How do you get a live chicken onto a plane?!

Uganda Part 2 - Schools

We visited the ‘God Cares Nursery and Primary School’ which is run by one of the pastors, Frank, from the church.  He started it in 2012 and they serve 160 children.  Fees are about £20 per term per child but he has some children there who can’t pay so he still allows them to come.  There is no free education in Uganda and fees range from £20 - £25 per term for Primary education, an amount that is sadly out of the reach of many people.  The government don’t contribute anything to schools to help them run even though the people have to pay taxes.  They have to pay about £2000 a year in rent for the use of the building and the fees they charge are to cover that and the teachers’ wages as well as a few meagre resources. 

 

Outside the 'God Cares' school

The school consisted of a few rooms in a pretty run down building and they have few resources but it had a lovely feel to the place and you could tell it was a place filled with God’s love and peace. 

Sitting in one of the classrooms

Very bare rooms - all they have is a few benches for the children to sit on.

The nursery class.

The children performed some songs and dances for us and then they were lined up outside in the sun so that I could do a little talk to them.  I used balloons to talk about how much God loves us and that even when we do things that are wrong he forgives us if we say sorry to him and then takes all the wrong things away.  We taught them an action song and they really enjoyed themselves. 

The children performing for us.

Talking to the gathered children at the front of the school.

Our God is a great big God...

We were then lavished with gifts – they gave us a basket of fruit, three sticks of sugar cane (about 6 ft high!) and to our amusement, a live chicken!  At the beginning of the day we could never have predicted that would happen!  Mark explained to Lazarus that we couldn’t take all that stuff home on the plane but didn’t want to cause any offense and he was understanding and said they would distribute the gifts to people which was a good outcome.  They also gave us some Ugandan flags which we could take home with us.

How am I going to get this on the plane?!

With our lavish gifts.

The Ugandan flag.

 

With all the staff.

We went on to Wobulenzi Secondary School which was a mixed Christian and Muslim school.  We were invited to speak at their equivalent of a lunchtime Christian Union and there were about 100 youngsters there.  It was a difficult place to speak as there was no sound system and there was a lot of noise going on at the back of the room and around the outside but we did our best!  I spoke about how Jesus can help us to break bad habits that we can’t break in our own strength, Jocelyn gave a testimony about how God had helped her in her life and Mark summarised.   Interestingly there was a young Muslim girl in the group and at the end she asked to have her photo taken with us which was a lovely moment. 

 

Tomorrow I'll post the next instalment!