"But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today." - Deuteronomy 8:18
There's not a whole lot to write about at the moment. The students are still on school holiday, which I wasn't expecting. A slight miscommunication meant that I thought they started lessons again on the 12th August, but actually they won't be here until 5th September! So I'm finding other ways to fill my time.
David and I are working at the school in Kyazanga to paint a world map on the wall outside. We were supposed to go last week, but the school's director, Bannet, needed to get the wall plastered first. Sadly his mother had a heart attack at the start of the week so understandably the plastering wasn't his highest priority. She is now recovering well, so we headed there yesterday to do the first lot of painting. Of course, more miscommunications meant they'd plastered a slightly different area of wall to what we expected so David spent most of the day plastering the rest of it while I did some painting. Hopefully the plaster will be dry by tomorrow so we can paint paint paint. Also, hopefully tomorrow it won't rain quite as much as it did yesterday! We were working underneath the overhang of the roof but we still got rather wet and even cold! Bannet kept asking me if I was too cold, since I was only in t-shirt and shorts, but I was very happy and told him that it's frequently much, much colder in the UK. He thought that was funny.
I've been spending quite a lot of time composing e-mails to various people asking them to donate money towards Hope Academy's laboratory. I calculated that it will cost about $1500 to put in all the work benches, water and gas pipes, equipment, chemicals and so on. I don't expect to raise all that while I'm here, but so far two people have donated a total of $350 which is a really good start, and someone else has pledged to donate more when they return to the UK. It's quite overwhelming having the responsibility of using the money carefully and wisely, especially when I know that many retailers here are only too happy to charge 'mzungu prices' if I'm not careful! But I'm working with the headmaster and some of the teachers, so hopefully we can do the best job possible. Today I was sizing up the lab to decide the best way of arranging furniture in there. It's only about 5m x 6m but it needs to hold a class of about 40 students! I think it's possible, so long as we make creative use of storage spaces. All those days of reading Ikea catalogues with their interesting arrangements of furniture are coming in useful. I even suggested putting in a mezzanine level since the ceiling is quite high, but it would be rather expensive... and I'm not sure I'd want someone using acid on a cheaply constructed platform above my head!
Another thing I've been doing is researching an idea I've had for a longer-term project for the future. While I'm really excited about furnishing the lab here, and I hope it will have a really positive effect on the education of these students, it's clearly not feasible to install good science facilities in every school in the area. However it would be possible to have a 'mobile lab' in a van that could visit schools, to run experiments that fit in with the national syllabus. Projects like the Book Bus do this successfully with a library but so far I can't find anyone doing it with science equipment. Obviously it would be more difficult financially (books are harder to 'use up' than chemicals, and easier for normal people to donate) but with some good sponsors (individuals, schools, universities, scientific companies etc) it should be possible. I've started discussing it with teachers and the response has been very positive. Next week, or maybe later this week, Bannet is going to take me round the other secondary schools in Kyazanga so I can talk to their science teachers too. I think the biggest challenge in this project would be convincing my mother that it's a good idea for me to move back to Uganda for a longer period of time...
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