Dateline: Friday, March 23, 2012
It has been a long but good week in Uganda. I have seen so much and learned so much from the people of Sitabaale - the village I am working at. Sitabaale is a remote village located about an hour north east of Kampala (the capital of Uganda). Sitabaale has no running water and no electricity. Most of the people in the village farm, work in the stone quarry hammering rock by hand or work at one of the large flower farms near the village. Most of the villagers are extremely poor and survive on less than a dollar a day. They walk long distances to collect water from a bore hole or a protected stream and also to chop firewood from the forrests nearby. Both adults and children work from before sunrise to sundown every day. The children not only rise early and do chores before school, but they then attend school from 8:30am to 4:30pm and go home to do more chores until bedtime. Bedtime usually isn't until 10-11pm, after they have eaten a dinner of posho (corn flour and water) and beans or sometimes sweet potatoes or matooke (mashed, cooked green bananas).
Some children walk several miles in the hot sun to and from school every day. Classrooms are not at all like the comfortable classrooms in America. The school I work at in Sitabaale, Tasaaga OVC Primary School, is a building made of cement with rudimentary benches with attached board-like desk tops. These "desk/benches" are not nicely sanded but are in fact quite rough. No comfortable chairs here! If there are not enough benches, the children must sit on the dusty, dirty cement floor. In spite of these conditions, the children do not complain, but sit obediently, eager to soak up new information. Many of the children at Tasaaga OVC School come from single parent households or live with grandparents or other relatives because both of their parents have died from HIV/AIDS. Some of the children board at the school because they have no one to live with or care for them. These children need and rely on sponsorship money so that they can stay in school and have a meal of porridge or posho and beans each day (which the school provides for those that can pay the meager $10 per term). Sadly, most families cannot even afford to pay this amount and so their children do not eat all day.
One of our boarders at Tasaaga school came to us from Jana Island (one of the Ssese Islands in Lake Victoria). There she attended the government school on the island. Unfortunately, this school, being located on this remote island, is not monitoredby the education department. The teachers, who are paid by the government, do not actually attened the classes they are supposed to be teaching and are off fishing or running a shop on the island instead while still collecting their teaching salaries. Thus, the children in this school are not being educated. This brings me to Maymuna Mugide. May (as we call her) is approximately 15 years old and was in a 5th grade class on the island. One day when the director of Tasaaga was on the island checking up on the HIV/AIDS program there, May's mother approached him and asked if he could please take her to the mainland to the Tasaaga OVC Primary School in Sitabaale because she said May was not getting an education at the school on the island. She said since the teachers were not in the classrooms and off fishing the children were not learning anything. She said she could try to pay something toward the fees for May's education and boarding at the school but could not pay the total. She begged the director to take may so she could have a chance at getting an education and a chance at making a better life for herself. Well, Bruhan, the director, said he would take her to Sitabaale and find a way to get her a sponsor so that may would have a chance at an education.
Well, this week, the teachers asked me to do an evaluation on May because she had failed all of the mid-term exams, in fact she got every single question wrong! The fact is, she can't even read! She had not learned anything at the island school! My heart just broke for her! Here she was, the oldest child at our school and not even at a first grade level! May is a beautiful, bright, young lady, with the sweetest smile! She is shy and quiet and having a hard time adjusting to her new environment. She is also very embarassed about not being able to read and keep up with her peers in class. So, I will be tutoring her, one on one, for this term to try and bring her up to a level where she can at least read; it will be a long hard road for her though.
We had a new student come to school this week. Her name is Nabante Barabwa. Nabante lives with her mother and her grandfather about 3/4 of a mile from Tasaaga school. Nabante is a beautiful, precious little girl who suffered with a severe case of polio when she was born and thus has a deformed leg and uses a stick to help her hobble around. Nabante was previously walking approximately 2 1/2 miles each way to a government school because there were no fees to attend that school.It took her hours to walk to and from school each day! Our nursery class teacher was alerted to the plight of Nabante and spoke with her mother about Nabante coming to our school. Nabante's mother said she could not afford to pay private school fees and so she could not send her to our school. (Our fees are very low compared to most private schools because we serve orphans and vulnerable children. The fees are only about $21 US dollars per term, plus $10 per term for breakfast and lunch, plus approximately $10 for the uniform.) So for only $130 little Nabante could get and education and eat two meals a day for a whole year! We told her we would take her at our school anyway and find her sponsorship so that Nabante wouldn't have to walk so far each day to school. So, Thursday Nabante used her stick and hobbled only 3/4 of a mile to our school instead of going the 2 1/2 miles to the government school. She is a beautiful but shy child, but I'm sure she will warm up as she makes new friends. Her life would be so much easier if she had an adjustable crutch to help her walk but her mother can not afford to buy her one. (Even better for her wold be surgery to correct her deformed leg, but there is no way her mother could afford that.)
Life here seems so unfair, especially for the disabled like Nabante. There are no disability services available to help her, no handicap accessibilty and no compassion for the disabled. In fact, most times they are shunned and feared because people here believed they have been cursed by evil spirit or are possessed by evil spirits to be deformed or disabled. There is no understanding of birth defect or illnesses which cause birth defects and so people like Nabante will lead an extremely hard life of much suffering.
My prayer requests this week are for those suffering with disabilities here in Uganda; for a sponsor for Nabante to be able to continue at Tasaaga OVC Primary School; for someone to donate for a crutch for Nabante and possibly even surgery for her; for a sponsor for May, for all the other orphans and vulnerable children at Tasaaga who need sponsorship; and for grace, mercy, wisdom and strength for me to help these children in every way possible.
Love to all from The Pearl!
