Thunder Only Happens When It's Raining

Ms Nicks wasn’t wrong – at least on a meteorological level, yesterday afternoon in Kakiika serves as Exhibit A. A sudden crack of thunder ripped through the relative tranquillity of the outskirts of Mbarara and the heavens opened like I’ve never seen before. Coming from a Glaswegian, that’s saying something.

We are right in the middle of Uganda’s dry season, and the lack of rain across the region is proving problematic, even for Kakiika’s impressive water tanks installed by last year’s PWs. Rain is almost clockwork, and is not due until the second week in August; any other rain is, as one man told me, “accidental”.  Any day in the dry season is a good day for rain, but yesterday was a less good day – we had our termly Board of Governors meeting, requiring a full squad of cooks to spend hours in the outdoor kitchen preparing an enormous lunch for us all. On the plus side, by putting buckets outside the door, Alice and I have collected enough rain water from the roof to finally wash our hair!

The outdoor kitchen (before the rain came on...)

Preparing posho, a hard maize meal porridge 

"Do you think there's enough to wash my hair yet?" - Alice

I half-mentioned our church marathon in a photo caption last time I posted. How anyone can spend four hours in a church service, I feel, requires something of an explanation. On Sunday, we turned up at church just before 8am, only to be told that the service we were looking for wasn't until 10am. Returning at 9.55am, we find two men preaching in front of a small crowd, one in Runyunkore and one in English. This, you tell yourself, must be the bilingual service you were looking for. I say bilingual: although there are notionally two languages on the go, the two get carried away and end up shouting over each other, leaving you with no idea who Ezekiel is and why he is in a Valley of Dry Somethings. Before you get too lost, the choir come to wake you up with a wall of the most incredible sound. Whatever your views on religion or its place in the developing world, there is no denying that church in East Africa is of huge cultural, as well as spiritual, significance. It is nothing short of amazing. The music and dancing was non-stop for at least an hour, if not more, as each choir and each singer chips in for some of the worship. Utterly mind-boggling, but so dynamic and energetic that it truly is a joy to watch.

 By this point, you say to yourself, we’re two hours in – pretty respectable effort, must be time to go home after the end of this song. But two more pastors climb the stage and start talking. One in English, one in Ruyunkore. This is the English service we had been looking for – apparently, the last one was a Kiswahili service (?!). So we start all over again. Two more hours pass, there are many anecdotes (the bishops’s wife has had an alarming number of near-death experiences, it seems), and we finally leave, slightly confused , knackered but made to feel very welcome.

In and amongst all of this, work with our partnership school is going really well. Our first week at Kakiika has been largely spent getting to know its community and trying to work out where we can make the most effective investment. As well as sifting through files and cupboards to determine what the school already has to work with, we’re speaking to as many people as we can. We’ve started a suggestion box for staff and students, and over the week we have had some really interesting feedback. Great colleagues, great students, great country – three happy PWs!

Our makeshift suggestion box has been full all week with contributions

Visiting a third year tailoring class, currently at work on traditional Ugandan dresses