For those of you who are not aware, I have decided that next year (around Septemberish) I will be moving out to Uganda on a permanent basis! I would like to thank all of you that have walked this journey with me, and supported me along the way. Looking through the list, I’ve been humbled at how many people have signed up to receive my ramblings on work and adventures in the best country in the world. My excitement is beyond words as plans that have been in the making for around 9 years suddenly feel as if they are coming to fruition! The clock is now ticking!
As I mentioned in another post, Shalom has a school that is operating, however, they lack a proper building to teach in. On Sunday 23rd October, I shall be starting off fundraising for this with a lunch! For a donation to the cause, jacket potatoes with a variety of fillings will be served at Church on the Way (158 Bradford Road, BD10 8SA). You are more than welcome either to join us for the service at 10:30am and stay for lunch or to just come for around 1pm for the food! I would love to take this opportunity to catch up with as many of you as possible, too! I have attached a flyer below with the details.
If you intend to come, it would be helpful if you could sign up here, so that we can get an idea of numbers: https://forms.gle/QKWq3Y2kPCeDitgo9
The following day, Monday 24th October, I’m also looking for as many people as possible to come and volunteer to sort out some children’s books. You may remember that while I was at university and while the schools were closed during Covid, I worked in a second-hand book warehouse. Stephen, my former boss, has very kindly donated boxes of children’s books that are very difficult to get hold of in Uganda. However, sorting them all out is a bit of a mammoth job and I’d love to have as much help as possible! I’ve also attached a flyer for this.
If you are available, the ideal would be to meet at Church on the Way for 9am and we will travel down to Stephen’s warehouse together as it can be quite tricky to find. However, if you can’t make it for that time but would still like to join us, please do sign up and we will meet you at the gate when you arrive. Whatever time you can make it, if you intend to come, it would be super helpful if you could fill in the following form: https://forms.gle/yEivVxrL8ztgg8nW8
Please do be aware that the warehouse is not heated (although tea can be served aplenty!) so make sure you wrap up warm enough!
Last week the children sat their “mid-term exams” – this is a common practice throughout Uganda – and so we had a meeting to discuss the results yesterday. All in all, they are doing OK, especially considering that our children have more barriers to learning than most from the backgrounds they come from. Many of the teachers are coming to the end of teaching the main syllabus for the term and thus will have time to dig deeper into the errors that the tests have thrown up.
I was also impressed with the teachers’ ability to diagnose the reasons behind some pupils and classes hadn’t done better. I haven’t seen much of this kind of analytical/problem-solving thinking in Uganda – I’ve been in more meetings where people air their own personal gripes with work than anything that could be linked with the results. Many of the issues identified will be familiar to UK teachers, such as persistent absenteeism (this is in the day scholars who are largely pupils that had a stint of staying at Shalom but are now resettled with parents or other relatives); children’s reading age lagging behind; and children being rather sleepy in class. For the educational issues, it’s been a challenge to me, to try to break down solutions that I’m aware of from the UK into first principles that can then be rebuilt in a Ugandan context. It’s a bit frustrating (though understandable) that almost all of the research into education is done in Western countries – the bits available in African contexts tend to be focussed on the impact of a government-wide policy (and often with an economic motivation), rather than what makes a difference in the classroom day to day. One of the huge advantages of being part of Shalom is that we have easy and direct access to the social workers who have a detailed knowledge of the background of every child. We are considering how we can work more effectively together going forward but I am hugely grateful to have their expertise available “on tap.”
Of course the mid-point of a term in the UK would bring with it a nice little holiday, this is not the case in Uganda. I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss it, although I’ve sort of ended up manufacturing my own. I’m currently on the bus travelling down to Kampala to sort out my work permit and for the sake of one extra day off work, I can spend Easter weekend down here with Joshua and Dianah (some of my closest friends whom I stayed with for the bulk of my time before moving up to Kotido). It’s not quite a holiday as I’ve obviously had to make arrangements for all my usual duties and I’m expecting to spend most of tomorrow waiting outside an office (I’ve come prepared with more books than clothes!) but it will definitely be nice to see people and get some bits of shopping done. Next term I guess I’m just going to have to get used to the longer terms (but also longer holidays).
