Shopping in Kampala

Today was a different kind of day because whilst the team spent their last full day in the school hanging out with friends Caroline and Chris went last minute shopping for resources for the school. After having spent 10 minutes trying to explain gauze dressings to the assistant in the pharmacy we headed to a couple of school publishing houses which were a major eye-opener in how the Ugandan education system works it appears on the surface that you can just buy exams.

At approximately 2:30 we left Eddie to go and exchange an item from the previous shopping trip and wandered over to the bookshop. We spent the first hour and a half looking for books and watching the primary school headteacher pick out books (by this point i had started getting bored of being in the same shop so read a book on animal facts - did you know a millipede is born with only 6 legs?) we decided we should start checking items through the checkout, about thirty minutes later we had paid and figured that we would soon be leaving the shop; it was not to be.

There is a system in this particular bookshop which allows the customer to ensure they are walking out with all the books they have paid for, this takes the form of receipts being counter-checked against the books in your bag, or in our case across the whole floor. (By this point I feel like i should have started reading harry potter rather than an animal book).

It turned out we still had a rather a large amount of money left but thought we really should start heading back for the presentation. What felt like a week later i decided to go and get a coke from a neighbouring shop (starting to think i should have re-read all of the harry potter series)

We were then, after another hour, ready to leave and went and waited on the side of the road for the car to pull up however it turned out that the driver had been clamped for 'wrong parking' so we sent him off with 20,000 ugandan shillings (about £5) to get the car unclamped and flagged down a bicycle and hired him to take our books to the car.

We then realised a traffic officer wasn't coming so left the car and driver, jumped in a taxi and headed down to the school for the presentation which had started two hours earlier at 3pm. When we arrived it became apparent that the team had been stalling the presentation of the resources until we arrived, as many of the resources had been bought with money raised by Caroline's school and many with money raised by Abigail and her school. So Caroline and Abigail presented the resources to the secondary school.

We then had the great privilege of presenting the primary school with their resources. A wonderful event with a lot of excited and grateful children.  

After which we were informed that the school was in debt and danger of having their water and electricity cut off - after a bit of maths it turned out that the amount of money we had left over was almost exactly the same amount that they owed - how awesome!

The day was rounded off with an amazing traditional meal with plenty of matooke, purple ice-cream and a wonderful display of traditional dancing from the ladies who work in the guest house.