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Food for Thought

Q15. Complete the proverb: "Half a loaf…."
Answer: "Half a loaf in the hand is better than two in a bush".
I couldn't agree more with the boy who has offered this sensible answer in the Primary 7 English revision paper and only wish I could give him a mark for such an inventive amalgamation of the two familiar sayings – but sadly, I must stick to the marking scheme which gives no credit for creativity – nor for amusing the marker…

It is Thursday afternoon and Independence Day in Uganda, so we have another public holiday. Although schools are officially closed I have spent the morning up in Kanungu watching the official celebrations with the Kirima children and now I am at home trying to finish the pile of exam marking I was given yesterday. It's been another long morning, this time of speeches, parades, march-pasts and salutes accompanied by a brass band so excruciatingly bad that you admire them just for being brave enough to appear in public. As the people joyfully celebrate 46 years of freedom from British rule I feel, as the only English person there, horribly out of place, like a very conspicuous gate-crasher at an extremely private party, and wonder if at any moment I will be hauled up in front of the soldiers and asked to explain myself, my country and all its imperialist machinations. But no, today the people are in far too good a mood to let the presence of a 'mujungu' – white person – interfere with their festivities and so I can sit back and enjoy myself along with everyone else.

The Kirima choir has been practising hard for today as, along with many of the other local schools, they have been invited to perform in front of the great and the good of Kanungu District Council.Ibsen, the teacher who trains the choir, has bought a new drum for the occasion, made in Mpambire, a traditional drum-making village along the road to Kampala. Earlier this week he showed it to the children proudly in assembly. "This drum", he says "this drum must be respected, do you understand?" He strokes the cow-hide lovingly. "If anyone.." he says in a voice tight with emotion, "…if anyone does not respect this drum, I will…" he pauses, searching for something bad enough that he can threaten "I will…" His voice trails off miserably as he fails yet again to identify a punishment weighty enough to fit such a crime. The children just nod their heads sympathetically; they have got the message. The drum will be respected….

I go to watch one of the first rehearsals, with the respected drum making its debut, held in the dusty stone-floored hall after school. The choir, children ranging in age from nine to fourteen, are in a huge semi-circle and Ibsen demonstrates the rhythm he wants them to clap, an incredibly complex syncopated beat that I cannot for the life of me master – although they pick it up effortlessly. One by one he introduces the body movements, the rhythm to be beaten by their feet and the song, in parts, that carries the whole thing along. Groups of children are selected to perform another set of movements within the circle and they pick up the choreographed sequences instantly. There is a mounting sense of drama and excitement as the drumming grows louder and the solo singer who is leading the performance dances ever more energetically and confidently. Ibsen prods and pushes, shakes his fist and shouts to get the effect he wants – no-one is allowed to be half-hearted. The children have an incredible innate sense of rhythm and seem totally at ease and uninhibited. There is not a snigger or a nudge from anyone as he gets them to stamp, wiggle and leap about, and I find it rather moving to see the adolescent boys and girls, at an age when most children are painfully self-conscious, working so seriously and proudly at these strangely primitive sequences without a flicker of embarrassment. Their performance on the day is faultless – despite the local madwoman who decides to join in with all the dances and is courteously ignored by the performers who just let her, wrapped up in her own little world, carry on enjoying herself.

I have also spent some time in the Nursery this week. Nursery 1, the three and four-year olds, occupy a tiny room which is furnished with the same pew-like bench-and-shelf units, each seating five or six children – often more – used in the other classes. Seated in rows, the fifteen little ones sit and chant, sing, count and recite, sometimes making a circle at the front for some practical activities, for most of the morning. I watch a number lesson where they carefully count the stones that comprise their number apparatus : their only equipment other than what they find outside is a pile of slates which they use for drawing and scribbling. They have not a single item of play apparatus, not a book, not a puzzle nor even a few bricks. Yet their lovely teacher Diana keeps them happily occupied with a medley of songs and action rhymes – they know more English nursery songs than I knew existed, as well as many in Ruchiga – and a succession of other little activities and lessons. She is a remarkable teacher; patient, kind, firm, and endlessly cheerful and energetic. She has an air of serenity about her and even in such an impoverished environment always manages to look wonderfully elegant, bringing a touch of glamour to the bare Nursery classroom in her dusty Chanel suit which has doubtless made its way to Kanungu from some privileged wardrobe across the ocean. Robert, the other teacher who works in the Nursery, is another fascinating character. Tall, gentle and the oldest member of staff here by some distance, he is a passionate devotee of Nursery education, believing, as I do, that it underpins the whole of a child's future learning; he loves working with the little ones. He tells me one breaktime that his parents didn't send him to school, and so, desperate to be educated, at the age of fourteen he enrolled himself at his local school in Primary 1 (Year One) with the six-year olds and worked his way through the system, always eight years older than the others in his class, finally taking his 'A' levels when he was twenty-seven. He then trained for the Church then finally went into teaching as – he admits – a very mature student indeed. Between them, these two teachers create a wonderfully happy, nurturing atmosphere in the Nursery – but, oh, how much more they could do if they had some toys and play equipment!

