We try to stay clear of politics, but this little gem is too great not to post. Uganda is gearing up for elections early next year and the presidential run has begun. One of the opposition parties had organised a campaign rally in town this week. We found out it had to be moved at late notice because an opposing party had sprayed faeces all over the grounds where it was meant to take place. We drove past today and it stank! #TIA
Riding to a school nearby, I see a child laying prostrate on the ground. I ride up to him and ask is he ok and all he can get out is t
he word ‘malaria’. I quickly turn around and get help as I can’t hold the boy on the bike by myself (and our office was only a few hundred metres away). I return with a colleague and the boy was absolutely limp! Couldn’t even stand up for himself. So we load him on the bike and he sits betw
een us and we drive him to the local hospital, Lacor. We found out that his mother works at the hospital (a cleaner). We take the boy in and I am immediately somewhat worried about the length of the queue – there is over 200 people in outpatients. In anycase, we bypass them, find a nurse and soon his mother and leave him in their care. She thanks us and we are off.
I drop my colleague off and return to my journey to the school (remembering this school is possibly 400m away from the workplace). Whilst returning from school I come across another child on the ground with a girl standing over her. I see she has been vomiting and she is curled up with
stomach pain. So I quickly load them on the bike: the girl was also very limp, I could feel she had little control on the back, but her sister was supporting her. I took her to a local health clinic called St Phillip’s, primarily because I know the manager and a nurse there.
Both were bad cases of malaria which is on the rise big time at the moment. We went through an epidemic about 6 months ago and I have a bad feeling it is returning. Please pray.
Dan.
O death, where is thy sting?
Pondering what other symbolism and metaphors this word sting brings…
Is the sting the wail from the daughter at her mother’s funeral?
Is it the children sitting under the tree who are saying goodbye to their teacher?
Is it how a common, preventable disease has wiped away the life of yet another?
Children and parents offer flowers at the burial of Teacher Dorine this week.
Or perhaps it is the comment from a grieving guest: how two cows at her father’s burial were not nearly enough to feed the guests (many who had joined the grieving for free food).
Is it how death has become such a strong reality in this land, almost something tangible?
Is it when you have been nudged and prompted to pray because your colleagues are too overcome with grief to whisper a prayer?
Is it when you meet with neighbours and colleagues, hearing of three burials this week, passing around a contribution list to help the family with costs?
Is it when you see young children bringing in 100 shillings (2p/4c); their contribution to their teacher’s burial?
Is it when you begin to feel old, fragile and suddenly mortal, questioning your purpose and future?
O death, where is thy sting?
These musings come from attending the burial of a teacher colleague of mine: Adoch Dorine, who taught at Layibi Techo Primary School. She died this week, aged 52, and suffered a long battle with HIV.
Jody
Last week thousands of P7 (year 6) pupils across the country sat for their Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). I dropped into one examination centre and found that three pupils from one school did not attend to sit the exams. Out of the three, one of them was reported to have gotten married a few days beforehand and that was why she wasn’t sitting for her exams. I think she was 15 years old. This is a sad but common reality here in northern Uganda. A lot of work has been done to keep girls in school, and for them to at least finish their primary education, but still a lot more has to be done.
Jody
So I was looking for two of our workers one afternoon this week. I caught them red-handed, feeding their faces on the job.
Dan
P.S. They tasted good too!
I’ve been doing a little reflecting lately (possibly too much today). This week I have organised two lots of teacher observation visits, taking teachers from different schools to go and observe what I believe to be ‘model reading lessons’ in schools I have worked with. In theory, I should be quite excited about
this, but not so today. What’s different? Reflecting on why there is such a need 
for me to take teachers to visit other clases in Gulu; and why implementation after workshops is so slow…
Why is it that I train teachers from central Uganda and when I return to see them, their teaching has drastically changed and they have taken so much of what I said on board? They don’t even have teaching manuals, just a couple of pages from my handouts. But here in the north, when I have done some follow-up visits I see little change. In one school in Gulu I observed a reading lesson which was straight out of my manual but the whole lesson was ‘rote learning style’, that wasn’t in the script!
Having some good ‘banter’ in the staffroom, one teacher tells me how much these infant teachers need training (in my head I am screaming: but they’ve had the training!)
I think of conversations with other volunteer workers recently, how workshops have turned into a means of getting whatever you can but that’s it. What you can get being a place to earn money and get a certificate, not a place to equip yourself with skills to improve your work environment or community.
Well there’s no money at my workshops, so teachers have missed out there (breaking the NGO trend there!).
Why is the jump from training to implementation so difficult here?
Is it because we have had countless workshops in this area from countless NGOs on countless topics?
Is it because follow-up seems to be a broken promise? Something we hear about but never quite happens?
Taking 6 teachers from 3 different schools to see the wonderful Teacher Catherine tomorrow morning. Am I paying for their transport? Nope! Schools – that’s on you! This is one bumpy journey, sorry Gulu, I am not on the ‘facilitation bandwagon’. Hopefully seeing Catherine in action tomorrow will be a source of inspiration for both me and these teachers and one small step to change.
Jody
We are going into breeding rabbits! It is a little pilot project that I wanted to have a go at. Meat rabbits have just started to come onto the radar here. I wanted to start this small project for a number of reasons, but mostly to bring some income to TRP down the road, and also to train locals to start their own little rabbit breeding business.
Here is our farmhand Ronald with our ‘buck’; and two of the New Zealand ‘Whites’ settling into their new home.
Dan
This week has been a whirlwind of school follow-up visits in Lukomera (central Uganda), culminating with some refresher training at The Bridge tomorrow afternoon. I visited here last term for training sessions and it is lovely to come back and see all teachers putting their new skills into practice. During a visit to Blessed Future Nursery School, the director Pastor Mukisa Peter extended his appreciation for this project and how ‘God was certainly in this’ – it is so exciting to see children learning how to read and to hear our new phonics songs across the country.
Jody
Thanks Sarah Duggan for the beautiful article you have written about our phonics project in Uganda. For those of you who don’t happen to have a copy of the EducationHQ /Australian Teacher Magazine lying around the house, then you can read the article here:
Meet Omony George – acting head teacher at Layibi P7 Primary School, one of the schools I am currently working quite closely with. Omony in Luo means ‘war’. Both of George’s parents were killed during the time of Idi Amin’s rule. George’s aunt couldn’t conceive children so her husband left her; when George’s parents died she then took in George to raise him. She struggled to put him through primary school, however the high cost of secondary school was too much for her. George then approached one of the head teachers of a local secondary school and asked for a small plot of land neighbouring the school so he could help raise his own school fees. George ended up growing and selling tomatoes to pay for his secondary education and consequently put himself through teacher’s college.
He is now acting head teacher at the school he attended for his teaching practice. I admire George and have a lot of respect for him. He is a hard worker and really aspires to improve the quality of his school and results of the children. I can rarely ‘pop’ into this school without sitting in his office for a few hours, chatting about education and culture, drinking extremely sugary tea with ‘escort’ (any food which accompanies tea); one time we even raced each other in the 100m at the school athletics carnival (I blame my speed on my poor choice of restrictive skirt and sandals).
It’s people like George who keep me here.
Jody
Dan and Jodes... in Gulu, Uganda 
