We’re back in Kampala for the night – leaving the hotel at 5.30am tomorrow. I can’t believe that any city can be so crowded. They reckon that 30 boda boda drivers a day are admitted to casualty and I’m not surprised!

I am very tired and beginning to feel that I’ll never be anywhere clean ever again! I sincerely hope my son has cleaned the house properly whilst I’ve been away!

I am trying to decide how best to use all the information and photos that I have amassed. I think that I will probably do a series of reports for the website: Education, Community, Church, Massindi link. All I have to do is to find time to write them!

Almost home

Our game park adventures were a little more adventurous than planned!!! (see photos) We were well over an hour in the midday sun in the middle of the reserve (after just seeing lions!) stood out of the car. I felt quite glad that our guide had a gun – although he kept running off to see where his brother had got to! Our rescuers (said brother and other rangers) were delayed when chased by a bull elephant!

Still we did see two leopards, a group of lions several herds of elephants and giraffes, hippo and buffalo by the tonne – and it was WONDERFUL. I can’t believe I’ve sailed down the Nile.

Visitors

It is easy to worry that you are a burden that your host could well do without but in reality visitors here are incredibly important to both individuals and organisations – hence the never ending stream of visitors books that we have had to fill in! (Yesterday at the diocesan office we had to fill one in in every office we sat down in – we were even called in to one office JUST to sign the book!) “if you do not have visitors then there is something wrong with you.” I was told on more than one occasion. To not be visited is a shameful thing.

Taxis take the form of bicycles with seats built on over the rear wheel and motor bikes (boda bodas)These latter often transport whole families and luggage. The most I’ve seen is three adults and two children! Women will often go side saddle, many not even holding on. People use bicycles to transport anything and everything. Things that we would think twice about fitting into our cars are tied securely onto the back of a bike – we spotted one man with a big wooden bed!

At last night’s farewell do I was given an honorary name ‘Abooki’ which I really like!

We’ve finished diocesan visits now and are spending two days at a reserve. This will allow us a bit of a break – it’s been very full on for what seems like months – as well as some time to work through and process all that has happened. Yesterdays school visits were a particular challenge as they enabled me to put many more pieces of the jigsaw into place. I was left feeling very frustrated. Before we left Chris talked about people going out for a few days and then thinking they’ve got the answers when in reality they know so little of the complexities. I knew that i wouldn’t be so arrogant – it’s galling to realise that you’re just the same as the idiots that went before!!!

I need some time and space to get off my high horse, dump my western solution driven way of thinking and become more dispassionate about what i have seen in schools. When I’ve done that I’ll be able to share more rationally what I saw of teaching learning and leadership.

I’m already talking through possible options for the future with Chris – anyone fancy a Ugandan trip?

God Bless

Abooki Germaine Matoki Typist

The twins.

Two young American health care workers here to set up a centre are looking after 4 month old twins Innocence and Imelda. They were in the orphanage which was not equipped to care for babies so young and so ill. It was thought that Innocence would not survive. Both babies probably have TB and results from the HIV tests are due soon. From 2 weeks old their mother had been unable to feed them and so they had been fed maize porridge. Both were seriously underweight and it’s thought that Imelda has had a stroke. Their mother was in hospital with aids , TB and pneumonia all of which had remained untreated for a very long time. She was due a blood transfusion yesterday but her family came and removed her from the hospital. The twins are likely to end up in an orphanage unless the father can be found and is willing to sign away his rights in which case adoption may be possible although unlikely.

Having spent two evenings nursing Innocence It was hard leaving them behind.

8 hours + in a car on roads that have no tarmac, one break down, one replacement car. We are all very tired but we have arrived in Masindi which is where my leg of the journey begins. Tomorrow we meet diocesan officials and attend the cathedral and on Monday it will be a timetable of one school visit after another. I have two days to begin to piece together how Masindi and the Dept. For Children and Young People can form a partnership that is sustainable, educationally valid and that benefits both partners.

(The Diocesan Secretary and the Education Secretary came to the hotel to find us this evening – just as well that I had delayed jumping in the shower! We meet again at 8am at the cathedral and then see Bishop Stanley in the evening. It will be good to meet up with him again.)

