Friday

Where ever you are, at some stage or another, you have to do the paperwork, or governance stuff. Today was our Macedonia Vision Trustees meeting. We were told that this would begin at 10:00. We know Africa but felt we should arrive around this time. There were no other committee members present, so we were able to catch up on the latest news from Mercy, one of the Sanitary Pad manufacturing team.

There has been some upset in town. The street kids are growing up and are now teenagers, and one had killed a policeman. Understandably the reaction to this was that large numbers of police had gone out and detained large numbers of ‘street children’. The problem was that in Masese, most of the children look like they are living rough and they didn’t think to run away when the police came. So quite a number were detained. Many families then had to collect the necessary documentation (and some money) to get them released. Not a great situation all round. It highlights the need for practical skills training for teenagers who drop out of school (another parallel with life in the UK?).

Anyway it was now 11:00 and the first of Trustees arrived, followed a bit later by Pastor Alfred. The meeting actually began at 12:00 and went very well. We discussed how MVA UK could best support the work and agreed a memorandum of understanding setting out mutual responsibilities. These things cannot be rushed and the meeting closed around 4:00, ready for lunch. We walked out into the sunshine and through the upper ‘better’ part of Masese, there are some new buildings and quite well kept houses. Things are improving. A young boy was playing outside with an old bike inner tube. He waved as we went by. It was nice to see him playing, but he should have been at school. After a rather long business meeting it was good to be reminded what the work is all about.

We got a lift back to the hotel with Stephen. He was driving back to Kampala and had collected one of Alfred’s chickens. It sat happily in the back of the 4×4. I guess it thought it was going on holiday – little did it know….