I have always been truly humbled by the reception I receive each time I go back to Uganda but arriving with the school bus was one of the most emotional, incredible, heartfelt, inspiring and beautiful moments of my life.
I will let Beau’s stunning photos speak for themselves….
Greetings from the shores of Lake Victoria!
Two days and several thousand miles later, from an island in the Atlantic to a land-locked nation in East Africa, I have arrived back in Uganda. This is my seventh annual trip here and I’m so excited to catch up with everyone in my village home, to hear about the highs and lows the year has brought and to share in the celebrations of those who are soon to be graduating from the Kiwi Sponsorships programme. However, this trip also has a particularly special purpose. For years, KAASO has had a dream dangling on the horizon but, until now, it has remained just that – an unattainable, far-off dream. Tomorrow though, that dream will become a reality. KAASO is getting a school bus.
Since 2009 when I first came to Uganda, Dominic and Rose have been telling me how much the school needs a school bus. The alternative – children riding on the barred tray of the school truck – is both illegal and incredibly dangerous. The truck has tipped several times and fortunately none of the children were badly hurt but we all feared that it was only a matter of time. It was not a sustainable option. A couple of years ago, KAASO began reaching out to the community requesting funds towards the school bus and over $1,500 was raised but, in a community where it’s hard to find the money for school fees, coming up with the remaining $30,000 for a bus was a colossal challenge.
And here’s where my story begins.
It all started in the most unlikely of settings – a beach-front restaurant for a rosé-infused lunch with a friend called Rebecca. I was explaining how much KAASO needed a school bus but how daunted I was by the task of trying to raise $30,000 USD to make this happen. You can gather donations for buildings and piggeries, I explained, brick by brick, sty by sty, but wheel by wheel doesn’t really work for a school bus. You kind of need the whole thing.
So Rebecca and I teamed up with the mission to make this actually happen. Her company, RenRe, was hosting their annual sailing day in early June and Rebecca suggested we use this day to help raise our funds. If I could get a bunch of America’s Cup sailors to helm the boats that RenRe’s clients and brokers would be sailing on, we could ask for bids to secure their favourite Cup sailor on board their boat. I emailed sailors from Artemis Racing, Oracle Team USA and Softbank Team Japan asking if they might help out – ‘an afternoon sail for a school bus?’ was my pitch. Within an hour, I had Dean Barker, Chris Draper, Jimmy Spithill, Tom Slingsby, Grant Simmer, Iain Percy, Francesco Bruni and, not surprisingly, Nathan Outteridge, committed to helping. We were on.
The team from RenRe, spearheaded by Rebecca, did an impressive job of rallying up support and enthusiasm and, once again, Claire’s amazing graphic design skills came into play, helping to create an infographic to explain what we were trying to achieve. All six America’s Cup teams donated signed merchandise which I had gathered at the America’s Cup World Series event in New York and, along with some LV Cup products from previous editions, I also had donated experiences from America’s Cup – and from my very obliging husband!
The day of the fundraiser, I felt sick with nerves. There was so much riding on this day and while I knew anything we could raise would be amazing, I was acutely aware of how much money was needed and that it might in fact take several fundraisers to achieve our goal. I so badly wanted this to work.
I boarded RenRe’s superyacht where I spent the day on board with a bunch of wonderful people, drumming up support for the silent auction items as well as encouraging those on the boats to bid higher and higher for their favourite sailors to join them for the final race of the day. Momentum gathered quickly and I was blown away not only by people’s generosity but also by how interested they were in the cause and how much the idea of providing a school bus to children in Uganda struck a chord with a bunch of people on an island in the middle of the ocean.
The final race was incredible. The Cup sailors did an amazing job of showing everyone a good time – and doing all they could to ensure that they were ahead of their team mates. By the time everyone rolled into the RenRe dock, the day had already far surpassed my expectations. And that was before the live bidding even began.
Originally there were only supposed to be two live auction items – a two-hour foiling sailing session with Nathan and a 4-person ride in an America’s Cup chase boat to watch the boats training on the Great Sound in Bermuda. However, a combination of much excitement, many drinks, and overwhelming support saw these two auction items multiply to six. Iain Percy from Artemis Racing, realising that there were multiple groups willing to pay good money for the chase boat ride, threw in two extra rides on the Artemis chase boat, spurring on Grant Simmer from Oracle Team USA to donate a ride as well. That act alone raised us $12,000. Then, the CEO of RenRe, deciding that his wife should also have the chance to sail with Nathan, asked if Nath would donate another foiling experience (the first had already been won) which he gladly agreed to and the bidding opened once more. While Rebecca was helping coordinate the auction, I was madly running around trying to calculate where we were at so far between the boat bids, the silent auction items and the ever-growing live auction funds. As the live auction closed, I pushed EQUALS on my calculator, and then stood staring at my screen, stunned. Then the tears began to fall. We had raised $30,190.
