It took us a full day to get to our remote village in western Uganda--a morning to travel from the Entebbe airport in to the capital of Kampala; four hours to drive to the next main city of Mbarrara, another two hours to drive to the Ibanda district (which I still found on a map), and then another half hour to reach the village of Engali. Ibanda is where we would go for an Internet cafe and other needs. The night we arrived, we needed bottled water, as there is no running water in the village, let alone drinking water. I was concerned, but not for long. The manager of our accommodations went to the local "pub" to get bottled water. No running water or drinking water, but always a pub for drinking alcohol. Priorities. Our accommodations are a series of cement structures built by the private LICHI - Life Child Initiatives- which sponsors a school and a clinic in the village. This was the first time that the village was hosting volunteers (aside from one person from the Peace Corps), so we spent the first day setting up bed frames, buying bedding, curtains, etc. The room next to our cement room is the "maternity delivery room," and its neighboring cement room is the "recovery ward." The latrine is a wood stall with a hole in the ground, decorated with flees who add to the ambience. All latrines in the village look like this, but the one at the high school where I am placed, is narrower, making it difficult to stay dry when squatting. Frankly, it's more pleasant to pee in a bush, a luxury we usually take advantage of. The LICHI housing has a faucet which draws water from a tank of collected rain water, but the locals use pond water for cooking, drinking, and washing. The ponds are used by both the people and their animals. In geography class, where the teacher read from his notes and the students wrote down verbatim what he read (the standard pedagogy
, I was soon to find out), the teacher recited four points under the heading Problems with Water in West Africa one of which was diseases contracted from drinking water shared with animals. When one student asked about solutions, the teacher answered, "Take drugs." Cows roam the grounds of the school, and drink and bathe in the pond from which the school cook takes water. Was the teacher oblivious to the problem in his backyard, or was he aware but too focused on covering the topics for the Ugandan standardized tests? One would hope that education would help improve the living standards, but when there is no application or discussion in the classroom, the likelihood is reduced. There are also no materials in the classrooms -- books, maps, objects for demonstrating - nothing. A local Korean couple sponsored by a Korean NGO recounted a conversation it had with the father of the school principal. "Why don't you sell one of your 40 cows and buy a water tank for drinking water (available in Mabarrara)"? "Why would I do that when God provides good rain in the ponds," he answered.
The curricular content is quite impressive. Students have classes in physics, chemistry, biology, commerce, agricultural, math ( even some calculus), English and Swahili and Christian thought. My attempts to engage the principal, teachers, and the director of the LICHI project on whether students are understanding the material they copy, memorize and regurgitate back, have fallen on deaf ears. The community is so thrilled that they even have this secondary school, the first in the village, that their focus is not on quality of education or even living standards, rather on building another room so that the current seniors ( our 11th graders) will have another year of schooling.
The director of the LICHI project, a worshipped individual in this town, is receptive to hearing our perspectives. How pained we were, we told him, that 22 students were sent home from exams because their parents or guardians didn't bring the required money or equivalent in maize and beans? We understood that this was a better alternative to taking away their meals, but these kids are not rejoicing and going off to the mall. They hang around the school, sullen and left out of the chance to improve their lives. How pained we were to see a teacher smack a little child (twice) when he didn't walk perfectly aligned when going from Church to the dormitory on Sunday, and when a high school teacher used a stick on the shoulder of a student to bring her into class, as if he was herding cattle. The condition of the two adjoining cement rooms called a "dormitory," while a blessing for the 11 adolescent girls who have no where else to go, is large enough for mattress with no space for moving around. Forget privacy. (Yet their caretaker insists that they iron their school uniforms. All school children wear uniforms, and the girls keep their hair cropped to the head, much easier when washing is done from a bucket.) What a poor use of resources when three volunteers and two teachers hand-corrected 250 copies of different exams before distributing them to the students because the secretary (using a typewriter with carbon paper), made so many mistakes. Instead of sitting idle, can the staff in the clinic work on outreach projects in the community when there are only 2 patients a day, if that? (Clinic fees reduce the traffic. ) "There are so many issues," he said to us, as he kindly greeted and sent away at least eight women from the town who, one after another, came to speak to him during our meeting with him (outside). "They each have their problems," he shared, as does the community as well. "We need more medical equipment to reduce the fatality rate caused by having to travel 2 hours to the hospital." But you don't have the electricity to support those machines, we responded. "Yes. We also need more solar panels," he sighed.
There is more to say--I went to Sunday Church, attended a local funeral, a prayer service led by children in the orphanage, and took in local scenes during a drive to Bwindi national park for a trek through the hilly brush to find gorillas (yes!) But more for later.
