Africa! It had never been high on my list of places to go. The Alps, the Arctic and frozen wastes are more of a magnet for me. I knew it would be primitive and I’m not even a camper. The thought of trekking down a field to fetch water or take a shower, never appealed. So how come I opted for three weeks in Uganda?

Well, for the last ten years or so at St John’s Church, Ben Rhydding, we’ve had links with the Revival Life Centre in Matugga, a small town about 15 miles north of the capital Kampala.

Besides providing education for 450 primary children and 200 secondary students, Revival Life also provides home for 125 children, who have lost parents and who would otherwise have nowhere else to go. One of them, 19 year old Tendo Justine, had been staying with the Chappell family in Ilkley since their return from Matugga last April.

The Director of the Centre is Pastor Ivan Lugolobi. His wife Allen, is the headteacher. Each summer, Ivan visits Ilkley for two weeks and each year, as “school links officer” for St. John’s, I accompany him to Ben Rhydding Primary School and Moorfield, where the children are always fascinated to hear about the huge differences between their school and Ivan’s, and their lives and those of the orphans – his champions, as Ivan always refers to them.

Over the years then, I’d come to know quite a lot about the centre, how it operates and the conditions there. I could help the conversation along when we went into schools and suggest topics for the children to ask about – or prompt Ivan to talk about different aspects. But, somehow it all felt like being able to describe the view from the top of the London Eye or the Eiffel Tower without ever having been there. It was all so two-dimensional.

To make it three-dimensional, you have to breathe it, eat it, smell, taste, feel it, dig it out from under your finger nails and wash it out of your hair. Then you begin to get the fuller picture. For the last two or three years, I had actually toyed with the idea of going, but this year it just felt like a power greater than I was telling me to take the plunge and see it all for myself. So this year, I went.

And how did that fuller picture look? Briefly: totally different from anything I’d previously experienced.

There was no problem with big bugs and biting things, which, I admit, had seemed a real deterrent for me! It was never too hot, though occasionally humid, and despite regular short bursts of torrential downpours, running water is a scarce commodity. It’s a very strange feeling turning a tap on and finding nothing comes out. But then there was the jerry can and a big baby bath. Electricity is there, but it goes off randomly at any time, for any length of time.

Then there are the roads – or rather race tracks: no markings, road signs, speed limits or traffic lights. As a pedestrian you almost take your life in your hands trying to cross the road to school. Stuff whizzes through the main street of Matugga – which is also the main road from Kampala up to the Sudan – at anything up to whatever the vehicle can do.

There are boda bodas which are little motorbikes, as well as bigger ones, everywhere, with up to four people on board, including toddlers – all usually bare-headed.

Bikes are a bonus - push bikes, laden with everything from people to sacks of grain, bundles of sugar cane and jerry cans of water plus anything else you can think of. Otherwise, people walk carrying babes in bundles behind them, bowls, bananas, sacks, jerry cans on their heads.

In Kampala it’s even more crazy – with flocks of storks floating surrealy around in the sky, landing on what lamp-posts there are, and nesting in trees. The smell of diesel, paraffin and wood smoke hang forever in the air.

But the people are wonderful. Despite all they lack, they are cheerful, bright, friendly; I never heard a cross word. It felt safe.

At school everyone is so appreciative of the smallest thing, that you feel that by just being you’re doing some good. The children are wonderful. A class of 40, 50, 60? No problem. Students are attentive and keen to learn, perhaps aware that education is their pathway to the future. “But it’s our culture,” they will reply when you raise an eye-brow at certain customs, and after three weeks there I couldn’t help believing that it will have to be lots more educated women who will lift Africa into the present – women and a few enlightened men.

The whole experience then, was eye-opening, mind-boggling, life-enhancing. It all took a bit of getting used to. It also took a while to arrive back in Ilkley. Yes, physically all of me got off the plane at Leeds/Bradford, but things all seemed so different. As indeed they must have done for Tendo arriving here in April – and then, going home again in September.

And would I go back? Well, actually, I think I would. For further information contact Phil or Libby Chappell on 01943 430744 or e-mail:philchappell@blueyonder.co.uk or visit revivalcentrematugga.org.uk