Amy Lindsay – Uganda Education Volunteer 2002

My personal experience with Students Partnership Worldwide ( SPW ), was on the Uganda Education Program 2002. In my group of four, we were two British girls and a Rwandan and a Ugandan male. After four weeks of training, comprising everything from ‘how to teach economics' to ‘how to put a condom on a banana', we were feeling fully prepared, though a little apprehensive, for life on place me nt. On 8 th February 2002 , the four of us were dropped off in Nawanyago. We arrived to the tiny mud hut surrounded by lush e me rald green trees and thick dusty orange mud that would beco me our ho me for the next nine months.

Living in an East African community where HIV is rife and water is scarce is a rude awakening. The villages you live in do not make special provisions for their white residents. I ate the lumpy diet of ‘posho', a delectable blend of maize flour and water, without the aid of cutlery and with increasing interest as I cultivated a spectacular pot-belly. I slept whilst the sun hid, and woke when the rooster alerted me , dressed not unlike my grandmother in long skirts and blouses, and behaved with the decorum of the local wo me n. Swearing and scruffiness have no place in village life. This is largely how you earn the respect of the community. Cruel images of Oxfam campaigns are, paradoxically, enshrined in the genuine beauty and hospitality the holiday brochures only hint about.

I won't say that this approach is easy. Fetching water from a bore-hole, bathing from a bucket, and urinating into a hole take so me practice. Cooking on charcoal doesn't quite compare to Sunday lunches and having one hundred cockroach roommates can make things a little crowded. Singing ‘ heads shoulders knees and toes' to a class of 107 dumbfounded, emaciated little Ugandans is surreal, watching them giggle as they try to coordinate spindly arms and protruding ribs to master the actions. But these are what make projects like Students Partnership Worldwide a challenging and beneficial way to spend a gap year.

Once you have settled into your community, you beco me a part of the village. You are a teacher, a role model, a colleague and a friend. The projects that you set up are fostered through team-work and initiative and you get a real sense of achieve me nt from seeing them grow and flourish, and from witnessing what a difference they will make. My Health Day took such a lot of hard work, but working with our African counterparts and the school made us so much closer and allowed us to share in the success of day.

You live the experience from the inside. Rather than being another bland white face in the crowd, you beca me a local celebrity, subject to screeches of ‘Muzungu' (white man) and stalked by a gaggle of chickens and bare-footed children wherever you roam. It will be an experience to shape your outlook to life and provide you with me mories to smile upon for many years to co me .