I have been here for nearly five weeks now and my working week has settled into a routine: on Mondays and Tuesdays I teach at the Primary School, doing at least one hour-long lesson in each class from Nursery 1 to P7, and two in some; on Wednesdays and Fridays I work at the College; and on Thursdays at the Great Lakes High School. All of these present me with different challenges: the Primary School because of the style of teaching and the size of the classes (the two inextricably linked of course); the High School because, much as I like them, teaching secondary-age pupils is definitely outside my professional comfort-zone; and the College because of the amount of preparation needed for each of the two-hour lectures on Business English (to the Travel and Tourism students) and Communication Skills (to the Micro-Finance students) that I have to give each Friday. And all three because my only resources for any of them are a blackboard and piece of chalk! This week I have started supervising student teachers in their final teaching practice placements on Wednesdays and have felt much more on home-ground doing this – as well as enjoying getting to see an interesting variety of schools. I spend long hours in the evenings and at weekends making lesson plans and lecture notes – yes, the boot is on the other foot now, my former staff will be glad to hear, after having been the one requesting such plans for so many years! The advantage of working in three different settings is, of course, the variety it offers; and also the chance to get to know three different sets of staff and students. It's quite a demanding regime but, as my sister Dot said before I set off – "It'll be character-forming – and you're never too old to have your character a bit more formed!" .
I have started reading stories to the children in all the classes at the Primary School at the end of their English lessons and they really love this: it is a new experience for them. Even the older children are fascinated by picture books and are happy with the same simple stories that the younger children enjoy. There are no books, not a single one, in the school other than text books and even these have to be shared between six or seven children – there is one per bench in each class. There are no reading books whatsoever and, unbelievably, the children learn to read without ever having a book in their hands or a moment's individual attention. Of course, this is of enormous interest to me and you can be sure you will hear more about the subject in future blogs!

Walking to the Primary School in the mornings is always enjoyable; plumes of woodsmoke drift in the air as people start the day's cooking, the sun has just risen above the banana plantations on the hills opposite, and a little coterie of children gathers around me as I walk up the hill, some wanting to try out their English, others just content to walk along with me stealing curious glances as we go. My vocabulary is growing slowly and I can now say 'olireje' – good morning, and 'osibireje' – good afternoon, as well as 'agandi' , so can pass the time of day with the villagers, who are now getting used to seeing me and are always very friendly. Out here no-one would dream of walking past you without some form of greeting, even if you are complete strangers. Autumn must be arriving in England but here, so close to the equator, the days never alter other than in the amounts of rain that fall, and it is lovely to feel the sun on my face each morning and to have warm nights every night…

Saturday arrives – and a day out! I have arranged to visit Ishasha, which is at the south-western tip of the Queen Elizabeth National Park and only an hour's drive from Kinkiisi. Jenna, the bursar is coming, and Novias too, as, despite having been brought up only a few miles from the park, she has never been there – it's a luxury only tourists can afford on the whole, despite a reduction in charges for Ugandan residents. We have to leave at 6.00am in order to see the animals before the midday heat drives them under cover. Dawn is breaking as we drive along the quiet roads but already people are out and about – whole families including tiny children walking along the road in the semi-darkness on their way to work in the fields. The hilly banana plantations give way gradually to savanna and it suddenly feels quite possible that at any moment some creature might emerge out of the undergrowth. As we near the entrance to the park a herd of elephants does indeed appear in the long grass near the road and soon colobus monkeys, Ugandan kob and buffalo too. We are the first visitors of the day to arrive at the park and in fact barely see any others while we are there: because of its remoteness this corner is the least visited part of the enormous 2,000 km park. However, it is the only place in Uganda (and one of the few in the whole of Africa) where one can see tree-climbing lions and I am hoping against hope that we will be lucky today…

The park has many varieties of primates and we see gibbons and chimpanzees as well as monkeys, and huge numbers of antelope, warthogs and elephants. We find a family of hippos cooling themselves in the Ishasha River which runs through the park and provides the border with Congo; and at one point a huge 'monitoring lizard' as our driver Nicholas calls it, crosses the road in front of us. There is an amazing variety of brightly coloured bird, butterfly and flower species here and in a Proustian moment I am transported back to the stamp-collecting days of my youth when, I recall, the African stamps were always the most beautiful and sought-after, though the names of many of the countries, as the political fortunes of the continent have waxed and waned, have changed: Ruanda-Urundi, forever imprinted on my mind for its set of exquisite flower stamps, must now presumably be Rwanda.
The tree-lions prove elusive, however. Nicholas, who knows the park well, drives to all their favourite haunts – they have a liking for sycamore fig trees and we slowly circle round several dozen of these with no success. After a couple of hours we decide to call it a day - but Nicholas isn't going to give up so easily and insists on taking us to one last spot where he has seen them before. And there they are! A pair of huge lions, languidly stretched along a branch, one sleeping and the other licking its paws. This is a rare sight indeed and we sit watching them for some time while they in turn fix their eyes on us – though for rather less benevolent reasons, I suspect…. It's a sobering thought that, within living memory, such creatures wandered freely in the Ugandan countryside. A paragraph in the newspaper that I occasionally get access to reports that a 'marauding lioness' that had escaped from the Queen Elizabeth National Park has been shot after a two-week reign of terror in which it killed many farm and domestic animals – although worse was reported from nearby Ethiopia where another escaped lion killed and ate a man. Gruesomely, the paper reports that he was identified when his intact head was found in a field near to where he had been working…..

On a brighter note, the health pages in the newspaper always make interesting reading and in case any of you have scalp problems, I pass on this advice from the 'Your Questions Answered' column in the same paper: " Cow dung, urine and brake fluid are not effective, and may even prove dangerous, in the treatment of dandruff".

You have been warned!

