We woke up one day and discovered swarms of flying insects and all our colleagues running around the district office grounds chasing them . . .

What was happening?

Turns out that it is a once a year event – grasshoppers. They are considered a great delicacy here, lightly fried in their own oil and everyone tries to catch as many as possible. The sides of the road are covered in sheets with dried grasshoppers ready for purchase. The real gourmets buy them live in plastic bags and pluck the wings and legs before frying.

We just got some already fried specimens and for a Ugandan friend and shared hers. They are actually quite tasty as the oil they have is very sweet, but all we could think of was the fact that they were once grasshoppers! As one of the English volunteers said, like prawns . . . but not quite.

They also herald the end of the year and the end of the rainy season – although as I am writing this during a very heavy storm I am not sure about the latter. The wife also traditionally prepares them for her husband to say thank you for looking after her for the previous year and the husband should then buy his wife a new dress. Geoff passed on the grasshoppers and offered a new dress for not getting them!

School Speech Day

P1 and P2 classes - the youngest children, singing about hand washing.

The older children telling stories through local dance.

Having been in Kamwenge for 7 months now, one of the things we often ask ourselves is “Are we making a difference?” or “Are we having an impact?”. It is difficult for us to tell as things move very slowly and often the challenges appear huge. However I was very pleased to be invited to Kyabenda Primary School's speech day last week. Not all schools have an end of term speech day, but those that do will normally invite members of the PTA and school management committee, together with parents, so I felt very honoured to have been invited as someone who has been involved in the school this term.

I was even more thrilled when, class by class, the children sung songs, recited poems, danced and performed drama, all of which had many, varied health messages. The younger children, who sang in their local language, sang a song about the importance of washing hands before eating and keeping food covered. Another class sang about the importance of washing their hands after using the latrine and protecting water from collection to drinking. One girl recited a poem called Mr. Mosquito, about how to prevent malaria, and the older classes performed a drama telling how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. I felt quite overwhelmed and very pleased that many of the topics I had been working on in the school were being performed in front of parents and school members. Although I am fully aware that singing about things does not necessarily mean that they are happening, I felt that perhaps I have made some small difference in Kyabenda School this term.

Nicola's visit in pictures

Nicola meeting some of the pupils at one of our schools - they are very good at handwashing and the head is the best maker of tippy taps in the district.

We met this tuskless elephant and the rest of her family on the game drive - they were very close to us and gave us a scary look at one point!

We got really wet on the way back from Rwengobe School - and we got a puncture whilst there!

It was Nicola's birthday during her visit so we had a birthday meal in our courtyard and got all dressed up especially.

Geoff and his new friend - Harry the hippo

Harry wanted this one in as it shows his best side.

Nicola at the hostel overlooking the River Nile - this is where we ate our meals.

Nicola vists Mum and Dad

We had a brilliant time with Nicola and managed to visit lots of places as well spend some time showing her some of the schools we work in.
We visited Jinja which is the Source of The Nile. The river leaves Lake Victoria here, travels through Uganda, Sudan and Egypt and ends up in the Med, a journey that takes 3 months from beginning to end. Could make for a long game of Pooh Sticks!
We showed her the sights of Kampala including the chaotic bus park, met some other volunteers and sampled after work drinks at an Ethiopian owned cocktail bar, stayed at a hostel overlooking rapids on the Nile and drove her back to Kamwenge along some very potholed roads. She agreed we do live in the middle of nowhere.
During the week she went out to schools with both of us. Geoff claims he provided the most exciting visit as he took her on a motorbike, got a puncture which was repaired at the school for one pound, and were soaked by a massive thunderstorm on the way back.
The middle weekend was at Queen Elizabeth Park, where we saw warthogs and mongoose wandering through our hostel grounds, elephants, Uganda kob and buffalo on a game drive, crocs and giant monitor lizards on a boat trip and a hippo outside the bar of the nearby lodge when we went there for a meal. Sounds like the start of a joke - a hippo wandered into a bar . . . - but that's what it was like.
In Kamwenge she met lots of our Ugandan colleagues and was asked many times if she was going to buy a house here! In fact we think she was more popular than us as everyone still asks after her.
The last weekend we went to Entebbe and got up close and personal with some very friendly vervet monkeys in the Botanical Gardens including a mother who carried her baby by walking along on her front legs only - difficult to explain but lovely to look at.
And then she caught the flight home and we were very sad to see her go but glad that we had been able to show her our life out here.

Our laptop has died!

