Category: UK

Uganda 2025 Day 3: Carnage in Kafuro

Today was absolutely bonkers for many reasons which I will explain below. My alarm went off at 06.45 and I got out of bed with a sense of expectation and excitement knowing that in a few hours we would be back in Kafuro.

The shower at Ever Green Motel wasn’t the most powerful I’ve used but it was warm, so it was nice to get properly clean. After getting dressed and prepared for the day, I met with the others and Ronnie drove us up to Ibanga, the hotel where we are having our meals, for breakfast. I went with the rolex option again and am justifying my choice on research. This time my rolex was filled with lots of vegetables and a stringy cheese which may or may not have been mozzarella. Anthony Mukama arrived at 09.00 as he would be travelling in to Kafuro with us and we began our journey.

The road to Kafuro has varied in quality over the years from terrible to fairly good, this time it was predictably terrible with massive potholes everywhere and cars ‘dancing’ across the road to avoid them. The only way I can describe it is imagine being put in a washing machine which is then turned on and you are constantly thrown around. There had been a thunderstorm in the area a couple of days before so when we got closer to the school the road (dirt track) was a muddy mess and the car slid all over the road. It took all of Ronnie’s skill to keep the car on the rod and avoiding any other vehicles.

As we approached the school, we saw the biggest crowds of people I had ever seen in the village – it was absolutely packed. People were waving at us and chanting our names, so it was obvious that news of our arrival had spread. There were also lots of election posters displayed around the shops as today was an election day for local representatives for the ruling NRM (National Resistance Movement) Party. We entered the school compound and all of the children began spilling out of the classrooms and surrounding the vehicle. Richard, the headteacher, came to greet us and we were taken to the school office to sign the visitors’ book. We were quickly joined by Didacus, the chairman of the School Management Committee (Board of Governors) and Idi, the chairman of the PTA. Having not been to the school for seven years, it was very interesting to look around the campus. In many ways, it was in worse shape than when I had last visited, the exception being the P2 block where the money raised by Liss Pupils and parents has allowed us to repair a wall and build a new veranda. There is lots of similar work that needs to be completed across all the classroom blocks at Kafuro. In seven years the buildings have become quite tired and the problems are more fundamental than a lick of paint.

We held a very brief assembly where we introduced ourselves to the pupils with the exception of P7 who were in the middle of a mock science exam. We said hello to them later; they were very friendly and smiley. At the assembly, the children were holding up posters with the names of Steve, Stu and Torin written on them. For me, they had photos of me with Heather. It was quite bizarre but flattering looking at them.

The village community were very keen that we came into the village and didn’t just stay within the school compound. When we walked out, I was quite honestly unprepared for what happened next. I had scores of former pupils approach who remembered me from as long ago as 2012 and wanted to say hello and shake my hand. It was quite overwhelming. This was mixed in with the confusion and chaos of the election. It wasn’t like a UK election where people enter a building and cast their vote in a ballot box (this is what happens in the general election in Uganda). Instead, the voters stood in single – file lines behind a portrait of the candidate that they wanted to vote for shouting, chanting, singing and dancing. There was a lot of peer pressure being exerted on people to stand in a certain line and once or twice I thought a fight was going to break out. It was totally bonkers!

Close to where the election was held, a new Catholic church had been built. It was an impressive structure on the outside, but looked as if it needed a bit more internal decoration. Next, Anthony took us behind the main strip in Kafuro to see Appolo (correct spelling, honest!), the former chairman of the PTA and a prominent local businessman and landowner. I have met Appolo on every trip I have taken to Uganda and he has told me in the past that he will give me some land in Kafuro so I can build a house. I’m sure that he was joking, but the spot he pointed out was in an absolutely amazing location overlooking the crater lake. We had drinks at Appolo’s house and then he led us on a tour of the area surrounding his land. Appolo showed us some amazing viewing points of the crater lake which we had never been to be before. He also showed us an irrigation project where the government has built a solar pumping station to pump water up from the lake into a massive water button a tower several metres above our heads. From there, gravity takes effect and the water irrigates several fields of crops – at the moment it is irrigating watermelons.

While we were at the water irrigation system, we met the local Church of Uganda vicar and I went and looked at the church – although it was smaller than the Catholic church it seemed to be better fitted out inside. By this time, it was absolutely baking hot, so we retired to the back room of a local shop where we had another drink of water.

When we got back to the school we went and had a look at the base of the cob oven. It needed to be higher so instructions were sent to ensure the base was brought up to the correct height and the base slabs were level and flush. At that point, Stephen Biru, the District Education Officer arrived with two of his assistants. Anthony and I were able to show him the repaired classroom block and the electricity providing light across the school. He was very impressed and even happier when we handed over the footballs, netballs and rugby balls we had brought over with us. The children in Uganda love sport but the interest in football is incredible, so there was a roar of applause when the footballs were presented to them. It was really nice to have the opportunity to tell Stephen how highly I rated Anthony and how he has worked tirelessly to promote shared learning between the two schools in partnership with me. Stephen promised he would come back to Kafuro next Tuesday to see the (hopefully) completed cob oven working.

