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.