Time seems to be flying by here in Jinja. 

The new school term officially started on May 18^th. I am under the impression that it normally takes a few days for pupil numbers to build up again after the holidays.  However, we have had the added complication of a national teachers’ strike, which coincided with the start of term.  The government had agreed to increase teachers’ salaries by 50 per cent phased over a three-year period with the final 10% being due this month, but the President wanted to delay this payment by a year.  I should point out that the average primary school teacher probably earns less than 400,000UGX (£85) a month having received a 40% pay rise over the past two years. A compromise was reached earlier this week such that the teachers will only receive 5% this term but a further 10% next year.  Incidentally, I hear that Ugandan ministers have just decided to increase their own allowance.

There is only one teachers’ union in Uganda, an approach that would be beneficial to English teachers when challenging ludicrous government policy.  Support for the strike was very strong in the Jinja and Kampala areas. At Kyabirwa, the teachers all took part in the strike.  However, the decision was made to continue to teach Primary 7 as the pupils have exams in November, which will determine whether or not they may move on to secondary school.  Consequently, I was privileged to be able to spend a lot of time with this group of youngsters and to gain a valuable insight into their education.

The main curriculum areas for all children are mathematics, English, science and social studies (history, geography and the environment).  In addition there is just one lesson of RE and a more ‘creative’ lesson for Primary 7, both of which I have yet to observe.  There is a national curriculum and teaching is entirely focused on passing exams, which all children take termly right from primary 1, I believe.  Kyabirwa has better facilities than many schools with its solid floors and electricity. The desks resemble half a picnic bench with a fairly narrow top and shelf underneath and seat three children. However, the classroom walls are very stark with just a few painted inspirational statements such as ‘Ask questions.  Seek to understand’ and ‘If you try you might fail.  If you don’t try you fail anyway’. They are fortunate enough to have textbooks for all primary 7 pupils although the only science resource I have seen so far is a small human torso with removable organs. One of the reference books being used by Emma, (short for Emmanuel), the science teacher, is dated 1984, and just happens to be the ‘tropical’ version of the main biology text used during my own secondary school days. Most of the children’s textbooks are a little less old and written by Ugandans.

I had heard that the standard of teaching in Uganda is generally poor. Primary school teachers receive two years of training, but it is only offered as an alternative to taking ‘A’ levels and cannot be completed at a later stage. As each teacher is only required to teach two subjects, children have more than one teacher throughout their primary schooling.  Primary 7 has three male teachers and I have been very impressed by the quality of their teaching.

There are about 45 children in the class, which is not particularly large by Ugandan standards. They really do not progress into the next year group until they have passed their end of year exams and Emma informs me that the age range in this particular class is from 12 to 19 years! Everything revolves around whole class teaching.  However, the children are encouraged to ask questions and give their opinions.  The level of difficulty of the work is definitely equivalent to that of English schools. When I worked in Suffolk there was a lot of talk about raising children’s aspirations.  Both Moses, and Johnston, the social studies teacher, excel at this.  Johnston avidly listens to the BBC World Service and really tries to broaden the children’s horizons.

Moses also relates his maths lessons to real life situations and has used the recent topic to explain the danger of taking out high interest loans. He encourages children to come up and write their calculations on the blackboard.  Moses and I team-teach in the lessons, which I really enjoy. We sometimes sit together in the staff room working out the solutions to an exercise as there are no answer books in evidence. Good mental arithmetic is essential.  Recent calculations have all involved Ugandan shillings.  This has really kept me on my toes as there are so many noughts involved! One thing I have found quite strange is the way in which maths questions do not seem to become progressively more difficult when working through an exercise, such that question 2 might be significantly harder than question 10, for example.

The school day is extremely long for Primary 7 and has scheduled lessons from shortly after 7am until beyond 5pm although I don’t think that they always go on until that late in the afternoon.  Lessons last about 50 minutes and so each subject can occur several times in a day. The discipline at Kyabirwa is very good. Once you have gained the respect of the children they are extremely well behaved.  During the strike, the three teachers just came in for part of the day such that they taught solidly for two or three hours, and the children were attentive throughout although perhaps a little sleepy by the end. The teachers frequently use humour in their lessons, which generates much raucous laughter from the children, but they quickly settle down again.  If the teacher leaves the room, the children simply carry on working.  During the strike, the children were quite often left alone, but they patiently waited until the teacher arrived. The children stand up when they are addressed at the start of a lesson and I have also seen children kneel to speak to a seated teacher.

