On African Soil Again

Tim and I are on African soil again! And so I am temporarily reviving the blog to keep in touch with you all on what’s cookin’ not just in Tanzania… but also in Uganda!

I feel I owe you all some kind of epic catch-up! Since returning to the UK after living in Tanzania and blogging regularly, it has been a strange matter of starting a new life. Lockdowns and also not being able to get back to Canada didn’t help matters… and this has all meant there are so many friends and family that we just haven’t caught up with yet. We had hoped to send out a Christmas newsletter... and somehow didn’t get round to it. And then there was the other strange matter of deleting our email list for GDPR reasons when we finished our “role” … a list of precious names which was a source of life and love and support for so many years, just suddenly cut off in the click of a button. Even though we know you are all still there, it was an incredibly lonely and bereft moment! Somehow staying “in touch” with people far away while trying to make new friends with people geographically close seemed a very difficult thing. All this to say, as I revive this blog, we would love to get back in touch and this is a way of finding you all again!

Now skipping the epic catch-up (which would take the whole flight to relate), here in a nutshell is what’s cookin’ right now …

With Tim now CEO of Amigos Worldwide, we have come to meet the Ugandan team for the first time. We are very thankful for the girls’ school and have left them boarding there while we travel. (Yes, they are excited about being proper boarders, but no, they are not happy about being left behind and would very much rather be coming with us … but in the midst of GCSE and A-level mocks and exam preparation, it was not an option). Tim and I will be visiting the vocational training centre, Kira Farm, outside Kampala and then travelling north to visit communities where Amigos is working on sustainable community development projects and we will also look into future possibilities. I am looking forward to wearing my bee suit again! One of my new roles includes working with BeesAbroad, and it is exciting to be partnering (Amigos and BA) to develop beekeeping projects in the rural villages and a honey centre at Kira Farm.

After just over a week, while Tim stays another week in Uganda, travelling to Kaliro and I will travel down to Mwanza and stay a few weeks with the Emmanuel International team. I am so looking forward to catching up with them all and all the amazing work going on in the Mwanza region! There I will be working with Bhatendi on another partnership project (BA and EI) working through the churches developing beekeeping projects with women on Kome Island. I will also be working with my much-missed friends in the Upendo wa Mama group to see how we can develop The Hive.

So over the next month, follow along and I will do my best to update on what’s happening here! Please keep us and the people and communities we are meeting with in your prayers. Please feel free to share this blog with anyone you think might know us and be interested. And if you have a minute, please drop us a line, and we can be in touch!

We left at 1am early Monday morning and flew to Amsterdam to Kigali and then to Entebbe ... and collapsed into bed at 2am early Tuesday morning! This morning we are just delighted to meet everyone here at Kira Farm, hear the familiar African sounds, sing and dance to the African music by 8am, feel the sun and dirt on my very white toes ... and actually feel warm again!