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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Two schools a world apart: African teachers visit city classes
Ugandan school teachers Aida Kainza, Samuel Kirya, and headmistress Jane Kansiime at Balmoral Hall School Thursday. (DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS) Photo Store
Teachers from a slum school in Uganda visiting Winnipeg's Seven Oaks School Division saw one familiar sight on a side trip to a private girls' school Thursday.
Uniforms.
"I'm impressed," Jane Kansiime, the headmistress of Kamwokya Primary School in Kampala, said at Balmoral Hall. "You look great," she told Girls For the World group members wearing the school's signature green kilts.
"It's the first time I've seen them here," said Kansiime who, with two of her school's teachers, was invited to Winnipeg by Seven Oaks and the Mondetta Charity Foundation.
One of the charity's founders, Kish Modha, is from Uganda and has kids who attended public school in Seven Oaks. The charity helped Arthur E. Wright Community School partner with the Kampala school. The Seven Oaks School Division sent books, chairs and 10 of its computers to the school that had none. It's now way ahead of other area schools in technology as a result of the gift, Kansiime said.
An Arthur E. Wright teacher visited Kamwokya Primary School in Uganda two years ago. The division, with the help of the Mondetta charity, invited the headmistress and two of her staff -- Aida Kainza and Samuel Kirya -- here to speak to schools in Seven Oaks and spend time at their sister school, Arthur E. Wright.
When they popped in for a chat with the girls at Balmoral Hall, it was soon apparent uniforms are about all the two schools have in common.
Kamwokya's 1,400 students were outfitted with uniforms because so many area kids were so poor they literally didn't have a thing to wear, Kansiime said.
"They cannot come because they are naked," said the woman with a booming voice and a big hug for those she meets.
Mondetta's charity picked up the tab for the primary school uniforms and for a lunch program for the students.
"Most of them are orphans. Their parents died from the epidemic of HIV/AIDS," she said. "You find two people are being buried at the same time and the children are being left alone."
What drew gasps from the Girls For the World was learning about the difference in class sizes.
With 1,400 students and just 16 classrooms, Kamwokya's smallest class has 96 students.
"It is abnormal here but it is normal back home," said Kansiime. The largest class has 135 students with just one teacher, she said.
"Our schools are congested." Up to eight students sit at a table in the classrooms, she said. Kids don't have running water at home to shower and going to school can be a sweaty, ripe experience, she said.
"But we are happy we are bringing change," said Kansiime. Kids who otherwise wouldn't get a chance are now going to school. "They might be the future leaders."
Next year, 30 Balmoral students are travelling to Kenya to build a school, said Grade 11 student Natasha Comeau who's with Girls For the World. They were riveted by Kansiime's description of what happens when they're visited by a muzungu -- the Swahili word for foreigner that literally translated means "someone who roams around aimlessly."
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 1, 2012 A8
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