Service with a Smile

Disaster! The heel has come off one of my indispensible black shoes and I must get it repaired…

Those of you who are acquainted with my footwear preferences may be surprised to know that the week before leaving England I invested – with considerable reluctance – in a pair of sensible, flat, sturdy black shoes. With a heavy heart I put to the back of my wardrobe the pink, the spotty, the red, the shiny and all the other frivolous pairs I have acquired over the years and left them to hibernate while I am away. Putting on the new pair for the first time when I arrived here took some effort and I was glad not to have a mirror to see how they looked. But from that moment they have barely left my feet (except at night of course…). They grip the gritty roads, disperse the red dust and repel the heaviest of rain; what's more they are blissfully comfortable – and in short have become treasured possessions. So it is off to Kanungu I trek this Saturday morning to get them repaired, I hope, at the shoemaker's shop. Robert, the only shoe-repairer in town, has a reputation for procrastination, however, and Novias warns me that she has been waiting for weeks for her shoes to be repaired; every time she calls in at the shop, he tells her they will be ready "very soon". Does he take bribes, I wonder? If the police do (more of that some other time!) then surely I can hope that shoe menders do too? I am desperate to get my shoes back into service…

I have to wear my only other pair of shoes, my "church" shoes (which are of the unsuitable variety) to walk there and I slip and slither on the stony, dusty road as I go. I join the growing crowds of people walking to the market, some with wares to sell on their heads, some with babies strapped to their backs, most barefoot – including some very elderly women – so feel doubly self-conscious about my silly shoes as I scramble along beside them. Robert's shop, when I finally get there, is packed with black shoes: some in pairs and others randomly heaped together on the counter and shelves long separated from their partners, looking like some lonely-hearts club for shoes out on a singles night. At one end of his little shop is his table with shoe lasts, a sewing machine and the other tools of his trade; at the other his shoe-repairing stand. He greets me affectionately, as people do out here: "You are welcome! We love you!" is a typical greeting. And yes, he can repair my shoe today, with either a used piece of heel rubber or a new one, whichever I would prefer – rather like having a retread instead of a new tyre, I suppose - a choice I have certainly never been offered at Timpson's. A short time later my shoe is ready. "Thank you for choosing my establishment to get your shoe mended" he says gravely as he shakes my hand - for all the world as if he thinks that Kanungu is full of rival repair shops all vying for my custom – and I pay him the 3000sh – about £1 - for the new heel plus an expert shoe-shine job. If I walk with a slight limp, due to the fact that one shoe is now a good few millimeters higher than the other, who cares? I have my shoes back and all is well with the world!

The power is off all day today but no-one seems much bothered by this fact. Electricity only arrived here less than a year ago and few even of the houses that have it use it much, fearing it as another drain on their finances and another bill to pay( none of the school staff, incidentally, not even the Headmaster, have electricity!). This means there are very few of the everyday gadgets and machines around that are so much a part of our everyday life in the UK. Most I miss very little: never having been a great television watcher the lack of it doesn't bother me at all. No-one uses kettles out here: we have the luxury of a two-burner calor gas hob for cooking ( although most villagers cook over open fires) and we heat up water for drinks in pans – a bit tedious but perfectly manageable. There is no toaster, indeed there are no kitchen gadgets of any kind; and no hot water at the sink – we wash up in cold. The washing, too, is done in big bowls of cold water on the grass where there is an outside tap. I had forgotten the sheer effort involved in washing sheets and towels by hand! But things dry quickly in the hot midday sun, draped on the hedge, even if they haven't been very well wrung out. However, with so many quiet evenings on my own what I do miss is the radio. The reception up here in the hills is very poor and the wave-lengths change at different times of the day; so that although I have a wind-up short-wave radio – a very thoughtful birthday present – I cannot usually access the BBC World Service for more than a few tantalizing moments at a time. I sit on my bed, feeling like a secret agent in a war-film, twiddling the knob of the radio painfully slowly, hoping to find the exact perfect spot where I will be able to hear voices above the high-pitched whistling, the strange underwater gurgling sounds and the monstrous crackling. If I am lucky enough to find that spot then I must sit in precisely the same position, holding the radio stock still (regardless of the extreme discomfort this inevitably brings) as the slightest movement will result in losing the precious connection. The only benefit of this is that the global financial crisis has passed me by almost entirely – the price of bananas down the road is all I know about – for which many must envy me very deeply….

Sunday arrives and I am up early, determined not to be caught out as I was last week. The College service is at 9.00am: I have had a personal written invitation stating as much, as this is a special 'thanksgiving' service to raise money to buy a keyboard and sound system for the chapel. I arrive promptly only to find that 9.00 is a very approximate start time and a few people are just beginning to set up the keyboard and speakers that have been hired for the day to demonstrate what an asset they would be. A family of birds that nests in the roof swoops in and out as we sit waiting – the building is largely open at the sides as it would be unbearably hot otherwise under the tin roof. At 9.45 we start singing hymns to pass the time – a medley of cheerful gospel-style favourites accompanied by the usual drumming – while people drift in. The two-hundred-odd boarders from Kirima Primary School arrive at about 10.00, more people saunter in, then a while later a priest arrives; and at about 10.30 the service officially starts. This is the very elastic 'Africa time' that I have been warned about! I am more than ready to sit down after 45 minutes of energetic hymn singing - but that was just the warm-up. Still to come are unhurried welcomes and introductions, songs from the children, songs from the choir, hymns for the rest of us – all full of lively clapping, dancing, waving and swaying – as well as, ingeniously absorbed somehow into the middle of all this, the usual order of service. Unused to having an accompanist the choir starts all the singing off rather than the other way round leaving the keyboard player to try to identify the key they are singing in. This involves a lot of trial and error and he usually finds it by the final verse, having effectively ruined the rest of the music with his loudly amplified chromatic wanderings through many keys to get there. The speakers are plugged into several old car batteries as there is no power again today, and from time to time they pick up the keyboard player's mobile phone power-surges which then pulsate through the hall violently. I suspect that I am not the only one who prays that, while of course we all want the money to be raised for the new equipment – Lord, let it not be too soon…

It's 11.30 by now and the sermon is about to begin. Any hopes that this will be short are soon dispelled: just as I think that the preacher – whose delivery is passionately evangelical and longwinded – has finished, he starts to repeat the whole thing in Ruchiga for the benefit of those whose English is not good. The college Principal, has, I note, nodded off beside me and who can blame him? 12.15 arrives and the sermon finally ends; the priest taking the service, however, obviously feeling that the visiting preacher hasn't made his point well enough, reiterates much of what he has said then adds a few points of his own. The gist of their messages is first 'give' and secondly 'plan', both worthy sentiments but neither necessarily improved by the tortuous elaboration to which they have been subjected ...

