Ramblings about Gender, climate change, Equity, community, culture

Day Zero - 21/09/2021 I am welcomed to Holiday inn express, queens ferry road where I am going to spend possibly 10 days of my quarantine depending on results, if not more, after travelling to a red list country for work. I am overwhelmed by the nature of the quarantine and I decided to share my welcome experiences which then seemed grim, that was before I went through it all!. See my  Previous blog . Why do I do this? if I had read quarantine conditions in the UK, I would have made better choices, either not to travel or to comeback through an amber or green country. I don't wish it on anyone, so I will share my journey to help some one else. Day one  - 22/09/2021 I didn't sleep well, I guess it was the frustration of the day, travelling all night with intermittent sleep, Covid19 document checks, flight delay in Amsterdam and the limited rights I had. I woke up to a loud knock at 7:00am, breakfast had arrived, the wrong one which I hadn't asked for. This was thankfully cor

  After one year and  a half of not travelling, for us the optimists we ventured to travel for work because it was extremely necessary. I do not regret it a minute, it exceeded our expectations in terms of achieving our objectives. We travelled to Uganda on the 4th of September 2021, after the rigorous preparation and filling forms, fit to fly PCR test, health declaration for Amsterdam and booking a quarantine hotel at the cost of £2,285 before travel. Arrival and processing in Uganda was un eventful since I am fully vaccinated and I had evidence of negative Covid results. There was no need to quarantine, after all I was coming in from the'' United Kingdom''. I chose to stay in an apartment where  I can manage the cleanliness and contact, plus I carried a lateral flow test kit to check myself occasionally. We held numerous meetings and a workshop in Uganda, every one is masked up and conscious about safety, social distancing observed, which was refreshing. Today I came

  A few days ago, I came across a cartoon by Rebeka Ryvola that I was tagged in on twitter, mirroring how development planning is managed. Reflecting about it, I remembered a lesson I was taught by a farming community in Western Uganda many years back. I was working with an International development organisation at the time, and we prided ourselves on targeting the ''chronically poor'', and for sure it was in the best intentions. One day we went to the field, I was facilitating a session on conflict management because we used to support communities living adjacent to protected areas who experienced crop losses due to problem animals, and the park-people conflicts were common on crops, land, resource access etc. We also supported community livelihoods, market linkages, savings and loan associations, gender equality, among others. As we waited for the rest of the community members, I started an informal discussion to understand how they perceive ''chronic poverty&

The Year 2020 has been challenging as we all know, but here we are in 2021! Happy New Year Every one.  The year started well, resolutions were made, plans put into motion, but Covid19 hit and everything crumbled.  Weddings got cancelled, travel plans and physical meetings were cancelled, school and places of worship closed, we were moving into the unknown. R eminds me of Mexican saying I heard from a friend, that if you want to make God laugh at you, tell him your plans.  The different faces of the pandemic The pandemic was not just a health issue, it had social, economic challenges that have been un precedented. It exposed inequalities, the flawed humanity where husbands and wives could not live together for long hours due to lock down and resorted to violence (wonder why we stay together in the first place if we cant tolerate each other). People with low incomes, living hand to mouth suffered hunger and psychological trauma. I read about a man who set himself on fire because he could