Mbale Time

I traveled to Mbale this week. I adore Mbale – if I ever buy land in Uganda I imagine it would be in Mbale. On the way, the bus passes through wetlands where fields of papyrus stretch before you, the morning mist encasing the distant trees. Women work with bent backs and swift hands in rice fields and the maze grows in stiff, stubborn rows. Uganda is such a fertile country, and it rains more in the east, making Mbale even more green and lush.

We work with 4 schools in Mbale – 1 government, 3 private schools. Unlike the West, government schools are generally better run and the teachers are better paid than at private schools. At the start of our programs, I was most worried about Mbale High School, the one government school we work with. The classrooms are overcrowded, the teachers are overworked and underpaid, and I expected the kids to be defeated. They have proven me entirely wrong. The essay competition cluster winner from Mbale cluster was an Mbale HS student.

We met with their SEC (social entrepreneurship club) – the boys are growing “flowers” (more like a bushy plant) to sell to their school and the surrounding community. The girls are making tablecloths. We talked with them about how to make their business model a social model by teaching skills to other women in the community. By training and having these women produce for them, they would have more volume to sell and would be providing skills and some labour salary to the community. Next step is a detailed business plan for both the boys and the girls. The president of their SEC was a rather pompous boy called Kenneth, who started his speech to us by saying “the human mind is a fundamental resource” and then asked Eric how to “get greater thinking capacity in life”. Nice one dude. In Africa, there are always a lot of positions created. Any club/organization/school will have multiple positions. For example, not only do schools have prefects but they’ll have cleaning prefects! Along with Kenneth the president, we also met Christopher the “planning minister”, Alex the “organizing minister”, Ben the “peer mentor minister”, Ibrahim the “disciplinary minister”, Prosy the “finance minister” and….Solomon the “assistant disciplinary minister”.

At Hamdan Girls School, the girls are energetic and outspoken. My first visit to this school last year, I had forgotten to bring a skirt (most likely a subconscious decision) and they had refused to let me enter the school grounds. While they allow me to enter without a headscarf, they require Esther (the Mbale mentor) to cover her head which she’s quite uncomfortable with. Despite the rigid rules, the girls are very forthright and spoke to us of how the SRLC (socially responsible leadership course) had increased their confidence and public speaking skills. One girl said the course helped her “to be firm about what you want in your future”. The girls are planning a chapatti stand at their school to raise initial start up capital before buying seedlings and planting trees. While they have a secure market (their own school community), we pushed them to think about how their chapatti stand would be different from other chapatti stands. I suggested marketing a “mini chapatti” that can be purchased and munched on quickly in between classes.

Mt. Masaba High School was one of Educate!’s pilot partner schools. Two Educate! advisory board members sit on the board of this progressive private school that aims to have 50% Christian and 50% Muslim students to promote understanding between the two religions. To our surprise, Mt. Masaba has been our biggest problem school – in Term 1, they only completed half of the scheduled lesson plans. My job was to address the students and push them to take the course more seriously. It had to be a delicate balance between chastisement and encouragement. When we asked the students why they were taking the course, most of them said “to acquire new knowledge and skills”. So I talked about how the amount of knowledge they were receiving was half of what their fellow Educate! scholars were getting because they were not committed to showing up for class. We questioned them why they had missed so many classes. A slew of excuses followed – exams, sickness, being sent home for school fees, scheduling conflicts… I pointed out that our other schools had similar issues, but they managed to work around them. Not everything is smooth in life – things happen that are outside of your control. What matters the most is how you take on these challenges. Do you let them take over (and thereby lose a free resource provided to you that you should take advantage of?) or do you work to find a new solution (schedule a make up class). After a bit of cajoling, Esther then taught her lesson, which was the “I can” & “proactivity” lesson. The main message of the lesson is that your choices are the greatest creative force in your life and the world would be a different place if people blamed history instead of making history. By the end of 3 hours I think we had the students pretty damn committed to coming to class and creating change through their SEC.

Other than running around Mbale town trying to find a TV that played Wimbledon (I mean hello, it’s Wimbledon! Pimms please!) we also managed to have dinner with Madanda (advisory board member and founder of Mt. Masaba) and Lydia (deputy at our 4th partner school in Mbale, Nabumali) and Lydia’s husband Richard. I had wanted to read some of the A level English literature taught in schools and Lydia had recommended “Upon This Mountain” by a certain Dr Timothy Wangusa. Written about a boy named Mwambu who grows up in the Mbale area, this book was one of the most sexist books I’ve ever read. Being Emily, I launched into a MASSIVE tirade of the book over dinner. I’m used to Ugandan textbooks blaming much of what is deemed wrong in modern Ugandan society on “the whites”. Textbooks will dryly teach students that “prostitution, homosexuality, pornography and bestiality all originate in the West”. Indeed, in “Upon This Mountain”, the only real “white” character in the book in a certain Revered Graves who is caught by Mwambu (the protagonist) having sex with his crush and schoolmate on the church altar. The white Reverend is of course then “the masked monster in a white human shape”.

This one sided view presented in an A level text is nothing in comparison to the author’s complete distaste of women. Every woman in the novel is either weak, or a slut. Mwambu’s mother is beaten by her husband. He is then raped by a promiscuous, “loose” woman who takes advantage of him and then bears his child. His school crush is also a slut and sleeps with the Reverend. The wife of Reverend Graves is a despicable woman who everyone hates. There is not one example of a morally upright, confident female role model in 116 bloody pages! The part where I nearly burnt the book was the sentence “He walked at a steady, adult pact, periodically shifting his bag from his masculine arm to his feminine one”. I mean, OBVIOUSLY the WEAK arm is the feminine one for this sexist pig of an author!!

During my massive tirade, Lydia (who’s a large and jolly woman who knows everyone and their mother in Mbale) giggled away while she was listening to me. Richard (her husband) was also listening to me with a quiet smile. Then they mentioned that they know the author……niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice one Emily……..Bravo! Happily, I’m sure I didn’t offend. I insisted they invite me next time they have him around for dinner, mwahahahaha. Apparently the man has a daughter who also writes. Her book is next on my list…keep you posted.