Uganda Diary

The Long Road Home

2009-04-03T11:10:00.001-07:00

It is considered very bad form to show any kind of annoyance or anger in Uganda. This makes for a very pleasant environment both at work and out and about: everyone is courteous, patient and friendly and it is rare to hear anyone
lose their temper even under considerable provocation. This week, although I think of myself as quite a patient person, I feel I am enduring a kind of inward trial by culture; the English part of me feeling severely tested at times and the Ugandan influence trying desperately to keep the peace. Perhaps it is time I went home after all...

The power has been off for most of the week so I have spent five evenings in darkness, trying to keep myself occupied doing crosswords by flickering torchlight. On Friday morning it returns, but, the local radio says, it will be turned off again at 7pm. Desperate to get home in time to use my laptop and maybe even my hairdryer, I wait for the boda-boda after my day at the High School. Eventually it arrives, an hour and half late – but the driver (not Ham today as he is ill) is full of smiles and apologises so charmingly that I swallow my annoyance and decide to try to be more Ugandan than English. A few miles from home the fuel runs out. "I will be back very soon!" my driver – who only looks about fourteen and drives like a maniac – calls cheerfully as he heads off on foot towards the nearest village in search of petrol. Civil war is breaking out in my head. "This is Africa" I keep reminding myself. "These things happen..." Saturday beats all records for things running out: we lose first the gas as we are cooking supper, so we have to use the charcoal stove outside; then the electricity while we are eating, so we have to light candles; and finally, as we start the washing up, the water – for which there is no fall-back situation other than abandoning the dirty dishes. "We have a saying in England" I tell Justine and Novias " ...which goes 'You have to laugh or you'd cry' ". Fortunately we all laugh – all that is left to lose now is our sense of humour and we decide we had better hang on to that...

On Sunday it is Divine Grace's baptism and I have been told that the service will start at 8.00am as it will be a longer one than usual. As godmother I dare not be late so I set off bright and early for the half-hour walk to the church - only to find that at 7.45 no-one else there. "It's at 9.00, not 8.00!" Jenna greets me happily as she arrives a good deal later with her arms full of white-clad baby - and without much difficulty, since this is such a happy occasion, I manage to quell my unbending English sense of punctuality and revel in the wonderful African easy-going approach to life... The service is lovely, and the celebratory lunch afterwards a lively village event: sensibly, a 'thanksgiving' collection is taken after the service – in lieu of gifts, which don't really exist here - for everyone to contribute towards the cost. The Ugandan formula for entertaining is very straightforward: you ask all your friends to come and lend a hand and bring plates, and you always serve the same food, whatever the occasion – a wedding, a party, a school celebration or a funeral. There are several forms of carbohydrate – matoke, rice, potatoes, posho, millet pudding; a little stewed meat or chicken; ground nut sauce; and maybe a vegetable like dodo or cabbage. Dessert is always pineapple, eaten on the same plate as your first course. "The gravy gives it a good flavour!" as someone tells me enthusiastically. This formula has a lot to recommend it: you never have to think what to serve, there is no desperate flicking though recipe books for the perfect combination of dishes, and no frantic searching in the shops for triple-distilled verjuice, pomegranate chutney or whatever the latest culinary fashion is. As a guest you know exactly what you will be getting and can look forward to the dishes you particularly like. The cooking is straightforward and can't really be spoiled so even less confident cooks can manage it. On balance, maybe I am beginning to feel a bit more on the Ugandan than the English side of things today – sitting in the dappled sunshine under the banana trees with the hens clucking around my feet, the glass of freshly-squeezed passion fruit juice that I am drinking surely tastes better than any champagne ever could....

This has been my last week of teaching and so has been full of farewells and of touching gratitude and affection. It is just like retiring all over again! On Thursday there is a special lunch at the Primary School followed by a wonderful presentation of traditional dances and 'appreciation songs', as is the custom here: these are speeches set to music, in effect, and children take it in turn to sing a verse in between rousing choruses of thanks. To hear 'mosquito nets and textbooks' set to music is quite a novelty and 'our friends in England who have made us so healthy' is another oft-repeated line of song. In the inevitable speeches I am asked to please thank everyone on my return who has helped to improve things so much at the school: they now have an embryonic library, and books are (thanks to the ones you have sent) becoming part of their everyday lives, which is such a joy to behold. I have resolved to send regular 'book parcels' to both the primary and the high school and if any of you feel you could occasionally send one too it would help so much to build on what has been started. Life in the Nursery classes has been transformed by the toys they now have and love so much! I already have a lump in my throat before I arrive at the College for my final French session in the afternoon and the emotional 'au revoirs' from my lovely students with oft-repeated "Oh la la! Je suis desolée!" On Friday I make my last trip to the High School. It is as 'the mujungu on the motorbike' that I have become known around here and I know I will miss the friendly waves and greetings I get on the way quite as much as the beauty of the journey to the school – not forgetting, of course, the students themselves who I have so enjoyed teaching and for whom I now feel such a strong sense of responsibility and commitment. After lunch - and another touching farewell ceremony - I go on to Nyamarama School which has, courtesy of the Net-Book Appeal been given bunks and mosquito nets which today I am seeing in place for the first time. Again, I receive many expressions of grateful thanks on behalf of all of you who have helped to swell that appeal – and I can only echo these very touching sentiments which I wish you could have been be there to receive yourselves. On Sunday I will be flying – yes, a new small-aircraft service has just started to fly tourists between Kampala and nearby Kihihi so that they can get to Bwindi without the dreadful journey by road – to the capital to spend a few days with Hamlet working on the book. The school lorry is bringing all the boarders and staff from the primary school to the airstrip, about an hour's drive away, to see me off; most have never seen an aeroplane so this will be quite an outing for them – and quite a send-off for me!

Thank you for showing such interest and support for what I have been doing here and for your compassion and generosity towards these children, who endure so much hardship and suffering with such enormous resilience and cheerfulness. The time I have spent here has added not merely a whole new group of people to my life but a whole new dimension: I have learned more than I can ever put into words and will always be grateful to have had this extraordinarily rewarding experience. It has been absolutely wonderful to be able to give, because of your help, the staff and pupils some things that they need and want and to know that in small ways their lives have been improved. There is so much I could say to try to sum up my time here; but I am inclined to just leave the weekly diary and all the little incidents and observations that I have tried to capture to speak for themselves. I am sure that, if I possibly can, I will come back – after all, I have a baby godson to consider now, as well as a high school full of young people to champion and provide for....

The long evenings in darkness have given me plenty of opportunity to reflect on all that has happened over the last seven months, and also the time to listen to a lot of music. One track that I have grown particularly fond of is called 'Pearls' by Sade – a beautifully haunting song which starts "There is a woman in Somalia" – you may know it. Sitting in the dark listening to that and recalling some of the things that have happened here, I find my thoughts shaping themselves into a poem. Perhaps I have fallen victim to my own creative writing lessons! Picking up the little girl by the side of the road the other week was, I realise, a powerful metaphor for giving aid – and most especially for the transformational nature of sponsorship: so I have decided to end this, my final blog entry from Uganda, with the poem. It is dedicated to all the courageous children here; and to all of you, who have stretched out your hands to them so compassionately - and may, I hope, find it in your hearts to do so again and to help CHIFCOD to continue its marvellous work out here....

Waiting

There is a child
Fallen by the roadside
Crying in the dust
She is waiting
Waiting for a stranger
Who will help her to her feet
Wipe away her tears
And take her by the hand

There is a child
Scrabbling at his mother's grave
With a small hoe
He is waiting
Waiting for her to waken
And chase the howling shadows
From the eternal darkness
Of her absence

There is a child
Sleeping on the ground
She is dreaming
Dreaming of an angel
Who has wrapped her in a blanket
But she wakes shivering
To the cold dawn
Of a new day

There is an orphan
Yearning to be a doctor
Longing to save the lives
Of other children's parents
He is waiting
Waiting for a pencil
So that he may form the letters
That whisper his name

There is a small hand
Waiting to slip into yours
So that you two may walk together
Along the stony road
The power of your hand
Will shape her future
The imprint of her hand
Will mark your soul

High Hopes and Sweet Dreams

2009-03-29T02:51:00.001-07:00

With barely three weeks left here I find invitations flooding in: today I am to be Guest of Honour at the Great Lakes College morning service on Sunday and have then been invited to lunch with a member of staff from the Primary School. I am getting the hang of being a Guest of Honour now and have prepared a longish speech, which is what is expected, to deliver in the middle of the service. Unfortunately a torrential downpour of rain thunders down onto the tin roof of the chapel as I begin and I am very glad of all those years of taking assemblies with young children which have taught me how to project my voice above competing noises - though today's deluge gives a whole new meaning to the word 'deafening' and in the end we have to sing a few loud hymns until the worst is over and I can resume where I left off……

Three hours on – the average length of a service here – I am more than ready for lunch with Alistidia, who is married to another teacher and has a baby son. They live in a simple, bare little two-roomed house with no electricity (so they are happily indifferent to the fact that it is off yet again today) and despite their double income are clearly still poorly off. Teachers are not well-paid here and as both are fairly newly qualified they as yet earn very little. However, in true hospitable Ugandan style they serve up a hen in my honour, which here is the equivalent of a fatted calf and definitely a special-occasion treat: a chicken costs three times as much as a kilo of beef here, despite invariably being well into middle-age and very scrawny. Various neighbours appear as lunch is being served and soon there are eight of us and the baby squeezed into the tiny room, most on the floor although I have been allocated a chair – clearly I am G of H again. It is unclear whether the other visitors have actually been invited or simply smelled the food and decided not to miss out on a good meal: here no-one is turned away. Plates are shared and somehow we all manage to eat our fill . Having had so little meat recently – once a week at the most – even the scant three mouthfuls that my bony portion of chicken offers transport me into gastronomic heaven and I even find myself taking it in my hands to chew thoroughly in the manner of my fellow-diners - although I draw the line at noisily sucking the bones as they do. I am clearly not quite a Ugandan yet….

Later in the afternoon I set off to see Jenna, the school bursar. Jenna is in her forties and has one son, a teenager who boards at his senior school so is often away. She is, unusually for a woman here, divorced and financially independent. She supports several members of her family and her house seems always to be full of children and adults who are related to her in some way, a number of whom are living there either permanently or temporarily. Jenna has now added a baby to her household: not her own but her niece's - and therein hangs a tale. Last year, the brother of this girl died, aged only sixteen. He had complained of a pain in his thigh and was taken into hospital where nothing could be found wrong with him despite many tests. His condition deteriorated and he was eventually sent home where he died a few days later. Sadly, if a diagnosis cannot be made here the word 'witchcraft' is often whispered – the perfect let-out in a difficult case like this one. Perhaps because of this recent tragedy or perhaps just out of fear, his teenage sister, finding herself pregnant, told nobody. Uganda is very like the UK in the nineteen fifties: abstinence is strongly promoted, contraception is not available for teenagers and abortion is illegal. To have a baby out of wedlock is a disgrace: back-street abortions are common and there are many deaths resulting from these. Jenna's niece managed to hide her pregnancy from everyone and simply went into labour one day in January – having taken her 'O' levels the month before and done extremely well. Her mother, still mourning her dead son, was too shocked to cope with the situation. The girl herself wanted only to go back to school and showed no interest in the baby. So Jenna has semi-adopted the tiny boy and is cheerfully reconciled to the broken nights and the tiring routine of caring for a baby again. Both Jenna and Alistidia have nursemaids who live in, in both cases a girl from a very poor family who has dropped out of senior school and is glad of a job where she gets meals, somewhere to sleep and probably a tiny wage as well – certainly a better option than an early marriage. Most families, if they are a rung or two up the poverty ladder, employ a girl to help in the house and it is ironic that live-in help, an arrangement that in the UK is the preserve of the relatively wealthy, is here an accepted way of helping both one's own and another family. Jenna's baby is very, very small with perfect, delicate features. She is feeding him on cow's milk as powdered baby milk is too expensive but he looks none the worse for that. He is dressed all in pink today – a colour which here has absolutely no gender distinction at all – and she tells me that he is to be named Divine Grace as she thinks he has survived only by God's intervention and has perhaps even been sent to replace the dead brother. As we talk, she asks me if I would agree to be his godmother – and despite some misgivings, since I have never felt that I have carried out this role very well in the past, I feel I cannot possibly refuse - especially as I suddenly remember that today is Mothering Sunday. What better way could there be to celebrate the day, I ask myself as I walk home, than to acquire a god-child? The baptism is to be next Sunday – the date of a family Christening at home that I am sad to be missing, but will by this strange turn of events, be mirroring here in my African parallel universe….

Sadly, unbelievably, my second term here is drawing rapidly to a close and I have, of course, been giving a lot of thought to how I can carry on supporting CHIFCOD once I am back in England. I have been asked, and have gladly accepted, to join the board of trustees in the UK which will give me an ongoing involvement and responsibility for CHIFCOD affairs. However, I also feel I should like to play a specific role in the organization and have some clear goals to bring back with me. Dearly though I love the younger children, it is the High School that has affected me the most profoundly while I have been here. Having been so closely involved with its foundation I feel a special bond with it as an institution, and see how greatly it needs support in these early years of its existence. But far more than that, it is the pupils themselves who have impressed and touched me. They enter adolescence and adulthood already bowed under the heavy burden that poverty has laid upon them; yet they have such hopes for their future, as all young people must have – and, without support, so very little chance of achieving them. They work incredibly hard both at school and at home, and suffer the daily humiliations that being poor brings, with great dignity. Talking to some of them again this week I hear more stories of heart-rending hardship. One boy – a double orphan who lives with his 90 year old grandmother (surely a record age in Uganda!) – tells me, when I ask him how he pays for everyday essentials, that because he has no money for soap to wash his clothes he asks his school friends if he can use their water when they have finished their laundry. As a yardstick for measuring poverty it does not compete with starvation, but in terms of dignity and self-esteem surely washing your clothes in someone else's dirty water marks a very low point indeed – especially when you see the filthy brown soup that the dust turns it to here. This lovely, good-natured young man has no sponsor – the only person he has in the world is 'my helpless grand', as he refers to her, whose land he cultivates during the school holidays to earn enough to keep the pair of them and pay his school fees. "But my name means 'hope'" he finishes, smiling cheerfully….

Following last week's blog, and even before its existence has been announced, a first donation to the Orphan Fund has already been sent in: my two generous sisters have agreed that one will give the money to the other as a birthday present but that it will be sent directly to the fund, and I thank them for setting the ball rolling. However, quite a few other people have also said they would really like to help this group of children and it is therefore my intention, and indeed my commitment, to try to raise enough money each year to fund free places for all the orphans and destitute children in the school – currently about fifty. I hope it won't mean that I have to run the London Marathon – although it may yet come to that and I will do it if I have to…! However, there are children in the school who are almost as poor and as disadvantaged as the orphans themselves and I want to help them too. One way to ease their burden is to provide more of the essential items that they need for boarding, the most expensive of which are the foam mattress and the blanket – a requirement at all boarding schools in the country, whether government or private, and not just the High School. Another plan is to set up a hardship fund which can be administered by the wise and all-seeing Headmaster, John, so that children who urgently need essential items like shoes, soap, stationery, underwear and clothes, can be given them.

Today, therefore, I would like to announce the formation of an association called The Friends of Great Lakes High School whose aim is to support and champion the school both financially and in all sorts of practical ways too. Anyone may become a Friend by donating to any one of the following appeals – or indeed to more than one:

Sponsorship: This remains the single most effective way to support both the child and the school. Only about a third of High School pupils have sponsors and many orphans are still waiting desperately for one. £180 a year which can be paid as a monthly payment of £15, will pay for a child's educational costs and school lunch. Target: to find a further 100 sponsors for High School pupils. Can you help?

The Orphan and Hardship Fund: this fund is to provide free places for single or double orphans (and other destitute children) throughout their time at the High School. In the case of sponsored children this would mean covering all their boarding costs; and for the unsponsored, the whole of their school expenses. Some money each term would be put into a Hardship Fund to help any children in the school who cannot afford essential items. In the fullness of time I would like to set up a bursary fund to support orphans at university and college too.
Target: £5000 per year - ambitious, but I hope possible!

The Blank-Matt Appeal: £20 will buy a good foam mattress and a blanket for a child at the school. These would be school property and be passed to new pupils when others leave. Not having to buy them will be a tremendous support to poor families, and for the pupils who have no blanket, and some no mattress, a huge blessing and comfort. What better gift could there be than to give a child a good night's sleep? Target: 200 'Blank-Matt' donors: also ambitious – but if every blog-reader did it……

Willing to Help?: If, like me, you know that your will needs updating, please, please consider making a bequest to VolunteerUganda. In this way you can truly become a guardian angel and leave a tangible gift behind that will hugely benefit the poor of Uganda.

Although I do not return to the UK until mid-April, next week will be the last episode of the blog as I know my final few days will be incredibly busy. I hope that many of you, having been my travelling companions and shared this voyage of discovery with me over the last seven months, will now consider continuing that bond by becoming a Friend of Great Lakes High School too. I cannot tell you how much the support you have already given – in the form of sponsorship, providing mosquito nets and text books, making generous donations, sending story books – has meant to the children here, and to the adults in their lives too. You would be amazed, and deeply moved, to see the effect that this kind of giving has on another human being. I have felt so very fortunate to have been the channel for your generosity. It has made me realize that apathy and indifference are amongst the greatest of human sins: and that the parable of the Good Samaritan – which you have exemplified so strongly – is perhaps the most powerful story in the history of mankind….

I have set my hopes high, I know, in launching this ambitious appeal. You have given so much already – but if you can give just a little more, how wonderful that would be. For that young man whose Rukiiga name, Twinamatsiko, does indeed mean 'hope', I dearly wish that, with your help, I can find a way of giving him and many others a warm bed, a secure future at school – and some soap…

Cheques, made out to VolunteerUganda, can be sent to: Dr Karen Sennett,23 Langbourne Avenue, Highgate N6

To sponsor a child please go to www.volunteeruganda.org and follow the link to the High School

Credit card donations may be made via the High School link on the website. As most people donate money in whole pounds, adding 50p to the total will indicate that it is to go to the Orphan Appeal, and by adding 20p that it is for the Blank-Matt Appeal.

News of the High School and regular progress reports about the appeal and other matters will appear on the website from now on so please check it regularly!

You may also email me if you would like to become a "Friend" at: juliachallender@gmail.com so that I can send email reports to you. Email addresses will be treated confidentially and will not appear as a list when group emails are sent.

Thank you so much for your wonderful support – the photos show a group of orphans at the High School, my new godchild, and the boy with no soap...

Power Struggle

2009-03-21T08:57:00.001-07:00

The weekend starts inauspiciously: there is no electricity on Saturday morning and Justine has heard on the local radio that it will not be reconnected until Monday. Little do I know that it will, in fact, be off for most of the coming week and that I shall spend several long evenings in total darkness listening gratefully to podcasts….
This is a blow as I have earmarked Saturday to work all day on the book, and my laptop's battery has all but run out. Determined not to be thwarted I hit on a plan: I will walk up to Kanungu and take my laptop to a small shop that does a steady trade in charging up mobile phones: they have a generator so should be able to recharge the battery. As I set off I get a phone call to say that Sunday's projected trip to Lake Bunyoni, a local beauty spot, has been postponed for a second time due to car problems. Trailing up the hill in the heat I feel a bit disgruntled at these unscheduled changes to my weekend plans - but suddenly I hear a clear child's voice singing the hymn "This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it" so loudly and happily that I cannot resist peering through the hedge – where I see a small boy pushing a huge wheelbarrow full of stones up a steep path, singing his heart out. If he can be so cheerful with all that he has to contend with, then surely I can be too: I carry on with my journey with a renewed spring in my step feeling chastened, as I so often do, by children's uncomplaining stoicism and good humour here…

On Sunday Internet Emily has invited me to visit her parents' home which, she assures me, is not far from Kanungu – but distance, like time, is a pretty elastic concept here. They are peasant farmers and very poor so we set off with a bag full of provisions - rice, tinned milk, millet flour, tea - to supplement the vegetables they grow. We travel by boda-boda; Emily assures me that we can both fit onto one motor-bike to save the expense of taking two – a good idea in theory but, as she is amply built, quite a challenge, especially going up hills (for the motor bike's engine) and down hills (for me, as I feel like the filling in the middle of a sandwich being firmly compressed between two pieces of unyielding bread). It is far from comfortable so I am relieved when, about forty minutes or so out of the village, the motor-bike turns off the road and down a stony track, eventually coming to a halt at a dead end by a little outcrop of houses. "Now we are footing" says Emily cheerfully, and 'foot' we do, for a good hour; uphill and down, through dense green banana plantations, past fields of groundnuts and beans, the track becoming first a narrow path and then no more than a barely discernible line through grassy undergrowth. The mud houses nestling deep in the plantations become fewer and there is a growing sense of isolation as we head further and deeper into the rolling countryside. We pass some families - immaculately dressed, even here, in frilly white dresses and pressed-Sunday-best – on their way to a tiny corrugated-iron roofed church on top of a hill, who all greet Emily warmly but stare at me with undisguised curiosity. White people do not often venture this far off the road, clearly….

"We are close!" Emily says at regular intervals – and finally we really are and she points to her parents' house, its rusty tin roof a landmark red amidst the pervasive green of the landscape. The extreme simplicity of the house (built by her father and brothers), with its stone and mud walls and earth floors is set off by immaculately cared-for grass borders and exotic flowering shrubs bearing gorgeous tropical blooms that grow wild here but would cost a small fortune in florists at home. Her parents are delightfully welcoming and hospitable and despite the language barrier we get on famously. Both in their fifties now, with their five children either grown up or nearly so, their smallholding is clearly becoming something of a burden to them now: the land is all steeply sloping and arduous to maintain, and water has to be fetched from a stream in the valley below their house as there are no taps nearby, involving a steep climb back to the house with the heavy jerry cans. Nevertheless, as Emily takes me round it feels like the Garden of Eden: giant avocado trees shade us as we walk, their branches laden with shiny fruits; great bunches of bananas cluster above our heads; pendulous jackfruit and purple passion fruit dangle provocatively before us, and pineapples thrust their thorny crowns from clumps of foliage. Neatly thatched bee hives are lined up beneath the trees and baby goats gambol through the thickets of sugar cane. There are orderly terraced rows of sweet potatoes and ground-nuts, dodo and beans: all this is managed alone by Emily's father. The prices they get for these crops are, he says, very low and so he cannot afford to employ anyone to help him; but so far from any road, transporting the produce to market must be gruelling in the extreme for him. We eat a simple lunch of rice, dodo greens and eggplants, the small holes that pepper the tin roof creating a lacy pattern of sunlight in the dark, bare room in which we sit. When it rains, they tell me, the water pours in through the rust-holes drenching their bedding and few possessions; but the cost of replacing the metal sheets is far beyond their means and for now, at least, they must make do with strategically-placed bowls to catch the worst of the water. I wonder what happens to anyone who falls ill or has an accident - or a baby - such a long way from vehicular access and Emily says that people simply have to be carried on stretchers, whatever the distance, to the nearest road – and some must presumably die before they reach help. Laden with bags of avocados and pineapples we make our way back late in the afternoon and wait for the boda-boda, wondering how we will manage with our cargo of fruit to somehow accommodate as well as the two of us. A grizzled-looking man with most of his teeth missing comes up to talk to us as we wait and tells me proudly that he has two wives and twenty-three children . "I have one house up there" – he points to a building near the top of a hill "..and one down here" – he points to another house in the valley not far from where we are sitting. "My life is up and down, up and down!" he says, waving his hands from valley to hilltop – and with that number of children one can only imagine that it is more down than up most of the time….

On Tuesday I go to the High School with Livingstone, who is the communications officer for CHIFCOD. We travel on his bright red motor-bike, a new acquisition of which he is inordinately proud, in a very Toad-of-Toad-Hall-ish sort of way. We go along at a fair old lick with frequent soundings of the horn and revvings of the engine. Will today be the day I fall off for the first time, I wonder, as we skid, lurch and bounce over the stony road…? But no, we make it to the High School unscathed and in record time for the day's work – not teaching, for a change, but interviewing pupils to find out more about their home backgrounds and to see how they are settling into the school. Today we are talking to those who are either single orphans (whose father has died but mother is still alive) or double. Some have lost their fathers to AIDS and I have learned to expect the answer many give when I ask "How is your mother's health?". "She is often ill" they say or "She is now weak" – and I know that before long they too will probably have become double orphans. In communities that are already poor, these pupils tell of pitiful poverty: one boy has no blanket to bring to school as his has been eaten by the rats that infest the room that he shares with his three brothers. Another boy's mother remarried when his father died and left him with his grandmother, who has ten other children to look after – and he has never seen her since. Many have no shoes, and no clothes other than their school uniform. Several have no blanket and just sleep under a sheet – even though it gets cold here at night. One of the best pupils in my English class, a bright, talented boy of seventeen, is a double orphan who, together with his brother, has lived with his 80 year old grandfather - who fought in Amin's army - since he was a young child. He has a pair of shoes, he tells me matter-of-factly, but took them to be mended some time ago as they had holes in them - and he has never had enough money to collect them. He recently went to give blood after a local appeal for donors and was discovered through the screening test to have hepatitis B; but no-one in the family has the money to pay for treatment. He wants to be an accountant and as he is extremely able he could easily achieve his ambition – that is, if he can get over his health problems, and if there will be anyone to help him pay the fees when the time comes: his grandfather is in poor health even now. He is an exceptionally nice young man, so diligent, quietly-spoken and uncomplaining. I have of course given him the money to collect his shoes – but if only I could do more for him, particularly to improve his health. Without exception these pupils say they prefer being at school to being at home: not because they don't love their families but because at school they are well fed (even the relentless twice-a-day beans and posho is a great deal better than their normal diet), can read and study in the evening because there is a light, can enjoy the companionship of their friends, and are not worn out by the relentless list of tasks they must carry out at home from morning till night – digging, growing crops, grazing animals, cleaning, cooking, fetching water and wood. One boy shows me the deep scars on his hands from digging; and more than one girl says that if she has to drop out of school because of difficulty with fees, as an orphan she will be forced to marry so that the 'bride price' can be used to feed the rest of the family – in effect sold into marriage. It is a strange irony that although the age of consent here is eighteen, girls can get married much younger and it is not uncommon for them to do so at fourteen and to have their first child soon after. Several of the pupils, girls and boys, say they want to be doctors 'so that I can save lives', and are working hard at science subjects in order to get the grades they need for university. But who, I wonder, will help them and pay for them to study if even the small amount they have to find to attend the High School is proving such a challenge? When I ask them if they have any problems each and every one says "I worry about the school fees" and indeed, several have to earn these themselves by growing crops, making and selling mats or by other means. How many children in the UK even give their school fees a second thought, I wonder? I come away determined to find a way to supply free places for orphans at the High School, and also to start a hardship fund for children who have no shoes, clothes, blankets or other essentials. In the entire day I have not heard a note of self-pity, nor a complaint, nor a hint of resentment about the bleakness of their lives. They love the school, their teachers and their headmaster and they are all so happy, and feel so lucky, to be there. I travel back in a sombre mood, deeply touched by the stories I have heard and by the sheer fortitude, and the desperation, of the young people who have told them. There must be a way of helping them further…..

