CSD Education Caucus

Sabina School and Home, Uganda

A report by Rowe Morrow. July 2008. C

Thank you to Dan Palmer and Amanda Cuyler for edits. 

The following blog discusses and provides photographs of the children, teachers, volunteers etc.

http://childrenofuganda-permaculture.blogspot.com/2008/06/kids-rock-to-permaculture.html

Prospects for permaculture in Uganda 

In July 2008, Janice Smart (http://www.permacultureacrossborders.org) from Permaculture Across Borders invited Dan Palmer and myself to come to the Sabina Home, heavily funded by Children of Uganda (COU) of which she is a director.  Jan had approached Dan and me at IPC9 where in about ten minutes before a book launch she said if we were going to Ethiopia she'd like to offer us the fares from Addis Ababa to Kampala.  We blindly accepted.  Later we were joined there by the dynamic and gifted Amanda Cuyler who had just completed her PDC in Ethiopia. 

So there we were in a van with about eight other people to travel 300 km south of Kampala to Rakai district where the home for the children is just off the main road to Tanzania. 

This time we were not to teach a PDC but rather present a seminar for district and other officials, and two introductory workshops for the children, staff and teachers of Sabina Home. (Few people would be able to get two weeks off work duties to attend a full PDC and anyway this was a toe in the water.) 

Let me explain by describing Sabina Home 

Did you know that most children, rich, medium and poor attend boarding schools in Uganda? There is a boarding school tradition in Uganda which may be unique in the world.  Most children go away to board at school when they are quite young usually primary school.   The roads into Kampala and out to everywhere are stacked with signs offering 'superior' education for children to board.  Janice said to me that "education is Uganda's biggest industry" and it certainly appears so.  

There are very expensive schools for the wealthy.  Some in spacious grounds and look from the road like five star hotels.  This is surely British heritage.  One woman explained to me that it is easier to have children board because then both parents can go out to work without anxiety about their children. It occurred to me that here is a nation where children are raised and socialised outside the family.  People all know what school everyone attended and I presume that that tells them about social status. 

Sabina is a home for vulnerable children (some with HIV) and many orphans. It has its own primary school and a very dedicated staff.   A few children also attend from the village as day students but most of Sabina's students are boarders.  There are about 300 children in residence at any one time with only three housemothers. In each of the dormitories there are over 70 younger children and some are in bed bunks stacked three high.   In addition there are smaller dormitories that each hold about 30 older children. It is the case that some children were quite old when they had first started school and so it is not unusual to be 16 or 17 years old to be attending classes 5, 6 or 7. 

Secondary school aged children from Sabina are placed in other schools to board and when the holidays arrive, those with families will go home. Sabina Home also tries to find local guardians for the orphaned children so they have somewhere they can go to at holiday time. In this way, these children too are able to experience family life.

The children are remarkably good and self-sufficient and many Sabina children have done well and acquired university degrees.  All these ex-students I met studying such subjects as Urban Planning and Library Science, spoke of wanting to "help others in their turn".  These children know, of course, that their road out of poverty is education so they all study very hard. Most children have a foreign sponsor who funds their schooling and gives them a very small allowance to buy treats such as the much loved sugarcane and fried dough and cassava made by the school nurse. 

The primary school achieves the highest marks in the district because the children are highly motivated to study and come to school every day.  The teachers are also very supportive.  The school has eight classrooms, blackboards and chalk, and 40 children to the class; but nothing else.  This is quite a good standard for Uganda.   

The children live structured lives.   They arise from 5.30am.  They pray and go to mass.  They are Catholic and maybe 10% are Muslim. They wash, help the little ones, get dressed, do their jobs which are mainly cleaning, carrying water and sweeping. They make their beds, eat breakfast and walk across the playing field to their school.  Children who wet their beds take their mattresses outside into the sun to dry. 

