The Building Project - Part III

Well! The building work got off to an interesting start! Initially it was delayed because the builders spent longer taking down the structural supports to the concrete slab than initially anticipated! A day later than predicted, we started plastering the walls! However, not like any plastering I’ve ever seen or done before! It was a case of loading your trowel with plaster then throwing it at the wall. If it stuck (which more often it didn’t!) then all was well. Mostly it didn’t and came back at you with varying force, depending on how hard you had thrown it! It was more like having a mud fight than building! I got the feeling that the builders were getting frustrated with our feeble attempts and very soon we were relegated to mixing sand and cement and transporting it to where the builders could throw it at the wall!

The windows were fitted early in the second week and we got to paint the first coat on them. Frustratingly we had to leave Rukungiri before we could see the building finished. The windows were given a second coat the day we left, the following day the glass was fitted as well as the doors and all that was left to do was paint both rooms. I wish we could have stayed an extra few days to see it finished, by the time you read this it should be complete!

We were talking to Alex, the headmaster, before we left. Initially the plan was to move class Primary 7 and primary 4 into them, but he plans to use one of the rooms as a library and study room. We’ll have to see what actually happens. The plan is bound to change a couple more times before they actually start to make us of the rooms.

It’s a long way to Rukungri

It’s Monday morning and we’re leaving for the long journey to Rukungiri. All our cases are tied securely to the roof rack, we wave goodbye to everyone at White Crest Guest House in Kampala and by 08:05 we’re off!

The two hours from here to the equator went very quickly, although this might be partly due to me falling asleep… but we also made up 15 minutes along the way regardless of getting stopped by a nosey traffic warden curious as to where a bus load of Mzungu’s were going!

Of course we had to stop at the equator and watch the water draining in opposite directions either side of the equator line. One of the team mentioned he’d watched a programme just before coming out stating that this would be impossible to see a few metres either side of the equator and you had to be a few miles away before the magnetic field is strong enough to see it! This programme was obviously wrong! Either that or here in Uganda they have discovered a way to defy magnetic forces!

Anyway, a muffin and fruit smoothie later and we’re off again. For all of 2 minutes! We pulled over to sort out something with the radiator, then managed to get another 5 minutes down the road before we noticed steam coming out from under the front seat! Clearly the radiator wasn’t repaired! We pulled over into another garage where the water was topped up and goodness knows what else they did, but oh no! Something’s leaking towards the back of the bus. We were sent to another garage in the next town, Masaka, where it turned out the fuel line was leaking! We all bundled out of the bus into a nearby motel for a drink while the problem was fixed. Not much further down the road we pulled into another garage! Fortunately this time we only needed to fill up on fuel!

The rest of the journey was plain sailing. We finally reached our lunch time destination and had lunch at 5pm and made it to Rukungiri for 9pm! Well, at least it makes for an interesting story!

Curses to Blessings

It’s really interesting being in country longer term. Every time John and Alice have shared their story with teams the essence has been the same, but you gain a slightly greater insight. There may be bits they said before that gets left out, but sometimes you find out little bits that you didn’t know before.

For example last night, while they were sharing their story with the last team, John started talking about land. By tradition, the land that is owned by the father is divided between his sons when he dies. John was one of about 12, so you can imagine the piece of land he received wasn’t very big. He said that it was also useless because it contained clay soil and lots of stones. The majority of people in the district survive on subsistence farming, so in terms of living on the land and developing a plantation, it wasn’t going to grow anything.

However, years later, John is married to Alice, he has been working as a prison chaplain and has just conceived the idea of a vocational centre to alleviate the problem of redundancy turning to crime. He is given a piece of land to start building on, then thinks about the land he’s inherited. He transports stones to the new site, which is used as hardcore for the foundations, and from the clay soil he makes bricks.

And that is how it all started. The vocational centre initially ran for four years so the first stream of people went through and qualified. By that point they had their four children, plus 20 orphans and were going to start the primary school. The vocational centre became a nursery and extra classes were added year on year as the children progressed.

A week in Rukungiri

We’ve had quite a bit of spare time between teams this time. We’ve spent quite a lot of time with different people getting to know them a bit better. We don’t really get the opportunity to do this while the team are here because you’re running from one place to the next, so it was really lovely to get the chance!