As I hurry down the road from the Primary School to the College on Thursday afternoon for French with the Tourism students, I feel a little hand slip into mine. This is my friend Mary, a poorly-dressed scrap of a girl whom I picked up out of the road a few weeks ago where she had been abandoned by the group of schoolchildren she was with after she had fallen over. It is very rare to hear a child crying here and her pitiful wails prompted me to run back and help her up, dust her down and deliver her back to her companions. Since then she has treated me with a kind of proprietorial affection, regarding my hand as hers to hold by right whenever we happen to walk down the road at the same time and pushing away any contenders. We have strange little conversations, she talking in Rukiiga and me in English, neither understanding a word of what the other is saying, but both enjoying a sense of comfortable companionship and I marvelling at that mysterious, unquestioning trust that children place in adults. At the College gate we part company with lots of waves and I brace myself for the two hours of French that lie ahead. How exciting it is to teach a language! I almost weep with joy as the students come in today greeting me with 'Bonjour Madame, comment allez-vous aujourd-hui?' and later manage to translate, almost unaided, the sentence 'I eat fish but I don't eat meat'. What progress! Best of all is their love of singing: 'Frere Jacques' African-style, sung as a round but with much clapping to liven it up, is a very far cry from the sedate, rather plodding version I grew up with. They beg for more songs so this week we try 'Savez vous plantez les choux?' – perfect for a group of students for whom planting cabbages is second nature and for whom a hoe, 'une houe', is part of their daily life - and which from the point of view of Ugandanising the song, so conveniently rhymes with 'choux'…. Magnifique!

Skirting the Issue

2009-03-15T07:51:00.001-07:00

Today is Saturday and I have a social engagement: I have been invited to visit Internet Emily's new residence. I should really say 'ex-Internet Emily' as she now has a new job: since developing her eye problems before Christmas she has had to give up computer work and now works for the Diocesan AIDS team, an interesting-sounding job which I am looking forward to hearing about. The Diocese has also found her accommodation, a room in the Mother's Union Training Centre which is where I am going to visit her today.

The Training Centre has only been open for a couple of years. It was paid for by a branch of the Mother's Union from - I think - Manchester, and is a praiseworthy venture. Women from local villages come here for three-month periods to train for one of three skills: tailoring, machine knitting or secretarial services. The workshops, complete with treadle sewing machines, knitting machines and office machinery are built around a courtyard where there is a dormitory, a shared 'kitchen' - in effect a storage area with a place for a fire - and a bathroom. Emily takes me proudly to her little home: as with most houses here, it consists of one room with an area curtained off for sleeping. Apart from her bed, the only other furniture is a chair: clothes are kept in a suitcase, a Ugandan custom observed even in quite well-to-do homes. People here have very few possessions and they give the impression that if the entire village had to move out they could all be packed up and on their way in ten minutes. Perhaps a trace of their nomadic spirit still lingers….
Over a glass of mango juice, which I guiltily realize is an extravagence in my honour (her work is very humbly paid), Emily tells me about her new job. The AIDS team is at the moment working in local schools to train selected volunteer students to be peer counsellors. Their brief is to encourage everyone to be tested for HIV AIDS so that they know their status and can be treated and given lifestyle advice if HIV positive. The biggest obstacle to progress at the moment is a widespread reluctance, amongst all age-groups, to be tested: even if both parents have died of AIDS teenage children will sometimes resist being tested, preferring to live in ostrich-like ignorance of the truth to having to face the consequences of it; and Emily's team is hoping to encourage much greater participation in the testing programme. Once all local schools have been visited, the team will go deeper into rural areas to find families where the children do not go to school, and offer testing and counselling. Another problem in the fight against the disease is that because anti-retrovirals mask the symptoms people increasingly do not admit their positive status, and there is a fear that the incidence is rising far more rapidly than the official statistics imply. Emily is clearly enjoying her new role; sadly her successor in the 'internet place' does not show her devotion to duty and the shop is more often closed than open. I have had to find a new venue for my emailing and now trudge up to Kanungu two or three times a week after work to my new internet friend Denis's establishment. This is a much more ambitious enterprise with several computers and a printer. The computers are ancient and look from their security marking as if they might have originated in some university department in the UK; but they work - most of the time, at least - and with a bit of a struggle will sometimes even let me post photos to the blog....

On Sunday I give myself the luxury of a lie-in and attend the 10.00 o'clock service at the church, which is all in the vernacular – the English service being at 8.30am and requiring an early start. Most of the villagers attend this Rukiiga service so the church is packed, and today the Kirima Primary School pupils are there as well. Sufficient, the little girl who is sitting next to me, has a nasty cold and blows her nose frequently and copiously throughout the first part of the service, using the skirt of her dress as a handkerchief. I pass her a new, neatly-folded tissue after the first bout of nose-blowing but she politely declines to use it, placing it carefully on the shelf in front of her then later putting it (mercifully still unused) into the collection basket – clearly preferring to continue using the method she knows best; which she does, frequently. During the sermon she snuggles up to me affectionately. As her skirt meets mine I sit very still and try to think holy and forgiving thoughts – and feel very relieved that I chose to put on something highly patterned and extremely colourful this morning….

I cannot, of course, understand anything more than the occasional word of the service but it is worth going just for the glorious singing – and for the spectacle of the collection. All sorts of things go into the collection baskets besides my tissue – small sweets, vegetables, bags of beans, pencils, bananas, a live hen (which I have followed up the road on the way here tucked under a girl's arm) – as well as a small amount of money. For most of the congregation giving in kind is their only option; but the spirit in which they give is nothing short of extraordinary - to call it enthusiastic fails to do it justice by a long mark. To the accompaniment of animated singing a representative from each part of the village takes it in turn to stand at the front of the church with a basket and one by one the groups of villagers, young and old alike, literally dance up the aisle to give their donations – then remain in front of the altar where they all dance, clap, sing and whoop for a few minutes before dancing back to their places to let the next group follow the same procedure. The drumming gets louder, the dancing more frenetic and then an old lady appears with a traditional painted shield and a spear and proceeds to parade around the church goading the congregation into presenting their offerings with prods from her weapon and loud cackles – a symbolic reminder, I suppose, of their tribal obligations. For twenty or so minutes the drumming and singing grow more insistent and urgent, the dancing wilder, and in the mounting excitement, exhilaration and fervour I wonder if at any moment they are all going to pour out of the church and declare war on the neighbouring village - but suddenly it is over. Silence falls; and moments later Holy Communion is celebrated with unimpeachable high church dignity accompanied by restrained, hushed choral singing of such beauty that tears fill my eyes. It is the most extraordinary, baffling juxtaposition of reserved Anglican ecclesiastical ritual and uninhibited African tribal spirit – and I find it very moving. Trussy, who is sitting on my other side, senses my seriousness and taking my hand starts to do 'Round and round the garden like a teddy bear,' – which I have taught the little ones – to bring me back down to earth, or at least to giving her a bit of attention. Soon we are all streaming out into the sunshine; three hours have passed if not quite in a flash then certainly in a mesmerising haze of surreal fascination and now it's time to go home to do some serious alfresco laundry: sheets, towels, and - most especially - highly-patterned skirts…

Although in theory the new wet season has begun there has been no rain for nearly a fortnight. A haze of red dust hangs in the air above the road and each time a vehicle passes a violent cloud of it is thrown up from the dry gritty surface, shrouding any unfortunate pedestrian in its wake in a choking miasma. Clothes, shoes, hair, ears, eyelashes have all acquired a powdery patina of rusty grime which no amount of washing seems to completely remove. Along the roadside the drooping vegetation coated thickly in brown dirt gives the appearance of an alien autumn having arrived; while in the fields the young crops, desperate for moisture, are beginning to wither and die…. Appearing like a genie out of the swirling red mist a motor-cycle stops beside me on Tuesday and to my surprise I see it is ridden by a white man of about my age.As he introduces himself I immediately realize who he is, Hamlet having talked about him several times. He is an American doctor who has set up a mission hospital at Bwindi, where the 'Impenetrable Forest' is home to some of the last-surviving gorillas in the world. Bwindi – about an hour's drive from here – is an area of Uganda that receives many tourists most of whom come to see the gorillas - the price of the 'gorilla pass', $500, acting as an effective means of controlling the numbers. But it is not for the tourists that Scott and his wife have set up the hospital: their work is with the Batwa Pygmies who live in the area. Until about 2000 years ago it is thought that eastern and southern Africa was largely populated by the Batwa people, who are semi-nomadic forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers (what a lot of hyphens!). Their numbers having dwindled to a few thousand by the 1930s, most were living in the Impenetrable Forest until it was gazetted by the then colonial government to preserve the last tracts of dense forest left in the country and to protect the gorillas. The Batwa were evicted from their communally-owned forest lands and have ever since struggled to re-establish themselves, facing discrimination, hostility and ridicule. Their small size (rarely growing beyond 1.5 metres) and lighter skin colour, coupled with their non-agricultural life-style, have set them apart from the communities in which they are now forced to live and the remaining two thousand or so of these ancient inhabitants of the country live a life of persecution and hardship, unable to make a living in their traditional ways and ostracized by their neighbours. Scott and his wife are, he tells me, soon returning to America so are only here for a few more weeks after eight years in the country supporting the Batwa. "We never intended to stay this long – maybe you'll do the same!" he laughs as he rides off, disappearing as if by magic in a puff of red smoke….

By strange coincidence, his words echo those that I have written only moments before meeting him in an email to a friend: I am indeed beginning to feel that, were it not for other considerations, I could quite happily carry on living and working here for much longer – years, maybe. As a teacher there are endless ways in which I could make myself useful and, having now grown accustomed to the system here I feel much more confident about how to subtly and gently influence the way things are done to make learning more interesting and accessible for the children. For example, with the aid of a kit put together for me by the learning support teacher at Highgate Pre-Prep, Janet Mills, I have started 'extra help' sessions in the lunch hour at the Primary School. My 'small group' of pupils who need help with literacy skills consists of twenty-five children sent along by their teachers– and that is after I have shown the door to all the others who have decided they don't want to miss out on something new even though they are perfectly good readers. With such a large number I can do little on an individual basis but hopefully 'Jolly Phonics' will work its wonders and give them all a bit more confidence… I am aware, too, even more keenly than I was before, of how adaptable we all are as humans and how surprisingly quickly - relatively speaking - we adjust to new environments. I no longer have the sense of shock that living amidst such poverty initially gave me – and while by no means immune to the daily struggle of peoples' lives here, I feel I now have a far better understanding of the context that determines and delineates their existence. On a personal level, and without intending in any way to romanticise poverty, there is something very appealing about living an extremely simple life and turning one's back – if only briefly - on the hedonistic consumerism of the developed world. And, having escaped the worst of the British winter this year, the thought of living somewhere perpetually warm is very attractive indeed….

As I walk down the road today to buy some 'Irish' – the Ugandan name for ordinary as opposed to sweet potatoes, which are now in season – I meet Annah, the head of the education department at the College. "We have a new intake of students" she says enthusiastically. "Can you lecture the teaching diploma students for us, starting next week?" I explain that I will be returning to England quite soon and that it really won't be worth my starting a course for such a short time. "Never mind!" she says cheerfully. "We can delay the start of that course until you return from your holiday." "But…." I begin – and then stop. Oh dear – maybe this is why people stay for eight years: it's just too difficult to say goodbye....

Census Sensibility

2009-03-07T01:47:00.001-08:00

Hamlet and Kellen have had to return to Kampala. As they leave Hamlet asks me if I would mind deputising for him as Guest of Honour at the High School's Award of Offices ceremony on Sunday. The outgoing school captains and monitors are to be awarded certificates of achievement and the new officers officially sworn in: these things are taken very seriously here and elections have been held after vigorous campaigning by the candidates, with full democratic process observed. There is a long list of offices which in addition to the usual leadership posts offer such opportunities as health monitor, food monitor and time-keeping monitor – the latter possibly the most challenging that any Ugandan organization could offer….

I should know better than to arrive at the stated start time, 9.30am – but as Guest of Honour I feel that I must set a good example and be punctual. I am delighted to be making the 'heavenly journey' for a second time this week; by now I know the route well and have given my own pet names to familiar landmarks - Rwanda Viewpoint, Morning Glory Corner, Blossom Boulevard, Bird-swoop Avenue, Frog-croak Hollow, Pot-hole pass – and despite the heavy overnight rain, Ham gets me to the High School unmuddied and relatively shevelled - if that is the opposite of dishevelled. I am met by a relaxed air of general unreadiness and the secretary in curlers. Hair curlers, usually large straightening rollers, are tantamount to a fashion accessory here – women shop in them, walk round the village in them and even sit down to dinner in them. Perhaps they are part of her outfit today rather than a sign of tardiness, I speculate to myself? Certainly everyone has dressed up for the occasion in no uncertain terms, with the deputy head, a very attractive lady at any time, in an outfit that would not have been out of place at the Oscar ceremonies, complete with a pair of glamorous silver stilettos. Even in the smartest clothes I can muster and my boldest accessories I feel distinctly under-dressed, and definitely under-pressed: the hot-charcoal iron rules supreme here and men's shirts and trousers, however decrepit, have creases so sharp that you fear for your safety…

The ceremony starts a couple of hours late but even then the secretary's curlers are still in place and the invited local dignitaries have not arrived: it turns out later that, due to some typing oversight, their invitations stated 1.00pm as the starting time – so they turn up at 2.00pm, just in time for lunch. A long service with lots of wonderful African-style singing and dancing and a fifty-minute sermon poignantly reminding the congregation about Lent and the virtues of hunger and self-denial, moves seamlessly into the ceremony itself and, of course, many speeches, hand-shakes and exhortations. Each monitor is sworn in, bible in hand, with a degree of seriousness that would not have been amiss at Barack Obama's inauguration and, in thanks for their service, the outgoing officials are given the Ugandan equivalent of the silver trophies or shields we are used to: a humble plastic plate or a glass beaker each. When the turn comes for me to make my speech, I experience an unexpected stirring of emotion. Seeing this hall full of young people already so proud and committed to their school, a Headmaster so passionate about the success of it, a staff so determined to achieve the best by their pupils, and knowing that it has been created almost entirely by the efforts of Highgate School pupils and parents is very moving – all the more so when, as a local man reminds me later, he can remember this site being the stamping ground of elephants and buffalo, it having been reclaimed from the Queen Elizabeth National Park less than fifty years ago. The Headmaster in his speech reminds everyone that "even tiny Nursery children worked to raise the money to build this school": it is such a marvellous achievement, and seeing the new buildings going up around the campus – thanks to further generosity by parents – hugely uplifting. The Headmaster announces that, in order to give very poor local children the opportunity to attend the school, a number of day-places will be offered at a very low cost – the local radio has just broadcast this news so more new pupils should soon be arriving – and this is a wonderful development. I am thrilled to see that my new 'sponsor daughter' Asanasi, despite only having arrived ten days ago, has already made such an impression that she has been elected as a class monitor. She looks so happy when I see her! Ronald, the other recent arrival has also settled in well –and now has a sponsor, I am delighted to report. The Headmaster introduces me to another newcomer, a girl. "This is Happy" he says – and proceeds to tell me of a life anything but happy which has led her - both her parents having died – to simply turn up alone at the school last week, miles from her home town, and ask for a place. She has no-one to speak for her and has brought nothing with her. Another girl has offered to share her bunk with her as she has no mattress; so the two teenage girls sleep head to toe together for the time being, and someone has lent her a uniform. I promise to bring the money for her mattress and other items with me on Friday; and I say that I am sure that I can find her a sponsor. Is there someone reading this who might help this girl – who shows every sign of being a determined, brave individual? Double orphans are a heavy burden on already impoverished families and it would seem that she simply has no-one to care for her…

Many thanks are expressed during the morning to "our friends in England" – especially for the new text books that have now transformed the library from one tiny cupboard to a whole shelved room with labelled subject sections. Wonderful! The Headmaster also publicly thanks the senders of book parcels from the UK for the school: a few have arrived and have been so much appreciated. "We want to promote a reading culture in this school" he says. The students urgently need more fiction books to read, though – the handful that they have just aren't enough to go round. Could I make a plea for more parcels containing a few paperbacks – any good 'young adult' stories, simple classics or adventure stories – from charity shops or your own bookshelves? One boy has especially requested Shakespeare plays! Many books have arrived for the primary school, which is marvellous – but few for the older pupils. The address is Great Lakes High School, PO Box 50, Kanungu, W.Uganda. A hundred parcels each containing two or three books would fill those yawning library shelves – and so much enrich the lives of the pupils. I should not keep asking, when people have already been so generous, for more - but if you could see the desperation for resources you would hopefully not mind my begging for just a bit more help….

I have started the book about CHIFCOD that I am writing with Hamlet and it is proving to be a fascinating and absorbing story to document. What began with three families starting a little Nursery school for their six children in a tiny mud village house fourteen years ago has grown into an organization running four primary schools, a high school and a college as well as reaching deep into the communities in which these institutions function to support families in all sorts of non-educational ways. For example in 2004 CHIFCOD (which stands for Child to Family Community Development), with the support of a Lottery grant, brought fourteen tap-stands to the village supplying 40,000 people with water. This grant also paid for a village ambulance to be purchased and a three-year health education programme set up to raise awareness of disease prevention, safe sanitation and domestic hygiene. CHIFCOD has also set up village banks, a micro-finance company to fund small businesses, a grinding facility where villagers can bring their grain to be milled and all sorts of other projects. All of this has been achieved through the determination, vision and energy of Hamlet Mbabaze: it is at once the story of one man and yet also that of the many people who have enabled him to achieve that dream for his community – and still do so today. CHIFCOD is supported by groups from America and Germany as well as several different parts the UK; wherever Hamlet goes, it would seem, he inspires those that he meets to become a part of his unquenchable ambition to improve the lives of the children and their families in his homeland. Gradually I am piecing together the complex picture of how and why the different schools came into being. Each one is supported by a different group of people: Nyamarama School was built largely through American supporters whom Hamlet met when studying there, while Rutenga school was created with funding from a German church that he once visited. Members of St Michael's Church, Highgate formed the Friends of Kirima organization which helped build and expand Kirima School; and the High School was, of course, created with money raised by Highgate School. Other churches and schools– in Hull, Kent, Guilford and London – are also affiliated to the organization, as is the Rotary foundation: many, many people worldwide have contributed to this community transformation – even more now, through the blog - and though most will never see for themselves what has been achieved they have all played a part in its remarkable story. With so much in the world to disappoint our opinion of humanity, a story like this speaks of the best of it: a worldwide reaching out to those in need with no expectation of gratitude or recognition, done simply in a spirit of compassion and trust. I feel privileged to be one of the few people to witness first-hand the reward of so much generosity - in time as well as money – and of such sheer human goodness….

As part of my background research I trek up the hill to Kanungu one hot afternoon to visit the government offices, hoping to get some statistical information about the district. After allaying some initial suspicion about my request –after all, why should a mujungu be snooping around asking for information about the local population? – I am eventually entrusted with the 2002 census return. It makes fascinating reading: I learn that only 4% of the population in Kanungu district live in housing deemed to be made from 'permanent materials', 80% depend on subsistence farming for their livelihood and 99% use firewood or charcoal for cooking. Only 4% of the population are over 60 – which means that if I were Ugandan I would be one of the lucky few of my age still alive, a sobering thought. The statistics on literacy are a damning indictment of the system: 29% of those who have attended school are illiterate - compared with only 23% of those who never attended school! The statistics about poverty are equally grim; only 28% of children have a blanket and 37% of the population own a pair of shoes. Less than 2% own all the household items deemed essential for basic welfare and 37% own none on the list. Of course, this information is several years old now; but from anecdotal evidence little has changed. For most, life is a daily struggle to survive….

Marking P7's English homework has given some light relief from statistics and French verbs, however. We have been learning about nouns with gender differences and as usual there have been some inventive variations on the language as we know it. It makes a lot of sense, I feel, to call the masculine version of a Duchess 'a Dutch'; and a 'gandress' would seem sensible to team up with a gander. I'm not sure that a female heir, however, would want to be known as 'hairless'; but, far worse, pity the poor counterpart of a bachelor – who, one child writes, is called a 'sphincter'. An open-and-shut case for getting married, I'd say….

Strange Antics

2009-02-27T22:40:00.001-08:00

Great Lakes High School is in a magnificent setting: built on a slope, with sweeping views in all directions, the land surrounding it is dotted with giant ant-hills – some as much as seven or eight feet high – which give a strangely lunar effect to the landscape. The ants who have created these mighty edifices are large (by ant standards, at least) and reddish-brown, and during the rainy season they are at their busiest, often to be seen in their orderly, military-like columns swarming across the school campus searching for new territories to conquer. As I arrive at the school on Friday I do not notice a whole battalion of the creatures busily amassing around my feet as I chat to a member of staff and within seconds they have scaled the dizzy heights of my legs and burrowed under my clothes. Instantaneously my entire body feels as if it is on fire: it is as if a thousand tiny red-hot needles have punctured my skin giving a sensation that is neither itching nor pain but can best be described as excrutiating physical distress. The school secretary who clearly knows these creatures well, calmly tells me that I must remove all my clothes immediately, and, shepherding me into a half-finished cloakroom with no door, hands me a dust-sheet to hide behind and leaves me to it. Modesty and caution take second place to desperation: I tear my clothes off frantically as the burning, stinging sensation reaches a pitch of unbearable ferocity – and then knock, pick and bludgeon the attackers off my skin. What felt like a thousand of them turns out to be a mere couple of dozen, but a few have taken refuge in my hair and continue their torment until – having hastily re-dressed – I seek the secretary again who expertly picks them out one by one. Miraculously, and as suddenly as it struck, the agony is over, and I go off to my first lesson a trifle dishevelled but none the worse for this startling prelude to the working day. I pick my steps very carefully for the next few hours….

There is a new girl at the High School. The previous week, when we arrive at Nyakabungo School for the 'grand toilet opening', we see an elderly man and his daughter waiting at the school entrance. Having heard that Hamlet is visiting that day, the father has brought his daughter along to plead for a place at the High School: she has missed the required grade for entry to the school by a few marks, but he is convinced that she is a bright girl and will do well if given the chance. They have dressed in their best clothes, he in a threadbare suit and shirt, tie and hat; and she in a clean, shabby dress. There is something about their determination and dignity that I find very touching. Perhaps, I suggest to Hamlet, it is possible that the Headmaster will give her another assessment to see if he thinks she has the potential for the High School? Hamlet relates this proposal to the pair: they look relieved and grateful for at least a chance. By Friday she has been offered a place and has moved in – everyone boards at the school as it is so remote – and certainly from her performance in my lesson, she is coping well. She is the youngest of a large family and will be the only one to have had a senior school education. The Headmaster tells me that on the day of her assessment she quietly pleads with him to let her stay. If she returns to her village she knows that she faces a future of working in the fields and early marriage: but she wants to study and get qualifications: "This is my only chance" she says. He, too, decides that she should have this opportunity and agrees to keep her. A sponsor has to be found for her, though, or she will not be able to stay as her father is extremely poor; so I decide that I will do this. Someone brings her to the office and when I tell her that I am going to be her sponsor she hides her face in her hands. I wonder if she is embarrassed, or overcome by surprise, but when she takes her hands away and looks up I see that her face is shining, glowing, with happiness. Sponsoring a pupil like this for their senior school years – five at the most – has this amazing capacity to transform their life and I wish that every sponsor could see that look of sheer joy lighting up 'their' child's face when they are told the news. Other pupils are not so lucky and some are absent today: a few weeks into the new term pupils who have not paid are sent home to 'look for their fees' as the phrase goes – making it sounds as if the money might just turn up under a bush or behind a tree – and, sadly, some may not return. Small though the fees are, they are essential to the running of the school – to pay the teachers, buy materials and to provide food, medicine and basic care; and the many children without sponsors walk a tightrope from term to term, never sure whether they will be able to return to school or not. Because the High School is so new, very few of the pupils yet have sponsors; so if you feel that you would like to bring that bright beam of hope into a life that has undoubtedly already had more than its fair share of darkness then please, do go to the website and click on the link. That £15 a month is an investment with a return far beyond any price that the stock-market – even in happier days - could ever offer: the certain knowledge that you have given the chance of a better future to a young person who has no-one, but no-one else in the world to give them a helping hand….

The very day that I have written this paragraph an old woman arrives at the house in the evening. She has walked for four hours, from a village called Rukungiri not far from the High School, to see Hamlet. Hamlet is out but she is given some food and a bed for the night and in the morning she explains to him why she has come. Both her son and his wife died when their two children, a girl and a boy, were very young and she, who is herself a widow, has cared for them ever since, working on her neighbour's land to earn enough money to put them through primary school. The girl has left home now but the boy, who did well in his Primary Leaving Exams, desperately wants to go to secondary school – and she has no money. She is now in her seventies; her health is failing and she cannot earn enough to support her grandson, who is called Ronald, any longer. She has come to beg Hamlet to give him a place at the High School. She has no money for uniform, or for the few things that each pupil must bring to the school – a thin foam mattress, a blanket, a tin box, a washing bowl, some pens and a bible. Hamlet asks her if she has anything at all that she can sell in order to make a contribution, however small, to Ronald's education. "I waited to come here until I had nothing" she tells him simply. "And now I really have nothing left - no hens, no land, no money – nothing at all." Hamlet and I give her the money for the school equipment and he tells her to send Ronald to the school the next day : he will have a place. But Ronald – and so many others like him whom the school has not the heart to turn away – as you will have guessed, needs a sponsor…..

