Another day in the big city!
OK...driving on the roads of Uganada is NOT the same as driving in Ontario. The main roads are
set up to have 2 lanes (remember, people drive on the opposite side than in Canada). However, it is not particularly unusual to see the cars, trucks, vans, matatus (~12 passenger van buses) arranged in 4 lanes and have the boda-boda's (small motorized bikes that transport 1 passenger at a time) weaving in and around the others. When in Kampala...you add on the pedestrians...who have no fear of of the traffic...yet don't seem to get hit! I've decided that it's all one big game of "road chicken"; the car or van that does NOT stop is the one that gets to make the turn or continue on the road. We were very happy to have Ismael driving!JGI Uganda has received a small amount of money to run a program for girls. They are planning to collaborate with the Ugandan Youth & AIDS Alliance to develop a workshop to train (female) student councillors/mentors for 50 schools. The focus is on girls, HIV-AIDS and preventing girls from dropping out of school (even by providing sanitary materials since many washrooms are open). The UYAA has the experience with this type of youth training.
Good luck Jacque and Rachel!
Jacque explained the origins of Kampala to us as we drove to our first school. Originally it was settled on 7 hills (the place is ALL hills and valleys!) with unique buildings/sites on each hill. For example, one hill held all the government offices, one the Catholic Church, one the Mosque, etc. Now, however, it is a city of many hills as it is experiencing the urban sprawl that many of our Canadian cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver). It is now a city of 77 hills!
The Kasubi Primary School was established in 1936. It is located right by the historical Kasubi Tombs where the Buganda kings are buried. This school joined up with Roots and Shoots in May and already they have completed projects and reported back to Jacque! They have cleaned up an area and planted a beautiful garden which they continue to keep clean. In addition, they spend time keeping the area around the Kasubi tombs clean. The Roots & Shoots club, made of Primary (P) 5, P6 and P7 students (equivalent to grades 5-7) hosted us in an outdoor classroom. Jacque talked about the Roots & Shoots program and told the students how amazing they were to have accomplished so much so quickly. She made a nice link between how they care for their pets and domestic animals to the whole concept of a caring community. The teacher shared pictures she had taken of the students cleaning their school area; the students worked hard without fancy equipment to clean the area, plant the trees and other plants. Several of the P7 students shared a poem with us that they had written called “The House Fly”. The 7 students spoke the poem in unison with actions. We chuckled when they said the House Fly was fair with everyone in sharing the germs it had picked up from the latrines!
Our second school was Kalinaabiri Secondary School where we met with their Roots & Shoots club and their teacher advisor Mr. Opolot. The students wore two different colours of uniforms: students in S1-S4 (about grades 8-10-11) wore blue, while the S5 and S6 students wore green.
- Kinds of plants and crops grown in Canada and could they grow in Uganda
- How to use the internet in Education
- How supportive the school (UTS) is to the Roots & Shoots club
- What our dress code is
- What our students eat and how we prepare our food
- Whether we teach about Uganda (did you know that Ugandan students study Canada both in S2 and S5?)
- Environmental issues
We dropped in at the Kalinaabiri Primary School right next door for a moment to leave some materials and for Jacque to speak with the Roots & Shoots teacher.
As we left the school area, we passed through about 500m of a very poor area of 1 room shacks, with just curtains for doors. This kind of juxtaposition was common in the city. We would see nice buildings on the hills then very poor areas in the (damp) valleys between the hills.
After a lunch break, we visited Nsambya primary school. This school is both a day and a boarding school. The teacher had assembled his Roots & Shoots club of P3, P4 and P5 students for one of Jacque’s Mobile Education sessions. Jacque has a great touch with students…she is very positive towards all of their answers and gets them very interested in answering her questions and prompts. The students were attentive, interested and paid attention…note this, Canadian kids! She talked with the students moving from very concrete questions about their school compound (e.g. what they did to make it look nice, how to be supportive of each other, how to act when you see someone bullying someone else…) to develop the concept of community and how everyone is involved in a good, positive community. Then she got the students to think of problems with urban communities, quickly moving them to the nasty smells of garbage and poorly maintained outdoor latrines. Then we all watched a video segment “Urban Living-Recycling Rubbish”. This video was made about Nairobi, a city of more than 2 million people which has only 1 official dumpsite. What we all liked was the positive message the video gave. Instead of going through all of the problems, it focussed on a man, Andrew, who set up a group to recycle urban wastes into something that could be sold. The organic wastes were made into compost and food for livestock while the inorganic wastes were ingeniously converted into mattresses, furniture and charcoal briquettes (using charcoal dust, liquid and some glue).
After a great question and answer session Jacque continued with other videos that addressed Urban Greening (which she pointed out to the students how well they had done this with their own compound area), Recycling Plastic (focussing on a women’s group in South Africa which makes mats, bags and hats from plastic bags), Ecosan Toilets (a really innovative idea stared in Dar es Salaam, which recycles the separated urine and feces into fertilizer. The toilet doesn’t smell and it can be brought inside the houses rather than using pit latrines) and Recycling Paper (showing a school that makes paper maché toys, boxes and furniture). The teacher at this school had come up with the idea of how to make bulletin boards from old paper – a cool idea all 3 of us are going to do back in Canada.
The Nsambya primary Roots & Shoots Club
Asked to start a partnership with another (Alison’s) school which can be a 2nd “Partnerships in Understanding” pilot school
Wanted to say to Canadian students
"Greetings”
“Good luck”
“Help the environment”
Back to Entebbe, to JGI, stuffing envelopes, setting up binders for our workshop next week…and writing blogs!
Friday? Ngamba Island and chimpanzees!
Bye for now
Meg, Emma, Alie
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