Since the last post a couple of weeks ago, we are pleased to let readers of the blog that we have made contact with Kafuro Primary School. Ronnie Musabe used the money that had been raised by the Liss Film Club to buy a smartphone and some data. This was sent by courier (along with some tomato seeds) to Kafuro where the headteacher, Mr Twinamatsiko received them last Tuesday. He was immediately in touch with Mr Stanley to express his thanks, and since then the two teachers have exchanged regular messages.
It has already been decided that both schools will undergo a tomato growing challenge. At the moment, it is very dry in Uganda, so it may be a little while until the pupils plant the seeds that Mr Stanley sent out to Uganda. However, nearly 20 tomato plants have been planted at Liss and we will post regular photos of how they are doing.
Expect to see in the coming months many different ways how the schools are working together.
The tomatoes had been grown from seeds in pots.
They were now being transferred into raised beds in the school garden.
Year 3 and Year 2 had a proper Ugandan experience yesterday when they were visited by Ronnie Musabe, the Twinning Project’s ‘man on the ground’ in Uganda.
Ronnie spent the morning with Year 3 reviewing their topic on changing Communities. He was able to answer the children’s questions on the relationship between the villages surrounding Queen Elizabeth National Park and the park rangers, particularly with regards to villagers encroaching on park land to plant crops.
In the afternoon, Ronnie visited Year 2 who have just begun their topic on Uganda. Again, he had many questions to answer and said afterwards that he could’ve been at the school for a week and not managed to answer them all. One of the activities Ronnie carried out with both year groups was to go through the Uganda Boxes that the Twinning Project have collated over the years. The children were able to see some traditional Ugandan toys, instruments and clothing as well as well as more modern materials.
This was a highly successful day from which the children obviously benefitted enormously. Ronnie was incredibly impressed, not only with the children’s maturity, but also with the quality of initial and follow – up questions that the children came up with. He told Mr Stanley that many of the tourists who come to Uganda come nowhere near to matching the children in terms of curiosity.
Everyoneat the Liss Federation would like to thank Ronnie for spending the day with us. When Ronnie returns to Uganda during half term, he will be taking some money with him in order to enable Kafuro to reopen lines of communication with Liss and also some special varieties of tomato seeds for the children to grow at Kafuro Primary School. For those readers of the blog who don’t know, Kafuro is famous throughout Uganda for the quality of its tomatoes, so we think the new varieties will grow really well. We hope to show you photos of the tomatoes later this year.
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.
As part of our unit on Ugandan food, Year 6 at Liss have been designing, making and tasting their own Ugandan rolexes. After extensive research on common Ugandan food, the pupils got into small groups to design their rolexes (rolled eggs) and chooose the ingredients to either go in the omelette or to go on the side of the plate. Many of the pupils opted to choose a fusion of British and Ugandan flavours – this resulted in some very tasty looking rolexes as the photos below show.
A large part of the first week of a new school year in Yr 6 is an examination of wants and needs and how it plays a part in our lives.
Rowan Class started their study by being placed into table groups. Each group was then giventhe outline of a child before being asked to give their child a name. Next the group were allowed 10 minutes to write on post – its as many things that the child would need in order to grow up happy and healthy. At this point they were asked to stop.
Generating ideas for each group’s child
The next task the children were given was to start removing post – its that they felt were the least important. Initially, this was to leave only the twenty most important post – its then removing five at a time until they were left with the five post -its that they felt were most important.
Among the most important considerations the children came up with was education, a family, clean water/sanitation, nutritious food, recuperative sleep and exercise.
Mr Stanley then gave the pupils 20 wants and needs cards and the same type of exercise was repeated. The children worked together to get down to the five most important cards to them by removing 5 cards at a time. As they gained more understanding of some of the statements, the discussions became a bit more heated. What became clear was that the children were making a distinction between wants and needs:
Needs – the things that are absolutely necessary for all children to have or be able to do to live a happy and healthy life
Wants – the things that are nice to have but are not necessary for a full life.
When the groups shared their final 5 post-its there, was some similarities between what they had originally selected for their child, but there was also some differences. Nutritious food, shelter, medical care and sanitation were the most popular, but there were some changes to what the children considered most important. The right to express opinions, the freedom to practice their own culture and religion, and protection from abuse an neglect were all very important. This is quite possibly a recognition of things we value from living in a democracy.
We then compared what our pupils had shared with that of Kafuro pupils the last time they carried out this exercise. There was a good deal of commonality in that Kafuro pupils felt that shelter, nutritious food and clean water were really important. Where there was a difference was that Ugandan children valued clothing and land really highly. In Uganda, particularly where there are rural communities, having land to grow crops on is highly important. When your family’s livelihood is dependent upon harvesting and selling those crops, then everything else pales into insignificance. Likewise, for some children, they might only have a couple of sets of clothes (one of which is their school uniform). Therefore we can see how depending on your circumstances, your needs may change slightly.
In the next post, we will look at how the UN Convention on the rights of the child is centred around needs.