But now comes the most entertaining part of the service: the collection. Money is given by some but the less well-off have brought produce instead – sticks of sugar cane, pineapples, passion-fruit, eggs, papaya – and even a live hen. These are piled up by the altar, the hen (legs tied together) sitting on a heap of pineapples. We still have the communion part of the service to come which takes place to the accompaniment of loud and reproachful clucking; and at last, at last, at 1.15pm we reach the final blessing. But can we go yet? No! We now have to auction all the produce so that these offerings can be turned into cash. The hen goes first, and I decide to buy the sugar cane for the school children who have sat quietly and uncomplainingly for over three hours and definitely deserve a reward (you cut it into short pieces and suck out the juice). The atmosphere becomes decidedly lively, raucous even, as successive items go up for sale and at 2.15pm I eventually stagger out clutching a bag of passion fruit and a pineapple, unsure whether I've been to a church service or a combination of a concert , a lecture, a party and an aerobics session. I'm exhausted!

I walk up the hill with Mercy and her friend Excellent Jolly (surely the happiest name in the world!) from the Primary School. "Did you feel the earthquake last night?" they ask. I'm relieved that I didn't imagine it, fearing that my juddering bed and rattling windows might merely have been the product of the nightmare-inducing Lariam pill that I take once a week on Saturdays to prevent malaria. I find out later that it registered 5.2 on the Richter scale and had its epicentre in nearby Congo. Because of the weakness in the Earth's crust beneath the Rift Valley these tremors happen quite often, apparently. A moving experience of a different kind to add to the many others I'm having here….

A Sweet Girl Named Desire

(with apologies to Tennessee Williams…)

Tuesday is Eid and despite the fact that there are very few Muslims in this part of Uganda it is a public holiday: in the country as a whole 11% of the population are Muslim and 85% Christian. However, until the morning itself there has been no confirmation from the District Education Office that schools should close for the day so staff and pupils have mostly arrived. After prayers and singing, the day children are told they may go home: 'Go straight home, mind, and don't play in the mango trees on the way' the Headmaster warns them. I find myself wishing that I knew where these were as I would love a mango but have seen none since arriving; perhaps I should follow the children and find out. I, for my part, am relieved to have a day off as I have developed a nasty sore throat and cough and have almost lost my voice. Having spent years building up resistance, as teachers of young children do, to every known virus in England (and frequently boasting that I never get ill) I have now succumbed to a hefty Ugandan one: many of the children here have runny noses and hacking coughs. Fortunately my 'medical chest' contains cold remedies but I shall resist using my one precious course of antibiotics unless I really have to.

This week's teaching at the Primary School has gone well and I feel I am getting into the swing of things. In addition to several English lessons I have one class for science for which the topic is 'Personal Hygiene'. I take along various items from my sponge bag as visual aids but I quickly realize that few are familiar to the children – for some, possibly not even the comb and soap. Children here have virtually no hair; their heads are shaved or they have just a very fine covering of hair until they are in their teens or older. It is quite difficult to tell girls and boys apart because of this; but it certainly takes away the worries (so ever-present in the UK) about headlice and explains why the bottle of shampoo I have brought along causes such a stir. The toothbrush and toothpaste, similarly, are objects of great curiosity and when I ask how many children have ever seen a toothbrush before not a single hand goes up. A twig, peeled of its bark, is used instead and judging by the gleaming white teeth the children have, and the good state of the adults' teeth too, this method is highly effective. Of course, a diet almost entirely free from sugar must help, although I do wonder how they get sufficient calcium since dairy products are virtually non-existent and milk a great luxury, even for young children. At the end of the lesson I teach them 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush' (so that we can do the washing actions) but have the greatest difficulty explaining what a 'cold and frosty morning' is – never mind a mulberry bush. To explain frost to children whose climate is never less than warm, and who have never eaten ice-cream nor even seen a refrigerator is something of a challenge! Collecting in their books for marking at the end of the lesson is a salutary experience too; a pile of seventy is quite bad enough to carry, let alone mark, and I quickly work out that even if I only spend two minutes on each it will still take over two hours to complete the task…

One little girl, Desire, stands out from the rest of the class. The phrase "bursting with enthusiasm" must surely have been invented for her: she is bursting out of her dress, her shoes, and almost her own skin in her determination to give answers and share what she knows. She is a funny scrap of a girl, scruffy and unkempt but her answers are always correct and her responses lightning quick. When I drop my chalk, it is she who rushes forward in a flash to pick it up; and she is out of the door before I have even finished asking the class where I might find a board rubber (and returns with a piece of screwed-up paper – I should have known better…). At the end of the P3 science lesson she hangs back until the other children have gone then asks shyly if she may smell my bar of soap, which she does with closed eyes and a look of undisguised pleasure. I wish I could give it to her but I know it would only cause difficulties. However it is in assembly that I notice her most for here she really shines. The singing is usually led by any child who volunteers on the spur of the moment to sing the first line of the hymn and then the first line of each subsequent verse so the other children can follow the tune and the words. Desire is only in P3 and as an eight-year-old would not normally take on this role which is generally that of a P7 child. However she bursts into song boldly and unselfconsciously as the hymn, a lively favourite in the local language, is announced and everyone follows her lead; and, taking herself to the front of the assembled children she breaks into a little dance in time to the music as she sings, clapping in time to her swaying steps. Her face glows with self-absorbed delight as she carries the entire school along with her verse after verse; until eventually the teacher has to tap her on the shoulder to ask her to bring this seemingly endless song to a close, and she skips back to her place smiling contentedly. I marvel at her sweetness and at her sheer zest for life: she is an exceptional little girl. She is one of the fortunate minority, I find out later, who has a CHIFCOD sponsor to pay her school fees, buy her uniform and pay for her board which means that she should be able to continue to the end of her primary schooling even if the crops fail or some other financial disaster befalls her impoverished family. For her and for many others though, secondary education is not guaranteed. It is a good deal more expensive to sponsor a child through secondary school (though still a very modest sum by our standards) and, understandably, fewer people commit to this. I wonder to myself - will this bright, talented, sparky girl become just one more of the numberless children who drop out of school at secondary level because a sponsor did not materialize for her? Details about sponsorship can be found on the CHIFCOD website: www.volunteeruganda.org and I urge, indeed beg, anyone who might have it within their means to do so to consider this – especially at secondary level. In terms of an opportunity do something worthwhile for a fellow human being it could hardly be bettered. Desire, and so many others like her, deserves the bright future that could so easily be hers – but might so easily be denied her. So much hangs in the balance out here….

