Week 61 (16 – 22 Sep 2007)

Following another walk to St Luke’s Chapel at Kuluva on Sunday we were invited round to Ann and Alan – and stayed for a light lunch. Andrea is giving them advice on cooking and suitable recipes for the different foods available. It brings back memories of our “newness” from just a year ago and again makes us realise how much we have learnt and accepted. And how much more we still have to learn!
We discovered that our neighbour, Brenda, walked to the hospital yesterday evening. It’s a hard uphill walk which I struggle with during the day. But she was in the early stages of labour. She had a caesarean later in the afternoon and both she and the baby boy are doing OK.

Start of term on Monday – our fourth term and the start of our second year. I (James) am on duty this week so went up to start registering the students as they arrived. I wasn’t busy. There was a steady trickle of about 6 and hour until late afternoon when it seemed that they all came at once. We check them in and go through a list of what they should have brought. Some parents stay to watch the procedure and find it hard to believe what some forget e.g. a jerry can. Not a small item and usually bright yellow – but they miss it! Buy 6pm we gave up as it was getting dark. About 70 of the 170 students had returned. Good by African standards and better than last year. It was interesting to note that the students had no difficulty with Andrea and me checking them in – it seems they have accepted us and our funny ways. We had visitors, Karen, Megan and a short termer – all from Kampala. They stayed long enough for a cup of tea and Andrea walked with them to Kuluva to visit the new baby (Nissi).

The checking in of students continued on Tuesday – it’s tiring, especially in the heat. Again, many students came later in the day. We started lessons and both of us were teaching but the timetable needs more changes as two new teachers have just been appointed (since the staff meeting on Friday when the last changes were agreed). Some teachers did not come in either. It makes it difficult to have an ordered start to the term – but that’s a very Western view! We were so tired that we forgot to go to the Discipline Committee meeting which we had urged to meet. We were having few hours off from the checking in. However, as the Chairman and Convenor of the committed has just become a Dad and went to the hospital the meeting was cancelled. They had staff devotions instead – which we also missed. So much for the enthusiastic missionaries!

Klemens, our Unit Leader, visited us for lunch and spent most of Wednesday afternoon here. This included an hour with the Principal. He used to work in Kuluva and Mary, (our cook and cleaner etc) worked for Klemens than so they spent some time catching up too. She named Jonathan after Klemens son. He was staying with the German team at Diguna so borrowed one of their heavy duty vehicles and had no trouble returning up the “road” to Kuluva with Andrea (to visit the baby), Mary, Jonathan and Joyce.

On Thursday we taught early (being able to swap a lesson as the teacher was away) before heading into town. After shopping and another excellent lunch with the Asikis we headed off to Ushindi Primary School. It’s only taken us a year to get there and have a look around. They have 250 students and the school has been converted from a house. There is some difficulty with the landlords (a dispute between the seven co-owners who are siblings) so may have to move out at short notice. We were at the school to attend the combined Ushindi Board Meeting. It was a fairly typical Governors meeting – similar topics to one in the UK but it did give us a chance to learn some more of the background and ongoing issues as well as to meet a couple of the Board members.

I had to take on extra duties on Friday as one of the other three was ill and the third did not know this so left the site for the day. There was still a steady stream of students wanting to be checked in as well as some who were ill with the usual things (malaria, typhoid, possible meningitis). The ill ones get sent to the hospital but need to be grilled to find out why they want to go e.g. “How do you know you have malaria?” and “No, you don’t have a cough. You haven’t coughed in the last 20 mins. No, you do not need an antibiotic for the cold you don’t have. Go away.” The evening ended with us taking the devotions again and starting a new series on Mark’s gospel.

Ann and Alan walked to see us in the afternoon on Saturday. It was good to see friendly faces again and be able to use bigger words than usual! And we were just relaxing after checking in more students – nearly all here now. Then at 6.16pm we got notice that a girl was very ill and her neck was aching and she was shivering. So we checked that no boys were also bad and took her to the hospital. They had medicines but the lab had run out of needles to take blood samples so couldn’t check what she actually had. [It later turned out to be malaria and she was kept in for a couple of days.] We returned at 9pm more than a little tired.

Week 60 (9 – 15 Sep 2007)

On Sunday we walked to Kuluva (30 minutes uphill) and spent the next 30 minutes recovering. We sat with Ann and Alan and managed to arrange a further time to meet before they were whisked off to a fund-raising event in a local village. That’s something we’ve managed to avoid so far! I also managed to get our new battery charged. No mean feat as it takes two people to lift it.

No lesson on Monday and I can’t remember what we did. Probably talking with neighbours, reading a lesson preparation again.

Ann and Alan walked from Kuluva to see us and stayed for lunch on Tuesday and through till near tea time. Being new, they have a lot of questions and fortunately we have a few answers. They have experience on other parts of the world on short visits and also visited Arua last December so had more of an idea of what to expect. And they have electricity and taps in their house. But we had a good time together.

A further quiet day on Wednesday with the main event being sorting out the school timetable for the term. There have been a number of key staff changes and fitting in with all limitations wasn’t easy.

We went to town on Thursday and had lunch with Cathy and her children. Cathy tries to find something different each time we go and so today we had rabbit. It was very good even though the local men regard it as not being proper meat and only suitable for women and children! Ann and Alan managed to buy some plants so we gave them a lift back to Kuluva and stopped for a cup of tea. We said hello to their Scottish neighbours, Molly and Isobel whom we haven’t seen for a while.

