A Matatu Called Smart Job

What began with a matatu called Beyonce ten weeks ago came to an end with a matatu called Smart Job, as we left Mbarara on Saturday morning and landed, slightly baffled and utterly knackered, at Gatwick Airport this morning. Amongst the many home comforts I'm taking full advantage of is an Internet connection, and an opportunity to share a few photos of our completed investments.

The library has taken up the bulk of our investment, spending 1/3 on textbooks alone. Each department has received a number of curriculum textbooks, and the library also has sections for Mathematics, Science and English fiction. Eight new tables and benches have been provided, and two new PCs have joined the two bought by last year's volunteers previously kept in a cupboard. The library also has a Maths Corner, and a Health Corner with material supplied by local health charities we have been in touch with.

 

 

The refurbishment of the nurse's office was a decision taken fairly late in the project, but in dealing with the bats living above the ceiling, we decided that it was too dingy, dirty and generally disastrous to be left as it was. With a little money and one heck of a lot of elbow grease, we've had the bats expelled, the offending gaps filled, a broken ceiling panel replaced, bought a medicine cabinet, painted and laid a new linoleum floor ourselves. The school's water filter has also been connected to a custom jerry can, providing clean water to patients.

Although the materials are locked away for the start of term, 1 million shillings went towards a fabric bulk buying scheme for the school. Tailoring students are required to provide their own material for practical classwork; buying only a few metres at retail price for each project simply isn't affordable for most, if not all, of the pupils. We have bought a few basic fabrics in large rolls at a discount, which students will be able to buy at this reduced cost price and the money reinvested in replacing the used material. The saving works out at about 2000 shillings per metre, which is a reduction of up to 50%. The tailoring department are also due to receive five new sewing machine frames next week, and I'm looking forward to hearing how the department gets on with them once they arrive.

The handwashing stations were completed two weeks ago, but in between torrential downpours and in defiance of the recommended eight hours of sleep, I have painted the rules for use and some hand hygiene-related facts on the tanks.

Before I head off to revel in the novel joys of hot showers, cups of Tetley tea and decent cheese, I have to say one enormous thank you to friends, family, sponsors and readers for all your support - I'm delighted with the results and very grateful to you all. Until the next adventure!


A fresh-faced Team Mbarara at baggage reclaim this morning

A final farewell from the shoes and I!

For The Rain, It Raineth Every Day

Typing this, I can barely hear myself think  - we’re now into September and Uganda’s rainy season, and the noise on the school’s tin roof is deafening.  It’s also hampering my outdoor painting tasks somewhat, so I have a few minutes to jot down an update. I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days now, but the final few working days of the project have been manic.

Last weekend, Alice and I made the trip to Kampala to spend the bulk of our investment on textbooks for the school. The kinds of textbooks the school needs are not only more expensive, but harder to find in bookshops outside Kampala and, as it turns out, anywhere – over 1/3 of the books we’d been told to look for were now out of print. Bit of a hassle, but with the help of a friend with excellent local knowledge even better haggling skills, we came home with two very heavy boxes of books and far too much craft market shopping.

Relatively light traffic for Kampala...

Alice posting the school's application and our letter of recommendation for government computers

Bought, referenced, logged and ready for the start of term on Monday!

Attempted matatu selfie with Champion Bargainer Ronald

Our Central Pot hand washing tanks are now complete! I mentioned these briefly in July, but these hand washing stations were funded by a grant from the central charity that allows for more expensive water and sanitation investments. However Dalek-esque they look, they will guarantee student access to water for hand hygiene throughout the year, irrespective of the dry season.

Library refurbishment continues at a rate of knots. We’ve moved bookcases, swept a floor dirty enough to host a small ecosystem, made notice boards, made posters, painted Maths & Health Corners, and had new tables delivered.  We’re expecting the remainder of the new furniture this week, and once the notice boards are up, we’ll be filling them with posters, leaflets and advice on either maths support or health advice sourced from local NGOs.

Our homemade notice boards

Lots more to do this week, particularly with sprucing up the nurse’s newly bat-free office, but I’m really looking forward to the next post, when we’ll be completely finished!

PS -there are one or two new photos from Lake Bunyonyi, pinched from Alice, including one of my rather ungraceful attempts at a rope swing. 

