Ruhanga Beaders

Ruhanga beaders

 Some of you will be aware of the Meldreth Beaders (or possibly not unless you are on thread!) and it was an aim of mine to create a twin here in Uganda.

A group of ladies already meets to produce local crafts for sale at their stall on the side of the road here in Ruhanga.  I hope to expand their market by developing their skills in basket making and weaving more easily transportable items for volunteers to buy, and perhaps bringing back to the UK for sale with profits returning to the project.  The group are also part of a saving circle in which they can save any surplus profit to plough back into materials or create another business, perhaps become a solar sister as mentioned previously.

We meet on Wednesday afternoons, to share our craft skills and have a giggle too, unlike Meldreth Beaders; the strongest beverage is tea, although I expect the craick will be equally as raucous.

the finished product

Available at a store near you soon

An African Evening

George, the headmaster, of a neighbouring private senior school invited all the volunteers to his home.  He acts as advisor to our school and has been assisting in providing to teacher training to address the fast expansion of the school in the last term.

We set of in good time to arrive at his school up the hill, we saw a newly constructed fish pond which is used in agricultural studies and fish should be ready for harvest in April, so I look forward to that as we haven’t had any fish here since I arrived.  

We then went to the school which is for 16 to 19 year olds, which if they complete the national exams they can go on to university.  We had an interesting question and answer session, explaining all our work experience.  We have a life guard in our midst, as land locked Ugandans, don’t swim or have many swimming pool, the purpose was difficult to explain, but when it came to describing what a water skiing instructor does… well the best we could come up with was rollerblading on water!

We were then treated to a performance of the school choir, which was fabulous, the pitch, rhythm and harmony was perfect all seemingly effortless and delivered with sincere enjoyment, there was a traditional welcome song, gospel music and a finale of a tribal song and dance, with innovative drum and pipes from what ever was around.  Just real good fun. I am sorry I can't upload a video so you can get the full enjoyment

We were then invited for a ‘cup of tea’ at the head masters house.  We arrived to be introduced to his immediate and extended family.  We had tea, biscuits and yellows (little sweet bananas).  The house is situated further up the hill in the plantation and vegetable gardens commanding and amazing view of the hills all around, further from the road and so really peaceful.  It soon became apparent the there was a lot of other activity going on, with two fires lit and cooking various dishes, pealing and chopping of many ingredients and another two fires burning in the cooking banda.  As the house is so far from the road, there is no electric power and so although the house is beautifully appointed and furnished, food preparation is still done in a traditional way.  Propane gas is available locally and is used for lighting, but it is a steep hill to  carry many gas canisters up and eucalyptus wood is readily available nearby.

Georges family comprises of at least three generations, and in the youngest, several pairs of twins.  Each member seems to have there own job and each gets on with it with ease, some chopping wood, others vegetables, cleaning pots and others cooking.  I know when I am trying to put together a family meal, there are times I feel it is necessary to hide all sharp implements to prevent internecine warfare braking out.  Here all was running so smoothly, which is essential as darkness falls and there are so many fires and sharp implements about, axes, pangas, skewers, as well as the normal knives etc we would expect.  The boys were preparing BBQ bananas over a charcoal burner, and the were stuffed with Cadburies dairy milk chocolate!  Hence the interest of all the small children in preparation of this dish

The Cooking banda  and inside

We had a lovely time sitting around the fires watching and occasionally helping with the preparation, chatting with the children and grandma, showing them photos of  gorillas, zebra, warthogs, hippos which they have never seen, even in their own country.

  Grandma loved having her photo taken

We then went indoors, to eat; the amount of food was mountainous, (the photo was taken as I was going for seconds) but the flavours were so marvellous.  All locally produced, except the chocolate.  Mashed plantain, something like mini kumquats, ground nut sauce, sweet potatoes, maize meal rice, meat stew, bean stew……. And the banana desert perfect, when ever I try this the bananas remain hard and the chocolate melts and runs out.  How do they do this in the dark, over open fires and charcoal.

We had a wonderful evening and when we left in the dark, we hadn’t expected to stay so long and so had no torches, we were escorted by most of the family, down the hill across stream in the rain, with grandma at the back wondering why we were going so slowly!

If anyone does ever venture in this direction, George and family do have rooms available to extend this African experience, you can email georgekaramira@yahoo.co.uk.  It will be a really uplifting and warm welcome from the whole family in the most beautiful and peaceful setting.

Solar Sisters

I think I may have mentioned that there are frequent power outages here, but as I type, we haven’t had one for a couple of days now and so I guess it will go any moment now, particularly as is getting more humid by the second, or is that another hot flush, no I think it is the next storm brewing.

Back to the point; we are on the main road from Kampala to Kabale and Kigali on Rwanda and so are on the main power route too.  Villages only a couple of kilometres from the road do not have power and so rely on paraffin for light, wood and charcoal for cooking and heat.  There are few appliances which require any power except of course the ubiquitous mobile phone.  It is the technology of choice for all; they use it for music, radio, games and camera.  However in order to charge them they have to go to the local trading centre, often a couple of kms walk up or down hill, pay Ush 500 and wait 2 hours for it to recharge, which they will have to do every couple of days, funds being available.