School starts at 8am.  A short break at 10.30am and then home for lunch at 1pm.  Older ones from Grade 3 go back to school at 2pm until 4pm.   Younger grades stay home and play for the afternoon. 

They all do homework.  Grade 7 does homework quietly and conscientiously from 7.30pm to 10pm or later. They have dinner at 6.15pm and then the school assembles to sing prayers for an hour or so.   Some children attend the whole prayer time on their knees and sometimes this can end quite late when dinner is delayed. Uganda is a strongly Catholic country and this is not unusual.  Saturday afternoon and Sunday is usually free time. Many children sleep at this time. 

Dan and I were billeted at the Presbytery where Father Edward showed Dan how to wash clothes by hand (I wish I had a photo of the philosopher and the priest at this work) and he helped pour water over my head the last morning when I was outside trying to wash my hair - quite a blessing.  The Presbytery impressively is on solar electricity; it catches all its own water and grows all its own food, milk and meat.  An older priest, Father JaJa, maintains a very productive food forest from which something is harvested most days. 

As there are no toys and only one soccer ball, games are hopping, knucklebones (with bones) and others contrived from the environment.  No child had any toy that I saw.  Each child has a key around their neck which locks a tiny box (often only a suitcase?) in which they keep their possessions.   I looked into one of these and there were two dresses.  That was her total possessions and the school uniform she was wearing.     

Because they are children and because the staff are few, not many children had buttons on their clothes and most clothes were torn.  The children are spoken to very nicely and very kindly treated.  They offer visitors a moving dance and song welcome and the director, Deborah, tells the children that the visitors have come to visit them because they are such wonderful children.  Deborah is young, but with subtle authority and speaks to the whole group in a very quiet voice.  

Most of the children looked healthy because, unlike the children in Konso, Ethiopia (that I also visited), they get enough calories.  Meals are of solid, natural carbohydrates.  There are boiled maize flour (posho) and boiled beans.  They eat this twice a day (porridge for breakfast) seven days a week.  Some Sundays there is meat as well.   Sometimes there is some amaranth leaf as a vegetable.  Sometimes there are fresh ripe bananas.  Mashed mattoke is rare - once a fortnight at the most, and cassava and meat more rare - not every Sunday.

So the diet is pretty much maize porridge then just posho and beans everyday and the last two Saturdays there was no breakfast - just tea).  Last few weeks there was also a synthetic American aid food which the children strongly dislike.  There is no more meat for the moment - no budget for it. 

Since writing this, a recent email from Dan said they'd had to cut out breakfast because the cost of maize had risen so much.  Also there's just enough money to buy wood to cook two meals a day and fuel for the generator to provide electricity for two hours a day.

Finally, malaria is prevalent and regularly several children come down with it because they don't have mosquito nets or sleep outside them.    

Our experiences

After good coffee at the Equator (everyone stops for coffee at the Equator),  Dan and I arrived with a tight schedule. The next morning we would give a seminar on permaculture open to community heavies after which they would either support or sabotage the project which was to bring permaculture to Rakai district.  This was Jan Smart's vision and a bold one. 

I checked the dining room where the seminar would be held: it was just like a dormitory without furniture, and so I sorted some rackety benches and chairs into a U-shape.  Children brought the teachers' chairs from the school.   I scavenged some paper and chalk and I had the pens given by Deidra from New Zealand for such an occasion.   Jan, as usual, with everything in her magical bag, produced some nametags making us look far less haphazard.  Dan and I had a discussion about what would grab people in a one-day five hour seminar.  

Next morning at 11.00am and no one had arrived.  We were on "Ugandan time" so we revised our agenda.  By 12.30pm we had started and everyone had arrived. We were doing well and had the interest of the group but then LC5 arrived with a bodyguard.  LC5 is the "Very Important Person" and head of the district. It is a political appointment. He gave the class a long well briefed speech about the importance of permaculture but we had lost another hour.   

