Happy New Year, my loyal bloglets.

New Years always bring a chance for reflection, for looking back as well as forward. Ive been in Uganda, working at Kiwoko, for 9 months now and its strange how the time has gone. I remember saying goodbye at George Best Airport very clearly, and yet, so much has happened in the last months, that I cant believe that it was less than a year ago that I left. Life at Kiwoko is certainly rich in experiences!

My long awaited Christmas break was fantastic spent a few days at Jinja, beside the river Nile and then went to Mombasa in Kenya. Mombasa is beautiful, but a word of warning for prospective visitors dont believe the guidebooks and websites who recommend the overnight train from Nairobi down to Mombasa on the coast. As well as being grotty (apparently we didnt pay extra for the stains on our bed sheets), it was delayed for 16 hours. We were stuck on the train for 13 of those, until we decided to escape and hire a taxi to take us to Mombasa! On the way back we flew with Kenya Airways more expensive, yes but then we did actually arrive at a reasonable time.

So, Im now having lots of meetings with staff, trying to get out of holiday mode and back to serious work! Luckily, I have so much work coming up in the next few months that there is no time to gradually slip out of holiday mode. Our large funding proposal (about 60,000 over the first year), has been authorised by USAID, which is fantastic, but will involve lots of extra work for the HIV/AIDS team here. Additionally, we are progressing with our HIV strategy the research has been completed, and now we are meeting with all those affected by HIV at Kiwoko to try and ascertain felt needs. As if that wasnt enough, were going to be making some internal changes to try and keep improving the quality of the services that offer to those living with HIV/AIDS in our area. Oh and weve got 2 donors coming to visit in the next 6 weeks

Youll see that Im going to be a busy boy.