The lamps

We hosted the introduction of Solar Sisters by Evelyn Namara, from Kampala, who was born in the region, and speaks the local language, which is funded by an American  NGO, which is providing a business opportunity to village women to start a business selling solar lamps and solar lamps which can charge mobile phones.  It works by providing a sample of each which the women can demonstrate to the rest of their community, secure orders and send the cash via mobile network and retain part of the profit themselves, they costs are ush 40,000 (£12) just for the lamp and ush 120,000 (£36) for the phone charging version.  These are very significant sums for women to find, but the benefits are that they is safer that candles or paraffin, brighter, cleaner saving about ush2000 per week on paraffin and not having to carry it from the trading centre; but with the 120,000 version they can also start a business charging phones at ush500 at time. 

There was a lot of interest from the women invited and all took away some samples; a number of men also wanted in on the scheme, but it is being reserved for the women to give them some economic autonomy and increase safety in the home.

More information can be found at    http://www.solarsister.org

Women with their lamps

I hope that they manage to make the scheme work; however there is a strong expectation that ngo’s will provide these things for free with no expectation of any input from the Ugandans.  It is very hard to find a way to get the local community to work with and build on the resources provided by the muzungo’s (white people) and NGOs.  I will follow with interest how this works  .

The most perfect place

Lake Bunyonyi

I have been here a month now and realised it was time to explore a bit more of the country and recharge my batteries.  With had a four day week end due to further elections and International Womens Day (why do we not celebrate this in the UK?, another blog entry I think)

It is always a challenge to move from A to B and so we waited for almost two hours outside the lodge for a bus, the hitched a lift to Ntungamo and waited more than an hour again, but eventually we were off.  We arrived in Kabale and treated ourselves to coffee and cake, sitting on a breezy balcony, feeling very civilised.  Then came the scary bit; the boda boda ride down to the lake.  It is many years since I have been on the back of a motor bike, and it wasn’t a happy experience then, I like to be in charge of the steering and more importantly the breaks.  We negotiated a rate and thought it would be one bike each, but no it was both of us on the back of the same bike.  Actually I felt much better about this as it had to go a lot slower with the weight.  In fact it was a great journey, a long way up hill slowly and then a long way free wheeling to the lake.  I have to admit that my legs were still a little wobbly when we dismounted and my thighs are still in spasm.

The next part of the journey challenged the upper body coordination, a dug out canoe to paddle 2km up the lake to out island retreat.  Worth every paddle stroke.

Byoona Amagara Island Retreat is run as a not for profit ecofriendly retreat.  It has amazing open fronted goedomes to sleep in as well as the cheaper bunk house accommodation we were staying in.  It uses solar power and so there are no generators and it is sooo quiet.  Lake Bunyonyi me and the lake of hundreds of small birds.  And it is certainly true, the come in all colours, pink, blue, green, orange, black white and any mixture of all, including of course the LBJ.  The beauty and tranquillity of the area is more than I can describe so I will let the pictures speak for me.

Another major highlight was the food and wine, yes red wine and cheese and avocado and cray fish and pizza…….  And all this for less than £15 per night.  It is free to for the canoe to get you there but you have to pay to leave; I am not sure that have it the correct way round!

 

I will return

Redundancy; the end or the beginning

28 February 11  My last working day

I am now finally redundant.

We celebrated with a little drink around the fire although not too much as tomorrow is a school day, literally.  Half of the volunteers are going on safari tomorrow so that will only leave four of us to go to school.

If this is redundancy then I guess I will have to wait for retirement to take a break.  Life is getting busier as the project has grown 6 fold in the last year and now needs some process management.  I have spent most of my professional life avoiding any sort of management and now I am finally redundant it seems this is about to be my new role.  The school had thirty pupils this time last year and now has around 250.  There are 7 seven classes of which three are baby classes of 3-5 year olds middle and top which are equivalent to our infants and P1 and P2 which are like our juniors.  The plan is to continue to expand by one year group each year to P7.  The foundations for four new class rooms are in place and we have desks for the three oldest classes and have just ordered desks for the middle class.

The children are incredibly well behaved compared to their UK peers and will get themselves into class on the bell and make a start on the lesson, even if the teacher is not present!  The resources are pretty limited and learning is often by rote with everything having to be copied from the board, laboriously in English.  As volunteers we help to support the teacher and to bring in and use books, crafts sports equipment and other learning resources which have been donated to help the children and teachers to become familiar with them. 

I am trying to put together some guidance notes and procedure documents for the volunteers and teachers, to enable smooth handovers as volunteers come and go.  We are also trying to set up a data base of all the students to monitor sponsorship, progress and updates for sponsors.  If you want to sponsor a child have a look at the link on the right.  The money goes towards providing, uniform, porridge in the mornings and teachers; funds are also required to keep on adding new class rooms for each new year group.  The latest rooms are still awaiting windows and doors, to make them secure so that books and other resources can be left in overnight.

All a bit serious this redundancy thing but really the fun part is with the children, they are so happy to be in school and to learn, we play all the play ground songs with them and they can pick up the words so quickly.  Also when ever we go for a walk around the plantations or the village they are always greeting us;  we do stand out as beacons being the only white people in the area.  As the project ethos is to discourage giving anything directly to the people, always to the school and community project, we are rarely asked for anything, so we feel sincerely welcome.   

So it is still an early night, to get up for work in the morning, but there is no rush hour or parking problem, just a gentle wake up call from a reasonable 7am dawn chorus, breakfast served in the banda and a gentle stroll through the banana plantation to be greeted by 250 happy children, bring it on.

Morning assembly

Morning clean up; yes the kids clean there own classrooms and play area every day, UK schools has something to learn here

P2 class with dust still settling

Baby class

Middle class waiting for their desks

Bricks and timber for the new class rooms, bricks are made and fired in situ