August 27 - Day Four
The overnight rains have cooled the temperatures and helped keep the dust and the smog in the city down a bit this day. After a quiet breakfast of western omlettes and lovely ugandan coffee, we made our way into crowded downtown to exchange money and make a withdrawl from the bank. This is a nearly daily process here in Uganda as we do not like to carry more than a few million shillings at any one time. The exchange rate is 2200 Uganda Shillings per American dollar.
Our journey took us north today as we visited with and paid fees for 21 boarding students at one of my favorite schools. It is one of my favorites because of how well they treat us and how much they appreciate all that we do to have these kids sponsored. There are some schools that we visit where we feel as though we are annoying them by having our kids in their school. Perhaps we will one day be able to fulfill my personal dream of having our own school to educate our sponsored children.
All of the students at this school are performing very well. They are older children who have been with the project for upwards of 5 years. They understand the importance of taking maximum advantage of the gift of an education that they are being given. We dropped off three months
worth of school supplies and personal items to last them through the term. Things like laundry soap, toothpaste and sundry other personal items. We also load them up with a kilo of sugar and enough tea and biscuits for a few evening's enjoyment. We also stock them up with the Ugandan version of bug juice. You know, bug juice. That syrupy drink mix in strange colors that we drank as kids. They have a similar product here that the kids just love. We encouraged them in their work and then headed out to locate the one young girl who had not yet reported to school. We had learned from the head teacher that she has not returned to class because she has a punishment remaining from last term that she had, to quote him, "escaped." Now she must return and do a half-day of digging in the fields around the school as a sort of detention for skipping classes. We went to her home only to find out that she was away with friends attending a party. Needless to say, Jim was not happy. I felt badly for the mother because she is caring for a very small baby that has a very severe deformity that has made his head nearly three times normal size and has rendered his legs immobile. If he is not being monitored or held, he may try to drag himself to where he would like to go with his oversized head dragging the ground the entire way. It is a horrible situation and I couldn't help but have compassion on the mother who is trying to care for this boy and chase down an unruley teenager.
We stopped at a few smaller schools on our way back to town to pay fees for primary students whose classes begin on Monday. I even managed one quick trip into a bank to pay for one child after we had visited the school and the bursar refused to accept our payment. I know it sounds crazy but he said that he had no place to keep the 150,000 shillings until the bank opened on Monday. I got there just as they were closing. They were kind enough to take my payment after I played the poor, pitiful Muzunga card - that is, looking down, speaking very softly and begging their forgiveness for not following procedure because I do not understand all things about the fee-payment process. It has worked before and worked like a charm again! That and a 2000 shilling bonus payment for the bank usually does the trick.
The last stop of the day was to meet with a group of 17 students at a secondary school who have been placed on probation for their poor performance in school. In a nutshell, the students are graded on a scale of 1-100 just as in the states. Points are accumulated through classwork, homework, quizzes and exams. Students then receive credits for every class in which they score 50 or above. Those credits are then converted to a secondary point scale that places them in one of nine classes in their grade. Grade one is the best and grade nine is the worst. The more points you accumulate for each semester, the lower your class placement. The ideas is that the best students in each grade will have somewhere around 11 to 13 points for each semester. The lower classes may accumulate as many as 60. High numbers are not good and neither is placement in classes below 4. The UCP requires it's students to remain within the top two classes to retain their scholarships. To be on probation means that you have not performed to that level in your last semester and you are in danger of being chased (thrown out) from the project.
When we began to speak to the group of students, they began to give us all kinds of excuses about how the teachers were not teaching them the material and that they were missing some teachers in some classes. I went to the headmaster and asked about this and he went ballistic! He marched outside and immediately began to challenge the students on their stories. We soon found out that they were lying. In fact, the problem was that they were being lazy and not applying themselves to their studies. Some of the kids were smirking while Jim was speaking and when he saw it, he just about went nuts. He raised his voice and threaten to expell them on the spot if they did not think this was a serious matter. Keep in mind, in Uganda, to raise your voice much above a whisper is a very rare occasion. The eyes on these kids bugged like you could not believe. They still had a cavalier attitude about the whole thing but they quit smirking. After nearly an hour of tongue-lashing by Jim, myself and the headmaster, we believe the kids got the message - do your best and improve or be booted from the project.
We celebrated our success with our first meal outside of the guesthouse. We ate Chinese at one of our favorite places near the Embassy. We didn't return to the guest house until nearly ten, exhausted but feeling very satisfied with the day.
Day Four Totals - 1 bank. 42 students. I have no idea how many more to go! Got to get some sleep.
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