The staff have lunch in a classroom and I am enjoying getting to know my new colleagues as we eat. They have wonderful movie-star names – Godfrey, Anton, Warren, Gloria, Victoria, Robert, Justine – and are mostly young and all very friendly. One question you never ask here is "What's for lunch today?" because lunch is the same every day. There is a pot of dried beans plainly cooked in their own juices; and posho, the maize porridge drunk at breaktime which when left to cool, sets into a solid mass that can be sliced or broken into chunks. We sometimes also have matoke (cooked plantain) as an extra treat. We all wash our hands outside first, taking it in turns to hold the big yellow water carrier marked 'staff' for the next person in the queue and to pour water over their hands onto the grass – there is no soap or towel but it's good just to rinse off the morning's chalk dust and grime. Somebody sends a child off to find me a fork – not that I have asked for one, but I am quite relieved not to have to use my fingers as the others do as I know I would make a dreadful mess with the beans! Despite the simplicity of the diet here I feel I am eating quite healthily. A typical meal in a middle-class Ugandan home would usually consist of several starchy foods – sweet potatoes, rice, matoke perhaps; some vegetables such as carrots or cabbage and either bean stew or a small amount of stewed meat. The meat, despite long cooking, is invariably tough and chewy and chicken generally a pile of little bones from which you must try to extricate a few mouthfuls of sinewy flesh. For the majority of the village people here, though, meat is only eaten at most once or twice a year – at special celebrations like weddings, say - and all of the good produce they grow is sold to give them the cash for basic day-to-day essentials like clothes, so they eat extremely poorly. For people with the cash to buy them, pineapples and bunches of tiny sweet bananas are everywhere, a limited choice of starchy root vegetables available, eggs fairly easy to come by and a kind of sliced bread which I can best describe as like the gluten-free loaves you buy in health shops – spongy, dense and apt to stick to your teeth – quite widely available. Dairy products are nowhere to be seen as without refrigeration they just don't keep; so the diet is very low in fat. A special variety of Blue Band margarine that will keep unrefrigerated is the only spread available – slimy and bright yellow, it has little to recommend it – so it pairs up quite well with the bread! Oddly enough, there is nothing I really miss or crave for; even the big bar of chocolate I brought with me remains unopened in my suitcase. In the context of such poverty food ceases to be the higher-order, pleasure-seeking activity it has become in the developed world. Boiled potatoes with a tasty pink sauce made from peanut flour has become one of my favourite dishes but on the whole eating is a functional rather than a gastronomic experience here and the world of the foams, mousses and amuses gueules of Michelin-starred restaurants seems a million miles away. This is not to cast aspersions on haute cuisine – I am the first to enjoy a good meal ; more an observation about the curious place of food in our lives - and our ability to adapt our expectations to new environments! What's more, it's over three weeks since I had a glass of wine and my body seems perfectly content with unremitting bottled water, somewhat to my surprise – I hope to come back in December a few pounds lighter and thoroughly detoxed!

Dear Blog Followers – thank you for your comments and emails which I have found so encouraging. I'm surprised and delighted that so many people are taking such an interest in the blog – it's something I really enjoy writing and it's great to be able share my experiences with you!

Weekend in Kinkiisi

This has been my first free weekend in Kinkiisi. Hamlet and Kellen have returned to Kampala; but I am not entirely alone in the house. Besides their own four children, who are all away at school or College, they have semi-adopted three girls in straitened circumstances, all in their late teens or early twenties. One, Eilen, has gone with them to Kampala but the other two are here. Justine teaches at Kirima School but is still studying for better qualifications and Novias, a relation of Kellen's, is a student at the College. They earn their college fees and keep by doing jobs around the house, laundry, caring for the hens and so on. It is nice to have their company and they are gradually becoming less shy, even making hesitant attempts at conversation from time to time. I am gradually learning more about them: Justine's father died when she was young, leaving her mother to raise their four children; and not long after Justine's mother was herself was bitten by a snake whilst working in the fields and had to have her leg amputated. Justine left school to look after the family but her determination to be a teacher eventually led her, when circumstances allowed, to walk the many miles from her home to Kinkiisi to beg Hamlet for a place at the College. She is clearly an excellent teacher and has more than fulfilled the faith that was put in her. She and I share the English teaching in P1 and P2 so a good deal of lesson-planning takes place over the tea-table…

On Saturday I decide that I must maintain the habit of a lifetime - and go shopping. Kinkiisi itself does not have a shop as such but, walking around the village this week, I have gradually realized that several of the humble corrugated-iron-roofed houses that front the street have a small stall just inside their doorway selling items of produce. One house has a neat line of tomatoes displayed; another a few bunches of bananas; a third some potatoes. There are one or two more ambitious projects, probably funded by a micro-finance company such as the one that CHIFCOD operates. One man works away at a sewing machine; and I promise myself that, before I leave here, I will knock on the door of the shabby house that bears a small painted board saying 'Fine Times Hair Design Salon' in uneven blue letters and see what they can do for me. But the enterprise that has already won me as a regular customer is the internet – well, not 'café' exactly, but 'place'. The face of the young lady who runs it lights up when she sees me: I suspect that she thinks that her business success is assured now that I have arrived in the village and spend long periods using her one, ancient computer. "I have air-time today!" she assures me enthusiastically "And power too!". Neither of these is guaranteed and to have both simultaneously is nothing short of miraculous. The power goes off for hours, sometimes the entire day, quite regularly; and the internet 'air-time' has to be purchased in the nearest town, Kanungu, in the form of scratch-card vouchers with numbers that are fed into the computer modem's sim card via a mobile phone. Broadband exists only in some far-distant parallel universe. The internet lady also has an unusual retail sideline – in sanitary towels, stacks of which line the shelves above the computer. Sadly, my feeble attempts at jokes about her'high tech pad' seem only to cause puzzlement….