I have a new challenge this term: at the College they are desperate for someone to teach simple French to the Certificate in Tourism students. Because French is spoken in neighbouring countries like Rwanda and Congo, these students, who may end up working there, need a basic grasp of the language – but there is no-one to teach it. On the strength of having been overheard passing the time of day with a visiting French-speaker last term I am appointed to the post: if only all jobs were so easy to come by! I tell myself that even I, with my say-everything-in-the present-tense-and-have-a-go-at-the-rest level of competence, am surely better than nothing – but I may yet be proved wrong. I turn up nervously on the first day expecting to teach the same two-hour lesson to two different groups – but discover that I am to have the same group I had in the morning again in the afternoon, necessitating some frantic lesson-planning and feverish vocabulary practice in the lunch hour with the aid of my tiny phrase book. Mercifully, the students seem content with a lot of counting, simple greetings and a few useful expressions, and we end the lesson saying 'maqnifique!' enthusiastically to each other many times over, happy in the knowledge that everyone can say one thing at least. Whether I shall be able to sustain credibility for the rest of the term remains to be seen - but for the time being at least, tout va bien…..

Of all the CHIFCOD establishments it is perhaps the College – or Great Lakes Regional College to give it its full name – that has had the greatest impact on the wider community. School leavers in the area have in the past had to travel to other parts of Uganda to attend college or university and the added cost of transport and residential accommodation on top of the fees has deterred most of them from pursuing further education or gaining a professional qualification. Building the College in 2004 was an ambitious but far-sighted project for CHIFCOD and has proved a huge success. Local students can attend as day pupils although boarding facilities are available for those who want them. Schemes have been set up to help students to earn their fees as they study: keeping bees, growing crops or raising livestock such as pigs, for example; and courses run at weekends and all through the holidays for people who have a job already but want to continue with their studies. There are vocational courses – for which students can study for a certificate or a diploma – in subjects such as teaching, tourism, micro-finance, office skills and agriculture; and degree courses in agro-business, accounting, social work and business administration, to name but a few. The College provides employment for the local community and attracts business and customers for local shops: it is altogether a very good thing for the area. Hamlet's vision for the future is to gain University status for the College – which would make it the only University in the whole of the extensive Kanungu province and bring even more opportunity and prosperity to the area. This would involve a substantial building programme to provide more lecture rooms, facilities and accommodation, and perhaps a performing arena to promote the arts and local culture. It might be possible to offer short courses on development and Ugandan culture for university students or indeed anyone from the UK or other countries who wanted to do research or work in the area; or to invite visiting lecturers from universities abroad for short periods – a vision for the future that would bring an international flavor to the College and raise its status even further. As always, lack of funds for capital projects stands in the way of achieving this dream at the moment – but in the meantime many young people are being given the opportunity to qualify for jobs that, just a few years ago, would have been beyond their wildest dreams – and that hopefully will give them an income and financial security for the rest of their working lives…

Hurray! At the Primary School the mosquito nets have arrived! Life never being straightforward, half of them have first been delivered to another school a few miles away who are, understandably, reluctant to part with them. However, they eventually are all safely returned and each pupil is handed their net in a special assembly and they are then taken to the dormitories. There is great excitement as they are attached to the underneath of the bunks above – or the ceiling, in the case of top-bunks – ready for use. The children are thrilled – it is not just mosquitoes that will be kept at bay but all the nocturnal creepy-crawlies including my own pet-hate, a sort of large hornet-fly with an elongated black body and menacing drone that circles round like a low-flying glider then suddenly dive-bombs towards you. Ugh! The new wet season is just beginning and the mosquitoes gathering force – so the nets are here at just the right moment. Everyone – children, staff and parents – is hugely grateful. Even if just one child less gets malaria as a result of the nets it will be such a worthwhile achievement – but I am sure that many attacks will be prevented and perhaps lives saved too – a pupil from the school died from malaria less than two years ago and many, many have suffered the illness. Thank you, on behalf of everyone both here and at Nyamarama School too, where they have also been supplied along with their new bunks – it is a wonderful gift to them.

Hamlet has acquired a goat, a gift from his nephew whose wedding he has recently helped to organize. The handsome black-and white creature quickly settles in and does an efficient job of cropping the grass around the house – mowers do not exist here, of course, so grazing an animal removes the necessity of laboriously scything the grass by hand. I have grown rather fond of him and the friendly bleat he gives me as I pass him. On Sunday he disappears, though, and as we sit down to eat in the evening I ask where he has been moved to. All eyes turn hungrily to the large, delicious-smelling pot of stew that has arrived on the table. Oh no – surely not…? There are times when I could so easily become a vegetarian….

Heaven Scent

2009-02-20T09:47:00.001-08:00

Ham arrives on the dot of 7.30am on Friday with his motor-cycle, ready to take me to the High School. It's a joy to make this journey again after the long break and to feel myself being gently submerged, almost drowned, in the enveloping greenness of the landscape as we travel into the remote hills ahead. Dotted along the way is a particular variety of tree that at this time of year opens white blossoms in the early morning that give off a powerful scent – a ravishing fusion of frangipani and gardenia – and as we travel through it the air is perfumed with clouds of its heady, almost overpowering fragrance, adding a new enchantment to this already intoxicating journey. Far from any village, the people who live in the tiny houses nestling amongst the banana trees, though, live a hard and isolated existence. They are visibly poorer, the children dressed in grubby ill-fitting clothes, the adults thin and stooped. Few vehicles pass this way – we meet the occasional bicycle, one weighed down with a load of bricks, its owner labouring to push it up a hill – a Herculean task in the rising heat. A small family sits by the roadside breaking up stones by hand, the size of the pile of pebbles barely changed when we pass them again on the way home, still sitting there, still patiently banging stone against rock, rock against stone. There are women walking to market in Katete, huge baskets of pineapples and potatoes serenely balanced on their heads. Ragged children run along the verge waving, stick in hand, following herds of goats and cows to the fields. There is almost nothing here to tell us which of the last five centuries we are living in; a dreamlike air of timelessness hangs over this unvisited, untouched corner of the country….

At the High School a new intake of pupils has arrived, many of whom I know from the Primary School. I have an extra class to fit into the day – and the attendant marking – so the time passes quickly. This term I am teaching creative writing: something that is on the syllabus but seemingly ignored by their previous teachers of English, since none of the children has ever, they tell me, written a story – and not a single one understands the terms 'fiction' and 'non-fiction'. To help them to learn how to express their thoughts and feelings I suggest that they start by writing about their early childhood memories. Reading them out at the end of the lesson is fascinating: there are tales of being bitten by snakes and falling out of mango trees, of running away from school and being beaten when found – indeed, many refer to being beaten both at home and at school. Several remember being breastfed, not surprisingly since mothers feed for several years here; and one vividly recalls being aware of having no teeth and keeping her mouth closed so that people wouldn't notice this deficiency of which she says, she 'felt ashamed'. One boy describes his first visit to Kampala with his parents where he was so overawed by the huge buildings and bright lights that he thought he was in heaven – the Heaven – and asked if they would be visiting his dead grandfather. Most touching of all are their descriptions of bereavement, which, despite their lack of writing experience, eloquently capture the bewilderment of a young child encountering the death of a close relative – something that is rare in our own lives but here is inevitable. "I remember my grandmother who died when I was still young" says one. "I thought she was sleeping when I saw her; I did not know that there is death and I waited for her to wake up but she did not. I saw people putting her in the soil but I thought they were planting her. I waited and waited for her to germinate and grow again – but she never did." Plant cultivation is part of every child's life here and what could be more logical than this boy's innocent, yet hopeless, expectation? More heart-rending still, one teenage boy writes "My mother died when I was about two years old and I was not told what had happened to her. I thought she was just sleeping and after her burial I got a small hoe and started trying to dig her out, crying 'Mummy, mummy, I want you!' ". That bleak image of the distraught little boy scrabbling desperately at the grave with his hoe is one that will always stay with me, I think; it epitomises the suffering, more suffering than most of us will experience in a life-time, that lies beneath the cheerful stoicism of the children of the very poor …..

We have been without electricity and water for over two days now. Cuts happen regularly but usually only last twenty-four hours so as we enter the third day this is proving to be a bit of a trial. Losing electricity is merely inconvenient – usually a good excuse for an early night and the chance to read Dickens by torchlight, or listen to the rather erudite podcasts of University lectures, interspersed with an eclectic mixture of disco dance tracks, sacred choral music and excerpts from 'Mamma Mia' that my daughter has inventively put together on my iPod for me. Being without water is more difficult and one quickly realizes how much a household gets through in a day merely for washing, cooking and cleaning purposes. We have come to the end of the rain-water that has been collecting in large tubs - and in which the hens enjoy a cooling flutter from time to time - and now we have just one jerry-can that has been sitting under the outdoor tap collecting drips of water and which is now, thankfully, full. I go to fetch this but find to my consternation that I can barely lift it from the ground. It is a standard twenty-litre container, the size that adults and older children use to fetch water all the time: I had no idea how heavy that amount of water is. It weighs at least as much as a very large suitcase, probably well over twenty kilograms. I would not be able to heave it past my knee – how on earth, I wonder, do women and children lift these onto their heads and then carry them for anything up to two kilometres, sometimes more? True, younger children carry smaller ten litre containers but even these must be extremely heavy. I wonder what damage it does to the back and neck: difficulty in walking is a common disability in later life here and one can only imagine that the pressure on the spinal cord from years of carrying this weight must be a contributing factor. The shock of the realization of the magnitude of this daily, commonplace task keeps me awake at night: the term 'fetching water' has taken on a new significance. When I talk to Justine about it in the morning and ask how children, especially, manage it she merely shrugs her shoulders and repeats that telling phrase, heard so often here when referring to some aspect of hardship in people's daily lives: "They are used to it……"

On Monday night Hamlet and Kellen return from Kampala with some visitors from England, a young couple who have started their own charity to support one of CHIFCOD's small day schools in a remote village called Nyakabungo. They have been raising money for, amongst other things, a new eco-toilet block to be built in place of the conventional pit latrines that have collapsed underground after heavy rain; and today is the opening ceremony. This is, unsurprisingly, the first time I have been to the official opening of a toilet: no trouble has been spared, however, and there is even a ribbon suspended across the entrance with scissors at the ready for the guests to cut it. Someone has been lined up to take a photograph, and the entire school has gathered around the small building in readiness for the ceremony. These toilets are – in every sense of the word – ground-breaking: without going into too much detail, they have been designed to separate solids from liquids and the urine is collected in a tank and sold to local farmers to use as a natural fertiliser. Having marked so many agriculture papers, this comes as no surprise to me: urine is widely used – added to the soil, rather than sprinkled on the plants, I hasten to add – to replenish nitrates and other minerals, and as such is a saleable commodity. The hope is that this new system will pay for its own upkeep and even contribute to the school's income. Songs are sung, speeches are made and the ribbon is cut; then the chief guests are invited to try out the new facilities – with the doors closed, thankfully, and no photographs taken – and the toilets are declared officially open. Ugandans are very matter-of-fact about bodily functions and the entire proceedings take place without a shred of embarrassment or coyness, indeed, everyone is highly delighted with their new combined business opportunity and eco-friendly facilities. Suddenly the term 'liquid assets' has taken on a whole new meaning….

By strange coincidence the English comprehension exercise I am studying with Year 6 at Kirima Primary School the next day bears the title 'Sanitation'. This is my first lesson using the new textbooks and it is bliss not to have to write up the long and complex text on the board in its entirety, as I have had to do in the past. Comprehension texts are a very different thing in Uganda from the evocative, descriptive passages, often excerpts from literary sources , that we use in England. They invariably are about an aspect of daily life, often with some kind of moral or social message so that the children are getting a sort of 'two for the price of one' lesson, practising their English skills while learning something useful at the same time. Even exam papers take this approach and it seems shocking at first to see passages about domestic violence, bad teachers or nasty accidents - with equally bizarre vocabulary to accompany them - set for this purpose. The list of questions from today's text include giving definitions of the words 'diarrhoea', 'dysentery', 'cholera' and - by way of light relief – 'man-hole cover' and 'breed'. The latter causes some difficulty as the sounds 'l' and 'r' are often confused here; one child warns " If you cut your finger, you will breed" – something to think about as you chop the onions. The passage gives useful reminders about personal hygiene, water-borne diseases and waste-disposal – all tackled without a hint of discomfort on the part of the children, although I do find myself wincing, professionally speaking, when hands go up cheerfully asking for the spelling of words like 'watery excrement' or 'frequent vomiting', and I start to long for a few obscure metaphors, a bit of puzzling symbolism or just a good old euphemism or two...

Today's lesson, though, is usefully timed as tomorrow some of the older children are going on a school trip – a rare and very exciting event. They are going to Mweya, the section of the Queen Elizabeth National Park that I visited in November, to see the wildlife, the salt lakes and other geographical features of the area. At assembly this morning the Headmaster gives a few words of warning: pupils should be careful about what they eat as there are outbreaks of both cholera and anthrax in the area they are visiting, and they should on no account pick up food from the ground or buy meat on skewers – a popular roadside snack – as anthrax is spread by eating the 'bush meat' of dead animals from the game parks. Aside from that, and a cheerful reminder that the lorry leaves at 3.30am so that they can arrive in time to see the animals in the early morning, there is no particular advice about what they should or shouldn't do, bring or wear – not even shoes. What a world away from the safety-obsessed preparations for school trips in England! To carry out a risk-assessment on this particular visit would be a nightmare, requiring an entire book of 'severity of risk multiplied by likelihood' sheets: seventy children being driven in an ancient, battered open-top lorry for four hours over diabolical roads, for a start - and standing all the way; the risk of being eaten by a lion, trampled by an elephant, swallowed by a crocodile or crushed by a hippo (all unlikely – but possible); of bites by snakes, ticks, monkeys or tsetse flies (ditto); of catching rabies or bilharzia, to say nothing of cholera – no-one in their right mind would consider such a trip if they had the slightest anxiety about the perils lurking round every corner. But fortunately Health and Safety, consent forms and personal liability have not yet arrived in this part of the world to spoil the fun of the day and everyone is looking forward to what for many will be their first, maybe their only, visit to this beautiful part of their country, and to all the excitement that the day will hold. "Would you like to come with us?" the teacher organizing the trip asks me. The prospect of getting up at 2.30am is not an enticing one – nor the long, upright-sardine-style journey in the bone-shaking lorry. "I'd love to, but sadly I'm teaching all day at the High School" I say in tones of regret. "Maybe next time….."

There has, alas, been one crushing disappointment this week. The visitors have brought with them the weekend papers which, even after barely three weeks here, I fall upon ecstatically. Imagine my excitement when I see that there is an article entitled "The Top 100 Blogs" in one of them! Surely 'Uganda Diary' will be there…? But no, sadly, my blog has not yet made it into the charts – neither mine nor 200 million others that exist in the world. But that's not going to deter me – and at least I learn something useful from the article: the word 'blog' is a derivative of the term 'web log'. I always thought there must be a good reason for such an unappealing name - and now I know…

The Good, the Bad and the Egg-layer

2009-02-13T09:52:00.001-08:00

Walking through the village for the first time – on my way to Kanungu for the weekly shop at the market on Saturday – a succession of people call out and wave as I pass: "Madame! Welcome back!" or sometimes just "Well back!" or even "You were lost!" which I translate optimistically as "We missed you" – unless they really do think that I have been wandering about Uganda for the last few weeks trying to find my way back to the village….?

Half way up the hill a motor bike pulls up and as he removes his helmet (he is the only person I have met so far who wears one…) I see that it is the Reverend from the Cathedral. Is he going to ask me to preach on Sunday, I panic - already? But no, he wants to tell me that he has been moved to another church some way from here so won't be around very much. He is clearly unhappy about this and proceeds to pour out a tale of woe. He has been sent to an area beyond Kihihi, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, a remote and fiercely tribal village - the Ugandan equivalent of being banished to Siberia. "It is a dangerous place" he says. "Because of the rebels and the fighting?" I ask. "No - because of the witch-doctors" he replies in hushed tones. "I cannot take my wife there or she will die. So she will remain here and I will travel back when I have the time". With fear in his voice he explains that every priest before him who has gone there has lost a member of his family: the local people do not like strangers in their midst and so the witch-doctors put a curse on a member of the priest's family so that they will leave – or die, whichever happens first. The last priest's young wife died suddenly and Reverend John is not going to let the same thing happen again. I try to gently suggest that all these deaths might have been from a conventional illness – a heart attack, perhaps, or an infection - but he is having none of it. "No, no, these men are very dangerous and powerful" he says. "They even do it to each other!" Once a curse has been put on someone, it can only be removed by another witch-doctor – and in a case like this they put on a united front of non co-operation towards the unwelcome outsider. Perhaps the Bishop will intervene and send him somewhere else if he explains his fears, I suggest? But no, he has been sent to this area actually because, he suspects, he has upset the Bishop in some way. Feelings run high in church politics round here and factions of supporters of one or other church dignitary mutter and murmur about each other constantly. I wonder what this mild-mannered man could have done to upset the Bishop so much. True, I have seen him take a call on his mobile phone during the Rural Dean's sermon on one occasion but this surely can't be reason enough for expulsion from the fold…? "I think I have been sent there to die" he mutters darkly as he sets off towards his new and unwanted workplace. It seems incredible that his Christian faith cannot sustain him and give him more confidence in standing up to these primitive forces: but, pondering on the complex nature of the human mind as I walk on up the hill, I reflect on how vulnerable we are and how readily influenced, whether to buy a face-cream that will knock years off our face or to trust financial institutions with our money ( I am guilty on both counts needless to say...). There are well-disguised con-men everywhere and none of us is immune to their persuasive powers, it would seem. Although people are reluctant to admit it, black magic is still practised covertly in parts of Uganda: in the newspaper this week we learn that eleven witch doctors have been arrested near to Kampala "in connection with the discovery of a headless body" - but I am hastily reassured by everyone I ask that nothing like that goes on round here….or does it, I wonder…?

On Sunday there is further gloom at the church: not only is the Reverend missing, but most of the hymn-books as well. Light-fingered (and presumably music-loving) members of the congregation have, over the last few weeks, been sneaking these flimsy booklets out at the end of services and today we have only a handful left to share amongst a congregation consisting of all the Kirima School children, the staff and pupils of another local school and everyone else besides. Nothing daunted we sing about a dozen hymns, mumbling incomprehensibly, making up words as best we can or just repeating the first line over and over again- a very feeble performance compared with the usual joyful, roof-raising experience. Worse, the visiting priest announces, there can be no Holy Communion today as the church has run out of funds and cannot even afford to buy the wine and the wafers. We trudge out into the sunlight feeling thoroughly contrite after a reproachful sermon based on the text "You have turned my house into a den of thieves" and with a shared sense of guilt that the few of us who can afford to have not been putting enough into the collection recently. Even holy places are not immune from credit-crunch misery, it would seem….

But if all is not well in the church, then at the Primary School there is great rejoicing. At a special assembly I officially hand over the boxes full of text books and the toys for the Nursery to much clapping and excitement. When I make the announcement that the boarders will soon all have mosquito nets there is an audible squeal of delight and an outburst of spontaneous applause. It is a lovely moment, and I quickly tell them that it is not I who has provided all these things but children and grownups in England, who have sent them with love and friendship to help them with their school life. The staff are as delighted as the pupils, I think, and the text books are put to immediate use in the morning's lessons – "We are very grateful, Madame Julia, to your good friends who have done this" they say, shaking me by the hand vigorously one by one. Dennis, the deputy head, finds me at the end of the day and relates, almost with incredulity, how for the first time he has been able to give the class maths text books and tell them to turn to a page and get on with the work. " I didn't have to write it all on the board!" he says exultantly "and they all worked so hard! This is wonderful!" I then spend some time with Godfrey opening parcels of books that have arrived from England (and indeed Australia!) – lovely books of all sorts, stories that have clearly been carefully chosen to be suitable, reference books, books about sport and nature – they are delightful and just right, and I am glad to have the chance to look at the names of the senders on the back and to be able to think of each one with a personal "Oh, how good of them!" – some close friends and family, others whom I haven't seen for a long time, past pupils and parents for example. I know these cost a lot to post but truly, each package is a wonderful gift to these children and will bring so much pleasure. More are on their way, I know; the post here is very slow indeed and I myself have only just received a parcel that was posted to me last October! The Nursery children are fascinated by their new toys: slightly in awe of them at first, they examine them carefully piece by piece as if unsure of quite what to do with them - but they quickly get the hang of them and love them so much that they cry when they are put away and say they don't want to go home! The staff seem as enthralled as the children with the construction kits and sit happily making models alongside them lost in a world of their own. "I think I should have been an engineer not a teacher!" Robert beams proudly, admiring his complex arrangement of cogs and wheels…

At the High School too there is great excitement at the arrival of their new text books, and the news that they too will receive mosquito nets shortly. With all the building work and improvements that are in progress, there is a sense of great excitement about the place and they hold a special assembly out in the sunshine in which they sing a newly-composed song of thanks accompanied by a traditional dance with much whooping and clapping to show their appreciation. Once again, I tell them, it is not I who has made these things possible but the combined efforts of many people from far across the sea in England: I am only a representative for them. Everyone – staff and pupils alike – is palpably grateful and I only wish you could all be there to see this happy celebration and know how much your support means to them. Spirits are high in this little corner of Uganda!

For me, returning to the village for a second time has been so much easier than the first and it has been almost effortless to adjust back to the simple way of life here – indeed, quite a relief after the over-indulgence of Christmas. Even the fact that the hot shower has now, due to some defect in the chancy Ugandan wiring, been reduced to a cold one, hasn't caused too much anguish - washing my hair under the chilling cascade does take a bit of stoicism but I tell myself that it's really no different from going swimming: one gasp and the worst is over. Buying 'Joy' toilet paper again – so undeniably well -named, since vastly superior to the only other brand available which resembles a kind of grey sandpaper – and yesterday's newspapers, now thoughtfully available in two choices, 'read' and 'unread', both at the same price - and all the other endearing eccentricities of Kanungu shopping life, has been a pleasurable voyage of rediscovery especially when accompanied by the warm greetings of the shopkeepers. The diet, too, has quickly become familiar again. I have, alas, missed the short mango season but aubergines are abundant now – round, fat, purple ones rather than the tiny white eggplants we ate before. However after consuming aubergine stew five nights running, and with nothing much to add to them bar the odd tomato, even this favourite vegetable has begun to pall. So eating a boiled bantam's egg today brings a degree of pleasure totally disproportionate to its small size and I savour every mouthful. Eggs are a luxury here: they are expensive as although many people keep hens they do so mostly for breeding and, when they are past that, eating – tough and chewy though they have become in their old age. To eat two eggs at one sitting would be regarded as the height of extravagance so an omelette here is a delicate little thing requiring a good deal of supplementary support from the ubiquitous matoke and rice – but oh, so delicious! Hamlet and Kellen's hens, meanwhile, have been confined to their henhouse since the owner of the neighbouring banana field has complained about their trespassing and bad behaviour: their vigorous pecking and careless foraging have allegedly uprooted the bean seedlings growing under the trees. Fowl play is suspected....

At the Primary School I enjoy being reunited with the children and hearing their charming, old-fashioned, misspelled names again – Apophia, Daughter, Liry, Penlope (sic), Shillah, Moreen, Babrah, Scovia, Miliam, Shallon, – and, of course, getting back into the teaching routine. Today I have been asked to help them write replies to letters sent by a school in Yorkshire and I suggest that they try to describe their home lives and what they do after school: this of course, makes chastening and sometimes moving reading as they describe – quite factually and unemotionally – the realities of their leisure time: fetching water and firewood, grazing the animals, washing, sweeping, cooking and digging. One ten year old boy says "When I reach home I fetch water and wash my clothes and also my sister's. Then I go to sell pancakes to look for my school fees. After selling pancakes I give the money to my mother and then it is late and I go to sleep". Another says "I live with my stepmother because my mother went back to her father's house. My stepmother does not love me as well as her own children. But God cares for me". When parents divorce, the mother is sent back to her parents, regardless of whose fault the breakdown was, and the children stay with the father. Sadly, mistreatment by the new stepmother is not uncommon and existing children often become virtual servants to the new family, or, as in this case, feel unloved and unwanted. Some are even less fortunate: "I don't have parents but I have a guardian. I am female and an orphan and each day I thank God that I am still alive" one young girl relates unselfpityingly. I do get a few smiles, though: from Obed who says he enjoys playing 'folly-ball' – the perfect description for one particular team sport I can think of – and Precious who says she 'cleans the house by moping'- presumably a few tears help to shift the dust. One letter even ends with an unexpected reference to me: " Teacher Julia always teaches us English and RE and she is a well-behaved woman" - so you can all stop worrying about what I have been getting up to!

It's lovely to be back….

Spending Time in Kampala

2009-02-06T22:37:00.001-08:00

I look out of the window of the aeroplane at the still, white landscape as we prepare for take-off and heave a sigh of relief. It is the Tuesday after "Snowstorm Monday" and it looked uncertain at one point whether I would even make it to Heathrow, let alone Kampala. But the car ride to the airport has, aside from a detour due to an accident, been uneventful and the flight is on time. Compared with this first hurdle, getting my luggage onto the plane intact has been infinitely more stressful. My two cases are packed to bursting with toys, books, footballs, skipping ropes and teaching materials and both, I suspect, are well over the weight limit. Heaving them onto the luggage belt as I check in I feel as apprehensive as a wayward member of Weight-Watchers standing on the scales after Christmas dinner. "This one is 6 kilos over the limit" I am told disapprovingly by the stern lady at the desk. "You will have to take something out – or pay £40 for each extra three kilos". "They are full of things for children at a poor rural school in Uganda" I say pleadingly. "Couldn't you make an exception?" As she shakes her head and tells me tut-tuttingly about the airline's strict baggage policy I make a quick mental check of what I might remove. Should it be the three large packs of mature cheddar cheese that I know Hamlet is so fond of? The four heavy tomes I have ordered from Amazon for Godfrey's MA course? The large tin of biscuits I have brought as a late Christmas present for the staff? In any event, I am determined not to leave behind a single item that is for the children. Ah! How about my least favourite item in the case: my new pair of heavy, sensible shoes…? As I agonize, a voice behind me – the roving floor manager I assume, who has been eavesdropping on the exchange – says kindly " It's alright - let them go through." The flood of relief that I feel is, however, short-lived as the check-in lady says, with a small note of revenge in her voice, "Now, please put your hand luggage on the scales". Oh dear! My rucksack contains almost an entire reading scheme, a bulging learning support file and about two hundred pencils – to say nothing of my own personal library of paperbacks to last the next three months. With a sinking heart I haul it up onto the belt. "It's far too heavy! Security will never allow you to take that on board!" my opponent cries triumphantly. I smile as sweetly as I know how and say "Well look, I'll just give it a try and if security tells me to take something out then I will". "They'll never let it through" she sniffs, as I beat a hasty retreat.

