We were able to provide each school with some resources to get them started on their first aid kit (1st picture above) and their tippy tap for hand washing (2nd picture). Our colleague Anita is presenting the resources in the 2nd picture. These resources were also provided with funds from our Justgiving site, so again we thank everyone that helped us.

Sign of the times

Teachers practising the sign for chalk - it starts with pointing at white teeth (Ugandan sign language in case any of our readers speak British Sign Language)

Emmanuel and Hannah showing us how to do it properly

Practice makes perfect

We also, in what was a busy week, held sign language training for teachers at Kamwenge Primary School, which has a special needs unit attached with several deaf children. Great fun was had by all the participants as we learnt how to sign greetings and ask for local foods, amongst a wide range of topics. And of course most importantly how to ask for a beer! The workshop was lead by fellow VSO-er Hannah and was very interactive. We finished up with a soda and a cake and signed goodbyes. The costs were met by money from our Justgiving site, so many thanks to all who contributed.

At last - a school health workshop

Richard demonstrating how to make a tippy tap

Geoff wishes that he got this much concentration when he used to do assemblies!

A practical first aid demonstration


Headteachers working together to think of ways to improve health in their schools.

After weeks of planning and a few headaches due to funding issues, it was the day of our new training workshop, entitled ‘The Health Promoting School’. Although Sabrina has been working on health related issues in schools since we arrived and we have carried out several HIV/AIDS training workshops, this was the first 2 day training course for head teachers and teachers on health issues. The concept of ‘Health Promoting Schools’ is a fairly new one here and we had been concerned about how it would be received.

We are pleased to say the training went well and the teachers seemed to be interested and participated well. They all thought of ideas of improving the environment in their own schools and seemed to take on board the information about the importance of providing some sort on hand washing facility in school. One of our more motivated head teachers demonstrated how to make a tippy tap and told the participants how they worked in his school.

We talked about the importance of providing enough water to drink and making sure that children have enough food. Half of the children in our schools go all day without water or food because the school does not provide it and there is little at home. Anita, one of our colleagues from Kampala, came to talk about how to set up a school garden and we are hopeful that some communities will work together to provide some food, at the very least for the orphans and vulnerable children.

We also held sessions on a variety of health related topics and Geoff presented a session called ‘Guidance not Violence’ to give teachers some ideas on how to manage children in school without using corporal punishment. Although caning children is illegal in Ugandan schools, it is widely used as teachers have never known about other ways of managing behaviour. They seemed fascinated in Geoff’s information about ‘a child centered approach’ and ‘rewarding good behaviour’ and many asked for more information at the end.

It will of course be interesting to see how much of the information they take back to their schools and whether practice will change. As well as holding more workshops, we will be visiting schools to help head teachers implement what they have learnt.

A glass half full moment!

Isaac has just gone into the final year of primary School, P7, and he helped me with the equipment.

We managed to get a couple of donations from VSO for the special needs unit in Kamwenge Primary School. The braille typewriter and paper we have already written about on the blog, but we also got a new wheelchair for one of the pupils with mobility problems. Here is a picture of them being presented to the children in the unit earlier this week. The girl who will be using the wheelchair had not yet returned to school, because her parents did not want her to go without a working wheelchair, so it is a very timely gift.

Is the glass half full or half empty?

Kamwenge has been visited by 2 Australians for the last couple of weeks – Tim and Sophie from Sydney. They are trustees of a local community based group, Toro Integrated Childcare and were visiting the project as part of a wider tour to report back to the other trustees in Australia. As is often the case when we have first time visitors to rural Africa, they asked how we managed to keep positive despite the poor school environment that Ugandan children have to learn in every day.

This got us thinking – how do we manage? Well, we think there are several answers to this question, although when we think about it, it is difficult.

• Firstly after some time here we just accept that this is what school life is like for pupils and it is not in in our power to do anything about a lot of what they suffer. For example we cannot build new toilets in every school. We have to concentrate on those things that we can have an impact on, such as ensuring that good use is made of available water to provide hand washing facilities. It is only when a newcomer arrives that we see life through eyes that have developed-country standards.


• We make a conscious effort to look for the positive elements that are happening – headteachers and teachers who are working hard in difficult circumstances and that we can work with to improve the education for their pupils.


• We look for small steps of improvement and praise them. So when we are despairing, we think of those pupils who have set up rotas to fill the hand washing facilities daily and the head teachers who enthuse their staff and put the ideas they get at workshops into practice.


• Lastly we concentrate on what we feel will make a difference in schools and to pupils’learning and work hard to empower what are known in the jargon as change agents – those who have the ability, the power and the respect to make changes for the benefit of children.

Not a very satisfactory answer, perhaps, but one that works for us.

Next week is our workshop for promoting healthy schools and we found it difficult to stay positive when one of our funders withdrew their money 7 days before. It was too late to cancel as we had already sent out the invites, bought the resources we were going to distribute and printed the participants handbook. So with some last minute juggling we managed to sort things out but it puts further workshops in jeopardy if we cannot replace the lost funds.

Of course when the going gets tough the tough go shopping, so here is Sabrina with the jerrycans to make hand washing facilities for the attending schools and cotton wool for the first aid kits we will be handing out!