Rubanga kene

Archive for April, 2010

Oh! Set Me Free

April 20th, 2010. Published under Fun Stuff, Students. 1 Comment.

We have some talented musicians at the school. Last year Brandon Heath, the Dove Award Male Vocalist of the year, came out with Bob for a visit. We had several of our students learn a few of his songs beforehand, and then we did a recording with him. Maybe one day in the future we’ll be able to hear those songs on the radio!

Students learning Brandon's song "Give me your eyes" last year

More recently, I overheard our students singing a beautiful song I’d never heard before. I asked one where it came from and she told me she wrote it. She is one of four sisters who attend Restore. They live about 2 hours away in Lira, but the oldest was part of Cornerstone’s Youth Corps home here in Gulu and we took her to Restore. The other three soon followed. They are four of six daughters, all being raised by their mother. Their father ran out on their mother a few years ago, leaving her to look after all six. Back in the day for church their pastor wanted the children to present a song. So this one girl went home and wrote one out. Turned out to be a hit. She’s since written several songs, all of them equally beautiful.

Over Easter weekend they all came to the Youth Corps Home and I decided to record the sisters singing their song. So here it is in one Garage Band take,

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Hope you enjoy! And plan on hearing more from where this came from. We hope to do a legit recording of students in the future, many of them are incredibly gifted musicians!

: One of the four sisters on the left

Mark Cuban in Africa

April 4th, 2010. Published under Fun Stuff, Life in Uganda. 2 Comments.

I have sympathy for Mark Cuban, the owner of the NBA team Dallas Mavericks. Growing up I never liked the Mavs, thus I never liked Cuban and was always happy when they lost or when he got in trouble for his antics… For those of you who don’t know, Cuban is a younger billionaire who bought the Mavericks and is very involved in the team. Most owners own from afar, watching the games from their skybox and mostly worrying about the profit and loss of their investment. But not Cuban. He watches the games courtside, yells at refs, knows his players well etc. Not being a fan of the Mavs I never liked this…

But I’m finding myself in his shoes. Here in Gulu, I’m kinda like the Mark Cuban of secondary school football (soccer). We have some legit athletes in our school and have amazing boys and girls football teams. I go to as many games as I can, sit with all the players, teachers and students, complain to the refs, yell, cheer etc. I find my competitive athletic nature come out as I spectate. I’m hurt if we lose, excited if we win, concerned if a key player is hurt or if we played poorly etc. I take offense when the refs are biased (which happens a lot here, we’ve experienced both sides of the biasy and its never fun). But being the only white guy around, I stick out. Everyone at the games know I’m with Restore. No other head teacher, school director or teachers go to the games and sit with the students and cheer. They sit in the shade somewhere and watch from afar. But we do. We’d rather be with the players and students.

Recently we played in the annual district football tournament. The school that wins for each district get to represent the district at the national tournament. Amuru is so poorly developed that the norm here is to stack your team with as many outsiders as you think you can get away with. AKA mercenaries. Anyone who you think can pass as a high school student. Make them a school ID, forge their documents and have them play for your team. The team that won the district last year had half of their team disqualified at nationals for being mercenaries. That same team had guys as old as 27 playing against teenagers this year. We know because our teachers went to highschool with some of the other team’s players. But we took a hard stance on this and would not allow a single outsider play for us. Each player had to be a current student. We wanted to make a point that winning wasn’t everything, but being honest and playing by the rules was the best way. If we lost, as least we lost knowing we played fair. I prayed so hard that God would reward us for playing fairly!

And he did. Both our girls and boys won the district tournament!!! In style too, the girls didn’t allow a single goal in three games and the boys allowed 2 goals in four games, both of them on penalty kicks! Combined the two teams outscored their opponents 19-2. The other schools had some more talented mercenaries than our players, but we came with a team. They had been playing together and collectively were much better because of it. One opposing coach who was very frustrated asked how we could represent the district, being only two years old. Representing the district was only for the big, established schools with 1000+ students, not us with just over 200. That same coach by the way is the one who had half his team DQ’d for being mercenaries last year So now our students are preparing for exams and then for the national tournament at the end of the month. The boys will travel to southern Uganda and the girls tournament is here in Gulu. For most of these boys it will be their first time out of the Gulu/Amuru area.