OPEN MIC 2 - The Final Chapter_____________________________________________________________

Part One
Open Mic

Date: May 21st (Sat)
Time: 7:30pm – 10pm (Doors open 7:00pm)
Place: 3rd Place, Saga City
Entry: 1500 yen (one drink included)

Part Two
Dance Party hosted by the 3rd Place Team – start 10pm

The Rainbow Team would like to thank, everyone for coming to the last Open Mic event, making personal donations, and contributing in your own special way. We raised over 80,000 yen for the Atiira Primary School in Uganda.

Our original intention was to build a new school roof for a classroom. The community in Uganda asked us to renovate the whole building. How badly did they want this to happen? They asked everyone in the local community to donate something and they raised 50,000 yen towards the building cost. People live on 200 – 500 yen a day in this area and to donate so much is truly humbling.

So our target became 250,000 yen to renovate the whole classroom. We have raised a total of 190,000 yen over the last few months including the amount donated by Uganda.

This is the “Final Chapter” about some wonderful people in Saga and Kyushu who came together to brighten the lives of children and parents in Atiira, central Uganda. Join us on May 21st to see how the story ends.

Open Mic video - Click on the link below - Sign into Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150560864655643&comments

Destination Kisoro______________________________________________________________________________

Blog 1
I left Fukuoka airport in Japan at 11:45am on Saturday morning, the date was July 25th. I arrived into Kisoro town in Uganda on a green Horizon bus at 5:30am on Monday morning. I had travelled half the globe and had three stop-overs but I had finally made it to the place of patchwork fields and old volcanoes. Bangkok, Dubai, Addis Ababa and finally Entebbe... what a journey, I must have only slept four hours in between a bout of turbulence and a portion of foil-wrapped lunch.



The night bus from the capital to Kisoro was interesting... the highlight being a drunk guy trying to get off the moving bus to take a piss, he was stopped and then promptly started pissing into the stairwell. The bus conductor wasn’t happy that the stairwell was being used as a urinal so flushed the stairwell and drunk guy with 10 litres of water. He was soaked but the stairwell was clean.



My first day in the Kisoro town was great. It was like I had never left, as people recognised me and said ‘waraye’ and shook my hand. As I headed to the weekly market, children from my old school shouted out my name while I bargained for mangoes and a pineapple. I forgot how much I missed this place I thought to myself as I watched women carry their shopping on their heads and head home.

It was good to be back.

Arrival at School______________________________________________________________________________

Blog 2

I had been looking forward to this day for a long time, the day when I would see the children again, the kids who we have been helping who are so poor that they can only eat beans and potatoes every meal. I arrived on my Honda motorcycle after navigating a ridiculous riverbed that they call a road here. I was covered in dust, as it was ‘dry season’ and the earth was just like powder for lack of moisture.

As I drove past the first classroom there was a roar of cheering, now from the second classroom all I could see were eyes and waving hands, and as I headed towards the school office children started pouring out of the classroom doors. I had to stop for fear of running over one or two small ones. I was in a sea of little people on a red Japanese machine that is our modern day horse, and you should have seen them, they were so happy.

As I had my helmet on they didn’t know if it was really ‘Ede-niii’ (my name here). It could be a different ‘white man’ who had come to visit the school. I lifted off my helmet, a little choked by the emotion of it all, and then there was a big

‘Aaahhh...’

‘Ede- niii’ had really come back to them.

The New Classroom_________________________________________________________________________

Blog 3

I looked round Gitenderi Primary School, and from behind the trees I could see it. There were ten men working on it, some were carrying stones, others were shovelling sand, but all looked busy, they were busy building the new classroom for this school of 1100 pupils. There were twelve classrooms at this school for all those one thousand plus pupils but within two weeks there will be thirteen classrooms many thanks to donors from as far afield as Japan and Cornwall.



It is a touching moment when you see the fruit of your labour, the feeling of we worked for this, we struggled, we didn’t give up and now there it is right before your very eyes… a classroom of brick and stone. I was surprised by how far construction work had gone considering the contractor had only received the money two weeks before my arrival. Foundations had been laid, bricks had been placed, and roof beams were just being fitted as I laid eyes on the building.

‘Paul works fast...’ I thought.

After talking to Paul the man building the classroom I understood why he was working so fast. He wanted to finish before I left, that was exactly twenty two days later.

‘Come and you look’ he said to me as he showed me the inside of the classroom. They were already putting in the foundation rocks for the floor.

As I looked upon the classroom, slightly in awe, I thought of the entire journey towards this man made structure of brick and stone. I thought of Karatsu and the setting up of the Rainbow group, I thought of all the events we had created so that we could raise money, events like Rainbow Run across a seven kilometres of pacific sand, and an ‘Open Mic’ night where good people came together sang, read poems, and gave a little of their time and talent. I thought of trials and tribulations in getting people in Japan to support us. I thought of all the people, there must be over five hundred in all, who gave a small donation or their time towards the building of this classroom. To the volunteers in Cornwall who throughout the year work towards the betterment of education in Uganda and finally I smiled and thought

‘We had done it!’




