Going Home

After being in Kamwenge for almost 20 months, we are preparing to finish our placement here. We are leaving slightly early as we work in schools and the academic year finishes at the end of November. There is then a long break before the new term begins well into February.
It is difficult packing up and saying good bye. Although at times it has been very tough here, we have also had lots of fun and feel very privileged to have been able to share in so many people’s lives.
Lookng back over our work here and writing our final reports, we realise that we have achieved more than we sometimes thought at the time. Progress can be frustratingly slow and life is tough here. It is difficult to have an impact on health and hygiene when parents know from experience that several of their children will die from malaria and where life expectancy is very low. However, small changes do make a difference and, as education improves, so will health.
We will miss
· Smiling children shouting Muzungu.
· Always being greeted warmly.
· Riding our motorbike anywhere we want without bothering with helmets or protective clothes.
· Fresh pineapple every day
· Delicious fruits and vegetables in the market
· Warm weather
· The disabled children with whom we have worked in the special needs unit.
· The ingenious way in which problems can be overcome, eg when there was no fuel in Kamwenge, a phone call resulted in 2 jerry cans being delivered 2 hours later.
· Good Ugandan friends we have made
· The amazing volunteer colleagues from all over the world who have a wide range of skills and knowledge

We will NOT miss
· The rocky, muddy, potholed, mostly non-existent roads.
· Mosquitoes and having to sleep under a net
· The staple diet of matoke, a type of banana, at every meal
· Showering in a bowl with a cup
· Frequent power cuts and water shortages
· Slow internet access

We have both struggled with the Ugandan attitude towards children. In the developed world, we are used to children’s needs being a high priority. Here things are different. Children are used as workers from a very young age. As soon as they can walk they are expected to fetch water and gather firewood every day. During the planting and harvesting season, they are sent out into the fields for long hours. They are often kept home from school when there is work to be done and are frequently beaten with sticks. We have repeatedly challenged teachers on the use of sticks in schools and although many headteachers want their school to be more child friendly, attitudes are slow to change. Many children, especially girls drop out of school very early due to pregnancy and marriage, and child mortality is very high. Due to the devastating affect of HIV/AIDS, many children are orphans and live in ‘child headed families’. Their main priority is finding enough food for themselves and their brothers and sisters.

There are, however, lots of people here, both Ugandan and visitors, who are working hard in difficult circumstances to improve the lives of local people and it is these interventions that give us hope for the future.

Car Fun

At the end of October, we went on a trip to Bushenyi with our colleague Edith, to visit her mum. We had cancelled several times due to petrol shortages, so were very excited when we eventually set off with Edith in her car. In true Ugandan style, we were late leaving Kamwenge and then had to stop on the way to go to the bank and to pick up supplies. As darkness fell Edith said the quickest way to get there was to drive through a swamp near to her home. We felt confident in her car and on the mud road until she mentioned that she had been stuck in a particular part of the swamp before; no sooner had she said that than we ground to a halt surrounded by water!! It was pitch black by this time and we could see nothing but stars. Fortunately Edith was able to call a neighbour on her phone and eventually 9 men with hoes and pangas arrived and tried to dig us out. Four hours later the car was free and we were able to continue to her home.

We had a lovely weekend visiting Kitagata hot springs, meeting her neighbours and enjoying Ugandan hospitality, although the car also had a puncture and the bumper almost fell off on the way home.


In Uganda, everyone comes to help when you break down!


Walking to the hot springs - the river had overflowed after heavy rains!

Sabrina’s brother and sister-in-law, Adrian and Grace, together with their son Owen, then arrived in Kamwenge, having had a whistle stop tour around Uganda first. It was lovely to show them Kamwenge and they visited some of our schools, met our neighbours and fell in love with our muddy, rocky, and occasionally ‘virtual’ roads!!! The 5 of us set off to Masindi where we visited our friend Bollus and then continued to Murchison National Park, where they treated us to a stay at a luxurious safari lodge as well as a trip to the Falls and a game drive before they went home.


