Time but no watches

Where do we start on a day like today.

After a 7.15am start, we headed past the grumpy armed guards, who now actually say hello to us, and all had breakfast at Caleb's house.
None of the Team knew what to expect from breakfast (surely you can't serve Matoke and rice for a 3rd meal in a row). It turns out that this was their favourite meal of our stay at the school as heavily sugared bread, with honey, bananas and also some amazing meat samosas was exactly what everyone wanted to start the day.
We were unsure of the plan as we soon realised that a strict Itinerary means very little when translated to Uganda timings. We sat around waiting to find out when suddenly Caleb announced that we were heading off on a school tour. Unfortunately Caleb had not quite calculated that we were touring the school at exactly the time that the pupils were getting washed and dressed. This meant much hastier visits to the dorms than normal. Although despite some deep angled photos to avoid half naked Ugandans, Jess and Genevieve still enjoyed their photos outside the  'Fawley' and 'Shelburne' dorms here. It was also good to see Jess and Lydia finding their own brother's names on the visit tree that was painted on the wall from previous years.

However, as the Nyakatukura Pupils had finished their under the tree teeth washing and bucket showers, they soon gravitated back to our pupils and the celebrity status returned with a band. Genevieve was mobbed outside Shelburne and the photo is one that I would imagine Mrs Ledlie will be wanting to frame for the walls of her boarding house (anything that helps a tour route when showing prospective parents around the house).
We finished the tour, having been shown the new building site that has had the foundations built but nothing else yet (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).
Next up was the talent show. Our troop had planned their song and were ready to go. They patiently sat through the Ugandan national anthem and just as they were ready to get on stage, a second national anthem was started by another year group. A bit strange, we thought, but we ran with it and got ready to get up again. 'Hang on', the compare on the stage said, 'we have one more national anthem'. So we sat through 'Uganda, land of freedom' for a 3rd time, followed by a 4th and then a 5th. We gave them the benefit of the doubt and were actually quite proud that we now knew the tune and many of the words of the Ugandan national anthem. When the 5000metres happens at the next Olympics  we will now be able to hum along.
"Next", said the announcer, "is the traditional national anthem". We all looked at each other, surely he is joking. But there was no sense of humour in his voice and we were then treated to 3 more versions of the Lugandan anthem, followed by being subjected to 2 more. Then it was the Nyakatukura anthems turn (we have to admit that this one is really good) and just when the talent show threatened to break out, up came the Christian Church of Uganda anthem.
By this point, the day was running away with us and it did not look like we were actually needed any time soon and so we made our way to Rosa and started to unpack the donations for the school.
We dropped off the computers, projectors, cameras and ipads in the computer room and their IT teacher quickly got to work plugging them all in and checking that they work. It was at this point, I realised that the 10 ipad chargers I had bought before leaving were still sat on matron's desk in house.
The sports teacher than ran in and started picking through the mountain of sports kit and the art teacher (a former Nyakatukra pupil sponsored by Eric and Sara Harris) also put his head round the door and beamed with delight at the arts and crafts supplies.
We left the teachers to it as Caleb wrote down all the donations so that he could share the news with the Bishop.

As we walked back up to the headmaster's house for a cup of tea, it felt strange to have dropped off all the equipment that we had been carrying from point to point over the last 6 days.
Although we did still have two more packages to deliver and these were the most satisfying of all.
Firstly, we got back into Rosa and headed to Nyakatukura Primary school. We were politely toured around by Maude the headmistress who showed us the goal posts made of wobbly wood, the classroom roof that lifts in the wind and the unfinished main hall (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

We then toured the classrooms with every child standing and saying 'Welcome visotors' in every classroom we entered. The children are delightful and although this visit was not on our itinerary, we just had to get to the school to see these beautiful friendly faces again.
We sat on chairs on the main field and the whole school came and sat cross legged in front of us. The head teacher then started speaking and before long we realised that she was reading word for word from the document that she had handed out. This was all good to help us follow it although it was still not quite as fun when she was still reading word for word on the 6th side of writing. The assembled children quickly lost patience and began occupying themselves by fiddling with our shoe laces or daring each other to touch our arms whilst we sat in front of them. 
After the 6th page was completed, it was our turn. Mr Pitt was again asked to do an impromptu speech. And he talked about the fundraising done for the new school gate and how Herbie was so struck by the state of their gate that he asked the prep school to raise money. This is exactly what they did and we promised a new gate as soon as possible before handing over to Charlie Harris in his bright green frog hat to say a few words of thanks and praise. 
We then had a short session of praise and worship that involved the whole school singing and dancing whilst one of the boys played drums. It sounds like fun, it genuinely was fun! We then departed with a melee of high fives, hugs and hand shakes from over 500 little people.
Maude then invited us for a lunch of mutoke, rice, potatoes and this time the ground nuts were mashed into a peanut butter type paste (Lydia was horrified but it tasted amazing).
Charlie and Charlie left the meal to hand out a Brook Court rugby shirt to Kevin the head boy and Jamie went to play football with some of the boys. When we say football, the ball was a pile of rags and plastic bags all bound together in a ball shape.

