National Sports Competition, Mbale

This year Mbale hosted the National Sports Competition. Districts from all over Uganda brought the best of the best from the primary schools in their area to compete in running and field events. Thousands of students invaded Mbale, sleeping in area primary schools, all with the mission to bring back boasting rights to their area.

Lulwanda Children's Home Primary School was blessed to have two students qualify to the national level: Ivan K and Abel.

Seeing as the competition was in town, we took advantage of the closeness and brought a different group of 13 kids from LCH each day of competition. It was a wonderful experience for the kids to have the exposure to town and to see how competitions work. They were able to talk with children from other areas and make some new friends.Ivan (in the middle with yellow shorts) running onto the field.

Abel and Ivan were on the same relay team. Abel was the 3rd to receive the baton and passed it to Ivan, who finished off the race. They ran very fast and were the 5th team in their group of runners.

The hand-off

While we were there, amidst the many spectators, Rachel's brother recognized his sister and they had a nice visit catching up.

The non-participants from LCH kept busy in between races by playing games. Notice the table they are playing on.

The winners of the whole competition received the gift of a "gold" metal, a mattress, blanket, school bag, and math set.

LCH watching the races

Ivan running the 200 meters for Senior boys. Unfortunately, corruption can reach all levels and Ivan was discriminated against by the registration officials, saying he was too big for Juniors (which he was not). Seeing as he raced with very big "boys", he was last in his group. (But sincerly this was not a fair match because some of the Senior boys looked like they were ready to be recruited for the Olympic team tomorrow).

Waiting to enter the field.

The proud cheering squad. Special thanks to Teacher Nathan and all his hard efforts and long hours spent to assure that LCH P/S participated in these competitions.

Both afternoons, Jarod and I took the kids into town to walk around. They were so excited to be moving freely in town, getting to see the people and the places that are so common to me but a rarity to them. We showed them around the supermarket, the market, the post office, and Jarod threw in his comments about where certain stories he has told them occured. We had a very fun time.

While they were moving around town, Betty and I sat at the Dutch Snack Shop and took passion fruit juice. We also enjoyed taking picture of the people moving past us.

Moving through the market.

The first day, after much adventuring, we stopped at a restaurant to have a fresh chapatti (in the family of a tortilla- I guess) and some "soup" to dip it in. Mmm, chapatti!!


The second day we took our "packed" lunch to my house to eat (seeing as we have probably the only picnic tables in Mbale). The kids really got a kick out of seeing where I lived and sitting on my bed. They also were so excited about the huge guava tree that they were sitting under because they knew dessert was coming.Overall it was a very fun few days. I am grateful that the kids had the opportunity to experience all that they did. Now for the reports of our next adventure- the site of the Bududa mudslides (that blog will come soon).