TESS v2

Retreat by Matthew Perry, a sponsor

The students arrived for the retreat on the afternoon of Friday 5th Dec and were registered as they arrived. Some were delayed and came in over the next few days. Others came who were not expected and a few who were not part of the scheme – this is Uganda and things do not function quite as in the UK!

Saturday was the excursion; this is the only pleasure travel they do. Ugandan timekeeping meant that our 7 a.m. start became a 9.30 one. To control the tendency of the drivers to speed we drove in convoy with Margaret in the lead. Sipi Falls are some way from Soroti near the Kenyan border and on the slopes of Mount Elgon. Driving up Mount Elgon was quite steep and one of the minibuses had problems with the engine overheating, however this was resolved fairly quickly.
We arrived at lunchtime and ate a packed lunch bought in Soroti (interestingly to me samosas are widespread in Uganda and made up a large part of the lunch). We then walked a loop at the middle part of Sipi Falls, seeing the falls from the middle and top. The Falls are a nice sight for those of us who have seen waterfalls before; for the children from Teso, which is very flat with lots of swamps, they are something special. I found walking through a coffee plantation fascinating, something I had not seen before. From the falls we went a few miles on to Kapchorwa, a town in the hills. To me it looked like Soroti, but the students I talked to said it was very different. Many students took the opportunity to buy roasted maize from roadside vendors. An interesting observation was that in this region, men carry things on their heads; in Teso only women do this.
The drive back was a long one. The early stage was quite stressful as the coach drivers wanted to go down hill fast as “their brakes were not very good”! Margaret was very determined to protect the children from the recklessness of the coach drivers, but it was not easy. The local drivers clearly respected the danger of the road (steep with hairpin bends), but even they used their brakes, not the gears to control speed.
Sunday morning saw the official opening of the retreat. We started with a service that was characterised by worship lead by a group of the older girls. Their singing (a cappella) was exuberant and joyful. The singing continued to be a feature of morning praise sessions and at other times. Some sessions were lead by different groups, for example a choir from one of the schools. Later in the week we had some musicians who came in and accompanied the singing, picking up on the tunes sung by the leaders. I was not sure if all the children liked this style of singing and worship, or just a proportion. Many of the children come from Pentecostal backgrounds and they seemed clearly comfortable with this, it was also similar to that of the Anglican church we had visited. I was less sure if the Catholics were so comfortable, or perhaps those who did not join in when singing was optional were just less interested.
I gave the sermon for the service. I am not sure what the children made of what I said, I suspect my style is different from what they are used to! I took it on because I felt that I had a message to give the children (about everyone being important & that there are many ways to contribute usefully to society) and because it was something that I felt I could do to take some load from Sam & Margaret.

On Sunday afternoon we had a “fun” time – which was to be typical of the afternoons at the Retreat. There were a mix of options for the children to try including outdoor games (football and volleyball were played) and indoor games

(we had a large selection of board and card games and jigsaw puzzles donated by people in the UK). I played catch with Jane and her friend Jesca, first with a ball and later with a Frisbee. It was good to get them using the Frisbee; one of the things I noticed repeatedly over the retreat was that it was hard to get the children to try new things. It was hot running outside in the sun so after a while we moved inside and the girls taught me a card game. It was different from anything I have played before. One game we did have success getting the children to learn was 4-in-a-row which many of them enjoyed. There were also a few who played Scrabble over the week. One of the difficulties was a tendency of the children not to be very careful with communal equipment – the boxes of games and puzzles tended to get mixed up very quickly and David and I spent a fair amount of time sorting pieces out so that games and puzzles were playable and complete.
In the evening Sam planned to show the children a DVD but we were pretty tired and bowed out early. DVDs are a great treat for children who do not have television or any cinemas.
The pattern for the remaining days of the Retreat was fairly constant. The mornings contained worship and talks, sometimes with practical activities. The talks tended to overrun and not all the speakers turned up when they said they would and some did not arrive at all. We did not attend all the sessions and one day I took the morning off completely as a rest. There was a good session on how to build clay stoves; these are much more effective than the normal ways of cooking used and the idea was that this skill could be taken back to their villages and stoves made for their families and others, thus benefiting the community and enabling the students to earn some money. The need for the children to earn small amounts of money was one of the themes of the week – rising costs are having an impact on the finances of the programme – and we tried to teach ways for them to earn small amounts of money to provide their own basic necessities and travel costs.