"It's full of books…." I start to explain helpfully to the man at security as together we heave the bag up onto the x-ray machine belt. "Bit of a heavy reader, are you?" he quips, and before I can expand any further – and without so much as a reprimand - lets me through. Phew! My guardian angel is with me today. Now I just have to endure two hours in the departure lounge with the weighty backpack then somehow get it into the overhead compartment on the plane - and the rest of the trip will surely be a piece of cake….

Stepping out onto the runway at Kampala a wall of mid-morning heat hits me and the thin clothes that had seemed so inadequate in the icy chill of England are within minutes sticking uncomfortably to my back. Hamlet is there to meet me and full of excitement at the prospect of the afternoon's shopping that lies ahead. The Net-Book appeal has – thanks to the amazing generosity of so many including a very kind last-minute donation to 'round it up' – reached an incredible £6000, and Godfrey, the Headmaster of Kirima Primary School, has come to Kampala to meet me so that we can buy the text books for the school. A teacher from the Great Lakes High School is also meeting us for the same purpose. Hamlet has found a local company who can supply treated mosquito nets more cheaply than the supplier we had found in Kampala so these will be purchased in Kanungu once we are back. As we drive away from Entebbe I talk to Hamlet about how the £6000 can best, and most fairly, be spent. Since so much more has been raised than I could ever have hoped, I suggest tentatively that perhaps some of it could be spent on bunks for Nyamarama Primary School, the remote CHIFCOD school in the Rift Valley that recently started taking boarders but has not yet been able to afford to buy beds for them. I feel sure that contributors to the appeal would be happy with this since the children cannot be given mosquito nets unless they first have beds: this is a highly malarial area and, sleeping on mattresses on the floor as they do, the children are extremely vulnerable. Hamlet turns to me in astonishment: Benon, the headmaster, has been on the phone every day this week, he tells me, desperately begging for some money for this very purpose, but Hamlet felt he could not give money that had been collected specifically for nets and books. "Can I ring him straight away and tell him?" he says, and, still weaving skillfully through the chaotic Kampala traffic, he calls Benon to tell him the news. Even from the other side of the car I can hear Benon's enthusiastic response, a sound very like something between crowing and crying. This has clearly made his day….

As well as beds and books, today's shopping list has grown exponentially due to two outstandingly generous individual donations made by different Highgate School parents at the start of this term. These have meant that development work at the Great Lakes High School that had been halted due to lack of funds can now, thankfully, be restarted. Two further classrooms and accommodation for resident staff are being built, a new and safer water supply and improved sanitation fitted, science labs equipped and doors and windows fitted to the formerly 'open plan' classrooms - and there is no time to be wasted. After a quick bite of lunch Hamlet and I go to meet the other members of the shopping team in central Kampala: a lorry has been hired so all purchases must be made today and driven back to Kinkiisi tomorrow. Six of us sit huddled in the car - which is parked outside the bravely-named 'Run Dental Clinic' – and, with the afternoon rain drumming on the roof and the windows steaming up in the heat, the shopping tasks are allocated. Hamlet pulls a thick wad of notes from his pocket – everything is dealt with in cash here, and with 3000 shillings to the pound, sums quickly reaches the millions. He licks a finger and counts out a pile of notes. " Justus: pipes, roof sheets, boards, toilet bowls, cement. And a septic tank. Go". Another pile of notes is counted after a few quick phone calls to compare prices: " Livingstone: bunk beds. Triples not doubles – I've cleared it with the inspectors. Twenty five sets with poles for mosquito nets. Go." " Godfrey" he continues tersely " – books. If they're out of stock pay for them and ask for them to be sent: we can trust these people" He hands over another pile of notes. This is beginning to feel like a gangster movie or the pay-out after a bank raid and I can hardly wait to see what I will be asked to do – as long as it doesn't involve driving the get-away vehicle, in this case a large and lumbering lorry well past it's sell-by date…. In the event I accompany Godfrey to the educational bookshops and spend a joyful couple of hours filling cardboard boxes with books and ticking them off on a long list: every class at the primary school now has text-books for the five core subjects. "This is a happy day" Godfrey smiles.

Kampala is as hot, dusty, noisy and fume-filled as I remember it: traffic chokes the roads, boda-bodas weave recklessly between the cars and pedestrians must beware: vehicle-users reign supreme here and if you risk crossing the road between the almost-stationary cars you take your life in your hands: they will continue inching forward whether you are in their path or not.…but it is good to be back, and I am looking forward so much to seeing the children and the villagers back in Kinkiisi (I had to laugh at the blog-reader who thanked me for explaining that this is pronounced 'Chin-cheesy' as he says that otherwise it might have sounded like a description of my taste in tights!). On Thursday morning I go to a supermarket to stock up with a few emergency supplies. All sorts of tempting western-style products are available here, at a price: Rose's Lime Marmalade at £6 a jar, a chunk of Edam cheese for a fiver, and even boxes of South African wine – but I resolutely turn my back on the soft life and allow myself two tins of tuna, two jars of peanut butter and a small bag of foreign-looking muesli which will, even with water, be a useful standby when the larder is empty.

We set off a little later than planned after a fruitless search for barium powder for Kellen's mother who has ulcers and needs to have a barium-meal x-ray. As well as paying for the x-ray she must first buy her own barium - and none of the six pharmacies we visit has any. I remember thankfully the excellent, free and thorough care that my own mother received in hospital after Christmas – one of the many things that have given me a heightened sense of gratitude over the holidays. Posting a letter in a letter box and knowing it will be delivered by hand a day or two later; walking on pavements and driving on smooth roads; the first, and every subsequent hot bath; the magical speed and immediacy of broadband. The list is long and this renewed sense of pleasure in everyday things surprisingly sharp: there are so many things I have taken for granted that coming out here has allowed me to appreciate very much more intensely….

The journey from Kampala seems surprisingly familiar now: the changing landscape, the teeming towns and villages, the progression of roadside stalls - one selling drums, another fish, and one selling plucked birds which the driver tells me are "guinea fools" – surely the perfect name for our financial managers back in the UK….? We speed along the good stretches of road then struggle slowly along the bad ones, some sections more closely resembling a roughly ploughed field than a major highway linking Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo with Kampala and with Kenya beyond. Stopping only to buy hot grilled matoke for lunch, at dusk we reach the magical hidden valley cloaked in the deep undulating folds of hills , once covered with jungle but now green with banana trees, that leads to Kanungu; and arrive at Hamlet's house at nightfall. Justine and Novias rush out to greet me with such excitement that I almost fall over. " Our mother has returned!" they laugh and certainly I feel that I have come, if not home, then to a home-from-home.

Lying under my mosquito net listening to the soothing sounds of the Ugandan night – the drone of crickets, a solitary axe chopping wood, the muffled murmur of distant voices - I reflect on all that has happened since I left here in early December. First and foremost the response to the Net-Book appeal, to my pleas for more sponsors and for general support for CHIFCOD has been so uplifting: it has left me with the overriding certainty of the goodness, compassion and generosity of people and their desire to help their fellow-humans. I can't thank you enough for giving so warmly and willingly: for those of you who organized pre-Christmas social events to raise funds; to friends who contacted small charities who then contributed generously; to the thoughtful twenty-something relative who has given up smoking and used the money saved to sponsor a child; to the husband and wife who both 'gave' each other a child to sponsor as their Christmas gifts; to the members of staff at one school who gave to the appeal instead of buying each other presents; and to the many, many of you who simply signed cheques or donated via the website with such open-handed generosity. I had hoped to raise perhaps £2000 for my appeal and the total was three times this figure: I am so tremendously grateful to you all. To those of you who have contributed so significently to CHIFCOD's general work I also give deeply-felt thanks. Every penny of that money is going directly to improve the children's lives and next week I will report on how it has been spent, and the effect it has had. It is a great privilege to act as a channel for your kindness and I hope you will all feel the gratitude of the little community here winging its way across the air-waves to you! For the parcels of books, too, that so many of you sent off before and after Christmas, I thank you enormously. Again, more about that in the coming week or two – but be assured that their arrivals are causing great excitement! Three groups of school children also deserve a special mention: my former school, St Edmund's in Canterbury where the Pre-Prep raised a substantial amount to donate to the NetBook appeal; my even-more-recently-former school, Highgate Pre-Prep School, who raised money to buy equipment for the Nursery at Kirima; and Highgate Junior School who collected a huge number of books - and the money to ship them out. Thank you all!

It has been touching too to have heard so many people say over Christmas and New Year: "We've been following the blog", "We really enjoy the blog "- and even one who said " I think most of North London is reading the blog"! Friends, family, pupils, parents, friends-of-friends….I am so surprised and delighted that what began as a way of recording my experiences largely for my own selfish reasons has become the means of bringing the daily lives of the people in this very remote, poverty-stricken village to an astonishingly wide and distant audience. Such are the wonders of modern technology! Thank you, so very much, for your support, interest and enthusiasm – and, most especially, for your marvellous generosity. This has been the best possible of starts to the new school year here – and you have made it so.

Peace on Earth and Mercy Mild

2008-11-28T10:26:00.001-08:00

I am stopped in my tracks as I walk through Kanungu in the sweltering heat of Saturday morning: the unmistakable sound of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" – in Rukiiga of course, and with a joyful African swing – is blaring out of a loudspeaker outside the electrical shop. For the first time since I arrived here I feel a lump in my throat and a wave of homesickness washes over me: soon it will be Christmas and I will be with my family again, and suddenly I can't wait to be back with them…

It feels very strange to be thinking about Christmas with the sweat pouring off my face and my shirt sticking damply to my back. On Friday we had the Christmas service at the Primary School - this week, the last full week of term, has been taken up with exams - and it had the same air of unreality. There was Peace and Mercy in abundance however as there are several girls with these names at the school, along with Hosannahs, Glorys, Comforts and at least one Joy. Elsewhere, though, it would seem that peace is in very short supply indeed: thousands of refugees are pouring into Uganda from Congo now, just an hour's drive from here, due to the escalating violence; and the news from Mumbai sounds very grim indeed. The year is moving towards an uneasy conclusion….

Being in the tropics for the run up to Christmas has made me appreciate just how strongly the cycle of the seasons shapes our lives in England. How that one last day of summer, with its unexpected bounty of warm sunshine, gives way to a sudden autumnal smell of bonfires and dampness; how falling leaves whisper of coming frosty mornings, of chilly nights and cosy homecomings; how Christmas cannot arrive without there first being days when your breath festoons the air with plumes of white mist …
Here, so near to the equator, summer never ends. The leaves never fall from the trees and the flowers go on blossoming endlessly: it is as if we are stuck in a time-warp of unchanging temperature and unvarying vegetation; and no amount of waiting will move things on. Much as I love the heat, I am so looking forward to feeling a seasonal nip in the air and seeing a few flutterings of festive snow…….

In less than a week's time I will be back in England. I cannot easily put into words what the twelve weeks that I have spent here so far have meant to me. Clichés like 'fulfilling' and 'enriching' do not do it justice: perhaps I should say simply that, in keeping with many profound experiences in life, it has been at times challenging , frequently thought provoking, mostly very enjoyable - and hugely rewarding. I am so glad that I shall be returning in late January; I would be feeling very sad indeed if this were the end of my time here. I know I shall look back on this as one of the most life-enhancing experiences of my teaching career and indeed of my very existence, and I will always be grateful to have had the opportunity to come here.

There have, of course, been many things to adjust to and many adaptations to make. Poverty, I have realized by living in its midst, strips away your options: you can no longer make choices about the way you live or what you wear, eat or do. Ultimately, you choose between being able to eat, and therefore stay alive, or choose something else – education for your children, perhaps, or medical care – and risk malnutrition and starvation. Finally even that choice is taken away from you, and chance alone – usually in the form of the weather - decides whether or not you eat. The people in this village live a life of almost mediaeval simplicity: they work the land, eke out an existence and survival is their unchosen goal in life.

My own choices, while of course on a very different, far more privileged plane, have also been dramatically pared down since I arrived here and the resulting simplicity of my daily life has been both a blessing and a challenge. Being released from the tyranny of the supermarket shopping trolley definitely falls into the first category. Buying food that has almost entirely been grown in or around the village, harvested the same day as it is bought and untouched by any chemicals, has been a delight. My diet has been repetitive and somewhat bland – but how much simpler life is without the endless possibilities on the supermarket shelves! I realize now just how complex and wearing the process of food shopping is and I am sure I shall feel faint with exhaustion for the first few days I am back with so many choices to contend with. I have, it's true, had to resort to some pretty strange protein-less concoctions when the cupboard has been bare: cold yam sandwiches are absolutely no substitute for cold ham sandwiches and I can't see the cooked carrot and cassava combo being a big hit at M and S either … but the upside is that I've effortlessly shed quite a few unwanted pounds so am looking forward to the party season happy in the knowledge that I can easily fit into size 10 again…! Similarly, wearing the same few clothes, shoes and earrings over and over again has been liberating – rather dull, but requiring very little thought. Having stepped outside my usual everyday life into this parallel universe has brought home to me very clearly the extent to which our lives are dominated by minutiae from the moment we rise until our buzzing heads hit the pillow at night. We are constantly bombarded with information, with a multiplicity of choices about every aspect of our lives, with noise, with urgency, with demands. It is not surprising that so many people become stressed and anxious and develop memory problems and a whole host of other symptoms, both psychological and physical. The absence of this information overload has been wonderfully therapeutic for me: life has been pared down to a simple, almost monastic routine. That is not to say that I want to turn my back on the comforts and choices of my life in England when I get back – I shall enjoy and appreciate them all the more for having been without them for a while - but is merely a realisation of the very high price we pay for the sophistication of our lives in the developed world ….

If a reduction of choices has been enjoyable in some areas of life, in others it has been less easy to manage: adjusting to the lack of any kind of entertainment for example – be it ready access to books, or the radio, television, the company of friends and family, cultural events, music – has, for this length of time, been a good deal more difficult than I had anticipated. Even going for a walk is regarded as odd here: walking is a mode of transport, indeed the mode of transport for most, and not a leisure activity. There is quite literally nothing to do here that one does not create for oneself. How lucky it is that I am used to my own company, and especially that I have had the chance to travel quite a lot in developing countries, sometimes alone: I would have found this whole experience much more difficult otherwise. Even so, I have to admit that after so many years in a very busy job with almost no time to do as I please, I have found the unstructured hours after work here have often hung heavily on my hands – something that would have been the case to a degree, I suspect, whatever I had been doing but multiplied a thousand times by being in such a remote spot - and this has been probably most difficult part of the experience to get to grips with. People do not have leisure here: when you have to gather the wood for your cooking, dig up your next meal and fetch every drop of water you use, there are no empty hours to while away: you simply work and then sleep. Being in the different and fortunate position of having a fixed working day I have had ample opportunity over the last three months to explore the no-man's land between solitary leisure time and extreme boredom, sometimes straying across the boundary from one to the other almost without realizing it…. Thank goodness for my laptop, for email, for mobile phones, and for the many hours of podcasts that my thoughtful daughter loaded onto her redundant iPod and sent out to me…! I can't describe the pleasure with which I have listened to 'Farming Today', 'Woman's Hour', 'From Our Own Correspondent' and other favourites since it arrived, especially without the incessant crackling and whistling that I get from the radio. Thank goodness for the blog too: it has not only given me a project to work on in the evenings; it has also become a sort of proxy companion to whom I can relate my experiences and confide my observations, as well as being a link with friends and family as far apart as Brisbane and Barnstaple!

I have thought on more than one occasion of how hard life must have been for the missionaries who came out to Africa in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries (my grandfather among them) and for the explorers and early settlers too, living in hostile and often dangerous environments without any way of communicating with home, with no modern medicines, no gadgets, and with not even the means of knowing what was happening a few miles away let alone on the other side of the world. I have also thought of the thousands of students who bravely set off to do voluntary work each year as part of their 'gap year' – it can by no means be an easy option for school-leavers and they have my respect!

So in summary: low points – resident mouse in my bedroom for three weeks and resultant lack of sleep; dried bean stew every day and sometimes twice a day; crackling radio; shoes filling up with water during downpours – and, lowest by a long way, seeing children being caned. High points – rising to the challenge of teaching seventy children in one go; listening to the glorious singing at morning prayers; hedgerows full of colourful birds, flowers and butterflies; unlimited pineapples; daily sunshine; and, top of the list, the lovely, lovely children and adults.
If ever I have felt the least dispirited, I have discovered that the solution is simply to walk through the village. Within a minute of my setting foot on the dusty red road voices start calling out to me - from passing children with their sing-song "How-are-you-I'm-fine", from unseen villagers concealed behind the banana trees or in dark doorways calling "Hello Madame Julia!", from the old man bent over his sewing machine outside his little house and his wife who cackles delightedly when I respond with "Nijay!" to her "Agandi!" – every step I take is punctuated by a friendly greeting. Sometimes a passing truck will stop and a head appear from the window asking how things are going for me; and at the corner of the road a tiny girl, always in the same grubby dress, runs towards me each time I pass calling "Mujungu! Mujungu!" with her arms outstretched for a hug. The old women, in particular, greet me warmly – perhaps recognizing me as one of their generation, although I find it hard to return the sentiment as most are toothless, gaunt and with backs bent by a lifetime of carrying heavy loads. They speak no English but come up and grasp my arm, talking fervently in Rukiiga and all the time shaking my hand and patting me with child-like friendliness. It is poignantly noticeable how few elderly men and women there are: living to old age is the exception rather than the rule here and the few who achieve it seem to have an almost iconic aura about them…

By the time I reach the school, where the children hanging over the fence to watch the world go by wave and call to me, my heart is singing. And this litany of salutations does not stop at the school gate: the staff always greet me with such warmth, as they do everyone, each one giving me a friendly hand-shake as I meet them, each enquiring about my well-being, each smiling broadly as if my arrival has already enhanced their day…..who could not be happy in such an environment as this? The warmth and friendliness of the people towards me has been very touching; and their fervent faith, their compassion towards each other, the proud generosity of their hospitality and seemingly indestructible cheerfulness, a lesson in exemplary humanity. Trite as it may sound, I shall come away from here a better person than I arrived because of it: these people who have so very little in material terms, such a lack of comfort in their lives, so few pleasures, so many desperate needs, have given me the one thing that I could not pack into a bag and bring with me: friendship. They have not batted an eyelid that a complete stranger has come to live in their midst for no apparent reason but have accepted me into their community with unqualified warmth. The children, equally, have been an absolute delight to teach and get to know, and I have been quite relieved to discover that out of range of a stick they are as mischievous and spirited as children anywhere in the world. I adore the Nursery children and although they only speak Rukiiga we manage to have a lot of fun together with them chattering away to me nineteen to the dozen, blissfully indifferent to the fact that I have no idea what they are saying. Again, the stoicism of the children and their ability to be endlessly cheerful and uncomplaining in lives that hold so much hardship has been a chastening example to me. The teenage children in particular fascinate me: they seem to have no 'attitude' at all towards adults and are respectful and courteous at all times. They are both very unsophisticated, in our terms, and yet at the same time extremely worldly: they can cope with huge domestic and practical responsibilities and many will be married and producing children when barely out of school. Not for them the adolescent years of experimenting, developing their individuality, going out enjoying themselves, pursuing their interests, nurturing their talents – they are expected to behave like an adult as soon as they start to look like one, and to help care for their families, work the land and take some of the burden off their parents' shoulders. When I asked some of the older pupils at the primary school recently what they enjoy doing in their free time (such as they have), one of them said "We play with our friends". How lovely, I thought, that they still enjoy playing! But then I realized that she had said 'praying', not 'playing' (r and l are often confused) – and that is how it is here: religious activities are really the only opportunity for social networking and, even at the College, the only singing , dancing and partying the students do will be in the form of religious gatherings or celebrations – a far cry from the average university campus in the UK and, needless to say, without a drop of alcohol in sight….

Somewhere, though, things go wrong here and I have been trying to work out how and when the corruption and exploitation that seem to be endemic, as in so many African countries, gets a hold on such seemingly honest, straightforward and devout people. I talk to Alex, one of the young teachers at the school who has been bemoaning the dreadful corruption and asking me how bad it is in England. I feel that it is no idle boast to say that corruption is virtually non-existent for us. Crime is one thing, and of course we have more than our share of that; but corruption a far more insidious and pernicious thing to deal with and we should perhaps be more grateful than we are for a police force, legal system, health service and political infrastructure where bribes are not the daily currency of decision-making. Alex suggests, probably rightly, that when you are very poor you will seize any opportunity to make a few shillings and you cannot afford to have too many scruples about how you do it; and anyway, we both agree, the "if you can't beat them, join them" mentality must break down even the most well-intentioned citizens when they have themselves for so many years been on the receiving end of this kind of exploitation…. But there is some good news too: Internet Emily has just returned from four days in Kampala: her brother found an eye clinic run by a charity where she has had free treatment – and acquired a much-needed pair of glasses. She is all smiles: and so am I, both to see her so happy and, selfishly, because now she is back I won't have to make the hot, uphill journey into Kanungu any more to send emails or post the blog….

Thank you, so very much, for following the blog faithfully over the last twelve weeks and also to the many of you who have passed the link on to other people – I have gradually realised that more and more friends and contacts have been reading it as the weeks have passed. There has been a marvellous response to the Net-Book Appeal already and I would like to take this opportunity – rather than the CHIFCOD treasurer having to do so personally - to thank everyone who has made a donation. Again, this includes all sorts of people that I had no idea were even reading the blog and I am so grateful to you all. I will of course let you know what the final total is and just how many children will be sleeping peacefully under their new nets in February, safely out of reach of mosquitoes – as well as how they are enjoying their new text-books! The link has now appeared on the website; could I suggest that you use this for 10 pound donations or multiples of ten up to 40 pounds; but that for larger amounts (I say this not just out of wild optimism but because I know that one or two people are having fund-raising events) a cheque might be better so that the treasurer knows it is for the appeal and not for general funds?
There has also been a fantastic response to the plea for books, and parcels are already on their way from both the UK and further afield – and I hope that many more will follow…I will keep you posted! I return to England on Friday 5^th December and then come back to Uganda towards the end of January when, time permitting, I will restart the blog.

I have been marking exam papers again this week. In the 'Complete the Proverb' question on the P5 English paper, always guaranteed to raise a smile, the pupils have come up with some wonderful inadvertent variations on our well-known sayings – which, of course, they don't really understand but have tried to learn parrot-fashion. "Where there's a will… there's a wolf" might be a useful reminder for lawyers dealing with legacies; and I like the suggestion that "when the cat's away…. the mice will pray" – presumably that the cat will not return at all. But I leave you with my favourite which those of you who are having a change from turkey at Christmas may find thought-provoking: "What's sauce for the goose… is sauce for the gonads"!

Have a very Happy Christmas – and mind how you handle those nut-crackers…..

Bad Hair Day

2008-11-20T11:39:00.001-08:00

"Some of you have come to school without combing your hair today. You look very untidy! Please remember to comb your hair every morning!"

I look around the sea of shaved heads and wonder to whom this remark is addressed. Can it be me…? No-one else, so far as I can see, has enough hair to cover their scalp let alone to pull a comb through; however, the pupils look appropriately chastened and run their hands over their heads in a gesture of compliance.

"What is more," continues the teacher who is taking morning prayers today "What is more, some of you have not cleaned your shoes today!". The children look down at their feet, many of them bare, others shod in a variety of ill-fitting, uncleanable footwear caked with the unavoidable playground mud, and shuffle nervously as the teacher glares at them. The same ritual takes place every day, once the hymns have been sung and the prayers said. As well as being reprimanded regularly for the state of their hair and their shoes the children are admonished for their untidy uniform – despite the fact that for many these are in tatters – and for not having washed well enough. A glimmer of understanding of this seemingly unfair and inappropriate daily haranguing is beginning to dawn on me: just because you are poor, the teacher is subtly reminding them, you don't have to lose your self-respect. If you were to have hair it would have had to have been combed; if you had shoes to wear you would be expected to polish them. Poverty is no excuse for letting yourself go: you can still take a pride in your appearance and look the world in the eye. Standards, even in the poorest part of rural Uganda, must be maintained....

Morning prayers is one of my favourite times of the school day. The children gather as the bell goes at 7.30am, and stand in their class lines on the muddy patch of playground by the hall: the drum beat starts and they launch into the first hymn, which is never announced but simply chosen and started off by any child who feels moved to do so. Two or three other hymns follow, everyone clapping, dancing, and singing enthusiastically enough to raise – well, if not the roof, then at least the delicate early-morning clouds under which we are gathered. Clusters of children quietly join the assembled group: some coming from their morning tasks of cleaning the latrines and dormitories, some from early morning prep, others just late. Soon the whole school is there from the tiny Nursery children to the gangly teenage boys at the top of the school – some as tall as grown men and, with their carefully trimmed moustaches and shaved chins, looking oddly vulnerable in their schoolboy shorts. Pupils volunteer to lead the prayers, usually three or four spontaneous and thoughtful stream-of-consciousness outpourings. Desire is praying earnestly for the sick today and ends her rambling prayer "Lord God, you are the doctor of all doctors, the nurse of all nurses and the patient of all patients." Or is that "patience"? Either way she has provided me with a new picture of God as a kind of Holy Trinity of health-care - doctor, nurse and holy (or should that be wholly?)patient - which I will treasure….
We finish with a prayer of thanks for the sponsors, parents and teachers and a rendition of the Lord's Prayer full of baffling Anglo-African approximations of the words – including the incomprehensible "..and forgive us our sessases as we sussessusussssessus against us" - and finally, a last hymn to round things off cheerfully before the daily notices are announced and the inevitable ticking-off about appearances delivered. The children are then sent to get ready for their first lesson at 8 o'clock. A new day has begun at the Primary School.

