Seeing as I probably won’t be blogging until my next Ugandan trip (hopefully not long now!), I thought I’d write a few words to explain what www.ugandanielle.blogspot.com is about for people who have been directed to / stumbled across this blog.
On an average September day last year, I opened an innocuously entitled email to find out I’d been successful in my application for a Welsh Government International Learning Opportunity assignment from the (relative) comfort of my desk in the Environment Agency Wales office at St Mellons, Cardiff.
Fast forward to February and I somehow find myself sweating buckets in 35 degree heat after walking up a crumbling Ugandan mountain in flip flops learning how rural villagers were working as a community to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change whilst wondering how submitting a 500 word expression of interest form to my manager had eventually led to me ending up in a country where warm beer, heart breaking poverty, cutting the grass with a machete, horrendous attitudes towards gay people and bum massages seem to be the norm.
For two months, I had the privilege of calling Mbale, Eastern Uganda, home.
I was there for two months working on a United Nations Development Programme called TACC (Territorial Approach to Climate Change). The TACC project aims to help people living in the Mbale region to adapt to climate change whilst improving their living conditions and livelihoods.
Fast forward some more to the beginning of April until June and I became Danielle Hitt of No Fixed Abode, Somewhere Between Kampala And Cape Town - always within camping distance of a big yellow truck, infrequently within charging distance of an electricity point and almost never within walking distance of a flushing toilet.
It probably won’t come as a surprise that February to June of 2012 provided some of the most amazing experiences of my life – some euphoric, some tragic, some life changing, others life affirming but the most significant (and mundane) of which are described in the blog below.
If you want to read about my assignment in Mbale, it starts on 4th February – you can start of the beginning by clicking on the February tab to the right of your screen.
If you want to start at my trip, you’ll need to start from April 14th. Again, click straight to April on the right.
Hope this makes sense to you. So for the time being, I’m blogging off until my next trip – but that won’t be long!