Just a quick post to say that our laptop caught some horrible virus and is no longer usable. There is no internet cafe in Kamwenge so posting photos and words is difficult, which is why we have not updated for some time.
News updates:-

• Geoff has got his bike and is riding round the schools of Kamwenge doing his work;
• Sabrina has ridden on the back of the bike and is even keen to try again;
• we did a live link on a Sunday morning with our church in UK to talk about our visit to Josephine (see earlier post) - well we spoke on our phone and Brian held the speaker of his mobile to the PA microphone but it was well received;
• and best of all, Nicola, our daughter, is coming out to visit us and will arrive this Wednesday evening. We will stay for a couple of days in Kampala before moving to Kamwenge. We have arranged a safari to Queen Elizabeth game park for the middle weekend and will celebrate her birthday whilst she is here. We are really looking forward to seeing her.

Nicola is also bringing out a new laptop - thanks to Grace and Adrian and Nexus - so hopefully we will be able to put photos on the blog soon!

Working in schools

This term, Geoff is doing what is called School Performance Review. I visit a school with a Ugandan colleague and we spend the whole day there, looking at lessons and the leadership and management of the school, feeding back to the headteacher and staff and writing a report detailing the strengths and recommendations for the school. When you say it like that, it sounds like an OFSTED report, but I believe that it is much more as we build an ongoing, relationship with the schools we work with. My Ugandan colleagues call it ‘supportive visitation’, which sounds lovely. We visit them regularly, provide training courses for them and the day itself is a process that involves a lot of conversation about where the school is compared to other schools and how management and teachers can improve the teaching and learning for pupils.

The Ugandan colleagues we work with are called Co-ordinating Centre Tutors (CCTs) and they are outreach workers for the local teacher training college. They are all very positive people and they carry out lots of training of school staff in their centres, so are glad to have the opportunity to visit the schools in their areas and spend quality time there. They all use motor bikes and give me lifts to and from the schools. Working together also gives us the opportunity to share skills so that the process can be sustainable when I leave.

I will usually do the leadership and management part of the process, as speaking to the headteacher, chair of School Management Committee (like our governors) and chair of the PTA can be done in English. I have started doing some of the lesson observations which is very interesting, especially as the younger classes are taught in local language. However despite my initial concerns, I was pleased to find that it is easy to tell a good lesson, even when you do not understand the language it is delivered in, as it is obvious if the children are engaged and learning and the teacher is good. The teachers’ English is good enough to allow feedback after the lesson although I mainly do the older classes.

A report is provided comparing the school with similar schools in the district and we will go on to hold a School Performance Appraisal Meeting later on in the term – commonly called a SPAM by my Ugandan colleagues. I always snigger slightly as I show my age by thinking of Monty Python every time! This is where all those from the school community are invited to a meeting to discuss the strengths and recommendations, decide on the school priorities and draw up a School Development Plan. We then will support the school as it tries to implement the plan.

So it is basically OFSTED with all the bits I didn’t like taken out and all the bits I wished it had, put in!

HIV/AIDS prevention in schools

This term, Sabrina’s School Health programme is all about HIV/AIDS prevention. Over one million adults are living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda and 3.5 million children are orphans due to their parents dying from the disease. Over the last few months we have carried out workshops for head teachers on HIV/AIDS prevention in schools and this term I am visiting all the schools trained to help them with implementation of the policy. The workshop consisted of topics such as prevention through education, preventing sexual transmission to pupils and teachers and mitigating the effect of HIV/AIDS. In fact I have never talked about sex so much as I have in the last few months!

Schools in Uganda cover a lot of information in PIASCY which stands for Presidential Initiative on AIDS Strategy for Communication to Youth. This was introduced by President Museveni in an attempt to halt the spread of AIDS. The initiative is successful to a degree although, when working in schools, we have found the messages given are good but understanding is lacking. For example, children chant ‘Don’t have unprotected sex’ without understanding what it means and school compounds have notice boards displaying messages saying things like ‘Have sex later’. The work in schools is very important as children present a ‘window of hope’ for stemming the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as those at school are usually free of HIV and the challenge is to keep them that way.

When visiting schools I talk with the head teacher and teacher responsible for PIASCY and we discuss how understanding can be improved through bringing the topic of HIV/AIDS into assemblies, clubs and lessons. The aim is to keep children free of HIV by identifying actions that the school can take. I also give lots of information on universal precautions to keep everyone safe. Supporting children who are caring for sick relatives in an attempt to stop them dropping out of school is also part of the discussion.

During the first workshop we held, Geoff and I did a role play during the session on Guidance and Counselling. I played the part of a caring teacher and Geoff was a pupil struggling at school because his mum was sick. Role play is obviously not big in Uganda because out of all the sessions we did, that was the one the head teachers remember and say they have tried with children. We feel under a lot of pressure now to do an even better role play at the next workshop we hold!