About Uganda

The Republic of Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa, source of the Nile and home to the majestic mountain gorillas.

 

Project Goal

Live like a local, experience life like a local and understand the life of a child in the rural villages of Uganda.

 

Experiences

5th African Conference on Child Abuse & Neglect - HIV/AIDS | Education for Rural Children

 

5th African Conference on Child Abuse & Neglect - HIV/AIDS

This is a conference organised by The African Network for Prevention and Protection Against Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) Uganda Chapter, in conjunction with ANPPCAN Head Office and the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN), held in Kampala, Uganda from the 27th – 29th March 2007.

It featured researchers, academicians, practitioners from all over the world including USAID, CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency), UN (United Nations) and most importantly, the children.

The objective was to share ideas, experiences, and good practices and research findings on the care and protection of children in the era of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. There was a large focus by practitioners, researchers and children on developing strategies for developing and scaling up effective and sustainable responses towards the protection of children living with and those affected by HIV/AIDS.

Sub-Saharan Africa is more heavily affected by HIV and AIDS than any other region of the world. An estimated 24.5 million people are living with HIV at the end of 2005 and approximately 2.7 million additional people were infected with HIV during that year. Millions of adults are dying from AIDS while they are still young, or in early middle age. The vast majority of people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa are between the ages of 15 and 49, the prime of their working lives. This impacts heavily on the labour market and economic growth. More than 12 million children have been orphaned by AIDS. Average life expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa is now 47 years.

I was told a true account by a truck driver who himself is infected with HIV. His vision is very quickly diminishing. He is constantly tired. He used to drive for months at a time from South Africa to Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, through to East Africa (Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania). Due to poor or non-existent infrastructure, drivers wait for days to weeks at the borders. . I saw it myself, lines after lines of trucks waiting their turn to cross the river between Zambia and Botswana (this is something that would take hours not days in Australia). The temptations of alcohol and unprotected sex are incorporated into the crazy puzzle of boredom and ineffectiveness.

This typically is the beginning of a vicious and underserved cycle, where the virus is transmitted to the wife (wives), then the unborn child, the cyle continues. Families lose their income earners. In other cases, income earners are forced to stay at home to care for relatives who are ill from AIDS. Many of those dying from AIDS have surviving partners who are themselves infected and in need of care. They leave behind orphans, grieving and struggling to survive without a parent's care.

For more information on HIV/AIDS, please see the AVERT website.

 

Education for Rural Children

I worked with a local organisation in Lugazi, Uganda, with a focus on enabling children in rural villages attend and stay in school.

A thorough understanding of life in a rural village of a developing country truly hits home when you attempt to live in the conditions they live in, eat what they eat and experience what they experience.

I spent my 4 weeks in Uganda visiting families in the rural villages, where the locals typically live in mud/reed huts, where the bedroom is the storage and living room all in one. Most sleep on thin straw mats or thin mattresses on bare earth, with one mosquito net around the whole family, or none at all. The children typically suffered from malnutrition, had fungal growth on their scalps, and some form of parasitic infection causing deep gaping wounds in their fingers or toes.

Education as you can see, is not at the forefront of anyone's minds.

Children are pulled out of school to help out in the fields, where survival is their main priority. It is hence archetypal that a nursery class for example would consist of children from 5 to 13 years of age. The adults work their hardest to provide for a typically large family plus extended family, but most are grandparents in their 60s-70s who have worked their entire lives and whose old bodies no longer function quite the same. A lack of trade in a rural environment contributes to an absolute dependency on the field, where the entire family's food is sown.

Rural schools are typically poorly funded. Qualified teachers are (in a realistic world), not attracted to poor-paying jobs where schools are located in the middle of no where. A complete lack of supporting infrastructure makes getting to school a 2 to 3-hour mission by foot. The children would get up at 4 or 5am in the mornings to ensure they get to school on time. Difficult as it is, the children are proud in their torn and browned oversized make-shift uniforms, keen to learn and impress!

 

 

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