On Friday, Liss Junior School held an event to celebrate the life of Mr Andy Burford, our former headteacher who passed away over Christmas 2020 when the country wasin the midst of a lockdown due to Covid. It is only now that the school has been able to hold an appropriate celebration of his life. Many people involved in the Queen Elizabeth Parks project – both in the UK and Uganda – will remember that Mr Burford was instrumental in Liss Junior School becoming twinned with Kafuro Primary School in the first place. He also assisted Mr Stanley with many of the bids for British council funding and was a source of many brilliant ideas for joint projects between the schools.
Mr Burford’s family attended the celebration of his life where an art installation was revealed on the side of the school (as seen below). The roots and trunk of the tree represent the core skills we give the children at school with the leaves representing the growth they make while at Liss Junior. The butterflies were made by Yr 6 as they leave us and fly away to the next stage of their education and adulthood
We also planted a cherry field in the school orchard up on the field in memory of Mr Burford. As well as giving the pupils another source of fruit, it will also produce a beautiful blossom each year.
Mr Burford continued his love of learning after he had retired, and his wife, June, gave the school a beautiful litograph that he had created.
All the pupils, staff and parents at Liss Junior School will miss Mr Burford as will many of the people involved with the twinning project.
Many of our Ugandan readers will be unaware that in February the UK experienced violent storms (Storm Eunice) that resulted in all schools in Hampshire. Unfortunately, a result of this was that the Clanfield keyhole garden was destroyed. However, Miss Brown has sent a photo of the rebuilt garden frame and a short report from the Clanfield eco – council.
The CJS Eco Council have been busy adding more to their key hole garden. Our focus this time was adding some wooden panels to the inside of the structure do that the compost doesn’t fall out. We had to measure the size accurately and then use screws to hold them in place. We’re making excellent progress and should be ready to plant very soon!
Mr Thembo has been in touch again recently to share more photos of the growing crops at Kafuro. They have been adding muich, spraying with chemicals to avoid diseases and making sure that the plants are well watered every day.
The water melon crop is being looked after in Kafuro
Rihamu Junior School always take on any new challenge wholeheartedly and creating an African Keyhole garden as part of the Connecting Classrooms work we began last year has taken their commitment to a whole new level.
The first thing Madame Shakilah mentioned was how the pupils found the project so interesting. The children were very excited to do the farming and the garden is looking beautiful already! They decided to plant only vegetables! The teachers and the children grouped and named these vegetables according to their species. And these include:- Cabbage kingdom Tomato camp Egg plant yard Green pepper zone and Onion ridges.. It was a beautiful moment for the children to plant these vegetables and are they are promising to take care, always water them in the morning and evening.
Building and planting the keyhole gardenLaying bricksPlanting vegetables
Since then, growth has been steady and Madame Shakilah sent the following photos of the different zones.
The vegetables are all growing well.A quick tour of the vegetable zones
We look forward to seeing how the zones develop over the coming weeks.
It’s been some time since we were able to update you on Kafuro Primary School, but Mr Stanley has spoken to Mr Thembo over the past week and we now have plenty of news.
Firstly, pupils returned to school on January 10th after nearly two years without any school attendance. The only pupils who have attended were last year’s P7 who returned for a brief time before their PLE (Primary Leaving Examinations). One of the questions that the children at Liss have asked regularly has been about the learning that children have had at home. It has been explained to them that the pupils have had no access to remote learning – no one has laptops, and although there is internet in the area it is 3G and very slow. The school has been unable to send workpacks either as they do not have a photocopier – some secondary schools have access to them but primary do not. Consequently, the pupils have had almost two years of lost learning. This places what has happened to education in the UK into a bit more context.
Another frustration for the staff and pupils in Kafuro is that Covid cases have been virtually non – existent. The remoteness of the community has obviously been a positive factor in this, but the school has been unable to open because of government rules.
The teaching staff underwent training similar to that in the UK about how to reintegrate the pupils back into school and to recover lost learning. Initially, attendance was very poor, but has picked up quickly and Mr Thembo said it was currently at about 98%.
Regular readers of the blog will be aware that one of the projects based around our last round of Connecting Classrooms funding was building an African Keyhole Garden. As you can see from the photos below, ground has been prepared in two areas around the school but nothing has been planted yet as the weather is so hot at the moment that straw has been spread out over the surface in order to stop moisture from evaporating. Mr Thembo said that they have planted banana suckers (these will grow into teees) in different parts of the school campus as banan trees are highly drought resistant.
March 18th update: Mr Thembo has been in touch to say that the children at Kafuro have been planting water melons – not something we could realistically grow at Liss. Mr Thembo said that the seedlings have to be heavily watered at the beginning and the end of the day because it is so hot in Uganda at the moment that if they were to water in the middle of the day the water would just evaporate. They are also planting some cabbage seeds which is more like the crops we would grow in the UK.
Queen Elizabeth Parks Project Schools' Blog 