The only way to see the animals - although Geoff fell off when the vehicle reached a 45 deg angle!


3 elephants, 3 giraffes and the Nile

This blog update would not be complete without commenting about our electricity - or lack of! Kamwenge will be the proud possessor of a new hydro-electric power plant in early 2011, but in order to connect it to the existing grid, the power has been switched off between 9 am and 7 pm every day except Sunday for the last 6 weeks - and sometimes they forget to put it on again at night! Even though the workmen seem to finish work by 3 pm every day. Still as one of our guides said – 'T I A' – This is Africa.

Katakwi post conflict area

We have recently returned from a week in Katakwi, which is a district in the north-east of Uganda. We had been asked to train teachers in school health and maths. Katakwi is a district that has suffered from insecurity over the last 2 decades due to several conflicts. A long-standing and violent cattle-raiding dispute between people in neighbouring districts has meant that many people have left their homes and moved into camps for displaced people. In addition to this, the civil war which was fought in the north of the country between the LRA and the government for many years has, at times, spread south into Katakwi. Although the area is now much more stable, many people still live in camps and are traumatised from their experiences.


Huts in the camps for displaced people

Link Community Development, the organisation with which we are working, is supporting schools in Katakwi. Our training was part of a package which aims to bring stability and peace to schools and communities through improving teaching and learning. Within the school health training, as well as hygiene and health, we taught them how to do basic counselling, deal with traumatised children and gave them an opportunity to talk about their experiences. The teachers were very interested in these subjects and it was good for us to hear about the challenges they face. It is also important to improve the teaching of basic skills and for teachers and pupils to enjoy their lessons. They had great fun making up maths and number rhymes as well as learning some old ones.



On the way back from Katakwi, we picked our son, Tom, up from the airport and spent an enjoyable week showing him life in Uganda and schools in Kamwenge. The local school children thought he looked like Wayne Rooney, much to his annoyance. A head teacher, on the other hand thought he was ‘photocopy’ of Geoff. Just as insulting to Tom!



We did another safari – well we deserve it! - and the highlight was watching tree climbing lions sitting in the tree just 10 metres away – so close that we could clearly hear them panting in the heat. Stunning. One even climbed down, wandered around and then climbed back up.

Water

Last week delegates were meeting in New York to discuss the progress on the Millennium Development Goals that were agreed in 2000. We read in the paper that Uganda has made good progress in reducing the number of people living in extreme poverty, but the poor progress on health still shocks us. We see that 137 children out of every 1000 born here still do not reach their 5th birthday. These figures are for the whole country. In poor, rural areas such as Kamwenge, the death rates are higher. More than 300 people, mostly women and children, die every day from malaria and there are over 80,000 AIDS related deaths registered every year. However the statistic that we find most shocking is that more children die from diarrhoea than anything else. Diarrhoea is caused by poor sanitation and the drinking of unsafe water. The problem sounds simple to solve, but we all have to come to terms with the fact that, at the end of 2010, most people here do not have access to clean safe water.

We have been inconvenienced over the last week because our piped water has stopped flowing. Our water comes from a small pumping station on the river Mpanga (about 10 Km from us). The reason for the stoppage is that the pumping station has had its electricity cut off. This is because most people who signed up for this water cannot pay their water bill and so the pumping station owners cannot pay for their electricity. We are fortunate because we can afford to pay a boda boda (motorcycle) driver to go and get us jerry cans of water from a gravity feed water system in another area. We also have a functioning rain-water collection tank. We then filter and boil the water to make it safe. Most people in Kamwenge, however, have to get all their water from the swamp or dirty shallow wells and cannot afford to filter and boil, so children continue to suffer from diarrhoea and continue to die.



In the 17 months that we have been here, we have worked hard to improve sanitation and hygiene in schools, have shown teachers how to make basic hand-washing facilities and stressed the importance of boiling water for drinking. However the challenge remains that until access to safe water improves for all, the long term improvment to health will be minimal.

