Ruhanga Development Centre, Uganda

It has taken an hour long trip in the back of a pick-up truck next to freshly slaughtered pigs to get to an internet cafe! We really are in rural Uganda at our new project... there was a power cut in town so I couldn't access an internet cafe! To get 3G we have to walk up a hill - and it's sooo slow! Anyway...

After a long and tiresome trip from Zanzibar, and a 7 hour bus journey from Kampala, we arrived at Ruhanga Development Centre, situated between Mbarara and Ntungamo, the main to Rwanda.

The centre was opened approximately 5 years ago by an English woman and a Uganda man, Denis, and they started by placing 20 taps around Denis’s home village.  They then surveyed the village to find out what else was needed, and a school was decided.

We live in a beautiful valley and regularly take a walk up the hills. I feel like we are surrounded by the Malvern Hills covered in banana plantations.  It is very green, lush and the people are very friendly with a reasonable command of English.  We do, however, want to keep speaking Swahili out of habit as we’d got so used to speaking bits each day.  We will slowly learn Runyankole, but teaching is all instructed in English, so it may not be needed

The school currently has classes from nursery to P6, although the ages in class vary and can be as high as 16 years.  The school has been very well resourced by donations and fundraising continues.  A medical clinic has just been finished, and volunteer doctors have been giving family planning advice and nutrition advice.  New classrooms and a library have been built and the next project in construction is a boarding section and a sports field, as well as more volunteer accommodation.

On our first day, we took the hour trip to the larger town to get sorted with phone and stock up on extra food (as meals here are very basic and mostly vegetarian, much to Rich’s disappointment!)  The Matutu ride home, however, took over 2 hours!

Our first day of work involved moving desks to new classrooms, removing irrelevant posters, washing down desks.  Rich busied himself mending broken shelves, and I worked on the sports equipment inventory (much like my normal job of cleaning out the sports storeroom!!).   We have also whittled signs out of wood for each classroom.

             

                                 

At the start of the second week, we had 3 days of teacher training.  This was fantastic and run by two primary school teachers from the UK.  They taught the teachers here how to make their classes more interactive, rather than the traditional way of teaching that they are used.  This has lead to us being very busy and we have spent the rest of the week making learning charts and interactive games and activities from old sacks, cardboard, water bottles, beans, bottle tops.

 

Most evenings we sit in an open room with a fire and a pool table.  There is a small bar available for all types of drink purchases, which turns into a dance floor on Friday nights! When you sip 100ml of gin or vodka from plastic sachets, these nights can get messy!

School begins again on Monday 19^th May and then we will become very busy after our Gorilla Trek!