Advertisements, visitors and a library!

What a busy and exciting month this has been! Where to begin?

Thanks to Sophie Greener; an A’level student at Caludon Castle School we have been able to design and print leaflets and a school prospectus to advertise Wellspring International School.  Sophie raised money by selling cakes during lunch times and break times. With this money we have been able to create excellent advertisements, which in turn will help us to develop and grow. As we come to end of the academic year these leaflets have come at just the right time to advertise for the next school year.  Next week we will be delivering these leaflets to people in the nearby local areas.

After hard work in organising, registering and sorting the amazing amount of books we received from Books to Africa and the Nettle Hilll team we are pleased to announce that the library is now set up and complete with over 2440 books. It has been amazing to see the students in both the primary and secondary schools absolutely enjoying reading the variety of books here.

A variety of books to chose from

There are so many books ranging from academic text books for a range of subjects from English, Maths, Science, Psychology, Sociology, Geography, History, ICT, Business studies and many more subjects to Novels; including Thrillers, Action, Adventure, Romance and Comedies to Biographies, books around Food, Travel and Entertainment. We also have around 600 books for the primary school and young readers, including many reading schemes.

This resource is the only one in the area, it will be used to support the community work that is already taking place within Wellspring and beyond. The community work helps to teach those who have not had the privilege to go to school basic literacy skills. The library will not only be an excellent resource to support this work further but will also support the work that takes place in both the primary and secondary schools. Helping to develop a love and culture of reading.

Enjoying learning in the completed library

As the school year comes to an end we are looking forward to our last open day for the year on Sunday 5^th July. This will be a day where we can really advertise the school and newly opened library.

Drama lessons

Over the last two weeks I have had the privilege of having some very special visitors coming to volunteer at Wellspring. Three ex students from Caludon Castle School; Charli Roberts, Arron Hope and Jyoti Chauhan, (all of whom I taught when they were 13 years old, and then the girls I taught A level Philosophy, up until they were 18 years old) came to offer their help and support. They were involved and stretched out of their comfort zones whilst taking part in many activities in both the primary and secondary schools. They taught PE lessons, Music, Dance and Drama lessons and also did some arts and crafts lessons with the primary school. A particular highlight was seeing them teach the students how to dance English Style to the famous ‘Saturday Night’ dance. I don't think Arron ever thought he would ever teach a dance lesson!

Parachute Games

 They were also involved In teaching English lessons with the students from the secondary and helped to support these students facilitate and lead a whole school debate with the primary. This was an excellent tool to develop the secondary students’ leadership skills whilst they took on the role of facilitators in the primary!

English lessons

Secondary students teaching the primary students

Secondary students teaching the primary students

Chali, Jyoti and Arron also enjoyed helping and supporting the community work that takes place. They enjoyed travelling to other communities, seeing what life is like for people here, meeting and chatting to the locals and also helping to support the skills training taking place.

It was an absolute honour and privilege to have some ex students come and visit; they have all grown up, matured and it was lovely to see their desire to want to add and make a difference into society and peoples lives. 

The academic year finishes here on Fri 3^rd July, after this I am looking forward to visit friends in Tanzania. Wellspring also has a work in Dar Es Salaam, alongside visiting friends I am looking forward to seeing the work Wellspring are doing there. I will then be coming home for a month in August, I can’t wait to catch up with many of you very soon! Thank you again for your continued support, love and constant communication. Your support has helped to create and make a difference here!

Whats in a name?

Wow, it is May already and defiantly time for another blog update! The last month or so have been a lot of fun, exploring the country with lots of different visitors. Over the Easter holidays it was lovely to have my friend Dan and parents visit for a couple of weeks. We defiantly enjoyed seeing more of the countryside and learning about the cultural heritage here in Uganda. It always amazes me to see how green the countryside is, the landscape is so luscious and exploring more helps to see why this beautiful country was coined the ‘bread basket and pearl of Africa.’  In fact they say that the soil here in Uganda is so fertile that you can pretty much grow anything in it.

At the source of the Nile, Jinja

It was amazing to learn that according to the law when a compound was created for people to live on they used to have to plant three trees in the grounds in order to provide for the people living there. Each compound therefore must have a Matooke (variation of plantain; one of the staple dishes) tree, a Mango tree and an Avocado tree.  If you visit the old compounds they all have these trees growing, amazing way to ensure people have food nearby in their communities. This off course has changed a little bit as people have started to live outside of the traditional compounds. Thus some people do not have the food readily available.