Eggxciting Spring Time

At the end of the school holidays, we went to visit the Hot Springs at Semliki National Park. These are ringed by forest, veiled in a cloud of steam and are a primeval sight. The largest spring is a geyser which can spout up to 2m high from the opening in the salt structure. As can be seen in the photo, it was about a metre high when we visited, but was still impressively hot and steamy. There are several other outlets which bubble away with boiling water and, in one of them, our guide left some eggs, which were nicely hard boiled after 7 minutes and made a welcome snack after the walk through the forest. For the sharp eyed amongst you, our Ugandan colleague provided the eggs in a Tesco egg box!

We have had some furniture made for the special needs unit, in conjunction with Rakel, the Spanish volunteer who left recently. The picture shows a walking rail (not sure of the technical term!) which can be used by the children with mobility problems to improve their posture whilst walking. We had to explain to the carpenter how to make this from scratch as he had never seen one before so there was a lot of trial and error before it was finished. But we are pleased with it and it seems to benefit the children.

We have now been connected to the grid and so get electricity on a fairly regular basis. It was good during the dry season, but now the wet season is starting, there are more power cuts due to heavy storms. However it is good enough for us to use an small oven left to us by Stuart and Sarah when they returned to Canada. We are having great fun making flapjacks and cakes – witness the carrot cake being removed from the oven. Sabrina would like to make lasagne and shepherd’s pie but we cannot get the ingredients here so they will have to wait until we return.

Pineapple Update
Following the positive comments we thought a regular update was necessary. The pineapple has some lovely little blue flowers and is growing apace.

Travel Guide Name Check
Geoff is apparently mentioned in the latest edition of the Bradt Travel Guide to Uganda – Page 329, Edition 6 if you feel you must rush out and buy it – following an email he sent to the author of the last edition about an attraction that is near us. Fame at last!!

Bread and Pineapple

One of the projects set up by Stuart, the Canadian volunteer who recently left, was bread making. It is designed to provide extra income for widows and single mothers, and is run by a group of women who are associated with the Cathedral in Kamwenge. Stuart researched and built a ‘rocket oven’, so-called because when it is fired up and working it sounds like a rocket! It is designed to generate a lot of heat whilst using less firewood than usual cooking methods. It is certainly an impressive piece of kit, as can be seen from the picture.



But the best thing about it, from our point of view, is that Stuart taught the women to make bread that we like, rather than Ugandan bread, which is much heavier than our taste. So we buy some brown bread flour from the nearest large town, give it to the baker and order a loaf every 2–3 days. Sabrina has also made some marmalade from local oranges, so we have toast and marmalade for breakfast and feel very English!

On a lighter note we are very excited that one of our pineapple suckers, planted over a year ago in the tubs in our compound, has started to produce a little pineapple – small but perfectly formed, as you can see from the picture. Never mind about potatoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers and other temperate crops – growing a pineapple is the business!

5 little ducks went swimming one day . . .

We have had a very busy time since our last blog entry (don’t we always say that).

Geoff’s maths workshop went really well and the teachers particularly enjoyed learning number rhymes and songs that they could use to teach the younger children mathematical concepts. As with all workshops, we wonder what impact they will have on pupil learning. We were thrilled a week later, when walking home one day, to hear some young children sitting outside their house and singing one of the songs we had taught at the workshop – ‘5 little ducks went swimming’ in case you’re interested! He also taught how to use number lines and followed it up with classroom visits.



Heather, daughter of our good friends, Brian and Ellen, visited us for 3 weeks and helped in the special needs unit at the local school. She is able to use British sign language and communicated with the deaf children, even though Ugandan sign language is slightly different from the British version. The pupils took great delight in teaching her the differences. We showed her the work we have done in some of our other schools and she was able to appreciate the joys of travelling on murram roads!



At the end of her stay we went on safari and saw, among other animals, 9 elephants drinking from the water, twin baby hippos, a huge crocodile and 12 lions (from a distance).