Novias insists on coming to Kanungu with me on Saturday morning as she is convinced that the shopkeepers will overcharge me if I go on my own. Normally she spends Saturdays working on the Student Agricultural Scheme – a CHIFCOD project to enable students to raise the money for their college fees by growing and selling produce; but she has a day off today. It is a steep 45 minute walk to the town in growing heat but I am looking forward to seeing the market which takes place every Saturday here.

Kanungu was briefly famous, or infamous, as the headquarters of an extreme doomsday cult called The Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God who on 17 March 2000 sealed themselves in their chapel and set themselves alight with sulphuric acid – or were set alight, for the jury is still out as to whether this was a mass suicide or a mass murder by the cult's insane leaders. Five hundred people died in the ensuing explosion but forest graves containing other bodies were found elsewhere in the area casting suspicion on the theory that this was in fact suicide. Still scarred by the event, Kanungu is now a subdued little town whose redeeming feature is that it boasts the sole petrol pump for miles around - and a hand-cranked one at that. It regularly runs out of fuel when the tanker is due and the town then fills up with stranded motorists who have no alternative but to wait for the next delivery – bad for them but no doubt good for business in this otherwise unremarkable place.

The shops in Kanungu bear no resemblance to ours, of course. They have no electric power so I have to peer about in semi-darkness to make out what is on the chaotically arranged shelves of the tiny food shop we enter. Besides the sacks of flour and dried beans there are a few luxury items –some lurid cans of jam, two jars (only) of peanut butter (which is rapidly becoming a staple source of protein for me so I buy them both), longlife milk, and, I note with interest – a dusty bottle labelled 'Communion Wine'. I shall know where to come if I get desperate…

There is a shoemaker, a hardware shop selling everyday essentials like cooking pots and kerosene, a stationery shop full of school exercise books (parents have to provide these) and a shop selling fruit and vegetables – or rather bananas, pineapples and tomatoes. I cannot stomach buying anything from the butcher's shop despite Novias' entreaties to look at an unidentifiable half-animal lying on the floor at the back of this hot fly-ridden place, which she tells me is 'very special good meat'. We go on to the tiny market, where there are a few stalls selling mostly – yes! pineapples, bananas and tomatoes…though also small onions, some cassava and sweet potatoes. There is also a clothes market on a grassy site adjoining the site where a huge array of second-hand clothes and shoes are set out by different stall-holders. Many of these are European or American clothes which have arrived here via charity shops and sell for the equivalent of about 50p an item. People dress quite formally in Uganda and it is not uncommon to see men in suits even in the most remote villages – and almost always in a smart shirt and trousers. Women too dress in a colourful and creative mix of their traditional dress with western-style clothes – though never trousers, which are regarded as 'not quite proper' for women, particularly in the more traditional rural areas. I wish I had brought more skirts with me now!

On Sunday I am woken by a knock on the door at 7.00am. Jenna, the school bursar, has come to collect me for Church, an arrangement entirely of her own devising but one that, once over the surprise and her overzealous punctuality, I am more than happy to go along with. I want to see the local church, which everyone refers to as 'the cathedral' though I am unsure whether this is an official title or a deferential one. The English service is at 8.30am and is followed by the local-language one at 10.00am: church-going is almost universal here and people dress up to the nines for what is clearly regarded as a very important occasion. The church is full of local school children in uniform and their families, and the service, as expected, is a lively affair. Familiar Anglican hymns are delivered, effortlessly syncopated, to the accompaniment only of drumming and clapping, often with three or four complex rhythms going on at once and instinctive harmonies. The singing is wonderfully uplifting and joyful. The priest, however, no doubt mindful of his church's elevated status, clutches to his mouth an ancient microphone for the spoken parts of the service which distorts his diction so much that it is impossible to hear what language he is speaking let alone his words. It is only when he is in the pulpit that I can finally make out anything he is saying. He has chosen as his text Psalm 23 and, addressing the rows of children fervently tells them, several times over, that if they are worried they MUST NOT COMMIT SUICIDE! Perhaps the dreadful happenings just up the road in Kanungu a few years ago have left an indelible impression on him….

In the afternoon Novias, who has been feeling increasingly poorly, decides that she needs a malaria test so I manage to organize a lift to Kanungu where while-you-wait malaria tests are carried out in a pharmacy for 1,000 Ugandan shillings – about 30p. The technician tries to persuade her that she needs a typhoid and brucellosis test too but Novias is having none of it – he just wants her money, she confides in me; she knows she hasn't got brucellosis because she always boils her milk, and has had typhoid fever and knows the symptoms. A few minutes later, triumphant at the accuracy of her own diagnosis and at having got one up on the technician, she leaves the shop clutching her malaria treatment, telling me that she may have to have a day off college tomorrow but will wait and see how she is. Illness is an expensive inconvenience here - but nothing to make a fuss about. I, selfishly, have enjoyed being a proxy mum to the invalid – in an environment where so much is new, it is something of a relief to have a familiar and easy role to slip into…

 

School Life

It's exam time at Kirima Primary School. Although the children only came back last week, they began three solid days of exams on Monday, as they do at the start, middle and end of each term. And I mean proper exams: done in silence and formally invigilated, with the children well spaced - which means only half the school at a time sitting their papers in the hall and classrooms while the other half wait outside. Amazed, I watch as the children waiting sit chatting quietly, unsupervised, unoccupied, for over two hours, as the others work in the classrooms. There is no running about, horseplay or misbehaviour. Even the little Nursery children busy themselves collecting bundles of twigs quietly and contentedly, their teacher busy with exam supervision.

