How do you actually spend your days, people back home have asked me. Hugging babies, I usually say, and making friends. I actually do a few other things, and this posting will give an idea.
School Fee Fundraising
You can't be in Uganda long without hearing the school fee lament. Usually someone is talking about not having the money for fees and worrying because their children cannot attend school. In addition to their own child, they are also often supporting orphaned children from the expanded family so the total amount needed can be overwhelming, especially considering the low, low income (some say the per capita daily income is US$ 1; some sources say $2). Even the educated face financial struggle; a school teacher's salary, for example, is reportedly between US $100 and $200 or so PER MONTH, so school fees that range between about US $50 per tri-mester term and almost US $ 200 (more for university) take a big bite from the budget.
For a long time I could not understand why school fees are so desperately needed since Uganda officially provides free education up to grade seven. Gradually it became clearer, although I still find the issue complex and beyond my full grasp. It seems that when free education was offered the response was so large that the system was overwhelmed. The government was not able to provide enough facilities and teachers to accommodate demand, and they have never been able to 'catch up.' Informed Ugandans tell me the quality of education is often very low for students who do attend the government-sponsored free classes; some teachers may have more than a hundred young children in one class. And many children live too far away from those schools anyway.
That's the background -- now for my involvement as fund raiser. In the middle of May I began to notice lines of children waiting outside the office of St. Jude's two social workers. They were children or parents from the community surrounding St. Jude, applying for help with school fees. It was the job of Jackie and Ronald to screen each petitioner, to confirm their circumstances usually by visiting the home, and to establish that their needs were legitimate. Once they gave me the detailed case sheets, I shot off a solicitation email to friends. Their response warmed my heart; I have generous friends and I am so grateful to all who sent donations -- U.S. $1,805 to be exact. This amount made it possible for us to fund 12 deserving students, ranging from Okot Vincent, a 10-year-old primary student, to a university student named Nyeko Kenneth, whose effort at self-funding was impressive but not sufficient to allow him to continue without help. (Unemployment is very high here, so it takes an extreme amount of creativity and tenacity to even try to "work your way through school" as many young people in the U.S. have done.) We also paid fees for a blind and deaf young man, who was able to attend a special School for the Blind.
I played fundraiser and banker for the school fee project. It was a matter of communicating individually with the 14 friends who wanted to help, tracking the amounts being deposited to my account in the States, converting it into Ugandan shillings, determining which of the waiting children to help, making trips to the ATM to draw out the shillings (only X amount can be drawn out in any one day) and trips to the various banks where schools have their accounts to actually pay the fee and bring back a stamped, official piece of paper that the child must bring with him or her to class. It was all worth it to see the smiles on the faces of the children who got that slip of paper in their hands and were off to school. Of course, this was just for one term; come August it all happens again -- the ongoing search for school fees. I plan to continue to help even after leaving Uganda.
Handcrafts
Working to develop handcraft projects has been another fun activity. Sadik, a teacher who also works parttime at St. Jude's to teach knitting and supervise the use of knitting machines previously donated to St. Jude, is a creative and dedicated man. As soon as I met him he began talking about his wish for more work for the machines. They receive occasional orders for making school uniform sweaters, but after that the machines are often idle. Meanwhile, Odwar Samuel, who is a teacher at St. Jude's Primary School and also the person who works with the many disabled residents at the Home and also the disabled adults in the community, had talked with me about his wish to have blind people use the knitting machines. I got involved and started trying to come up with designs that could be sewn using St. Jude's several sewing machines or knitted, either by machine or by hand using knitting needles; my focus was on items that could be marketed in Gulu to the many ex-pats and Europeans who work or volunteer there or to find market outlets for U.S.; distribution of African handmade items. Sadik was quick to sew and knit some product ideas for us to consider. I took his rough samples around town to get feedback and received encouragement; several shops and restaurants expressed interest in selling them on commission. Alas, as I type these words, it has become clear that I'll be leaving Uganda before seeing this project into fruition. But I'm leaving behind copious notes about the status and some of the options I've uncovered ...and it will be my pleasure to continue to work with Sadik from wherever I am. His patchwork totebag is awesome and I'm disappointed I forget to get a photo of it before leaving Gulu. I also see possibilities for an Africa print/knit pillow cover and small knit handbags that he's working on.