A jigger is a sand flea that lives in the dust of classrooms without proper floors and is a problem for pupils who go to school in bare feet. Stop reading now if you are eating. It burrows into the toes or feet and then lays its eggs under the skin. These hatch out a few days later and cause much pain and itchiness. It is usually OK if you wear sandals, however Sabrina found one in the end of her toe. Fortunately we were on our way to Kampala and so were able to get a volunteer doctor friend to remove it, on Saturday morning on her balcony, with an admiring audience of children and adults looking on. Thanks Alison. Sabrina and toe are recovering nicely.



On the way back from dropping Heather at the airport, we went to Masindi to visit Bollus, the headteacher who visited us in Bicknacre and who hosted Geoff when he first came to Uganda. We had a lovely time catching up on family news. His daughter, Bridget, a 15 year year old secondary student, came back to Kamwenge with us for a short visit. She was a delight, washing all her own clothes daily and telling us how she could kill, cut up and cook a goat for her family. So unlike a 15 year old girl in the UK! She was thrilled to be able to use our computer as she has very little opportunity to use one in her school. We were able to let her practise some of the things she had learnt theoretically at school.




Bollus, his wife Margaret and their 2 new grandchildren, Joylin and Comred Rooney.

workshops, water and whole numbers

'Draw 4 things on your slate'



'Stick' energiser


'Counting' energiser


Working on numeracy with David and some older pupils


Last week we held our third Health Promoting School training session, so we have now trained the head teacher and the health teacher in all the 61 schools we work with in Kamwenge District. We made a big effort this time to do lots of energisers between sessions, as it gives the teachers ideas to make their own lessons more interesting for pupils. Most lessons we see tend to be mainly ‘chalk and talk’ with pupils sitting quietly at their desks and receiving the teachers’ ‘wisdom’. A quick trawl of the internet provided some exciting ideas such as:-
· Writing your name in the air with your finger, elbow, shoulder, nose and belly button!
· In deference to the world cup, passing an imaginary football equivalent to the answer to simple maths questions – 9 minus 9 always fools them!
· Raising and lowering a long stick together – see picture.

The next job is to visit the 20 schools that attended last week and follow up with them. Have they written an action plan? Are there any areas they need further input on? Have they used the first aid kit we gave them and is it accessible to all teachers? Has the tippy tap been put up and is it filled with water every day?

Not an easy task at the moment as we are in a drought – there has been no rain for over a month, bore holes are drying up and the new water pumping system cannot extract from the local river as the water level is too low. It even made the national news in Uganda. With no pumped water having been available for 2 weeks, we used the rain water tanks until that dried up. We were then given water from the local swamp, but it was too dirty for us, so we had to get a motor bike taxi rider (known as a boda) to get us jerry cans at 2000 ugandan shillings each. Only 70 pence but an awful lot for here. They were obtained from a gravity flow system, which is still working, about 10 Km outside town. We have stored several jerry cans and hope that supplies will trickle – literally! – through until the rains come.

In a mad moment Geoff volunteered to write a numeracy workshop for infant teachers and struggled to get on with it, infant maths not being his strongest point! On the basis that a deadline concentrates the mind wonderfully, he organised a trial training session for 2 weeks time and has found it helped greatly. He is getting internet information on number lines, maths’ stories, songs and rhymes, and problem solving, as well as trying to remember all the maths workshops he attended in Essex – thanks to Diana Rouse, maths subject leader at Stock Primary School for her training!

He has been discussing it with local teachers like David from Railway School, as you can see in the picture. David is a very reflective teacher and, following a visit to Ireland in 2008, tries out lots of ideas in his classroom as well as singing with Geoff in the cathedral choir!!

