East African Playgrounds - The Charity.

Volunteering for a charity had never been something I’d taken great time to consider as I ventured from childhood to adulthood. I’d always been too preoccupied by the immediate problems of my own life – such as what to watch on television, what to wear to university on a day-to-day basis that would look chic yet effortless, and how to convince my friends to come and get drunk with me on a Wednesday afternoon. This is slightly embarrassing to admit, but true nonetheless. As my time at university was coming to a close though, things like what I was going to do afterwards started to become more important. I knew that I wouldn’t be satisfied going straight into a boring 9-5 job, and I knew that I wanted to experience something that would put me a thousand miles out of my comfort zone. Which is when the idea occurred to me, as I was scrolling through the jobs and opportunities page of York St John and saw an advertisement for a meeting happening later that night to attend an East African Playgrounds event, that volunteering might be exactly what I needed.

It’s funny looking back on that moment now. Half an hour before the meeting was scheduled to take place, it had started to rain, and the thought of walking through it (despite the fact that I only lived a few minutes from campus) had almost made me cancel my plans and crawl into bed. It was only my determination not to be a lazy slob for the third day running that forced me out of the house and toward the meeting that would convince me that East African Playgrounds was definitely a charity worth my time.

When I arrived I was ushered into a room with about twenty other eager-looking students, all patiently awaiting the arrival of the volunteer coordinator Laura Dove. I remember thinking when she arrived in the room with her neon-bright EAP t-shirt and baggy looking harems that if that’s how people dressed in Africa on a day-to-day basis then I could definitely get on board. Her clothes were so bright and wonderful, and counteracted so forcefully with the otherwise miserable and completely predictable British gloom that I felt immediately comforted. It sounds kind of strange, I realise, that somebody’s outfit could have such an impact on my feelings, but I’m a peculiar individual who places far too much emphasis on aesthetics. It’s both a blessing and a curse.  

As the meeting got underway, and I began to learn more about what exactly this charity did, my positive feelings regarding my choice not to stay in bed were confirmed.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know whether you’re devoting your time and money to the right cause. At the end of the day, it’s a personal choice and a reflection of the causes you care about. To some, building a playground might not seem like a worthy cause. The people that think this might justify those feelings with the argument that food and money are more important than “playing”. To those people, I will allow that you are entitled to your beliefs. I will not share those beliefs though. It became obvious to me as Laura explained the importance of play in that first meeting that this charity wasn’t just about rainbows and happiness. What East African Playgrounds is about is offering children and communities a chance to live and feel entitled to a life that we first world citizens take for granted. It offers children a safe environment in which to develop essential social skills which impact their academic careers and shape the people they will become.

The charity might not give food or build wells or provide the amenities which some deem most urgent, but they do something which in my opinion is far more important – they impact a child’s future. Play is so important to children, and it took listening to Laura and hearing her own experiences to fully understand this. It made me look back on my own childhood with a different perspective. I’m an introvert, yes. I love being social, being with other people and exploring new places and experiencing new things, but I’m a naturally quiet person. And I realised that it was my formative experiences that allowed me the freedom to be this way without fear of judgement.

That is the beautiful thing about this charity – it allows children to discover themselves, which is something they deserve to do, beyond the hard environments in which they live. I couldn’t recommend working with this charity more, because, on a rather more selfish note, it had a massive impact on me as well. I remember on our last day living in the school, during the open day where the children finally got to play on their hard-earned playground, many people making speeches about how grateful they were to us, the headmaster included, but it was one of the founders of the charity – Carla Powell – who really reminded me of what a powerful thing we had done. Her speech talked about the hope we had given to the children of that community, and how that hope was a long-term effect, because the playground we spent a mere 30 days constructing would last and be cherished by generations of children. By working with East African Playgrounds, I and the other volunteers made a difference to children who hadn’t even been born yet. This fact hadn’t actually occurred to me until Carla pointed it out, but realising it turned me into a bit of a soppy mess.