One-on-one English coaching and mentoring
I did teach a few formal classes at St. Jude Primary School but found it hard to engage the students in a way that felt productive to me; apparently they are not accustomed to interacting with the teacher in discussion. And, let's face it, English Grammar isn't really my favorite part of the English language. What I have enjoyed, instead, is being the roving library lady and unofficial English teacher. Once I learned that St. Jude has quite a good collection of donated books, I made it my mission to see that the children get access to the books. I found this same attitude during my months in Namibia; the teachers and officials value the donated books and want to protect them so they keep them locked up and rarely available for use by the children (who admittedly are tough on the books, never having been taught to respect and use books gently. One day I tried opening the usually-locked library/video room and chaos ensued with books tossed all over the floor, until I found a couple of older kids to help me ... but it convinced me I could not just 'open' the library). Keeping books locked up and hidden is definitely contrary to my ideas about how to engender a love for reading and a fluency in language among young children. My solution? I became the vagabond, rebel 'library lady." I selected an assortment of books from the various shelves and cabinets where they are stored and traveled around the 'campus' each day with books that children could sit with me and enjoy. And, boy, did they enjoy them! I know for a fact that a number of the younger children now know some English thanks to our looking together at the picture books and 'talking' about what we were seeing. And, I know for a fact that some of the older students benefited from our one-on-one philosophical talks and from the books I chose to match their interests and brought to them (even though they were not allowed to keep the books more than a few hours at a time) and also from the Scrabble games we played together.
Attention to disabled residents
Whether looking at books together, playing cards, using my pick-up sticks as a dexterity developer, or coloring in my coloring books, I'm pretty sure that my daily visits in the Consolation Home were a highlight for some of the disabled children -- I could see their excitement when I arrived, toting my heavy book bags, coloring books, and crayons. And, sometimes, my time in this section was spent simply sitting with the wheelchair-bound, cerebral palsied or muscular dystrophy children, gently stretching their tight, bent limbs or massaging their tightly hunched shoulders...or just showing them attention and love. I wished, so much, that I had training and experience in physical therapy. It's a specialty St. Jude needs -- if anyone reading this blog is interested in volunteering, please ask me how to contact the dedicated and personable special needs coordinator, Odwar Samuel. You would love working with him and enriching the lives of these children and young people.
One Mango Tree
The wonderful ladies, the One Mango Tree tailors, who first welcomed me to Gulu are dear to my heart. After detaching from OMT operations and moving to St. Jude, it became harder to spend time with them but I visited as often as possible, taking treats and staying to play with the children who accompany several of them to work.. One of my last must-dos before leaving Gulu was to deliver the prints I had made of photos I had taken of them. I hope they will remember me half as fondly as I'll remember them. I learned much from these courageous, no-nonsense women of steel.
What else?
hmmmm ... crafts with the young residents of St. Jude's and such things as manicure sessions for the girls ... preparing the way for friend Marilyn's visit and her presentations about services for the blind to schools and other groups ... bringing the Season for Nonviolence principles to One Mango Tree tailors ... making friends with as many people as possible in the two communities where I've lived, around the One Mango Tree compound and in the more rural community surrounding St. Jude Childrens Home, which means daily greeting on the road, joking and even dancing with the women vendors across from St. Jude, all with a goal of building bridges between our separate parts of the world ... learning to be brave enough to ride (and enjoy) boda-boda taxis since it was the only way I could get around ... helping with daily operations at One Mango Tree during the first months of being in Uganda ... taking photos and doing bios for the OMT website ... and, oh yes, did I mention, giving hugs.
