Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Easter party

Children playing football, throwing ball, skipping rope and watching in books is just some of the things that happened as we arranged an Easter party at Ruhandagazi School for Disabled. The event took place Friday the 6th of April as the children were supposed to go home for Easter. Some children didn’t have the money for doing so, and it was mainly for those we planned to have the party.

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Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Easter workshop at the Bushenyi Medical Centre

Yesterday we had an Easter workshop together with the children. It was so fun. BEST TIME EVER! The children were so free. Before we have had to ask them if they want to do this or this, but yesterday they just went on doing whatever they wanted; painting, drawing freely, playing cards, paper folding and watching books. It was a wonderful chaos… :) And the children must have enjoyed as much as Kathrine and I did, because many stayed way past their examination/medication time… Children that don’t want to leave the Health Centre because they’re enjoying too much… How wonderful is that… :)

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Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Visiting Gulu

Anne Margrethe and Kathrine have been visiting Gulu town in Northern Uganda:

Together with a friend of my family that have worked as a missionary in Uganda for the past 20 years Kathrine and I went to visit Gulu the 24th-25th of March. This is a place in the north that has been affected by a conflict that started in 1986 as President Yoweri Museveni took over the power by a military coop. The LRA (Lord Resistance Army) under the lead of Joseph Kony have fought their war up in north apparently as a way to overthrow the sitting President. LRA have had little success besides loosing the little support they had to begin with because of their way of acts. They have kidnapped a lot of children and trained them to be soldiers or/and sex-slaves.

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Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Visit to an orphanage

A couple of weeks ago Kathrine and I went together with some friends to an orphanage. When we arrived we were welcomed with many happy faces and hugs from many at the same time. It was overwhelming because I had never been there before and still they welcomed me as an old friend. We had brought some flower seeds and the children got to plant them into containers. We wrote each of their names on a peace of tape and put it on their container. This way they can follow up their own flower.

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Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Health station Kasaana

Children are screaming from inside and a “queue” of tired women, after a long walk, and their children are sitting outside under the trees. They’re all waiting for their turn to go into the small and dark room where the vaccination of the children is done. Every Thursday I go together with some of the staff from a health station out to their units in the villages. This last Thursday we went to a place called Kasaana. Every Thursday and Friday they go out to one of their units and help out with immunization, vaccination and pregnancy check-ups – just to name some of their work.

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Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Slumber party

Friday a week ago we had invited 9 girls from Compassion International to come and stay at our place for one night. They were picked up in the afternoon and as they arrived they got some food. Thanks to the chef at “Meats and More” (a restaurant in Bushenyi town) we didn’t have to make it ourselves… Beef-stew with rice and chapatti was on the menu… Later we served brownies and fruit-salad. We spent the evening playing cards, watching a movie (a cartoon/animation) and dripping lights onto water making nice colour-patterns;

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Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Update

Anne Margrethe blogs about what has happened since December:

Goats wandering around grazing in the “town” together with cows, and none of them seem too mind the traffic, passing by in tremendous speed, when passing the road. People shouting “mzungu how are you?” at you. Besides the traffic, animals, and maybe some generators running there’s no much other sounds besides some birds and rain pouring down now and then. I feel that everything is passing in slow paste…

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Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Rwanda, here we come!

Anne Margrethe shares impressions from Rwanda:

Last weekend we went to Kigali, Rwanda, together with the four placed in Kampala. They came and visited us here before we continued together to Kigali. Kigali was a really nice town. So clean, many nice buildings, and a nice private park. It was very interesting and touching to visit a church were the 10 000 that hid in were killed, and a memorial. You keep hearing about the genocide, but to be where things had happened gave me a surreal feeling, but also (hopefully) some more knowledge and understanding. I really can’t believe that it could happen. That nobody stopped it. You know; all the soldiers that were put there to get out all the internationals (people from the west), could probably have put an end to it… So “why and how could this happen?” I, like many others, keep asking. I know that I will never really understand what has happened in this country, but with just the little I’ve understood about it I keep asking… WHY? HOW? The marks are from grenade splinters..

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The Fokus students in Kampala were also in Kigali. You can read about their impressions on Per's blog and Kay Amund's blog. Fokus-student Ingrid deler også sine inntrykk på sin blog.

Kathrine and Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: Refugee Camp

Anne Margrethe and Kathrine write about their visit to a refugee camp close to their practice place. Anne Margrethe observes:

Three dirty and tired children placed in the back of a vehicle. Sitting close to each other, and staring a bit afraid on the mzungu that’s also sitting there. It looks like they are trying to comfort each other. There’s plenty of space, but the children, and three women together with matooke (banana for cooking) and a bag with some belongings, is squeezing themselves together in the very end of the vehicle. This is a refugee family that we (Kathrine and I) met while we visited a refugee camp.

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Kathrine continues:

So we left early Friday morning with the bus, and we’re picked up in Mbarara for the next 2 hrs stretch. (The camp was only 60km from the border of Tanzania) [...] This is Nakiwaru, the biggest refugee camp in Uganda. There is living somewhere between 22 000- 30 000 refugees here. Most are from Rwanda and Sudan, but they also come from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, Tanzania and Kenya. What might also be special with this camp, besides the big size, is that most of the population has actually lived here for at least 10 years, so most of them are more or less settled.

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Anne Margrethe in Bushenyi: I'm still alive

Anne Margrethe blogs about boda-boda rides and childhood memories:

A couple of boda-bodas passing through in a hurry, each one with a white girl on the "backseat". That's Kathrine and me.. The road is humpy, steep and curvy. The wind is blowng through my hair and I'm thinking: "I don't want to die..." I must admit that I sent quite a few prayers up to God this last saturday. But it went well and I had a nice time. Our purpose for this trip was to visit a friend of ours at his house. It was qite far away into the countryside. Some of the roads we travelled on were just paths, and when we came to the house I was surprised to find a nice brickhouse. It's so strange that in "the middle of nowhere" this house stod...
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