I gave an impromptu – and hugely tearful – speech, letting the room know that we had reached our goal – we would have our school bus. A sea of smiling faces erupted into applause and cheers and I just stood there, crying and grinning dumbly before engulfing Rebecca in a huge hug. We had done it!
In the weeks that followed, Rebecca did an incredible job of helping me collect each and every dollar and I was amazed to find that our total amount just kept going up and up – people were so moved by the experience that they wanted to donate more, to give more, to help more. I was blown away.
In the end, we raised over $40,000, all of which has now reached the village and, on Wednesday, Dominic purchased the bus. As if that wasn’t enough, a few weeks ago, Rebecca decided to join me to help deliver the bus along with my brother-in-law, Beau, who is going to make a short film about the bus delivery. Things couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.
So now I sit looking out across Lake Victoria with Rebecca at my side, and I have to pinch myself to realise it’s not just some amazing dream that I’ll soon wake up from. Beau flies in tonight and Dominic will pick us all up in the bus tomorrow morning and together, we will drive to the village.
I am so hugely grateful to each and every person who helped make this happen – to the sailors, the donors, the far-away cheerleaders and of course to Rebecca, whose huge heart and incredible determination that this was going to happen has meant, quite simply, that is has. Tomorrow is going to be one for the record books – and one requiring quite a few tissues I feel…
Lake Victoria, Uganda
Three months ago, I was hugely inspired by a conversation I had with a friend called Jessie. I was in Rio at the time in the lead up to the Olympic Games at which my husband was competing and life was all about sailing and sports. However, for a couple of hours one July afternoon, I was transported back to my village world during a Skype conversation with Jessie. Now back in the UK, Jessie shared with me the amazing updates from her recent trip to Uganda. I listened with a smile to her stories, her words reminding me so much of my own Ugandan experiences, but what struck a chord most was her talking about the ‘Starfish Story’ – a story so reminiscent of the motto of KAASO’s co-founder, Rose: “We can’t do everything, but we can do something.” I have just completed a memoir about this very issue – the fact that we so often feel paralaysed by inaction, the problems of the world seeming too big, unsurmountable, beyond us. However, for each and every person, a single act can make a huge difference. That was the case with me and Henry. And the same goes for Jessie. I invite you to read on and challenge you not to feel inspired…
Emma xxx
I’m Jessie, a physiotherapist from the U.K. and this is my first ever blog. It’s taken a while for me to write but here goes… So why the ‘Starfish’ story? Well, it reflects some of what Uganda taught me. The main lesson – you can’t help everyone but we can all help someone.
The ‘Starfish’ story I know goes like this… There was a young girl walking along a beach with her mother and there were hundreds of starfish washed up on the sand. ‘What will happen to these star fish?’ asked the child. ‘Sadly,’ said her mother, ‘without the sea they will die.’ So the little girl started to pick up starfish as she walked along, throwing them back into the sea. Her mother said, ‘You can’t make a difference sweetheart, there are just too many of them.’ The little girl picked up another one and as she threw it back into the sea she looked up at her mother and said, ‘I can make a difference to that one!’
This story has always stuck with me and often helped me on crazy days at work or in life when I feel like I’m treading water and helping no one. On those days I take a deep breath and tell myself… One person at a time, the starfish effect!
UGANDA: Africa for me had always seemed a magical place I wanted to one day visit. I thought and daydreamed that maybe one day I could go and help a country that always seemed to be developing but, at the same time, struggling when I saw the images coming through on TV. Like many of us, I have limited funds so can’t address all the needs of a world that is crying out for help. It’s so easy to sit on a comfy sofa, feel sympathetic – and then hopelessly overwhelmed – and say to ourselves frankly, ‘What can I do?’ I’d donate £5 or £10 and hope it got to that kid with the sad eyes that desperately needed a hug, some love, some hope, all the things you can’t give from the comfort of your home.
Then, two years ago, I was asked to lead a team of sixteen-year-old boys who wanted to volunteer at a school in Uganda. I was super nervous, but I agreed to go. The boys raised money and, together with my parents, we ran a fund-raiser that got us all out there. So as soon as the boys finished their GCSEs, off we went, five boys and me to a rural school in the outback of Uganda. I had no idea what to expect – none of us did.
