Why George loves Africa

Determined to return to Uganda to continue the work he began last year, George said the only thing that he did not enjoy about his voluntary work was the food.

He travelled to the poverty-stricken country last year to work with communities decimated by AIDS, and to spread the word about how to prevent the spread of the disease among its young people, and to help people set up sustainable industries.

After we watch a video in support of African Hope for Single Mothers we settle down to talk about George's decision to go to Uganda to work with the people living at the margins of society there.

"I did it through an organisation, Real Gap, I I just looked it up on the Internet," he says, adding: " I paid about 1,000 to go there plus my flight, and the group I went with was Calm Africa. That's an organisation out there with a couple of schools.The Ugandans are the nicest people you could meet. They are absolutely beautiful people."

A well-travelled man, George thinks he as seen roughly a third of the World, and has been to Africa before.

"I always thought 'I'm going to come out here and do something, because they are the nicest people in the World. That's what made my mind up to go there. So I went in June last year and spent five weeks," he said, adding that he travelled after that for about two months.

"If I had not have had my itinerary sorted out before I went I would have spent the entire three months there. I was in Kampala, the capital of Uganda and it was the safest city I was ever in. Unbelievable, you could walk around the city at night and no one would say boo to you.

"The problem there is that the capital is fairly stable and the UN pump a lot of money into it, but it only gets to a certain level before it is syphoned off. There is so much corruption that the people at the bottom get nothing, and I mean nothing. If they get a meal that day they are doing well.

"We went to a school one day and there were about 800 pupils - 280 orphans sleep there four to one bed in a bunk bed. A room this size would hold about 30," he says glancing round the front room at his mother's house on Bann Drive.

"They have no lighting, you have no idea. I took photographs and they do it justice because of the flash on the camera. Just outside are the toilets, which are pits in the ground, and if they don't have the money they cannot afford to dig another pit, so when it rains it all just overflows. So you have raw sewage running through the school, and you have over 800 pupils at the school," he recalls.

"The headmaster was amazing and the school was a great school. It is very hard to explain but they were all just so happy, and the teacher would just say to one of them 'Get up and sing' and they just stood up and they loved it," he said.

While he was in Uganda George worked in a school, but when he got to his designated school they had more volunteers than they needed so Calm Africa took George and the other volunteers to other groups, and he ended up working with an Austrian man and an English man.

"We went into schools doing sex education telling them about Hiv and AIDS awareness. These children look up to the white man and treat what you say as very important, so whatever you are saying to them they take it on board. The Austrian guy's father was a gynaecologist so we got photographs sent over of syphilis and gonorrhea and other diseases which are really bad. We got them blown up into posters so that when we were talking to the kids we were able to talk to them not only about Hiv and AIDS, but other diseases they could get. You could see them reacting. There was 250 or something that we talked to in one class of nine to 15-year-olds, and then we met with the girls and they were talking to them about the problems of single parenthood. But it was going through one ear and out the other, so what we said was to get a couple of girls from the young mothers' group to go to the school and talk about what it's like," he said, adding that the organisation learned skills from George and the other volunteers rather than just talking to the children.

"You have got to shock children into doing things and talking to them is not shocking them. They learned from us about how to go forward," he said.

Asked if he hoped to return to Africa, George said he hoped to, and would love to go back this year, but his wedding plans looked like preventing it.

He goes quiet for moment before adding: "These people have nothing. They had not money to get food for the children because they had run out of money, and they had about 850 kids. I gave them money and we met two guys from Galway who also gave them money so they were able to get food, and that would have fed them for about a month. At the bid school we were at, the headmaster never turned anyone away because a lot of them were orphans and they were entitled to their education too. He said the budget for a year at one of the schools was $600."

While he was out there George helped one orphaned girl who was being exploited by relatives who expected her to work despite illness, and they secured not only her treatment for 20, but got her a place as an orphan, with access to education.

"There was another family with four boys who had to walk four miles with Jerry cans to get water, so we got them a bicycle as they could wheel the water back. It created a business for them because they could then carry water for other people. It was about $50 for the bike but it could save the family."

Encouraging other retired people to volunteer, George said anyone who would like to know more about his experiences in Africa and how to go about volunteering in Uganda or another African country is welcome to contact him through Facebook.