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.

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.

Notes from Uganda: Week 1

This is the first 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 flew into Entebbe Airport where we were met by George and Joseph from the charity we are working with, Building Tomorrow, and by John Nisbet, a colleague from Gifford.

Hayley and Jessica at the airport

We are staying in the capital Kampala, a bright, bustling city, with plenty of traffic and the familiar problems with internet connections. We are currently staying at a pleasant guest house at Clement Hill; we are not sure who’s more fortunate: Hayley with a hot shower and toilet seat, or Jessica with a working fan and mosquito net with no holes!

There is a wide variety of food available including Western food, but we have been easing ourselves into local dishes sampling “tilapia” (delicious local fish), “matooke” (cooked mashed banana) and “Irish” (potatoes).

On Tuesday we visited the site for our classrooms at Nakaseeta, over an hour from Kampala. Our original plan to visit the site on Monday was delayed due to 12-hour torrential rains which even made the headlines in Uganda! Typical Brits, bringing the bad weather with them. The site is very rural, far off the beaten track down red dirt roads.

We were surprised how tropical and completely overgrown it is, and how much needs clearing before any construction work can begin. However, despite the foliage, we were able to understand the slope of the site and determine suitable positions for our eight classrooms. On the way back our Toyota 4x4 got stuck in the mud and had to be pushed out with some helping hands from the locals and a little engineering ingenuity on our part.

We have since visited three other Building Tomorrow sites, all in rural locations surrounding Kampala, and each with its own set of challenges. It has helped us to understand current building practices and to meet the teams building the new schools. We have been able to offer advice and improvements where possible. Structural engineering seems to be quite a loose term here, with sound reasoning being ‘that’s the way it’s been done before’.

We also had the opportunity to see the interlocking ISSB building bricks we plan to use being made and had a go ourselves. This is a new alternative building technology with a few teething problems we hope to iron out with the charity and the Good Earth Trust before starting on site.

We have been working with Building Tomorrow to adapt our design to meet practical buildability and budget, both of which are significantly different to what we are used to in the UK. The charity is very excited to have an innovative design to provide better teaching conditions for the students, and hopes this will be the template for future schools.

We have been welcomed wherever we have travelled, particularly warmly by the local children, who run along side us calling ‘Muzungu’ which means “white person”. We have perhaps been a little disruptive to lessons, but people are pleased to see progress in areas where the current schools cannot meet capacity or building conditions.
Tomorrow we will be visiting our site again, where the community will be starting site clearance, and introduced to the team we will be working with for the next month. At last the project will be underway!

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.