Friday, 12th:  Babu, Peace and Philip (two of his four children – Peace lives with Babu while Philip still lives in South Africa but had come home for Christmas), set off back to their home outside Mbarara in their car while we followed more slowly in the minibus, stopping at the Equator – a must for all visitors to Uganda! (There are only 13 countries crossed by the equator, some of which are small islands.)

And of course, we had to see if water really does go down the plughole clockwise in the northern hemisphere, anti-clockwise in the south and straight down with no swirl on the actual equator line, especially as Patrick is a physicist! Known as the Coriolis Effect, it is scientifically controversial and much contested! We watched a simple and seemingly flawless demonstration – but check it out on the internet!

We arrived at Babu’s home on the Nganwa family farm outside Mbarara to find Peace had baked two delicious cakes and tea was laid out on the extensive verandah overlooking lovely lawns with a beautiful panorama of Ankole hills and pastureland stretching out beyond and a wide expanse of sky. As we talked, we watched the sun set. We had lovely bedrooms upstairs with a huge balcony with orchids around the railings. We chatted as we soaked in the view and watched about twenty magnificent Grey Crowned Cranes come back from the valley to roost on top of the trees around the house. They announce their arrival with a loud, haunting drawn-out call of “ooh-wang”. They are so big (over a metre tall with a wingspan of two metres) that they look quite precarious on the rather flimsy top branches, often flapping their huge wings to balance. They are Uganda’s national bird which used to be called by the much nicer name of Golden Crested Crane.

       

We slept well in such a lovely environment, with a refreshing breeze coming through the open balcony doors.

Saturday:  A day of guided tours, story-telling and reminiscing! Babu and I both learnt a lot of new things from each other, and I saw things I haven’t seen since I was a child. I was surprised how much I remembered from childhood when actually in situ.

First, after a leisurely breakfast, Philip took us on a tour and ‘nature walk’ around the farm, much of which is on gently sloping hillsides, with a small reservoir, pools and boggy areas in the valley which were good for birds and butterflies. It covers 800 acres. They have 400 beef cattle, and a few goats and chickens for home consumption. Local villagers cultivate some of the land for their own consumption.

In the afternoon, we started a historical tour of the older parts of Mbarara! We started in what was Canon Ernest Bawtree’s home, which we often visited and is now a museum for one of the greatest evangelical revival movements of the 20th century which is known as the East African Revival. It started in Rwanda nearly 100 years ago and is still strong in southern Uganda, especially in Ankole and Kigezi, as well as Kampala. It is not a movement that any of my family has ever been part of. In fact, it could be very divisive and, when we were in Kabale from 1960-72, it was a strong influence that drove us towards the Catholic Church where we felt accepted.

 

Not surprisingly, the old CMS “Mission hill” has been completely changed, especially over the last 15 years. It is now unrecognisable, with the beautiful avenue of ancient jacaranda trees gone and so much development, including a good church-run hospital. The obvious wealth of Ankole Diocese compared with the Anglican dioceses of Soroti and Kumi in Teso was somewhat overwhelming. We walked down what was the jacaranda avenue to the Anglican Cathedral of St James, where the Nganwa family have put lovely stained glass windows over the west door and, at the east end, above the altar, are windows put in by my family.

 

From the Cathedral, we went to my old home (where I lived from when I was born in 1944 until we returned to England in 1954) only about 100m further on. It felt like it was completely overwhelmed and suffocated by all the banana plantations growing around it as well as more staff houses and their plantations! It used to have a lovely big garden with extensive views over empty grassland to beyond the river Ruizi in the valley below.  It has also been divided into two homes. But the basic structure, including the original iron roof, is still the same and recognisable. It was built of sun-dried bricks about 100 years ago which aren’t showing any signs of giving way. There was no one in, so we couldn’t go inside.

 

We then walked around Mbarara High School, identifying which buildings were there in the 1940s and 50s and which have been built as the school has expanded. Although it was the long holidays, the school was full of young people on the annual Ankole Diocesan Youth Conference. Babu, who attended MHS for his junior secondary years, knew exactly what was what, including my father’s office! My father had been headmaster from 1941 to 1954. I am interested that, of all the earlier headmasters, my father seems to be the only one after whom anything has been named. Did he, perhaps, have the most impact on the development of the school? He had always insisted that all pupils should do art and crafts alongside the academic subjects, so it is fitting that the workshops built later were named after him (albeit with the wrong spelling on the later signboard!). However, it looked as though the workshops are no longer in use, which is very sad as they are full of good machines, equipment and furniture which were piled up, with rubbish and gathering dust. The pottery workshop, which my father set up and which I saw about ten years ago when I visited, is apparently no longer there.

