Day 2 - Seed Secondary School: You are most welcome!

We got up at 6:00 this morning for a 7:00 departure. We were visiting our first school of this trip. We filled traveling mugs with hot tea and packed some granola bars for a quick breakfast snack along the way. Phoebe’s car was loaded with over 400 kits and a bunch of teaching materials. We felt ready!

We had been warned that Uganda is a mess of traffic jams due to road work. During the run up to the Ugandan election last November lots of projects were started to encourage people to re-elect the current president. Once he was announced the winner the work pretty much ground to a halt leaving the roads all torn up and travel slow and difficult. Such was our experience today. We arrived at our destination three minutes before our 11:30 scheduled appointment.

We were welcomed the way I always remember Ugandan greetings…”You are most welcome. I love that.

Seed school is a government run school. It was built two years ago and it’s beautiful. Phoebe’s former secondary school teacher, Emanuel, is headmaster there. He is determined to change the face of government schools. He is kind but strict and exacts excellence from his teachers. It is often the practice in these schools for teachers to not show up or not teach well because they’ll get paid regardless. Emanuel doesn’t put up with this. Students travel from as far as 15 kilometers away. They come on foot or ride their rickety bikes through sun or rain and mostly in the dark having to start early and leave quite late. The school day is longer than most school as Emanuel wants these children to catch up to grade level and for this extra time is needed. I keep thinking a student really has to want to be there to manage this schedule.

Students who attend Seed Secondary often travel up to 15 kilometers from their homes.

We entered a space consisting of three rooms with adjoining doors flung wide open. 400 girls were waiting for us. The smiles and greetings from these students caused a lump in my throat. I’d missed this last year when we couldn’t travel and was happy to remember the joy it brings me.

Phoebe started the class and in two minutes Zak leaned over and whispered to me, “she’s GOOD!” I said “I told you”. Phoebe wraps those girls around her baby finger; getting them to answer questions, ask questions and pay apt attention. It was such fun to watch her work her magic again. Once she’d been with the girls for a while she turned the whole thing over to Brynn and me. I was rusty to say the least but eventually I warmed up and with Brynn hamming it up modeling the menstrual pad we managed to do ok. We worked together to teach plotting one’s cycle, and kit care and handed out MoonCatcher kits to all those girls.

Meanwhile Phoebe and Zak taught the boys. Phoebe has a magic way with young boys. She gets them to fully participate and feel at ease. Zak had fun helping, though the questions for him had nothing to do with puberty and everything to do with the US, but he was happy to answer them.

We later heard that the students were thrilled and parents called the school to say thank you. Wow! That made us so proud and happy

It took us a good long time to get home too. We got a flat tire on the way and stopped for dinner too. My pal Helen had sent me left over shillings from her last visit to Uganda and we used them to feed ourselves tonight. Thank you Helen!

A great message for all of us.

It’s after midnight and this is pushing things for me. It was a productive happy day. I am so happy to be back in Uganda!