Mopping the New Cement Floor: New Life at COBAP Gym

It’s midday but the sky is overcast like it's still morning. The city well known for its morning rain had a shower in the night and the signs are visible but this however doesn't deter the activities being done. Up at COBAP gym on the Lubya Hill in Kampala city, you can hear the brooms scraping against the new cement floor.  The gym apart from being larger than the neighbouring houses doesn’t look different on the outside than the general housing in the area. For anybody who has stayed in Kampala, Lubya hill on this side, seems an anomaly because the unspoken rule in Kampala is that the rich take the hills and poor take the valleys. Here however, the opposite seems true and it speaks loudly in the way the houses appear and how the gym used to look

A few months back, the gym was a bare murram floor, with a stack of car tyres, in the corner, a dingy but wide room with a slanting roof that would quickly look dark even with the gaping holes in its walls. The club boxers would come in at intermittent times to train under the watchful eye of the head coach popularly called Coach Lora, a simplified name for his long one, Lawrence Kalyango.

The gym has its roots from a community organisation that was helping AIDS victims. An organization called The Community Based AIDS Programme(COBAP)  had operated here and sports was part of their activities they did in the community and the boxing sessions were done in the gym. However, the organization died but the boxing continued and the name stuck. 

There is momentary stillness as the sweeping has been completed but there is a desire to make the place sparkle much more than than the sweeping could do. The renovations in the place are quite evident. A new cement floor, a sitting area, window frames already put in place, some brand new brickwork where there used to be empty gaps and a fresh coat of paint on the inner walls and  office. Overhead, are bigger bulbs for better lighting.  This renovation breathes  life and a new sparkle  into a gym that was known for producing  talent from a ghetto. 

There is a lull in the sweeping, water has to be purchased to clean the floor, the gym is about to get its first scrub, before that water was purchased to spray on the dust in the room so that it wouldn’t rise up during trainings, this time however, water will be used to make the floor sparkle. And this means some discussion before that can happen.

Just below the gym on one side, is a home with a tank where they sell water to fill a 20 litre jerrycan at five hundred shillings but on the upper side there is a new person selling three 20 litre jerrycans at one thousand shillings. The decision of who to purchase from is not that difficult to make. Every coin matters, especially in a place like this. And it doesn’t end there, when the water is poured, a cloth is placed at the entrance of the gym so as not to allow the water to flow outside. The water that collects there is poured back into the basin and reused to scrub the unscrubbed portions of the floor.. 

Every boxer who arrives just joins without being told. This is a team that knows the value of  team work. In the hive of activity one can see Batte Nuhu, just the other day, on Boxing day, he retook the Ugandan welterweight belt again. There is Kimera Moses who also won the Flyweight 51 kg category. These are big achievements and highly lauded but on this day here at COBAP, it seems like it's business as usual. The pomp and hype is nowhere to be seen, it's back to work like nothing has happened. The water has to be poured back into the basins, the brooms have to be pressed firmly into the new floor because you can bet people here want it sparkling, ready for its opening. After that, the punching bags will be lifted up for training to start.  Everybody participates regardless of status, belts or  kilograms. One thing one can see is the watchful eyes of Coach Lora who paces like the way he does when he is training them or by the ringside as they put into practice what he taught them. He issues instructions and what he wants done and hum of work continues with the occasional joke, laughter or conversation that pops up. 

A distance away is Sanyu Roberts, the Uganda GFF manager who has been behind the renovations. You could detect a smile on his face as he looks at what is happening. He seemingly seems lost in his thoughts. One could even imagine he could be seeing the smiles of those who sponsored this amazing work. From a dusty, old gym to something remarkable like this that will still be changing the lives of those who had few options in life. You can already see it in the new spring in their steps and the smiles as the work continues in earnest.

When all this is done, the exercises will begin, the punchbags will face the full wrath of those scrubbing hands, this time clothed in boxing gloves and coach Lora will issue commands under the watchful gaze of the bigger, unblinking bulbs overhead. The past victories have never made anybody forget here that there are more victories ahead.