Throughout the day, it became apparent that the participants were generally aware of environmental deterioration and a few even knew about "climate change" and "peak oil".  "Sustainability" is on the government's agenda but it has little idea what is required or how to implement it. 

However,  we had one remarkable man, Godfrey, head of the Rakai District Department of Agriculture who quickly understood the issues and by the end of the day, he wanted permaculture to be part of his work. He sent his deputy to the next two Saturday workshops and that was followed by some interesting involvement and offers.  

We followed this with two 2-day workshops for the teachers and for three people from Kampala who had heard of permaculture or were attached to Children Of Uganda.   They all wanted it in their centres.  Two participants, at least, went home and started planning and gardening. 

What we saw

On looking around the school and home several things stood out.  

Lack of:

• freely available water for drinking and washing hands
• shade
• connection between activities eg. wood-store and kitchen where food is cooked caused unnecessary work. Also some twenty chickens in a far-off pen are fed bought food while most food scraps are burned.
• on-site food gardens (some staples are grown on a school plantation some kilometres from the site)

Also, other factors were:

• burning plastic and other intractable rubbish
• sweeping soil and other endless maintenance activities
• unprotected and dubious rubbish dump near the kitchen
• evident flooding and erosion in heavy rain
• dust when it is dry and glare
• conflict between pedestrian and vehicle traffic (air pollution and potential danger)

How we introduced permaculture to the school community

• The boarding school director and some staff came to the seminar and two weekend workshops.
• We held discussion sessions with the kitchen staff, matron and the dormitory staff.
• We held briefing and visioning sessions with the teachers at the school.
• We had a whole school assembly and talked to the school.
• We took classes 4, 5, 6 and 7 for their school agriculture sessions and tailored the practicals such as composting and seed sowing to their syllabus. (The teachers were pleased to learn how to turn theory into practice.)
• We used only local materials and discarded waste such as plastic bottles were cut for planting seedlings.
• We had 1:1 discussions with various people in their area of responsibility and this showed them that permaculture is more than just organic gardening.
• We moved the bulk food and tool store out of matron's Sick Bay to the kitchen, and gave matron back her room so she didn't have to treat sick children in front of a room full of staff.
• We specified moving the wood-store close to the kitchen so children don't have to cart wood several times a day. (Unfortunately it hasn't happened yet!)
• We closed down the stinking fire which burned 24 hours a day with smoke from plastic drifting across the site.We were helped in this by an article in a local paper appearing at the same time and saying that burning plastic was carcinogenic. This was very helpful for our authority.Slow charring fires are normal everywhere in Uganda with their plumes of black smoke.
• We started a new system of separating waste into "organic" and "other" in bins placed at the school and the Home. We found that they didn't know that paper was organic. So we discussed what is organic and what can be composted.
• Dan and Amanda started a major composting project which is producing lots of organic matter (OM) which is going straight on the garden beds now too. Jan bought pee buckets for the dormitory at night. There are no toilets or water in the dorms. These will be used for fruit tree compost with which to develop Zone II.
• The kitchen is hard and medieval.There are enormous open fires with enormous pots on them.The smoke billows all day and we know that this causes long term lung problems. The kitchen needs a whole new rethink.However it was evident that there is a requirement for smokeless stoves, taking grey water straight to the garden, and a good shelter for staff peeling mountains of bananas outside every day.
• Grey water from bathrooms is another problem, with the washing and toilets for a community of about 300 people. All the waste water moves downhill south of the site. The toilets are perfect for bio-gas and this can easily be taken to the kitchen and it would remove some of the need for wood.In this land of bananas, the banana circle is the evident answer, and as I did in Cambodia near a kindergarten, they can make banana "canals''.
• Dan, Amanda and I in collaboration with Jan and Deborah, the very capable and supportive director, questioned the boundaries and found numerous problems with title and squatters. These problems are common in most developing countries and need to be solved before final permaculture designs can be made and implemented. We held discussions with the Daughters of Charity who own the land and worked out a fair strategy for the Home and the squatters. (This is underway.)
• Dan began the first small nursery.

