This is the last week of the long school holidays – since the beginning of December – and the new school year starts on Monday. We have been preparing for our ‘Promoting School Health’ workshop, which is taking place in the 2nd week of term. This has involved researching the internet, preparing lesson plans, priming other experts to lead sessions, writing a participants’ handbook and buying resources to hand out on the day. This is a new skill for both of us and we agonise over every part of the workshop to ensure it will be OK!

Most of the time we have locked ourselves in a spare office in the district education department and tried to ignore all the comings and goings. This was quite easy to do except for a couple of days this week when the place was crawling with anxious headteachers. Why? It was the day that the school results for Primary Leaving Exam (PLE) results came out. These are of critical importance for Ugandan schools as well as the district, as they are used to grade both of them, and it was like A levels, GSCE’s and SATs results day all rolled into one.

Children are graded from 1 (highest) to 4 (lowest) and each school hopes to get as many 1’s as possible. The size of the smile on a headteacher’s face gets bigger with every grade 1. Conversely those with none hurry out! We tell them that it is about children doing their best and reaching their potential, as well as trying to include the 50% of children who drop out before they even get to PLE, but it seems to fall on deaf ears at this time of year.

James from Rwengoro school got 4 1’s, so he is very happy!

Flight to the hills

After a wonderful Christmas and New Year break in snowy Bicknacre (see our back garden above) catching up with friends and family, we are back in hot and sunny – well apart from the odd tropical thunderstorm – Uganda. The journey was very good and we were pleased to find that Kathy, an old friend of Sabrina’s that she did her nursing training with, was on our flight. In the too short time of the flight and over breakfast in Entebbe, they were able to do some catching up and exchange details of what they were doing. Kathy runs a charity called ‘BirthLink’, which provides support and education around the world for all those involved in the care of low birth-weight and sick babies.

After 2 days back in Kamwenge, we were invited by the District Education Officer, Eric, to go and visit his family home in Kisoro, in the far south-west (bottom left hand corner for those of you who slept during geography) of the country. It was an 8 hour drive and we climbed 2200 feet to get there but the scenery was stunning. Kisoro itself is in a bowl surrounded by mountains, with several large lakes around the town and we climbed to over 8000 feet, round a twisty steep road, to get over the lip of the bowl.

The area was formed by volcanic action and it is littered with caldera – extinct mini volcanoes as in this photo – that are all extensively farmed. This is because the area is very heavily over-populated as it is bordered by Rwanda and the Congo. Both of these countries have had internal conflicts in the recent past and many refugees have settled in Kisoro to escape the fighting. We went to the border with Rwanda and after shaking hands with the Rwandan border guards and smiling sweetly, were allowed to walk across and have our photos taken in front of the sign. We then walked back again! Still counts as a trip to another country in our book.

Sabrina was pleased to find this pub in Kisoro town. We are now back in Kamwenge preparing for the new term, which starts on February 1st.