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!