The new term and new year are now in full swing here in Uganda. The children and teachers seem to have generally settled well into routines and the kitchen staff have got used to my regular enquiries about hot water for tea!
Despite this, it has not been an uneventful start to the term. Last Friday we were paid a visit from the local schools’ inspector who certainly made his position felt, threatening to close us down (which he does have the authority to do) but it transpired all he really wanted was an update on the school building project. Rainbow is the person who holds all of that information but wasn’t onsite at the time but a phone conversation the next day smoothed everything over – apparently, they have known each other for years. The inspector popped back yesterday to take some photos of the school in action and was much more pleasant about it. To add to all the fun and games, both times he arrived I was in my painting clothes from making a big board that will be a Biblical timeline and overview. I paused the project at the start of the week as he said he’d come back on either the Monday or Tuesday, by Wednesday I knew I needed to be cracking on and of course that’s when he arrived! I have apparently surprised various people at Shalom with my (actually very rudimentary) DIY skills – from owning and operating a drill to planning through how it will attach to the wall.
Life hasn’t been all about school though – the Sunday before last I decided to attempt to make a roast dinner for the 6 people that live on the farm compound. After calculating how I could do this with a small oven and single burner, I bought a live cockerel on the previous Friday when I was in town (the usual way to buy chicken here). He spent a couple of days roaming around our farm, generally staying quite close to our house and well-protected by the high barbed wire fence. I was sure that this and his clipped wings would stop him from escaping and with a bit of help would be fairly easy to catch. However, on Sunday it was as if he knew his time was up and was nowhere to be found! It took 4 or 5 of us looking for over half an hour, with me wondering what else we could have for supper, before he was discovered hiding in a bush. Hunting for the chicken before you start cooking it does put a slightly different spin on the term “from scratch!” The food largely went down well, although I forgot how much dried peas expand as they are cooked and so we had them coming out of our ears!
Just a quick note to finish, I changed my number on WhatsApp a couple of weeks ago. This is because I’m anticipating that my UK line will get disconnected since I’m not using it. If we have an existing conversation on the app, you should have received a notification to tap that will take you to the new number. If you are having any difficulties, please comment below and I’ll send you a message. I really do value having personal conversations and not just these public blog posts!
So, as you know, I arrived in Kotido about 10 days ago. I can’t say it was quite the first week I was expecting. I thought I would be meeting with the teachers to start planning for the term and then have some time to look at the school registration requirements and see how we can work towards those. Instead I arrived and discovered that the teachers were due back a week later than I had anticipated but that we needed to recruit for 3 more (which I naively assumed would have already been done). Enter crash course in how to read applications and conduct interviews in a different culture, and lots of prayer! We have appointed the three teachers we needed, who started work yesterday, and I’ve been asked to sit on a panel today interviewing for a new social worker so I guess I didn’t do a terrible job!
Yesterday I met with the teachers to go through the principles of Christian education so that they can create the schemes of work for the term (I am always amused that Ugandans refer to this process as “scheming” and have mental images of the teachers planning mischief but I digress) . This is a very laborious process in Uganda, partly because their schemes of work are detailed, partly because they’ve got to be done by hand and partly because there’s no way of looking at and then tweaking and editing what was done the previous year. I am hoping to move towards digitised copies as this will cut both the teacher’s time and mine in preparing them, the obstacle for now is that not many of the teachers are particularly comfortable with even basic word processing and there isn’t time to go over how to deal with complex tables in Word.
The government sets how both the schemes of work and lesson plans should be laid out, which I think gives quite a good example of the kind of government overreach there is in education here. One of the unfortunate results of this is that teachers, particularly trained teachers, often focus on getting this exactly right, rather than on the quality of the lessons or how they fit together into a sequence.
