Recap of the Past Week

Disclaimer: I have had very little time over the past week to write, so this blog is very poorly written, please do not judge me or stop being my friend.

The Public School Education System

Over the past week or so we have tried to follow the schedule we have created, working with the kids in the morning, working at the school Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and filling the rest of our time working on projects around the clinic (planting, blogs, and letters). The first week this worked relatively well. While the school did not follow the schedule we gave them the classes we were supposed to teach never had a teacher in them. In addition, we had to finish planting our peanuts, and transplanting the cabbage from the nursery beds to the garden. We started working 10 hour days. YAY!

The next week was not as successful. This is mostly due to the poor management of the school. While we arrive at the scheduled times the teachers do not follow the schedule, in fact they do not follow any schedule. When the teachers actually make it into school, which is not always often, they just walk into classrooms that are empty and teach for a while and then leave. This means many of the classes are left unattended for long periods of time. The teachers often do not come into school, this includes the head mistress. I estimate that the head mistress makes it into school twice a week for a half day. The teachers vary a little more, some like Mr. Mugerwa make it in every day, others may only come three or four times a week. The lack of dedication is due to the lack money.

The government is supposed to pay public school teacher’s salaries. However, since the government is really corrupt all that money disappears long before it makes it out to the rural villages to pay the teachers. John’s sister, Rose, is a teacher outside of Masaka. Rose has not received her salary for over 3 months. This means she has been teaching without receiving any money for months now. Rose is a really dedicated teacher. While she was on holiday she stayed at the clinic, and every night she would spend a couple hours planning her lessons. However, not everyone is a dedicated as Rose, and certainly not everyone is as dedicated as Rose is when they are not receiving their salary for months at a time. The way the public schools keep pay their teachers enough to live is to charge all of the students a “building maintenance fee” of 5000 to 10,000 Ush (3 to 6 USd). This fee ends up covering the school supplies the teachers use, lunch for the teachers everyday, and maybe a little for each of the teachers to take home. Now this is a problem because many student’s families can not afford to pay even this small fee. And this means that children do not go to school. Or if they do go to school, they do not have books, pens, or food to bring with them.

In 2000 the United Nations created fifteen millennium goals. The were things like to end extreme poverty, create access to clean water for everyone, reverse HIV/AIDS prevalence etc. One of the goals was to bring free primary school education to every child. Uganda has recently been able to start its free primary school education system due to UN money and people donated to create the program. However, the money does not end up going to the public schools because Yoweri Museveni’s corrupt government soaks all the money up before it can make it to the teachers in the rural areas. What makes it even worse is that many people here think that Yoweri Museveni started the public primary school system and don’t really understand why the teachers do not receive their salaries. They don’t understand that it is Museveni’s corrupt government soaking up the cash, but think that it Museveni and his government just doesn’t have the money. So while Museveni and his cronies are getting rich and living the high life, many children are not even receiving a primary school education.

Tad Poles

Speaking of millennium goals I should discuses the worsening water situation. The entire village gets its water from a bore hole. The people used to use a well with a pump, but it broke. This water had been tested by a past volunteer and this water was safe to drink. Now everyone uses the bore hole filled with algae, frogs, cow poop that the rain has washed down the hill to get water. Lately, the sun has been so strong that by the end of the day the entire hole is covered with algae. This has caused the tad pole/ fog population to increase drastically over the past month. I think that I have seen every stage of frog development. In addition, someone scoped up a little tadpole into one of our jerry cans when he or she was getting us water, and now we have a resident tadpole growing in the 12 gallon bucket of cooking water we keep in the kitchen. We boil all of our water and everything is cooked well, so I am not concerned about my health, however, I can only imagine if we have a resident tad pole in our cooking water and I am at a clinic how bad the water situation must be in people’s houses.

Running

John came back he asked if I had been running. Apparently when he met my parents they told him that I liked to run and that he should run with me everyday. I had not been running because I hadn’t seen any other girls exercise and I did not want to make a scene. However, with John back and running with me I figured it was ok to try. I definitely turned many heads, but everything went smoothly.

Because I have now been able to run by myself and with John every morning I have decided to start training for a half marathon. I get up at 6:00 every morning and go. When John is not in Kampala he comes with me. I have started to really enjoy these runs. First, I get to watch the sun rise over absolutely beautiful farm land every morning. Second, many of the boys and sometimes girls like to race me on their way to school. I always get a great work out.

One of the sad parts of running is passing two of the morning program students Tye and Boy. Tye and Boy were not originally asked to join the morning program. However, the first day their mother brought them by. She said she understood that they could not be added to the list, but asked if she could leave them at the clinic for just that day because she had to walk to Kinoni (a town 2 miles away) and they were too small to walk. The next day she brought them back saying they had so much fun that she had to try. We felt so bad we had to add them. However, they live about half a mile past where I run every morning. This means that they walk two and a half miles every morning to get to the clinic. In addition, they are dropped off by their sister who needs to get to school by 8:00 instead of 9:00 which is when they are supposed to arrive at the clinic. So they wake up at 6:00 every morning and start walking to the clinic to get there in time for their sister to walk to school. I often see them on my run. They always greet me with friendly faces and try to run along with me. However, later in the day they often get tried and grumpy. The other day Tye fell asleep sitting up and fell of the bench onto the concrete porch. In addition, while someone is supposed to pick them up at 1:00 and take them home, they often wait at the clinic until their sister gets out of school at 4:00. If they do happen to disappear it is only because their sister has taken them to the school and hid them there until she is done at four. Also during this time they have nothing to eat, John or I often rummage around the clinic for bananas, or fried cassava for them to snack on.