Thursday, July 17: The Tough Ones

You know, it happens this way every year. We go see more than a hundred kids. Some have colds. Some have torn a uniform. Some can’t decide which color blanket is best. All happy kids, pleased with school, living in a somewhat at least stable environment.

Then you get down to the end. Only a big handful to go to meet the goal of visiting every child. But these aren’t the happy kids, the kids with their act together because their world makes sense. These last few are the problems, the troubled kids, the stories, the real reasons we are here.

Lisa and I made us 10 minutes late on this our sprint day: a mad rush to visit all the remaining kids. We went to Najjera High School first. We visited there last week, but two girls were out sick. They came quickly to the van when Grace went in for them. The other kids at Najjera had seemed reasonably happy at least, but these two girls were surly. They didn’t want to answer our questions.

There was something wrong, but we couldn’t figure out what. So Vincent and Grace will keep an ear open to see if something is really wrong or if these were just two teen-aged girls on a bad day.

We went on to another high school and saw three very happy young men. Kunsa Rodney (Janice) is now within 2 inches of being as tall as I am, a very rare achievement for a Ugandan. He is adjusting well to secondary school and said he is working hard. Kyeyuhe Julius (Tom and Abigail) is still drawing. He is now taking art in secondary school and talking about being an art major in college.

We were on the eastern side of town, that strange mix of Muslim and Africa and Christianity. The east side has it all spread across a mixture of very poor people. This is Michael’s territory, he was born here and he has lived his entire life here. He met us at a crowded shopping market and joined us in the van. I always feel better over here when Michael is with us. He seems to know everyone.

Our first stop with Michael was St. Consolate Primary School. We parked and Grace went in. Within less than a minute, a young girl came charging out of the school. She ran up and hugged Grace, then she hugged me, then she hugged everyone. She was laughing, almost hysterically. This is Nassolo Mable, a young woman in P7, her last primary year. In this, her pivotal year (in P7, you take the Primary Leaving Exam, which decides whether you can continue to secondary school) this girl’s mother has abandoned her. No one came to visit her on Visitor’s Day.

The head mistress for the school asked Grace and me to come to her office. As I started to go, Danielle stopped me. “I have money left over. Use it here if this girl needs it.”

When I got to the office, I quickly saw the seriousness of the situation. It is mandatory that this girl live in the boarding school during this her test year so that she can study harder and longer than at home. Her mother agreed at the start of the term that if we paid tuition and fees she would pay for boarding. But she hasn’t paid a penny and the girl had a large past due balance.

To make it even worse, her sponsor also quit! No letter or call, just a year behind in payments and refusal to answer our many letters. So she had no letter or photographs. All she had to cheer her up was us.

The head mistress said the girl cried at night because she is afraid something is wrong with her mother. She also knows that her boarding fees are behind and she worries that she will be sent home. And she has been provided none of the requirements for living in the boarding section, like a mattress or the blanket we were giving her or the wash basin we were also providing. Grace said the mother is fine, she just doesn’t want to honor her promise.

I agreed to pay the past due balance. That would be one less thing for Nassolo to worry about. So the head mistress started telling her assistant about the amounts we owed. She told her to put down an amount, then added several things to it (all the add-to-its were in Luganda). I told Grace this seemed like too much, but she said no, it was okay. I ended up paying. Grace said she believed the mother would take care of the required supplies, she just couldn’t afford both the supplies and the boarding fee, even though she promised to do just that. Nassolo needs a sponsor if anyone feels so led.

And then, one of the high points of our trip! I recently met an official from the Church of Rwanda. He told me we needed to check out Uganda’s new Christian University. Namutebe Cathy, the daughter of Michael and Mabel, was accepted as a student there last term. I could hardly wait to see her!

The campus is most impressive. The huge gates open onto a plaza with a fountain and beautiful flowers. We drove past new buildings and older students in uniforms. We parked under a tree in a large, open lot. A few minutes later, Cathy hit! She was no less enthusiastic or happy than Nassolo. But Cathy is quick witted and sharp tongued, a wonderful combination if her target is David!

Cathy met everyone. She looked good in her uniform (she had been sick a bit earlier in the year). And her father just wanted to stand near her and glow: his first-born, a university student!

