Landscaping Uphill

Uphill Junior School lives up to its name as our school site is anything but flat, a reflection of the wonderful geography of the surrounding landscape in the crater lakes area of west Uganda, bordering the Kibale Forest.

The landscape around Uphill is not the only spectacular feature – rain in Uganda comes down by the bucketful and very, very rapidly. It is like a firehose. Thunderstorms are common, and after a rainstorm flash flooding can be quite a problem.

This tropical rainfall is great for watering countryside and crops but it causes big problems to roads and paths as it can easily wash away soil. The problems caused by these torrents of rain running across and down our school site need to be addressed.

Guttering and rainwater-harvesting tanks on every school building help, but the sheer amount of water can overwhelm this collecting system. Wearing wellies is very acceptable by everyone in Uganda but even this footwear is not always enough. When you have 300 pairs of kids’ feet running around the school along unmade paths every day, you can imagine the erosion of our hilly site.

We now have a major job constructing some robust walkways with drainage throughout our sloping site and make things safe for everyone. As well as reducing the mud and dirt brought inside every day, all areas of the school grounds need to be accessible in all weathers.

We have already been able to find an effective way of building retaining walls using hexagonal shaped concrete blocks built on-site and used to hold back several areas of eroded banking. These block walls will allow plants and grass to become established in them and create an attractive appearance as well a preventing the bankings around the school site from collapsing.

A local civil engineer, Elisha, who helped as our building supervisor for the recent vocational classroom build, has worked with us to create a plan for landscaping (or should that be aquascaping?) the walkways and the entrance area of the school.

This work will involve a considerable amount of careful excavation and construction to make it robust, work that doesn’t come cheap. It will cost in the region of £12,000 for the whole site to be landscaped.

We have funds to be able to start the first stage of this major project but it will have to be done in several stages and we will need more donations to help complete all the works.

Can you help? 

Do you have any gardening, building and landscaping contacts who might be interested to help us with a donation?

Thank you.

Tags: infrastructure, landscaping, preventing soil erosion, protecting the landscape, Uphill Junior School, water erosion