Marina and I spent Thursday at the school painting and finished the biological eye and skeleton diagrams which were started with the second team. Actually that’s a bit of a lie, it’s almost finished. I went to paint the feet of the skeleton and realised I hadn’t got around drawing them! I‘ve always had a bit of a thing about drawing feet! I’ve never found them easy and they always end up looking deformed! Let’s hope these ones don’t look too bad.

Then on Friday we went to Nyakibale hospital and started preparing one of the wards for painting murals next week! We spent all morning sanding down the walls down by hand! They were previously painted with gloss because it’s easier to clean! We then had to wash everything down because there was dust everywhere! We got this finished and had a late lunch. We also had a bit of a nap, although it didn’t last long as I was rudely awakened by an ant decided it was going to have bit of me for lunch! They’re vicious!

Anyway, the fun bit started after lunch (which was toasted cheese sandwiches! Mmm!) We started painting, with another layer of gloss. We were finished by 5 and went home exhausted, but the ward looked so different! Thankfully they’re getting the hospital carpenter to prepare the second ward this week while we’re in Kampala. So it should be all ready to start drawing the murals when we return! Well, that’s the plan!

Modern Primary School

I was talking with John this evening about the school, the building we’re doing now, future plans for the school etc. It’s all quite exciting how everything developing. In a fortnights time the two classrooms we’re building now will be completed! I can’t imagine it at the moment, but at the same time I can’t wait to see everything finished. We’ve seen the whole thing through from the foundations being dug out.

The last team arrives this weekend. Builders in Rukungiri are making a start already on removing the timbers which have been supporting the concrete ceiling slab. They have also been asked to remove the ramp, which the builders used to carry concrete up to the ceiling, as the children return on Monday and the last thing they want are kids climbing up onto the roof! Can you imagine it! Health and Safety in England would have a field day!!!

So, from Wednesday, the team will start plastering the walls with a first layer. An order has been placed for doors and windows to be made. Apparently this will take about week, but depending on electricity so that the blow torch can work! Next week we will be fitting these and putting in glass panes. An electrician will install all the wiring, then we’ll get the builders to do the top coat of plastering I think!!! Not sure how smooth it will be otherwise. Then comes the best bit!!! Painting! John is certain all this will be completed by the time we are due to leave. Part of me is a bit sceptical, but the builders have been working so fast, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was finished. I would be quite disappointed if we didn’t get to see it through to the end!

Nursery

There has been a lot of talk about building a Nursery on another site. I asked where this was going to be and I was really surprised to find out that we had been walking across the land pretty much every day on our way either into town, or on the way to Rondavels, where John and Alice live. Someone gave them the money to buy the land and they’re waiting for God to provide the funds to start building!

It amazes me how much faith they have in God’s provision, but also how much they’re needs are met! They start something, such as the school, having absolutely nothing and just go “Oh, God will provide!” and He does. You look at the school now and it blows your mind! Then there’s the two guest houses they’ve set up, the vocational training school, the nursery they’re about to start on! It’s absolutely amazing!

Lake Bunyoni

On Saturday we give the team a well deserved break and go to Lake Bunyoni, also known as the Switzerland of Africa! Bunyoni means ‘place of little birds’. It is such a beautiful area of the country. It’s also the only lake in Uganda safe enough to swim in. It’s too cold to support any life forms, such as crocodiles and hippos! (I hope! We haven’t encountered any yet!) It’s also the deepest lake in Uganda at 2600 ft!

We arrive around lunch time, have a picnic lunch on the edge of the lake and then get a boat across to an Island called Bushara. You can walk into the centre of the island and drink coffee at the little restaurant there, or you can walk around the parameter of the island and admire all the wildlife, hire a little dug out canoe and row to the neighbouring islands, you can jump off the pier and swim to a floating raft about 20 metres out, or swing off a platform into the lake! Or you can just lie on the bank and sunbathe!! It really is a little paradise!

At the end of the day we make our way back to Bunyoni, have dinner at the restaurant there and then head home as the sun sets!

Holiday Club

The school was on holiday while the 2nd team was here, although primary 6 and 7 were still behind doing exams and some of the orphans were still around so rather than going in to classes a teaching as the first team had, they ran a holiday club.

Games

Half the team took some of the kids onto the field at the back of the school and played games. They loved games that involved playing with the parachute! I knew of one game, but the guys who came out came up with loads! Although 4 hours of this is really tiring and after a while you try and think of things which means they do all the running around so you don’t have to! Trying to explain some of the rules to games was interesting. You have to think of so many different ways of saying the same thing.