Up until now, I haven’t said very much about the spoken language but it is a fascinating subject.  I am very relieved to be staying in a country where English is the official language.  However, it isn’t actually as straightforward as I had envisaged. There are a large number of different languages spoken in Uganda and people are rarely heard speaking English even in Jinja.  In this area most people speak one of two Bantu languages: Luganda or Lusoga, the latter being spoken at Kyabirwa. 

The children are taught in their first language during Primary 1 to 3 but learn to speak, read and write English alongside it. Primary 4 is regarded as a transition year because after that all lessons should be conducted in English.  This is exactly what happens at Kyabirwa although Emma often moves between the two languages when giving an explanation.  All examination papers are written in English, which seems to be quite challenging for the children. I suspect that maths word problems are often answered incorrectly due to the very formal, complex language used rather than a lack of mathemtical ability.  Yesterday, I was working through an English test paper with Primary 4, which would have challenged any English child of that age. I am aware that English is not spoken as extensively in some of the remote rural schools but this means that the teachers have to translate exam questions for the children. The teachers speak Lusoga amongst themselves and often to the children outside of lessons.  Almost all words end in a vowel and I cannot help be amused by the way in which some of the teachers inadvertently add a vowel to the end of common English words too resulting in the ‘costy’ or ‘whaty?’, for example!  

On Monday morning there was an outdoor whole school assembly. I was amazed to see at least three hundred children standing in lines.  Most of them were then sent away again as the teachers did not return to work until Thursday.  Now I am getting involved with a number  of classes and I have also been asked by two of the teachers for some guidance on teaching phonics.  More about that next week!

Bodas seem to feature in all of my posts, which is an indication of both our reliance on them and the colourful characters of the drivers. Our ‘friend’ John is no longer working for us.  It is hard to say whether he resigned or was sacked. On just my second day at Kyabirwa, he was half an hour late arriving to take me. That in itself is not unusual or unmanageable. However, when I phoned to ask him to come and pick me up at the end of the day, he simply said that he was tired and that it was too far.  I thought it might be easier to dispense with bodas and catch a bus along the main road and then walk the rest of the way, although buses appear to be fairly infrequent along this particular route as most head for the highway to Kampala. However, the school decided that it would be better if they arranged a new boda driver for me. Assam is a former pupil of the school and very sweet. His time keeping is not great but we are working on it.  On the way home on Thursday, he took me to meet his family.  Communication was quite difficult but they seemed very excited to see me. One of the youngsters climbed about forty foot up a tree and then presented me with two avocados!

We had a relaxing weekend settling in Kibibi.  Our biggest challenge has been to find dog food, a lead and collar.  We actually managed to locate a store specialising in pet medication but it was some time before we found a supermarket providing everything else. Plan UK through which I sponsor a Kenyan girl called Sauda, strongly discourages mention of pets in correspondence as this is not a concept likely to be understood.  However, here in the town, there are some pet dogs and the Ugandan men in particular seem fascinated and enchanted by her.  She is a real delight, intelligent and loving and she has come on in leaps and bounds this week. Toilet training is going reasonably well and she is more or less able to sit on command.  Initially, a tennis ball was too big for her to hold. However, now she will bring it to me so that we can have a game of football. She quickly adapted to wearing her collar and lead although she doesn’t yet walk that far. I found it a little challenging taking her on a boda yesterday as she wriggled so much.  She is now chewing everything in sight…..

It has been an eventful week here in Uganda.

Although I am never averse to a little luxury and happily embrace some aspects of modern technology, I was very much attracted to the idea of being able to live a simpler life in Africa. It seems to me that although human beings can be very inventive, they are rarely clever enough to predict or deal with the frequently unintended consequences of their actions.

I certainly hadn’t contemplated the idea of coming into contact with the more affluent side of Ugandan life. In fact, there are a number of smart hotels in this area charging relatively high prices, normally in dollars. Our raffle ticket price took us to the mid-priced Nile Village Hotel and Spa last Saturday, just ten minutes from our apartment, where we had attended the jazz evening shortly after our arrival in Jinja. Bed and breakfast for two would have cost 260 000 Ugandan shillings (around £60).  This certainly wasn’t the frugal lifestyle that I had envisaged adopting here but the place was utterly charming.  Our accommodation was upstairs in one of the little ‘cottages’ and accessed by a spiral staircase.  The bedroom was well furnished and had a variety of luxuries including a hanging space for clothes, free wi-fi, a television, air conditioning, and an ensuite bathroom with a proper shower unit.

