Co-operatives in Northern Uganda have invited Six Canadian Co-operative Association volunteers to help them measure their enterprises against international standards using CCA’s Development Ladder Assessment Tool (DLA). Follow Linda Archer’s exciting account of their 2-week mission working side-by-side with Ugandan co-operators as they plot the path forward for their co-ops and credit unions. The result is a snapshot of how the co-op is doing - and a set of benchmark scores for measuring progress as they grow their co-operative enterprise.

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Day 5 - Meeting the family

A beautiful day and Isaac has asked if I’d like to accompany him to meet his family in the village where he was born and grew up. I jumped at the chance.

On the way we stopped at several locations to pick up things for the family and I contributed a litre of cooking oil for his grandmother as well as sweets for the children.  Kids are the same everywhere it seems.  For the adults back home we might bring flowers or a ‘treat’ of some kind but here it appears to be about a practical gift. 

We stopped by his immediate family’s home and picked up his niece to bring along to visit her grandmother and great grandmother; she’s 3 and before long she was holding my hand and asking to be picked up.  Extended families are the norm here so I met all kinds of aunts, nieces and neighbours. I can’t send pictures at the moment as I don’t have internet access (I’ll send all this as soon as I get some) but I definitely have some.  I was made most welcome and before long the women were all hugging me.  There’s a sign of respect that women have here and they got down on one knee on the ground when greeting me including elderly women.  I kept trying to lift them up but as a visitor from Canada we’re treated with great respect.
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