My first TIME in Ssinda Village, Uganda...memiors of starting a non-profit

 Memoirs of starting a nonprofit and my first time to Ssinda Village, Uganda!

I am sure, if you follow anything I do. I have somewhere along the way mentioned to you that I had ideas of beginning an NGO (non-profit organization)  to support and promote rural Ugandan’s efforts in advancing their education, spirituality and vocational knowledge.

How the idea came about…I will get to that in a few blogs later… but check this out. My first time to Ssinda Village!

So in July/1994 my mother, whom I was staying with lost her battle to AIDS in Kasubi along with my stepfather and my youngest brother Jonathan...I ended up staying with her side of the family for sometime but hated them….they were/are nice people but they were not my mother. 

Plus it was against tradition for a child to grow up (ebukoja)…Luganda for your mother’s side of the FAM…that was told to me by one of them… so anyways at the wise age of between nine and ten years old I designed my master plan to escape to my grandmother’s home  (dad’s side) in Ssinda, Village, Mukono District of Uganda from Kasubi from my aunts and uncles….in my mind after I buried my mother in Masaka…my next plan was to run away.

Bomma (my grandmother) was a wise and nice lady,she spoke this deep Luganda at times only using metaphors to make herself understood…. prior to my mother’s death I had only met her one time, in 1992 during my school holidays, it was the first time I went to Ssinda Village, and it is my first memory of rural Uganda life: Bomma, along with my aunts, uncles and cousins lived in a small mud house with a dry grass roof-top….I don’t remember much of this trip or how my Aunt Tabitha came to get  me and took me there, to Bomma’s house…but I remember lots of other things…I remember it was a large extended family of all Bomma’s grand kids.
 

I remember that Bomma was a Muslim and prayed all the time…I remember we spent a lot of time fetching water and firewood out in the village’s bushes….and that we were always clearing land to plant food...I also remember a snake falling from the grass-roof-top once and Bomma grabbed it by the neck end and threw it out…. 

to be continued.....

Senkansuku is were I fetched my drinking water during my stay in Ssinda, Village! Photo taken in 2010 while I was working on a water project for the village:

My name is Jeremy Jjemba: I am chairman and founder of "RUEI", The Rural Uganda Education Initiate: we are a non profit 501(C)3...our mission is to promote and support rural Ugandans' effort to improve and advance their education, vocational knowledge, health care and spiritual awareness.

website and more information to follow!