 

We didn’t see any remains of the small hut in which my father had installed a generator which provided the first electricity on the hill, but to my great excitement, we stumbled (almost literally!) across his much-loved little tractor which he had bought in the 1940s to improve the output of the school farm which fed the students. I recognised it by the traces of grey paint still visible in places and by the name Ferguson on the front. But was it a much later replacement? Searching the internet shows that the British firm of Ferguson merged with the Canadian firm of Massey in 1953, leading to the production of Massey-Ferguson tractors. Since we left Mbarara in 1954, this must have been my father’s tractor! I am amazed at how intact it is after more than 70 years! “One of Fergusons most successful designs was the Ferguson TE20 (the name derived from Tractor, England 20 horsepower), commonly known as the Little Grey Fergie – a light-weight machine still popular with enthusiasts today.” For comparison, I have paired up my photos with some from eBay of a Ferguson tractor for sale now which looks very similar! It felt strange to be sitting on the same seat that my father (who died in 2010 aged nearly 97) had sat on so many years ago – a tangible connection with the past! I wish I could get it repaired – it doesn’t look as though it would be impossible.

 

From the school, we went up onto the highest hill on the edge of Mbarara to the Omugabe’s Palace, where the Kings of Ankole live – their recorded history goes back to the 15th century although the official kingdom of Ankole and its monarch was abolished in 1967.  Nearby was the official home of the similarly defunct office of Prime Minister of Ankole (Enganzi), a position which Babu’s father, Kesi Nganwa, held from 1955 until just before his death in 1962. (Kesi Nganwa was only the second Mwiru ever to hold this office which had always been held by the dominant Bahima. The conflict and tensions between the majority but oppressed Bairu and the minority Bahima of Ankole, fuelled by the British Government, is explored in this PhD thesis and was something my father worked hard to help resolve in practical ways.)

We walked around the nearby small church built in the shadows of the stone remnants of the first church (reminiscent of older ruins seen in England!) to the graves, now mostly derelict, of British people who had died in or near Mbarara (one had been killed by an elephant). In any culture, graves are respected so we were shocked at how they had been desecrated and wondered if the descendants are aware that their relatives are buried here. I took photos of the few headstones that were still legible and hope I might be able to trace some of them but have so far only found the last two (Maturin and Galt).

 

The next visit was to the original Nganwa home at Ruharo (Ruharo is what my parents called their home in Broadway). Kesi Nganwa finished building the new house not long before he died in 1962. It is where the family still gathers from across the world for Christmas each year. As is traditional in Uganda, those who have died (even if they died abroad) are all buried in the garden nearby.

 

We ended the afternoon by  going down to the river Ruizi which we used to walk down to as children from our house (that path no longer exists). It was also the place where the schoolboys collected water and washed. However, 80 years ago, there were occasional crocodiles and lions around, so it wasn’t completely without risk. (It’s completely safe now – the nearest ones now being about 50 miles away!)

   

We got back to Babu’s home as the sun set and the cranes returned to roost. 

 

Sunday:  Robert and Patrick took the minibus into the town to mend a puncture and change a tyre. Babu and Peace took me and Inna to what should have been the English-speaking service in the Cathedral but which turned out to be a large outdoor English-Runyankore service with a visiting bishop and team from Tanzania to mark the end of the Youth Conference. Partly because of the translations, it was a very long service which we had to leave early (after nearly three hours of increasing heat as we sat in the sun) because of driving south to Lake Bunyonyi. It was fairly typical of East African Revival meetings, featuring testimonies and a confession by the Bishop of Ankole of sexual immorality as a young man before he was “saved”, all peppered by the impromptu singing of the first verse of “Tukutendereza, Yesu” (“We praise you Jesus, Jesus the Lamb of God, Your blood cleanses me, I thank you Saviour”). It brought back memories of the tensions we experienced years ago when teaching in Kabale (and which I think my parents also experienced in the 1940s). I have written about this in Memoirs of Christian Charismatic Renewal.  There was a brief interlude of traditional dancing, something which would not have been allowed in a service until recently. 

Robert and Patrick met us outside the Cathedral and we set off for Kigezi.