Project LegalAid - This (week) is it!

Project LegalAid is starting its most important week. But before I tell you about that I want to give you an update of how I find Uganda.

The people
Ugandans are one of the friendliest people I have met so far. People greet you in the taxi (which are more likely to be called small buses) and they are always very polite. Our host(Carol) is a very good example of the Ugandan hospitality. The family we stay at has taken us in to their home that has gone beyond all our expectations, they have been so warm and kind.

In the morning we have breakfast together, we often come home for dinner at around 7 pm and after that Olav and I try to help the kids do their homework, this is really a fun time!

If you want to go to any African country and you aim is to get to now the people and their culture, Uganda is the place to go.

The Food
Ugandans don’t use a lot of spices. Their food is in general very build up around bananas, rice and ground nuts. But if you want to try something else there is a lot of Indian restaurants here. We had our first pizza on a shopping center yesterday which was fantastic!
But beware that they use ages in serving the food, even if there is more staff that customers.

Meetings in general.
If you have a meetings with a Ugandan and you are the one to invite him, its quite common to give a amount they would cover the transport cost. You should also give the person some refreshments and something to eat.

Don’t expect the person to on time.
|If you don’t tell him or her that its American time, you can be waiting for a long time. Always tell people to come 30 min before the actually meeting so that you hopefully can start in time, this is common.

Project Legal Aid – This (Week) is it.

This week we will be on fire!!!

Monday and Tuesday we will be planning our Meeting on Wednesday, The Information Day at KCCC which is on Thursday and the Information Day at Makerere on Friday.
We sent out the invitation last week with Richard (our guy at KCCC) who drove around in Kampala on a Boda Boda delivering to their door – the post services in Uganda does not seems to be reliable.

The Meeting - Wednesday
We have booked the boardroom at KCCC for this meeting. The object for this meeting is to have a discussion around the problems that people who have been abused or neglected will meet on their way to court and how we can ease this process.
The people here face big challenges in getting to the right people and the cost of getting the evidence cleared by certified police surgeons (this is required and they charge 50 000 Ugandan shilling) so the case will be strong enough to convict those how have been charged in court.

We have invited totally 25 stakeholders, this including the police, different NGOs and governmental institutions that are involved in such cases.
At The Meeting KCCC Advocacy will first tell them about the problems that they have faced, then their will be a discussion ,before we in the end try to come up with ideas so that we all can work on solving these challenges.

The stakeholders will meet at 8.30, the meeting will start at 9 am and finish at 12 pm. We will serve them samosa and refreshments.

Therese and I are really looking forward to this meeting. There are high profiled people that will be attending this. We hope that this meting can in the longer run help people in general, but for KCCC Advocacy this will from this day help them in getting the right contact so that they know who to contact on their quest to help the people in Kamwokya.

The Information day at KCCC – Thursday.

This will be a short meeting with different local politicians and other religious leaders who are well known in the community . Here KCCC Advocacy will tell them about their services and how people of Kamwokya can contact them. This meeting will be in Luganda and since we are not yet fluent in this, the meeting this will be lead by Richard (We hope our presents will give some effect- Mzongos in the house usually does this in Uganda)

The Information Day at Makerere Univeristy- Friday.

This meeting we haven’t sett any confirmed plans than meeting the students together with the Guild president and the president of Makerere Law Society.

But look forward for the next update where we will be telling you how our plan for this week went.

And remember that the road to success will always be under construction!

Vinesh – Project LegalAid.