Volunteer support

Dorota's farewell party with volunteers and friends in Kamwenge

For those of you who may have wondered about the repeated jumble of photos last week - the group around the table were not animals in Lake Mburu National Park but our family in Pinner!!
One of the great things about being a volunteer in Uganda is meeting other volunteers. In the 14 months that we have been here (is it really that long?) we have met some truly amazing people. We have many volunteer friends in Kampala and other large towns, but the ones that make a huge difference to our lives on a daily basis are those few in Kamwenge.
When we first came here we were the only volunteers in this District. Within a few weeks we were joined by Dorota, a delightful Polish girl who had spent many years in Spain and was volunteering with a Spanish organisation called Africa Directo. Dorota’s organisation are building a much needed health centre in Kamwenge and her job was co-ordinating the project. Dorota quickly became a good friend and we shared scarce books and enjoyed many an evening drinking Nile beer and chatting. Sarah and Stuart came here from Canada just before Christmas and Rakel joined Dorota from Spain in January. Suddenly we were six and have been able to support each other, far from home, and also have fun together. Sarah and Stuart are a young Christian couple and have really made a difference to our lives at our local church.
Sadly Dorota’s time in Kamwenge came to an end in late May and she has now returned to Spain. We really miss her. Although Rakel, Sarah and Stuart will be leaving in August, we are fortunate that Goiko, a guy from Spain who has been a volunteer in Malawi for 2½ years, is coming to Kamwenge to move the health centre project on to its next phase. All of these (much younger than us) people have taught us so much and have made being a volunteer in remote Kamwege much more fun.

Long overdue update

Lake Mburo boat trip






Impala in Lake Mburohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Sorry about the double pictures but decided we have better things to do than work out how to get rid of them!!!!

There has been a rather large gap between blog entries for many reasons, the main one being that Sabrina has been at home for 4 weeks and Geoff has been doing all his usual work, plus all the other jobs on his own that are usually shared.
Most of May was school holiday here, so we took the opportunity to visit other volunteer friends and do some sightseeing. We visited Lake Mburo National Park which is a small but delightful park and the only accesible location in Uganda where Zebra are found. As well as hippos and waterbucks, there are 315 species of birds. It is the best place in the country to see the ‘Bare-Faced Go-Away Bird’ so called because it has a bare face and the noise it makes sounds like it is saying ‘go away’!!! Although quite how it managed to speak English when the locals speak Ankole is a mystery? Lake Mburo is also the only reserve in the country to support a population of Impala, an antelope for which Kampala is named.
Sabrina had a wonderful time at home visiting family and friends and managed to catch some very good weather as well.
Geoff held more ‘Guidance not Violence’ workshops, which give teachers ideas of how to manage behaviour without resorting to corporal punishment. He also has prepared a 2 day training manual on numeracy for early years teachers, which he will trial with a small group of friendly teachers an make any necessary adjustments so it can be rolled out across other districts.
Kamwenge, like England and the rest of Africa, is currently in the grip of world cup fever. All the bars have big crowds, although sometimes support can be esoteric. The other day Geoff met a local supporting Japan instead of their African opponents because he owned a Japanese car! Anyway the cross of St George is hung in the bar next door for England games and Geoff has managed to gather a small goup of Ugandan England supporters around him who cheer England on – with more success in the future we hope.

One year old in Kamwenge!

Having been in Kamwenge for 1 year now we thought we would put some local views on the blog. Enjoy!

Kamwenge Schools

Participants at the 'Guidance not Violence' workshop showing power differences betweeen different people - although Geoff looks as if the power has gone to his head.
Discussing the causes of bad behaviour by pupils
Charlotte, Valencia and Isaac going back to their dormitory. Charlotte (who has cerebral palsy) in the red jersey is guiding Valencia, who is blind
Rakel playing with Charlotte
Valencia catching the ball

We have been very busy over the last few weeks, carrying out workshops and making follow-up visits to school. It has been pleasing to see some of the good things that are happening in schools, as well as frustrating in some schools when the attendees at our workshops seem to have been asleep most of the time. Although perhaps they have!!

We have trying to visit the special needs unit at the local school for an afternoon a week and enjoy working with the pupils there. It reminds us of why we are working with the adults – to try to improve the education of the children. The pictures show some of the activities we do – playing with a ball to improve gross motor skills and touch-feely books for Valencia, who is blind. We have used some of the money you have given us to buy suitable resources for these children. Rakel, a Spanish volunteer here for 6 months, helps in the unit every day and has built up very good relationships with the children.