We left Kafuro at about 16.20 and headed back to Ever Green. It had been emotionally exhausting, but a great day. As we reflected that night, we were really proud that 13 years after our first visit, our partnership with Kafuro is still as strong as ever.

A long – awaited Kafuro update

Readers of the blog will have noticed that it’s been a long time since there was any sort of update from our twinned school, Kafuro Primary School. To recap, the Covid pandemic meant that the last reciprocal visit had to be cancelled although some work was carried out at both schools.

Since then, the prospects for another reciprocal visit has become minimal. The British Council (which has had its funding slashed) is no longer offering funding through Connecting Classrooms for reciprocal visits, and the replacement Turing Scheme doesn’t work in the same way. Therefore, any chance of face to face contact is remote at the moment .

However, we now have some up to date news on what is happening at Kafuro Primary School. Ronnie Musabe (who is the twinning project’s man on the ground in Uganda) visited Kafuro last month and was able to spend some time at the school.

Firstly, the school has a new headteacher. Mr. Stephen Thembo (the last Ugandan headteacher to visit Liss) has been transferred to a school in Katerera. This is pretty common in Uganda – most headteachers spend 3 – 4 years at a school before they are moved onto a new school. The new Headteacher is Mr. Jackson Twinamatsiko.

From the photos received from Kafuro (below) and the information Ronnie has already passed on, Kafuro is facing a number of challenges. Firstly, although the school population has remained the same since the pandemic, there has been quite a shift in numbers in each year group. P1 (which is roughly equivalent to Yr R/1) has 145 pupils. They are likely to be in two classrooms with totally inadequate seating! P7 (which is equivalent to Yr 6) has only 16 pupils.

There are now big issues with water coming into the school. Readers of the blog will remember that during Mr Stanley’s last visit to Uganda, he was at Kafuro Primary School when running water was turned on at the school – Liss pupils had funded the cost of the pipeline to the nearest lake and Kafuro pupils and parents had dug the pipeline to the water source. Apparently, although the pipeline is still secure, the source of water appears to have dried up or receded. To make matters worse, the massive (2000 litre) water tank at the school has perished so there is now no water source at the school. This means that children will have to fill jerry cans of water at the nearest crater lake.

Other issues that are facing the school is that although the solar panels (which Liss pupils raised the funds for installing) still work, the batteries to store the energy created are no longer working. These will need replacing. There are also issues with some of the windows no longer keeping rain out of the classrooms.

For all the negative news that has come before, there are also some positives. The last major fundraising that Liss pupils provided for Kafuro was in getting windows and shutters for the staff blocks which was under construction at the time. The staff block is now complete and several of the teachers (including Mr Twinamatsiko) live there during the week. Another area where Liss pupils had helped in the past had been to pay for the draining and upgrade of some of the school latrines. The Ugandan government has now built a brand new latrine block which will help to improve sanitation further at the school. Kafuro also continues to innovate with the construction of a bin for collecting rubbish made entirely out of recyclable materials.

Our immediate priority is to re-establish communication with Kafuro on a consistent basis. For many years the film club at Liss has raised money from selling crisps at screenings and Mr Stanley will be sending out some funds to allow Mr Twinamatsiko to communicate regularly with him. The plan is to identify some projects that both schools can work towards, and see if there are things we can do to help.

One final piece of really good news is that Ronnie Musabe is in the UK for the next three weeks and will be visiting the Liss Federation next Thursday. He will be working with Yr 2 and Yr 3 who have learning about Uganda in their geography curriculum.

  • The staff quarters at Kafuro Primary School
  • The water tank has perished
  • The school grounds
  • The new latrines at the school
  • Mr. Twinamatsiko, the new headteacher
  • The current school enrolment
  • The recycling bin made of recycled materials
  • The P3 & P4 classrooms
  • The seating inside one of the classrooms

Completing our African Keyhole Garden

This morning, Year 3 pupils with the assistance of Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock completed the building of our African keyhole garden. The first task was to complete the second course of bricks so we moved them down to the garden site so Mr Haycok could lay them in the correct place. After that, we had the task of adding compost to the garden. Mr Haycock has been piling up leaf litter for the past couple of years and much of it has broken down into excellent compost. Half the pupils went with Mr Stanley armed with forks, trowels and wheelbarrows to collect the compost, while the others remained with Mr Haycock to spread and stamp down the compost when it arrived.