I’ve ended up involved in more of the admin than I ideally wanted, having discovered that nobody had calculated how many lessons each teacher would teach, or even seemed to have a clear idea of how the day is timed! Fortunately I love any excuse for a spreadsheet!
Personally, I’m staying in temporary accomodation at the moment which has ended up rather full of wildlife. The crickets were so loud *inside* my room they woke me up on Saturday morning! Despite the fact that I have shoed out several alive ones and swept out several dead ones, I still have a chorus on a daily basis and have largely got used to the sudden movements! The setting is beautiful though, on three sides the site is surrounded by scrubland and I’ve enjoyed several stunning sunrises and sunsets. I’m thoroughly enjoying having my own space, as well as using some of the things brought in the container. Ugandan pans, pillows and facilities to dry washing are always questionable, despite the fact that they are all used on a regular basis. It’s been nice to have an airer, non-stick pans with handles (yes the Ugandan ones don’t have where to hold onto and nobody has oven gloves either, it’s mad!), and non-lumpy pillows (having a lumpy pillow is actually a bit of a luxury, most people don’t have one at all). The stuff for the school (which is most of what came across) is in storage for the moment and will most likely come out for use once the school building is built (construction has already started) so that it can all be kept and organised properly.
I always knew I was a bit clumsy but I think I’ve surpassed myself with the number of injuries I’ve acquired in the past week! I’ve got scrapes and grazes from falling of my bicycle (I was rushing to get somewhere, went too fast and hit a patch of sand and a stone wrongly), a cut thumb from cooking, a pulled muscle and a scalded thumb from preparing a hot water bottle for the pulled muscle! They’re all on the mend and I’m fine, just a bit grumpy sometimes!
Term starts on the 5th Feb, so between now and then I’ll be working on a timetable for the year, moving the school towards meeting the requirements to be registered and going back to my curriculum analysis whenever I’ve got the time!
So yesterday after dealing with more Ugandan beaurocracy and waiting in the bank that expected you to wait so long that the queue is literally made of chairs, the container was finally released! (I thought you might be amused by the added detail that I started off the day on the back of a motorbike carrying a large suitcase, large backpack, plus 2 other bags. A motorbike can carry almost anything in Uganda, although I did have to walk up one of the steep hills as the engine wasn’t powerful enough for all the weight!)
Everything was unloaded and loaded (by hand because the bond doesn’t have any forklifts) into the truck which is currently taking us to Kotido. Thank you to everyone who has prayed over each part of the journey! I know the things are going to be such a blessing to the children (and to me!). To give you an idea of just how much so, the owner of the transport business was eyeing up the educational materials for the school and started asking if his own children would be able to come (even though he knew we were based in the rough region of Karamoja). When we had had to unload for customs verification, the guys (men used to doing manual work) doing that kept on taking sneaky peaks at the loose (children’s!) books when they weren’t directly requied. One of them explained it was his once chance to see such things and he wanted to make the most of it.
We decided to break the journey to Kotido into two. Kotido has had some security issues recently and arriving there with a big truckload of stuff is apparently not a good idea after about 4pm. Since it’s about a 12h journey from Kampala (where the things were) the Maths of this all started not really adding up. Yesterday we travelled to Soroti, which is about half way up and slept in a hotel overnight. I had underestimated how much nicer a cold proper shower is compared to bathing oneself in cold water from a basin (big washing up bowl) and having a little bedside table!
Soroti is the place where the tarmac runs out and so today we are travelling on dirt roads. I’m going to finish writing this pretty soon because the jolting is not very conducive to typing – I started while we had stopped for a moment! It’s all very exciting – both having the stuff released and also heading for my final destination, ready to start work on Monday!
Today feels like a breath of fresh air compared to the past few days of craziness and being out of routine!
