Notes from Uganda: The final chapter

This is the final chapter in a series of weekly updates from QUEST award winner Hayley Maxwell and her collegue Jessica Robinson, who are currently in Uganda helping to build rural classrooms.

Our last few days here have been sadly frustrating for several reasons. We returned from Pallisa to discover that the cleared section of the site had been burned to remove all traces of vegetation. Although this left the site half cleared, but we had hoped more might have been done in our absence. We were also disconcerted not to find any of the villagers working on the site.

It turns out that there is a boundary dispute and work has completely halted. Nobody seemed to quite know what was going on, so we went to see the chairman of the village. He explained that the landowner is disputing the area of land Building Tomorrow has bought. We then went to the home of the landowner to try and discuss the problem. Unfortunately he wasn’t there, but his wife was lovely and gave us some fresh eggs!

We had to leave the matter with Building Tomorrow as boundary disputes can get complicated. An article in the newspaper the other day said they can turn nasty and end in machete fights (though we’re sure this one won’t!). However, in typical Ugandan style a meeting between the charity, the landowner and surveyor was pushed back, then back again, then back some more!
We did have the opportunity to talk to the villagers about the school and what it will mean to them. Currently, a lot of them cannot afford the school fees for the private school nearby, and are eager to educate their children and ready to build the new school! We also met some of the children who will be attending, who don’t currently go to school but are very excited about starting!

Unfortunately, we have also been hit by illness this week which hampered our efforts. Hayley, Joseph and Jimmy have all been struck down at some point, and Metrine had to miss a computer ‘lesson’ due to sickness. We went to the surgery in Kampala to visit the very good English doctor who has served out here for 30 years and knows all possible Uganda-inflicted ailments and bugs!

We have introduced Metrine to the internet and set up her first email account – we hope she will stay in touch with us. We have also organised a computer training course at John’s facilities in Pallisa for a number of staff from the Crane Paradise.

For our last day today we visited the completed Building Tomorrow Academy at Gita, north of Kampala. We were encouraged to see such a well built school, although there are some problems with rain ingress, noise transfer and weld durability! We donated exercise books and pencils to every student who were pleased and excited to have visitors!

We can’t help but be disappointed with the lack of progress on site during our time here – but we have certainly learnt a lot and feel the knowledge we have imparted and the contacts we have made will assist Building Tomorrow’s future work. We finalised the classroom design and site layout based on the construction capabilities we have experienced first hand, although current estimated costs are inexplicably more than a little over budget! Something to pick up when we’re back in the UK.

We’re sad to be leaving. We’ve made many friends along our journey and are already planning a return trip next year – hopefully to coincide with the opening of the school. In the meantime, two other members of our award-winning team, Farah Naz and Chris Soley, are hoping to come out to Nakaseeta and to visit some of Building Tomorrow’s other Ugandan projects in August of this year.

Hayley Maxwell and Jessica Robinson

Hayley and Jessica work for Gifford and are part of a four strong team currently in Uganda. Hayley is an ICE member and won an ICE Quest Award to assist with her trip.

Offshore Renewables: Unlocking the potential

ICE published its latest report on the challenges and opportunities behind the deployment of Offshore Renewables in UK waters. The report can be found here.

ICE also hosted a panel discussion which included Alan Simpson MP, leading campaigner on the environment and economic issues; Professor Bakr Bahaj of the University of Southampton and one of the report authors; and Chris Tomlinson of Renewable UK. Chairing the debate was ICE Vice-President Richard Coackley.

The discussion covered a variety of issues from the engineering challenges; the importance of a more effective planning system; helping secure and directing appropriate sources of private investment and delivering the amount of skilled workers required. In addition panellists and audience alike made the point that the education of, and engagement with, the public regarding the benefits of new technology and infrastructure must take place.

Notes from Uganda: Week 4

Site clearing continues. Our most useful contribution is uprooting cassava plants, which also prove quite tasty! Progress on site is slow because the community can only spend a couple of hours a day working, as they are subsistence farmers with their own gardens to tend.

Our blueprints are with the local architect, and he was meant to visit the site before signing them off, but “he failed”. In Uganda, the industry has not been fully privatised, and so it is up to the local district councils to provide major plant and equipment. Building Tomorrow has visited the council on a number of occasions and still not met with the relevant official to organise the grading of our site. Scheduling appointments in advance is not possible. This has been very frustrating.

The big excitement was the arrival of our ISSB brick-making machine from Nairobi! It was ordered in November and has taken a tortuous route to get here. The Good Earth Trust delivered the machine to site, and with their engineers, we analysed the local soil. We visited a nearby murram (local red soil) pit where we concluded that we can use the soil there, but in different ratios to achieve the required brick properties.

We have finalised the layout for the head teacher’s office / library building at the school. There will be seven classrooms for each of the primary years, and an additional building to monitor visitors and store books securely.

We also travelled to Pallisa to see John Nisbet. Pallisa is a flat, sleepy town, more rural than Mukono – 15km down an empty murram road. The bugs here are ginormous! Hayley is not happy about the size of the spiders, but we were rather impressed by discovering flying beetles the size of our hands and multicoloured preying mantis. We had our most unstable and nerve racking experience of public transport, riding on the back of bicycles side saddle.

