Ten Years Later . . .
This June marks 10 years since my family first visited JPSS. Looking back now, it’s amazing how far we have come, and the changes we’ve seen in our recent visits to Uganda in 2023 and 2024.
The whole Comerford family went on this adventure – Liz and I along with our two teenage boys – Sam (then 14) and Nate (then 13). After two long flights and 20 hours of travel, we were picked up at the Entebbe airport by Denis, the Berrigan’s friend and long-time driver for every trip to Uganda over the years.
After a day of recovery at a lovely hotel on the shores of nearby Lake Victoria, we started on the lengthy trek out to Mbale, the town in eastern Uganda that’s closest to the school with a hotel that met Nancy’s minimum standards. Despite a lot of development over the past decade, Mbale remains our overnight spot in this remote area.
The next morning, we set off bright and early in the rugged Land Cruiser, expertly piloted by Denis. Any question of whether we needed a driver was quickly answered once we turned off the main road onto miles of poorly maintained dirt road pocked with huge potholes and ridges. The 58-mile journey took over two hours. Today, that journey is a far less arduous 1 hour and 15 minutes thanks to significant investment in roads, bankrolled by the Chinese Government.
Driving through the mud hut villages was quite the spectacle as many of the locals had rarely if ever seen a white person. Everyone would come out and smile and wave like we were some kind of procession. Today there’s a little less excitement, but we still receive a warm welcome any time we drive through this remote area.
Finally, we got to the school and were swarmed by kids from the primary school that shared the property. These strange-looking white people were truly a thing of wonder as the bravest little kids would sneak up to touch us and then turn and run back to their friends squealing in triumph. The older JPSS kids were no less interested, especially in Sam and Nate – two kids their own age.
After the raucous welcome, we got to tour the school, starting with the huge shade tree that served as the teaching area before the Berrigans started building in 2007. By 2015, the school consisted of two buildings – the original classroom building and a newly completed building for science labs and computer lab. At the time, the computer lab was an empty shell as the school lacked electricity, let alone an internet connection. Today, the lab is packed with over 60 workstations, powered by an extensive solar power system and linked to the world via a dedicated cell phone tower.
The next stop on the tour was the makeshift girls’ dormitory that had been set-up in the small community hall adjacent to the church. Somehow, they managed to accommodate over 100 girls in the moderately sized room by cramming in bunk beds, stacked three-high with little room to move between them. While the crowded room was undoubtedly stuffy on the warm Uganda nights, it was still an upgrade over the floors of classrooms or local mud huts where the boys would bed down.
Today’s dormitories are a vast improvement: four custom-designed buildings with medical, toilet and washing facilities that serve upwards of 800 students – S1-4 Girls, S1-4 Boys, S5-6 Girls and S5-6 Boys. These new dormitories have allowed us to increase enrollment by almost 4X from the 200 or so students when we visited in 2015. This expansion was important to meet the ever-increasing demand for spots at JPSS thanks to district-leading test scores and low school fees.
The next highlight of our 2015 trip was the ribbon-cutting for the new “bore hole” that we had drilled to bring water to the campus for the very first time. This hand-pumped well allowed staff, students and local villagers to fill their plastic jerrycans after a much shorter walk than the previous nearest well. Today, we have a solar-powered electric pump and water tower that feeds water to taps throughout the campus, bringing the convenience of running water to the area for the first time.
As lunch time arrived on that hot day in June 2015, we watched the students line up in the midday sun for a simple meal of beans and posho, prepared over an open charcoal fire in a tiny, smoky brick kitchen. After they picked up their food, the students sat on the ground or on the large rocks that punctuate the campus, hoping to find some shade.
Today, the meals are prepared in a kitchen complex (state-of-the-art by Ugandan standards) with much more efficient stoves with chimneys to take away the smoke and nearby storage rooms for food and supplies. Once the meals are prepared, the kids line up to get served and eat in Berrigan Hall, a beautiful terrazzo-floored building with room for 800 students to dine.
The impressive building rises above the surrounding rural landscape of fields, mud huts and single-story buildings of sun-baked clay bricks. Also known as the Multi-Purpose Building (MPB), Berrigan Hall accommodates school assemblies, national testing, concerts and more.
In 2015, the center of the campus was dominated by the primary school and a soccer field that was more bare earth than grass. Sam and Nate joined the boys of JPSS for a friendly soccer match… but only after they shed their shoes to match the competition.
With our ongoing expansion, that real estate is now needed for more classrooms and labs. Today, the primary school has been rebuilt across the road and we are in the process of building out a beautiful competition-level soccer complex on the southern side of campus.
While so much has changed since that first visit a decade ago, many echoes still remain. One lasting impact is that the two classes in each grade are named Sam and Nate (which they pronounce “Nat-ay”). The students were extremely impressed during our recent visits when we were introduced as their parents!
JPSS has given the Comerford family so much purpose and insight over the last decade-plus. We remain so grateful for the day that the Berrigans welcomed us into this special, special project.
