Sere, Akwedde and Osilo

Sere Charles

In December 2010, Sere finished his A‘levels. He is our oldest child and the first to finish his school education. In Uganda the local school year finishes in December, but the university year starts in August. So for the last 6 months or so Sere has been trying to find a job that could help him earn some money. We have decided that after they finish secondary and wish to continue on with their studies, it would be good for them to contribute to the fees. We hope that this will teach them to work hard and value their education and job, so they learn to be self sufficient.

Charles found a job with a friend of ours who runs a tourist business. He sent Charles to work deep in a forest in Budongo Safari Lodge. It’s been very hard for Charles as he has never lived outside of the city so he really struggled trying to adapt to not having life around him. He sleeps in a tent so not even having electricity and friends around to chat with has been very hard. When he first came back he totally refused to return that he couldn’t cope anymore. We talked with him throughout his time off explaining to him how this could be a good opportunity that our friend who owns the lodge is a very successful person and could offer him a good opportunity. Eventually Charles returned after he had applied to the Universities around Kampala and spent another two months planning to come back in August to start Uni. Just before he finished his time our friend Amos went to check on the lodge and spent some time with Sere. He saw that he was doing very well and could make a good tourist guide and offered to pay for him to study tourism as a diploma down in another town out of Kampala. He asked him to come back home to learn how to drive properly and then he would be able to go down to one of the Safari parks and while studying he could also be a tourist guide. He explained that there were a lot of opportunities in tourism that you don’t need a degree for and many people who have been to Uni haven’t been able to get jobs. It is expensive to learn how to drive so it might take a while to pay for everything for him; meanwhile he is working for us at Sparkling Stars cooking lunch for the children and staff.

The rest of the boys are studying hard. Orikodi finishes his A‘levels this December and then will look for a job. He has told us that he doesn’t want to go to University straight away that he would much prefer to work for a while and save money and study later, maybe first get a diploma like Charles. The time is running fast and each year a few boys at a time will be finishing school entering the big world with hopes of further studies. Fees for University are a lot different to school fees. Many people ask us what our children will do when they finish secondary, we always tell them like any family we hope to support them until they can support themselves. If that means university then we will try all we can to provide for them. We have a friend who already has been raising funds for further studies by making and selling Christmas decorations. We hope to find other ways too.

Some of the younger children are finishing primary school and needing to go to secondary school. Two of them, Akwedde and Osillo, have been home-schooling this year because they are dyslexic and Ugandan schools don’t really recognise it and definitely don’t have support for it.

Osillo has repeated one class at school three times. Recently my mum has been teaching him and he is now reading and writing after only a few months. We’re hoping to send them to a school that does look after children with dyslexia but it is a lot more expensive than a normal school.

This is Akwedde Erina, she is 14 years old. She is a sister of Kilappa, Orikodi, and Rafiki. She came to live with us two years ago as her mother had moved to the village and she had a problem that needed parental supervision. She is a lovely girl and is very good with Jude and Lizzie. She panics in exams even when she knows the answer in her head so doesn’t do as well as she could do.

Osillo is younger than Akwedde and from the same family. He still lives with his parents at home but they don’t have much control over him and comes home at all hours of the night. When he started home-schooling this year I couldn’t really face working with him as he had some of the habits the boys had when I first started working with them and felt that as I had been through all that before could I really face the challenges again. However he is doing well and is changing and it hasn’t been such a big challenge.

Sparkling Stars

The school has now 31 children, 14 of which are free children who come from very, very poor families who live in the slum areas. The rest are paying children. It is encouraging to see how the school is growing, though at times I have been very discouraged and have almost given up. But this last 6 months we have been able to put up our fees and admit a few children who are able to pay these fees. Although we are still not covering our costs and some of the expenses are required to be covered by donations, we are doing a lot better and we have a lot more enthusiasm to continue on with it.

We are covering the Cambridge system of education. After many years being, here having my older children in the local system, I have got to know how the local curriculum works, and to see how it has affected Uganda’s development. It uses a lot of fact cramming, not really teaching a child to think and use their initiative; with no imaginative development at all. After a lot of debate, we have now started teaching using a more international approach. This means a lot of work for us as the teachers are not experienced in teaching practically. We spend a lot of time planning for each term and teaching the teachers what to teach. It makes it quite hard and frustrating attimes and feels like we are doing many jobs at once. The local educational examining board allows the Cambridge SATS results to be converted into the local PLE (end of primary exams) results so meaning the children will not be affected if they need to go back into the local schools. So far, the parents are very happy and the children love coming to school.

We have a good staff; 4 Teacher’s, a Toddler worker, a Security man, a cleaner, and a cook. They are good workers, but of course it’s hard at times managing them due to cultural differences. Jane, one of the teachers who I have been working with for around four years, has just finished her Nursery Teacher training course. I met Jane when she was struggling with life. She finished her A’levels but hadn’t been able to go on with further education so she was working at a fishing net factory. She was really struggling with hardly any money so didn’t have good accommodation or much provision of anything else. She didn’t have any teacher training but applied for a job with us so we gave her a try, with the aim to put her through studies if she does well. After a while her living conditions worsened so I gave her a house to live in. At that time her boyfriend mistreated her, deceived her into bed and she fell pregnant. For months she never told me in fear of being fired from her job, which often happens here. She was astounded when I found out and didn’t send her away. Since then she has been working for us and being a single parent to her little boy who has just turned three.

At the end of the term in July we held a school performance where the children sang songs and did presentations on the things they had been studying during the term. We had been studying about the world; they sang songs from different countries and also made cakes to sell to the parents after we had finished. The children performed very well. It was a lovely afternoon and the parents were so impressed. You can see some of the photo’s below.

We have a friend, who I have mentioned about in one of my other posts, she has a clinic where she works with many people who are affected by HIV. She has raised funds for many people to have free ARV medicine. She looks after a lot of children, many who are very poor. This term we will be taking in at least five of her children under free education, and if we can raise enough support, to help with housing and other financial costs the family may need. We are happy that we now have a good base of fee-paying children to enable us to support more vulnerable children, much in need of a good education.