The Source of the Nile

For some reason, when I saw that there was a 25 km trail race in Jinja, Uganda, I decided it was a good idea to enter. No matter that I haven’t run more than about 10k in one go since moving here – I convinced myself that Kigali’s hills were a substitute for distance. And never mind the small issue of a 14 hour overnight bus journey to get there, followed by another one the same to get back after the race!

I couldn’t convince anyone else to actually come and run with me, but Josh, Amy, Luke and Stan did come along to Jinja to enjoy its most famous attraction – white water rafting on the Nile.

The race is named for the same river – the Source of the Nile Trail Race – and had four distances, 5km, 12km, 25km and 50km. I watched a small band of 50km runners set off at 7am, then went along to the race briefing for the 25km. They had flags for all of the runners’ nations which was a nice touch. I had been hoping I would be the only Brit and so manage to be first Brit in a race for the only time in my life, but sadly there was another British girl who turned out to be faster than me!

When we set off it was warm and humid, and I found myself hoping it would rain. Of course ten minutes later it did, rain so heavy that it was like running under a cold shower turned on full blast. The tracks promptly turned to mud which managed to be both sticky and slippery at the same time; sticky so that it clings to your shoes and triples their weight, and slippery so you can never tell which way your foot will slide when you put it down. These conditions combined to make running pretty impossible at times!

In the end I finished in 2:44 – not my proudest achievement, but I’m glad I did it.

 

Butaro

Last week I travelled to Butaro, a town in the north of Rwanda which is home to several flagship MASS projects. I was there to begin site supervision on the construction of a new accommodation block for oncology patients.

Already in Butaro are Butaro hospital, a housing complex for doctors, and a cancer centre. The cancer centre has become a hub for oncology patients throughout Rwanda and wider east Africa, and people travel great distances for treatment. Many of these are outpatients receiving chemotherapy at the ambulatory cancer care centre. Until now there has been no accommodation available on site for these patients, and as many cannot afford to pay for somewhere to stay in town they have had no option but to sleep rough in the hospital grounds during their treatment. There is a fantastic organisation called Partners in Health who are very involved with healthcare in the Butaro region, and they have now raised funds to build an accommodation centre for oncology outpatients. MASS designed the building and we’re now providing construction supervision.

The Cancer Centre

Butaro is in an incredibly beautiful part of Rwanda, very hilly and green and noticeably cooler and wetter than Kigali. The journey there was amazing as we followed the dirt road higher and higher through the hills, and had some great views of  nearby Lake Burera. At the moment there’s not much to see on site other than a fairly boring excavation so I’ll spare you photos of that. I’m really excited about spending more time up north as the project progresses.

Beautiful Butaro – looking across the valley towards the Doctors’ Housing, another MASS project

I was also able to attend the project groundbreaking ceremony, which was treated as a very significant occasion and attended by both the Mayor of Butaro and the district Governor. Also there was the co-founder of Partners in Health, Ophelia Dahl, who turns out to be Roald Dahl’s daughter! It’s probably good that I didn’t know that while having tea with her or I would have embarrassed myself by talking about Fantastic Mr Fox.

Traditional dancers at the groundbreaking ceremony, watched by oncology outpatients

In other news, one of the MASS Directors, Christian Benimana, gave a very inspiring TED talk recently. The video isn’t up yet but you can read a synopsis.