Remembering Uganda_________________________________________________________________________

Blog 4

I had been used to tarmac, modern trains, neon lights, bowing people, Shinto shrines and concrete tower blocks. I was now in a world alien to me...



Although I had been here before, lived among these people, eaten the food the food they do, and walked along the same orange murram roads I felt I had forgotten so much. It was like a living a previous life again, I started remembering the things I had taken as normal twelve months ago.

I remembered it being dusty when I was here but never this dusty. It was the dry season and so the fields are brown without the green of life, grass was yellow and brittle, and the roads were like a John Wayne western, dry and harsh. I was used to clean skin, air-conditioning, and dirt free roads, now every day I go out and return covered from head to toe in dust, pieces of rubbish fly around my feet and air-conditioning is found only in Toyota Land-cruisers.

‘How am I this dirty?’ I said to myself as I took a shower after a day outside. The pool of around my feet was brown, just like the muddy pools I used to play in when I was a young nipper in the Cornish countryside. I didn’t see any trout though around my feet though.



Beans and potatoes, beans and potatoes, beans and potatoes, it is like a broken record but that is what people eat here morning, noon and night. It was a shock to the system to taste unflavoured boiled beans and potatoes again. My body was beginning to remember and accept its new environment. My mind drifted to a yakitori (skewered chicken, grilled over charcoal) restaurant and of eating deep-fried tofu in dashi soup as I spooned another potato and beans portion into my mouth. I moved away from my day dream, and back to the dish, the potatoes were excellent if a little unflavoured I reminded myself. I also reminded myself that people are too poor to eat anything else here, head down I humbly ate my food.

‘The roads weren’t this bad, were they?’ this question kept popping into my head as I hit yet another pot-hole or large tortoise of a rock in my way. I was glad I had my Honda dirt-bike with big-foot suspension, and claw like tyres. I remembered enjoying navigating these roads, hitting jumps, and hollows like a teenage boy having fun on his new Christmas present. As the days passed, I realised it was far more fun than riding a bicycle in the centre of a Japanese city where bicycles are definitely an afterthought when road construction takes place. The dust however was not fun at all.



The memory that I do remember well was that there were so many children here. Fifty per cent of the population was under fifteen, and that meant there were children everywhere. Children carrying things on their head, children hiding behind trees and bushes, children running and shouting

‘Mzungu!’

Children wearing the dirtiest items of clothing I have ever seen and children looking after goats and cows in the countryside.

Kisoro, ‘A Magical Land of Children, Mountains and Gorillas’

I am remembering more and more every day...

When I see the children at my schools I wonder if they are remembering too... Perhaps that is why they are so excited to see me.




Do you take water for granted?_______________________________________________________________

Blog 5

I have been to a few places in my life, I have seen many things beautiful and sad, experienced a few wonders of what we call life and known love. I guess we all feel the same deep inside, a feeling of being glad to be alive. With all its ups and downs, it is not a bad life after all.

I have been to places as high as 5100 metres, as low as 32 metres below sea level, to some of the great cities of this world and I have sat watching sand dunes in the desert. I thought that I had seen enough to understand, to compare, not be shocked by what I see with my eyes but last Sunday I was left stunned.

‘Do you take water for granted?’

As I travelled to a local spring near Mukibugu Primary school, I don’t think I can look at clean water from the humble tap the same.

Now I had heard about this place, the ‘murinyo’, the ‘water spring’, when I was at Mukibugu School last year. I had heard that people were fighting to get water there. That there wasn’t enough water for everyone during the dry season and that all the children got their water from the same place, the ‘murinyo’.

As I travelled down with my fourteen year old pupil Median to fetch water last Sunday I saw cows coming up the path, people with yellow jerry cans 20 litres on their head snaked up ahead of me, and in the distance two hundred people. Median was telling me that cows polluted the water by urinating in it but this was the only place to get water for the animals. I remember thinking ‘...for you as well’.



As I drew nearer I saw the dreadfulness of the situation, it was a horror, the people that I saw in the distance weren’t at a pond as I first thought, and they were instead in a muddy nightmare.

The first people I passed were children, I peered into the darkness where their hands were and saw a cup and a pool of water ten centimetres across.

‘Oh my god...’



I gasped, and a tear filled my eye, the children were collecting water from a muddy pool ten centimetres across and putting it into a small jerry can. An animal would be the only thing that would drink from a hole like the one I saw, and here was an eight year old girl trying to collect drinking water. I looked up and saw that everyone was collecting in a similar way, some water holes were bigger than others but all were dirty, all were not fit for humans and all had a throng of people around them with waiting yellow jerry cans. If you exchanged the people for a herd of wildebeest, you will get a picture of what I saw.

