Will Miss 10,000 please stand up?

The girls at Porogali Primary School, Pader district share out knickers in groups of three. The pads have already been handed out and put away. One of these is our 10,00th girl.

We have just started our fourth year of the Pads Ministry in Pader, Northern Uganda and a blog post seems to be one good way of marking a special milestone.

Yes, we have now passed the '10,000 girl' milestone and she is somewhere in this crowd of girls you can see at Porogali Primary School in Pader district.

We thought about singling her out and celebrating her but in the end we decided not to embarrass her; just to know that she was there.

That was on 14th of February and was in the middle of a push that took us up to 10,763 at the time of writing.

These young girls will shortly be young women and, in due course, mothers themselves.This project is helping to break the cycle of ignorance and prejudice around menstruation, that leads to girls dropping out of school and being married off young for a lifetime of childbearing.

Girls anywhere can suffer low self esteem and the onset of menstruation, without understanding what is happening, can be crushing. We always tell them how they are each 'wonderfully made' by God, quoting from Psalm 139v14. It is all to easy for them to think that they are some kind of horrible mistake, in a culture that traditionally does not value girls, except as a means of gaining wealth by marrying them off. Attitudes are changing, but slowly.

So, with these simple materials, instruction and encouragement, we are giving these girls just a small but vital bit of control over their own lives.

When they do become mothers, they will know how to help their girls as they grow up.

Each set of 4 pads and 4 knickers, delivered to the girl, costs 9,500 Uganda shillings, roughly £2.21. We think that is rather good value for a life changing intervention!

Lets go fly a kite!

Every Friday afternoon in term time I have been visiting the dozen Deaf children in the district Special Needs Unit of the local school, Paipir Primary (say pie-pea). My sign language is slowly getting more fluent with use and I have attempted to tell Bible stories.

Let's go.....

We have also been making kites from plastic bags and split bamboo. Kites that actually fly are very rare in Uganda so it has been a lot of fun teaching the Deaf kids this 'special' knowledge. This is a small effort to redress the natural balance which leaves them well behind the curve in almost every way, in a largely unsympathetic hearing world.

fly a kite!

There should be about 120 Deaf children at Paipir but there were only 12 last term. The rest are isolated in their home villages because the parents are unaware that they can go to school, are too poor to attempt it or believe it is no worth sending a deaf child to school.

All of us hearing people pick up our mother tongue without a thought as we grow up. For the deaf, that does not work and sign language must be learned from an outside source; an instructor or a school. Without language, communication, and life, is miserably limited.

Channel 4, 'Unreported World' made an excellent documentary about the issues of Deafness in rural Uganda which you can watch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNCPgrm8Gu4.

On Sunday mornings at the Church of Uganda (Anglican) church we provide sign language interpretation for the Deaf adults and children who come. After church I host 'Deaf Breakfast' and usually welcome around 10 young adults (with 3 children) and a sign language interpreter into my home for 'Break Tea'. It is generally not very deep but provides the Deaf community with a social space.

Fun at Deaf breakfast

The church has come to rather enjoy having the Deaf coming to Sunday service and a few church members have learned sign language, which augurs well for the future. The Children presented a sign language song to the church one Sunday that was well received.

Hearing aids? Sorry, there are no technicians and even if the batteries were available, which they are not, there would be no money to pay for them.

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Time to catch up, better late than never.

I have been very remiss in my blogging. It was December last year....... Well, no excuses. But I would like to give you a series of sketches of what I have been up to, starting with Pads.  You can expect further posts in the coming week or so on the Deaf, the Radio, Farming and Future Plans. 

Pads Project

This school had a 241 girls over 12. In the foreground is the stack of knickers needed for each to get four pairs. 

The main project I am involved with is providing washable sanitary pads for schoolgirls. I have written about this before, so you can scroll down through the blog or link to here or here to get the full low-down.

To date, this year we have visited 16 schools, 11 of which were 1^st time visits. About 1450 girls are now equipped to go confidently to school.

In June we were invited at short notice, by an NGO called ActionAid, to provide pads for the girls of 10 schools at their expense and we have 4 of those remaining to visit in the next two weeks.

Then we can resume visiting our 'old' schools and providing for their 'new' 12 year olds.

This year, by the end of the final term, we should have made and distributed in excess of 10,000 pads and bought and distributed the same number of knickers.

Does it any difference? So far it has proved very difficult to get clear statistics. But anecdotally it is not hard to show and I have yet to come across anyone here who thinks we are wasting our time.

