A tale of 2 headteachers

Meet Francis.

Francis is the headteacher of Nkangoro, one of the schools we work with. He passes our house every school day on his journey to and from work and always has a smiling face when he sees us. He is a couple of years younger than Geoff and has been a headteacher since 1987, in 7 different schools.

He has 5 children, although his father had 15 children. The oldest is 34 and the youngest is 18. The second born, Patrick, has just qualified as a doctor and has started work at the referral hospital in Fort Portal. Francis is paying fees for all his children through their secondary and tertiary education, on a salary of just £120 a month. Patrick is getting married on 17th April in Kampala. The youngest has just finished S6, their equivalent to A levels, and will be going to university in September.

He lives in the village of Rukunyu, 6 km to the north of Kamwenge, and his school is in a village 6 Km south of Kamwenge, so he has to travel 12 km every day. He uses a very old bike with completely bald tyres to make the journey every day, although because Kamwenge is very hilly, he has to push the bike up a hill for about half the time. The journey takes him nearly 2 hours each way. This means he leaves home soon after 6 in the morning and gets home at 7 in the evening.

Geoff met him last week whilst driving his motor bike, which is provided and maintained by VSO, our supporting organisation, so we can visit far schools. It is thought provoking to realize that due to different countries of birth, the lives of headteachers in Uganda and the UK are so different.

Sports Day

Geoff turned up at the special needs unit on Friday to help with the pupils only to discover that it was sports day and trials for the district competition. The pupils were of course much more interested in seeing their friends compete than sitting in a classroom with Geoff, so they all trooped out and had a great time cheering on their fellow team members and taking part in special events themselves.

Those of you who know Geoff’s passion for school athletics will not be surprised to learn that he did a little coaching of the javelin and discus competitors, although he was a little worried to see them practising with the discus in the middle of the field at break time as a football match went on around them – can’t get away from ‘elf’ and safety!!

It was just like a UK sports day with the chart for the results for each team on display, although the jumping in the high jump was somewhat different and not quite according the coaching manual, and the spectators perhaps a little near!
The board is propped up with a broken sign that is supposed to be displayed in the playground as part of an HIV/AIDs prevention strategy!

Peter's story

Last week was spent in Kampala writing training manuals for the NGO, Link Community Devlopment, that we are working with. Geoff was planning and writing a Maths training manual and Sabrina was expanding her School Health handbook into a longer Child Friendly School training manual. These training manuals will be used in many districts of Uganda and will be used (hopefully!) long after we have left.

We always love going to Kampala - we enjoy the restaurants, the wine, and the hot showers and, of course, catching up with the many volunteer friends we have in the Capital. We had our hair cut and had several very good cappuccinos!! In the midst of all this luxury, which as ‘rich’ people we can enjoy, we met a child called Peter. He is 13 years old and is HIV positive. Both his parents and all his siblings have died of AIDS. He was living with his grandmother but she has now died.

He now lives alone, with the support of an aunt and an HIV/AIDS project, which provides him with a small amount of eggs and vegetables each week. He also has a small garden and grows the rest of the food that he needs. Peter is fortunate in that he has access to anti retroviral drugs (ARV’s) through the project, run by Link Community Development in his home of Nakaseke. This project supplies him with some food and ensures that he travels to Kampala each month to collect his ARV’s, which will prolong his life.

However, although only 13, he has to make sure he has enough food each day, as ARV’s can only be taken with food, and he has to manage a complex cocktail of drugs to ensure his health. We were amazed at Peter - not only was he delightful to talk to, but he was so determined to do well at school and fulfil his ambition to be a Maths teacher. He is now in his last year at primary school, as last year he was too sick to take the Primary Leaving Exam, which he needs to pass to enable him to continue to secondary school. He is now feeling stronger and is confident of successfully taking the exam next November.

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.