Blog

Volunteering in Uganda

Posted 17th January 2017
by Lauren

Building the Playground in Kagoma

In Uganda
I've been back for about five months now but in my head, I'm still bungee jumping over the River Nile, my time in Uganda is not something that I will ever forget. The work I did out there and the amazing people that I met along the way have inspired me to make another trip out there in the coming summer, this time as a Volunteer Leader! To build a playground for a school out in East Africa was a once in a lifetime experience and one I truly loved and enjoyed. I learnt a lot about myself as a person, my strengths and weaknesses, how I can overcome any problems I am faced with, even in an alien environment.
I never thought that I would ever get the chance to go out to Uganda and build a playground for a school there, but now that I have I can’t wait to go back and do it again! The work although tiring was highly rewarding and satisfying. To see hundreds of children running to play on that playground that I built on open day, is, and always will be one of my most cherished memories. Surprisingly, I found out about this amazing opportunity from a mass email at my university and thought it sounded amazing. I filled out my application, put down my deposit and then called my mother and told her! Luckily, she thought it was an amazing opportunity too so I wasn’t in too much trouble for that. The whole process was really easy and there was so much help from the charity that I never felt like I was alone to sort it all out at any point. We had fundraising meeting to give us ideas about possible ways to fundraise and we even got monthly emails with ideas that we could do. There was also a Facebook information page where we could ask any questions we had and have them answered quickly and concisely.
Now it wasn't all building a playground, in our free time on weekends we got to go out and do various activities. I myself went bungee jumping, horse riding, stand-up paddle boarding, kayaking, white water rafting and on a weekend long safari! These were the most amazing experiences of my life, we tracked white rhinos and stood not even 5 meters away from them, things I could only dream about before!
My group was placed at Kagoma Primary school in Kagoma village, in Jinja Uganda. On the weekends, we would stay at NRE which was right on the river Nile and during the week we would stay in a classroom at the school. The weekends would also be the time that we would go into Jinja village and do all of our tourist shopping and eating.
The group that I was a part of was really diverse, even though we all went to University in the UK we were all from different places, such as Greece, China, France and Norway. So, it was really cool to learn new things not just about Uganda but about other places we haven’t necessarily been to before. It was fun trying to learn any amount of Chinese and I was terrible at it but it was still a fun way to pass the time while digging hole in the burning sun!
I owe this wonderful experience largely to the JVenn foundation because without their support and encouragement it may not have been possible. So, I would like to thank John Cliff and everyone else on the JVenn board for choosing me to be a part of this amazing foundation and also supporting my dreams and goals to travel. I couldn't have done it without you!
The experience was so amazing that I have volunteered to go again, this time as a leader meaning that I will offer help to any of the volunteers from my University both in Uganda and before we leave.
Postscript
It is hard finding any sort of balance at University between everything that you must do and everything that you want to do. You need to balance seminars, lectures, coursework, exams, study time, reading time to prepare for seminars and lectures, social time to eat, time to sleep and time alone to take care of yourself! Some people are especially amazing at balancing these things and getting amazing marks in Uni but if your anything like me you’ll struggle from time to time (even a lot of the time!) and I don’t even have exams on my course. But, I want you to know that it’s okay to struggle with everything and reassure you that you won’t struggle forever. Even I am starting to find a nice balance, even if it did take me a while……until well into the second year…. but I’m still here!
It is made even harder to balance anything when you are having a rough time personally. Sometimes it is easier to take a break from things to take care of yourself and then tackle everything else. My advice is to do the things that you absolutely must for example anything that has a hand in date that can’t be avoided. Then take care of everything else. Trying to do too much all at once will only make an already tough time even tougher, take my word for that.
I would also like to say that there is nothing wrong with telling people you are having a hard time and may not be able to do all of the things that you were asked to do. That includes Uni work. They will usually understand if you have a valid reason and often offer you extra time. For example, I was having a tough time personally and finding it hard to get all of my essays in on time so I told John at JVennn that I wouldn’t be able to write him the blog that he asked for and that I really wanted to write. He was amazing and very understanding telling me I could do it whenever I finally found the time. I have handed in all of my essays and finally done the blog and am very happy with it. I am also very thankful to John for understanding that I couldn’t do it and being very supportive of me in that situation. This is a bursary where you get a lot of support and understanding and I think that is amazing.

View all blog posts