After she made the rounds, she looked at David. David has blond highlights in his hair, something Cathy has noted in the past. Today, she looked at him thoughtfully for a minute. “David, if you will come with me, I will cut those bad spots from your hair,” she said.

“Then I would have gaps all in my hair. It would look terrible,” said David.

“Oh, I would lend you some of these,” said Cathy as she twirled a dark black hair extension between her fingers. “I believe you need them far worse than I.”

With that, we all climbed back into the van. Cathy wanted to show us where she is living. It was a very long way from the huge campus – at least 2 miles. I was concerned about her safety in the evenings, but there was a shuttle schedule posted that seemed to cover late evening studies. We turned into the driveway of a brand new 4 story dorm. Construction wasn’t complete, but Cathy and a few other students had been invited to live here. They had applied late to the college, and ended up with the best rooms!

Cathy’s room was on the second floor and it was no different than any other college dorm, except that there were three beds (a single and bunk beds) in the space that would usually hold only two people. And there was no desk or bookshelves, only the beds. There was a private bathroom, however. Cathy’s room was spotless, and she was so proud to show it to us!

We dropped Cathy at the college entrance as we left. Michael glowed for the rest of the day.

During our Christmas 2006 trip, Michael got word from a teacher friend that there were two Muslim boys in serious trouble. Their mother had been dead for a while and the father had just died unexpectedly. The teacher was allowing the boys to live at her house, but she said she couldn’t keep them permanently and she had no money at all for school fees. The boys were twins, though one was two years ahead of the other in school. We met them then, and they were incredibly touched that Americans cared about them. We checked in with them last summer and they were doing very well in a Muslim school.

We were visiting them at Nile College, which is not Muslim. Grace went in to get them, but the head master insisted that I come in before he would allow the boys to come out. I talked to the head master, a young man from Ntenda, for a few minutes before one of the boys knocked on his door. I opened it and walked out. Katon Hussein (Collins) and Wasswa Hassan (Howards) were a little out of breath from running to meet me. They shook and shook and shook my hand, and they were both talking at once.

Last summer, the twins said their uncle sold the place where they had been living. The place had belonged to their father and they expected to live their forever, but the uncle sold it. He promised that he would care for them, but he insisted they move to their current location because he wanted them in a day school. They moved as he suggested, and they said he seemed to care about them. His wife, however, was a different thing. She didn’t want them eating up their food. She assigned them chores that were impossible to complete on school days. And she began telling the uncle that the boys were lazy, that they were gossips sharing his secrets in the street.

Finally, the uncle began to listen to his new wife. The boys said he began to scream at them at every opportunity. And this week, he had told the kitchen staff to stop feeding them. The only meal they were getting was the hot lunch at school, not enough for growing boys. And he had told them they could no longer sleep under his roof.

So these 15 year old boys had no place to live, not enough to eat, and no prospects at all to make things any different. I talked to the head master about boarding them at this school, but the price was very, very high. He said if I brought him more students he would look at his price, but that it was firm for these boys at about $750 per year each.

I talked with Grace and Vincent for a bit. They felt that the story was exactly true and that the boys were in serious trouble. They said they would look for two openings in a less expensive boarding school. Until then, we didn’t have a lot to offer.

So we loaded the boys up with all the food we were carrying. I gave them 10,000 shillings, which would buy a lot of food stall food in that area. And we told them not to worry. I hope we can move quickly enough to prevent a disaster here.

I take back my criticism of the road to Kassanda, or at least the part about that being the worst road in Uganda. The road to Butinindi is much worse! We hadn’t been on this road in four years, but it hadn’t improved with time. It felt very much like riding on a washboard with holes in it! We shook and shook and shook, then wham, the bottom would fall out as Vincent slipped into a pot hole. One of the holes was so deep I believe it was a gate to Narnia!

We had one small boy to see at the end of this very long and bouncy road: Senono Mavin (Gary). Senono is a very funny little boy. He is so full of energy and life. He has a huge smile that is absolutely infectious. He was a boarder at Rasa Model Day School, which was a bit old and shabby. He had on his shoes from Christmas, which were still at least three sizes too big for him.

I asked how he got here. His mother took him out of his school in Ntinda and moved him here to live with relatives. His teacher was very concerned. She said he wasn’t being cared for at all by these people and he was possibly being abused. She said he needed help. Grace agreed to call the mother, who is still in her place in Ntinda. Beyond that, we’ll have to see.

