A week ago Saturday, we arrived at the site around 11:00.  A ministry, called "Hope Alive!", wanted to build several schools on the site, equivalent to K-12 with a vocational school as well.  We were there to give some preliminary plans: where would things be?  Where could they get water and power, and how much would they need?  Where was a good place to grow things to sustain the school, and what kind of agriculture should they pursue? Though we knew that we could not walk through all 350 acres in one day, the first step was to look at the land they had purchased.

There were people living on the land - their clan had sold it to the ministry.  We waited for them to gather reed mats for us to sit on outside their huts; they also produced several chairs.  They welcomed us, and the staff with Hope Alive who accompanied us explained who we were and what we had come to do.  we were introduced to the elder of the homestead, and to several of his family.  One of his sons - Geoffery - had a middle-school education, and he served as translator.

 

Some of our team on the first walk.  The guy in front is the country director for Hope Alive!

After the meeting, we were off - first to look at their water supplies.  It's the dry season, and they draw water from an unprotected spring near the swamp.  "When we drink this water, we get stomach cramps" our guide almost cheerfully explained.  He also explained that they neither filtered nor boiled the water.  The next spring we came to looked like it was sometimes running - but not during the dry season.  Nearby a cow grazed in an unfenced pasture.

Community Water Supply

Along the way, we saw tomatos, cassava, maize, and papaya.  Further on, there were wide stretches of grassland, with sparse but majestic trees scattered throughout.  It is an African savannah.  On later days, we would return and Geoffery would lead us through the impenetrable bush with a machete.  Thorny trees, tiny chili peppers (we took them back to our guest house, and Hattie put them on everything), fuzzy pods ("if you touch these, you itch so much"), brilliant butterflies, and once, in the distance, a group of monkeys.

Every so often we passed a homestead.

We were instructed by one of the architects to look for beautiful trees.  There were plenty.

Wild peppers!  Hot!

It is a beautiful land.  And Hope Alive! has a beautiful plan for it: to provide a place where local children can come to receive a good education.  This is a rarity in the north, where more than 20 years of war have devastated local families and infrastructure.  Classrooms can reach up to 300 students, and second-graders frequently drop out because of lack of interest.  Uganda has 38 million people; half of them are younger than 15.  In this nation, education is critically important.  In this nation, 25% of children finish primary school (7th grade). (1)

In our week there, EMI was able to sketch out what that school might look like, eventually.  We also did less exciting-sounding things like water and wastewater and electricity demand, and agricultural analysis.  But it was important work, and it was good work.  During the final presentation, as we were going over questions and concerns about the plan, I was imagining what it would be like to be a student there: to start in nursery school, and advance first to primary, then to secondary school; how the student's relationship to the place would grow and develop; how they would pass by their old nursery school on the way to secondary school, and be able to join in caring for the fields that they saw on the walk to primary school.  I was reminded of my time at Berwick Academy (K-12), and how that school still feels like a safe place, like home.  If this project can accomplish any of that for some of these disenfranchised students, I will be so happy to have played such a small part in it.



(1) UNICEF, 2008 - 2012 data (percentage relayed to us by Hope Alive! was slightly lower).  http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/uganda_statistics.html; accessed February 9, 2016.