Construction

In case you were worried, I am aware that while the subtitle of my blog is “stories of starting a school in Uganda,” I haven’t actually told any stories of starting a school. I think the only explanation I have for that is that most of what I’m doing to start the school at the moment does not rate very high on the Good Story Potential Scale. I spend my days on the computer coming up with policies, manuals, and solutions for hypothetical problems. Believe it or not I enjoy that activity. Someday it will all be useful, but the school doesn’t open until next February!

Recently, however, the school has been really starting to take physical shape. Paul and his 60 plus workers have made some real progress on one of the dormitory blocks and, what is of most interest to me, this week they poured the foundation and floor on the administration building—the future home of my office. The hill in the background will be the view I’ll be looking at from my office window in a few months when we start holding staff and student interviews, filing all this paper I’m creating at the moment and meeting with local officials and dignitaries as we try to get the school registered with the Ministry of Education. Seeing this building well on its way makes this whole project seem very real!

(Just before taking this photo, one of our guard dogs woke up from his nap right in the middle of the wet cement. I was sorry not to have gotten the shot sooner!)

So there is a brief look at a school coming together—it’s a huge task! But I continue to grit my teeth and repeat “Is no problem!”

Potholes

When I was in South Africa a few months back, my sister and I took a day trip to the Drakensberg Mountains. It was a lovely drive and we had a beautifully relaxing time. At one point we had to take a more secondary road through a more rural area. As we turned onto this road, we saw this warning sign:

I had to chuckle when I saw that. The road was paved the whole way and I don’t think I noticed a single pothole. The road was a bit rougher than the South African highways, but it was still much smoother than most roads in Uganda. If the quality of the road we took to Drakensberg was here, drivers would easily consider it to be the best road in the country; Ugandan roads are dreadful!

Even the major highways between cities have some very treacherous potholes and eroded edges. In places, more drivers have created a “road” on the shoulder as they are forced to detour the actual road. The pavement on the road to the post office here in Masaka town was recently scraped away and the dirt road that is there now is actually an improvement. Formerly, much of the pavement was broken on that road that it was mostly dirt. The potholes that resulted were very deep and it is practically impossible to avoid damaging the undercarriage.

Many of the side roads in Uganda are not paved at all and after a prolonged period of rain, it is quite the challenge to get from A to B. As our project is located a fair distance from the main road, we have to drive about 3 or 4 km on a dirt road to reach home. In the few months I’ve been here this road has deteriorated significantly—larger potholes, deep trenches down the middle of the road, ditches caused by flowing water, etc. We have a Rav 4 that we use to run errands in town, and that poor little vehicle has really been shaken up driving this road so much. We get a bit shaken up ourselves!

Here is a photo of part of Bukoto Rd that we have to drive whenever we leave home. If it has been raining, we have to splash through large puddles and slide through slick mud:

Urban North American SUV’s must get very jealous of their cousins who drive African roads and have the opportunity to fulfill the purpose for which they were designed! Unfortunately, vehicles in Africa do tend to have a shorter life expectancy. (nothing new for Africa.....)