Our Last Day in Uganda

From Sunday, November 29, 2009











(Picture sent via iPhone is from the plane on the way home….see the sunset and the coast of Greenland!)

Today is our last blog entry, and a short one.

We have spent the day packing and getting ready for the 29 hours of travel ahead of us. But since we didn’t leave until 11:00 pm, we made sure the day was productive and we met with UNANM for a few hours putting together the final pieces of our strategy and defining our goals and objectives. It was a particularly engaging meeting as now after all this time, we have some clear direction and aspirations.

I am very excited about our plans and I look forward to coming back in March to make the next crucial steps.

It has been a pleasure sharing this experience with you all and thank you for your interest in our work.

“Kwaheri” from Uganda!

From Saturday, November 28, 2009

One thing I didn’t mention yesterday was our wonderful dinner with our UNANM (Uganda’s national nursing association) friend, Patrick B. He joined us on our tour to Kabale and was very helpful in scheduling appointments during our trip.

He continues to be a wonderful help and a terrific mind. I really enjoy collaborating with him, sharing ideas, and of course learning all that he knows about nursing in Uganda which seem endless.

Because his wife Prissy is so patient to let us take him away so much we took them out to a fun part of Kampala called Centenary Park. It is a huge compound of restaurants and more restaurants. The park was alive on a Friday night and we sat under the stars eating Uganda’s version of BBQ while competing music from three different restaurants vied for our attention.

Today we went for a tour of the national museum. It is lovely, but small and had the feel of an old-school museum with dioramas and displays of baskets and tools used years long gone. It took less than an hour but it was a nice break before continuing to type up more notes and compiling additional information from the SONS.

We ended the day over dinner with our good friend Janet O. who is the President of UNANM. We gave her a recap of our trip and an update on our work. She too is a wealth of information and we continue to learn a great deal from her extensive experience. For our work to sustain itself it is so important that we actively engage UNANM in the development of our work. By working together, we can better ensure that future Gretta graduates have appropriate remuneration, safe working conditions, due professional status and the like.

Well today was our last full day in Uganda. Until tomorrow….