This is going to be a long one since I am trying to share all about the school we are supporting so go get some caffeine: coffee, tea or if you are my sister, Joe, or Genn, a diet coke with lime. Pastor Hummer named the school New Rays of Hope School, but it seems to be constantly changing. It became New Rays of Hope Orphanage and School, then Rays of Hope School for Orphans and Needy Children and the last thing I saw printed out was Ray of Hope Widows and Orphanage Care Centre. We try to pick our battles. Tim and I just call it “the school”.
In a few weeks, it will be a year since we met Pastor Hummer Ochim, his wife Alice and their 4 children: Derek, Calvert, Barbara and Mercy. Besides being the pastor of his church of about 25 people, he had started a school for orphaned and severely needy children who could not afford to go to school in the Banda area of Kampala. When we visited his school, and saw the 30 students, the conditions there were dire. They gathered in a makeshift room made of a few boards and papyrus mats and along with a few nearly “volunteer” teachers, they did their best to teach and care for these kids. They fed them half a cup of posho (porridge) for lunch and this would be their only meal of the day. Hummer and his family were barely getting by in their 8X10 brick shack, his kids were malnourished and one of them had malaria.
We spent most of our time last October with Hummer and the school and did what we could to improve their conditions. Over the last year, through emails, letters, phonecalls, and Tim’s visit in March, we have been able to help this school move and grow into a school full of children that would not have had the opportunity to go to school otherwise. We have been so fortunate to have had our friends, Kim and Marty Berg, living here while we were in Canada. They were able to oversee the distribution of our funds and track what was going on with the school.
When we arrived this July, the kids at the school were on a break and they have since started back (Sept. 17th) for their third and final term of the year. They are opposite from us and start the new school year at the beginning of February. Considering the staff had been basically left alone to try to figure out how to run a school and the many programs they do for the kids and widows, they have done amazingly well. Are there LOTS of things to change, improve, stop altogether, add and organize? Oh yes, overwhelmingly so. Sometimes we feel like we are on another planet. There are lots of challenges with the culture, education and language, and we can see why so many people quit helping shortly after coming here, it can be very frustrating. Good thing Tim and I are both so stubborn, our moms can confirm this! We just have to look at the children to remember why we are here.
Ok, more about the school itself. Hummer found the piece of land to rent while we were in Canada and started to have the school and church built on it. Tim helped them finish it last March. Would we have picked this land? No, but that is a whole other story, we are keeping our eyes open for something more suitable. The entire school and church can be taken apart and moved at any time. We cannot build anything too permanent there since it is rented land and the landlord has already increased our rent because we have buildings on it. It needs a major facelift, but is fine for now.
Currently, we are reaching 200 students. We have 6 classes, JK (called Baby Class in Uganda), SK (called Top Class) and Primary 1-4 (called P1-P4). When school starts next February we will have to start a P5 class and so on as the years progress. We have 6 teachers and two teaching assistants, one of which will become the P5 teacher in February. The teacher’s names are Edith, Irene, Christine, Leah, Mercy, James, Gertrude and Lillian. There is a cook who starts the fire early and prepares all of the food for the meals, her name is Celina. There is a school accountant/secretary named Christine who is amazing and can do anything. Esther is the school social worker. Esther identifies the children’s immediate and long term needs, finds out what their home situation is, does their trauma counselling, finds the worst houses for Tim to fix, deals with their Moms and their varying situations etc. I have become the administrator, trying to figure out all of their systems and get everything organized. I have a huge job ahead of me!
Baby Class and Top Class come to school from 8-1 and P1-P4 stay until 5pm. This is common in the poor areas as kids tend to get into trouble if they have too much time on their hands and they are usually safer and happier at school than at home. They have a breakfast break at in the morning, porridge with a little bit of sugar on top. For lunch, they have various combinations of rice, beans, greens, matoke (looks like a banana, taste like a potatoe), meat, eggs etc. We are going to start including some more fruits and veggies. These are usually the only meals the children get in the day, so we want them to be yummy and nutritious. There is no power at the school, so storage of any food that can spoil is an issue. About half of the children show up at the school on Saturdays for our feeding program where they can get lunch and do crafts and activities organized by Hummers church. When the school is on a break, the children who need extra help still come to meet with the teachers and get extra help.
The school follows the Ugandan curriculum and P1-P4 classes take an exam in each subject at the end of each term. Their worst subjects appear to be reading and writing. It is difficult for them because at school they learn English but at home their caregivers or moms and entire community speak only Luganda or one of 50 other languages spoken in Uganda. We are looking forward to having our Moms (both retired teachers) here early next year to help tackle this issue.
Every Friday, Tim takes each class on a 10 minute walk to a large field at a big government school. That school has allowed us to use the field on Fridays for sports and games. Many of the kids from that school join in with our school, so they have lots of fun playing together. There is no space to play at Hummer’s school except for in the church so this is a big thrill for both students and teachers. We are just completing a small medical clinic on the school grounds to better take care of and track malaria and typhoid and all of the little cuts and scrapes that happen at school. This set up will save us having to pay fees to other clinic and doctors which really add up. We are in the process of hiring a nurse. We can do this for around $1000 a year. The funds for the clinic and the nurse have both been donated by two cool couples in Canada! What an amazing gift to these precious kids! The nurse will have other duties as well such as being in charge of the meal planning and helping the cook, who is getting a little too busy cooking for and serving almost 200 twice a day.
We will slowly work on the school improvements. We need desks in the office, a filing cabinet of sorts, textbooks for the teachers, school supplies for the kids, some sports equipment, a better toilet system, a better water system, a counter for the cook to serve from, a storage room, a church office, a few shelves in each classroom, desks and chairs for the teachers, more uniforms, some more cooking pots and pans and dishes for the kids, a microscope for the clinic, school benches, and the list goes on. Tim can build a lot of the stuff and we will start to slowly purchase the other stuff as our budget allows. We are just happy to finally be here and able to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Thanks to everyone who has us in their thoughts and prayers, maybe one day you will come to visit or work with “the school”.
I'm sure the biggest question on your minds is "how do we pay for all of this?" You know it's true. Let me answer this with total transparency. Well, when we were in Canada, our friends had access to our account and took money out monthly to pay for everything. We now have a few people donating towards the school so Tim and I are paying for about half of the school costs plus any extra projects and "stuff" we feel we need for the school, and donors are paying the other half of the cost of sustaining the school. As requested, we list other needs on the Help the Kids page. We will cover whatever is not picked by you guys on that page. We are paying for our rent, flights, girls tuition, car and montly expenses with money from the sale of our house. Will our own money run out eventually? Absolutely, it won't take long but we plan on coming back for the summers so that Tim can go back to framing and I can do dental hygiene in order to support ourselves. We will also continue to renovate our house in Caledon for a future sale. One thing is perfectly clear to us now, we know that we have to be here on the ground in order to help to this extent, and in order to guide and oversee all the funds and projects, we just can't do it from Canada. If I have left anything out and you have any questions, please email us at tim@hippoafrica.com or karen@hippoafrica.com .Click on the youtube link to see the video of the school. There are more photos of the school and kids on the photo page.
