leaving Uganda…

Tuesday 28th February

As February draws to a close, I leave Uganda again – it’s been a tough month. After the wonderful road trip experiencing other parts of the country, there were some real lows during my volunteering stint.

And of course that is life – not everything can be fantastic all the time even when on sabbatical – but am still disappointed I wasn’t able to turn more of the time there into great experiences… Instead I have a lot of learnings, I guess. Haven’t worked out what they all are yet, but hoping everything will become clearer after a bit of time and space.

So it was with mixed emotions that I left the community, said goodbye to a lot of people that I care about and of course saw the last of the beautiful nature. I was looking forward to the next chapter in Tanzania and was sad that I felt relieved to leave but at the same time I thought of all the people who still need help and support there…especially around education and health…and it felt like I’d given up by thinking that this is now a closed chapter… so have decided not to close the door entirely!

And education really is the key in my opinion. I have been finding myself getting more passionate about helping people by giving them knowledge (not surprisingly I guess, as it is my job!)…there will always be cultural differences and that is important, but some fundamentals of how many Ugandans live their lives must change for them to provide better chances in life for their children and grandchildren.

For example, population growth… families are too big – most fathers have five children or over, many have more than ten, made possible through multiple wives… and the consequences are plentiful:

• The area is running out of land, where they should be farming they are building houses, and where there was a playground previously there’s now a potato field. In a few decades I predict that the population in that area will outgrow the land and there will not be enough food to feed everyone. This could in turn lead to the forests being felled to make space for more agriculture…

• The government schools have up to 80 students in a class, there are simply not enough teachers or space in the schools to make smaller classes, which means that the children are learning through repetition and not through understanding.

• Not all children will go to secondary school as parents cannot afford to pay for all of them… often the girls stay at home looking after younger brothers or sisters or helping around the house or in the fields. Therefore they do not get the knowledge to make positive changes…

So I have been trying to find out why they ‘produce’ so many children. And one of the reasons is in that word ‘produce’ – that is how the describe having children… because they can! And it’s a status thing, it seems… and if you have a lot of boys even better, although girls do bring dowries to the family, so they are not all bad!

It’s also just part of tradition in a way… previously child mortality was much higher so it was necessary to maybe have 10 children to make sure you had 5 or 6 to help you and to look after you when you get old… but nowadays the vast majority of children are getting vaccinations and the healthcare is getting better, so more children survive!

Have plenty of ideas about how this problem could be explained to children and adults for them to realise that they are not thinking of the future of their families, of their communities or indeed of their planet… would be great if I could manage to realise some of these one day… so yes, door definitely not quite shut!