On Monday lunchtime I got a message with the amount of tax due on the container. This felt like a great and exciting development at the time, meaning that it wasn’t too far off being released. However, things were not all that simple. The main way that I transfer money from the UK involves an account attached to one’s phone line that effectively functions as a bank account, while I’m not eligible for a bank account on my current visa. Well the timing of paying the tax co-incided with my needing to renew my registration of the lines because I’ve had a change of visa. I won’t bore you with the technical details but suffice to say I hit problem upon problem (some completely unrelated to the registration issue) that took 2 days and a lot of prayer to sort out! The good news is that it has now been paid (perhaps the only time that paying tax is good news?!?!) and so the process can continue.
On the subject of visas, last week I took a brief trip to Rwanda as one visa expired and I “activated” the next one as I entered from the border point. As a Brit, I was initially very excited at the prospect of experiencing a land border crossing (I travelled by bus) but this evaporated quite quickly when I realised it is essentially just lots of queuing – for a bag search and then to get exit and entry stamps separately. Although the trip was for a very pragmatic purpose, I feel like God was still using it to generate new connections. I was able to visit another Christian school – schools that are truly Christian, integrating a Biblical worldview into everything they teach are very few and far between in Africa! I’m really excited about the potential for networking and mutual encouragement from this. I was also super blessed to be accommodated by a lovely family who stay within Kigali itself, so very convenient for the buses, who were a bit miffed I wasn’t staying for any longer (which is good because I don’t think it’s the last time I’ll need to cross the border and back again!). It was also very interesting to see another East African country – one which much better governance than Uganda. Kagame, the Rwandan president has effectively stamped out corruption from the country, which I think has probably had the side effect of meaning people respect the government and therefore actually follow the rules!
The day I got back from Rwanda was the day of my Grandad’s funeral, which I was able to watch online. I am so grateful to live in an age of internet technology, although there is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from watching a funeral service for someone that nobody around you ever knew. I’ve been to a couple of Ugandan burials and had a couple of interesting conversations comparing the similarities and differences in the customs regarding saying goodbye to a loved one.
The day after this, I went into hospital for a minor operation to remove a couple of abscesses. This was the first time I’ve been disappointed by the healthcare offered in Uganda, which probably isn’t too bad having been involved here for 10 years! The issue essentially boiled down to the lack of effectiveness of the local anaesthetic and I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details! I’ve been going back every day to have the dressing changed, which has been a very different experience with very friendly nurses and doctors!
After all that drama and excitement, I’m hoping to have a bit more time to continue with my delve in to the Ugandan curriculum that I started in the 6 weeks I had in Masaka. I’ve been studying how each class progresses from the next across the different subjects, then looking at how to integrate Biblical truth into this. One would think this should be straightforward with a curriculum document, however, it’s a fairly frequent occurrence to find the same phrase repeated in several classes without any explanation as to how one might differ from the other. The documents are also littered with mistakes, my favourite one being a maths objective that the children should be able to tell the time with coins and notes!
Reading back over my last update, I’ve realised how much has happened since then and how it feels so long ago!
After coming back from Kabale I spent a lovely two weeks with Joshua, Dianah and their children (although Joshua works away a lot so I was mainly with Dianah and the children).
After buying some curriculum books, I headed to Mother Janet near Masaka. This is the school that the youth trip visited a few years ago, run by an amazing family. At the moment, I divide my time between teaching English to P3 and P4 (approx. Yr 4 and 5); trying to get my head around how content progresses throughout the Ugandan curriculum in preparation for Kotido (spoiler: it doesn’t well!); getting a charity registered in the UK; and sorting out the practicalities of moving like containers and visas.
It’s been great to be back in a Ugandan classroom but it’s also been a stark reminder of how imperfect the Ugandan system is. Both my classes have over 60 pupils in them. Both my classes have difficulty reading basic English (despite this being the language of instruction). These two factors make giving meaningful feedback very difficult! I think I’ve also pushed and stretched my classes as I show them the importance of understanding the why, instead of focussing on rote learning and “getting the answers right.”
