I came to Uganda in 1972 and have never looked back

Brigittie Daley first came to Uganda as a volunteer nurse trying to recover from a broken relationship. She fell in love with the rural Uganda where she is fondly called Musawo by the older people and Jjaja Nassali by young ones, Sunday Monitor’s Henry Lubega caught up with her.

When I first came to Uganda in 1972, I was just a 20-year-old fresh graduate of nursing, and I knew little about the country.

Towards graduation, there was an advert by the White Fathers looking for volunteer nurses to work in some third world countries like Uganda. I told my parents about my planned application to volunteer in Uganda, but they didn’t buy the idea because of the fresh news about the 1971 Idi Amin coup.

However, I followed my heart and applied; in August 1972, I arrived at a White Sisters run hospital called Villa Maria Masaka as a volunteer nurse on a two-year contract.

Adjusting from the Western kind of life to that in a rural village in Uganda was not as hard as I had thought. And because I learnt Luganda very quickly, I settled in quite easily. During this time, I learnt a lot about the common diseases, especially those affecting children, and in the process I got so comfortable and overstayed my permit.

Deportation
Sometime in 1975 while at the hospital, army men came looking for a muzungu nurse. By then, I was the only White nurse at the hospital. They asked to look at my documents and they found that I had exceeded my stay period by one year. I was asked to pack my bags and was driven to Entebbe where they left me with the White Sisters, giving the sisters 48 hours to ensure that I was out of the country.

The sisters got me a ticket since it was part of the terms of my volunteering. On the second day, the same soldiers picked me from the Sisters place and drove me to the airport.

Although I got back to Canada, I still had Uganda in my heart and I knew one day I would come back.
I got married and raised my two sons and when they could live on their own, I told my husband, Bruce, that we should relocate to Africa and my choice was Uganda. My husband gave me a month to come and see the place I wanted to come and stay.
I first returned in 2004 for a month, then I went back and told him I liked what I had seen and I was sure we would be happy here. We had to sell our house and buy a condo. It’s easier to rent and manage a condo than a family house when you are away. The condo was to be our source of income since we were not coming to Uganda to make money.
The return
In 2005, Bruce and I came to Uganda. Upon return, I was recruited as a nurse with International Hospital Kampala as I waited for my move to Masaka - the place we were to stay in.

The pay was good but my heart was not into it because I had not really come to Uganda to look for a job.
After six months, I quit my job to move to Masaka where I registered at Masaka Comprehensive School of Nursing for a refresher course to be enrolled by the Uganda Nursing and Midwives Council.
During my refresher course, I worked as a mobile volunteer with a Danish organisation which was looking after orphans. I used to go out in the villages visiting the sick and immunising children.
However, during that time, I was not allowed to treat children who were not registered with the NGO. To me this was not fair, the system was segregative.

I talked to my husband about my experience; coincidentally he was also seeing the same thing. To him the NGO system was introducing a welfare system in Uganda which had failed in the West.

After the refresher course I was placed at Masaka Hospital as part of my registration process. During that time, I met a young lady called Alice (Second name forgotten) who helped us with the needs assessment exercise.

We decided to concentrate on Tekera Village because the nearest health centre from was 10 miles away and people were very poor.
Starting the Centre
We identified an old man - Francis Kiwewa - a Kibanja owner who out of passion for education was conducting nursery school under a tree in his Kibanja. We asked him to give us part of his Kibanja in return for a permanent building for him to conduct his lessons.

As the construction of the clinic started, the locals thought we were like other NGO’s giving out freebies. When the clinic opened, they came for free services; they thought so because the place was built by Whites.
My husband has always been passionate about agriculture and farming in general. He suggested that we use part of the Kibanja we were given as a farm to generate income for the clinic.

The farm was to support the clinic because people in the community were too poor to pay for the services yet they needed them. We asked the village leaders to encourage people to come for treatment whenever they were sick and once they had recovered, they would come and work at the centre’s farm as payment for the treatment.
Unfortunately, the arrangement was abused. After treatment, people were not willing to work, thinking it was for free. We were forced to close for two months.

Within that time, they realised the importance of the centre and their need to work for the services they were getting. The residents and their leaders came asking for the reopening.
The peso
When we reopened, people were to work when they are healthy and get treatment incase of sickness later. We introduced a community currency called the peso. It is a piece of paper that one gets once they have worked at the Centre and can be exchanged for service. We encouraged the residents to get as many pesos’ as they could, as this covered the entire family.

One peso is pay for an hour’s work and its equivalent to Shs1,000, but the work varies according to age and ability.
At the Centre residents were accessing treatment for the commonest ailments in the area like malaria, dysentery, STD’s diarrhea, and sometime stitches.

With just two pesos, one gets a full malaria treatment while an STD would require one to have five pesos.
Expansion
A year after the opening of the Centre, Kiwewa the Kibanja owner, introduced us to the landlord. He agreed to sell to us the whole five-acre piece of land at Shs2.5m.

With the land title secured in the names of Tekera Resource Centre, we embarked on providing other services.
That is when we started the school with the help of some international volunteers from Netherlands.

We also realised that it is not only about providing health services and education to the children that mattered. The people were poor and needed some level of income. We started with the women by having a craft’s club where women meet once a week to make handcrafts, which we sell in places frequented by tourists in Masaka Town.
Meanwhile, we used the farm produce to support the clinic in terms of buying drugs and other supplies.
Of course on different times, we have got donations from friends overseas to improve service delivery like being able to conduct in-house immunisation which was not the case before since we didn’t have a refrigerator to keep the vaccines.
Happening now
To supplement on the income from the crafts, we encouraged residents to form a village cooperative group where they bring their farm produce to the Centre and we take them to Masaka for sale on their behalf.
Through the Centre, we are trying to empower the local poor people. Instead of giving out freebies which don’t add value to them, we encourage them to work for themselves not as individuals but as a community by providing them with the skills and exposure.

When the farm area and the school expanded, we created employment for the locals, some on permanent and others on a casual basis.

Through the years, we have included some members of the community in the management of the Centre. This helps build confidence among the people and endear them with the facility.
One day we may have to go back to Canada, but we want the Centre to remain as useful as possible.

Receptive husband

When Brigittie Daley went back to Canda, she got married to Bruce. However, after giving birth to two sons and raising them up successfully, she proposed to her husband that they relocate to Africa and her choice was Uganda.

Bruce was receptive to the idea. He gave Brigittie me a month to come and see if it was the place she wanted to stay. Brigittie would first come to Uganda in 2004 before returning to Canada.

In 2005 Bruce and Brigittie came to Uganda. They have since settled in so well.