The term is moving rapidly towards its conclusion and next week the children will sit their end of year exams. These are set by the government and, rather like our National Curriculum tests, aim to measure standards across the country. The tests are also important because the staff at Kirima Primary will use them to decide about which children w ill go up to the next class, or 'be promoted' as they call it. Children who have done poorly throughout the year, but especially in these final tests, will be kept down to repeat the year. Some children will repeat several classes during their time at primary school and will reach P7 at the age of fifteen or sixteen. Sadly, these pupils often have learning difficulties that are simply not recognized, understood or helped. I visited one school where I met a thirteen year old boy who was still in the Reception class having failed to make the necessary progress one year after another. I wonder how many more years the poor disheartened boy will have to stay there before he gets the specific support that he needs – maybe something as simple as some individual help with learning to read…?

Children who have not learned to read fluently are usually kept down a year and are generally regarded, as they used to be in England in less enlightened times, as rather slow. Dyslexia, it would seem, does not exist here: whenever I ask teachers about its incidence I am met with a blank look. If a child fails to learn to read he or she repeats the year, and carries on with the drilling and copying that form the literacy programme until the penny drops. Books, apart from the occasional textbook and the Bible, are rare things indeed in Ugandan classrooms and reading books non-existent. This is partly, at least, due to practical considerations: school buildings are very rudimentary and classrooms generally have neither glass at the windows nor lockable doors – they are open to all comers and so nothing can be left in them apart from the bench-and-desk furniture; but in any case, in both the cash-starved schools and the children's very poor homes books are unheard-of luxuries. The children arrive at school speaking only Rukiiga and most never having seen or handled a book. Yet within two years they are having all their lessons in English and can read, write and spell in the language. Reluctantly, I have had to accept that children can and do learn to read without ever possessing a reading book, without having had stories read to them and without any individual help whatsoever. I find myself in the astonishing position of having everything I believed and held dear about the teaching of reading turned completely on its head...

Whatever would Uganda make, I wonder, of the great phonics debate that rages on in our schools in England, of the Literacy Strategy, the massive body of educational research, the political manoeuvrings, the in-and-out fads and fashions of the classroom? Here, refreshingly, none of these have the remotest influence. Here, we still live in the Edwardian era of education. We drill, we repeat, we chant. We copy, we scribe, we emulate. We work, work, work.

The children in P1 – Year 1 and the first official year of schooling – have six one-hour lessons a day. They remain in their classroom for the entire six hours apart from a half hour break at 10.00am and a lunch break at 12.30pm. There are no PE lessons, no movement, art, or choosing time; no time to draw, paint, construct or experiment. Each hour-long lesson – be it English, social studies, agriculture , science or any other subject - is spent at their desks, listening, repeating, chanting and copying from the board. They learn to read, I have deduced, by writing: they create their own reading materials and gradually, day by day, the words they write begin to make sense to them. By the time they start to write independently their spelling is remarkably good because they have never had the opportunity to write a word incorrectly: endless copying and repetition have implanted the correct form of the word for posterity in their brain. With six hours of copying from the board and endless repetition of lists of consonant-vowel patterns, day in and day out, they gradually build up to three-letter words, then four and so on. It is dull, but it works – for most children at least.

Of course, this method of learning to read has its limitations. Children learn to communicate largely in formal, functional, text-book English with the restricted vocabulary that goes with it. They do not learn the words needed to express their thoughts, ideas or feelings; nor the enriching descriptive words of the imaginative and creative writing forms. They do not experience the pleasure that stories bring nor the doors that they open into the mysteries of the mind and the ways of the world. It is as if they have been taught to read the Highway Code but never introduced to the countless exciting accounts of travel and exploration that exist, nor the tales of the fabled and fascinating lands that the roads lead to. Yet they crave for stories and their eyes light up when I take a book from my bag at the end of a lesson. The boarders have started reading stories to each other at night from the couple of anthologies I have brought with me and I only wish I had more for them to enjoy. Perhaps a trickle of book parcels will soon start arriving for them from faraway England....how much pleasure they will bring if they do!

While I am picking up crackling radio reports of more job losses and growing tension in the financial world in England, shortage of money is also taken its toll here this week. I find Internet Emily in tears when I arrive to do some emailing. She has had a bad cold and her eyes are now swollen and inflamed – she suffers from recurrent eye problems. She weeps as she tells me that she knows she should have her eyes tested but can't afford to go to Kampala to see an optician, let alone pay first for his services and then for glasses should she need them. She cannot even afford the fee to see a doctor locally and so faces the prospect of deteriorating eyesight and chronic pain and discomfort from the recurrent inflammation. 'Isn't there anyone who can help you pay for treatment?' I ask. There is no-one, she tells me: all her family are poor. I wish I had the money to help; but know that if I helped her I would have a queue outside my door tomorrow of other needy and equally deserving villagers; it is perhaps just as well that I am on a tight budget myself now and having to eke out my remaining shillings to make them last until I leave....

One of the teachers at school comes up to me at break. "Do you think there is anyone in England who would sponsor an adult rather than a child?" he asks desperately. He has two children at university and three at school and has to find fees for all of them from his modest teacher's salary. He also supports his mother and is paying medical bills and food bills for other relations. The only way he can increase his salary is by gaining a further qualification; however he can't afford the college fees to do this. He is buckling under the strain of his financial burdens. I have to tell him gently that this kind of support is not available from any organisation that I know of; and that anyway it would be an unworkable arrangement. He walks away with his shoulders sagging under the weight of his responsibilities. Here, anyone who has a job is expected to support and help the less well-off members of the extended family and it would be unthinkable for them not to do so. He has no alternative but to struggle on.

There are problems at the High School today, too: the violent storms a fortnight ago washed away the equipment that pumps the water to the school and they have no running water. The pupils are having to fetch water themselves for washing, cleaning, cooking and sanitation from the nearest tap one and a half kilometres away. The cost of the repairs will be thousands of shillings. No-one seems to know where that money will come from - but it will have to be found...

It is my last day at the High School today as the pupils have exams next week. I have so much enjoyed teaching the students here – more, perhaps than the younger children because I have found it so hard to adapt to the very formal methods used here with that age group. When I gather in their books for marking one pupil has written in small letters at the end of her work "God bless you, Teacher Julea". I feel very touched...

At morning break a plate piled high with deep-fried grasshoppers arrives in the staffroom with the posho. These are a prized wet-season delicacy and looked forward to with the same fervour as asparagus in England and truffles in Perigord. It would cause offence to refuse the proudly proffered morsels so, rather gingerly, I take a bite of one. It is delicious! I am soon wolfing them down along with everyone else. In size and texture they are rather like non-fishy whitebait; they are crisp, tasty and, of course, absolutely free. In such financially precarious times one must be thankful for small – and crunchy – mercies...

Net Gain

2008-11-14T09:22:00.001-08:00

On Saturday I have planned a day out to visit Mweya, a part of the Queen Elizabeth National Park. The day, and the money to fund it, have been earmarked for some time and I have been really looking forward to it. The Mweya Peninsula is a good deal further north than Ishasha (famous for the tree lions): it is a spit of land at the end of the Kazinga Channel which joins Lake George to the larger Lake Edward – two of the 'Great Lakes' in western Uganda. The peninsula has magnificent views of the snowy peaks of the Rwenzori Mountains, the highest mountain range in Africa, which stretch for almost 120km along the border with Congo. As well as the many game animals, over 610 species of birds have been recorded at Mweya, including 54 different raptors. I wish I had brought binoculars with me!

On Friday night I am kept awake not only by excitement but by unremitting torrential rain, and storms with thunder so violent that on one occasion the whole house shakes and my bedroom door flies open: will the trip be off, I wonder? Just as I am finally dozing off I am roused by the sound of the Kampala bus passing, and, as it does every morning at 4am, driving through the village sounding its blaring five-note claxon-horn to awaken anyone intending to catch it so that they can be ready when it returns in an hour's time after going to villages further into the hills. At 5am it is back with horn blaring again to announce its imminent departure for the capital. As a kind of roving alarm-clock for those who want to catch it there is no doubt that it is extremely helpful but for the rest of us it is an unsolicited and deeply unpopular pre-dawn wake-up call. Today, however I have an early start myself so feel slightly less uncharitable towards the driver then I usually do…

I am worried that the roads will be impassable because of the rain but Nicholas, the driver, assures me they will be fine and so we set off at 5.30am for the three-hour drive to Mweya. Elsewhere, I discover later, some roads have been washed away or blocked by landslides; but we are lucky and meet no obstructions. After the first hour the journey is through the National Park itself which means that we can spot elephants, buffalo, gibbons and a multitude of birds as we drive, as well as enjoy the tranquil landscape in the early morning light. The water-logged roads are full of hidden pot-holes and boulders and about half-way there we have an inevitable puncture – but better now than on our return journey at dusk when it is dangerous to get out of the car because of hungry leopards and lions on the lookout for supper…

At Ishasha we meet empty buses on their way to pick up refugees at the nearby border with Congo to take them to a designated camp at Nakivale. Despite its close proximity this is the first evidence I have seen of the conflict in Congo; even the national newspapers hardly give it a mention and Uganda, it would seem, is thankfully keeping well out of the troubles there.

Once at Mweya I take a leisurely boat ride along the Kazinga Channel, a wide expanse of water which is home to a prolific amount of wildlife. We see crocodiles basking in the sun, dozens of hippos out visiting each other in their groups, enormous water monitor lizards scurrying along the sand-banks, monkeys balanced on overhanging branches, buffalo bathing in the shallows, and, later in the day, elephants arriving for their evening drink and a meal of river-bank greens. A dazzling variety of birds appears along the shores as we drift slowly past: storks of various kinds, spoonbills and gonolek; pied, malachite and shining blue kingfishers; cranes and pelicans; weaver-birds busily extending their delicately suspended nests, menacing-looking African fishing eagles, white-bellied cormorants…the diversity is breath-taking.

On the drive back we encounter families of gibbons sitting by the road in lines looking for all the world as if they are waiting for the next bus, elephants grazing in the falling light, giant forest hogs out foraging and numerous kob and antelope nervously glancing around for predators. There is a glorious sunset against which the sharp outlines of the spiky cactus-like euphorbia trees are silhouetted dramatically and then, in the encroaching darkness, intensely bright stars appear in the clear, unpolluted skies. How lucky I am to be here and to have the opportunity to see these marvellous sights! It has been such a treat to have a day out and I shall return to work on Monday with my batteries fully recharged…

It is less than three weeks now until I return to England. The end of term here is on the 5^th December and the new school year does not start until the beginning of February: a nice long break for me and for everyone else too. My initial three month 'trial period' is nearly over and I have been thinking about the next stage of my visit. There is no doubt in my mind that I want to return after Christmas, and, fortunately, everyone here seems to want and expect me to do so too. However, despite my best efforts to ignore it, the global financial crisis has had a significant effect on my budget for the year, as I'm sure it has on everyone's; so I will work here until Easter then will have to return to England in time to do some part-time teaching during the summer term rather than staying for the entire year as I had originally hoped to do. Although this is in many ways a shame, Hamlet has put forward an exciting proposition: he is very keen to write a book on the history of CHIFCOD in time for a big conference for the organization that is being held in England next September and has asked me if I would like to help him to do this next term. It means that I shall have to give up some of my teaching but it will be a project that I will really enjoy, and, if I can gather all the material and draft it out with him before Easter, I should, with the wonders of email, be able to finish and edit the book at home over the summer. All that practice writing the blog will no doubt come in useful!

Writing the blog has been a perfect way for me to record my experiences here both for my own benefit and also to share with friends, family and - as people have passed on the link - a growing number of other people too. Many of you who read the blog have said "How can we help?" and I have given a lot of thought to what, in addition to the urgently needed support given through sponsorship, might be achievable: and so I have decided to launch a sort of 'blog plea' to all of you who read it which I have called The Net-Book Appeal. The name springs, as you will read below, from the two items which I hope we can collectively provide for each child at the primary school. But it also, coincidentally, is the name of the tiny less-than-A4-size laptop that the blog has been written on, so is doubly appropriate. Shortly before I came to Uganda a very kind friend bought me my little Netbook, and I have been hugely grateful for it. Without it to tap away on in the long, quiet evenings I suspect that I would have been very bored and possibly a good deal less happy here as a result. Without it the blog would never have been written and the opportunity to involve so many of you in the life of this remote village would never have arisen. So, with grateful thanks to a generous friend, I give you: The Net-Book Appeal!

A mosquito net, treated with chemicals for life, can be purchased from a specialist company with a branch in Kampala for £5. A school text-book, again available in Kampala, also costs £5. If everyone who reads this were able to contribute £10 as their gift to a child at Kirima Primary School then I am sure we would quickly find the two to three hundred of each that are so badly needed. A mosquito net might well save a child's life, and certainly a great deal of suffering; and a text book would hugely improve their educational experience, as they waste so much time copying work from the board that could so much more easily be accessed, and enjoyed, from a textbook. From my experience of teaching here myself I cannot express strongly enough the frustration of only having four or five textbooks to share between fifty children or more – and in some subjects none whatsoever; and for the older children it presents serious difficulties in delivering the curriculum at all. Try to imagine teaching maths or studying texts in English or teaching the science subjects without text-books: it is an unimaginable struggle for both teachers and pupils. Godfrey, the headmaster of the school, when I asked if nets would be a welcome idea said simply: "It would be a great blessing". Similarly, in his quietly passionate way he said that the need for textbooks is "very desperate". These children receive nothing at Christmas: how wonderful it would be if we could all give one extra present this year so that each of them would find their life changed in a simple but significant way for the better when they return to school in February. Of course, if you feel that you can give to more than one child then multiples of £10 would be very, very welcome. It would be marvellous to be able to extend this appeal to the pupils at the High School too. Malaria is no respecter of age: as I write a student is just recovering from a near-fatal attack of cerebral malaria. The High School students, also, are in urgent need of textbooks – especially as they start preparing for public exams.

I shall personally handle the purchase of both the nets and the books when I return to Kampala in late January and through the blog I will keep you up to date about the appeal's progress – and the children's reactions! Cheques should be payable to Volunteer Uganda, and sent to: Dr Karen Sennett, 23 Langbourne Avenue London N6 6AJ ; or you can donate by credit card on the CHIFCOD website: www.volunteeruganda.org .You can either pull down a sponsor form which has a one-off donation form at the bottom; or click on the 'donate now' link. Within a few days there should also be a specific link for the Net-Book appeal.

It will mean a very great deal to me to be able to leave a tangible legacy behind at the end of my time here and if you can make a contribution to the appeal I will be so enormously grateful. To my family and friends I would like to ask that you donate to the appeal in lieu of giving me a Christmas present this year: I can think of no gift that would please me more. And if any of you are still considering sponsoring a child, please, please do so: the need is very urgent at the moment as the new school year approaches, especially for students hoping (if they can get a sponsor) to go to the High School.

Several of you have also asked if you might send some books to the school to help them start a library: the children crave for stories to read and it would be wonderful to provide a supply for them. Similarly, the older pupils at the Great Lakes High School have told me that they have no books at all to read in their leisure time and would so much love to have some - especially bearing in mind that they have no TV or computers to entertain them. Shipping books out in bulk is one option but collecting and then sending them a complicated and costly process to set up. What I would like to ask, therefore, is whether everyone might look on their bookshelves and find two or three outgrown or unwanted books in good condition, parcel them up and send them directly to either the Primary or the High School. Picture books for younger children, story books or reference books for the older ones at the Primary School, and any of the classics or fairly unsophisticated (and suitable!) novels for the High School students would be very warmly welcomed indeed. The cost of postage would be a few pounds but if sent surface mail should not be too expensive. The idea of a steady trickle of books arriving over the next few weeks and months is an exciting one and, if enough people took part in this 'send a book' scheme then a really substantial number could be acquired for the schools. For both the day children and boarders this would hugely enrich their lives. They beg to borrow the few books that I have brought with me and I fear they will be in tatters by the time I leave after such intensive enjoyment! The simpler the text the better for the younger children as their English skills are still embryonic; and a little care regarding the content and style would be helpful bearing in mind the very sheltered upbringing these children have. I feel excited at the possibilities of this scheme: if everyone were willing to send off a modest parcel what a fantastic result there would be!

The addresses are:

The Headmaster, Kirima Parents' Primary School, PO Box 50, Kanungu, W. Uganda

The Headmaster, Great Lakes High School, Katete, PO Box 50, Kanungu, W. Uganda

Thank you, if you feel able to, for supporting this appeal. Christmas here is celebrated only by returning to one's family home, attending church and having a meal, for most - though not all - containing meat; but it is looked forward to with the same eager anticipation as our own much more lavish festivities. Father Christmas does not come to this village: perhaps we can collectively do his job for him this year and bring something into these children's lives that will be a real and lasting help to them….

The blog will continue until I come home in early December and hopefully when I return in January too: thank you for being such encouraging, supportive and compassionate readers over the last twelve weeks and for all your comments and emails which have increased my pleasure in writing it hugely. I am sure that this beautiful country and its lovely people will go on providing me with all sorts of impressions and experiences to share with you for some time to come – and I hope that you will continue to enjoy reading about them.

Morning Glory

2008-11-05T09:44:00.001-08:00

I have started to travel to Great Lakes High School on Thursdays by boda-boda (motor-cycle taxi) – the car journey is just too expensive because of fuel costs and besides, this is a much more interesting way to get there. The school is some way from Kinkiisi in quite remote countryside near a little town called Katete; the journey takes about fifty minutes and travelling there by motor-bike is a truly lovely experience. Ham, my boda-boda driver, picks me up at 7.30 (yes, he has a brother called Shem although their father is not called Noah..) and we set off with the cool morning air in our faces, past roadside verges blue-hued with tumbling morning glory flowers, barefoot children on their way to school, women with babies on their backs and hoes on their shoulders, herds of giant-antlered cows, tiny roadside villages and acres of banana trees. We travel up (engine on) and down (engine off, to save fuel) the green hills passing mist-shrouded valleys below, with the dark mountains of troubled Congo to one side and, far ahead in the distance, the flat plains of the Rift Valley. The motor bike sails over the potholes and boulders, cowpats, mudslicks and piles of stones, skirting and dodging the larger obstacles deftly. Women generally ride side-saddle here but I feel much safer sitting astride the bike which attracts even more attention and shouts of 'Mujungu! Mujungu!' (white woman) from the children than I usually get – it is clearly regarded as not quite proper…

After a while we turn down a smaller, quieter road and in the sudden hush of the deserted countryside the air resonates with bird-song. Brightly-coloured birds with wonderfully evocative names – the Cinnamon-breasted bee-eater, the Chestnut-bellied wattle-eye, the Red-tailed bristle-bill – swoop in front of us on the path then disappear into the lush greenery that is punctuated only by the iridescent crimson blossoms of the flame trees and the snaking red path of the road ahead of us. We, and everything around us, are bathed in benevolent early-morning sunlight: the line of a poem by Robert Graves comes into my mind, "….swims warm and golden over me, the sun's plenipotentiary". This will surely be one of my favourite memories of Uganda…

I arrive at the school, hair streaming, eyes streaming, nose streaming, just in time for my first lesson at 8.30am – fittingly, on poetry today. I feel inspired! Now that I am getting used to it, I begin to wonder why I didn't train as a secondary teacher – I am really enjoying working with this age group so much. But it's far, far too late to think about that now and I am just grateful for this opportunity to do it for a while. The pupils have asked especially for some help with poetry as they simply don't understand it as a form. All those Facts that have been forced upon them have left precious little opportunity to develop their creative side; they find the imagery in poetry, the subtlety of the meaning and the lack of clearly defined rules baffling - and it is my mission to convert them all into poetry-lovers over the next few weeks….

It is coming towards the end of the academic year here and in February there will be a new intake of students at the High School, many of them from Kirima Primary School. On Saturday the Year 7s (P7) at Kirima have their leaving service to which their parents are invited, along with all the boarders and a few special guests. The school hall and grounds have been given a thorough spring-clean (by the students themselves of course) and the stage - a raised concrete area at the top of the hall - has acquired a makeshift altar and some decorations. Fairy lights have been strung up (these do not work but still give a festive atmosphere), along with some Christmas bells, tinsel, and branches draped with toilet paper. The effect, though a little eccentric, has been so lovingly created that one cannot help but admire it. We are blessed with a dry, sunny day which means that the special lunch that has been planned can take place outside: everyone is in good spirits. Shoes have been polished, uniforms washed and at 10.30 the service begins, taken by 'the Reverend', as everyone refers to priests here, from the local church. The boarders, even the five and six-year olds, have been sitting quietly in the hall since 9.30: the service was scheduled to start at 10.00 – but this is Africa! I have begun to identify a particular philosophy, equally applicable to a church service, a meeting or a social call, which goes "Why try to fit into an hour what can be expanded to fill an entire day?" – there is nothing, it would seem, that cannot be improved by being taken at a very leisurely pace. The leavers' service, which is followed by speeches, singing, lunch, then more speeches and more singing, eventually ends at 5.00pm – a long sit even by African standards! The lunch is a special-occasion feast including meat, a rare luxury: there is stewed goat, rice, matoke and peanut sauce – and a bottle of soda each for the leavers. No part of the goat is wasted and the portion I am served contains some dubious-looking white tubes amongst the chunks of meat: I decide that this is a meal that will benefit from being eaten without the aid of spectacles. The goat tastes delicious, and if some mouthfuls are a bit rubbery – well, the peanut sauce helps them down. One doesn't leave food in Uganda…

As we embark on the second round of speeches the Headmaster leans across and asks if I would be kind enough to make a short speech myself. "When?" I whisper. "Now" he whispers back. I do as well as I can with my impromptu delivery – clearly a little too well, in fact, as a few minutes after I have sat down the Headmaster leans towards me again and whispers "The Reverend from the Cathedral has just asked if you would give the sermon tomorrow at the morning service". The phrase 'shooting oneself in the foot' springs to mind: this is clearly an invitation for which refusal is not an option. I have been asked to give all sorts of talks in my time but never, to date, a sermon: the last time I was in a pulpit was to read a lesson at the Carol Service in Canterbury Cathedral about fifteen years ago and that seemed bad enough even with the reading already provided. I walk home mulling over the possibilities and wondering on which of the sermon-styles I have experienced here so far I should model my own. Should it be of the bible-fumbling-ten-texts variety, or perhaps a passionate discourse like last week's, in which the preacher was so affected by the intensity of his own message that we had to sing an extra hymn in the middle of the sermon to allow him a few minutes to stem his tears and recover his equilibrium…? In the event I go for something simple, short and child-friendly and hope that while it is good enough, it is not so good that I will be asked to do it again for a while…

On Monday and Tuesday the P7 candidates sit their Primary Leaving Examination, a national test similar to Common Entrance. There are four papers in the core subjects which are sent off to Kampala for marking by external examiners. In January the grades will be published: these are from one to four, with a 'U' for failures. Kirima usually does very well in these, with most children achieving Grade 1: it is one of the top achieving schools in the country. It is not hard to see how, despite their bare classrooms and deprived backgrounds, they manage to do so well. The P7 children rise at 5.00am every day ready for their first prep session from 5.30 to 7.30am and this is often in the form of extra coaching from the teacher who is on duty with them (I wonder how either pupils or staff would react to a 5.30 start in England…!). They have extra maths and English lessons after school each day, another prep session from 7.30 to 9.30 each night, lessons all day on Saturday and some on Sunday too. The staff input is enormous and the children's tireless perseverance quite formidable . Some of them taking the PLE are already in their mid-teens, having either started school late or repeated years because of slow progress. For them and some of the younger pupils too, this may be the only educational qualification they get so the results are important. The drop-out rate from senior schools is extremely high and many children simply have to start full time work on the land to help support their families. Other luckier ones will go on to a senior school and take 'O' and 'A' levels if their parents can afford to let them study or if they can get sponsors.

The exams, which take place at a local government school, evoke the same responses that they do anywhere in the world: there are complaints that the papers are too hard, that some questions were unfair, that some weren't on the syllabus; but they aren't disastrous. As soon as the second day of exams is over the P7 pupils are free to leave. Those who live locally come straight back to school, pack the meagre trappings of their seven years of life there into their little tin trunks, roll up their thin sponge mattresses and leave. Others will be collected the next day, or catch a truck (the local equivalent to a taxi) home if they are some way away. All this is done in a very subdued way: there are no tearful goodbyes, no embraces, no 'keep in touch' handshakes with staff. The pupils simply pick up their belongings and go, dealing with what must be for many a huge emotional upheaval with the customary Ugandan lack of drama. It's time to move on to next phase of their lives…

I find this quite difficult. Although I have only been at the school for a few weeks I already feel fond of these children and have to restrain myself from going up to them and giving them a hug. But this is not how things are done here. The staff, who have nurtured and cared deeply for them for so many years, display an apparent indifference to the occasion and keep a low profile. There seems to be an unspoken agreement that neither adults nor children can afford to show or even to feel too much emotion on this or any other momentous occasion, when their lives are at all times so precarious and so permeated with hardship…

One girl, Florence, does come and seek me out. She has learned that a member of my family has become her sponsor and she wants to thank me. "God has answered my prayers" she says simply. She is a lovely girl, very bright, diligent and determined. She wants to be an engineer: an ambitious choice for a village girl whose parents, as she says in the letter she has given me to pass on "are living a peasantry life and so they are poor". She is always top of the class and there is every reason to hope that after a good secondary education at Great Lakes High School she will go on to university and achieve her ambition. She has been waiting for two years for a sponsor and there are many more still waiting. I feel so touched by her relief and gratitude: there is optimism in her eyes and some certainty in her future now. I know that quite a few people who read the blog have become sponsors in the last few weeks and to all of them I want to say: your money could not be better spent - these children are so deserving. Every day at morning prayers the sponsors are remembered with special thanks. Your support may be the one factor that will lift a child out of the relentless cycle of poverty in which so many families are trapped. Thank you.

Matters of Life and Death

2008-10-30T22:03:00.001-07:00

Hamlet and Kellen have returned to Kinkiisi suddenly as there has been a death in the family: an elderly uncle of Kellen's has passed away. Funerals take place quickly after a death since there are no mortuaries outside of the larger towns; so families have to gather without delay. The funeral is taking place in Kellen's home village which is about an hour's drive from Kinkiisi. The service is at the deceased uncle's house since people are buried on their own land here – or "in the garden" as someone puts it. On the day before the funeral, the morning, in fact, that the death has been announced, a group gathers at Hamlet's house to make the long walk to the village, which is not on any transport route. Novias, who is related to Kellen is going and also her two cousins, both studying at the college. A few other people also set off with them, all apparently related in some way to the family. On the day itself Hamlet's jeep fills up with yet more relations who have appeared, as it seems, out of nowhere. The term "extended family" is beginning to take on a whole new meaning.