In the exam rooms all the year groups are today doing Agriculture papers at different levels. Even Nursery 2 (Reception) does exams in the four core subjects! From P(Primary)1 to P6 (Year 1 to Year 6 in National Curriculum terms) the children do papers in six subjects, each lasting from 1 ¼ hours in Year 1 to 2 ½ hours in Year 7. P1 do all their papers apart from English in their own language but from P2 (after only a year of English lessons) they are all done in English. The range and number of questions (fifty-five seems standard) is impressive and the children get on with them in compliant silence. The sound of wood being chopped outside the hall to cook the school lunch punctuates the quiet; and a family of hens peck their way across the floor as the children work, mercifully oblivious to question 43 about 'three reasons for keeping chickens'. ...

The big advantage of the system, the Headmaster explains, is that the children quickly become accustomed to taking exams and they hold no fear for them so that by the time they take their important final Primary Certificate papers they are mostly very confident. The teachers start marking the flimsy banda-duplicated papers immediately the first group has finished; this will be a long, long job. I am given a pile of P6 papers to mark. The children seem to know a huge amount about crop rotation, irrigation, pests and manure but one pupil at least falls down badly on the question "What is castration?" to which he has answered " The removal of an animal's breasts"!

The results are recorded on huge class record sheets where I scan the fascinating range of names : Fortunate, Hosannah, Memory, Precious and Sufficient are amongst the many charming 'missionary' names while, curiously, Chromosome seems to be particularly popular at the moment... Pupils are listed in exam order with no concessions made for relative age within the class, special needs or any other mitigating factors. Parents receive a termly report sheet where their child's results and class position in each subject are shown, the days of absence, a brief comment by the class teacher ("work harder"; "very good") and the start date of the next term. Do they need more? I think back to the lengthy, detailed reports we are used to writing and wonder if they were any more useful than these rather bald but admirably straightforward documents...

The school has its own clinic with two nurses who look after sick children and dispense medicines free of charge to them: this is another of CHIFCOD's many initiatives. Malaria occurs regularly and is regarded as part of the way of life here. Everyone gets it every so often, much in the same way as we in the UK get colds and 'flu, but people take the view that as long as it is treated it doesn't much matter. However, the young are very vulnerable and one in five children's deaths in Africa is from the disease (one in ten worldwide). The children have no nets in their dormitories; how good it would be if they could be provided for every child in the school!

School starts early here and many of the teachers have been at work since 6.00am. At break time a snack of dry bread rolls and posho, a thin maize porridge the consistency of semolina and drunk from a mug, is served for the staff. In other schools they drink weak tea made with copious amounts of well-boiled hot milk; I am still working at acquiring a taste for either, I'm afraid! Uganda is a strongly Christian country and prayers are said often – including grace before every meal and even before eating a snack such as this. Food is precious and no-one takes it for granted.

The school day ends at 5.00pm after a final end-of-day assembly. Older children take it in turns to sweep the classrooms, wash the floors and tidy up outside. Fortunately, today's afternoon rain was not too heavy and the muddy puddles are already drying up. The day pupils leave, joining the stream of children from other schools in the area who are all walking home, cheerfully barefooted, along the stony red road. 'How-are-you-I'm-fine' they call to me. 'Agandi!' I reply – at least I can manage 'hello' in Ruchiga, the local language – and soon, I hope, will manage a lot more.

First Impressions

Wednesday 17^th September

Today I visited the two CHIFCOD schools in the village: the Primary School and the College. CHIFCOD (Child to Family Community Development Organisation) is an organisation founded in 1993 by four local men, one of them Hamlet Mbabaze, who decided that the village needed better provision for its families and young people. The Primary School was opened in 1994 and has grown year by year and now has several hundred pupils aged 3 to 13 (although there are some older students those who have repeated a year or started late ).

To anyone used to English schools it is easy to be shocked and judgemental about the physical circumstances under which the school functions. There is a blackboard at the front of each quite small classroom; the pupils, between forty and seventy in a class sit crammed onto wooden benches behind narrow table-shelves. They work for solid one-hour periods (apart from Nursery 1 and 2 who work for half-hour sessions), with teachers rotating around the classes, so the children stay put but the teachers move round. They have core subjects of maths, English, Science and Social studies and also do RE, agriculture and cultural (own language) studies. They start the day at 7.30 with an assembly and this morning I woke to the sound of their gloriously harmonious singing, accompanied by drumming, wafting across the valley. Two hour-long periods before break, and two after, take the children to lunchtime. Lunch is cooked at the school in huge pots over wood fires, usually beans and maize porridge. At 2pm they have another two hours of lessons then break again. Although school officially ends at 4.30pm the boarders, which is most of the children over 7, then do prep, and the older children have another prep period from 7.30 until 9.30. At 5.30 they wash their clothes and themselves and have tea. The dormitories have three-tiered bunks crammed together so that thirty or forty children are in one room, for which the children have to bring their own foam mattresses. Washing lines hang above the bunks for the children's clothes to dry on after they have washed them. On each bed is a small tin trunk in which they keep their few possessions. Two matrons look after the separate boys' and girls' quarters and several member of staff live at the school and look after the boarders, after teaching six one-hour periods during the day first! The boarders have lessons all day on Saturday then on Sunday go to Church – and do more prep. 'Don't they get very tired?' I ask. 'They are used to it' is the reply. Indeed, this is the reply to most of my questions about the children's lives. The teachers, too, work incredibly hard; their days are long and relentless. They too, it seems, are used to it. They plan their work for the next day each evening in longhand using carbon duplicating paper for their planning sheets and write each hour's lesson on the board to be copied down by the children; the only way to manage teaching such large numbers of pupils.

