People Postcards-Our last story from Uganda

This is our last story from Uganda. Chris, as with the stories from the West Bank they have touched our hearts and I for one want to say thank you. This w/e we begin to look east towards the Olympics in Beijing. For now enjoy this last post from Chris.

The Headmaster’s Office

She mumbles the words, sitting behind the big desk.

“He will be back soon. He has gone to visit a member of staff. Their mum has just died. It is AIDS. He is on a Boda Boda so won’t be long. Please, sit down.”

So the six of us wait in the Headmaster’s office, waiting for him to return on the Boda Boda – which we come to understand as the local “bicycle-come-taxi” ridden over bumpy Ugandan tracks by men with too much testosterone. Good job the Headmaster will be on a soft seat.

On our way to his office our attention had been grabbed by the moral advertising in blue paint on all the roof rafters above the classroom doors and windows. “People with HIV need care and support”; “Say no to bad touches”; “Virginity is healthy”. A very in-your-face strategy for a bunch of eight year old kids.

Now, as the African sun blazes the school yard outside, we sit quietly in his office and gaze around at the walls. Cracked plastered walls filled from floor to ceiling with sheets of paper crammed with numbers on. It is like living in a spreadsheet. Numbers for how many girls and boys and staff for each year stage. Numbers in Ugandan shillings for the cost of uniforms, books, and maintenance per term. Names of staff and their home addresses and wages. It seems that the Data Protection Act hasn’t yet crawled into Uganda.

“Greetings!” he beams. He is the kind of man who brings the sunshine indoors with him. He stands in the doorway like The Fat Controller, embellished with the kind of smile we have come to expect here. His apology for his lateness gives way to a short potted history of the school. In fact we are well versed in the school history as it is written out painstakingly by hand on several sheets of paper tacked to the wall in front of us.

Then he says something that has stuck with me ever since. Had the school successfully collected in all the fees from the 1130 pupils, they would have around £25,000 available. Do the maths. That’s £22.12 per student for the year. However, with the local economic poverty they face, the burden of AIDS, and the absence of any reliable infrastructure for communication other than word of mouth, they have collected in £600 for the year. My calculator tells me that is 53 pence per child for the year.

He remains standing in the doorway, not for effect, but it is a portrait that reveals no self-pity or panic. His posture says quite proudly “And that’s the way it is folks, so we just get on with it.”

The Headmaster’s Office by Chris Spriggs

People Postcards-Our third story from Uganda

A few months ago Chris Spriggs travelled out to Uganda. Chris is someone who has carried a concern for issues of fair trade. His love of people is reflected in these tender “people postcards” that he has put together. This then is the third of five.

The Big Secret

He limps. That’s the first thing you notice from a distance. But get a little closer and you see something else about him, something which lasts in the memory even more than his awkward swagger.

We greet each other in the language local to this area of East Uganda, called Lugisu. I absorb his long slow deep greeting of “Mulembe” (Moo-lem-bay). An African version of Shalom.

His name is Samuel and sometimes when he stands in front of you his height blocks out the sun. Partly because he is so lanky, and partly because I am so not. The sun that shines persistently even in this, the Ugandan rainy season.

I watch him go about his work, diligently taking the empty plastic water carrier from the school yard, down the red-dust track for a mile and more and come back with it, full. You can hear the thud-thud of the replenished barrel on the tough-African land, and notice the jerky imbalanced stroll of Samuel bringing it back, like a pet at his heels.

One’s life can look a little ridiculous in contrast. Okay, MY life can look ridiculous when placed next to his. His job prospects are meagre, his network of connections limited and his profile on Facebook non-existent. He wanders from the school yard to the water pump and back again, and then back to the pump and then back again, and that is his morning complete. Yet he has found the secret. Even when we offer him a lift to the capital city Kampala, a five hour trip through delicious bumpy green landscape in our beat-up van, so he can visit his teenage daughter making a go of education so far away, even then his secret weapon is on display.

He is more than useless at directions as we slowly penetrate the horror that is rush hour in Kampala. There are no such things as road markings, speed limits, traffic lights or rights of way. Just hell on wheels. He murmurs from the rear seat “Go left” (pointing right) “oh…no…perhaps go right here or straight on” (pointing to the ceiling of the van). So we ignore his navigational input. But we cannot ignore that most dominant feature.

His contentment with life, exhibited in his brilliant broad smile. As we cling to our seats with the van hurling itself over two foot high concrete speed bumps, he sits and just smiles at us all.

Yours, Samuel, is a life on a different planet. Can I join you sometime?

The Big Secret by Chris Spriggs

People Postcards-Our second story from Uganda

 Love Your Neighbour

I can’t quite get it straight in my head. I am just inches away from the Queen, but the surroundings don’t quite fit.

I am in a lounge of three metres by three metres. There are thirteen of us knee to knee, eating chapattis and bananas. The muddy floor beneath us blends seamlessly with the mud-brick walls upon which, a little above my head, sits a silver framed clock and a poster of our Royal Highness.

 

Nice of you to join us in Uganda, Ma’am.

 

Our host, Edward is telling us about his week. “I go without food perhaps a few days each week so the children can eat.”

 

His wife is with us, a burden of hope protruding from her. Judging by the size of her pregnancy-bulge, child number seven could be arriving very soon.  

At Edward’s feet is another woman, Nancy. Her burden is not hope, but one of the hallmarks of AIDS; the dark blotches of Kaposi Sarcoma, a skin cancer not uncommon in people with the disease.

 

Edward tells us a little of her story in his soft-but-articulate English. 

“Her husband, he died of AIDS. So she went back to her clan with her three children but they rejected her. They said she was unclean. So she had no home.”

 

She is uneasy on her feet as she slowly accompanies us on the small tour around the community. We pass children carrying stacks of runner bean stalks on their heads, the Witch Doctor’s hut, and the school about the size of Edward’s lounge with fading copies of the alphabet tacked to its walls.

 

Then he shows us the house he has been building for Nancy. It has exactly the same dimensions as his own. Estate Agents may well describe it as a “two-bedroom maisonette with intimate social accommodation at its hub”, but the truth is it is a well-made mud-hut of three tiny spaces.

 

They let us look inside. It takes less than ten seconds to survey, but to Nancy and her children it will be home.

 

For Edward, it was simple. Despite getting no salary, it was the good thing to do. He is showing how motive can speak more powerfully than money. His hands are creating hope. His family is expressing love. His community is revealing another little piece of heaven on this, our dark muddy earth.

 

Chris Spriggs