Over the past few days, the container suddenly found itself much higher on my to-do list than it previously had been. I had expected it to reach here around late December but I also figured these things tend to be later rather than earlier so I sort of half expected it to be January. However, then I was contacted that it was expected to reach Mombasa (the nearest sea port in Kenya) on the 8th and could be in Uganda by the 15th of this month! (Although I’ve since had word, it’s likely to be in Mombasa on the 17th, which is still earlier than I’d expected).
My clearing agent (person who sorts out customs for you) is one of the most obnoxious people I have ever come across and working with him has been incredibly frustrating at times! On Saturday night I was given some laborious paperwork that he should really be doing, to do for Monday that took essentially all the time I had. Annoyingly, if it wasn’t done, I would be the one landed with the extra charges.
The school here has a “speech day” coming up – at the end of the year the parents are invited and each class prepares some kind of presentation or performance. Today has largely been taken up with rehearsals coming up, which has let me off the hook with my lessons and enabled me to take a bit of a breather after the stress of yesterday and do things like write blog posts!
After landing the first couple of days were a joyful reunion with some friends from my gap year, Joshua and Dianah. I actually attended their wedding in that time and they now have four children. It was lovely to catch up, see how much the children have grown over the past year and meet the youngest one for the first time! Although he’s only 4 months old, he’s HUGE and not far from sitting up! Dianah says it’s much hard work keeping up breastfeeding him!
Then came time for the journey down to Kabale (far South-West). This took a rather longer than expected! In Uganda, if a bus (think long-distance coach) hasn’t filled up by the scheduled departure time, it hangs around to wait and see if anyone else is coming. This does mean that prices are kept as low as possible and generally isn’t a major problem as the companies only run as many buses as they can fill. However, apparently very few people are traveling anywhere at the moment, which meant Pastor Justus (pastor of the church I attended on my gap year and native to this area) and I sat on the bus for three hours before it left (and it still wasn’t full!), therefore we arrived in Kabale town much later than expected and after the last taxi had gone out to the village. (Ugandan taxis operate like UK buses, where there are several unrelated people in the vehicle at once and each person pays for themself.) This meant an overnight stay in a hotel, and a wait for the taxi to fill up the next morning. Most Ugandan taxis are Hiace vans converted to minibuses but the ones going out to this village are all 5 seater cars, which of course aren’t actually full before they’ve got at least 7 people in them. I think this particular one peaked at 9! Fortunately, the state of the roads means they rarely get above 20mph!
The classic Ugandan rough journey contrasts with the apparent serenity of the classic Ugandan village. The scenery here always reminds me of the Yorkshire Dales but with a very distinct Ugandan flavour (which makes it even better in my view!). The wildlife is stunning: lizards, small birds in droves (including swifts on migration), beetles and even an eagle! This is all part of the Rwenzori Mountains, which most tourist literature for Uganda will mention and is not hard to see why.
The altitude though does bring rather changeable weather. In the sun, it can reach into the 20s and be very pleasant. However, in the rain it can get down to the low teens which does feel rather chilly (and makes it quite hard to dress for both!). My chunky knit cardis, thermal leggings and fleece have all been appreciated.
Our friend and host Alex has made sure we have been very well looked after! Hospitality is greatly valued in. Uganda and his shop that sells everything from haircare and hardware to glue and groceries has apparently really taken off in the last couple of years which meant having some little unexpected luxuries, like having charging points in the house, meat a couple of times and having my own bedroom.
However, dig a little deeper, there is a much darker reality. Alcohol abuse is more common here than central Uganda, with many men leaving their wives to both grow the family’s food and keep the house running. I even saw a lady on the way to her allotment only 3 days after giving birth to twins. One was carried on her back and the other by an older sibling. Very few children go to school in this area and, unusually, education is not seen as desirable by many families. This has eerie echoes of the Karimojong that I’ll be working with in Kotido – eerie because they are at opposite ends of the country, with generally more positive traits in between.