Crafts

The other half of the team ran crafts. They had a theme based on Noah’s Ark and had the children making animal masks, animal finger puppets, singing animal related songs and telling the story of Noah.

The building Project - Part II

There wasn’t a huge amount that could be done with this team which was quite disappointing. We cut endless amounts of wire as the builders tied even bigger lengths of wire together to make the support for the floor to the next level. I hadn’t appreciated how much there was that actually went into this. It took about 3 days to complete it all.

They then made a huge ramp from the ground up to the first floor level to carry up concrete to lay the slab. This took another day and then there was fixing the boards to the sides of the building to create a shell to pour the concrete into! Finally in the second week we got around to mixing concrete. The builders formed a chain up the ramp and passed bowls of concrete to each other up to the roof where they filled a wheelbarrow and wheeled it across wooden boards to where they wanted it to go.

We then got power which meant the builders could use the concrete mixer. They produced huge amounts of concrete at a much faster rate than normal and in no time at all the slab was finished! They were so proud with their achievement! Unfortunately the team was left with nothing to do on the building site! Oops!!!! Nothing more could be done until the slab had completely set which would take about 3 weeks.

We did get another small project though. We were asked to paint some biological diagrams onto some walls at the school though to help the students learn them. I went through Marina’s medical teat books to find pictures, bought some paint and brushes from the local hardware store (If you’re ever in Africa they don’t use turpentine or white spirit, you’ll have to go to the local petrol station and buy paraffin!!) and soon the team were painting an eye, a skeleton and a fish with labels! They’re not quite finished yet, but we’re back in Rukungiri next week and will complete them then!

And also at Nyakybale hospital!

Marina went down to the hospital one day to arrange for some of the team members to have a tour. Jeff, the hospital administrator, mentioned in passing about a team of Australians who were supposed to be coming, but at the last minute hadn’t been able to make it. He talked about their plans to decorate the Paediatric ward, make new curtains and brighten it up by painting murals on the walls.

There’s a lady on the next team who is coming to teach sewing at the Vocational Training school and will be able to work with the students there to make the curtains. “It’s just a shame we don’t have an artist” Marina had said. I got so excited. We went down to the hospital together to have a look at the ward. There’s actually two, but that makes it a bit easier in placing the children while we do one ward and then swapping them over to do the next one.

The curtain material which is going to be used is covered with 'caricature' safari animals in bright colours which you can repeat on the walls. They're really cute! I'm also going to see if we can make animal shaped plaques to put above each bed with the bed numbers carved in rather than the bit of paper currently stuck above each bed with a bit of plaster!

I'll keep you posted on progress!

Delayed Arrival

We were all set to meet the 2nd team in the early hours of Sunday morning, but received a phone call from the UK early Saturday evening to say that their flight had left late! Security at Heathrow had caused huge delays on all flights.

Still having no idea whether they would make the connection at Cairo, we all went to bed not knowing if we needed to get up at 3am to meet them. Linda would be receiving a phone call to say whether they had departed Cairo and told Marina and I she would wake us up if we needed to go, otherwise there was no point in all 3 of us not getting any sleep! I wasn’t going to argue with that!!

When I woke up the following morning it was obvious they hadn't made the connection!

There are only 2 flights a week from Cairo to Entebbe in Uganda and we did wonder what was going to happen, but they managed to get a flight late on Sunday night with Kenya airways which diverted them via Nairobi. They didn’t seem to mind too much when they were put up in a very posh 5* hotel, got to ride a camel and visited the pyramids! Just wish our day had been as exciting! Although it was nice to get an unexpected day off!

The team finally arrived early Monday morning. They had breakfast, we allowed them a quick shower and to change before heading off on the 8 hour drive to Rukungiri!

Nyakybale hospital water supply

There was a bit of concern about the route of the potential water supply to the hospital because there was mention of a fairly big hill between the source of the stream and the hospital. As far as I’m aware there has never been a case of water defying gravity!

I was sent to investigate the route to see if this was true and if so, any possible solutions before commissioning a detailed survey and wasting hundreds of pounds on something that would never work.

Initially George, the water engineer, was reluctant “This will all be investigated in the survey!” he kept lamenting! Eventually he was persuaded that there wouldn’t be a survey if the hill posed too much of a problem and off we went.