The kinship groupings in Africa have long been a subject of fascination for sociologists. Here in Uganda they are particularly interesting because of the large number of distinct tribes that have survived intact, each with its own language and traditions. Thirty-three languages are spoken in the country and there is no common language except for English. This causes all manner of problems and perpetuates a tribal insularity which, whatever its merits, must certainly be difficult to manage in an increasingly global social order. If a Ugandan moves to a different part of the country – to go to university, to get a job, to marry – then he or she has to learn the new local language. Although there is some common vocabulary between languages within the same area, the similarities are not great enough to enable an easy switch, certainly from one part of the country to another. Visiting politicians, speakers, church leaders or businessmen have to speak through interpreters to reach the many people who don't speak English fluently in the regions they visit. Television, films, radio and indeed any public communications have to either be in English or dubbed. In the east of the country, which has always been more cosmopolitan, Kiswahili is widely understood; in and around Kampala, Luganda and other languages of Bantu origin are fairly interchangeable; and in the extreme northeast Karimojong, a language with a vocabulary of only 180 words is used – which would seem to make it the obvious choice for a common language if only for ease of learning it! But elsewhere you are stuck with the language you were brought up with. It means that all formal and legislative communication must be delivered at a very regional level and local government holds a good deal of power as a result. It's a chicken-and-egg situation: people tend to stay within their local area or move back to it for ease of communication; therefore the adoption of a common language is very slow indeed to progress (and anyway no-one has decided what this should be). The government has recently compounded matters by insisting that children should all be taught to read and write in their local language rather than English until they are eight: as a result their English will be poorer, their local language stronger and the tribal bonds ever tighter. As a self-generated means of maintaining political stability this is pretty effective: the country is divided into small, tight-knit groups none of which can communicate very effectively with each other and none of which, therefore, can gain any significant amount of power. The rivalries that can occur with such devastating consequences - like those between the Hutus and Tutsis in neighbouring Rwanda in the recent past - are not something that trouble Uganda. The civil war in the north between the Lord's Resistance Army and government forces, however, has led to 10,000 deaths in the last two decades and terrible instability and hardship for the people caught up in it – but that is another story….

Within each tribe are clans: groups of people linked by kinship or marriage, some closely and others extremely loosely and distantly and no doubt more still who are simply part of the community and become honorary family members by osmosis. The clans gather whenever an opportunity presents itself: a birth, marriage or death, or any occasion that merits a celebration. Funerals are particularly momentous and no-one in the clan would miss the burial (for there are no cremations here) of one of its members. Marriages, too, are big - very big – occasions, with hundreds of guests. Although there is an official guest list the expectation is that roughly double the number invited will attend and a wedding 'committee' of family members makes the complicated arrangements for catering and accommodation – and even transport for the poorer members of the clan.

Florence, the bursar at the College is getting married in Kampala in ten days' time. Church weddings (for the better-off) are similar to those in England with the bride in the traditional white dress and the groom's supporters in identical suits, shirts, ties and even shoes. I, along with my colleagues, am invited to contribute towards the expenses of the wedding, for which purpose a list has been drawn up – an exhaustive catalogue including the cost of the hire of the hall, band and clothes; transport costs for the entire family; and presents for the couple including, in the traditional way, the livestock and crops to be given. Should I sign up for a cow, I wonder (no, too expensive, surely..?); or a sack or two of flour? A few crates of soda perhaps (alcohol does not figure…) or the mother-in-law's bus fare? People choose their own partners here but marriage is nevertheless a serious business arrangement too. The groom's family has to pay a 'bride price' which is measured in animals, land and crops and takes considerable negotiation before the bride's family agrees the terms. For urban brides the livestock is these days largely symbolic and the monetary value is given in lieu of the real thing – although one of Florence's male colleagues says quite seriously when this is being discussed "….but surely every woman needs a cow to milk doesn't she?" - to which I can think of no suitable reply...

Women – especially in rural areas – tend to marry very young, something that the government is trying hard to discourage. Schools everywhere are painted with slogans – over doorways, on fences, on classroom walls - exhorting children to break away from culturally-entrenched patterns of behavior. It is somewhat unnerving to arrive at a primary school and be greeted by a sign saying "Say no to early marriage" and " Don't accept gifts in exchange for sex" – and, over and over again "There is no cure for AIDS". The impact of AIDS on Uganda, as on so many African countries, has been devastating: over one and a half million Ugandans have died from the disease. In the late 1980s Uganda was regarded as the worst-affected HIV/AIDS country in the world but has been remarkably successful in tackling this damning statistic and the incidence has now stabilized at about 7% of the population. The ABC approach – abstain, be faithful, use condoms – has been hammered home through schools, churches and government programmes and a huge effort made to encourage greater openness, and a willingness to be tested and to know one's HIV status. However, people are still reluctant to admit to being HIV positive and it is impossible to know how many children, and which ones, are HIV positive in any school, Kirima included. Free anti-retroviral drugs have been available since 2004 but for many the cost of transport to access these remains a deterrent to using them, particularly in the war-torn north of the country. It is estimated that 80% of Ugandans are unaware of their status: the optimistic statistics, one fears, may be considerably wide of the mark. There are two million orphans in the country, largely as a result of AIDS, and 20% of these are double orphans. We are talking about this in the staffroom and a teacher recounts the story of a pupil in a secondary school where he used to work who was always falling asleep in class. The boy, who was in his early teens, refused to give any explanation for this so one day the teacher followed him home. He found that this young boy was mother, father and breadwinner to his orphaned brothers and sisters and that when he got home from school he had to singlehandedly cook and care for them as well as grow the crops: he was constantly exhausted by his duties as head of the family but desperate to finish his schooling. "He was a clever boy, too", the teacher adds. I wonder what has become of him and the many, many like him for whom the heavy burdens of adulthood have fallen so prematurely onto their young shoulders.

At the College this week the students ask me about what jobs children have to do in the UK. They seem rather shocked when I say that actually, they don't really have to do any jobs apart from a few chores: childhood is a relatively carefree time and most children just play, develop different skills and interests, and concentrate on their schooling. I add, fairly light-heartedly, that the disadvantage of this is that some children leave home unable to do their own laundry or cook. "But they can use a hoe can't they?" one student asks. The hoe could be Uganda's national symbol: every man, woman and child learns how to use one and it is an essential part of their lives. There is even a saying that goes "Welcome a guest for two days but on the third give him a hoe" which I think I may adopt over the forthcoming Christmas period…! The notion of the average British teenager wielding a hoe does not inspire much confidence, however. Our children can operate a computer; Ugandan children can grow crops. Which of these skills, I find myself wondering, is the one that will serve a child best in tomorrow's uncertain world…?

Finding out about healthcare generally has, as with education, thrown up a good deal of confusion and hearsay. Immunisation against the common childhood diseases is, it seems, provided for all babies and there are a small number of government hospitals where some treatment is theoretically free; but the shortage of doctors and other trained staff, together with woefully short supplies of drugs and other medical supplies, means that treatment is very limited and extremely basic. "All you will get in a hospital is paracetamol – if they haven't run out of those as well!" people scoff. Ambrose, one of the administrative staff at the College recounts over lunch one day that he was involved in a motor cycle accident not long ago and broke an arm and a leg. He was taken to the regional, supposedly state-of-the-art, government hospital for treatment where he lay on his bed in agony for an entire week without receiving any treatment: his broken bones were left unset and he was not even given a pain-relief tablet. He eventually managed to get the attention of a doctor who told him that he wasn't officially on duty so couldn't treat him; but if he paid him privately he would find a sling for his arm. Ambrose's family found the money to transfer him to a private clinic where his limbs were put in plaster and, thankfully, he made a complete recovery. Others are not so fortunate. For people with chronic illnesses, he says, the position is particularly dire. Diabetics, faced with the cost of both insulin and syringes, and patients with high blood pressure, cancer, and a host of other treatable conditions very often resign themselves to inevitable early death because they cannot afford to even start the long-term treatment required. There is an acute shortage of doctors too: they are poorly paid and many go overseas as a result. Our local district of Kanungu has just two doctors to serve the 100,000 odd people in the area. I am keeping my fingers firmly crossed that I don't fall ill in the coming weeks…

The only way to get effective treatment, indeed any treatment, it would seem, is to pay privately. Many drugs destined for government hospitals find their way into private clinics instead and there is universal consensus that corruption undermines the health services as much as it does so many other areas of Ugandan life. People cannot afford to buy medical insurance so they just have to pay for treatment as they need it – or else they resort to traditional remedies which are much cheaper. All surgery has to be paid for: my colleague Justine's widowed mother had to sell her small piece of land to pay for her leg to be amputated, and this is a common story. As always, it is the poor who suffer the most; the average life-expectancy of between 39 and 49 years (figures vary according to the source) speaks volumes about the shockingly poor levels of healthcare in the country and the many, many people – adults and children – who, without access to treatment, simply die unnecessarily. When I tell people about our health care system in the UK they are open-mouthed with disbelief. "You mean if you get taken to a hospital they will treat you without payment? That you can have an operation free? That there are doctors in every town?" For women, the fact that pain-relief and medical intervention are available for labour is greeted with amazed envy. Abandon any notion that childbirth is easier for a woman who works in the fields than one who sits behind a desk in a smart suit: over and over again girls and women speak with dread about the pain that it is their lot to endure and the lack of any support whatsoever with childbearing aside from that of a traditional village birth attendant….

Alice, one of the teachers at Kirima Primary, has a three-month old baby and has just returned to work. Twelve weeks is the statutory maternity leave for a teacher here, and you have to split your salary with the person who is covering your job. She dashes back to her little house near the school to breast feed her son at break, lunchtime and in the afternoon and leaves him in between, unattended, to sleep. Here this is regarded as perfectly acceptable; her neighbours keep an ear open for him and can come and fetch her if needed. Having seen that I have a camera she asks me shyly if I would take some photos of her baby and have them printed when I go back to England for Christmas. This is my first official engagement as a photographer and I only hope I can meet expectations! I go round to the tiny house she shares with her husband, also a teacher, and the baby – one room divided into a living area and a sleeping area, screened off with a curtain. Every day she brings a torch into school to recharge the battery, 'for when I feed him at night' she explains – as they have no electric power. We chat about the amount of washing babies generate and she is fascinated by my description of a washing machine – she would love to have one but acknowledges regretfully that she probably never will…

Back in England my own particular clan has been celebrating quite a few birthdays recently. Here, however, there has been no evidence or mention of a birthday since I arrived – although by the law of averages there must have been a substantial number amongst the school population. I ask in the staffroom one breaktime whether anyone there celebrates their birthday, even in a small way. " Not really" shrugs one member of staff. "Only special ones like twenty-one" says another. Robert, the Nursery teacher, tells me that he doesn't even know when his birthday is: his parents, he says, were so illiterate that when they registered the birth some time after the event they had no idea of the date – only that it was early in the morning. He found out the year by going to the record office: 1945; but that is as much as he knows. "So I can't celebrate it" he says cheerfully. 'Internet Emily', when I ask her the same question looks wistful. "When I was at school," she says, " my friends used to club together to get a bit of money to buy some milk and they would make a cup of tea for all of us to drink together in the dormitory". There was no cake and no presents but even that little celebration clearly made her feel special. "Now I just remember it on my own" she finishes, a little sadly. The children at the school don't appear to do anything at all: their families are just too hard-pressed to buy even a few sweets or some other small treat. "The really lucky people," says Gloria, one of the younger teachers, " are the ones who have their birthday on December 25^th as they share their birthday with Jesus. They always have a special day with nice food to eat too!" At home people with Christmas birthdays tend to regard themselves as unlucky since they feel they miss out on having their own full birthday entitlement. It's all a matter of perspective…..

There have been torrential rainstorms this week; we are in the middle of the wet season and I am getting used to the pattern of the downpours. The atmosphere becomes progressively hot, still, and unbearably humid; then just before the rain begins the temperature suddenly drops. The banana leaves start to make ominous crackling and knocking noises as they bang against each other in the rising wind and then, quite suddenly, sheets of water start to fall from the sky as if some huge floodgate had been opened. Rain this heavy causes damage: recently there have been some particularly violent hail storms a little higher into the hills which have washed away the crops and destroyed many banana and matoke plantations. Hamlet has had to send maize flour to his mother as she has run out of food: the old, and the subsistence farmers, both of whom live on the crops they pick daily, are at high risk of starvation if they have no family to support them. They have no money to buy food and rarely manage to store any for times of need. Even the root vegetables like yams and sweet potatoes which usually survive these storms have rotted in the water-logged soil. The coming months look very grim indeed for the rural poor.

The extreme weather has, tragically, claimed a young victim: a student teacher at the College was struck by lightning and killed instantly on Friday night during a ferocious storm. She was lying in her bed when it happened; a freak accident that no-one could have predicted or avoided. The funeral takes place the next day and she is buried almost before people have heard of her death. Nobody talks about it much: death, even one as sudden and as sad as this, seems part of the fabric of everyday existence here and people accept its cruel arbitrariness with quiet resignation. Life, however precarious one's hold on it, must go on….

Hard Times

2008-10-22T05:57:00.001-07:00

"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else"
How Mr Gradgrind would have loved Uganda! By pure chance – it was the only copy of Dickens I could find at Heathrow – I am reading 'Hard Times', having decided to bring with me some rather more challenging reading matter than my usual diet of Booker shortlisted novels; and the opening words might surely have been written by the Minister of Education himself…

Uganda has an impressive National Curriculum, published only last year: detailed, rigorous and forward-looking, it includes provision for creative subjects, for gifted and talented pupils, for PE and sport, and for group teaching. However, it is an idealistic and unrealistic pie-in-the sky document and impossible to implement: class sizes are far too big, there are many too few teachers and there is no money for resources. I have been told that there is not a single qualified PE teacher in the entire country: sport, as a non-academic subject, is seen as a luxury that cannot be afforded in a qualifications-obsessed society. What is taught in schools, therefore, is facts, facts and more facts, with no room for the 'imagining' that Mr Gradgrind so hated, nor for dialogue, for investigation, for creative expression or for independent learning.

Observing trainee teachers for the last three weeks has been a largely dispiriting experience. The lessons are formulaic, repetitive and dull. In each one, whatever the subject, a handful of facts is taught through drill, chanting and imitation: this is called "the experiencing phase" of the lesson. The children are then given a written exercise which they copy from the board, "the evaluating stage". Those who finish sit and wait for the rest of the class to catch up, sometimes spending as long as half an hour doing nothing. Today I watch a student taking a science lesson with P1 (five and six year olds) on 'dangerous animals' which runs along the lines of: "Here are three dangerous animals: snake, elephant, lion. Repeat after me, snakes, elephants and lions are dangerous animals. These words say snake, elephant, lion. Everyone read them. Snake, elephant, lion. Now stand up and repeat them when I point to you " (this takes about twenty minutes to get through the entire class). "Now complete this exercise in your books: write the names of three dangerous animals." There is only one resource in the room and that is the teacher; the teacher's only resource is the official textbook. The textbook is dull, dry and stereotyped; ipso facto, so is the lesson. But believe me, every child can name three dangerous animals when it comes to the mid-term test and that is all that matters…! This pattern is repeated throughout the age range: facts are taught, repeated, chanted; then copied from the board, memorized and regurgitated in tests. The children work in silence and the teacher marks their books as they finish. There is no opportunity to help children who are struggling: this is a sink-or-swim environment and the less able just have to look after themselves - or copy from their neighbours. It is an approach straight out of the Victorian era.

Teachers do a two-year training here, for which they only need the equivalent of GCSEs, leading to a teaching certificate. After this they can go on to do a diploma and then a degree if they so choose. Many work towards these further qualifications at the weekends or in the holidays – they are the only means of getting a promotion and earning more than the very basic salary that they start on. Finding some students to observe, however, has not been plain-sailing by any means. On Friday morning I make the long, hot walk to Kanungu with the college lecturer I am working with only to find that the school we are visiting has decided, unilaterally, to have a day's holiday. "We have sent the children home to refresh their minds" the Head tells us, a trifle defiantly. When we return to the school this week many of the children have been sent home again, this time because their parents have not paid their fees. They are given half a term's grace after which their children aren't allowed back until they have paid what is to us a pathetically small sum of money – a few pounds, no more –but to a peasant farmer often an impossible amount to find. However, today I strike lucky in a little school in the next village where five students are taking turns to teach a Reception Class (Nursery 2) of eighty children. The children are seated on a dozen or more benches which, when the time comes for written work, become their tables: they simply kneel on the stone floor behind them. These four and five-year olds are incredibly well-behaved and go through their chanting and drilling diligently. When it comes to their written exercise, however, the sheer practicalities of making sure each of the eighty children has a pencil and a book, can see the board and has a space to work in is a logistical nightmare for the teacher. Monitoring their progress, likewise, is impossible: the more able manage the task, finish and get a tick. The rest of the class struggle along, some doing nothing, others managing a few indecipherable scribbles. And so it goes on, lesson after lesson, and school after school. The impressively good behaviour of the Ugandan children, while it does have something to do with the way they are raised, also has a lot to do with the stick that the students carry in their hands: corporal punishment is still used widely here.

A few days later I am booked to go to two tiny schools high up in the hills in a village called Kajugangama. The lecturer I am working with and I go first to Kanungu for fuel. Two goats have draped themselves round the petrol pump: an informal way of telling us that there is no fuel today. After a lot of behind-the-scenes negotiating our driver reports that he can get a jerry-can of fuel for twice the usual price (and that is high enough..). All eyes turn – hopefully – to me. The car is refuelled and off we go.
The road we take winds up through the hills rapidly becoming more rocky and rough until it finally reduces to a single track made almost impassable by the recent heavy rains. The first school is reasonably accessible but to reach the second we have to abandon the car and walk down a narrow path through banana fields for about a kilometre. I begin to wonder how a school could possibly have been built so far from a road, but when I see it I understand – it is a tiny two-room building made entirely from mud. This is a 'parent school' built for and by the families who live in this isolated spot but woefully underfunded as few of them can afford to pay any fees. The two classes, one for the younger children and one for the Reception/Year 1 age group, have a wall between them that reaches only to door height so noise carries from one room to the other unimpeded. I watch a student on her first teaching practice taking the Nursery class – a loose term for pupils in their first year of schooling ranging in age from two to five – which has sixty pupils crammed into the small room. I don't know whether to feel more sorry for her, as she shouts to be heard above the hearty chanting from the class next door, or for the two and three-year olds on the front benches who, along with the rest of the class, are being subjected to a lesson on subtraction. They sit for an hour, these tiny tots, struggling with 9 take away 5 and suchlike, work far too difficult for any of the class but especially for them. Bundles of sticks for counting are given out as they start their written work, once more using the benches as tables, and in such a cramped space I wait with bated breath for someone to be poked in the eye. But no, the only casualties are the sticks, which several children have started to chew, probably not having had any breakfast. There are clear signs of malnutrition here – swollen abdomens and scalp lesions – and the people are obviously very poor indeed. "How did you feel the lesson went?" I ask the student at the end of it and, depressingly, she says she thought it went really well...

It has taken me some little while to make sense of the complicated schools system here. There is a large number of schools, one round every corner, it seems – but then there is a very large number of children to educate. (People here, even my teaching colleagues, are astounded to hear that in the UK it is usual to only have two or three children as eight or more is quite common in rural Uganda.) First there are the government schools: no-one has a good word to say about these as they are very understaffed so classes are enormous, often with over a hundred pupils. Teachers are, it is said, demoralized by the intolerable burden this presents; rumour has it that in many schools they arrive late, take it in turns to have days off and do not set written work because the marking is impossible to deal with. Children do poorly; they receive no food during the day so arrive hungry, work hungry and leave hungry if they cannot provide for themselves. The secondary system too is buckling under the strain of also trying to provide places for all the children who need them and it has just been announced that all secondary schools must now operate a double-shift system with children coming for half a day only. This system is widely disparaged: children get half the lesson time, teachers get double the work load, resources and facilities are put under huge strain. In the government's defence, however, it must be remembered that this is a country where 87% of the population live in rural areas, most of them subsistence farmers who do not pay tax. There is little revenue, therefore, to fund public services such as education and health.

Not surprisingly, parents who can possibly afford to do so send their children to private schools, often called 'Parent Schools' since the parents finance them through very modest fees; and these are everywhere. Some are church or religious schools – Catholic, Protestant, Muslim – and others not. They bear absolutely no relation to our concept of a private school: they operate on a shoestring and facilities are very basic but at least have the advantage of controlling their own destiny. Standards are generally higher in these schools, classes smaller and children are usually fed at break and midday. Kirima Primary is one such a school. In both government and private schools uniforms are compulsory, and in most schools parents must provide stationery too. Boarding facilities are provided at most schools because children have to travel such long distances to get there; but again, these are nothing like the boarding schools in the UK. The children sleep in three-tier bunks in overcrowded dormitories, do their own washing and a variety of other jobs around the school, like the cleaning, and do schoolwork before and after school and at weekends to keep themselves occupied. Boarding is a popular option: the children get extra schooling and because fees are minimal it is often almost cheaper for parents than having to feed and care for them at home. Far from feeling upset by the amount of schoolwork the children do – prep sessions for the older pupils start as early as 5.00 am in some schools that have electricity and 6.30am at most (and staff have to supervise them!) – parents see this as an opportunity: education is the only way out of poverty for their children. In a society such as this childhood as we know it does not exist and children have to be much more robust emotionally. I have hardly heard a single child cry since I have been here, although they have much to cry about. They are far, far less needy and demanding in terms of the attention they expect from adults than children in the developed world. Life is tough and they do not expect it to be otherwise: self-pity is not part of their emotional language. The youngest boarder at Kirima Primary is five and several are only six; the only concession to their young age is that they are allowed to sleep in the bottom bunks, and be in the same dormitory as an older sibling if they have one.

In both the government and the private schools resources are in shockingly short supply. Classrooms are bare and dingy with only scrappy home-made wall charts of letters and numbers if anything at all. Textbooks, where they are found, are shared between many children. There are no art materials nor any science equipment, certainly up to the end of year 7 – not a magnifying glass nor a magnet in sight. Talking to a physics teacher who works at the local government secondary school, he says "In Uganda we do everything in theory - so it's no wonder that we produce engineers who can't put things into practice!"
All the schools I have been into use stones, sticks and bottle tops as counters in maths lessons. In most schools children have to bring their own pencils and many carry a razor blade to sharpen them. My heart is in my mouth as I watch tiny children slicing away at their pencils with the sharp blades then slipping these back casually into their pockets. How would risk assessments go down here, I find myself wondering…?…

Yet, despite this depressing catalogue of shortcomings, the children do somehow learn to read, write, count - and speak English too. They work extremely hard and, in the absence of any other distractions from the hardship of their lives, actually seem to quite enjoy their lessons. And they sing: every lesson I have seen up to Year 5 has begun and ended with a song, often with one or two in the middle as well if the class is getting restless. To hear them sing is an absolute delight: they have clear, loud voices and everyone, but everyone, takes part enthusiastically. It seems to be a kind of therapy for them, uplifting, soothing, cheering, unifying – and raises them, these rows of impoverished, overburdened children, into what I can only describe as a state of joyful liberation. It is not hard to see where the gospel music of the oppressed American slaves had its roots…

So where does a volunteer from England fit into all of this? How, coming from a school and a culture so educationally privileged and progressive, can a teacher like me contribute anything of use and value to a situation which, in reality, needs a massive injection of both money and political will to change it by even one iota? Certainly not by any aspiration to 'do good' : the very term 'volunteer' hints at both an assumed superiority in the giver and a perceived deficiency in the recipient and I have quickly realised that tact, sensitivity and humility are the most essential qualities I can bring to my new workplace. A school like Kirima Primary , despite its material needs, is a very successful and happy one when judged within its own context. As with any successful school, it is the strength and commitment of the staff team that makes it what it is. They work incredibly hard, sometimes a seven-day week if they are on duty at the weekend. All I can offer is support and friendship to the teachers, giving them a few extra free periods each week to cope with the massive workload and – genuinely – to express my admiration for what they achieve in the school. Much as I might prefer a more child-centred approach to the teaching there I know that my methods would be useless with such large classes and with so few resources. For the children I am a new and friendly face and a different kind of teacher who can help them with their English, teach them something about a different culture and bring a little variety into their predictable curriculum. The older students at the High School and College, now they are getting used to me, love to ask questions, often rather naïve ones, about life in the UK – or 'your place', as they call it. Is it true that if you have more than four children they will be killed? Does childbirth hurt as much as it does here? Do English people get AIDS? Do they eat matoke and grow bananas? Is it really true that there is no 'bride price' paid when people get married? And can it be possible that all the roads in your place are made of tarmac…?

The important thing I can do, apart from building stronger links between Highgate School and the CHIFCOD schools, is to raise awareness in the UK of the challenges people face here and hope that CHIFCOD may as a result get more financial support for the tremendously worthwhile projects – far beyond just schools, as their website shows – that they operate out here. If a few more children get sponsors, if some textbooks and storybooks can be purchased, if even one child less gets malaria through acquiring a net, then I shall feel something positive has come out of my time here. People attribute very generous motives to me for coming here but I know that I shall take back from the experience far more ( my weight aside!)than I have put in, and that my reasons for coming are just as much selfish as altruistic, if not more so…

Today, Saturday, I have taken myself for a long walk through the banana plantations towards the next village. Small houses nestle amongst the dense foliage of the trees and I stop at one of these to chat to a woman called Patience and her four young boys. She is keen to show (and sell me) mats and bags she makes from dry banana tree leaves so I step into her little house. On the bedraggled sponge-foam sofa is a fifth child who lies there with grotesquely contracted limbs drawn up towards his body and head lolling. "His brain does not work" his mother tells me matter-of-factly as she tries to disperse the flies that persistently settle around his mouth and nose. He is about four and obviously severely brain-damaged. He cannot walk, feed himself or indeed move at all. I ask Patience if there is a school, maybe a boarding school, where he could be looked after. "In Uganda? Of course not!" she says. I ask how she will manage when he is older and bigger and she simply shrugs her shoulders. There is a small handful of special schools in the country for children with physical handicaps such as blindness; otherwise, to all intents and purposes, special needs do not exist here and children who cannot cope with mainstream schooling simple stay at home to be cared for by the family. I ask what the boy's name is and, innocent of the dreadful irony of her reply she says "He is called Ambitious".