The conditions in which the children live and work could hardly be poorer. Even the young children seem to have no play materials or equipment ; the walls are bare, and everything very shabby by our standards. Yet the children are very well-behaved, extremely courteous and perform very well in the national grading tests that take place at the end of Primary 7 when the children are 13: this is a high-achieving school. Their dormitories are bare, bleak and crowded yet for most these are better conditions than they would have at home and they are certainly better fed than they would be there. Most that I see walking along the road or in school have no shoes. I pass tiny children balancing huge plastic water carriers on their heads. A huge number are orphans. Many suffer from malnutrition. Childhood in rural Uganda is very, very hard.

In the afternoon we visit the Great Lakes College ,also in Kinkiisi. A newer, more spacious establishment also built by CHIFCOD, this caters for students from sixteen upwards who want to do diploma, access or degree courses. Some courses are vocational, such as agriculture or office skills whilst others are academic. Students have to finance themselves – there are no student loans – so courses run at weekends, at night and during the holidays for those who have jobs, as well as during the day. There is a two-year teacher training course and the Principal, when I meet him, seems very keen for me to help on the Early Years Teaching Course, both in college and supervising students on teaching practice. He suggests two days a week there but will wait until I have finished all my school visits before committing myself.

Thursday 18^th September

A clear, sunny day after the misty 'wet-season' humidity of the previous two. Today we are to visit another CHIFCOD primary school some distance away in the Rift Valley, close to the Queen Elizabeth National Park, and also the Great Lakes High School which is being built with money raised by Highgate School in 2007 and although still under construction already has pupils. The two hour drive takes us through ravishing countryside of rolling, lushly-vegetated hills and widening valleys. The ubiquitous banana plantations give way to termite-mound covered fields and sparser vegetation: here it is hotter and drier than Kinkiisi and the people are much poorer still since they can grow little to sell. We arrive at Nyamirama School as the Nursery 1 and 2 (Reception) children are doing PE. The school is on a lovely big flat area of grassland and the fifty or sixty children are in an enormous circle playing games and singing – a delightful sight. Once again I am taken from class to class where, in unison, the children chant a word-perfect welcome in each one. I am then invited to make short speech of introduction to which the children listen in an absolute silence that signifies either total incomprehension or extreme courtesy – in the younger classes, certainly the former since they don't learn English until Primary 2 (year 3). The children are beautifully behaved and obedient, the teaching very formal, and the classroom environment spartan in the extreme. This school has smaller numbers in each class – a more manageable 35 -45 – and feels a lot less depressing than the one I visited yesterday – or perhaps I am just adjusting to this new way of school life? Boarding has just been introduced and I am shown the girls' dormitory where 47 mattresses, with no space between, fill the room – they have no money for bunks at present. Many if not most of the boarders have a sponsor through CHIFCOD – the only way they will get an education.

As we leave I see in the playground one of the 'improving' notices nailed to the trees which reads "Remember your responsibilities as children" - little chance to forget them when most have to go home and fetch water, gather firewood and carry out other household tasks....

Then on to the Great Lakes High School, about an hour's drive back along the red, dusty track. We stop to give a lift to two women who are walking to see a relative in hospital, each carrying a baby and a suitcase. They have already been walking for some time in this fierce heat and without the lift would be walking for many hours yet – and back again. When they have got out of the car Kellen tells me that one baby has clear signs of malnutrition, and the mother has already lost three of her six children this way. Sadly, unbelievably, parents have to pay for their children to go to school here, and have to buy their uniform too. Although a very small sum to us, the fees are crippling to such impoverished people and they will sell the food they grow in order to send a child to school, rather than feed the family with it. In government schools they are not fed; but CHIFCOD provides a midday meal for day pupils and three meals for boarders.

Great Lakes High School is set on a hillside with magnificent views across a wide valley. The new buildings gleam impressively in the sunlight; the campus has already been planted with flower beds and trees and looks most attractive. Not all classrooms have been equipped yet and the forty or so students have to carry their all-in-one desk and chair from one place to another for lessons. The fields surrounding the school have already, with the help of students from the College, been planted with maize and vegetables so that they can be self-sufficient, and they have two school pigs who will soon be breeding. The staff are delightful and very welcoming; the students courteous and hard at work. I look down 'Highgate Road' as the drive to the school has been named, and feel sure that everyone who contributed to the building of the school would be pleased and proud with the result of their fund-raising efforts: it is a fantastic achievement and will give the chance of a really good secondary education to so many children in the coming years. There is much still to be done before the school has its official opening in July but all the signs are good!

The Head Teacher is keen for me to come and teach some English at the school; something else to factor into my timetable when I put it together at the end of the week!

Today, Friday, has been the last day of school visits for me – proper work starts on Monday. We went to two even more remote schools up in the cloud-capped hills towards Kibale where the steep slopes are covered with tea bushes. We pass a building called 'Maternity Services and Placenta Pit' before reaching a tiny school built into the hillside where I am introduced solemnly to the staff. Ugandans tend to have either traditional English names such as Edna, Hilda, Eileen or Arthur, or biblical ones like Moses, Amos and(even) Herod. I thought I had encountered most possibilities for unusual names after so many years of teaching; however today I was momentarily thrown to be introduced to a teacher called 'Happy Christmas'....!

NB I apologise for the length of these entries. Once I'm at work I shall probably only update the blog once a week, at weekends. Email is very unreliable out here which is why so much is arriving in one big chunk!