They are not unhappy! They are just giving their undivided attention!

As many of you know, we dedicated three weeks of our lives to volunteering to at a rural primary school in Uganda. As many of you also know, it didn’t take long for us to fall in love with the children that attend this school. Kyabirwa Primary School was founded in the late 1940′s. At the time of its foundation until just seven years ago all classes were held outside in a setting not much different than an Alabama farm. Children were often lectured under trees to keep out of the sun and avoid the afternoon thunderstorms. Ideal conditions on a cool summer day but not so ideal when considering a typical day in Uganda. A thunderstorm there simulates what many of us would call a monsoon. Seven years ago Kyabirwa finally received its first structures to house the children for classes. The roughly tweleve hundrend (aged 5 to 20) students now enjoy classes in 10 average sized classrooms. On a good day, there is one teacher for every other classroom. To them, this is great. To them they now have the privilege of learning in a true school and in a building. Most of the classrooms consist of several wooden desks which seat four to five students per desk. The writing space is small, very small and it´s a shame because they have a lot of it to do! There are not nearly a sufficient amount of textbooks for each child therefore all text is hand written in tiny journals. Page after page of anatomy, physics and algebra, all hand written in their own text book. The chalk boards have received no maintenance in the last seven years and they lack what you would call a smooth surface. I would now call them white boards due to the left over residue of powder on them. I could hardly read or tell if there was something written most of the time.

The school is making progress though. Just next week they will receive their first power ever. Oh what a luxury it is to have electricity. They are excited for it and in our minds this opened many new doors of modern learning. Between Ryan and I we bought the school a new paint job and its first computer…ever! Yes, their first computer ever, and I would say they were more excited about that than the electricity they were getting to make it operate. As you should know Ryan and I aren’t necessarily in a position to be just buying computers for people either. I mean we’re jobless and haven’t had an income for over four months now. Most of the time we turn down a 2 dollar taxi ride and walk a mile to save the funds. However, we realized something pretty quickly while working at Kyabirwa. We realized that the damage this gift had on our pocket will far less effect us as compared to how it will benefit them. I can sit here and tell you what it was like working at Kyabirwa and being in Uganda, but the full picture is never really painted until you get to experience it yourself. After doing this and being there, I want to do nothing more than help these children receive a better education. Before it was something that I “would like” to do someday so I can help the world and be a better person. It was an after thought at one time.

Many kids of Kyabirwa have dreams! They have big dreams. I spoke to several of them who wanted to be engineers, pilots, or artists. Its exciting to see children in a culture like this be excited about their future. What is not exciting though is when their teachers tell you that these dreams aren’t possible for them, not even close to possible. They say that most of them won’t be able to afford even secondary school let alone university. Worse yet, most of them will likely be caught up working for their Mother because Dad passed away not long ago due to a local disease. One thing I noticed with these children was that most of them were willing to work hard and that most of them tried to look at life in a positive way. Also, of all the country’s we have now been to I have never seen kids have so much fun like these kids!! They will MAKE fun out of nothing. They are always laughing, giggling or playing in any way possible. It was great to see such vibrant life but sad to think that the excitement of their life quickly goes away because they can’t follow their dreams. Kyabirwa and its children need help. The government can’t support them but people like us can. Whether it be by volunteering with them in Uganda or giving them a small donation, or even nothing. As long as you know and realize that this is how other children learn and live and realize that these children are capable of a lot, that is enough. It´s up to you. Below are some pictures of the children you could be helping through a volunteer experience. If you can’t volunteer you can easily donate. To do one or the other see http://volunteerugandaschool.org/default.aspx or email Moses Owino at owinomoses22@yahoo.com. Help the cause. This was an amazing experience and one that ill never forget!

Jamie

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