It was a joy being able to dispense with a mosquito net.  When I first arrived in Jinja, the odd mosquito seemed to find its way inside the net.  Therefore, I would wear pyjamas with the bottoms tucked into socks, cocoon myself in a sheet sleeping bag laid between the sheets and spray any exposed skin with insect repellent, such that I sweltered.  I have been able to relax the regime a little now that I am more successful at keeping out the mosquitoes although when we stayed in Entebbe, I had to plug the holes in the net with toilet paper.

At the hotel there were sun loungers and parasols dotted around the pool. When leaving England, it hadn’t occurred to me to pack a swimming costume or bikini as swimming is not recommended in the fresh water here due to the risk of Bilharzia and it had never occurred to me that I would have access to swimming pools. However, early on we managed to find a sports shop in the centre of Jinja.  The assistant kept giggling as she produced a number of swimming costumes and looked in turn at me and then at the rather more ample bottoms of the costumes.  Finally, she found something very much smaller, which I could just about squeeze into and later I discovered a label showing ‘Next age 11-12’!  Incidentally, a lot of the mannequins in the shops are very shapely too.  Having not learnt to swim until I was in my mid twenties, I have never been particularly confident in deep water.  However, I feel quite competent in the company of both Ugandan Africans and Indians, as some clearly cannot swim at all.  Apparently, there is a public swimming bath somewhere in Jinja although we haven’t yet come across it.

Amelia and Marina came over to join us at the hotel and we spent a very relaxing afternoon swimming and reading by the pool before enjoying a fine meal.  I cannot over emphasise the quality of the service that we have experienced everywhere in Uganda. Staff are friendly, helpful and attentive in a way seldom seen in England.

It is difficult to get a good night’s sleep in our apartment.  People seem to come and go at all hours and it just isn’t possible to bolt the metal front doors quietly.  The car drivers also beep their horns to alert the security guard of their arrival.  This then seems to cause all the local dogs to start barking. The freight train may pass behind the apartment at any time of night, there is the early morning traffic on the main road, and, of course, there are the thunderstorms.  Just after 5.30am comes the call to prayer from the mosque just down the road and occasionally there is loud music from the church next door. The hotel, on the other hand, had none of these disturbances and it was bliss.

Breakfast was an amazing affair and seemed to cater for every taste: cereals, pastries, omelettes, Indian breakfast potatoes, sausages, baked beans…… Chloe and I then retired to the poolside and later relaxed with a cocktail before returning home mid afternoon.

Since arriving in Jinja I have realised just how much I am a teacher at heart and I have been itching to gain a better insight into the Ugandan education system.  The modern office life of the charity with all the usual technological trappings and its particular way of working did not entirely suit me although I have valued the experience.  However, I felt that I was not really seeing life on the ground, which is of such interest to me. Having done some research, I discovered a local primary school that takes on volunteers in a variety of roles.   It was a difficult decision to make, but having come to a natural break in the work and feeling that further progress was going to be quite difficult, I decided that it was time to move on.

So on Monday when term restarted I headed out for Kyabirwa Primary School.  It takes about twenty minutes to reach the school by boda. The first part of the journey is quite chaotic as the road works force vehicles from both directions onto just one side of the road, which has a surface reminiscent of the Rwenzori Mountains.  A roundabout and service area also have to be negotiated but then we largely leave the traffic behind us as we head out into the countryside.  It is quite hilly terrain and many of the bodas struggle to make it up the slopes. As we enter the dry season, the roads are becoming increasingly dusty and the four-wheeled vehicles create a mini dust storm. For the last part of the journey we leave the main road and travel down a simple track.

The school is in a lovely spot and in some respects it reminds me of some of the rural schools that I used to visit in Suffolk. It essentially consists of three long buildings each divided into a number of rooms.  All the buildings have a sloping corrugated iron roof with exposed wooden supports on the inside. The walls and floor are of solid construction and the window cavities have metal bars and shutters. A school hall is currently being built but the walls are only about eighteen inches high at the moment. There are pit latrines and limited access to water but there is an electricity supply. Food is prepared over a charcoal fire.  The school has built some very simple teacher accommodation and hopes to find sufficient funds to enable more teachers to live on site.

