Leaving Uganda

Wow, where did those 10 days go?!  Monday and Tuesday have been a whirlwind, visiting DFID and the Commissioner for Nursing and Midwifery at the Ministry of Health then finally facilitating a workshop with the external stakeholders of the midwives' association.  This included representatives from various universities, the Ministry of Health, the Nurses and Midwives Union, the Ugandan Nurses and Midwives Council, The White Ribbon Alliance and various NGOs such as White Ribbon Alliance and AMREF.

The room at UPMA's office where they are going to install their new E-learning centre so Enrolled Midwives can updgrade to Registered Midwives

Workshop was supposed to start at 0930.  This is what it looked like at 1015... African time!

Lovely Andrew, UPMA's Project Administrator, organising all the handouts etc.

Groundrules!

Finally everyone arrived, just in time for coffee!

Disan outlining the background to the workshop

Once we got going it went really well

Group work to assess the capacity of the assocation with the external stakeholders

More group work

Rebecca, Deputy Chair at the Uganda Nurses and Midwives Council, feeding back

Elizabeth, Head of Midwifery at Uganda Christian University, feeding back

I'm flying home tonight and going straight from Heathrow to the office where I'm meeting a delegation of high level health representatives from Malawi, including the President of the Association of Malawian Midwives (AMM).  Jacque Gerrard, the RCM's Director for England will be joining our meeting and we're really excited as we have just submitted a bid for some work in Malawi with the AMM.  After the meeting I'll be travelling to Birmingham by train to attend a two day conference hosted by our donors, THET.  I'm doing a 3 minute presentation at the conference so may have to re-hash our project song! Click here to hear Uganda midwives singing our project song at last year's workshop  I'm looking forward to staying with my friends Helen and Andy Tidy whilst at the conference - Helen and I studied nursing together in 1984 and have stayed in touch ever since.

I'll finally arrive home on Friday evening and am really looking forward to seeing my family and friends and sleeping in my own bed without mosquitoes keeping me awake!  The following 2 weeks are very busy with writing a bid to continue our work in Cambodia, Nepal and Uganda, writing a big report and then flying to Cambodia on 15 October.  I'll go straight onto Nepal and won't be home until 8 November by which time it will be well into winter!