We planned an easy day; our first follow-up visit and a visit to two other schools to schedule follow-ups. These are the three schools nearest Kalinzu so one would think it would be easy but one would not necessarily be correct.
Some how we rode right past Mashanga our first time and spent half an hour wandering on muddy tracks through fields of tea. When we finally found the school Jerome helped me with the post-assessment questionnaire. It seems some of the kids got it, while others see the value of the forest only in terms of firewood and timber. While we were doing the follow-up Connie was the center attraction for the rest of the school. She gave an English lesson on body parts – hair, ears, nose, eyes, stomach, bum – and the kids loved it. A couple who probably don’t even realize what they are doing took the opportunity to ask for money.
We rode home in the rain, filled in our map and had lunch. The folks who make Knorr soups are our heroes. I made a salad of cabbage, greens, onion and tomato and a dressing of mustard, olive oil, vinegar, soy, chili sauce, peach chutney, garlic flakes, mixed dried herbs and salt and pepper.
We spent the afternoon at the Tea Estate searching for Swazi Primary School. We asked directions and a guy took us the “back way”. It was a harrowing bike ride which ended in a walk up a steep narrow track and left us with a view of the school still a kilometer away. We rode back to the Tea Estate security for directions and David did a wonderful job. It’s funny but roads that earlier today seemed challenging were now a piece of cake. And the views from Swazi of endless tea fields and workers harvesting the hillsides were worth all the effort.
Today we saw some of the inequities of education in Uganda. At Swazi, many of the young kids are AIDS orphans and the head teacher, Lazarus, has 300 students and only 6 other teachers. At the Tea Estate Primary School the kids are neatly dressed, the new-ish buildings are painted and there is glass in all of the windows. Jerome’s class room at Mashonga has holes in the tin roof, an uneven dirt floor, only two shutters for eight windows and a chipped slate blackboard. He has 32 students crowded 3 and 4 to a desk. I am not sure how much “teaching” goes on but I doubt there is much “learning.”