Furthermore, the local area has been hit with significant tragedy over the past week. We arrived to the news that one of the men had gone to look for work in town and had been knocked down by a moving vehicle and died instantly. He leaves behind a toddler and sixteen year old widow who buried a stillborn child on the same day as her husband. A few days later and a seven-year-old dies collecting firewood when she trips and hits her head on a stone. It’s the very grim reality of living in a country that gives little regard to daily health and safety.
It is against this backdrop that we find the church that I had come to visit. A glimmer of hope, it has become well established, despite some early difficulties finding a meeting place. There are a number of people with encouraging testimonies of how they came to know Jesus, many of them leaving behind a life of ancestor worship and small gods.
The church is far from perfect: there’s a bit too much showmanship in parts of the worship for my liking, I’d like there to be more exposition of the biblical text in the sermons and I don’t think the way they take the tithes is biblical. Moreover they apparently have some services that last over 6 hours!! I was delighted though when one of the new Christians asked me if I’d buy him a Bible in a language he understands. He has been mocked by the community for changing his beliefs later in life but it seems to have only made him more enthusiastic about church life.
Pastor Justus (far right), next to Alex (our host) with the pastor of the church here (middle) and his wife and children (left).
We are now on the overnight bus, when I’ll arrive back to spend some more quality time with Joshua, Dianah and the children.
I was reminded of the ancient proverb “the journey of a thousand steps begins with the first” as we pulled out the drive in the small hours of this morning. It does feel a little odd that the first few roads of a journey half way around the world are the same as popping into town or to church. I was also reminded of the metaphorical implications of this. Rome wasn’t built in a day and I don’t have a build a school in one either! But it’s all a step in the right direction.
Thank you very much for giving me such a lovely send off. I’ve really enjoyed reading your messages on the plane, as I journey between one chapter and another!
I’ve just landed and am waiting in the ssllloooowwww process of immigration. Very excited to be home at last!
If you are one of my new subscribers from Southampton, welcome! You will already know that the home straight has begun: last weekend I moved back up to Bradford from Southampton. As a hoarder by nature, one of the things that hammered home the nearness of moving was sorting my things into “taking to Uganda,” “will use over the next 2-3 months” and “find the kindest/most environmentally friendly way to dispose of”- the final category not being a particularly well-rehearsed one in my head! Getting the first box sealed and ready to ship though was an exciting antidote to any uneasiness I was feeling, as was realising that I won’t need to have 24 little Uganda flags dotted around my room to remind me of home soon because I’LL BE THERE AT LAST!!!
Back in the UK though, apparently, I couldn’t quite get enough of the M1 so I’m actually heading down to London for the weekend (yes, from Bradford, yes when I lived in Southampton until four days ago). Aside from the North-South jokes, it’s really all part of starting how I mean to go on: making time to spend with friends and people that I haven’t seen in too long and won’t get to see again for ages either!
Thus begins how I at least, envision the summer panning out, condensed into a week: organising practicalities and paperwork (who knew how long registering a change of address on car insurance could take!); seeing family and friends; and finding rest in between.
The 12th January was a sad day as Adrian passed away. Despite some initial fear, he slipped into glory with supernatural peace, knowing where he was headed, and was buried in Uganda, as he had wanted. I’m sorry for not updating on this before now, I haven’t found it particularly easy to talk about.
A couple of weeks ago we had a thanksgiving service at his church in Wales. One of the themes that emerged in the service was that the work he started still continues, despite the fact that he is no longer with us and it is very true. The farm project is still running and people are still benefitting from it. What a legacy!
Having said that, I know he is hugely missed by the team in Uganda and by me personally. As much as it hurts to know I’ll never see him again, I have come to a place of peace and trust in God and look forward to working with the project he left behind (and keeping you all updated!).
Hannah in Uganda 