Moses, an enterprising teacher, has also raised money to build a small accommodation block alongside his modest home a short walk from the school where he sometimes houses volunteers. The facilities include simple bedrooms plus good washing and toilet facilities and the volunteers pay to eat and essentially live with Moses’ family as well as assisting the school in a variety of ways. This provides revenue for the school whilst giving the volunteers a real insight into family life.  There are about nine children in the family, three of whom are adopted.  Chris is not yet two, Winnie, Isaac and Danny are all at Kyabirwa Primary whilst the others are away at secondary school or university and one is training to be a midwife.  Moses attended the primary school himself and has been teaching at the school for nineteen years. I have been able to experience a little of family life too as Moses takes me back there each day for a traditional lunch prepared by his wife, Florence. I have now eaten my first jackfruit, which has a rather interesting rubbery texture.

I had offered to assist the school in anyway that they felt appropriate. However, I was delighted that they initially invited me simply to observe lessons, get to know the children and see the teachers’ methods. They like to involve volunteers as they feel that it broadens the children’s horizons.  However, on my first morning, a teacher suddenly asked me if I had a red pen.  He then supplied me with one, requested that I mark the children’s work and left the room.  This was a little challenging, as it was quite an advanced geography lesson on Africa!  It transpired that an inspector had called at the school and wanted to meet with all the teachers.

We had the most stupendous thunderstorm in the early hours of Thursday morning and so I was hopeful that it would dampen down the dust on the roads.  This proved to be the case.  However, when the boda turned off the road and down the track, which eventually leads to the school, it started to slither and slide in the mud and it was obvious that the best solution would be to walk the last stretch.   Unfortunately, I was only wearing sandals and I struggled to make progress as they became more and more caked in mud. Fortunately, I was able to pick up another boda further down the track where it was less boggy.  However, I was still a real sight when I finally walked into the school grounds. Moses seemed very impressed that I had managed to arrive on time and simply instructed me to take off my sandals and gave two children the job of cleaning them! I was then invited to teach my first lesson, which was a mathematics class for primary seven (the equivalent of year 7 or the first year of secondary school in the UK).  I thoroughly enjoyed it and I shall tell you much more about life in a Ugandan classroom next week.

To change the subject completely, we have a new addition to our household.  Chloe has fostered a puppy, who was abandoned outside Jinja Backpackers and kindly taken in.  She is to be adopted by a family and taken to Kenya once she is allowed to travel across the border, which will be at the end of next month. So in the meantime she is living with us.  We have called her Kibibi, which is Swahili for ‘Little Lady’. She is only about six or seven weeks old and very sweet natured.  More about her next week too!

It hardly seems possible that I am already nearly half way through my time here in Uganda. I’ve settled into a very different way of life and I cannot imagine how I shall cope with the climate in England after the glorious heat and sunshine of this place.

Power cuts are a way of life in Jinja although I suspect that they are less frequent or prolonged here than in some other parts of Uganda.  In our apartment we are entirely dependent on electricity for lighting, cooking and our luxurious, hot shower.  We had been on the look out for cheap bedside lights as, once cocooned under the mosquito net at night, it’s a faff having to get out to turn off the main light, which isn’t very effective for reading anyway.  The recently purchased solar powered lantern did not prove to be up to the task but it came into its own when we were plunged into darkness for the very first time. Nevertheless, we still soon turned in for an early night. The lantern broke shortly afterwards but since then we have bought two ‘LED super capacity emergency lights’, which are easy to charge and really quite bright. It is impossible to predict when a power cut may occur or for how long it will last.  On the Saturday night of the music festival the organisers experienced a lot of problems with the sound system, which they put down to voltage fluctuations.

We now have a contingency plan for the odd occasion when we arrive home from work and the power is off.  We are lucky to have hotels with generators within walking distance of our apartment.  Sadly, the light starts to fade here before 7.00pm, and so where possible, we set off to find some supper before it gets completely dark.   It does mean that, on the way back, we have to cross one of the most poorly maintained main roads in Jinja complete with road works, armed only with a torch and bicycle light.  On Tuesday we were forced to put the plan into action but were delighted to find a very pleasant outdoor restaurant attached to a local guesthouse.  The mains power was only restored as we were finishing our meal and so we were pleased not to have stayed at home hoping that the supply would be swiftly restored. My least favoured time for a power cut is actually first thing in the morning, not because of the cold shower, but due to the fact that I cannot make a hot drink.  Our little fridge frequently leaks water but most foods survive the power cuts surprisingly well apart from cheese, which does not seem to be very fresh anyway.

The external appearance of the wiring in our apartment generally appears better than I might have expected. However, there is only one rather dodgy looking socket in our kitchen, which we rather foolishly managed to overload whilst trying to juggle kettle, little electric hob and fridge with an extension lead.  The socket looks more singed than ever now and so we have had to transfer our cooking facilities to the sitting room, which is otherwise fairly devoid of furniture but boasts three sockets.  An added complication is the fact that a lot of the appliances available in the shops have two pin plugs even though the sockets are three pin.