After lunch the afternoon sessions were more practical and fun; indoor and outdoor games were on offer as were art and craft activities. Jane’s brother Emma(nuel) came to help with the art as we had discovered he was a very talented artist when we visited her family. We hoped to develop their skills so that they could use them to earn money. Margaret had bought some simple looms and we tried to teach some weaving, not a skill that seemed well-known in Teso. In many cases the weaving proved difficult to get a nice result, though the simple peg-looms for making rag-rugs worked well. Disappointingly this lost popularity and I do not think anyone took it up; a pity since the products would have made good sleeping mats for people many of whom sleep on the bare earth. Knitting (crochet) clearly is done and was popular with quite a few who produced some nice work very quickly with the donated wool.
I got involved in some dyeing and shirt decorating on two afternoons thanks to Margaret having been given a large number of surplus T-shirts. This was typical of activities in that at times all went well and the children worked hard and creatively and at others was completely manic. The latter was at any point when it appeared that some would get things and others miss out – thus when everyone was assured of getting a T-shirt each to decorate and time to do it, calm was restored. Once we decided that those who had finished the first could start a second T-shirt everyone tried to get one and it became very pressured on those trying to organise the activity. Clearly having very little the children are desperate to get what they can. It was also noticeable in this that the majority of the children preferred to do things they had done before than try new ideas. We hoped that the children would use the fabric paints to draw pictures onto the T-shirts (many of them have lovely artistic abilities – though mainly shown in copying pictures rather than drawing from life or imagination) but almost without exception they wrote slogans or Bible verses onto their shirts. They used a technique of creating stencils (using a razor blade that I thought rather unsafe!) that they had learnt at school. How much of this was us trying to project our ideas and expectations onto them and how much a consequence of their limited experience is hard to say. They were all very pleased with the T-shirts and enjoyed the activity, but I doubt if any of them took up the idea of buying and decorating T-shirts as a money-making activity.

During the morning and afternoon sessions on 4 days we had a doctor present at the retreat. On 3 of them this was Moses Arinaitwe, a young Ugandan doctor who stayed in the guest house with us; on a fourth day Peter Walker (a British doctor married to a Ugandan woman) came. Even with Margaret helping, this was not enough to treat all the medical needs there were. The level of need was, to me, shocking – though given that most cannot afford to see a doctor normally, this is less surprising. Malaria is a dreadful problem and several girls needed to be taken to the clinic for treatment; one stayed several days. Almost half the children saw a doctor at one point or another.
The evenings were generally DVDs or other activities – we usually left without attending them (they were run by Sam) and went back to a late and often cold meal. We then used time to prepare activities for the next day, or write notes on children we had spoken to. Early in the week we had enough time to relax for a while later on (some fun games of darts with Moses stick in the mind). By the end, we pretty much crashed out once the work was done – or sometimes before.
Ugandans are, surprisingly to me, rather formal at times. Elaborate handshakes are the norm, even with people one meets every day! Most schools we visited required us to sign their visitor’s book and we signed one in a small trading centre in the middle of the bush! Consequently to this there was a quite elaborate closing ceremony to the retreat. The children had done a lovely job decorating the meeting room. We had a special meal – though the food was not so different from normal. There was a “top table” where particularly important people sat – including us, somewhat to my discomfort! The children provided entertainment, some sketches and a fabulous traditional dance (the “Ajosi” dance) that lasted about 10 minutes accompanied by vigorous drumming. There were visiting dignitaries (mostly clergy, all welcomed at length) including the archdeacon who gave a long address. We also gave prizes to all the children of the books bought in Kampala. It was interesting to see how, given a choice, the Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet) was the preference. The evening finished on a sour note for me as I became quite angry with some of the children. We had talked with the children about corruption and cheating on several occasions during the retreat. Despite this when we handed out glowing wristbands as a treat at the end, many of them managed to get two or more whilst others went without. I went round trying to redistribute them so that everyone had one.
The day after the retreat we spent time at the school saying goodbye and clearing up. It was a busy time but not having constant demands on us was relaxing. David and I tidied the craft and games items which was quite a big task.
On the Saturday evening I was able to visit the other girl sponsored by my family. Josephine had not been on the retreat, but lived very close to where we were staying. She is a complete orphan with no family support but had been taken in by the head teacher from Bethany Girls School. We had a lovely time talking and I was made very welcome by the family. The house was much nicer than that of other sponsored students, though Josephine has to work for her keep and I felt she was unable to talk freely with me about her life because of the presence of family members.