One of my favourite musicians is Foy Vance – he is astounding – amazing voice; intelligent, insightful lyrics and guitar skills to die for! Find him here. You may have seen him at summer madness – he's been involved with the CMSI venue there a number of times. An artist who is a Christian, rather than a Christian artist, I often find that his songs cause me to look at my own life and faith differently, and express things that I know and feel, but can't articulate!

One of his songs is ca…

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I awoke with a start had I heard the rather distinctive voice of our esteemed MS, Dr Rory, talking to me in a dream, offering guidance and wisdom, or was that him banging against my window? The banging resumed and my answer was provided

Niall!

Rory

You awake?

Uh- huh (Im not very talkative in the morning)

We need your blood

You what?

Youre O+ we need your blood to transfuse into a kid

Right.be there in a minute

Whereupon, I leapt out of bed (an unusual occurrence), scurried to the showe…

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i often wonder exactly what part of my primary school teacher/ youth work training prepared me for designing and implementing a horribly complex data collection system to satisfy the most stringent of donors… and yesterday this wondering lead me to wonder why on earth God had brought me here… surely there would have been many much more qualified people to do this!

reflecting on that though, i see that God does not require people with the 'right' qualifications.. he's not restric…

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well the day has come… broadband has arrived at Kiwoko Hospital! So, no longer, will i be able to use a poor internet connection as an excuse for radio silence on the blog.

Despite the lack of postings since Jan (i hang my head in shame), things have been pretty busy. I have been carrying on full steam ahead with our new HIV/AIDS program, which has involved redesigning our monitoring and evaluation systems, changing our data collection methods and generally trying to work out how we're go…

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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 …

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well, my deveoted blogees..

Christmas is approaching… i have now finished work for a few weeks and am enjoying a coffee with dr r in Kampala. You'll be glad to hear that i have my christmas tree up, and the stockings have been bought for santa to fill. looking forward to heading off to Mombasa on boxing day with a friend who is coming out from home for the festive season. As great as Kiwoko is, it will be nice to get away and realx for a few weeks.

workwise… we continue to be busy.. th…

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Well my devoted blogees, time for another instalment from Kiwoko Hospital. Things are going well weve started a process of thinking about a strategy for HIV/AIDS for the hospital and as part of that Ive taken on the job of researching current thinking and good practice in responding to AIDS on a national and international scale. Its been great so far been down to Kampala and managed to download most of the UNAIDS website. Its worth a look if you want to educate yourself, though does go to quit…

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i got this in an email from a friend simon, who works in burundi… lets get voting…

he writes..

" I often preach about how we can change the world so easily if everyone does their little bit. Well I want to show it through this email. The BBC is running "a competition aimed at finding individuals or groups from around the world who have shown enterprise and innovation at a grass roots level." Out of 800 entrants, Cards from Africa are down to the last twelve. CFA WILL BE GIVE…

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at our daily morning devotions this am, i heard jonathon (one of our UK med students here on elective) preach on 1 John 3: 11 – 21. in the passage John (the author, not the med student) talks about love.

i was really challenged by what Jonathon had to say and indeed by what the passage said. its a simple message, but i think a crucial one for us. and it is this.

we need to simplify our faith! stop complicating things! at the root if it all, christianity is about loving God with all that we ha…

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Well, were chased out and all very much alive. The Kiwoko chase happened last Saturday and was a great success. The vision behind it was twofold firstly to have a fun day for the hospital. We had the 16 km race in the morning and then had games and a roasted cow afterwards. Staff and students had a great time we will be talking about this for weeks to come. The other purpose was to fundraise some money to meet hospital running costs (pun very much intended there Im afraid). So if you would lik…

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