It was all a great rush, because we only had two weeks but after careful analysis we did finalise a basic site plan and presented it to the staff the evening before I left. Dan has stayed on to finish the first big mandala food garden and to get the composting well practiced.  Dan and Amanda will finalise a draft design.  Jan left to take the results of the permaculture introduction back to the board for Children of Uganda in the USA and, to try to raise money for bio-gas, big water tanks and guttering and solar power for the school and dormitories, and sponsors for some more children. Five of the teachers at the school want to do a PDC. They would want their school to lead in this innovation. 

What helped the introduction of permaculture to Sabina Home? People wanted a new vision and direction.  Staff, teachers and students all wanted a new vision and one that they could participate in and was feasible. 

But, outcomes are hard to predict.  Actually Jan was nervous that the whole project would not succeed but it has caught fire.

And, as elsewhere, fuel prices have skyrocketed and the increase has been passed onto the food staples with the costs trebling or quadrupling across the country. Rainfall is also less predictable.  More people are now in the official 'poor' category. The Government reported that 20% of rural families can only manage two meals a day. The government backs sustainability but has little idea what this involves. Water and food autonomy appeals as eminently sensible and possible for rural families.    

Other outcomes 

• We gave a short presentation to a nearby agricultural high school. The principal appeared bored but then we couldn't get our printed materials back from him. He has asked for more.
• The district Department of Agriculture wants Sabina School and Home to be a "contact farm" - a model for the district and run tours and classes. He wants it to be a Department of Agriculture supported project and has offered fruit trees and animals(a bit dubious since the carrying capacity is not obvious). More milk for the children would be very goodbut would need a lot of cows for this.
• He wants his staff to do a PDC. After a second presentation from Dan and Amanda an excited woman District officer requested a permaculture design for the large grounds of the Rakai Agricultural Training Centre.Godfrey invited her participation as she reports directly to the President and he wanted awareness of permaculture at the highest levels.
• The Kampala workshop participants also want to do a PDC.
• The people from a sister home near Kampala want a permaculture design for their home and have started gardens already.
• In Kampala, a very new and poor fishing village school wants a full permaculture design and implementation. It is about one hour by boat across Lake Victoria.
• Another school, for gifted but very poor girls, also wants permaculture input.
• A new daycare centre in nearby Kyotera, organised 24 participants for an afternoon workshop and are getting a design together including their existing composting toilets. Several are very keen to learn more.
• We sent out a call for permaculture people to come and help establish this exciting project.Dick Copeland from Brisbane Northey St Community Garden, who will be in Kampala in October, offered assistance.So has Walter from Zambia who is "the school expert on permaculture in schools in Africa". It will be great for these two men to meet and more community seminars are scheduled to let people hear from others outside.
• We would like people to donate copies of Carolyn Nuttall's new book.
• Wonderful Amanda Cuyler, a born permie from Australia who did her course in Ethiopia, arrived one evening and committed to stay for six months.
• The school, the staff, the children, the local agriculture department and people in Kampala are all engaged and supportive.

The field is open to the permie.   If this caught on in schools in Uganda as it has in Malawi then it could move like a flock of birds across the whole country. What a vision, Jan!  

As a postscript Janice Smart together with Dan who is at the school, have been calculating what the students require: Rowe - here are some general items needed at Sabina. We can use up to 300 sets of each. The first sum is in Ugandan shillings.

• Mosquito nets ugs 18,000 (A$8)
• Uniform set ugs 18,000 (A$8)
• Shoes ugs 24,000 (A$11)
• Mattress ugs 48,000 (A$21)
• Sheets ugs 24,000 (A$11)
• Blanket ugs 18,000 (A$8)
• Dining room bench ugs 20,000 (A$9)

I hope all is well.  Much love

Jan