I spoke to a successful woman of around 40 years a few months ago who said that by the time she reached the end of secondary school, she was the only girl in the school. All the others had dropped out for various factors peculiar to gender. Foremost among these was the problems and embarrassment of dealing with periods in a mixed school, without sanitary materials. She was very enthusiastic about this project.

Barbara Rivera,
1963 - 1994

Remembered

Emmanuel International (EI), the organisation I work with, has been in existence since 1975 in Canada, when it was formed out of the experiences of the Ethiopian Famine. The UK arm was started in 1978. Since then many people have gone out to third world countries with EI and worked in places that are mostly 'off the map'. EI has an ethos blending 'Mission' with relief and development, avoiding separating the one from the other. And we strongly prefer to work alongside local church partners.

Of the many ex-patriots that have been with EI over the years, a few stay long term but many work for a year or two and move on. Many are young people starting out on their lives, making the few oldies feel either young or ancient, depending on their energy levels at the time!

The old EI Compound in Patongo today.
The burned out garage on the left, accommodation on the right

Back in 1983 EI established a base in Northern Uganda in a small town called Patongo among the Acholi people, who were suffering the effects of internal strife, coupled with lack of development, and geographical and political remoteness from the capital, Kampala.

The EI work of health education and care, agricultural development, relief in famine and war continued from the Patongo base until 2002 when the LRA rebel group attacked the EI compound, burning the vehicle garage with the vehicles inside. No one was hurt in the attack but EI decided to withdraw. The LRA, known for their gruesome brutality were completely unpredictable; sometimes polite, sometimes murderous.

When it comes to getting people out to remote places and later getting them back again, EI has an amazingly good safety record. Only one EI person has ever died in the field; Barbara Rivera.

Barbara joined the EI team in Patongo in 1992. Born in the Philippines in 1963, her father moved to London with his work when she was 10. She joined EI with experience of teaching Sunday School and a degree in Herbal Medicine. She wrote of herself in 1994 “I like visiting people but am actually quite shy and not always talkative! (more of a listener than a talker) I prefer practical / manual work to written desk work and can be quite creative when I'm in the mood. I enjoy being with people but also like my own company.” In Patongo, Barbara seems to have concentrated on the children. She taught a regular Sunday school class. The two photos of her were taken on a day when she and the district nurse were shepherding children through the bush to keep them safe from a rebel incursion (they would have abducted the boys as soldiers).

The route from Lira.
Ignor the time; Google does not compute dirt roads!

On 11^th June 1994, just over 20 years ago, Barbara and her sister, who was visiting from the UK, were in Lira, the nearest big town to the south, looking for transport to take them the 106 km, 3 or 4 hours to the North East over dirt roads, back to Patongo. They found transport in the form of a small petrol driven local truck. As is normal even today, the polite Africans made space for the two Mzungu (white people) in the cab and the other passengers rode in the open back. The driver had been drinking. The truck's fuel pump had failed and the fuel was being gravity fed into the engine's carburettor from a jerry can in the cab.

The driver was in a hurry; about half way, passing through Rackoko, he did not decelarate as they descended the shallow valley after the town. The passengers in the back shouted to the driver to slow down but he did not react. At the rough and muddy spot at the valley bottom he lost control, the vehicle left the road and rolled several times, settling on its side. Amazingly everyone survived the crash but petrol from the lashed up jerrycan had leaked out. The driver clambered out in a panic and ran away. The petrol ignited. Barbara, pushing from below, helped the others in the cab escape but could not get out herself and was overcome. Some youths from the back pulled her out of the cab; she was hurried to hospital in Lira but did not survive. A tragic and devastating loss.

Children have long memories; and they grow up. Today Barbara's Sunday school children have grown into responsible adults, knowing that part of who they are was formed by Barbara. Some of them have gone into local politics, others into administration, many are no doubt ordinary town and village folk, most are churchgoers; but they have not forgotten. Patongo needed another Secondary School and the old Sunday school friends and the older EI staff who knew Barbara got together and are on the school board. They have named it the Barbara Rivera Secondary School. It is a local initiative, a work in progress but it is happening and is a fitting tribute to a herbalist from London, young woman with a heart for children, a gentle teller of Bible stories.

The information in this article was gathered from published EI material, EI personnel and from an eyewitness, one of the youth in the rear of the vehicle. If you know any further information or corrections, please let me know.