Before we left, we then handed out about 200 reading books to the pupils of the school. It was amazing to see the smiles on their faces and Maude looked pretty pleased too! We left the field to return to the senior school being waved and cheered all the way (it was about 20 minutes later that we realised that we had left Jamie and Charlie playing football on the main field).
The boys then headed back to watch the continuing talent show (yup, it was still going) and the girls all went down to the girls dorms to hand out the period packs that we had ordered from 'Days for Girls'.
The three giant sacks were carried by Jess, Genevieve, Katie, Niamh and Lydia with Fenella giving moral support at their side.

They then went to the girls' dorms and a huge huddle of girls appeared as if from nowhere. They sat on the make shift wooden benches whilst Mrs Pitt and Genevieve explained what was in the packs and how they work. There were genuine cheers as the girls were told that there were three pants in each pack, 5 washable liners alongside a waterproof used towel container, a flannel and soap. It was quite worrying that the biggest cheer was for the flannel and soap.
As the packs were handed out, the smiles on the girls' faces were huge and they all proudly opened their packs to show their friends what they had just been given. Unfortunately, some girls took too many and we ran out. This caused our own girls distress and we quickly let them know that we would sort it out, get a list of girls that missed out and rectify the problem.

The emotions of that handout are hard to explain. Even as a man; the joy of the faces, the desperate need for such a basic necessity, the happiness of our own girls being able to provide this need and then the sudden sadness of not having enough. It was a lot to process and I am sure that this is one of those moments that will hit hard when we get back to the UK.

It was then back to the talent show. The pupils sat patiently through the drama section of the performances and then the traditional dance section with another 5 performances of each (thankfully this time they were not all the same).
After 3.5 more hours (no, I am not exaggerating for comic effect) they reached the end of the show and it was time for results. Just before the results, we were finally asked on stage to perform and Charlie Harris as conductor led us in an enthusiastic rendition of Valerie with full choreographed moves! I thought it was amazing, the Ugandan crowd had clearly never heard of Amy Whinehouse and their mute responses did little justice to the actual quality of the performance.
Then came the results, or so we thought. Cue a long winded and hugely critical critique of each performance by Uganda's very own Simon Cowell. Viscious comment, after viscious comment was thrown at the Kids that had just sung and danced their hearts out.
Then, the microphone was passed to Bishop Amos who had arrived for the last performance of the day, then the Dean of Ibanda, then our very own Mr Pitt, then the headmaster and then back to the Bishop for a final prayer. We were now well past 6.30pm for a show that had started at 10am.
Bishop Amos then invited his friend from the UK and also Mr Pitt on stage. He asked them to start the prayer (by this point, impromptu speeches and prayers were common place) and after thanking the Lord for the show and the ability to see positives and to praise and support each other, the microphone was ironically passed back to the Ugandan Simon Cowell to genuinely announce the results this time.
He began by saying 'in last place' before his microphone lost connection. When it worked again, I wondered if my prayer had actually worked as rather than publicalky verbally destroying the act that came last, he just read the top 3 and was almost positive as he announced the winners (senior 3 if anyone reading this cares to know).
We departed just as Senior 3 exploded with excitement, probably at winning but possibly because the 9 hour show had finished).
The Dean Close Uganda Team are now officially the most patient and polite group of teenagers in the UK and they were still full of energy and smiles as we headed to evening meal. Even the boys seemed positive despite their planned Eng v Uganda football game being postponed until tomorrow.
The meal, much like the football, was also delayed as a staff meeting was called along with the Bishop and our team was redirected back to the hall again for Fellowship.
The meeting was suprisingly short for a Ugandan meeting and the Bishop even commented on Africans having time but not having watches. A similar joking reference was also made by another speaker at the meeting.
Although we were shown a wish list of planning and development for NMSS that this time seemed considered and much more formal than the nudge, nudge, wink, wink moments from earlier. I particularly liked the piggery planning.
Food was finally served and after another praising, singing and dancing session, Team Uganda were ready for their mutoke, rice, nuts and potato.
Despite the length of some of the speeches today, a huge amount has been packed in today. It was 12 months ago when Mrs Pitt and bishop Amos' wife sat down to talk about period poverty in Ibanda. Between that time and today, contacts have been made, period poverty movie preimeres have been shown, mufti days and international women's day fundraisers have been held, packs have been ordered from factories in Kampala that employ only women and today our very own group of female superstars delivered those packs to the amazing girls of Nyajatakura. Despite the last minute nature of the changes to this trip, a lot of time and planning has gone into these magical moments. So magical in fact, that they more than ofset the ennui of the length of a few of these talks.