Beam Me Up & Going 'Back Through the Wardrobe'

Apologies for the mixed Star Trek/Narnia analogy, but there is a point. This article is written to give a personal perspective, as well as a general project update. Describing daily life here should be straightforward, but one of the trickiest questions to answer is either 'How is Uganda?/How is Africa?' Honestly, the short answer is that it's impossible to give a short answer.

Having been back in Uganda since mid Feb, many of my 'moving' thoughts were forced to resurface. The overall feeling is of being 'beamed up' out of the familiar and then 'beamed down' into the parallel world, which of course, is also home. Since 2008, the flight itself has become for us 'The Wardrobe' (in the Narnia sense), with its many hours of suspended time between the two worlds. On a good day, the flight is a useful opportunity to peel off one life and prepare for the next. On occasions, if the leaving has been particularly painful or abrupt, it can just feel sad and raw.

But it's not all heavy duty; life here is always thought provoking. So here are a few glimpses of some differences ...

Domestic Trivia or 'Slowly Going Power Crazy'

After 8 weeks away, the car battery is flat and 'refusing' to charge fully. On closer inspection, there is clear evidence of rats spending Christmas in the car. Hmm... But the power has been off for hours now, so it can't charge anyway. We debate about using a boda, going to Luwero by bike or not bothering at all  - then the power suddenly comes back on. Great! The battery charges enough to start the car. Now to unlock two gates, with four different padlocks and a bunch of unlabelled keys (don't ask) and .... the car fails to start again. We wait patiently(ish) for another 15 minutes for the recharge, so we can reach Luwero before the bank closes. In order not to get stranded again, we leave the engine running outside the bank and supermarket as we dash round. Add environmental guilt onto the day's overheated hassle. Back home again, the power is off again. Whaaat? "OK, at least we can boil the kettle on the gas". The gas flame flickers and dies. We're completely out of gas... you're kidding? Gas bottles last for months and months. If there's no tea, it will be a really, really bad day... Sinister thoughts about leaving Uganda are lurking.

But then power comes back, we boil a saucepan of water and now there's tea! Phew. Power goes off again in the evening and it's still 35 degrees at night. Without a fan and hemmed in by protective mosquito nets, it's sweltering all night. (Amusingly, students arriving back to WTA from Gulu find it a tad chilly, so some are wearing warm polo neck jumpers, just in case!)

After another 24 hours with no power, we are both definitely feeling short-fused. The solar is all used up, the internet is feeble, there is no phone signal and we've got stuff to do. As a communication addict, this is so mind-numbing. The useless electricity company doesn't want to know and doesn't care about the problem - something to do with droopy wires and dusty winds blowing. This isn't the first time they have been so incredibly unhelpful.

To take advantage of the seasonal super-heat, the ice-cream bicycle man is doing the rounds playing the endless (mindless?) tinny mashup of 'We wish you a merry Christmas' & 'Santa Claus is coming to town.' It's starting to get very wearing. We previously had some icecream in the freezer, but it's melted, refrozen, remelted and now separated. Fortunately, the dogs have zero discernment and are delighted to lick up the lot.

More alarmingly, the water table is getting very low, the boreholes are emptying, but the students, the builders and the community need increasing amounts of water. It is a constant challenge.

There is a team of 19 visitors from Dentaid doing dental marvels at The Rock this week. They are working incredibly hard, so there is always restorative tea and cake at Mirembe House for them. However, ants have discovered the banana cake and are having their own party first. Putting the cake into the freezer usually does the trick, so that the cake becomes visitor-presentable. These must be super-insects, as a host of resurrected ants emerge energetically out of the defrosting cake. Hmm.. perhaps we can pass them off as poppy seeds, except they keep moving ... And surely a team of dentists won't want cake? (That assumption turns out to be 100% incorrect......)

School Surprises

Several good teachers have left WTA for greener pastures, due to the offer of government jobs, as there is the promise of a state pension and greater financial security. Of course, it is understandable, but it is still sad to see them leave. Occasionally they return if the new job turns out to be a red herring or even non-existent. Ten new teachers have arrived and are pleasantly surprised to see a moderately-priced, ordinary looking school with such a large library, range of laboratories and extensive computer suite. Everyone, new students included, needs to be reminded of WTA's unique history and ethos.

In reality, school never fully starts on Day One. The first week may look like chaos, but there is order within that chaos. In the third week, students are still arriving - some are old students returning and many are new pupils who are transferring having heard about the good O' level results. The classrooms are filling up steadily with an alarming ratio of one teacher:100+ students. Fortunately, each large class now has a classroom assistant to help out.

At the end of 2022, it was announced that graduate Science teachers would be paid 3 times more than Arts & Humanities colleagues. The aim is to boost Science teaching and develop Technology in Uganda. Such a controversial decision did not gone down well in the staffrooms of Uganda. Arts teachers want to strike again to demand equality of pay. The official response to the Arts teachers has been to 'show their loyalty to God, their government and the children they teach' ie 'accept the decision'. Not sure how well this would go down on a UK picket line.

Team Dentaid are very keen to visit the WTA students' morning church on Sunday. By 8.30am, the students are in celebratory, dancing, stamping mode; on entering the church, the visitors are hit with a wall of noise, exuberance and dust. They are totally unperturbed and throw themselves into the Sunday line-dancing mode. Despite more organised chaos, the experience is both surprisingly meaningful and memorable, for all the right reasons.

Out and About

"It's as if I've been living in a fridge and now I'm living in an oven.' This is Jerry's attempt to describe the massive temperature shift between the UK and Uganda to an S4 student. Most Ugandan colleagues decide that it sounds like far too much hard work to have to wear very many clothes just to keep warm!

Driving by car to Kampala is always 'interesting'. The last journey involved negotiating past 12 sets of police along the 50 km journey. It took half a day to go and buy two new car batteries. New driving rules include carrying two red warning triangles (no more using tree branches to indicate a breakdown) plus each car must have its own rubbish bin - carrier bags not allowed. Better get sorted to avoid a fine..

Each week there are premature deaths, boda accidents and rain-induced taxi chaos. This week a senior member of staff had a miraculous escape, when his car rolled off the road and landed upside down in a swamp. He and his family escaped with minor injuries, as bystanders from a local trading centre rushed to help turn the car over, as water poured in. They are all lucky to be alive. Our colleague shrugs off the story with a smile and says he doesn't feel too bad and that God is Good.

Sometimes each day seems chaotic and unpredictable - of course that can happen anywhere. In Uganda there is a resilience and acceptance of such disturbance, coupled with the conviction that tomorrow will be a new day and 'things can only get better...' Not just blind, fluffy optimism, but a genuine and deep-seated hope, which is not always seen in 'our' media and ongoing conversations about the world today.

So many things are incomparable to life at home and is hard to put into words. On arrival, we instantly slot back into different conversations, mannerisms, food, clothes, timings, church, social life, travel. Usually, it takes a few days for the brain to catch up with the arrival. However 'different' is not necessarily a bad thing and keeps us on our toes.

Reading the UK news on the BBC website from this side of 'The Wardrobe' reminds us that we do, at least, have an unlimited, unrationed supply of tomatoes and that's something definitely worth celebrating!