I landed in Kampala on Sunday morning, had a day at the hotel meeting with my colleague and friend Barbara Durr who was in from Nairobi. I wasn’t at the hotel long, though. Monday morning I checked out, went to the office, and we quickly left for Kenya. Our project director, Philip, did the driving (a first! Typically projects have hired drivers who cart us all around), ably dodging potholes and shepherding us through the crush of the border, where hawkers descend on the car offering to change money for you, hand you forms you may need, showing you what’s what. You get to do it all twice, as you leave Uganda and, 100 yards later, as you enter Kenya. It was quite the scene—a well coordinated chaos, it seemed!
Along for the trip was another communications consultant, Sarah, an American living in Kampala, and Mel, a British photographer visiting Uganda.
It was about a 6 hour drive all told. We landed in Western Kenya, in Uganya district, at a surprisingly nice hotel. Frankly, I was prepared for the worst, but the Hotel Camunya isn’t at all bad, all things considered.
(hotel Camunya at right)
After checking in, we drive the 20 minutes to the Matibabu Clinic. Matibabu is a small local NGO that JSI is working with through the Technical Assistance to the New Partner’s Initiative project. Matibabu received a direct grant from the CDC under the New Partner’s Initiative and JSI has been asked to help strengthen Matibabu’s management systems—along with about 15 other organizations. We just took a quick tour of the clinic and met some of the people working there and made plans for the next day, when Sarah would be conducting a workshop on key message development.
It turns out that while Matibabu is “homegrown,” they were founded and are extensively supported by a group of doctors from San Francisco--now called the Tiba Foundation. We found this out at dinner, when two Americans came into the hotel restaurant; one we had seen at the clinic. Amanda and Andrea are doctors who have volunteered for two weeks at Matibabu. Amanda, a pediatrician, has been involved since day one and volunteers twice a year. This was Andrea’s first trip—she’s an intensive care pulmonologist who’s known Amanda for years and was persuaded to come to Kenya by Amanda’s enthusiasm!
Matibabu Pharmacy window below
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