October 2, 3, and 4. Well, in my last blog we got as far as our arrival in Entebbe airport. Entebbe is a city right on the edge of Lake
Victoria. We stayed at the Imperial Resort
Beach Hotel, a huge establishment with five floors of rooms, meeting rooms, a
gigantic convention hall, an acre of lobby where we often sat together in big
leather chairs before or after meals, a dining room a restaurant and a bar, and
a wonderful shady park that rambled down to the water’s edge—where we often had
“tea breaks”.
The name
and the elaborate spread reminded me of one of my favourite authors, Alexander
McCall Smith, who wrote humourous
detective stories set in Africa. He loved
names like this. If you enjoy light-hearted detective novels with an
African flavour, look him up!
Why such
luxury? It seems rather extravagant but
it was explained to us that “the price was right”, and it fulfilled all our
needs. Don’t forget, we were paying our
own way at the rates the SLF were able to negotiate. Practically the whole Convening took place in
this hotel.
On that
first day we were pretty much the only guests, and we were busy unpacking,
getting to know each other and our roommates, and finding our way around, changing US$ to Ugandan shillings, etc. We
were pretty much all exhausted with jetlag, but too excited to relax and catch
up on sleep. Looking back at it now, I
realize I didn’t catch up on my sleep until I arrived home twelve days
later. We sat together in the dining
room, served by an army of waiters, experienced their varied menu and the buffet
where we could find just about anything we liked, both local and
“American”. Even the Nile Beer. J
Some wonderful friendships began
to blossom.
We had
briefing meetings with the SLF staff, and began to understand what our role was
in this amazing event. We were there to
observe and report. We were encouraged to
mingle among the African Grandmothers, and learn from them personally, about
the situation they are currently living.
At workshops we were to record all this so that it could be “boiled
down” at the end, into the distillation of a Ugandan Grandmothers Statement--the
follow-up to the Toronto Statement (2006) and the Manzini Statement (2010). Had anything changed? Our observations would help to answer that
question.
It was suggested that we leave our cameras in
our rooms, and allow the three or more local photographers who had been hired to cover
the whole event, take photos for us.
That was hard to do! There were
pictures crying out to be taken wherever we turned.
I took a few with my iPhone, and I am glad I did, and will share some of
them with you. But I am exceedingly
grateful to these professional young men – (Edward, Emmanuel and Oscar) who
were everywhere, recording the event from every angle, far better than we could
have ever done. We were in their photos,
schmoozing and hobnobbing with the GMs.
The GMs felt much more comfortable being photographed by their own young
men. Hiring them was a brilliant idea.
It is all
part of the SLF policy of allowing the Grandmothers and the local community
based organizations, to run their own show, and have their own people do the
work. GMs could speak out freely and express to
us what they were living, and how we could help them. It was an exercise in listening, instead of
talking. Watching instead of
acting. Becoming engaged in the event
instead of controlling it. It was an
important lesson for us. But I am getting ahead of myself. We have not yet even met a Ugandan Grandmother! We were 20 Canadian Grandmothers and two
British Grandmothers, preparing ourselves for possibly the most exciting and important experience
of our lives.
One wing and entrance to the Imperial Resort Beach Hotel
Meeting in the lobby--smiled down on by Owner
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