March 2008 Update - DVD of some of the work they are involved in - click here

Nathan & Jen's October Newsletter 2007 (.pdf file)

Nathan and Jen's May newsletter 2007  (you will need Adobe Reader to access this file)
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Nathan and Jen’s News Letter from Uganda                                    January 2007

Happy New year to you all! We hope you had a good Christmas. We had an unusual but fun time celebrating with the boys we work with. As we enter into the New Year it is hard to believe that four months have passed since we said our good byes and headed of to work for Tigers Club street boys charity at their Halfway Home called Tudabujja.
As we reflect on our experiences and lessons learnt so far it seemed appropriate to give our supporters, friends and family an insight into how things have been going, especially for those of you without internet access.

Our first couple of weeks were just like the first weeks of any new job, getting to know the organisation, how it works, trying to find out what it is we are supposed to be doing, getting to know the people we work with and desperately trying to remember their names that are unpronounceable to the English tongue!
We settled in at Tudabujja very quickly, the staff and the boys were brilliant at making us feel welcome and its setting is beautiful, our home over looks Lake Victoria.

Sometimes we are asked what a typical day holds for us. Thankfully there is no such thing as a typical day- variety is the spice of life! Each week we join with the rest of the staff on a Monday for a staff meeting and on Thursday for a lunch at the clubhouse which caters for any street boy around. We also have staff meeting at Tudabujja with our team there. The rest of week is more flexible and many of the things we do are related to liaising with others in the community; supporting and coordinating the rest of the Tigers team as they work alongside the boys at Tudabujja; being involved to some degree with the farm, sports and education programmes at Tudabujja; and most importantly being with the boys and ensuring their welfare. Each month the team at Tudabujja meet with the social workers to share the boys’ progress and to work together on their future plans. At the moment Nathan is also doing part of the farm manager’s role while we are in the process of recruiting someone. No, he doesn’t know much about farms but with some support and the help of some very good Ugandan primary school agricultural books he is learning quickly! Jen is covering a lot of the Tigers Club admin work while the administrator is on maternity leave. We are thoroughly enjoying our work. The team and the boys are all fantastic. Our work is both challenging and rewarding and, although we sometimes feel out of our depth, we are always well supported.

We are slowly getting used to the culture here (except the crazy traffic- no one could ever get used to that!). Many people speak English, Uganda’s official language, but our New Years Resolution is to learn Luganda- the local language. We are learning not to try to fill our days with too many tasks as the mixture of the slow pace of life, very ‘flexible’ timing and the bad traffic mean that in any one day we may only get 2 or 3 simple tasks done. Sometimes this can be incredibly frustrating and we work long hours to get things done, however it is far less stressful than life back in England and residential work is never supposed to be a 9-5 job! We are also appreciating working together. We took a risk applying for the same job but it is working out really well. It means that we understand what each other need to do and even though we are working long hours we have time with each other.

Away from work we are going to an international church where Nathan has begun to work with the youth. Before Christmas Jen was in the pantomime at the National Theatre and hopes to be involved in other productions in 2007. We’ve made a lot of good friends and although we live out of town we get to see people often.

Unfortunately we can no longer use our lycos email address which many of you have but until we get a permanent new one you can go online to check out our blogspot (like a website) and click on ‘comments’ to read and leave messages. We really appreciate your support, thank you. We feel so privileged to have so many wonderful friends. Please keep in touch, we love to hear your news.

Jen and Nathan Gregory

Contact us:
Jen and Nathan Gregory - The Tigers Club - PO Box 7737 - Kampala - Uganda           www.nathanandjen.blogspot.com
Nathan- 00256782267140      Jen- 00256782267136