First hot shower!!! Have managed a lot of cold ones and one that was luke warm until I’d got the shampoo nicely lathered and then it turned as cold as the rest. It must be said that everyone else has managed warm showers – it’s just that the showers in my rooms have taken one look at me, laughed their socks off and delivered freezing water!!

I’m hoping that I can get internet connection this evening so that I can post this and yesterdays blog. You never know I might manage a few mpre photos.

God Bless

Germaine Matoke Typist

Randomly speaking....

Written on the wall of the head masters office yesterday - “There would be perfect peace on earth, if on the lips of every liar a padlock was put and the key gets lost in the sea.” !

They’re hot on signs in schools here – “avoid bad touches, lonely places” “abstinence is healthy” “defer sex until marriage” “there is no cure for aids” “respect the family way” Can’t see them catching on in England.

There are occasions when I get a real sense that “I am in Africa!” - sitting on a boat in the middle of an African lake. Seeing the tiny island where girls were left to die if they were found to be pregnant. Driving through miles and miles of tea plantations, passing markets selling plantain and fabric and charcoal and goodness knows what else besides, trucks over laden with goods and then people sat on top of that and of course the elephant by the waterhole...

The men on the trip are finding it amusing to try to come up with ways of ensuring that I find a husband before we leave! (I have no idea why – I have never intimated that I wanted one which is, I think, why they are having such a whale of a time with the whole thing) Thus far fortunately they have not followed through on any of their suggestions!

Following the incorrectly translated girls talk and my avoidance of matoke if at all possible (an indescribable substance parading as food which is both the lynch pin of all meals and of all agriculture) I have been renamed ‘Germaine Matoke Typist’!

We’ve had a thunder storm today which was magnificent. I don’t think I’ve ever seen clouds so black.

Tell me......Is the sight of children walking/running/skipping to school with no shoes on a sign of abject poverty and injustice or a sign of a different way of life where children/people have often walked barefoot? I am grappling with what is poverty and what is a different way of life. Is it necessary for everyone to have a hot bath every day, a washing machine, a tv, computer, car, 25 pairs of shoes and a wardrobe full of clothes before I decree that they have sufficient? If not all that then where will I draw the line to demark an acceptable standard of living and what business is it of mine anyway? United Nations Rights of children say (from memory and incomplete) Home, family, food, water, sanitation ,education, health care -and all of those I have seen.

(of course there IS poverty here and there are those that ARE in need of help – it’s just where the lines are drawn. Also what help is needed. The projects that I have seen that are the most mind blowing are those that allow people to help themselves thus restoring their sense of dignity, pride, self esteem. It does nobody any good to rely on handouts.)

Take care

Germaine Matoke typist

The power of prayer!

An incredible day – dancing, lakes, ex leper colonies, more visitors’ books, Mothers Union..... and yes I did it all! Woke up with back as bad as yesterday, went to Morning Prayer in great pain but was determined not to miss another day. We travelled to Kabungo church to be with the Mothers Union. By the time we had had breakfast with the pastor and got up to process into the church my back was no longer hurting and I could stand up straight, climb the steps and sit in a pew! Now there has been divided opinion as to whether it was the journey on the road that thought it was a river bed that knocked my spine back in to place or God’s direct intervention. I know that people were praying (thank you) and maybe it was God answering prayer via a pot-holed road?

The speech to the Mother’s Union (following traditional dances and songs that were truly joyful) was about the power of women in church and country. The speech to the Lake Bunyonyi secondary school pupils (preceding the most amazingly exciting dancing and singing) was inspiring girls to continue with their education because they were able to gain the best jobs like girls the world over – at this point Chris dubbed me a raving feminist! The translator couldn’t quite bring himself to tell the girls they could have the best jobs so told them that if they worked hard they could have a car!!

The welcomes today have been so warm and the worship so joyful. Neil and I have also managed to get avoiding eating the matoke and chicken down to a fine art – if you’re careful you can get by just having the rice, gravy and bananas!

We’re leaving at six tomorrow morning to Fort Portal. About 33 km of the road will be nothing but pot holes so prayers welcome – for back and axles!

God bless

Jackie