Our new brick school.....the dilemma...

Leading on from my previous post........I left in October with potential pieces of land being sought out and went back to my life in the UK. Everything was all a bit up in the air when I got back on a personal level as I had arranged all my plans for me to not actually be in the UK during that time. Anyway these tings happen and so I plodded along in regular contact with Rose the Director of Ndeeba Primary School and my lawyer as they searched for land and researched the paperwork.


By January 2013 I knew things had to move forward. Here I was......the money we had all busted a gut to raise/kindly donated.....sat in the bank and here I was with no workable design and no land! Then finally one piece of land became a possibility. You see the area where Ndeeba Primary School is originally belonged to the Kabaka of Buganda who is the Tribal King of the Buganda Tribe which is the main tribe for Kampala. Over time some of the land has been purchased outright making it mailo land but for many this paperwork is tarnished in issues. For us and the school we originally had issues with the paperwork but when we decided to work towards building the brick school we funded the process of getting everything in order so for us we were all nice and 'clean'.

So off I trundled back to Kampala, carrying a lot of hope but fearful of a similar outcome as October. With everything resting on the only other piece of 'clean' land in the area I met with Rose and she took me to see the land.......and I HATED IT!! The sense of sheer deflation swept over me. Rose.....ever the optimist was trying to explain to me how we could make it work but for me this was not my vision. This was an awkwardly shaped piece of land housed right in the middle of the slum almost drowning in there and surrounded by swamped water, flies and dirt. No matter how much I tried to see how it could work the fact remained......it could not and would not work. And so that was the end of the land search......

I went back to the hostel that night thinking what on earth am I gonna do??? I have 500 childrens' education, 22 members of staffs' lively hoods and a whole community resting on my shoulders that I could find a solution and at that point I had nothing! Not a bean.....so off I went to bed to try and think this out....

Now I seem to make a lot of decisions when I am in bed.....I have no idea why its just the way it is and so that night as I lay awake tossing and turning I decided that I needed to go to the architect and brainstorm ANY possibility to build ANYTHING that could help us on our existing plot. I also had a meeting first thing with the Education Authority to discuss our plans for the school......could I find a solution???