Hard times indeed for this little family, and for many others like them….

Footnote: You can help CHIFCOD move up the Google website ratings and therefore be more in the public eye by accessing this blog through their website:
www.volunteeruganda.org
rather than directly. The blog is easy to find on the front page and it shouldn't take any longer than doing it the usual way. Every little helps!

photos

2008-10-15T05:09:00.000-07:00

Food for Thought

2008-10-14T09:55:00.001-07:00

Q15. Complete the proverb: "Half a loaf…."
Answer: "Half a loaf in the hand is better than two in a bush".
I couldn't agree more with the boy who has offered this sensible answer in the Primary 7 English revision paper and only wish I could give him a mark for such an inventive amalgamation of the two familiar sayings – but sadly, I must stick to the marking scheme which gives no credit for creativity – nor for amusing the marker…

It is Thursday afternoon and Independence Day in Uganda, so we have another public holiday. Although schools are officially closed I have spent the morning up in Kanungu watching the official celebrations with the Kirima children and now I am at home trying to finish the pile of exam marking I was given yesterday. It's been another long morning, this time of speeches, parades, march-pasts and salutes accompanied by a brass band so excruciatingly bad that you admire them just for being brave enough to appear in public. As the people joyfully celebrate 46 years of freedom from British rule I feel, as the only English person there, horribly out of place, like a very conspicuous gate-crasher at an extremely private party, and wonder if at any moment I will be hauled up in front of the soldiers and asked to explain myself, my country and all its imperialist machinations. But no, today the people are in far too good a mood to let the presence of a 'mujungu' – white person – interfere with their festivities and so I can sit back and enjoy myself along with everyone else.

The Kirima choir has been practising hard for today as, along with many of the other local schools, they have been invited to perform in front of the great and the good of Kanungu District Council.Ibsen, the teacher who trains the choir, has bought a new drum for the occasion, made in Mpambire, a traditional drum-making village along the road to Kampala. Earlier this week he showed it to the children proudly in assembly. "This drum", he says "this drum must be respected, do you understand?" He strokes the cow-hide lovingly. "If anyone.." he says in a voice tight with emotion, "…if anyone does not respect this drum, I will…" he pauses, searching for something bad enough that he can threaten "I will…" His voice trails off miserably as he fails yet again to identify a punishment weighty enough to fit such a crime. The children just nod their heads sympathetically; they have got the message. The drum will be respected….

I go to watch one of the first rehearsals, with the respected drum making its debut, held in the dusty stone-floored hall after school. The choir, children ranging in age from nine to fourteen, are in a huge semi-circle and Ibsen demonstrates the rhythm he wants them to clap, an incredibly complex syncopated beat that I cannot for the life of me master – although they pick it up effortlessly. One by one he introduces the body movements, the rhythm to be beaten by their feet and the song, in parts, that carries the whole thing along. Groups of children are selected to perform another set of movements within the circle and they pick up the choreographed sequences instantly. There is a mounting sense of drama and excitement as the drumming grows louder and the solo singer who is leading the performance dances ever more energetically and confidently. Ibsen prods and pushes, shakes his fist and shouts to get the effect he wants – no-one is allowed to be half-hearted. The children have an incredible innate sense of rhythm and seem totally at ease and uninhibited. There is not a snigger or a nudge from anyone as he gets them to stamp, wiggle and leap about, and I find it rather moving to see the adolescent boys and girls, at an age when most children are painfully self-conscious, working so seriously and proudly at these strangely primitive sequences without a flicker of embarrassment. Their performance on the day is faultless – despite the local madwoman who decides to join in with all the dances and is courteously ignored by the performers who just let her, wrapped up in her own little world, carry on enjoying herself.

I have also spent some time in the Nursery this week. Nursery 1, the three and four-year olds, occupy a tiny room which is furnished with the same pew-like bench-and-shelf units, each seating five or six children – often more – used in the other classes. Seated in rows, the fifteen little ones sit and chant, sing, count and recite, sometimes making a circle at the front for some practical activities, for most of the morning. I watch a number lesson where they carefully count the stones that comprise their number apparatus : their only equipment other than what they find outside is a pile of slates which they use for drawing and scribbling. They have not a single item of play apparatus, not a book, not a puzzle nor even a few bricks. Yet their lovely teacher Diana keeps them happily occupied with a medley of songs and action rhymes – they know more English nursery songs than I knew existed, as well as many in Ruchiga – and a succession of other little activities and lessons. She is a remarkable teacher; patient, kind, firm, and endlessly cheerful and energetic. She has an air of serenity about her and even in such an impoverished environment always manages to look wonderfully elegant, bringing a touch of glamour to the bare Nursery classroom in her dusty Chanel suit which has doubtless made its way to Kanungu from some privileged wardrobe across the ocean. Robert, the other teacher who works in the Nursery, is another fascinating character. Tall, gentle and the oldest member of staff here by some distance, he is a passionate devotee of Nursery education, believing, as I do, that it underpins the whole of a child's future learning; he loves working with the little ones. He tells me one breaktime that his parents didn't send him to school, and so, desperate to be educated, at the age of fourteen he enrolled himself at his local school in Primary 1 (Year One) with the six-year olds and worked his way through the system, always eight years older than the others in his class, finally taking his 'A' levels when he was twenty-seven. He then trained for the Church then finally went into teaching as – he admits – a very mature student indeed. Between them, these two teachers create a wonderfully happy, nurturing atmosphere in the Nursery – but, oh, how much more they could do if they had some toys and play equipment!

I have been here for nearly five weeks now and my working week has settled into a routine: on Mondays and Tuesdays I teach at the Primary School, doing at least one hour-long lesson in each class from Nursery 1 to P7, and two in some; on Wednesdays and Fridays I work at the College; and on Thursdays at the Great Lakes High School. All of these present me with different challenges: the Primary School because of the style of teaching and the size of the classes (the two inextricably linked of course); the High School because, much as I like them, teaching secondary-age pupils is definitely outside my professional comfort-zone; and the College because of the amount of preparation needed for each of the two-hour lectures on Business English (to the Travel and Tourism students) and Communication Skills (to the Micro-Finance students) that I have to give each Friday. And all three because my only resources for any of them are a blackboard and piece of chalk! This week I have started supervising student teachers in their final teaching practice placements on Wednesdays and have felt much more on home-ground doing this – as well as enjoying getting to see an interesting variety of schools. I spend long hours in the evenings and at weekends making lesson plans and lecture notes – yes, the boot is on the other foot now, my former staff will be glad to hear, after having been the one requesting such plans for so many years! The advantage of working in three different settings is, of course, the variety it offers; and also the chance to get to know three different sets of staff and students. It's quite a demanding regime but, as my sister Dot said before I set off – "It'll be character-forming – and you're never too old to have your character a bit more formed!" .
I have started reading stories to the children in all the classes at the Primary School at the end of their English lessons and they really love this: it is a new experience for them. Even the older children are fascinated by picture books and are happy with the same simple stories that the younger children enjoy. There are no books, not a single one, in the school other than text books and even these have to be shared between six or seven children – there is one per bench in each class. There are no reading books whatsoever and, unbelievably, the children learn to read without ever having a book in their hands or a moment's individual attention. Of course, this is of enormous interest to me and you can be sure you will hear more about the subject in future blogs!

Walking to the Primary School in the mornings is always enjoyable; plumes of woodsmoke drift in the air as people start the day's cooking, the sun has just risen above the banana plantations on the hills opposite, and a little coterie of children gathers around me as I walk up the hill, some wanting to try out their English, others just content to walk along with me stealing curious glances as we go. My vocabulary is growing slowly and I can now say 'olireje' – good morning, and 'osibireje' – good afternoon, as well as 'agandi' , so can pass the time of day with the villagers, who are now getting used to seeing me and are always very friendly. Out here no-one would dream of walking past you without some form of greeting, even if you are complete strangers. Autumn must be arriving in England but here, so close to the equator, the days never alter other than in the amounts of rain that fall, and it is lovely to feel the sun on my face each morning and to have warm nights every night…

Saturday arrives – and a day out! I have arranged to visit Ishasha, which is at the south-western tip of the Queen Elizabeth National Park and only an hour's drive from Kinkiisi. Jenna, the bursar is coming, and Novias too, as, despite having been brought up only a few miles from the park, she has never been there – it's a luxury only tourists can afford on the whole, despite a reduction in charges for Ugandan residents. We have to leave at 6.00am in order to see the animals before the midday heat drives them under cover. Dawn is breaking as we drive along the quiet roads but already people are out and about – whole families including tiny children walking along the road in the semi-darkness on their way to work in the fields. The hilly banana plantations give way gradually to savanna and it suddenly feels quite possible that at any moment some creature might emerge out of the undergrowth. As we near the entrance to the park a herd of elephants does indeed appear in the long grass near the road and soon colobus monkeys, Ugandan kob and buffalo too. We are the first visitors of the day to arrive at the park and in fact barely see any others while we are there: because of its remoteness this corner is the least visited part of the enormous 2,000 km park. However, it is the only place in Uganda (and one of the few in the whole of Africa) where one can see tree-climbing lions and I am hoping against hope that we will be lucky today…

The park has many varieties of primates and we see gibbons and chimpanzees as well as monkeys, and huge numbers of antelope, warthogs and elephants. We find a family of hippos cooling themselves in the Ishasha River which runs through the park and provides the border with Congo; and at one point a huge 'monitoring lizard' as our driver Nicholas calls it, crosses the road in front of us. There is an amazing variety of brightly coloured bird, butterfly and flower species here and in a Proustian moment I am transported back to the stamp-collecting days of my youth when, I recall, the African stamps were always the most beautiful and sought-after, though the names of many of the countries, as the political fortunes of the continent have waxed and waned, have changed: Ruanda-Urundi, forever imprinted on my mind for its set of exquisite flower stamps, must now presumably be Rwanda.
The tree-lions prove elusive, however. Nicholas, who knows the park well, drives to all their favourite haunts – they have a liking for sycamore fig trees and we slowly circle round several dozen of these with no success. After a couple of hours we decide to call it a day - but Nicholas isn't going to give up so easily and insists on taking us to one last spot where he has seen them before. And there they are! A pair of huge lions, languidly stretched along a branch, one sleeping and the other licking its paws. This is a rare sight indeed and we sit watching them for some time while they in turn fix their eyes on us – though for rather less benevolent reasons, I suspect…. It's a sobering thought that, within living memory, such creatures wandered freely in the Ugandan countryside. A paragraph in the newspaper that I occasionally get access to reports that a 'marauding lioness' that had escaped from the Queen Elizabeth National Park has been shot after a two-week reign of terror in which it killed many farm and domestic animals – although worse was reported from nearby Ethiopia where another escaped lion killed and ate a man. Gruesomely, the paper reports that he was identified when his intact head was found in a field near to where he had been working…..

On a brighter note, the health pages in the newspaper always make interesting reading and in case any of you have scalp problems, I pass on this advice from the 'Your Questions Answered' column in the same paper: " Cow dung, urine and brake fluid are not effective, and may even prove dangerous, in the treatment of dandruff".

You have been warned!

Service with a Smile

2008-10-08T09:19:00.001-07:00

Disaster! The heel has come off one of my indispensible black shoes and I must get it repaired…

Those of you who are acquainted with my footwear preferences may be surprised to know that the week before leaving England I invested – with considerable reluctance – in a pair of sensible, flat, sturdy black shoes. With a heavy heart I put to the back of my wardrobe the pink, the spotty, the red, the shiny and all the other frivolous pairs I have acquired over the years and left them to hibernate while I am away. Putting on the new pair for the first time when I arrived here took some effort and I was glad not to have a mirror to see how they looked. But from that moment they have barely left my feet (except at night of course…). They grip the gritty roads, disperse the red dust and repel the heaviest of rain; what's more they are blissfully comfortable – and in short have become treasured possessions. So it is off to Kanungu I trek this Saturday morning to get them repaired, I hope, at the shoemaker's shop. Robert, the only shoe-repairer in town, has a reputation for procrastination, however, and Novias warns me that she has been waiting for weeks for her shoes to be repaired; every time she calls in at the shop, he tells her they will be ready "very soon". Does he take bribes, I wonder? If the police do (more of that some other time!) then surely I can hope that shoe menders do too? I am desperate to get my shoes back into service…

I have to wear my only other pair of shoes, my "church" shoes (which are of the unsuitable variety) to walk there and I slip and slither on the stony, dusty road as I go. I join the growing crowds of people walking to the market, some with wares to sell on their heads, some with babies strapped to their backs, most barefoot – including some very elderly women – so feel doubly self-conscious about my silly shoes as I scramble along beside them. Robert's shop, when I finally get there, is packed with black shoes: some in pairs and others randomly heaped together on the counter and shelves long separated from their partners, looking like some lonely-hearts club for shoes out on a singles night. At one end of his little shop is his table with shoe lasts, a sewing machine and the other tools of his trade; at the other his shoe-repairing stand. He greets me affectionately, as people do out here: "You are welcome! We love you!" is a typical greeting. And yes, he can repair my shoe today, with either a used piece of heel rubber or a new one, whichever I would prefer – rather like having a retread instead of a new tyre, I suppose - a choice I have certainly never been offered at Timpson's. A short time later my shoe is ready. "Thank you for choosing my establishment to get your shoe mended" he says gravely as he shakes my hand - for all the world as if he thinks that Kanungu is full of rival repair shops all vying for my custom – and I pay him the 3000sh – about £1 - for the new heel plus an expert shoe-shine job. If I walk with a slight limp, due to the fact that one shoe is now a good few millimeters higher than the other, who cares? I have my shoes back and all is well with the world!

The power is off all day today but no-one seems much bothered by this fact. Electricity only arrived here less than a year ago and few even of the houses that have it use it much, fearing it as another drain on their finances and another bill to pay( none of the school staff, incidentally, not even the Headmaster, have electricity!). This means there are very few of the everyday gadgets and machines around that are so much a part of our everyday life in the UK. Most I miss very little: never having been a great television watcher the lack of it doesn't bother me at all. No-one uses kettles out here: we have the luxury of a two-burner calor gas hob for cooking ( although most villagers cook over open fires) and we heat up water for drinks in pans – a bit tedious but perfectly manageable. There is no toaster, indeed there are no kitchen gadgets of any kind; and no hot water at the sink – we wash up in cold. The washing, too, is done in big bowls of cold water on the grass where there is an outside tap. I had forgotten the sheer effort involved in washing sheets and towels by hand! But things dry quickly in the hot midday sun, draped on the hedge, even if they haven't been very well wrung out. However, with so many quiet evenings on my own what I do miss is the radio. The reception up here in the hills is very poor and the wave-lengths change at different times of the day; so that although I have a wind-up short-wave radio – a very thoughtful birthday present – I cannot usually access the BBC World Service for more than a few tantalizing moments at a time. I sit on my bed, feeling like a secret agent in a war-film, twiddling the knob of the radio painfully slowly, hoping to find the exact perfect spot where I will be able to hear voices above the high-pitched whistling, the strange underwater gurgling sounds and the monstrous crackling. If I am lucky enough to find that spot then I must sit in precisely the same position, holding the radio stock still (regardless of the extreme discomfort this inevitably brings) as the slightest movement will result in losing the precious connection. The only benefit of this is that the global financial crisis has passed me by almost entirely – the price of bananas down the road is all I know about – for which many must envy me very deeply….

Sunday arrives and I am up early, determined not to be caught out as I was last week. The College service is at 9.00am: I have had a personal written invitation stating as much, as this is a special 'thanksgiving' service to raise money to buy a keyboard and sound system for the chapel. I arrive promptly only to find that 9.00 is a very approximate start time and a few people are just beginning to set up the keyboard and speakers that have been hired for the day to demonstrate what an asset they would be. A family of birds that nests in the roof swoops in and out as we sit waiting – the building is largely open at the sides as it would be unbearably hot otherwise under the tin roof. At 9.45 we start singing hymns to pass the time – a medley of cheerful gospel-style favourites accompanied by the usual drumming – while people drift in. The two-hundred-odd boarders from Kirima Primary School arrive at about 10.00, more people saunter in, then a while later a priest arrives; and at about 10.30 the service officially starts. This is the very elastic 'Africa time' that I have been warned about! I am more than ready to sit down after 45 minutes of energetic hymn singing - but that was just the warm-up. Still to come are unhurried welcomes and introductions, songs from the children, songs from the choir, hymns for the rest of us – all full of lively clapping, dancing, waving and swaying – as well as, ingeniously absorbed somehow into the middle of all this, the usual order of service. Unused to having an accompanist the choir starts all the singing off rather than the other way round leaving the keyboard player to try to identify the key they are singing in. This involves a lot of trial and error and he usually finds it by the final verse, having effectively ruined the rest of the music with his loudly amplified chromatic wanderings through many keys to get there. The speakers are plugged into several old car batteries as there is no power again today, and from time to time they pick up the keyboard player's mobile phone power-surges which then pulsate through the hall violently. I suspect that I am not the only one who prays that, while of course we all want the money to be raised for the new equipment – Lord, let it not be too soon…

It's 11.30 by now and the sermon is about to begin. Any hopes that this will be short are soon dispelled: just as I think that the preacher – whose delivery is passionately evangelical and longwinded – has finished, he starts to repeat the whole thing in Ruchiga for the benefit of those whose English is not good. The college Principal, has, I note, nodded off beside me and who can blame him? 12.15 arrives and the sermon finally ends; the priest taking the service, however, obviously feeling that the visiting preacher hasn't made his point well enough, reiterates much of what he has said then adds a few points of his own. The gist of their messages is first 'give' and secondly 'plan', both worthy sentiments but neither necessarily improved by the tortuous elaboration to which they have been subjected ...

But now comes the most entertaining part of the service: the collection. Money is given by some but the less well-off have brought produce instead – sticks of sugar cane, pineapples, passion-fruit, eggs, papaya – and even a live hen. These are piled up by the altar, the hen (legs tied together) sitting on a heap of pineapples. We still have the communion part of the service to come which takes place to the accompaniment of loud and reproachful clucking; and at last, at last, at 1.15pm we reach the final blessing. But can we go yet? No! We now have to auction all the produce so that these offerings can be turned into cash. The hen goes first, and I decide to buy the sugar cane for the school children who have sat quietly and uncomplainingly for over three hours and definitely deserve a reward (you cut it into short pieces and suck out the juice). The atmosphere becomes decidedly lively, raucous even, as successive items go up for sale and at 2.15pm I eventually stagger out clutching a bag of passion fruit and a pineapple, unsure whether I've been to a church service or a combination of a concert , a lecture, a party and an aerobics session. I'm exhausted!

I walk up the hill with Mercy and her friend Excellent Jolly (surely the happiest name in the world!) from the Primary School. "Did you feel the earthquake last night?" they ask. I'm relieved that I didn't imagine it, fearing that my juddering bed and rattling windows might merely have been the product of the nightmare-inducing Lariam pill that I take once a week on Saturdays to prevent malaria. I find out later that it registered 5.2 on the Richter scale and had its epicentre in nearby Congo. Because of the weakness in the Earth's crust beneath the Rift Valley these tremors happen quite often, apparently. A moving experience of a different kind to add to the many others I'm having here….

A Sweet Girl Named Desire

2008-10-04T02:09:00.001-07:00

(with apologies to Tennessee Williams…)

Tuesday is Eid and despite the fact that there are very few Muslims in this part of Uganda it is a public holiday: in the country as a whole 11% of the population are Muslim and 85% Christian. However, until the morning itself there has been no confirmation from the District Education Office that schools should close for the day so staff and pupils have mostly arrived. After prayers and singing, the day children are told they may go home: 'Go straight home, mind, and don't play in the mango trees on the way' the Headmaster warns them. I find myself wishing that I knew where these were as I would love a mango but have seen none since arriving; perhaps I should follow the children and find out. I, for my part, am relieved to have a day off as I have developed a nasty sore throat and cough and have almost lost my voice. Having spent years building up resistance, as teachers of young children do, to every known virus in England (and frequently boasting that I never get ill) I have now succumbed to a hefty Ugandan one: many of the children here have runny noses and hacking coughs. Fortunately my 'medical chest' contains cold remedies but I shall resist using my one precious course of antibiotics unless I really have to.

This week's teaching at the Primary School has gone well and I feel I am getting into the swing of things. In addition to several English lessons I have one class for science for which the topic is 'Personal Hygiene'. I take along various items from my sponge bag as visual aids but I quickly realize that few are familiar to the children – for some, possibly not even the comb and soap. Children here have virtually no hair; their heads are shaved or they have just a very fine covering of hair until they are in their teens or older. It is quite difficult to tell girls and boys apart because of this; but it certainly takes away the worries (so ever-present in the UK) about headlice and explains why the bottle of shampoo I have brought along causes such a stir. The toothbrush and toothpaste, similarly, are objects of great curiosity and when I ask how many children have ever seen a toothbrush before not a single hand goes up. A twig, peeled of its bark, is used instead and judging by the gleaming white teeth the children have, and the good state of the adults' teeth too, this method is highly effective. Of course, a diet almost entirely free from sugar must help, although I do wonder how they get sufficient calcium since dairy products are virtually non-existent and milk a great luxury, even for young children. At the end of the lesson I teach them 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush' (so that we can do the washing actions) but have the greatest difficulty explaining what a 'cold and frosty morning' is – never mind a mulberry bush. To explain frost to children whose climate is never less than warm, and who have never eaten ice-cream nor even seen a refrigerator is something of a challenge! Collecting in their books for marking at the end of the lesson is a salutary experience too; a pile of seventy is quite bad enough to carry, let alone mark, and I quickly work out that even if I only spend two minutes on each it will still take over two hours to complete the task…

One little girl, Desire, stands out from the rest of the class. The phrase "bursting with enthusiasm" must surely have been invented for her: she is bursting out of her dress, her shoes, and almost her own skin in her determination to give answers and share what she knows. She is a funny scrap of a girl, scruffy and unkempt but her answers are always correct and her responses lightning quick. When I drop my chalk, it is she who rushes forward in a flash to pick it up; and she is out of the door before I have even finished asking the class where I might find a board rubber (and returns with a piece of screwed-up paper – I should have known better…). At the end of the P3 science lesson she hangs back until the other children have gone then asks shyly if she may smell my bar of soap, which she does with closed eyes and a look of undisguised pleasure. I wish I could give it to her but I know it would only cause difficulties. However it is in assembly that I notice her most for here she really shines. The singing is usually led by any child who volunteers on the spur of the moment to sing the first line of the hymn and then the first line of each subsequent verse so the other children can follow the tune and the words. Desire is only in P3 and as an eight-year-old would not normally take on this role which is generally that of a P7 child. However she bursts into song boldly and unselfconsciously as the hymn, a lively favourite in the local language, is announced and everyone follows her lead; and, taking herself to the front of the assembled children she breaks into a little dance in time to the music as she sings, clapping in time to her swaying steps. Her face glows with self-absorbed delight as she carries the entire school along with her verse after verse; until eventually the teacher has to tap her on the shoulder to ask her to bring this seemingly endless song to a close, and she skips back to her place smiling contentedly. I marvel at her sweetness and at her sheer zest for life: she is an exceptional little girl. She is one of the fortunate minority, I find out later, who has a CHIFCOD sponsor to pay her school fees, buy her uniform and pay for her board which means that she should be able to continue to the end of her primary schooling even if the crops fail or some other financial disaster befalls her impoverished family. For her and for many others though, secondary education is not guaranteed. It is a good deal more expensive to sponsor a child through secondary school (though still a very modest sum by our standards) and, understandably, fewer people commit to this. I wonder to myself - will this bright, talented, sparky girl become just one more of the numberless children who drop out of school at secondary level because a sponsor did not materialize for her? Details about sponsorship can be found on the CHIFCOD website: www.volunteeruganda.org and I urge, indeed beg, anyone who might have it within their means to do so to consider this – especially at secondary level. In terms of an opportunity do something worthwhile for a fellow human being it could hardly be bettered. Desire, and so many others like her, deserves the bright future that could so easily be hers – but might so easily be denied her. So much hangs in the balance out here….

The staff have lunch in a classroom and I am enjoying getting to know my new colleagues as we eat. They have wonderful movie-star names – Godfrey, Anton, Warren, Gloria, Victoria, Robert, Justine – and are mostly young and all very friendly. One question you never ask here is "What's for lunch today?" because lunch is the same every day. There is a pot of dried beans plainly cooked in their own juices; and posho, the maize porridge drunk at breaktime which when left to cool, sets into a solid mass that can be sliced or broken into chunks. We sometimes also have matoke (cooked plantain) as an extra treat. We all wash our hands outside first, taking it in turns to hold the big yellow water carrier marked 'staff' for the next person in the queue and to pour water over their hands onto the grass – there is no soap or towel but it's good just to rinse off the morning's chalk dust and grime. Somebody sends a child off to find me a fork – not that I have asked for one, but I am quite relieved not to have to use my fingers as the others do as I know I would make a dreadful mess with the beans! Despite the simplicity of the diet here I feel I am eating quite healthily. A typical meal in a middle-class Ugandan home would usually consist of several starchy foods – sweet potatoes, rice, matoke perhaps; some vegetables such as carrots or cabbage and either bean stew or a small amount of stewed meat. The meat, despite long cooking, is invariably tough and chewy and chicken generally a pile of little bones from which you must try to extricate a few mouthfuls of sinewy flesh. For the majority of the village people here, though, meat is only eaten at most once or twice a year – at special celebrations like weddings, say - and all of the good produce they grow is sold to give them the cash for basic day-to-day essentials like clothes, so they eat extremely poorly. For people with the cash to buy them, pineapples and bunches of tiny sweet bananas are everywhere, a limited choice of starchy root vegetables available, eggs fairly easy to come by and a kind of sliced bread which I can best describe as like the gluten-free loaves you buy in health shops – spongy, dense and apt to stick to your teeth – quite widely available. Dairy products are nowhere to be seen as without refrigeration they just don't keep; so the diet is very low in fat. A special variety of Blue Band margarine that will keep unrefrigerated is the only spread available – slimy and bright yellow, it has little to recommend it – so it pairs up quite well with the bread! Oddly enough, there is nothing I really miss or crave for; even the big bar of chocolate I brought with me remains unopened in my suitcase. In the context of such poverty food ceases to be the higher-order, pleasure-seeking activity it has become in the developed world. Boiled potatoes with a tasty pink sauce made from peanut flour has become one of my favourite dishes but on the whole eating is a functional rather than a gastronomic experience here and the world of the foams, mousses and amuses gueules of Michelin-starred restaurants seems a million miles away. This is not to cast aspersions on haute cuisine – I am the first to enjoy a good meal ; more an observation about the curious place of food in our lives - and our ability to adapt our expectations to new environments! What's more, it's over three weeks since I had a glass of wine and my body seems perfectly content with unremitting bottled water, somewhat to my surprise – I hope to come back in December a few pounds lighter and thoroughly detoxed!