So yes, East African Playgrounds makes a massive difference and if you’re reading this because you want to volunteer then I couldn’t recommend anything more. You can volunteer for whatever cause you choose, because there are many worthy ones, but to me the affects that EAP have are immediately tangible, and are one of the best.  

Visit the EAP website to find out more about its ethos and general awesomeness... http://eastafricanplaygrounds.org/

Those First Few Days

Reflecting upon my experiences, adventures and the wonderful thing I did during my time in Uganda has deepened my appreciation for the fact that since leaving university in May, everything I do and every choice I make has the potential to change my life. Of course, during the year I had to fundraise for the project I would be spending my summer on, I knew that it was something I would love and that would change me. I knew that experiencing the sights and sounds and tastes of a country that I had only ever got to see on TV during awful episodes of Comic Relief would probably make me a worldlier person. I also knew that the project would look great on my CV. I’d heard it enough times throughout the year as I’d told people what I was doing. Of course people encouraged me, seemed awed by it all, but the emphasis had always been on how it would improve me – my employability, my cultural awareness.

Somewhere in the countless conversations the point had been missed altogether, not just by the individual I was talking with, but by me – because my time wasn’t what was important. It was the people I met, the children I played with, the school that I lived in – those were the important ones. Those were the lives that were changed, and it took me arriving in Africa and seeing the school that I would live at for the next four weeks to realise that. I remember the day vividly. It was hot, and I and the other 18 volunteers had been crammed into a tiny matatu on our way to the school – all waiting for the moment that would make our surreal journey a reality. Because up until that point it had all been a haze of airports and transfers and travel-anxiety-induced insomnia. Not to mention a bizarre run-in with a local mulalu (L’Ugandan for ‘crazy’) who begged for pictures with our group in the local bar and stole my glasses while posing like a wannabe gangsta with me serving as her bemused/terrified entourage (god I wish that photo had been taken on my camera!).

When we arrived we were greeted by hundreds of curious children, all of whom stared openly at us the way a child would stare at an antique china doll they’d been warned not to touch. We were strange to them, but they were thrilled and curious and as we walked onto the field that sat at the back of the school and began to play with them and introduce to them the songs I only vaguely remembered as a child, the reality of the lives these children lived became glaringly obvious. Yet they were so happy, so humble, and so ready to make each and every one of us feel as welcome and adored as we were -  one little girl made it her mission to carry my water bottle for me while I played, despite my insistence that she shouldn’t. We played basketball that first night for hours, each of the children passing the ball to me with smiles on their faces as they watched me drop it for the hundredth time, and trying to help me make a jump shot. Bless them; they had no idea how hopeless the cause was.

The next day, which was the first official day of building, I remember stepping onto the green field that would become our beautiful playground and feeling completely daunted. Within ten minutes I was sweating profusely, and within twenty I had already refilled my bottle twice. I didn’t know whether I was physically capable of digging and operating equipment that most people within their right minds wouldn’t let me within ten yards of, especially in heat that would have even the most devoted tanner dousing themselves in sun protection. As it turns out, digging really isn’t my forte.

But even as I sluggishly attacked the hard soil with my spade and watched as all but crumbs came back in my attempts, I knew what I was doing was something I would remember and crave to re-experience, because all of those kids (when they weren’t in class), watched with an eagerness and excitement that you rarely see on the faces of our British children. All because of 20 breathless British wannabe-builders creating for them just one playground for a school of roughly 1000. I realised how privileged we really are, and how privileged I still was in comparison to a huge chunk of the community I lived in, the people of whom lived in rags and sheltered in ramshackle huts made from the recycled wood and metal that would be deemed useless at home.

My first few days in Uganda seem so long ago to me now, yet my memories remain strong because the most overwhelming sense of surrealism clouded them. I constantly had to remind myself that I wasn’t watching a TV set anymore, that I was an active participant, that I was finally in this country I had devoted an entire year fundraising to go to and that despite the heat and the blisters and the bizarre malaria-induced dreams, I got to step outside the little world that had been my selfish-alcohol induced student life and do something with my time that felt like something worth doing.