Yesterday we ran our first ‘Guidance not Violence’ workshop in Kamwenge Railway Primary School – so-called because it is next to the old railway station. We have to cross the old railway line to get to the school and despite having been here for a year and the railway having been closed for over 12 years, we still look both ways as we drive over the level crossing.

Anyway back to the workshop. It aims to promote positive discipline methods as schools prefer to fall back on corporal punishment, despite the fact that it is supposedly banned in schools. We look at issues of power, its use and abuse, and the moral question of how to maintain discipline, before looking at alternatives to corporal punishment. Again, thank you for your giving, which meets the costs associated with this workshop.

A child's life in Kamwenge

Last week when Geoff was reading The Argos on line (web site of the local paper in Brighton that he reads to keep up with his football team), he noticed an article which stated that 1 child in 10 in Sussex is considered to be neglected. There then followed the usual letters asking if that meant the child was lacking in food or a mobile phone! Having been in Kamwenge for a year now, I thought I would write on the blog about what life is like for the majority of children in rural Uganda.

If a child and his/her mother survive the birth process, then they are very fortunate. Giving birth is one of the most dangerous things a woman can do in the developing world and, in a district like Kamwenge that has no hospital, it is even more dangerous. Most women give birth in their villages attended by a TBA (traditional birth attendant). These are untrained women who also lay out the dead and prepare them for burial.
TBAs have little knowledge about hygiene and many women and babies die from infections. If the labour is obstructed, then both mother and child die.

The baby will spend most of his first year tied on to his mother’s back whilst she attends to all her tasks, such as digging in the fields, fetching water, looking for firewood, preparing meals etc. He is exclusively breastfed. By the time he is about 1 year, he will be given some porridge made of maize flour and millet and will be spending more time on his older sister’s back. His mother will probably be pregnant again.

From about 18 months he will be looked after by older brothers and sisters, often only a couple of years older themselves. He will spend a lot of his time playing in the dust or mud, depending on the season. His toys will be sticks, rubbish and anything that is lying around. His food will be small portions of posho (maize) probably shared with his other brothers and sisters. His diet will not contain the protein or vitamins that he needs. It is unlikely that he sleeps under a mosquito net, so he will have repeated attacks of malaria. In this area 1 child in 4 does not reach his 5th birthday and, throughout Uganda, a child dies every 5 minutes from malaria.

By the age of 3 he will be out with his brothers and sisters looking for firewood, which he will carry home on his head. He will also be going out to fetch water, often walking long distances with his small jerrycan. As he grows, the size of the jerrycan he is expected to carry gets larger. As soon as he is old enough to help with digging and planting (about 5 years) he will spend much of his time out in the fields helping the rest of his family to grow the food which is essential for their survival.

At 5 years he may be enrolled at his local primary school where he will sit in a classroom with up to 200 other children. The condition of the room will be very poor and his teacher, who is poorly trained, will struggle to teach with few resources. During the planting season, or whenever it rains, his parents will keep him at home to continue with the essential task of food production. In Kamwenge district 82% of children enroll in primary school but only 42% complete. Education is not always a priority in an area where only 40% of people are food secure.

If he is one of the fortunate ones who complete primary education he may have the opportunity to go to secondary school although only half of the 42% completing primary school will go on to secondary school.

The rest will carry on being subsistence farmers and raise their own children in a similar situation.

Parents' Day

Kamwenge Primary School, where Geoff helps in the special needs unit, had an open day for parents. The teachers all dressed up in their smart new t-shirts.

The senior man teacher could not be forced off the microphone - just like Geoff at sports days at Stock!!

The staff team played a pupil team and the result was an honourable draw.

Both sides looking ready for action before the game.

And in action.

And of course the standard of cheerleading and drumming beats anything seen at Brighton's games!