Something a little different

So, this is nothing to do with slums, development, poverty, our family, or feelings.

It is a glimpse into how I love to unwind and have adventure in this fantastic country though. Fellow adventurers should enjoy this video of a day out on the bikes!

The writing's on the wall

As part of the overall plan to move things along slowly in the slum communities, we've had a lot of fun creating murals as an awareness raising tool. These two mural sets have been about how to make a Tip Tap (a simple hand-washer) and a Bag Garden (think vertical gro bag). As well as these instructions are key messages about the importance of hand hygiene and eating nutritious vegetables. You may know that already, but only if you can read Luganda.

Before getting them painted, we surveyed households closeby to see what their understanding was in these two areas. Some of the results were pretty eye opening. Here are a few:

34% of people had not eaten any fresh fruit in the last week - some hadn't for months!

Only 1/3 of people eat 2 or more vegetable portions in a main meal.

A whopping 48% of Banda slum children had diarrhea in the last 6 months. 33% of those, more than 4 times! 

We're now in the process of finding out how the murals affected people's knowledge and attitudes, then we'll being doing training at the mural sites on the techniques to see if we can help people to change what they do as well. So, here are the lovely murals, which are like mini oases of colour amongst the brown, grey and dust of the slums.

This is Nalongo's house. She is a bit of a mover and shaker in Kinawataka community and is really pleased with her newly painted home and really well placed to influence her neighbours.

These children followed us around whenever the murals were being painted. The colourful nature of the murals means that we often catch children staring up at them and reading.

The lady from this house asked if we could add some paint to the front of her house too. So, what the heck, we went for blue!

The toilets that Revelation Life put in are in the foreground and the plan is to have several Tip Taps here to make this a kind of sanitation centre. It will also make more money for Hadijah - the lady who looks after the loos and receives about 5p every time someone spends a penny.

My personal favourite! This mini toilet is right next to the railway line where hundreds of people walk to work every day. A great site to get messages that save lives to a lot of people.