Laying Foundations; the anxiety and hurdles

December 2018 gave birth to an idea. I cannot tell with exact precision how long the gestation period was but what I am certain of is that the labor and delivery heralded new beginnings. The start of what would be building blocks for many generations after us.

In the middle of December last year, an extraordinary meeting sat somewhere in the leafy neighborhood of Kololo. This time though, the venue wasn't a hotel with stars and neither was it a palatable mansion but it was small well kept compound that would accommodate a bunch of people pregnant with big ideas but moving around with empty pockets. Mind you the compound had been secured by one of us who as you would expect by now exploited his relationship with a friend to allow us hang around in his compound. Nevertheless we sat, luckily enough on some chairs that were out of use at the time. For us ‘the now’ didn't matter, what we looked at was the horizon beyond where we stood; the unforeseen future that we only hoped would present with it not what we feared but rather what we figured.

The faithfuls (I call them so because everything has been done by faith) who were gathered in the compound that evening were proud bearers of the Debate Society Uganda tag name. It wasn't a get-together to make merry but what you would term as an Annual General Meeting if you were to borrow the business lexicon.

It is here that we thought of having a high school debate championship organized and facilitated exclusively by Debate Society Uganda. Not that there had been an arid of debate championships before but what we intended to bring to the fore was a very well organized and highly competitive tournament that would still stand even if double checked against what we rate as the world's elite debate competitions. If you had asked me for an opinion then, I would have dismissed us as a group of youth who detest dreaming individually but choose to come together to share the sleep. I was wrong!

In two weeks time, we shall cross the newly constructed bridge in Jinja and descend on the Eastern region of this country to do what will be our second regional tournament after a successful one in the Northern region just a month or so ago. For those who have been following our social media pages, the pictures tell the story but for some of us who have been in the thick of things there is a bigger story which we would rather not tell.

The one moment I will never forget about this program was the conversation I had with our team leader after we had agreed on the dates for the respective regional tournaments. When I asked how we intended to raise the finances (a very huge budget it was) to run the tournaments, this was his response; “Patrick we have to find money in some way, in any way but whether or not we find it the program will still go on.” Unfortunately we didn’t raise the amount we needed but it didn’t stop us from going to Gulu. We shall hopefully be in Jinja the weekend after the next and hopefully to Mbarara in the sixth month of this year.

Our currency of operation has been faith and hope, they have refused to run out and we pray that the tank doesn’t empty soon, because we need them around for some time. It is Robin Sharma who says that when you are inspired by some great purpose, some extra ordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

The path we have chosen is one of laying foundations. We are committed to filling the foundation with stone, brick and poured concrete to ensure that it withstands the storms but should the ‘structure’ by any stroke of bad luck falter or waver, it will never be because of a weak foundation.

Blessed week ahead!