Someone came up with a great idea: we had a very large number of small crayon sets. There were 13 left in our box, so they sent Mavin back into the school to bring out 13 friends for this gift. I believe the boy grew a foot as he started back through the school gate.

It took him quite a while to gather up the kids. We expected to be swarmed and we were bracing for the deluge of children. We expected many more than Senono’s 13 would be coming out. But when we looked at the gate, out came Senono leading a reasonably straight line of 13 kids. They stopped and didn’t say a word until we spoke to them. Their eyes were huge. They didn’t particularly want to be near us. But there was not a sound from these kids. And they were an interesting group! Senono had chosen boys and girls, some obviously older than he and some obviously younger. I still can’t believe how well these kids behaved!

The road into St. John Senior Secondary School leads into a huge primary school. We entered the gate and pulled into chaos! The younger kids were having lunch, and they came running to see the Mzungu! We all jumped out. Angie and Danielle were immediately swarmed by kids. Angie organized her mob into a huge circle and it began to turn faster and faster until a young boy fell. Danielle led hers in the same exercise, but she never developed the style that Angie had. What Danielle had that no one else in the world has is an ability to make very strange faces. She led a huge group of kids in making a very strange assortment of faces, and I got everyone on my camera!

After a wonderfully long time, Nassimbwa Esereda (Marilyn) came to see us from the secondary school next door. This girl seemed to be on the ball. And she still loves math!

As we were preparing to leave, I saw one of the most amazing things ever. A young teacher walked up to the group of children. She began talking in a normal tone. The mass of kids quieted down almost instantly. Every little eye was focused on the teacher. In a normal tone, she said, “Let us thank our visitors for coming to see us.”

There was a chorus of “Thank yous.”

“And now it is time for us to go back to our room. Can we go there now please?” A mass of yellow, the uniforms on the backs of these kids, began to move across the plaza to their classroom. We didn’t see or hear another word from this teacher or her class.

We found three more students at New Style Primary School and soon found ourselves outside the gates waiting to see Zawedde Hilda (Tom and Linda). Grace went in first as was usually the case, but she returned after a while saying the head master wanted to see me. I followed her back to the Administration Offices and me the Dean of Students. He was trying to locate Hilda. Grace and I talked for a few minutes with the gentleman. He told us to stay put and we did. We waited for a long time, until I asked Grace if there was any way we could be at the wrong school. She said no, but eventually she began to doubt herself. She made a call, then announced that we were at the wrong branch of this school. We left as quickly as we could!

Our last stop for the day was at Caltec Academy. Mabuye Julius (Ron and Judy) wants very much to be a doctor. Last year was his S6 year and although he worked hard, he didn’t complete all the required reading. He wasn’t granted a certificate, so there was no way for him to start university. So Julius went back to a different school to take S6 over again.

We were at the end of a heavy shower, so the roads around Julius’ place had been transformed into gigantic mud puddles. Pot holes became a very serious concern because under these conditions, it was possible to slip into a pot hole and not get out. Vincent called Julius to get directions to where he was. In a few minutes, he came walking into the campus. Julius has now grown significantly taller than me!

We talked about his school work and his plans. He seems very determined, but once again has no backup plan if he struggles on his exam again. He simply said he wouldn’t fail to get into medical school in the fall! He asked us to come see his place. It was about 4 blocks from his school. It was a tall, building with a lot of outdoor decks. And there was a college male on every single one of them! Word seemed to pass very quickly that there were Mzungu women in this van because within minutes, men were staring at us from all directions. Two men even took off their shirts and began lifting weights for all the world to see.

Julius lives on the fourth floor and he wanted us to come up and see his place. We quickly decided that it would be better if I didn’t try to climb the narrow, dark stairs. The ladies didn’t want any part of going alone into Julius’ building.

We returned to the van and Vincent drove us home. We rested for half an hour, then went down to dinner. We put in our orders as soon as we arrived at Kiwatule (more than an hour ago).Vincent decided to eat with us, so he had a table when we walked back into the dining room. It was the first time this trip Vincent had come with us without the others. We had a very nice evening, waiting more than an hour (even with the orders turned in early) for our food, talking, laughing. I had grilled tilapia with some sort of sauce that was very, very greasy.

We had visited 11 schools and added 22 children to our “Visited List.”