Lawrance Titterton with his wife Monica – Photo Credit: Alongside Africa
The Founder of a UK charity which supports Uganda says his relief to be back there after 15 months is tainted with fear for a country entering a second Covid 19 wave it is ill equipped to deal with.
Kent man, Lawrance Titterton, who started the registered charity Alongside Africa, with his wife Monica, runs his own IT business, which allows them to spend most of their time living and volunteering in Uganda.
Alongside Africa is a UK-based not for profit organisation that is committed to a world in which every person has the opportunity to earn a living. They focus on providing opportunities, not aid with effort geared towards developing countries – initially, Uganda in Africa, where the charity currently runs three projects.
Lawrance, who is from Folkstone, Kent, explains: “I left Uganda in Feb last year to come to the UK for 6 weeks on business but because of Covid 19, lockdowns and travel bans, I ended up staying for 15 months, which was so frustrating as we could not provide the hands on support we usually do.
“We arranged for Monica to travel back to the UK with a volunteer who was staying with us at the end of March, but I found out at lunchtime a few days before the flight that Uganda was closing its borders that day and the airline was stopping flights that night, so after some frantic phone calls and a mad dash to the border Monica and the volunteer were able to make the last flight out of Rwanda.”
Although Lawrance and Monica are grateful to be back in Uganda, where they have a home, financed by the couple’s unrelated jobs and not the charity, which they draw no income from, their relief is mixed by fear for the local population who do not have the medical support and access to Covid vaccinations we take for granted in the UK.
Lawrance said: “We seem to have arrived back here at the start of the second wave of Covid 19 in the country and it is going to get much worse.
“They have run out of vaccine here, there are very few medical facilities, with just two ventilators in the whole district, for a population of **** and the number of cases is increasing all of which is made worse by little testing and so actually the true extent of the spread of the virus is not known.
He said: “Lack of testing means that a lot of the covid cases and deaths will not be properly recorded and so the figures will look a lot lower than they really are and that is especially true with older people where deaths are put down to age related natural causes, but the real cause is Covid 19.”
Lawrance believes, whilst a lot of focus has been rightly placed on countries such as India which has been hit hard by Coronavirus the UK should also be watching and supporting Africa before it is too late to make a difference.
He said: “Most of us who are lucky enough to be financially secure, will probably have read about the benefits of things like pulse oximeters, and spent £15 to buy one to keep at home in their medicine cabinet, just in case of Covid.
“But in Uganda even the hospitals lack these basic things and so Alongside Africa has been posting them out from the UK but so much more support is going to be needed to keep people well and alive when so many of them face issues around poverty and malnutrition*.”
Alongside Africa is a UK-based not for profit organisation that is committed to a world in which every person has the opportunity to earn a living. It recognises the rights of marginalised and disadvantaged children, individuals, and communities to be able to take responsibility for their own development and independence.
They work in partnership with local authorities, community groups and individuals to reach the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. The strap line of opportunities, not aid recognises the right of marginalised and disadvantaged communities to be able take responsibility for their own development, and for this to be achieved with dignity and self-respect, critical factors often lost when aid is provided instead of opportunities.
For further information about the charity please visit: www.alongsideafrica.org.