Due to the dry season, the water level was so low, that there were only a few places to collect water. That water was brown, and by the looks of the cows mingling around unsafe. There had been cases of typhoid (caught from taking in contaminated water or direct from faeces) in at least two teachers I knew at Mukibugu School (they were collecting from this water hole as well). I was not surprised after what I saw before my eyes. Cows and people drinking the same water, in the UK it would be like people drinking from a cow trough.

At this time, it was mostly women and children collecting water but when men come they often fight according to Median. Even though it was women and children, people were still shouting at each other as forty people clambered around a large (half metre) muddy hole.



I turned to Median and asked ‘You come to collect every day?’

‘Yes, it is best to come very early in the morning. Some people even come at 4am’ she replied. Twenty children were staring at me; it was not often a white person came to the ‘murinyo’.

‘You can see how we suffer’ she added with a sad look in her eye.

We left in silence, I had been shocked at what I had seen. We walked away from the muddy nightmare that was the source of water for five thousand people.

‘They have no choice...’ I reminded myself as we headed up the path.


Home stay with Median___________________________________________________________________

Blog 6



I arrived at school late as it was already 3pm, it was Sunday afternoon and clouds were rolling across the sky, I could see that the lock on the school office was bolted and no one was around as I sat on the seat of my stationary red Honda. The engine clicked as it cooled.

‘Bugger…’ I said.

I looked round the back, still no one and no way in. The teacher’s house was also empty which was strange as at least one teacher usually stayed over the weekend. I headed back to the office.

I looked down the compound and saw a girl. She looked familiar.

‘Is that you Median?’ I said.

I didn’t get an answer but instead a row of white teeth flashed across her dark face. She had been waiting for me it seemed.

We walked towards her home and chatted. My bag was a little heavy from the large cabbage, spices and peanuts that were gifts for her family. I would be staying with them that evening.

We reached her home and as usual I was greeted by the local children who stood all around me like dark flowers under a white tree. They had colourful floral dresses on but were always so dirty! No water for washing I thought.

Her home was just like all the others in this area, made of mud and bamboo, four rooms under a tin roof, and painted in gray and pink clay. I greeted her mother and gave the gifts, they were quickly scuttled into the back room and a huge mug of brown liquid was offered to me. It was ‘ubushera’ a ‘porridge’ as people called it, that was drunk as often as tea is taken in England. However, I always remembered porridge being white and gloopy not brown and sour on the tongue. Perhaps Nestle hadn’t started selling any porridge here yet.

We had a fun afternoon doing video recording for a small documentary I am filming on the children’s lives here. Median was always the one who smiled at the camera last year and the most photogenic of all the Mukibugu school kids. She had the most magical set of straight white teeth I had ever seen, probably because children here don’t eat sugared cereal, Mars bars, fizzy cola bottles and a choc ice for desert. She also had wonderful skin and was one of the best singers in the school. We laughed together after a long silence due to waiting for one of us to say something to the camera. She was great on camera and quick with a smile.

We got along well. She told me about her life, I listened and absorbed as much as I could. I found the simple way of living here enchanting. Sun came up, fetch water, go to school, come home, help with house chores, collect firewood, bring home animals, prepare food, eat, sit by paraffin light and talk as a family and listen to the wind blowing the trees outside. That was Median’s life most days of the year. However, that idyllic picture came to an abrupt end when I visited the local spring (see previous article).

The whole family crowded round as I showed them the film work of the day on my camera in the flickering flame of the paraffin light. They laughed as Median messed up what she was trying to say and smiled as they pointed to people they knew on the screen. I yawned, it was time for bed.

I slept in the living room with the two young boys of the family, on a bed of matting and hay; I was waiting for a horse to pass by any second. I blew out the paraffin light, and the room was plunged into black. I put my head down to sleep and closed my eyes.

After my last home stay in the village that was last year, I was expecting the walls to come alive and insects to start sharpening their knives and forks. I can’t say I had the best night’s sleep, but I didn’t get eaten alive and only one flea bothered me in the night. Jump, jump, scratch, jump, jump, scratch, squeeze, fleas have very strong shells I knew from experience. My father showed me one time how to get rid of them with a bar of soap, they were usually found under the pillow he told me as he plunged the soap on top of a jumping black dot. I could see that his days growing up in Liverpool were a bit more fun at night than mine in little old Zennor village.

It was morning; we walked to school in a group of ten other children in the orange glow of daylight. They seemed to be excited to be walking with the ‘Mzungu’ teacher. Three were carrying yellow jerry cans for collecting water later in the day. Dust blew around our feet and made us look like a moving cloud of brown. I covered my face as the wind blew more dust our way.

As we passed the front gate of the school Median went to join her friends and I went to the Head-masters office, it was the start of another school day.