Out in the Field

Field work in this district has been challenging.  We have visited 7 schools, had meetings at 2 district offices, met with the Education CAO of the district, visited a Community Library and none of them were near each other!  I would love to know how much mileage we covered in the four days.

We stayed in Soroti, as there is a halfway decent hotel there, but all our work was in the Dokolo District and the Amolotar District.  Doloko is 70 km from Soroti on a good tar road, but schools were quite spread out and we had to leave really early each morning in order to reach the schools in time.  But Amolotar was another kettle of fish!  Turning off at Dokolo we followed a very bumpy road for about an hour and a half to reach Amolotar Town, and then it was at least another half an hour ro the schools.  The team was so eager for us to do masses of things that they had 3 schools visits planned for each day as well as interviews with community and Department Officials.  Eventually we had to put our foot down and say it was impossible to do it all – we have been leaving between 6 and 7 each day and never getting back to the hotel before 6, and we were getting exhausted.

The other major challenge is the loos!  I knew they wouldn’t “be up to my specifications” as Helen, our colleague in Mombasa said, so I limited my liquid intake – just half a cup of tea at breakfast, sips of water when I could have drunk a whole bottle it was so hot, being careful not to eat too much fruit – but there were still numerous times I had to find a loo – and only once was it a loo as I’m used to.  Holes in the ground might be the way it’s done in Africa, but I am not very good at it!  I always feel sorry for whoever has to follow me.  I learnt to wear dresses and skirts and to carry my tissues wherever I went – as well as my hand cleaner.  The best wee was in the bushes when the loos were so bad that even the kids didn’t want to go in.

But on the plus side, the field work has been amazing.

In the Amolatar district, Gulzar and I were a curiosity, with the kids into whose classes we went, giggling and looking at us under veiled lids, and bigger kids peering in the windows. We were meeting teachers in the playground and the kids crowded so close we were afraid of being smothered and the prefects had to keep them away with sticks! And all they wanted was to have their photo taken.

Sitting under the mango trees in the deep shade for all our meetings was another pleasure.  The trees are big, the shade is dense and it is so wonderful to have a meeting in that setting.  We also shared some meals with teachers and members of the team – the Office team arranged for the meal to be brought each day so we could all eat together.  I will admit I wasn’t brave enough for goat, chicken or turkey and ate mostly rice and beans, but I was a bit adventurous with millet porridge – really chewy brown stywe pap, and even some smoked fish which I ate with my fingers because there were no forks.

Working with the team was another joy – not just our immediate team of Gulzar, Katherine and me, but the AKF team – Amina, Daniel, Semmy, Barbara, Henry, Robert, Irene and a whole lot more. They are such warm and generous people – Amina lent me her modem and insisted on charging it with airtime.  Daniel and Irene went and sorted out a sim card for my phone – not their fault it didn’t work because it takes a long time for the card to be registered J.  Every day Amina organised tea and fruit for us – Gulzar said she liked pineapple and so there was some waiting for us each morning when we arrived.  Tom our driver was a treasure – he drove so carefully on the bad roads so we wouldn’t get bumped too much, slowed down and even stopped when we wanted to take photos and generally looked after us all day.

And despite the bad roads, there was so much to keep us entertained – trees that fascinated wuth their colours and foliage, cows with huge horns, goats of all colours, but the black and white spotted ones were my favourite, chickens with a death wish as the skeltered into the road in fromt of the cars, kids in their bright uniforms waving and laughing and swimming in the swampy areas, bicycles carrying varied cargoes, from elegantly dressed women in their silky dresses, to bags of charcoal, pots, live goats and bags of mangoes.

As we drove back tonight we sang softly and recited snatches of half remembered songs – children’s songs, like BINGO, as we were all pre-school teachers; beloved poems like The Owl and the Pussycat, Jabberwocky, Girl Guide songs, like Land of the Silver Birch and This little Guiding Light of mine.  It was a mellow end to a busy week.

A long trip to Kampala tomorrow and then home on Saturday night.