Well, I've managed to contract my first (and hopefully only) case of travellers' diahhrea - not a fun experience. Thursday evening my stomach started acting up and by Friday morning I was out of commission. However, the antibiotics the doctors perscribed for me before I left did their job and I felt much better by Friday night - save for the short bouts of severe naucea, I think it was a side effect of the antibiotic (cure the diahhrea, make you want to vomit).
Friday our supplies FINALLY arrived as well - which means we can finally really start working. We recieved the gravel, sand, and cement for the concrete mixture (which I'm becoming relatively familiar with), barbed wire, and angle bars/fence posts. We are just waiting on the chain link to come, but that probably won't happen until we get the posts - hopefully by Tuesday or Wednesday. We're hopeful that this project will be finished before we go on safari so that we can start helping with other odd jobs around the compound and the school.
Thursday we were taken to two of the local primary schools near us and were able to see the students and the classrooms. What I saw astounded me - I'm still trying to process everything four days after the fact! The primary schools run from P1 to P7, with many more students in the lower grades than in the upper grades. In both schools many of the class sizes were well over 100, close to 130/150 students for one or two teachers. Can you imagine such a high student to teacher ratio? I couldn't believe it. Not only were many of the classrooms themselves overcrowded, but many of them were also lacking supplies - one school didn't have any desks for the younger children, they sat on the floor all day (8-5 with no lunch). At the same school, government funded, the older students were given desks but they were learning in unfinished buildings.
Relatively recently the government mandated that all primary education is free for all students. While this a good idea in theory, the reality of what has happened doesn't seem good at all. many schools are running on little to no supplies, they cannot provide lunches for the students (and the parents will not send the students with lunches from home), students have very long workdays, and the schools are severely overcrowded. It's hard to imagine that students learn adequately in these conditions - perhaps it speaks to the high drop-out rate as the grades progress.... My thoughts on the school system are still too jumbled to really say any more about right now, the pictures, when I get back, can speak for themselves.
A few people were also given the opportunity to visit the local public hospital. When they came back I couldn't believe what they saw - I've seen one of the hospitals here but didn't realize how private it was until they talked about what they'd seen. What really stuck out to me was the conditions of the actual wards: chickens running loose throughout. Can you imagine? A pedatrics ward of 120 patients with only four nurses. Highly infectious patients nearest the doors into other hospital areas. Overcrowded beds and wards. Lack of mosquito nets. Make you feel really lucky with US facilities no matter how long the wait may be....
We also went into town for the weekend and stayed a local hotel. We were able to walk around and really see Mbale Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the time this weekend poolside. What a great way to combat todays heat (and, of course, replace the healed sunburn with a newer, larger one). But, the best part about it, was that we could eat food that we knew was safe just fine: cheese, butter, unboiled water (bottled), juices, cheese, meat, chocolate. It was amazing - I had GOOD pizza and gnocci and sausage and chocolate pudding. Now, I'm ready to go back for another two weeks of rice and beans - then we may need to take another trip to the hotel for the afternoon for the sake of eating some food and swimming for an afternoon (or getting an hour massage - a good one - for $25).
Dinner's out, so I'm going to end for tonight. I'll post as soon as I can.
Oh - and don't forget to watch the World Cup tonight, the final match: Netherlands versus Spain is on!
are you ok???? I know you're far away from the capital, but still. Such a tragedy.
ReplyDeleteInteresting bit about the schools there. I met a guy who started a boarding school for orphans in Uganda, probably about an hour south of where you are. Despite how overcrowded it seems, at least in Kenya, he found kids that wanted to go to school and to get an education SO BADLY but often couldn't; he set up an individual sponsorship program for it. Made me sad to think about all the elementary school kids here in the US that say they hate school, etc.
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