By the end of the morning, we had moved most of one of the big piles of compost into the garden. We now need to leave it to rot down further before adding more in the spring. Mr Haycock and Mr Stanley just need to put a bit of render around some of the bricks to keep them secure.

In the Spring we will also create a willow basket that we will place in the keyhole garden. Food waste will be placed in the basket which will then rot and provide nutrients for the soil.

We aim to plant vegetables in late May/beginning of June and then Year 2 will be responsible for growing and maintaining the crops. We are very excited to see what the Kafuro pupils decide to grow when they build their keyhole garden hopefully in the New Year.

  • The garden is now going to be left until the spring before we add more compost

Building of African Keyhole Garden begins

After many delays, we finally began construction of our African Keyhole garden today. The Liss design is not quite the same as the circular gardens that you see on the internet, but has been configured to match the available space in our school grounds.

Year 3 children from Ash and Oak classes came and worked with Mr Stanley and Mr Haycock to dig out a trench to lay our bricks. This involved moving lots of earth around with trowels and spades. When this was done, The children worked with Mr Stanley to fetch bricks and bring them to the site of the garden where Mr Haycock arranged them into courses at a 45o angle.

By the end of the morning, 60% of the work had been completed. Next week we hope to lay the remaining courses, fit a willow cylinder to house compost which will spread nutrients in the soil and add more earth to the garden so it is ready to be planted in the spring months.

Food Webs

One of the topics we are covering as part of the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms program is food webs which was suggested by Mr Thembo, the headteacher of Kafuro Primary School.

Steve Peach very kindly produced a PowerPoint which took the children through the differences between food chains and food webs. Mr Stanley was very impressed with the children’s knowledge of food chains and the terms producer, consumer and predator. Only one pupil in the class had a good idea about what a food web is, so Mr Stanley was able to use the PowerPoint (displayed below) to show some examples of food webs in both UK and Uganda.

Once the children had got used to the idea of what a food web meant, we created our own using animals commonly found in the UK

We then went onto the playground with a big ball of string in order to try and replicate this food web. The photos below make it look as if we were actually quite successful. However, the complexity of the food web meant that we actually ran out of string before we could complete it.

Our final discussion of the session was based around what might happen to the food web if one of the elements was removed from it. We discussed several possibilities, but the children concluded that if the frog was removed from our food web then much of the web could collapse. Clearly removing land plants or water plants would have a massive effect on the ecosystem. When you think about the damage this would cause and then compare it to vast deforestation taking place on our planet, it makes you wonder whether humans are actually very clever at all!

We are looking forward to seeing what food webs other schools in the twinning project produce.

Beginning our journey to investigate Fairtrade

This morning, the Year 6 classes as Liss Junior School began to take a detailed look at fair trade. We began by discussing what causes poverty. The children were given 3 beans each and were asked to investigate nine statements. When they found a statement that they felt was most accurate they could place one of their beans in a cup next to the statement. If they wished, they could place all their beans in a particular cup. These are the results for Rowan Class:

StatementVotes
cast		Percentage
Climate change means flood and droughts1926%
International trading system is unfair to poor
countries		57%
People can’t grow enough food because of wars1318%
People are too poor to buy food1521%
Food grown on the best farmland is sold to rich
countries		34%
Many big companies don’t pay the tax they should
to poor countries		23%
People in rich countries want to pay less for
things they buy, so wages in poor countries stay
low		23%
Corruption and bad government in bad countries11%
People in rich countries don’t give enough in aid
and charity		1318%
  • Casting votes for the causes of poverty
  • There was a lot of thought and discussion

Once we had calculated the percentages, we had a discussion as to why the pupils had made their choices. What became very clear was how aware the children are of the issues relating to climate change and war – the situation in Syria was mentioned several times. Where the children had less awareness was on the issues of corruption and bad government. This is not necessarily surprising as they are not at an age where they would study politics yet.

With this opening task complete, our next task was to find out where much of our food comes from in the UK. We used a world map and identified which countries supplied the UK the following foods:

Bananas – The Caribbean, Costa Rica

Soya – Brazil

Pineapple – Costa Rica

Cocoa – West Africa

Sugar – The Caribbean

Palm Oil – South East Asia

We noticed that many of these ingredients came from poorer parts of the world. This raised the question – if all these poor countries are selling us lots of good then why are they so poor?

We then looked at the ingredients in a chocolate bar and found out that only one of the ingredients is produced in the UK. A discussion followed about why chocolate was so cheap in the UK when so many of the ingredients were imported. Mr Stanley told the children how big companies will pay producers very low prices in order to ensure that prices are kept low in richer countries like the UK and to ensure that their profit margins high.

Next, Mr Stanley got the children to undertake an exercise. He asked the class to draw their own bananas to represent bananas that were grown.