Holiday Week #3: Kigali & Parc National Des Volcans

I did promise that this one was coming! The remainder of our time in Kigali was spent being unusually cosmopolitan. Memorials aside, there's not a huge amount to do in Kigali for tourists, but we were more than happy to enjoy its fantastic restaurants, cafes and art galleries. The four of us were also staying with Alice's cousin, meaning we had some home comforts in a home for a few days and a lovely host. 

Rooftop Chinese restaurants are unheard of in Mbarara - not so in Kigali!

Inema Arts Centre, Kigali

Work by at Inema Arts Centre

A few hours outside Kigali is Parc National Des Volcans, home to mountain gorillas, three international borders and some of the most beautiful scenery I've seen in East Africa. Sadly, gorilla trekking permits are notoriously difficult to get, but I did get the chance to track endemic golden monkeys through the forests at the foot of a volcano that spans Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. No SLR to take close ups, so you'll have to play a bit of "Is It A Tail Or A Branch?" too, but they're fantastic to watch and a joy to spend an hour with.

Holiday Week #2: Kigali I

Quick warning: this post contains no pictures, nor investment work, nor anything cheery.
Our second stop on our holiday week was Kigali, and although lots of fun was had (coming in #3 soon!), we did take some time to visit a few memorials to Rwanda's genocide of 1994. It's a change of tone from the usual witterings that I usually post, and I'm not even sure I'm wittering any less in my attempts to find the right words, but it was a part of my time in East Africa that deserves more than to be swept aside in favour of my silly pink shoes. 

I can't say I'm comfortable with gift shops and bus parties and dubbing it "worth visiting" in a Lonely Planet style, but the Kigali Memorial Centre is an exceptionally poignant memorial to the events of 1994 and the thousands of victims buried at the site. It is very deliberately a memorial centre, and not a museum - the information centre indoors is joined by walls and gardens of remembrance, and a separate research archive, all with the intention of allowing people from all walks of life, with different experiences of the genocide, to remember the Hundred Days of Madness that ripped Rwanda apart twenty years ago.

Of any museum or war memorial I've visited across the years, the Centre was the most intensely personal - the exceptionally graphic images, mass graves and personal input of survivors and families make for a very visceral experience, for want of a better word . In and amongst boards of information, family photographs fill one room, silent but for a video of survivors recounting their stories. The rural church memorials we went to the following day have been left largely untouched for twenty years, still with blood stains on walls, bullet holes in rooves and piles of victims' clothing left on pews. One of the most interesting sections of the information centre was an exhibit looking at Rwanda's tragedy in the context of other genocides, and mass killings not recognised as genodical, of the twentieth century - whole chapters of brutal history still not acknowledged by modern governments and unbeknownst to the outside world.

Certainly some harrowing mornings in Kigali, but impossible to gloss over and - now - impossible to forget.

Holiday Week #1: Lake Bunyonyi

When I last posted, the students had just left for the end of term, and we had one week in school ourselves before heading off on a week's holiday of our own. My first stop was Lake Bunyonyi, around two hours further south from Mbarara. As it's one of the very few, if not the only, lakes in Uganda free from parasites, crocodiles and other things that might want to eat you, we spent most of our time swimming, canoeing, jumping off things into the water like five-year-olds and some slightly-more-age-appropriate sunbathing with our books. Lots of photos still to borrow from other people, and will update in due course!

I have no words. Only bruised thighs.

The view from our island log cabin

By the time we left, there was enough sunshine for a lovely sunset and some dreadful tan lines.

La Vie En Rose

It's been a while since I last posted, but it's been a successful week in Mbarara. This week's first, but least impressive, win was the pink trainers' running debut in Uganda! Perhaps I'll just say that my face was pretty much the same colour by the end of a pitifully short attempt, and leave it at that.

It's also been a week of triumph at the Commonwealth Games back at home - from what I've seen, Glasgow seems to be doing a great job of hosting the games, Uganda won their first gold medal of the games last night, and Glasgow's own Katie Archibald won her first Commonwealth medal almost a week ago. Very proud!

