Postcards form a Backpacker

School in Uganda

Posted in Africa, Uganda,

Today its time to give something back to Africa. A British based charity Soft Power sets up and runs local schools in Uganda. This morning I am volunteering to go to a local school and paint some of the classrooms.

On the way to the school we visit two of the charity’s other projects. First a pottery for the local kids to use to express themselves and the most memorable part of the day an orphanage for young kids that have lost their parents to Aids and other diseases. At the orphanage the kids sang to us and seemed very happy to see us, as were the teachers. We sang “heads, shoulders, keens and toes” back to then and taught them the actions. When it came to leaving to head to the school we were to be painting there was one little boy of about 4 who would not let go of my hand. This made it hard to leave.

At the school we whitewashed two empty classrooms and painted some pictures on the walls of some animals on an almost completed classroom. We had a modest lunch of beans, rice and chapatti bread the played football with the kids in the field that were on lunch. A few cows shared the field but this did not stop hundreds of kids kicking the balls around in the blistering heat. Before we left we took some photos with the digital camera. The kids loved seeing themselves in the LCD screen on the back. After keeping the kids out on lunch for an extra half an hour we sent them back to class for the afternoons lessons and headed back to camp to do a village walk and visit another local school.

Comments [1]

Older