Jinja

Students picking their first harvest

That reminds me, we have started to see our first harvest in our little school garden. The students were thrilled to see their hard work paid off, especially after a few disappointments and hurdles jumped through to actually get some fruit.  It was a good lesson for all of us about hard work, commitment and productivity. We now have carrots and a few tomatoes to enjoy. We have also just planted one of the staple foods here; beans.  So we look forward to enjoying these soon.

I am always inspired by the shared community life here and whilst visiting the Tombs of the Buganda Kabakas’ (Kings of the central region) I was inspired to learn how the naming of children takes place. I have always found it difficult to understand and get my head around how each person has a different surname, when a child is born they do not seemingly take on the family surname. Going to the Kusubi Tombs helped me to understand how this takes place and how community is so in built in the minds of people and structures of society here.  When a child is born they are given their own personal surname, not a family surname but a name that identifies them with their wider clan. The name given is much bigger than the immediate family but identifies and connects them to their wider community, their clan. Each clan has certain names that can be used; once the name is heard in any setting, the person can be identified to that clan. There are 6 million people living In Buganda (Central region of Uganda). The Buganda tribe is spilt into 54 clans, this means approximately if the clans are spread evenly across the 6 million people in Buganda, there are around 100,000 people in each clan. Therefore it can be said when a surname is given to the child it is identified with the much wider community of aprox. 100, 000 people!  This has been a great challenge to me especially as in our western society we keep ourselves to ourselves; we go to work, come back home and stay in our houses. We identify with our immediate family and that is it. Unless we work at it, there is no real expression of community. Here community is even inbuilt in the naming of their children, no wonder belonging to a much wider community is so important! I have been challenged to ask myself; what community am I seeing, what community am I given to and how do I add to this? How is community expressed in our daily lives? Us Westerners can learn something of community from people here.

Kasubi Tombs

Kasubi Tombs. The fire is kept alight for as long as the King is alive

At the school we are in the midst of end of year exams. It is crazy to think that the academic year has gone so quickly, one more half term and the year is over! Last week we enjoyed a school trip to watch William Shakespeare’s ‘Twelve Night’ at another international school in the city. The students loved it; it also worked as a great revision tool before the English exams. 

School Trip to see Shakespeares 'Twelve Night'

Students watching the play

As we are coming to the end of the academic year it is that time in the year when we need to push the advertising of the school for next years cohort. In order to advertise, I have produced the school prospectus and leaflets. Thanks to Sophie Greener; an ex-GCSE philosophy student and students at Caludon Castle School who have raised some funds. The money they raised from a school cake sale will help us to print the leaflets and school prospectus and advertise effectively in the surrounding areas. Thank you to all that was involved! Hopefully this will help the school to grow in numbers.

I am also looking forward to receive 4 ex-ALevel students next month. These students have just finished university, (yes, this makes me feel old!) and are coming to volunteer with us for 2 weeks. They will be involved with both the primary and secondary schools and also with the weekly training and community work that takes place. We’re looking forward for them coming and having an experience of Uganda, we will see what happens.. Watch this space!

Water? Water? Water ...

We have been challenged over the past week or so with no running water. In fact any water has been hard to come by; it has been so dry with no rain for the past 3 months resulting in a complete water shortage. The tanks that normally fill up with rainwater in the rainy season are completely dry and the national water has been on and off. Each day that went by last week finished with many going to bed hoping that the water would be turned back on the next day but to no avail. After 6 days of no running water; collecting from any water supply/source we can, filling up and carrying the jerricans to use for washing, cleaning, cooking and bucket showers. It all became a hard dirty slog and after 6 days I felt so low. Then I was reminded how this is an everyday reality for many here in Uganda. Not just a reality for a week but what people live with on a day - day basis. There are many that live with no running water, no showers and live by collecting water from the nearest supply which sometimes can be far from home and there I was struggling with a week. Surely puts things into perspective!

Collecting water

In the midst of all this I have been challenged to think about the necessity for life to have access to a fresh water supply; water is such a source for life. Whilst going through the challenges of the lack of water I have been challenged to think about where I draw my life from in a spiritual sense. Do I go and draw from the true life source; (for me this is God) or do I wait until I’m desperate, until I’m nearly out of energy, feeling low and then go out of desperation. To put it pictorially; am I enjoying the full essence of Gods deep waters in my life or do I just desperately use up a little dribble of what is left in the tank of life?  If we truly believe God is the source of life it is so vital we draw from him daily.    