  • Drawing bananas

Once the children had finished drawing and cutting out their bananas, Mr Stanley said that he would return to the class in five minutes to make the class an offer for the 25 bananas that had been produced.

When Mr Stanley returned to the class, the children had discussed the sale carefully and come up with a price of 1000 counters for all 25 bananas. Mr Stanley said that he would consider the price and would have a think about it. After 30 seconds Mr Stanley made the class a counter – offer of 50 units: one – twentieth of the price the children had asked for. This caused understandable outrage in the class, but Mr Stanley told the class that BB (Big Bananas), the company he was representing had been to another class who had accepted this offer. If Rowan Class weren’t prepared to accept his offer then he would do business with the other class.

With the exercise over and the children very angry, Mr Stanley took the children through the stages from a banana being grown to being sold in a supermarket in the UK. This can be seen below:

We discussed who should get the most money from the sale of the banana. The children thought that the grower should receive the majority of the payment or at least an equal share. They were genuinely shocked when they saw how little the grower was actually paid. One pupil was so angry about this that she was almost speechless.

In our next lesson we will be writing about what we have discovered so far as well as beginning to investigate what fairtrade actually means.

Uganda celebration event at Liss Junior School

Uganda Celebration Event

Many thanks to all the pupils and parents who attended our Uganda Celebration. We were joined by Mr. Davies and Mrs. Masika, the headteachers of Hambledon Primary School and Rihamu Junior School respectively. We were also visited by Olga Rey from the British Council who was incredibly impressed by the work displayed from the four schools. She described the partnership as ‘prolific’.

Work on display at the event included examples of the learning from all three of the units that Yr 3 and Yr 6 have been working on in conjunction with Kafuro. Additionally, there were samples of work from the  wider Yr 6 curriculum where their topic this term has been Uganda. These included African—style bags and travel guides to Uganda written by the children.

Changing Communities: Building in Liss part 4

The next photos from the Andlers Ash development, taken today, show that work is progressing smoothly around the suite entrance. Piles of earth in the distance are testament to the the amount of work the diggers are doing in clearing the land. If you look carefully, you can also see measuring equipment.

Discussing dilemmas for UK and Uganda

Last week, Year 6 pupils in Liss had their last lesson where we looked at rights and responsibilities. Firstly, we looked at the role of rights bearers, the people who make sure that rights are enforced. For example, if a child has the right to a tidy classroom, but a responsibility to ensure that they keep it tidy, then the rights bearer has to ensure that a classroom is provided in the first place,

After this we discussed dilemmas that may make us think carefully about rights. The children were asked to discuss one of two dilemmas:

Have the government the right to impose a ban on junk food for all school dinners in the UK?

Should parents be able to take children out of school to support their parents in the field at harvest time in Uganda?

Both questions generated some fierce debate. The children had to choose one of the two questions to answer while working as a pair. Here are a couple of their answers:

Holly and Leila

Junk food in schools shouldn’t be banned as if it was banned then our rights are being denied. If we eat too much junk food then that’s our fault and we would have to deal with the consequences. If junk food was banned then the children/adults who are sensible eaters wouldn’t be able to have a break once in a while from healthy choices. It isn’t ok to eat loads of junk food, but it still shouldn’t be taken away from us. We should be able to make our own choices and if our choice is to eat lots of junk food then that’s our own fault.

On the other hand, junk food should be banned as too many people are overweight at a young age. If we can’t control our diet then we should get as much help as we can. Other places can supply a treat for those who eat well, so it’s good for everyone. If there was too much unhealthy food on menus, people would most likely choose it over healthy options. Some people eat a lot of junk food outside of school so why not ban it inside school so we can convince them to be healthy.

We don’t think junk food should be banned as that would deny our rights to eat freely without being told what to eat. We should be able to control and convince ourselves to eat healthily, and if we can’t we deserve the consequences of being overweight. If unhelathy food was banned, it’s likely less people would get school dinners as it wouldn’t be something to look forward to, like a treat for healthy eaters. It’s our responsibility to stay healthy and we should only treat ourselves once in a while.

Levi and Isaac

We think that children should be banned from working in the fields as it will ruin the education of most children in Kafuro. If they don’t go to school then they will most likely not pass their end of year exams. Therefore the only job they will ever have will be in the fields.

On the other hand, we think that children shouldn’t be banned from helping their parents because if the school was worried about children working in the field s during harvest then they should just change the term dates and that problem would be solved.

In conclusion, the right of any child in Kafuro is to have a good education, but they have a responsibility to access it.

We asked Yowasi whether it was possible for Ugandan schools to change ter dates to fit in with harvests. Yowasi told us that schools do not have the power to do this and the Ministry of Education in Uganda sets the term dates. He added that the start of the rainy season has been so inconsistent in recent years that even if the dates changed there would be no guarantee that they would get them right.