Indeed there was quite a large hill about half way along, but also a valley which goes around on wither side of it. We drove along both possibilities from here on in and there was definitely one way which seemed like the better option, although there may be other factors which would mean it isn’t.

Three companies have been contacted to submit quotes for the survey and hopefull by the end of September this should be underway! News from the UK is that initial fundraising for the project has kicked off to a very good start!

Teaching @ the Modern Primary School

The alternative to building at the school project was teaching. There was usually about half the team on each option, with people changing around day to day depending on what they had planned or wanted to do!

Poetry
A school in England, associated with a couple of the team members, had written poems about what it was like to attend schools in England; what subjects they did, which were favourites, school lunches, discipline, etc… these were read out to a class here in Uganda. The students then wrote poems about Ugandan schools and what it was to attend a school here. The poems produced were amazing! They have been taken back to England to read out to the class that produced the first poems. I thought it was such a great idea!

Art
We had an artist on the first team! He brought with him an array of pens, pencils and crayons and got the kids drawing animals typical of Uganda, Hippos, Giraffes, Lions etc then animals typical of England, Rabbits, Dogs, Horses… I don’t think the children have had much opportunity for art lessons in this way and loved it! They all proudly showed us what they had done!

Music
There was a group of about 6-8 students who were taught piano lessons. There was only one keyboard and using this depended on availability of electricity, but during these times the students were taught music theory. They are now going to teach their fellow students what they have learnt.

Football Match

The school challenged our team to a football match one evening at the beginning of last week. It was us against a mixture of students and staff. We were all very excited, although as the day approached we’d heard numerous stories about how good the students were at football and decided that maybe we needed to recruit some of these students for our side! Not that we had a lack of confidence in our own abilities!

One afternoon on the building site we managed, with the help of another student, to recruit the 3 best footballers (supposedly) in the school.

The match started with the majority of the school standing on one side and supporting their teachers and friends and laughing at us every time we missed the ball or kicked it over the line. English supporters were a little thin on the ground! We managed to score the only goal during the first half of the game!

By the second half the number of supporters on our side had drastically increased, while support for the school was waning a little bit! We scored another goal before the end of the game and won 2-0! (Admittedly it was two of the students who scored both goals!)

The Building Project

I can’t believe how quickly the building has gone up. A fortnight ago it was a concrete slab and now there are almost two classrooms!

I think the builders found it quite amusing initially, these white people turning up to help them build the school. There was the odd chuckle, they said thank you quite frequently in jest, but it didn’t last long! We were set moving bricks from a stack which had been dumped at the side of the building to where the builders could easily get them while bricklaying. After about an hour we then got to join in with the bricklaying which was great fun. There was a bit of competition going on to see who could lay bricks the fastest... and the best of course.

Three days later the bricks were all laid up to first floor level. The scaffolding was a bit interesting but actually quite secure compared to what I had seen in Sierra Leone. We were then mixing cement for the supporting columns and lintels over the next couple of days and the remaining days were spent cutting wire lengths for further concrete reinforcements for the concrete slab of the first floor and moving the remaining bricks and stacking them up out of the way for the next level.

We had great fun on the site, had the odd wheelbarrow race, and got to know the builders quite well. Most of them had been trained at John’s vocational school and some of them were orphans that he and Alice had looked after. There was the odd day where you got someone just turn up and hang around the work site in hope of a job. A couple of days later they would be working hard alongside the rest of them and having a laugh as if he had always been there.

Work has now stopped on site (I hope!) until the next team arrives at the weekend where we will be mixing yet more concrete for the concrete slab (which will be the ceiling of the classrooms and floor of the future dormitories). We will also be putting in the doors and windows and plastering the interior walls.

Nyakaina Anglican Church

Last Sunday we took the team to a local village church and experienced the most surreal service I had ever attended! It was quite a traditional service compared to other African churches I have been to, although the worship was as amazing as any other with their African drums and songs and dancing.

It came to the offering and we’d all gone to give our money donations. Just as I thought it was over they started another offering! People were bringing down, amongst a number of other things I can’t remember, avocados, groundnuts, a chicken, bananas, pineapples, pumpkins, a goat! A cow!!!!! The church then started to auction these things off! It was so funny; we soon got into the swing of things and joined in!

