The dream has been realised!

Wednesday July 29th 2009

Today for the first time children from Namuwongo slum have visited the library and taken a book home to read! This morning I took P4 class down to the library and this afternoon it was P5’s turn. When I established the library last year we appointed Ritah as librarian, but she soon got a job using her IT degree and a new librarian Margaret was employed. I met her last Saturday for the first time when I went to Saturday reading club. She is great! The library is in good hands! She is very enthusiastic about books and reading and really wants the project to succeed.

She is already working with groups of disadvantaged children from the community who are not enrolled in school and tomorrow begins classes for six women who have got micro0finance grants and need to improve their basic literacy and numeracy skills to improve their businesses.

Next week my aim is to get the slum school where I worked last time into the library! I’m visiting tomorrow and will not leave until we fix a day and time!

The books at St Barnabas are already looking dusty and well-used - which they are. Every lunch time the children come for books and sit in small plastic chairs on the veranda reading – often there isn’t a book left on the shelves!

On Tuesday I went into the community with Joyce to meet some women who make beads out of paper with a view to buying lots and bringing them home to sell. Joyce is keen to expand opportunities for these women who are HIV+ (the correct term being ‘women living with AIDS’) to establish a business with a guaranteed market. We discussed the funding and agreed that 400,000/- was needed to set up the project: 100,000/- to buy varnish, strings, elastic and fasteners etc; 120,000/- for a guillotine to cut the papers and 180,000/- for a month’s wages for each of ten women. This is 1,500/- per day; they will work three days a week for three hours each day. We also discussed paying them even well they are not well enough to work, as they still need nutritious food to enhance the effectiveness of the ARV drugs they take.

I am going to use the money raised and donated by Beccy and Carl who did a sponsored bike ride riding a tandem for 22 miles, coping with a puncture and numb bums!!!! So a big ‘THANK YOU’ to them. I will give Joyce the money and she will buy what is needed so the project can begin at the beginning of September. Prior to that, she is involved in a holiday project for the sponsored children at St Barnabas. Development workers never rest – they are amazing! Hopefully she will send the necklaces, bracelets to me via the BA pilots and I will be able to sell them with your help and send the money directly to Joyce so the project is sustainable and the women have some self-respect and a much-needed income.

The school day at St Barnabas is long but somehow quite relaxed. Classes start at 7.00am with an hour of ‘extra study’ (this is not for P1 and P2). The other ‘extra study’ period is from 4.30-5.30 and children only need to attend one of them. (This is when I do my extra reading support session). The ‘normal’ day is from 8.00-4.00pm and at 4.00-4.30 the children clean the classrooms! There is a half hour break in the morning when sweet ginger tea and a samosa is provided for the teachers (the tea is served in a battered metal kettle!) and there is an hour for lunch which is also provided.

Teachers seem to have quite a few free periods during the day but as they all either walk to school or come by boda-boda they use this time for preparation and marking as there is no way they could take work home with them. The craze in the staffroom at the moment is Scrabble and they often play over lunch-time! Children move freely in and out of the staffroom – remember it is also the library - but generally children are welcomed and tolerated and possibly as a result they are not ‘in your face’ as much as British children seem to be.

Well I’ve been invited to go the Queen Elizabeth National Park this weekend with Immaculate and Joyce and nine other volunteers from UK – so that should be fun! Hopefully will see the Rwenzori mountains, a few crater lakes and possibly tree-climbing lions – I’ll let you know!

Answer to puzzle – only vowel used is ‘a’ and all consonants are followed by an ‘a’. I’m sure you all got it!

In the meanwhile – keep reading – you don’t know how lucky you are! And if you come across any children’s books you don’t need any more or at car boot sales etc – remember there are some very keen children at St Barnabas who would just love them!