So to school, last week we had the excellent opportunity to learn how to make lovely African Styled material using Tie & Dye. You may think this is a throw back to the 80’s, using elastic bands and a bucket to create blue and purple T-shirts.  However I was so surprised to see the variety of different methods you can use to create lovely looking materials. How Tie & Dye has developed over the years! My particular favourite was the lost and found method using leaves and anything found on the ground to create your pattern on the material. The students loved being able to make their own materials and are now planning on creating various shirts, dresses and bags. 

Throwing the Dye onto the material

Making the materials with leaves

The finished materials

As part of the community work in Wellspring every couple of months they put on a kids club for the local children in the community. This is called, ‘Fun Factory.’ Last Saturday was this very, ‘Fun Factory,’ around 90 children from the local community came and we played games for the whole afternoon. The children absolutely loved it. It really is amazing to see and be apart of what Wellspring are doing here to help make a difference in peoples lives.

Children at 'Fun factory.'

Being English I decided to celebrate Pancake day with a few people here. However for some reason we couldn't perfect the making of the pancakes … I think there was something wrong with the pan. Chefs always blame the equipment right?! So in the end we went to buy the local Chipattis made on the side of the road. These chapattis are a very popular fast food, in fact the local Rolex is a favourite of the local people. A Rolex is a chapatti filled with scrambled egg and onions, it's a very tasty treat when you want something quick, fast and greasy!! Haha! So on pancake day we proceeded to fill these chapatti with all the various pancake fillings …a little bit different than pancakes but it was tasty enough!

Just want to say thank you to everyone for your continued support and to those who continue to keep in touch. It is so lovely to hear all that is going on with you; you are often in my thoughts!

New shopping experiences and Camels

Apologies for the long wait for an update to the blog; since the last time I wrote so much has happened. Where to begin school life is going on well, we have just returned fresh after a nice half term holiday.

The girls and their uniforms

Last term we were excited to see the arrival of the school uniforms for the new students that have joined us. Here in Uganda everything is made from scratch and so each student has to be measured and the material is then sent to the tailors to create the uniforms. This takes a little longer than just buying from the shops but it does mean the uniforms are tailored made for each student. 

It is funny actually, anything you want to buy is tailored made to your specific needs and so I have been challenged to think about and design the kind of bookshelves we would like to create for the library of books that are on the way. Of course being English I am not used to thinking about the design and dimensions of what we would like, we just happen to walk into the shop if it looks right, will fit in the space and is the right price we buy it, this new Ugandan way of designing and buying is a whole new world!

The books are on the way, there was a delay in the shipment but are now travelling to us. We have been told they should be with us by the beginning of April, so we are all eagerly waiting for them to arrive!

Students enjoying the new science equipment

Thanks to Neighbours and Nations in Coventry we have been able to buy some new science equipment for the school, this will enable the students to actually conduct their own experiments, something they have not been able to properly do until now. The students are so grateful and are excited to be able to use the Bunsen burner!

Teacher Training 

At the end of last term I was asked to do some teacher training with the primary school. This training was focussed on developing questioning techniques to encourage students’ deeper thinking. It has been really good to work alongside the primary school and proved a really beneficial time for the teachers. All of the staff were set ‘homework’ to try out some of the questioning techniques in their classroom at the beginning of the term, looking forward to the feedback on this.

Fort Portal

Over the last couple of weeks I have also enjoyed being able to see a little more of the country. Uganda is such a big country and so it is nice to be able to see more! I had the privilege of going to Eve Wanjala’s (director of Wellspring) home in Fort Portal, Western Uganda. Fort Portal is about a 6/7 hours drive west of Bweyogerere.  Surrounded by the Rwenzori Mountains and tea plantations all around, as you can imagine it is a very beautiful town. Because it is mainly in the countryside many people here are self sufficient in growing their own crops on their family’s land. It was amazing to have dinner with Eve’s family; the family grew everything we were eating! Funny as we were leaving the town we bought live chickens on the side of the road ready to be eaten when we returned to Kampala.  It really does bring a new meaning to shopping and eating fresh!

 Shopping for chicken ...

Eve & Pam in Fort Portal

Dancing on the beach

Some of the ladies and I had a lovely day out at the Beach in Entebbe. Entebbe is the town before you get to Kampala, around an hours drive away. It is the town you fly into when entering Uganda. The beach was lovely, it was a surprise to swim in Lake Victoria and it was not salty like the sea. I had stupidly forgotten that it was a fresh water Lake! At the beach there were Camels, this was only the second time I’d seen a camel in Uganda and so it was a surprise to us all! The Beach started off quiet but by the evening it filled up with people ready to dance, so off course we danced the night away with the beautiful scenery all around us…Uganda really is a beautiful country!

Riding a camel!