Joining the HYT Family/Kampala

The Ugandan’s have a very individual (and confusing) way of letting you know that they haven’t seen you recently, and that they have missed you… so I have to apologise for my absence from my blog over the past week, I have indeed been “lost, veeerrryyyy lost”.

On the other hand, I have done so much over the past 7 days, I’ve hardly had time to stop and think – after starting Paul off at Lords Meade last Saturday…

I spend the weekend unwinding after the intense and stressful preparations that had preceded his admission to secondary school. Monday was a national holiday – Women’s Day – so we had an extra day to relax, although it did entail a very painful evening where we were all forced to endure “Twilight, New Moon” the movie… at least my opinion that it would be an awful film is now justified. For dinner Connor and I cooked a mean “G.I. Shepherds Pie”, which was acclaimed as one of the best meals we’ve eaten so far. I was thoroughly astounded once again at my new-found abilities as a chef, although I’m not sure how much of the appreciation was fuelled by the massive hunger brought on during the 3 hours it took to prepare!!!

The rest of the week was incredibly busy, but let me start with Friday morning, when I woke up feeling as stiff as a board, very dirty, and immensely happy about it. It meant that Sophie, Rachel, Marianne, Tom and myself had spent a week living out in a Ugandan village, working for a charity called HYT (Haileybury Youth Trust) on their “One Village At A Time” project, helping in the process of totally re-modelling a secondary school called 3R’s. It was by far the most rewarding week so far, and I feel really lucky that we had the opportunity to go and experience rural Uganda in such an intimate way…

The Journey

…and Arrival

When we arrived we were introduced to the headmaster, John 1, deputy head, John 2, and workman, John 3… I obviously don’t stand a chance of ever being offered a job there!!! All the people were very welcoming, and we instantly felt at home. The students taught us African drumming and we taught them salsa dancing, then I went and played in a massive game of volleyball with the HYT construction workers.

HYT is a charity linked to Haileybury school in the UK, started by Clement Atlee, an alumnus of Haileybury school and British Prime Minister after Winston Churchill. They used to do alot of work in East London, but in recent years have transferred their efforts over to Uganda, and have begun the “One Village at a Time” project that I mentioned earlier. Tom and Marianne are the  ambassadors this year for HYT, and together with Helen, the HYT supervisor out here, are doing fantastic work improving 3R’s school, as well as furthering the reputation of the charity (which recently achieved NGO status).

During our stay we learnt to make the ISSB (Interlocking Stabilised Soil Block) bricks, using a Ugandan-designed machine…

As you can see, you have to throw your entire body weight on the lever to compress the brick, and it’s very tiring work, but at the same time fun, especially at the other end when you flip the lever over and the brick pops out on a pedestal, like something out of Indiana Jones. I did get some bad blisters off the machine, and redefined the meaning of pain as I cleaned them with antiseptic hand gel, which I realised was practically pure alcohol. Oh the burn! During our stay we hiked over to a local primary school, where we found a pond with turtles in it…

 

…crossed over….

…found a massive anthill…

…entered the school having given no reason whatsoever for our visit…

 …and were then expected to give speeches in front of all the students!!!

You’ve gotta love Uganda!!!

On Thursday we were taken to a nature reserve with an amazing waterfall and a totally unpronounceable name. The tour guide didn’t really speak much English, so we were quite baffled/intrigued when we found a small ravine with two tents at the bottom, outside which were planted stakes with human hands fashioned out of metal on the end. Rachel was straight in, calling up that it was “hands guys, it’s definitely voodoo.” We were thrilled that we had found witchcraft and black magic, but then I got a translation from the guide and it turned out to be a tourist attraction, which was frankly a bit of a letdown. He did show us a cave where people really did used to practice witchcraft, and there were some human jawbones there, as the Busoga people believed that the human spirit resided within the jaw, so the bones had healing properties… We then asked whether the guide subscribed to such beliefs, and he looked at us aloof and said very matter-of-factly “I am just a tour guide.” I presume the intended answer was “no”. Sadly, my camera battery had run out by this point, so I don’t have any photos to show you, but we are planning on going back to the site to camp in mid-April and I promise I’ll deliver then.

In the meantime, here are a few photos to conclude our stay in Lugazi…

The view from our room…

Which you can see here…

And here we are enjoying the evening with some of the workers

 

Over the weekend we made a road trip to Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It was so great to start travelling around the country, because we all now really feel like Jinja is our home, and naturally we want to break out of that bubble… so we went to watch some of our friends play rugby against the Kampala Pirates, and it turned out to be a very entertaining match…

Things got off to a great start, with our team (Jinja Nile Rugby Club) scoring a cracking try. They really fought for it, before eventually slipping right through the defence with a couple tricky passes and feints. In the end they managed to land it smack bang in the middle of the goalposts, and Brook was able to make a very smooth conversion – we were going crazy in the stands, as you can see below…

In the end though, things started going downhill and the final score was 40-7 in the pirates’ favour, although the match got called off 10 minutes early after too many players got sent off… it all started when Joe, the coach, got into a scrap with another player, punched him in the face and promptly got shown the red, then in the next tackle instead of going for our player’s legs, the guy simply laid into him with his studs, and the match erupted into a full-scale brawl! No one got injured, but it was hilarious to watch, and all the Ugandans were just cheering for whoever threw the most punches. A woman next to us screamed “Number 1, I’m disappointed in you, we wanted to see blood!!!” Now all our Ugandan players have gone on strike because they aren’t getting paid and our Mzungu players are all rafting with us next weekend, leaving only Nial, an Irish guy, as the remaining player for the match next Saturday. I think it might be the end of an era…

But in any case, none of that was going to stop us from having a great night, so here we all are on the balcony of our Kampala hotel (before going out)…

and I’ll leave the next portion up to the imagination until morning…

when we were all still alive and ready to escape the loggerjam of mayhem that is daytime Kampala traffic and return to Jinja, home sweet home.

 

This week I’m going to be incredibly busy back at Lords Meade, leading up to the launch publication of the very first school newspaper on Friday 26th March. I’ll keep you posted!