The “highlight” of Friday was the staff meeting (11am to 1.30pm) followed by lunch. Many issues were discussed and we even made some decisions. Again. It is a challenge to find ways of ensuring that decisions are turned into actions. As everyone has other priorities and simply living is a challenge let alone transport and family commitments, it’s not surprising that issues and changes in school take a much lower priority. And England lost to South Africa (0-36). But I won’t comment on that as Ireland will lose something soon.

I think we rested on Saturday – or continued to prepare for next week.

Week 59 (2 – 8 Sep 2007)

Picture: Can't resisit another picture of the Nile - and a small waterfall that we went over four years ago. We were in a raft.

We attended Zana Presbyterian Church on Sunday and met a few people we knew. Other than that we had another quiet restful day and enjoyed watching a DVD without having to worry too much about the lack of electricity.

We walked up the hill to Matoke Inn on Monday morning, sorted out some administrative details and had a pleasant lunch with a lady from the UK and working Kenya. We met with Klemens, our Unit Leader, in the afternoon to update him on our progress and complete our mid-term review. He has been on home assignment in Germany for the last year or so and is settling back into a new role in Entebbe. We watched another DVD again – that’s three in a row now! What extravagance!

Tuesday morning was spent reading and planning some things for school. We had lunch with Lyn and a chance to catch up on what has been happening to us all since we last met. And yes, we did watch another DVD in the evening.

We decided not to go out on Wednesday to allow more time for working but the power went off at mid-day so we were unable to use the laptops until around 6pm which was a bit frustrating as we’ve just got used to having power!

On Thursday we took a taxi to town and met up with Hope, the daughter of our Chairman of Governors and with whom we stayed for about 10 days last September. Hope has been studying in Kampala for a diploma after finishing her Law degree so we haven’t seen her for a year. It was great to catch up with her – definitely a bright spark and has great potential for the future. After a fairly long walk we eventually found Sam’s, a missionary recommended eating house i.e. Western food like bangers and mash! Andrea was delighted that we ended up just across the road from the knitting / craft shop she has been wanting to visit since January. After 5 minutes I went next door to the electrical goods shop! We also visited a good bookshop before returning to Matoke Inn for the regional prayer meeting. We met up with the Unit Leaders from Chad and Southern Sudan whom we had met on previous occasions. There were some other folk we haven’t seen for a while too. We heard about the working in some areas – very challenging but also with some successes.

Today is a sad day for me. Friday 7th Sept sees the start of the Rugby World Cup 2007 and I can’t get anywhere near a TV – even in the matches were on at a reasonable time. Bear in mind that we don’t go out in the evenings and most of the matches are around 5pm or later (Uganda time). BUT – as I write (on Sat 15th) I’ve at last managed to get on to the internet and a top priority is to find out some scores. I won’t say anything about England and South Africa.

Back to the 7th. And we took another walk up to Matoke Inn for lunch and a rest before the Regional Conference 2008 Committee meeting which we’re on. Actually, Andrea is chairing today. It went OK but we experienced the difficulty of not only getting committee members into the same room at the same time, but getting them into the same country! Therefore, several were missing and only two of those present were at the last meeting. Still, we managed to get something useful done. We walked back to the flat and managed to do most of our packing before the power went again.

The power came back on so we were able to leave the flat at 6am on Saturday with relative ease. There were no problems on the flight back to Arua. We met another English lady, Ann, who arrived in Arua a week ago. She and her husband, Alan, are living at Kuluva Hospital and so are “near” neighbours. They gave us a lift into town to our car and on the way established that they are around our age and have two children, a boy and a girl, about the same ages as Richard and Laura and they are also first time missionaries. But they are with CMS rather than AIM.
Back at Ushindi, most people had gone to a wedding so it was quiet. Only the S4 students were around.

Week 58 (26 Aug – 1 Sep 2007)

Picture: View of the River Nile from our chalet

Sunday 26 Aug 2007
I think the blog entries this week are likely to be very similar. Got up, had a leisurely 5 minute walk to the restaurant. Had a filling breakfast sitting outside overlooking the River Nile as the sun rises higher and the temperature also rise from cool to pleasant. Took a bit longer walking back to the chalet. Sat on the private veranda, also overlooking the river but a bit further downstream. Read and admired the view. Had a cup of coffee (Andrea) and soda (James) with a slice of cake. Continued to read or use the laptop. Meandered up to the pool for a leisurely swim before lunch. Rest beside the pool after lunch with a possible second swim. Return to the chalet to rest after the exercise and read then shower and return to the restaurant for our evening meal.

It’s true that we are missing some things. Like the 5am bell, the knocks on the door, the goats and cockerels crowing (yes, I know goats don’t crow but they are almost as loud!), fending off the cows from our washing. But we have sacrificed the solar power for electricity all the time and a bucket for a shower. But you can’t have everything! Still, it’s a much needed break and rest.

Saturday 1 Sep 2007
The week did turn out as expected. Except that the weather turned dull and cool i.e. very comfortable for us and not so bad that we couldn’t sit by the pool for a few hours each day, have a leisurely swim and lunch. Apart from a few small conferences and occasional day visitors there were generally less than ten other guests at any one time. We had the pool to ourselves much of the time so it was even more peaceful than we had expected.

Our return trip was without incident – the lorry we passed last week still had not been moved. After some shopping on the way, we settled ourselves in Lyn’s flat – she was elsewhere.