We all sat there stifling giggles as best we could as the pastor tried to close the service with a prayer and the goat started bleating so loud you couldn’t hear what he was saying! It would never happen in England!

I learned afterwards that the money raised would go towards church projects, but it also helps the local people to get food this way because it’s much cheaper than if they brought it from a market.

Following the service we ended up catering for nearly 150 people! It’s apparently quite normal for the congregation to follow the preacher home for dinner! Can you imagine doing that every week!!! I bet the church leaders here love having guest speakers! Fortunately we were given advance warning that this would happen! So 150(ish) of us sat down to dinner and watched the Mpororo dance group.

Nyakibale Hospital

Last week, as part of the programme, some of the team visited the local hospital one morning as an alternative to working at the school. This resulted in one of the team members developing an interest into the water supply to the hospital, or rather lack of it. A meeting was arranged with the hospital and a couple of members of the local council to discuss solutions to the problem.

In the mid 60’s a bore hole had been dug to provide a continuous and independent water supply for the hospital, which had been sufficient up until 1997. They started experiencing problems with the mechanical pump which a local water engineer determined wasn’t worth repairing as the water table had pretty much dried up. There is a mains supply, but this is dependant on the local electricity supply and completely unreliable. If there is no electricity, the pumps that supply water to the town and surrounding areas don’t work and so there is no water. Staff get water by driving to a local spring to collect water in Jerry cans. Water tanks were installed to collect rainwater, but this is only effective during the rainy season. During the dry season they are always empty.

A gravity spring water source has been identified 6km away from the hospital in a town called Mugamba. This would supply continuous water. Financially it is a good solution as there is no need for pumps or pipes so no fuel or maintenance costs, just the initial set up costs. We agreed to test the water flow and purity straight away as the previous investigation of this source had been carried out in 2002, obviously a lot could change in 4 years.

I went with the local councillor and a water engineer to the stream and carried out the crudest water flow test I had ever seen in my life! (Not that I’ve seen that may water flow tests in my life!) Where the five sources of the stream converged they created a little dam with mud in which they placed a bit of bark they had just pulled off a nearby banana tree to direct the flow of water! At the end of the bark they placed a bowl to collect the water (it apparently holds 15litres) and timed how long it took for the bowl to fill up! This was repeated 3 times to get an average reading! Of course! (I wonder if this method would have been accepted for my GCSE Geography coursework!)

Following this we returned to the council offices and carried out numerous calculations to determine whether the supply would be sufficient for the hospital population, taking into account increasing population and many other factors and projecting for how many years the water supply would be sufficient for! I was actually quite impressed with how detailed they were in this area, considering methods of collecting data, and was stretched in trying to remember what I had been taught in maths to keep up with them, although got completely lost when they started using logs!

Next they will conduct a survey into water purity, sections and profiles of the land, effects to local community, more definitive costs etc while the team members have gone home to start fundraising for the project.
It was really exciting to be involved in this stage of the project.

Gables Vocational Training School

When John was a prison chaplain, he believed that the majority of people in prison probably wouldn’t have been there if circumstances had been different, if they’d had a job, if they weren’t bored and idle. However, he didn’t know what to do about it until in 2000 he was invited to England as chaplain to go around the British prisons. He noticed there that prisoners had the opportunity to learn new skills, develop their education and were given vocational training.

He returned to Uganda with the vision of setting up a vocational training centre. This was temporarily put on hold while they started the Modern Primary School, but is now quite a big training centre with approximately 200 students enrolled. It not only takes in people on leaving prison, but also students from the primary school who can’t afford to continue their education into secondary school or university.

They teach driving lessons, brick-laying, carpentry, welding, IT skills, dressmaking, upholstery and secretarial skills, amongst a few others I can't remember.

Tuesday morning…

After the long drive on Monday from Kampala to Rukungiri, the team were very keen to get stuck into the projects. We arrived at the school early on Tuesday morning to join in with their assembly. Nic, one of the team, told them a story, we sang songs, they sang songs, they marched with their band it was great fun!

We were then given a tour of the school, introduced to teachers and pupils in each class, not that they would have remembered many of the individuals, the classes are an average size of 70 students! Each class had a performance for the team, a song, a drama sketch or some poems it was lovely.

The team then divided into what they wanted to be doing; about half were building, while the others were teaching poetry, art, crafts, sports and music.