John is out here for six months, overseeing the building of a vocational community centre. It is a £400,000 development including teaching and IT facilities, library and catering resources, and dormitories to sleep almost 100 people.

We learnt how to cut and lay tiles, as well as mixing cement using a kitchen spatula and whisk! It was good to review the local construction techniques available on bigger budgets, though we are now envious of luxuries such as a concrete ceiling to keep the building cool and paint to brighten it up.

We were invited to take a primary school class for years P6 and P7, where we encouraged the children (especially the girls) to continue their studies and strive for good jobs. We also tried somewhat unsuccessfully to play FizzBuzz with them. Explaining a mathematical game proved a little beyond us!

We glimpsed the scale of the development required at Pallisa. Locals told us of new schools, water storage and boreholes urgently needed. People were supportive of the work we are doing in Mukono.

There has been no rain this week, and whilst we have been grateful to see so much sunshine, we are beginning to wilt!

Hayley Maxwell and Jessica Robinson

Notes from Uganda: Week 2

This is the second in a series of weekly updates from QUEST award winner Hayley Maxwell and her collegue Jessica Robinson, who are currently in Uganda helping to build rural classrooms.

We have moved to our new base in the Crane Paradise ‘Hotel’ in Mukono, where we will be staying for the majority of our placement. Mukono is a small town north west of Kampala. We explored the area last week with Jimmy, the Building Tomorrow employee responsible for our school site at Nakaseeta. We had an ‘orientation’ establishing accommodation, local restaurants and amenities. The town is certainly less glamorous than Kampala but has everything we need.

Many of our plans have been disrupted by the unseasonally heavy rains and you may have heard about the fatal landslides in Uganda at the moment. It is very unusual to have this much rain. It normally arrives in a burst of an hour or so, but recently it has been pouring for whole days at a time. We had hoped to go to Gita today to meet the students at one of the completed schools but flooding put paid to that.

We have been completing the drawings for the new school (thank goodness for the Gifford laptop!). Yesterday – against all the odds including broken plotters, miscommunications and ‘Uganda time’ – we printed four full sets of blueprints ready to be delivered as our planning application to Mukono District Council.

We met the Good Earth Trust at Makerere University to discuss the implementation of the interlocking soil stabilised bricks (ISSBs) which we want to use as building materials. Having surveyed some changing rooms and auditorium seating constructed from the bricks, we feel confident the ISSB technology can be used to great effect. Training is required at our site both in how to make the bricks and how to build with the bricks before work can start. We plan to test a number of sample bricks for compressive strength and durability properties at the University.

We took a break on Sunday afternoon and strolled around Kampala, taking in the sights including the parliament building, National Theatre and crafts market – there’s always time for a spot of shopping! We are becoming ‘Uganda-fied’ travelling by matatu (local minibus taxi), immune to splatterings of red mud, with Jess even picking up the local dialect which is always greeted with a smile! (“Webale nyo sebu – thank you kindly, sir”). We have become hard bargainers on everything from soap stone sculptures to exchange rates.

The rain has delayed work at our site. Building Tomorrow held a meeting to discuss plans for the school, which was attended by 26 members of the local village – very encouraging. Site clearance is now due to take place tomorrow. Fingers crossed for better weather!

It was Hayley’s 26th birthday yesterday, and we treated ourselves to dinner at Krau Thai – maybe the only Thai restaurant in the country. Delicious! We travel to Jinja at the weekend to mountain bike round the source of the Nile, and meet Soft Power Education, who are also building schools using ISSBs. Next week we shall visit John Nisbet at Pallisa to assist with his projects.

Now to find an internet café!

Hayley Maxwell and Jessica Robinson
Hayley and Jessica work for Gifford and are part of a four strong team currently in Uganda. Hayley is an ICE member and won an ICE Quest Award to assist with her trip.

Find out more about: ICE web project

ICE’s web project was planned in response to increased dissatisfaction with the current site and ICE’s ongoing commitment to its increasing global membership. Considerable progress has been made on the project, and the new website is scheduled to launch in June.

The key to the new website is that it will be personalised for each user. When you sign in to the site it will show you material most relevant to you're personal preferences: be that the region you live in or the topics you are interested in. Each ICE region will have its own landing page:

Regional landing pages feature news and upcoming events relevant to that particular region. Each region will also have its own unique subpages with more information pertaining to events, online communities, regional committees, education, and more.

Regional news and events will be able to appear on regional landing pages as well as on the main ICE news and events sections. This ensures a broad readership while also delivering a regionalised and personalised experience for the user.

Users will also be able to navigate the site by topic:

If the user is currently signed in, the right hand toolbar will filter topics related to his or her individual preferences. In the same way that the ICE regions page will be regionalised to the user’s region, the ICE topics page will be personalised to the user’s interests.

You can find out more about the web project by following our progress on the ICE web project blog http://www.icewebproject.blogspot.com/ You will find updates on the progress of each part of the site as well as profiles of the key team members involved.