Our newly purchased kettle stopped working within a couple of days.  The kettle itself wouldn’t connect properly to the base and so we returned it to the shop. We were a little taken aback when the assistant very willingly and painstakingly took it apart there and then, did a bit of gluing and gave it back to us. It worked for a couple of goes but then the problem returned. So back we went and the process was repeated.  This time we managed to boil the kettle successfully five times.  Chloe returned to the shop yet again and this time had sterner words with the assistant.  We have no idea what he did differently that time but the kettle is still going strong!

On Tuesday I accompanied Susan to the District Education Office.  She wanted to ensure that the letter giving Irise permission to run menstrual health education sessions in schools was still valid.  The system is such that one simply has to turn up at the offices rather than attempting to arrange a specific appointment time in advance.   I think that Susan was hoping to speak to the District Education Officer but they did not appear to be around.  However, after a very short time we were ushered in to see the Inspector of Schools for Jinja.  He was extremely convivial and only too willing to support the sessions.  Indeed he tried to persuade us to visit secondary schools too and I was most surprised when he suggested that we should also establish a peer education programme.  This is something that I had already been thinking about particularly as it has been successfully used in HIV prevention programmes.

As I understand it, all Ugandan children are now entitled to free primary education but families still have to buy uniforms and books etc. However, there are real problems with the quality of teaching. The teachers are poorly paid and payment is often not forthcoming.  As a consequence, teachers often take one or two other jobs such that their attendance in school is poor, and strikes are frequent.  There appear to be a lot of NGOs working in schools. I don’t know whether or not technically we actually need the letter to work legitimately in schools.  However, the charity quite rightly prefers to go through the official channels and it also seems to make it easier to gain entry into individual schools. Apparently Kenya keeps a register of NGOs but nothing similar seems to exist in Uganda.  Unfortunately, I doubt that anyone monitors the quality of the NGOs input or considers how it sits within the broader school curriculum.

Chloe and I also had a chance to meet all the Irise educators this week to get their views of the programme and their aspirations for the future.  The meeting was due to start at three o’clock but by half past three only two or three people had arrived. However, Susan assured us that the rest were on their way and we were finally able to start in earnest at four thirty!

Last Sunday we took a daytime boda trip and instead of going into town headed out into the countryside to Bujagali along the east bank of the Nile. Although it is difficult not to be a little concerned at the poor safety record of bodas (one of the educators was actually injured trying to get to our meeting), this trip was idyllic.  We found a lovely restaurant for lunch perched above the river with vervet monkeys swinging in the trees around us. There was only one other group lunching and, as always, the food and service was excellent. We then headed down to the lake. Jinja is renowned for its adventure activities such as white water rafting. However, the construction of various dams has led to the submerging of some falls such as those at Bujagali, which means the relocation of activities and the apparent loss of income for the associated local services.  Whenever we arrive anywhere there always seems to be somebody ready and willing to take us around, presumably hopeful of earning a little money.  Chloe isn’t always very keen on having an escort but I enjoy the opportunity it gives me to learn more about the local way of life.  On this occasion I wandered around with Tom largely learning about how life had been before the disappearance of the falls. 

We had arranged to meet Amelia later that afternoon at a hotel with a swimming pool some distance way, so necessitating another boda ride. Normally, Chloe sits behind me as it is less comfortable at the very back and she has more protective padding.  It was an unfortunate time to swap positions as this particular driver drove very fast over rough, hilly terrain and I am still nursing a tender coccyx. Part way through the journey it was apparent that we were running out of petrol.  The driver conserved fuel whilst going down hill but we still eventually ground to a halt. We dismounted, he tipped the bike over and then we were able to progress a little further to a ‘village’.  The driver called out and immediately a man appeared with a small water bottle filled with a pink liquid. This was poured into the tank, payment made and we were off again!

Our Ugandan colleagues had already suggested to us that we find a regular boda driver. John had seemed a very good driver on the way out and was obviously local to us and so we took his mobile number and arranged for him to collect us at the end of the day.  He now regards us as his ‘friends’. He doesn’t come that cheap and it’s always difficult to judge whether or not we are being charged a fair price although we have to bear in mind that collecting us from town may in effect be a double trip for him.  However, it does mean that we can avoid going with a random driver at night particularly as once or twice we have come to the conclusion that they have been drunk. I am looking forward to riding my bike again!