The first thing I discovered when we arrived was that Africa is not at all like what you see on the charity programmes. This was the first shock. Uganda is a very green and beautiful country, dusty from a lack of tarmac on the roads but so full of colour, life and beauty. The cities are crazy and full of life with everything from shanty towns to exclusive shopping centres. The rural areas are green and very beautiful. Not surprisingly, the sanitation isn’t great and while it’s not that hot, it is incredibly humid, which means the mozzies love the place. But overall, my first impression of Uganda was that it was an incredible country.
Our first challenge: of the 12 charity bags and 6 personal bags we had checked in, only two arrived which meant we had no clothes other than the ones we had on (and a few we later bought) for ten days. Needless to say, this was not part of the plan and it definitely made things slightly more interesting for the first week or so, however, this did not stop the boys getting involved with school life, and me getting involved with the small medical centre on the school grounds.
Towards the end of our stay, while the boys were playing sport with the kids during break time, I noticed one of the young boys sitting out. He was a good footballer and was normally one of the first to be out playing football so I was surprised to see him sitting on the side of the field. I went to check he was okay and he told me he was fine, he just had a sore foot. I hadn’t noticed him limping but I simply nodded and was about to leave him when I noticed his finger – it was raw. I asked him what happened but he refused to tell me until eventually, with the help of Jude, the school nurse, we managed to get the truth out of him. His answer literally stopped me in my tracks.
‘It’s from the rats,’ he said, ‘they come into the dorm at night and bite on our fingers and feet.’
I was so shocked. I asked why he hadn’t told someone. Jude gently explained that the boys didn’t want to get into trouble as the school is supposed to be a girl’s school and the boys are there mostly because they are siblings of orphaned girls with nowhere else to go so the Sisters who run the school have taken them in. The dormitory was a tiny, dark room with little comfort and in the rains it sometimes flooded. When the rats came in, they didn’t tell anyone for fear of being kicked out of the school.
I sat with him while Nurse Jude patched him up, then I went to explain to the boys I was with what was happening in the boys’ dorm. They were hugely upset to discover this and after some serious discussions about the situation, we made a decision: we would build a new dorm for the boys. Before leaving Uganda, we helped clean out the boys’ existing dorm and laid rat deterrent. We promised we would return.
Two years later, the boys had completed their ‘A’ Levels and managed to raise £8,000 which they sent over to the school to get construction underway. In July 2016, we all went back out to Uganda to paint the new dormitory and be there for when the young boys moved into their new home. It was an incredible moment and I am truly grateful to have been on this journey over the past two years. I am so proud of these five eighteen-year-old boys and the sustainable difference they have made to the school and the boys that currently live there. I hope this experience has inspired the boys in the dormitory and the girls of the school as well.
Nurse Jude was also waiting for us when we returned to Uganda and on this second trip, I learned more about his story. Jude is from a local family and was trained as an assistant nurse. He was employed by the school nurse but only qualified as an assistant nurse due to lack of funding. I thought back on the Starfish Story, and decided that this was one person I could help. With the assistance of friends and family, I am now funding him to become a fully trained nurse so he can further help his local community. There is a shortage of nurses and he is hoping to work at his local medical centre, the Busembatia Grade 4 Health Centre, once fully trained in a few years.
What Uganda taught me: There is a fragile balance in Uganda. On a basic level, most people we came across seemed to be doing well – they had food, great community spirit and clean water. Although life was simple and in no way easy, everyone wore huge smiles, no one complained, people were not starving and, on the most part, they were in good health – a far cry from what is portrayed on TV. However, when you look closer, you do see the problems that poverty brings – one mosquito bite and a child dies in its parents’ arms, unable to get to a medical centre that could provide free treatment if only they had the transport to get there. The failure of a single crop can mean the loss of a nutritional source, leading to malnutrition and illness. And yet the strength of the communities in the rural areas is inspiring.
The problems and fragilities in Uganda are huge and if you focus on the big picture, all you see is what you can’t do. Life can be overwhelming and complicated, however, if you keep things simple and look at the individuals around you, you realise that there are small things that can make a big difference. If we take a deep breath, find someone we trust and invest our efforts in small projects, we can lay a foundation so the people we help can then move on and help others. As in the Star Fish story, you can’t always help everyone, but if you can help and inspire the right people, then you can create a circle of goodwill that inspires the next generation and flows like ripples across a lake when you drop a stone.
Uganda taught me you can help people one by one, and that looking up and out, not down and in is the best way to help each other in this world.
I left my heart in Uganda 