Dear Blog Followers – thank you for your comments and emails which I have found so encouraging. I'm surprised and delighted that so many people are taking such an interest in the blog – it's something I really enjoy writing and it's great to be able share my experiences with you!

Weekend in Kinkiisi

2008-09-29T07:36:00.001-07:00

This has been my first free weekend in Kinkiisi. Hamlet and Kellen have returned to Kampala; but I am not entirely alone in the house. Besides their own four children, who are all away at school or College, they have semi-adopted three girls in straitened circumstances, all in their late teens or early twenties. One, Eilen, has gone with them to Kampala but the other two are here. Justine teaches at Kirima School but is still studying for better qualifications and Novias, a relation of Kellen's, is a student at the College. They earn their college fees and keep by doing jobs around the house, laundry, caring for the hens and so on. It is nice to have their company and they are gradually becoming less shy, even making hesitant attempts at conversation from time to time. I am gradually learning more about them: Justine's father died when she was young, leaving her mother to raise their four children; and not long after Justine's mother was herself was bitten by a snake whilst working in the fields and had to have her leg amputated. Justine left school to look after the family but her determination to be a teacher eventually led her, when circumstances allowed, to walk the many miles from her home to Kinkiisi to beg Hamlet for a place at the College. She is clearly an excellent teacher and has more than fulfilled the faith that was put in her. She and I share the English teaching in P1 and P2 so a good deal of lesson-planning takes place over the tea-table…

On Saturday I decide that I must maintain the habit of a lifetime - and go shopping. Kinkiisi itself does not have a shop as such but, walking around the village this week, I have gradually realized that several of the humble corrugated-iron-roofed houses that front the street have a small stall just inside their doorway selling items of produce. One house has a neat line of tomatoes displayed; another a few bunches of bananas; a third some potatoes. There are one or two more ambitious projects, probably funded by a micro-finance company such as the one that CHIFCOD operates. One man works away at a sewing machine; and I promise myself that, before I leave here, I will knock on the door of the shabby house that bears a small painted board saying 'Fine Times Hair Design Salon' in uneven blue letters and see what they can do for me. But the enterprise that has already won me as a regular customer is the internet – well, not 'café' exactly, but 'place'. The face of the young lady who runs it lights up when she sees me: I suspect that she thinks that her business success is assured now that I have arrived in the village and spend long periods using her one, ancient computer. "I have air-time today!" she assures me enthusiastically "And power too!". Neither of these is guaranteed and to have both simultaneously is nothing short of miraculous. The power goes off for hours, sometimes the entire day, quite regularly; and the internet 'air-time' has to be purchased in the nearest town, Kanungu, in the form of scratch-card vouchers with numbers that are fed into the computer modem's sim card via a mobile phone. Broadband exists only in some far-distant parallel universe. The internet lady also has an unusual retail sideline – in sanitary towels, stacks of which line the shelves above the computer. Sadly, my feeble attempts at jokes about her'high tech pad' seem only to cause puzzlement….

Novias insists on coming to Kanungu with me on Saturday morning as she is convinced that the shopkeepers will overcharge me if I go on my own. Normally she spends Saturdays working on the Student Agricultural Scheme – a CHIFCOD project to enable students to raise the money for their college fees by growing and selling produce; but she has a day off today. It is a steep 45 minute walk to the town in growing heat but I am looking forward to seeing the market which takes place every Saturday here.

Kanungu was briefly famous, or infamous, as the headquarters of an extreme doomsday cult called The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God who on 17 March 2000 sealed themselves in their chapel and set themselves alight with sulphuric acid – or were set alight, for the jury is still out as to whether this was a mass suicide or a mass murder by the cult's insane leaders. Five hundred people died in the ensuing explosion but forest graves containing other bodies were found elsewhere in the area casting suspicion on the theory that this was in fact suicide. Still scarred by the event, Kanungu is now a subdued little town whose redeeming feature is that it boasts the sole petrol pump for miles around - and a hand-cranked one at that. It regularly runs out of fuel when the tanker is due and the town then fills up with stranded motorists who have no alternative but to wait for the next delivery – bad for them but no doubt good for business in this otherwise unremarkable place.

The shops in Kanungu bear no resemblance to ours, of course. They have no electric power so I have to peer about in semi-darkness to make out what is on the chaotically arranged shelves of the tiny food shop we enter. Besides the sacks of flour and dried beans there are a few luxury items –some lurid cans of jam, two jars (only) of peanut butter (which is rapidly becoming a staple source of protein for me so I buy them both), longlife milk, and, I note with interest – a dusty bottle labelled 'Communion Wine'. I shall know where to come if I get desperate…

There is a shoemaker, a hardware shop selling everyday essentials like cooking pots and kerosene, a stationery shop full of school exercise books (parents have to provide these) and a shop selling fruit and vegetables – or rather bananas, pineapples and tomatoes. I cannot stomach buying anything from the butcher's shop despite Novias' entreaties to look at an unidentifiable half-animal lying on the floor at the back of this hot fly-ridden place, which she tells me is 'very special good meat'. We go on to the tiny market, where there are a few stalls selling mostly – yes! pineapples, bananas and tomatoes…though also small onions, some cassava and sweet potatoes. There is also a clothes market on a grassy site adjoining the site where a huge array of second-hand clothes and shoes are set out by different stall-holders. Many of these are European or American clothes which have arrived here via charity shops and sell for the equivalent of about 50p an item. People dress quite formally in Uganda and it is not uncommon to see men in suits even in the most remote villages – and almost always in a smart shirt and trousers. Women too dress in a colourful and creative mix of their traditional dress with western-style clothes – though never trousers, which are regarded as 'not quite proper' for women, particularly in the more traditional rural areas. I wish I had brought more skirts with me now!

On Sunday I am woken by a knock on the door at 7.00am. Jenna, the school bursar, has come to collect me for Church, an arrangement entirely of her own devising but one that, once over the surprise and her overzealous punctuality, I am more than happy to go along with. I want to see the local church, which everyone refers to as 'the cathedral' though I am unsure whether this is an official title or a deferential one. The English service is at 8.30am and is followed by the local-language one at 10.00am: church-going is almost universal here and people dress up to the nines for what is clearly regarded as a very important occasion. The church is full of local school children in uniform and their families, and the service, as expected, is a lively affair. Familiar Anglican hymns are delivered, effortlessly syncopated, to the accompaniment only of drumming and clapping, often with three or four complex rhythms going on at once and instinctive harmonies. The singing is wonderfully uplifting and joyful. The priest, however, no doubt mindful of his church's elevated status, clutches to his mouth an ancient microphone for the spoken parts of the service which distorts his diction so much that it is impossible to hear what language he is speaking let alone his words. It is only when he is in the pulpit that I can finally make out anything he is saying. He has chosen as his text Psalm 23 and, addressing the rows of children fervently tells them, several times over, that if they are worried they MUST NOT COMMIT SUICIDE! Perhaps the dreadful happenings just up the road in Kanungu a few years ago have left an indelible impression on him….

In the afternoon Novias, who has been feeling increasingly poorly, decides that she needs a malaria test so I manage to organize a lift to Kanungu where while-you-wait malaria tests are carried out in a pharmacy for 1,000 Ugandan shillings – about 30p. The technician tries to persuade her that she needs a typhoid and brucellosis test too but Novias is having none of it – he just wants her money, she confides in me; she knows she hasn't got brucellosis because she always boils her milk, and has had typhoid fever and knows the symptoms. A few minutes later, triumphant at the accuracy of her own diagnosis and at having got one up on the technician, she leaves the shop clutching her malaria treatment, telling me that she may have to have a day off college tomorrow but will wait and see how she is. Illness is an expensive inconvenience here - but nothing to make a fuss about. I, selfishly, have enjoyed being a proxy mum to the invalid – in an environment where so much is new, it is something of a relief to have a familiar and easy role to slip into…

School Life

2008-09-24T11:14:00.001-07:00

It's exam time at Kirima Primary School. Although the children only came back last week, they began three solid days of exams on Monday, as they do at the start, middle and end of each term. And I mean proper exams: done in silence and formally invigilated, with the children well spaced - which means only half the school at a time sitting their papers in the hall and classrooms while the other half wait outside. Amazed, I watch as the children waiting sit chatting quietly, unsupervised, unoccupied, for over two hours, as the others work in the classrooms. There is no running about, horseplay or misbehaviour. Even the little Nursery children busy themselves collecting bundles of twigs quietly and contentedly, their teacher busy with exam supervision.

In the exam rooms all the year groups are today doing Agriculture papers at different levels. Even Nursery 2 (Reception) does exams in the four core subjects! From P(Primary)1 to P6 (Year 1 to Year 6 in National Curriculum terms) the children do papers in six subjects, each lasting from 1 ¼ hours in Year 1 to 2 ½ hours in Year 7. P1 do all their papers apart from English in their own language but from P2 (after only a year of English lessons) they are all done in English. The range and number of questions (fifty-five seems standard) is impressive and the children get on with them in compliant silence. The sound of wood being chopped outside the hall to cook the school lunch punctuates the quiet; and a family of hens peck their way across the floor as the children work, mercifully oblivious to question 43 about 'three reasons for keeping chickens'. ...

The big advantage of the system, the Headmaster explains, is that the children quickly become accustomed to taking exams and they hold no fear for them so that by the time they take their important final Primary Certificate papers they are mostly very confident. The teachers start marking the flimsy banda-duplicated papers immediately the first group has finished; this will be a long, long job. I am given a pile of P6 papers to mark. The children seem to know a huge amount about crop rotation, irrigation, pests and manure but one pupil at least falls down badly on the question "What is castration?" to which he has answered " The removal of an animal's breasts"!

The results are recorded on huge class record sheets where I scan the fascinating range of names : Fortunate, Hosannah, Memory, Precious and Sufficient are amongst the many charming 'missionary' names while, curiously, Chromosome seems to be particularly popular at the moment... Pupils are listed in exam order with no concessions made for relative age within the class, special needs or any other mitigating factors. Parents receive a termly report sheet where their child's results and class position in each subject are shown, the days of absence, a brief comment by the class teacher ("work harder"; "very good") and the start date of the next term. Do they need more? I think back to the lengthy, detailed reports we are used to writing and wonder if they were any more useful than these rather bald but admirably straightforward documents...

The school has its own clinic with two nurses who look after sick children and dispense medicines free of charge to them: this is another of CHIFCOD's many initiatives. Malaria occurs regularly and is regarded as part of the way of life here. Everyone gets it every so often, much in the same way as we in the UK get colds and 'flu, but people take the view that as long as it is treated it doesn't much matter. However, the young are very vulnerable and one in five children's deaths in Africa is from the disease (one in ten worldwide). The children have no nets in their dormitories; how good it would be if they could be provided for every child in the school!

School starts early here and many of the teachers have been at work since 6.00am. At break time a snack of dry bread rolls and posho, a thin maize porridge the consistency of semolina and drunk from a mug, is served for the staff. In other schools they drink weak tea made with copious amounts of well-boiled hot milk; I am still working at acquiring a taste for either, I'm afraid! Uganda is a strongly Christian country and prayers are said often – including grace before every meal and even before eating a snack such as this. Food is precious and no-one takes it for granted.

The school day ends at 5.00pm after a final end-of-day assembly. Older children take it in turns to sweep the classrooms, wash the floors and tidy up outside. Fortunately, today's afternoon rain was not too heavy and the muddy puddles are already drying up. The day pupils leave, joining the stream of children from other schools in the area who are all walking home, cheerfully barefooted, along the stony red road. 'How-are-you-I'm-fine' they call to me. 'Agandi!' I reply – at least I can manage 'hello' in Ruchiga, the local language – and soon, I hope, will manage a lot more.

First Impressions

2008-09-20T07:20:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 17^th September

Today I visited the two CHIFCOD schools in the village: the Primary School and the College. CHIFCOD (Child to Family Community Development Organisation) is an organisation founded in 1993 by four local men, one of them Hamlet Mbabaze, who decided that the village needed better provision for its families and young people. The Primary School was opened in 1994 and has grown year by year and now has several hundred pupils aged 3 to 13 (although there are some older students those who have repeated a year or started late ).

To anyone used to English schools it is easy to be shocked and judgemental about the physical circumstances under which the school functions. There is a blackboard at the front of each quite small classroom; the pupils, between forty and seventy in a class sit crammed onto wooden benches behind narrow table-shelves. They work for solid one-hour periods (apart from Nursery 1 and 2 who work for half-hour sessions), with teachers rotating around the classes, so the children stay put but the teachers move round. They have core subjects of maths, English, Science and Social studies and also do RE, agriculture and cultural (own language) studies. They start the day at 7.30 with an assembly and this morning I woke to the sound of their gloriously harmonious singing, accompanied by drumming, wafting across the valley. Two hour-long periods before break, and two after, take the children to lunchtime. Lunch is cooked at the school in huge pots over wood fires, usually beans and maize porridge. At 2pm they have another two hours of lessons then break again. Although school officially ends at 4.30pm the boarders, which is most of the children over 7, then do prep, and the older children have another prep period from 7.30 until 9.30. At 5.30 they wash their clothes and themselves and have tea. The dormitories have three-tiered bunks crammed together so that thirty or forty children are in one room, for which the children have to bring their own foam mattresses. Washing lines hang above the bunks for the children's clothes to dry on after they have washed them. On each bed is a small tin trunk in which they keep their few possessions. Two matrons look after the separate boys' and girls' quarters and several member of staff live at the school and look after the boarders, after teaching six one-hour periods during the day first! The boarders have lessons all day on Saturday then on Sunday go to Church – and do more prep. 'Don't they get very tired?' I ask. 'They are used to it' is the reply. Indeed, this is the reply to most of my questions about the children's lives. The teachers, too, work incredibly hard; their days are long and relentless. They too, it seems, are used to it. They plan their work for the next day each evening in longhand using carbon duplicating paper for their planning sheets and write each hour's lesson on the board to be copied down by the children; the only way to manage teaching such large numbers of pupils.

The conditions in which the children live and work could hardly be poorer. Even the young children seem to have no play materials or equipment ; the walls are bare, and everything very shabby by our standards. Yet the children are very well-behaved, extremely courteous and perform very well in the national grading tests that take place at the end of Primary 7 when the children are 13: this is a high-achieving school. Their dormitories are bare, bleak and crowded yet for most these are better conditions than they would have at home and they are certainly better fed than they would be there. Most that I see walking along the road or in school have no shoes. I pass tiny children balancing huge plastic water carriers on their heads. A huge number are orphans. Many suffer from malnutrition. Childhood in rural Uganda is very, very hard.

In the afternoon we visit the Great Lakes College ,also in Kinkiisi. A newer, more spacious establishment also built by CHIFCOD, this caters for students from sixteen upwards who want to do diploma, access or degree courses. Some courses are vocational, such as agriculture or office skills whilst others are academic. Students have to finance themselves – there are no student loans – so courses run at weekends, at night and during the holidays for those who have jobs, as well as during the day. There is a two-year teacher training course and the Principal, when I meet him, seems very keen for me to help on the Early Years Teaching Course, both in college and supervising students on teaching practice. He suggests two days a week there but will wait until I have finished all my school visits before committing myself.

Thursday 18^th September

A clear, sunny day after the misty 'wet-season' humidity of the previous two. Today we are to visit another CHIFCOD primary school some distance away in the Rift Valley, close to the Queen Elizabeth National Park, and also the Great Lakes High School which is being built with money raised by Highgate School in 2007 and although still under construction already has pupils. The two hour drive takes us through ravishing countryside of rolling, lushly-vegetated hills and widening valleys. The ubiquitous banana plantations give way to termite-mound covered fields and sparser vegetation: here it is hotter and drier than Kinkiisi and the people are much poorer still since they can grow little to sell. We arrive at Nyamirama School as the Nursery 1 and 2 (Reception) children are doing PE. The school is on a lovely big flat area of grassland and the fifty or sixty children are in an enormous circle playing games and singing – a delightful sight. Once again I am taken from class to class where, in unison, the children chant a word-perfect welcome in each one. I am then invited to make short speech of introduction to which the children listen in an absolute silence that signifies either total incomprehension or extreme courtesy – in the younger classes, certainly the former since they don't learn English until Primary 2 (year 3). The children are beautifully behaved and obedient, the teaching very formal, and the classroom environment spartan in the extreme. This school has smaller numbers in each class – a more manageable 35 -45 – and feels a lot less depressing than the one I visited yesterday – or perhaps I am just adjusting to this new way of school life? Boarding has just been introduced and I am shown the girls' dormitory where 47 mattresses, with no space between, fill the room – they have no money for bunks at present. Many if not most of the boarders have a sponsor through CHIFCOD – the only way they will get an education.

As we leave I see in the playground one of the 'improving' notices nailed to the trees which reads "Remember your responsibilities as children" - little chance to forget them when most have to go home and fetch water, gather firewood and carry out other household tasks....

Then on to the Great Lakes High School, about an hour's drive back along the red, dusty track. We stop to give a lift to two women who are walking to see a relative in hospital, each carrying a baby and a suitcase. They have already been walking for some time in this fierce heat and without the lift would be walking for many hours yet – and back again. When they have got out of the car Kellen tells me that one baby has clear signs of malnutrition, and the mother has already lost three of her six children this way. Sadly, unbelievably, parents have to pay for their children to go to school here, and have to buy their uniform too. Although a very small sum to us, the fees are crippling to such impoverished people and they will sell the food they grow in order to send a child to school, rather than feed the family with it. In government schools they are not fed; but CHIFCOD provides a midday meal for day pupils and three meals for boarders.

Great Lakes High School is set on a hillside with magnificent views across a wide valley. The new buildings gleam impressively in the sunlight; the campus has already been planted with flower beds and trees and looks most attractive. Not all classrooms have been equipped yet and the forty or so students have to carry their all-in-one desk and chair from one place to another for lessons. The fields surrounding the school have already, with the help of students from the College, been planted with maize and vegetables so that they can be self-sufficient, and they have two school pigs who will soon be breeding. The staff are delightful and very welcoming; the students courteous and hard at work. I look down 'Highgate Road' as the drive to the school has been named, and feel sure that everyone who contributed to the building of the school would be pleased and proud with the result of their fund-raising efforts: it is a fantastic achievement and will give the chance of a really good secondary education to so many children in the coming years. There is much still to be done before the school has its official opening in July but all the signs are good!

The Head Teacher is keen for me to come and teach some English at the school; something else to factor into my timetable when I put it together at the end of the week!

Today, Friday, has been the last day of school visits for me – proper work starts on Monday. We went to two even more remote schools up in the cloud-capped hills towards Kibale where the steep slopes are covered with tea bushes. We pass a building called 'Maternity Services and Placenta Pit' before reaching a tiny school built into the hillside where I am introduced solemnly to the staff. Ugandans tend to have either traditional English names such as Edna, Hilda, Eileen or Arthur, or biblical ones like Moses, Amos and(even) Herod. I thought I had encountered most possibilities for unusual names after so many years of teaching; however today I was momentarily thrown to be introduced to a teacher called 'Happy Christmas'....!

NB I apologise for the length of these entries. Once I'm at work I shall probably only update the blog once a week, at weekends. Email is very unreliable out here which is why so much is arriving in one big chunk!

Journey to Kinkiisi

2008-09-20T06:57:00.001-07:00

We left Kampala for Kinkiisi at about 9.30am on Tuesday . Kinkiisi is, I have disovered, the village in which Kirima Primary School is found, Kirima being the name of the sub-district in Kanunga province from where it draws its pupils. Kinkiisi is pronounced 'Chincheesy' as a 'k' followed by an 'i' is always pronounced 'ch' – but not if followed by any other vowel! The village is right in the south-west of Uganda, very near the borders with Rwanda and Congo, close to what is mysteriously called on the map 'Bwindi Impenetrable National Park', home of the famed mountain gorillas.

The road out of Kampala takes us south, parallel with (though inland from) Lake Victoria. About 65km out of Kampala we cross the equator though with so little sign or ceremony that I only realise it has happened retrospectively. The landscape is flat, very green, and largely planted with fields of banana trees. By now w and e are turning west the further we get from Kampala the worse the road gets. The pot holes get bigger, necessitating the driver to zig-zag across the road – fortunately there is little traffic. Eventually the pot-holes merge into each other at each side of the road leaving narrow band of tarmac in the centre with red dust tracks on either side. We stop to buy a snack of matoke, cooked plantains which you eat skins and all – they taste like a cross between a parsnip and a banana. Hamlet has stayed behind in Kampala to sort out the water supply at the High School in Kinkiisi which has failed, so I am travelling with his wife Kellen, a teenage girl who lodges with them, and an old man who has been taking his disabled daughter to University in Kampala – and a driver. The 4X4 vehicle is a new (though second-hand) purchase and although very comfortable begins to show its age as we bounce over the potholes. Six hours into the journey a sudden screech and a dramatic judder announce that a tyre has ripped, the hardened rubber unable to cope with the constant impact with the rough road. Out come the tool kit and the spare tyre but the jack doesn't work and the spare tyre, though inflated, has a nail in it surrounded by a large hole in the tyre. The driver decides that we will drive slowly back to the last garage we passed so we limp back noisily, to the great amusement of the children and villagers we encounter. Some hours later we are off again having purchased a second-hand tyre for which, the driver says unhappily, we have been hugely overcharged, especially as (he can tell from the tread) it has obviously been stolen from a government vehicle. Never mind, we are on the road again which now perversely, improves steadily until, as darkness falls, we reach the end of it at Rukungiri. From now on the road is unmade but unabashed by earlier experiences the driver hurls us along at high speed, the road closely flanked by dense leafy vegetation and woodland. We pass the occasional village, most in total darkness despite the fact that it is only 7.30pm – few have electricity. On we drive for an hour and then a second hour and it feels increasingly remote and far from civilisation. Imagine the most remote place you have ever been to and then keep going – in the pitch darkness, especially, it feels like a journey into the deepest unknown. But at last we arrive at Kinkiisi and Hamlet and Kellen's house. I can see nothing of the village in the darkness but am deeply thankful to find that my room has a comfortable bed – and a hot shower, newly installed last week!

Kampala

2008-09-14T01:08:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Kampala on Friday, or rather at Entebbe, which is more than just an airport; much more, in fact, as it was once the capital of Uganda so is a city in its own right. I can recommend Kenya Airways, not least for the fact that they allow two suitcases of 23kg rather than the usual one! Great was my relief when I discovered this last week and I had no trouble at all in filling both; in fact, still had to leave behind some books and a few other things for the school which I will have to bring next time.
I was met by Rev Hamlet Mbabazi who is in charge of CHIFCOD's work in Uganda. Typically for someone who achieves a huge amount he is a very busy man: chaplain to Parliament in Kampala, chaplain to the Cathedral, priest at All Saints Church in Kampala, as well as Director of CHIFCOD and also a company which organises micro-financing and work co-operatives around Uganda. He was an MP for five years but gave that up as he found he had too many political/moral conflicts to be able to do either job to the satisfaction of his own conscience whilst trying to do both. He is a charming, charismatic, energetic and visionary man who clearly has huge influence and is greatly loved and respected. He and his wife Kellen divide their time between Kampala and Kirima and I shall be staying with them, initially at least, in the guest room of their house when we go to the village tomorrow.
Here, I am staying in the Namirembe Guest House which is a friendly, unpretentious Church guest house on one of the hills which surround central Kampala. Like Rome, Kampala was built on and within seven hills although now other hills have been built on beyond and between the original number. Kampala is a typical African capital city, although greener than most, I imagine (it has a lot of rain both in and out of the rainy season) : shabby, delapitated shacks and shops and dusty fume-filled, traffic-choked roads side by side with the lush gardens and fine buildings of embassies and multi-national corporate life. Crowded, noisy, humid, the city is nevertheless miraculously civilised and orderly given its traumatic post-independence history especially during the Amin years. The people are wonderfully courteous and friendly and greet you with the widest of smiles. The official statistics, however, are depressing: average life expectancy is about 39 years and only 16% of the population have access to secondary education. The great majority of the people live in extreme poverty.

Yesterday Hamlet and Kellen drove me to Jinja, about 60km east of Kampala, where the source of the Nile (or one of them at least) can be found, where it flows out of Lake Victoria. Having spent my early childhood at the one end of the Nile in Cairo it seemed rather fitting to be standing at the other end of it at retirement age!
A quiet day in Kampala today before setting off tomorrow for the long drive to Kirima. Hamlet clearly has some ambitious ideas about what he hopes I can do and achieve - I only hope I can fulfill his expectations!

A week to go

2008-09-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

In a week's time I will be on my way to Uganda. At the moment I feel totally unprepared: all I have done is to get out the suitcase I am planning to use and decided that it will never hold all that I need to take. Enough clothes, toothpaste, face cream, shampoo, insect repellent, books, teaching materials, medical supplies, sheets, towels and goodness knows what else to last until December. And money! I will be miles from a bank and while I shan't have many shopping opportunities I will certainly need a regular supply of cash to pay for food and, more especially, petrol as I shall be driving round to different schools and villages and will be expected to pay for fuel as it is so expensive.
People ask if I am nervous about going and I can honestly say 'no'. It feels very much like starting any new job: there is an uncertainty about exactly what the work will involve, what my colleagues and the pupils will be like and whether I will be able to do the job expected of me; but because I will not have the ultimate responsibility of running a school this feels a much less worrying option than starting my previous job! I am eager for the new experiences that lie ahead, even in the knowledge that there will be a certain amount of physical hardship (cold showers!), loneliness and probably some illness. I feel very fortunate to have the chance to do something completely new and challenging, to live with a different group of people in a culture and country about whiach I know very little.
Tomorrow I go up to London to get my visa at the Ugandan High Commission. A step in the right direction!