Thursday 27th October
The first 2 days this week were spent in Fort Portal helping
with the PRIME course for 2nd year Clinical Officers at the
government training school. The course seemed to go well and about half of the
students got really engaged with what we were teaching which was a mixture of
teaching about treating the whole person-body, mind and spirit, together with some consultation skills and
more specific teaching about end of life care and managing Depression. It was
good working with Rob Sadler again who ran the course we helped with this time
last year. Ann acted as an excellent scribe for the various flip[ charts that were created but also as an excellent depressed woman and someone with terminal cancer in the various role plays which we did. It was the first time she had done this and realised how powerful it can feel when you get into a role like these. I am pleased to say Ann neither has terminal cancer nor depression at the moment!!
Mr TB (me) being told his diagnosis!
The students doing the course
Discussions in pairs.
Wednesday morning we were able to go on a birding walk for a
couple of hours from 7am to the botanical gardens in Fort Portal. We saw an
amazing range of birds, a number of which we would have easily overlooked
without our guide, Andrew, to help us.
On the birding walk to the birding hot spot!
Ann and Andrew
Dusky-blue flycatcher
Red Backed Shrike
Mackinnon's fiscal
The journey back to Kagando went
smoothly and allowed an opportunity to stop at Rubona where there is a
cooperative of local woman who make baskets to sell. The amount of work going
into the baskets can be huge with one taking the most experienced women two
days and then selling for 12,000 Ug Sh, or just under £3.
This afternoon was a further litter picking afternoon. There
was a large turnout of local school children who, to the accompaniment of the
brass band, did a good job of tidying up Kagando’s main street but until the
adults locally see keeping the environment litter free as worthwhile it is hard
to see how things will change.
Clean up Kagando
Ann doing some serious litter picking!
It really pleases me to see educational activity in third world countries,This is the dire need of the hour and the only way to get rid of all kinds of poverty in those parts of the world.
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