Scholarships and Students

Scholarships and Students:

            Well, I’ve had a pretty good week so far. We finished ‘survey-ing’ for the week on Saturday afternoon, and then I had the rest of the day and Sunday off. Mostly, I lazed around in the shade and did my laundry. On Monday, instead of going out with the questionnaire crew as usual, I left camp for Mbarara to help Nancy with her scholarship work. We stayed in Mbarara until Wednesday. It was wonderful. I learned a lot about the Ugandan school system, which is very complicated.

            Here’s the gist: In Uganda, there are seven primary levels (P 1-7). Before a student can enter secondary school (if they can afford it, that is), they have to take a government exam, which tests them in four different subjects: English, Math, Science, and Social Studies. The best possible mark a person can get is “aggregate 4” – it’s kind of like golf in Uganda, a low score is the best. A score of 1 is awarded to a student who gets between 90-100% in a subject, 2 for 80-90%, and so on. But a total score of 4 is a very unusual score – only the very brightest (and usually the wealthiest, who have books, tutors, helpful parents, and electricity with which to study at night) get 4. Most of the kids Nancy was interested in sponsoring had 9-20. A student who gets “aggregate 12” or above after primary school moves into division one – kind of like an honours group. The rest fall into division 2, and the very worst are in division 3. Then, if they are accepted, the children go into secondary school. Here, there are six more levels. After four levels of secondary school (levels 1-4 are called ‘ordinary’ levels, and levels 5-6 are called ‘academic’), the kids take another exam to see if can go to university, after which they move on to secondary 5-6. And how old are the students at the various levels? Well, that depends. In poor families, parents sometimes have to take their kids out of school halfway through the year because they cannot pay school fees. The child then has to repeat the year. This happened to a couple of the kids that Urban Systems Foundation (an engineering firm based in Vancouver which, through ACTS, sponsors several needy children to go to school each year. Nancy works (volunteers) for them). All this is to say that it is not unusual for students to be in their early twenties before they finish school.

            But school really is the only way out of poverty. All the students we talked to said that they want to be engineers. Funnily enough, however, most of them had no clue what an engineer does – they just know engineers make a lot of money. Teaching and nursing are also common ambitions. The nice thing about Urban Systems Foundation is that the sponsors care more about whether a student is trying his/her best and is staying out of trouble than they do about their students having tip-top grades. So even if the sponsored kids don’t have good enough grades for university, they’ll be sent to teacher’s college or will be put into a trade – welding, masonry, mechanics, that sort of thing. Nancy says the teachers at the schools are not very nice – they cane the students and yell at them all the time (a bit like Nicholas Nickleby, I’d imagine). But the students are very used to it – it is the Ugandan way. Their grandparents, parents, and teachers all went through it, and now they must brave the storm for a better future.  

            And what do the schools look like? They vary, but most consist of big, brick, open-windowed classes with wooden desks, cement floors, and a blackboard at the front of the room. There is usually also a water tap, a bathroom, a space for children to play, and sometimes a garden area. Yesterday, I visited a high school with Nancy. While she was busy paying school fees, I wandered into the girls’ dorm to have a look around. There were a few girls standing by the gate to their sleeping compound (the boys and girls have separate, gated compounds), and they were very eager for me to come in. One of them pointed to the first couple of dorms. I peeked in. They were big rooms, but packed tight with school trucks and three-level bunk-beds. By the time I had finished taking a quick look at the first room, I noticed that there was a considerably larger group of girls surrounding me (these were senior girls – so they would be from 14-21 years old). As I walked along, admiring each room and examining the water tank, more girls approached. Finally, when I entered a corridor, I was swarmed. They knew some English, and peppered me with questions:

“Where are you from?”

“Are you still in school?”

“Why are you in Uganda?”

“ACTS? What is ACTS?”

 And while I was trying to answer their questions and watching my camera (which they weren’t interested in) I noticed that some of them were touching me – feeling my skin (“It ees very smooth and nice”) and playing with my ponytail, which they found very interesting (all of them have their hair cut very short, almost bald, for low maintenance).

            You’d think that, as a no-touching, crowd-hating person, I would have felt very uncomfortable during this time. I wasn’t. Actually, I was thinking ‘I can’t wait to write about this.’ After a few more minutes, I shook everybody off, and went to find Nancy.

            Well, that’s about it for now. The only other interesting thing I can write about is witnessing a snake-killing at a primary school. Boy – those Ugandans are tough! Instead of running when they see a venomous snake, they grab sticks and large stones, and beat the thing to death. I’m not sure what kind of snake it was, but I think it was a black ‘young’ cobra.

           

Oh- that's the supper bell - must dash or I won't get any food!

            Cheers,

            Erica