Lively Minds – Jinja day 1

Grace the Lively Minds country manager in my new accommodation

Arrived in Jinja Uganda at 1.00am after an 18 hour journey so I spent a lot of day 1 in a kind of daze. There was a lot to learn on the first day of work – names of the staff, the way Lively Minds works and where to get a beer (Nile Special) at the end of the day.

So: There is Mike who knows more about how my laptop works than I do. Josephine who stayed up to greet me at 1.00 am at the end of Wednesday, Sarah who gave a dazed old man an orientation chat on the Lively Minds set up. Grace who runs the show, Ronald who is finance, Selma another community development officer, Wilberforce (transport) who became a father for the first time yesterday, Maria who cooks and cleans. Oh and Samson the watchman and the guard dog Delila. Took me a while to work that one out.

I’m the only volunteer living in an old colonial house near the shores of Lake Victoria which doubles as the work place and office of the Lively Minds charity in Uganda.

Everyone has been very welcoming and say they are very excited about my visit – so there is no pressure on me! I hope I can be of help but I have a lot to learn first. It’s a very lively and well organised team who are having an effective impact on some of the more deprived village areas around Jinja. I know this because I was included in the field trip for that day to a village called Ntinda It was a great way to learn how the organisation works because it all went so well.

 

We arrived and there was an orderly line of 3 to 5 year olds waiting to wash their hands before joining the play scheme. This began in a hastily rearranged room because the usual one was needed for a village meeting. More about what goes on in these playgroups in another blog but just to say that it was a very structured and well organised experience where I tried in vain to be a fly on the wall. Almost impossible as some of the children had never seen a white person before. (I couldn’t understand why some of them were crying as I arrived!) None of the villagers spoke English so I spent the rest of the time trying to smile a lot – the international language.

The mothers running the activities were great. They have been well trained by the Lively Minds staff and in many, many cases acted like professional kindergarten teachers. I made a long list of positives to report back to the LM staff the next day.

Things like:

Mothers working with groups of 4 children would always give praise for each child’s efforts by employing a clapping game.

Mothers were well organised and were very clear about what the activities they were leading.

Everyone was so enthusiastic and the children seemed to enjoy every minute.

The children were very well behaved.

The adult-child ratio was perfect for the age group and this was because there were enough trained mothers to act as teachers.

There was encouragement for some children who were clearly quite shy.

The mothers ensured that the children in each group took turns to respond to the activity, thus ensuring no one was left out.

If a child in the group could not complete a task then these were helped by another more competent child.

One mother acted as a timekeeper (using a mobile phone of course) so that the children rotated activity every 10 minutes. No time to get bored with an activity. The timekeeper was able to help with organising the children as they moved about too.

 

The team have done a great job, as far as I can see, in training mothers who generally have no education themselves. They are working to a successful and quite strict pattern in order to achieve this. I’m looking forward to learning more over the next 3 weeks.