Tag Archives: reconnecting

Uganda awaits

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It feels like an eternity since I last wrote – the past months have been full to bursting. But now, sitting in yet another airport, it seemed like an appropriate time to sit down and reestablish contact with the world. Outside the light is fading over Amsterdam where I have been for the past 24 hours for a brief but amazing catch up with a long lost friend I met one afternoon in the Greek Islands on the eve of my very first departure for Uganda. And here I am now, four and a half years later preparing to board my flight southbound, back to the African continent.

This trip to Uganda is about getting grounded, reconnecting with the village and catching up on the past year and a half since I was last there. In that time, thanks to so many of your generous donations, Mark House was completed and I can’t wait to see it with my own eyes and to visit all the boys who now call our dormitory home – there will be pictures coming for sure! Also, thanks to the incredible kindness of a few and the outstanding organisational skills of Madam Kirsty, we brought Dominic to the USA in July this year to speak at an educational conference in LA and attend an educational workshop in Florida. I can’t wait to hear all about it and, in Dominic’s words, to ‘compare stories of being American!’ I’m not quite sure I consider myself American after a year and a half in the States but will be hilarious to compare notes all the same…

I’ll be in the village for one month, and during that time I also plan to visit all of the sponsor children at their respective high schools on my magical mystery tour around the country with Rose as my co-pilot, navigating my way across the pitted roads, past the fish-sellers and fruit-laiden roadside stalls. It will be almost Christmas by the time I leave so I’m looking forward to having some pre-Christmas celebrations with the children and to spending time with those who are back at KAASO for the holidays.

It’s hard to believe I left my Bondi home in Sydney nearly two years ago. Since then, it’s been an incredible adventure of ever-changing horizons followed by planting my feet in one place for over a year – a rare miracle in my world. I met so many amazing people in San Francisco and it’s a really special feeling to be able to take your world with you – this travelling circus of people that follow the America’s Cup around the globe are like one big family to me. While the past year was marked with ups and downs, I ultimately left with great memories of the foggy city.

It’s a strange feeling now, sitting in a brightly lit room full of people going about their business, music playing, suitcases wheeling, laptops tapping, TVs buzzing and glasses clinking, knowing that this time tomorrow I will be back in the village, sitting outside under a tree, strumming my guitar and surrounded by singing, swaying, grinning little faces. I close my eyes and try to picture it and it still feels like another world, so very far.

But it’s undeniable, Uganda is calling me back. That dusty road is stretching before me and I can’t wait for the cacophony of sound, the flying hugs and tangle of limbs that await me. It’s been a while, but it’s time to return to my Ugandan home.

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Dreams take flight

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From my open window I look across the rooftops of Saint Germain in Paris, my bags packed beside me, ready to jump on this afternoon’s flight to San Francisco and the start of yet another chapter on this wild and wonderful journey. My well-loved backpack looks slightly out of context in my clean, white hotel room and while I managed to wash the dust off both my clothes and my feet, there is a kind of dust that remains within and cannot be washed off.

Uganda was, quite simply, magic. The very first time I went it felt like I was stepping off the beaten track, light years from my known world and everything was new and different and challenging and we spent our days grappling to understand our brave new world. My return last year with my parents I approached with curiosity – unsure whether I would have to acclimatise all over again or if it would feel natural to be back. Fortunately it was the latter and it was such an incredible thrill to watch my parents wholeheartedly embrace village life, which had come to feel strangely familiar to me.

This trip I didn’t know what to think. I knew it wouldn’t be the overwhelming head spin of the first time but I still wasn’t sure whether after a year away and the huge contrast with my life in Europe, adjusting to the village would be a challenge. From the minute I stepped off the plane and spotted Dominic’s beaming face through the crowd, it felt as normal as if I was arriving at Auckland airport. During the trip down to KAASO we chatted like old mates and it wasn’t until we pulled into the school gates to find a throng of children screaming my arrival home and Cherie and Kirsty standing there as if 2009 were yesterday, that the tears started to fall.

Two and half weeks is but a heartbeat in a place where so much happens in a day, where you want to find out every detail of every project that has developed since you left, where every conversation leaves you inspired to do more and where every second spent with the children leaves you grinning from ear to ear. This trip was a time of reconnecting. Of visiting old friends, of reviving once again our faith in the fact that KAASO truly is an incredible project and that, with barely any money, Dominic and Rose somehow manage to perform miracles to keep this school running. And the success of the school has been spilling out into the community who now have access to the library and computer lab that we built in 2009 which, thanks to the generosity of family, friends and workmates, is slowly filling with books and computers. Beyond our wildest dreams.

In my short time back in Uganda, I navigated countless atrocious roads to visit all thirteen children being sponsored through secondary school. With me at the wheel and Rose as my guide and copilot, we ran out of petrol, ended up wedged in potholes that seemed sure to devour us, got lost countless times, were refused entry into a school due to the fact that I was wearing long, baggy pants (rather than a skirt like a proper female) and ended up doing exactly what I had vowed to avoid – driving at night in a country where no one knows lights can be dimmed from full beam and everyone prefers to use your side of the road – particularly trucks. There was a lot of time spent in the ditch! But we survived the various journeys and the love, hope and overwhelming gratitude I felt from the children was worth every steering-wheel-gripping second.

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