Kingserve operates in many parts of the world but has always had a special interest in Uganda in East Africa.  Situated on the equator on the shores of Lake Victoria, Uganda has a population of about 34 million people and a land area equal to that of the UK. Winston Churchill called it ‘the Pearl of Africa’ and so it is with its fertile and well-watered soils, an equatorial climate tempered by high altitude and scenery ranging from savannah plains to high mountain jungle.

Civil war ravaged the country in 1970’s and 80’s but since then it has begun to rebuild its economy though it’s GNP is still only 1% that of the UK remains in the poorest 15% in the UN’s Human Development Index

Over the years Kingserve has helped in school and church building on the Sesse islands in the middle of Lake Victoria, providing Occupational Therapy resources to a remote hospital near Luwero, supporting water and sanitation projects and especially in the development of a centre for disabled children at Kitega.

Such relationships are often two way.  Yes, western countries usually give material aid and services but often receive much in ways hard to express in words. The Scottish poet Robbie Burns wrote “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, to see oursels as other see us, it wad frae mony a blundr free us, And foolish notion” which roughly translates as seeing ourselves as others see us can save us from making many mistakes.  Comments such as ‘westerners have the watches but Africans have the time’ or ‘westerners have the wealth but Africans have the smiles’ are examples of such observations.  Or take the case of the Ugandan visitor to the UK who on being shown the material splendour of a western shopping centre saw past the materialism and observed that ‘the people didn’t talk to each other’.  Another example of it ‘being more blessed to give than to receive’.