As far as our investment is concerned, our successful careers day on Wednesday definitely qualifies as a victory for Team Kakiika. Post-secondary opportunities is an area of particular focus for EPAfrica, and I'm sure I've written before about the obvious relevance to technical schools that are so geared towards vocational skills. At first, the link appeared to be simple and the task a simple one, but we've realised over the last weeks that the relationship between technical schools and careers is far more complex. It's not that our students aren't employable: it's that they're so instantly employable that there's little incentive to keep going and realise their potential. Technical schools are seen as schools for the lazy ones, or the poor ones, or the failures - not the kind that go on to do anything meaningful, or so they say. To a worrying number of pupils, it makes more sense to finish school, get a job and start earning peanuts than spend time and money pushing themselves to further study, enterprises or even university. Careers Day wasn't just an efficient choice, but a thoroughly worthwhile
one.

Our panel of speakers introduced themselves before breaking off into smaller workshops to discuss women in work, further education and how to finance studies, and returned for a seminar on entrepreneurship and the chance to for students to quiz our panel with their questions. We were, on the whole, absolutely delighted with the speakers' contributions, and have already had great feedback from students and lots of requests for photocopies of the careers materials in the library. The day ended with an afternoon of sports to celebrate the end of term, and some very happy - and equally knackered - players (and volunteers!).

Congratulations also go to the four Mbarara volunteers finishing university this year. Unfortunately, they will be missing their graduation ceremonies, and so we're taking this weekend to celebrate their graduations and one 21st birthday. We have spent today at Lake Mburo National Park, with gowns I made and tin foil hats, and will be having a proper ceremony with cake tomorrow.

Time Flies When You're Budgeting And Buying Textbooks And Running Careers Days And.....

It's been a really busy week since my last post (although 20 points for a crested crane in the garden on Wednesday morning, woo!). We spent last weekend in the Central House with the whole group, spending Saturday having our End of Week 2 meeting.  There are lots of exciting plans afoot at each of the different schools, and it was great to see all of the other PWs for a Nile Special, a candlelit curry and a bonfire in the back garden.

After two weeks of getting our bearings, planning, budgeting, scratching our heads a bit and then planning some more, our ideas are really beginning to take shape and we are getting started on the main body of our work and investment. Although there’s lots to do and lots that may change before September,  now seems like a good opportunity to give a brief overview of what we are planning to do with the money we have raised.

Our main priority for the summer is the library. Before we arrived, the school had fewer than thirty relevant textbooks on the premises, and these are shared between 260 students and staff. Our Project Manager assures us that Kakiika’s is the smallest school library she’s ever seen, but it’s still not as small as some technical schools in the area. The textbooks used by technical schools are much less readily available and are significantly more expensive than those on the main secondary school curriculum, making it much harder for schools to provide an adequate number. We have purchased the thirteen curriculum textbooks available locally, and will be sourcing as many others as we can from Kampala or even further beyond.

Not only are we looking to make the library better equipped, we are looking to make the library space well used. Currently, the library shares a space with the staff room, which is occupied during the day and locked after class hours. Our headmaster has very kindly agreed to give up the space to the library, and move the staff room elsewhere in the school, so we will be getting our DIY SOS faces on to refurbish and redecorate. We have started to open the library during evening study sessions, and our new student librarians are doing a fantastic job of running these.

Although the library is our greatest overall project, the most pressing deadline is the End of Term Fair we are organising next week. One of EPA’s focus areas is post-secondary opportunities for students, and technical schools are centred on trades and skills: it would be madness not to marry the two together to encourage students to look beyond Year 3 and consider the true range of options available to them. A range of teachers, governors and external speakers will be running talks and workshops throughout the morning, and we’re really looking forward to the sports tournaments in the afternoon.

After the school holidays, we are also planning to install some concrete hand washing stations to give students proper facilities and a constant water supply to keep themselves clean  - particularly when it’s the dry season and you spend every day up to your elbows in concrete.

Similar stations at another EPA school in Mbarara - we're hoping to build something along these lines

This “brief overview” seems to have grown arms and legs of its own, so it’s probably time to stop. Still having a wonderful time, still happy to take questions from, and still grateful to those of you reading these updates!

Will and the games prefects with sports kit we've bought and rugby balls donated by his former school

Health questionnaires