Fort Portal's day of horror

Briget and her mother Bonny in our garden last year.

9.15 this morning a text from a friend told me that there had been a serious fire over night at the primary school where one of our Ugandan Children, Briget, boards. No answer of course from the school which had other things to think about but by 10.00 Briget's cousin, whom we also are helping, through nursing school, had found Briget at home having been rescued by the mother of another child in the schooland kept over night. As the day wore on the number of deaths has increased from six to seventeen, mostly the younger ones in the school and no doubt the toll will increase further. Two other members of university staff have children in the school and fortunately both are all right. Bridget lost every stitch of clothing and other possesions she had as, quite correctly, they were allowed to take nothing out. Identification is impossible it seems. I think there will be very few people in town who are unaffected.
How the fire started is unknown at present, and may be never will be. There was no power that night, [we are on 24hrs off 24hrs] so it cannot have been electrical. Bridget tells me there were no candles, but maybe we will hear differently in time. Candles are a menace in schools and this would not be the first burned down due to children going to sleep and leaving a candle burning.
The current story is that one of the girls in the senior school was caught on her third outing to the disco and punished by the Head. She threatened him that he would suffer more than she did. Later that evening she got a fit and was taken by friends, including Briget, to the chapel where they prayed with/for her. She was still in a very 'excited' state when she went to bed and articles were moving around in the dormitory. Later that night at about 1am the girl woke up with the underside of her arm on which she was sleeping, burned and the bed on fire. Although there were fire extinguishers it seems no one knew how to use them and the nearest of the two fire engines in the country was about 250km away in Mbarara. As might be expected there was some level of panic and the small children hid rather than leaving immediately
Some hundreds of children will have to find new schools, one elderly man has lost all four of his children and another woman her only child.
I am planning to put on a course in the University on fire safety and one of the suppliers has agreed to put on demonstrations on how extinguishers should be used. We might help to save some lives sometime in the future.

Rain

General picture of tea bushes with pluckers in the background. A good worker may pluck 70kg a day
We have had a sociable time recently with visitors and parties, sadly, mostly to say good bye to friends who are leaving. One friend who has been in the country for over five years but on her first visit to Fort Portal was really impressed by the social life.
On Saturday we were invited by a friend who has bought a very interesting tea estate with a fascinating history which he is researching, We arrived down in daylight after a long and tortuous route through the estates. The roads/ tracks are designed for the harvesting of the tea not for convenience of getting around and finding friends. We discovered on arrival the the reason this particular large house being so far off the road is that the " road" we had come along used to be the old road to Kampala because it avoided having to cross the Mpanga river. Much of the time a small car and a bicycle would be a crowd, especially if it was one of the sections where the road was really two trenches deep enough to take the bottom out of anything lower than a tractor. The party was great and the venue interesting as the owner is developing a business in soaps, creams etc all made out of local materials, fully organic with no chemicals, really nice to use. Most of the pressing and other works being run off solar power, just as well at the moment when the national power is on for only 50% of the time if lucky. He tells me that the UV index frequently reaches 16 in September/October when the air has been washed clean by the rain and the sun is vertically over head. In more health conscious parts of the world anything over nine is considered off scale. Hats are important!
Before we left we had some serious rain which makes driving on dirt roads much more interesting, even in 4WD sliding sideways into the ruts. By now it was pitch dark and surprise, surprise we missed a turn. We knew other people existed somewhere because every now and again we saw the tracks of a bicycle. We were beginning to think we might bed down for the night when up a small rise we met a tarmac road. We were home and dry, there is only the one paved road within 300km so not much chance of getting lost again. Blocked again just before getting home by several vehicles which got stuck in the mud on the little hill on our side of time of town but a detour on a less used road got us home without further trouble. Bald tyres really do not work very well in mud. With a return trip to Kampala on Wednesday [600km] the we really appreciate the sealed road.
Rainy seasons reduce the malaria problem because they are colder and also most of the water is on the move sufficiently often to interfere with breeding. The beginning of the dry is the worst time.

A School story

So the elections are over. Next week we can get back to normal as each day of election has been another public holiday 4 in all, no doubt very populay with the school children, unpopular with anyone running a business and of no practical significance to people working on their land.
A friend who used to be out here in the 1960s teaching in a local school is now back there and regales us with some of the more peculiar ideas. This school used to be one of the best in the country but like all schools has had a really hard time over the last thirty five years or so. The exam results were very poor this year so they decided something needed to be done. Currently the children are up at five in the morning, 'study' to 6.30 unless they have gone to sleep at their desk, then they have breakfast, more study until classes begin at 8.30 until lunch with a short break, and then more classes in the afternoon. Since all periods are double the teachers find they cannot manage the full slot so always turn up late. Classes finish and then study can go onto 11.00pm when lights go off, unless they are left on all night.

Back to the exam results; what was the suggestion to do better in the future?? Reorganise the time-table.....No. Ensure teachers teach their full hours.....No. Feed the children better.....No. Do away with holidays ........RIGHT..clearly they are
not studying enough!!. This is why the University rates school management highly significant on the curriculum. We have a long way to go.

I do so wish Western agencies would help the country sort out its fundamental problems rather than social issues which are fashionable in the West. It is not that these are unimportant but there are so many other issues out here which must be sorted out first if the country is to progress. In particular high quality and effective education for all including girls and women. Our experience in the West is that high quality education including for women, is the absolute key to development, school education requires good teachers who need to be highly valued and who need to be graduates in large part. The effect will be slow but this is where Aid is needed. It is not possible to have sustainable engineering businesses without well trained engineeering graduates who are prepared to live and work in the Country and in the country districts etc. etc. Those of us on the ground perpetually complain that the powers who control funding have never lived and worked out here and make policy in offices where the breath of reallity and experience never penetrates. And then they wonder why development history is so full of failures.