Can I Get A What What?

Today we had a meeting with nine out of the twelve schools located in this district that we are in. They were represented by the Head Masters, or as we would say, Principles. It was a nice meeting. We spent a little bit of time telling them what we were doing there and spent most of the time hearing from them as to some of the frustrations they were having in trying to teach these children under these circumstances. What you learn very quickly is that they have what seems to be an impossible task,

What we have learned is that most of these kids don't have the word "breakfast" in their vocabulary. They start their day doing domestic work for the family. This work may be working in the fields, it could be hauling water to the hut, or it could be any number of things that just need to be done on a daily basis in order to survive. Regardless, it has to be done before they start their, what could be up to five kilometer, walk to school. And if you have an infant brother or sister, your probably taking them to school with you.

What I'm getting at is that for most of these kids, their first meal of the day could and usually comes at eight to ten o'clock at night. It's just in time for them to go to bed and get ready to start the whole thing over again the next morning. Fortunately, some of the kids are sponsored and they at least get lunch. The other sixty percent (60%) don't get that luxury. That's weird, I just called lunch a luxury.

Having text books to learn from seems to be another problem. In this area, the text book to student ratio seems to be about one for every twenty students. So forget being able to take your work home. On top of that, many of the students don't have paper to write on or a pencil to write on the paper if they had it. The things we take for granted every day....... copy machine, stapler, pens, pencils, white-out, paper, post-it notes, computers, google, the list goes on and on. We have information at our finger tips. Many of these kids have never even seen what they look like let alone what an elephant or a lion looks like.

There were a couple of really simple request. One was for us to provide balls for the kids to play with. Another was pens for the kids to be able to write with. We had both of those and had already planned on surprising them with those items. Another request was for bibles for the students. Can you imagine a Principle at one of our schools asking for a bible to give their students? I love that request. We really need to make that happen.

The last request that really stood out today is really going to stick out to the females that are reading this blog. They need sanitary napkins for the girls. The teachers keep really good statistics on the students. They can tell you how many girls are in each grade. The older a girl gets, the less likely she is to come to school. They attribute not having the napkins to being one of the leading causes of a girl dropping out of school. Can you imagine why? Its something that is so simple yet so life changing. A product taken for granted everyday back home, yet so life changing here. There has to be a way to correct this problem and it shouldn't be rocket science.

I ended my day in the Village with a visit to the hut of the two kids that I sponsor. Some of you already know from my previous trips that the girl that I have sponsored has had a baby girl. Today I had an opportunity to meet the father of that baby. We had a great talk. I learned that he is trying to raise the money to pay the dowry of four cows. He already has two of the cows. He looked me right in the eye and never backed down. The Ugandan men that were with me from Hope Chest came away from that meeting very impressed with the young man. I must say that I was to. He told me that he loved Phoebe and he would work very hard to not only take care of Phoebe and the baby, but also Emma, Phoebe's little brother. I ended my conversation by telling him that if there was to be a wedding wile I was still here, he would probably get a very nice wedding present.

Keep us in your prayers.

With Love,

Tom Cox