In what ways have you seen progress?”...This was the question a woman recently asked me at one of our events. She was eager and excited, wanting to hear more. “Progress”…this is an interesting term when we are working with people. How do you measure progress in another person’s life…and better yet, who am I to do that?
Have you ever felt like you didn’t belong and yet known that there is nowhere you belong more? When you look around, you see that you are right where you are supposed to be, and yet something inside you longs to be elsewhere. I have lived the last 10 years of my life in this paradox, belonging and yet still longing. You see, living with one foot in the western world and the other in Sub-Saharan Africa is a gift, but it is also the hardest thing I have ever done.
Besides planting the actual seeds, this mulch "blanket" is perhaps the most essential part of the planting process, sometimes making the difference between a low and plentiful harvest. The trick? Finding the dried leaves to make it. Luckily, there is one crop that drops heaps of dried leaves and there's plenty of it around, even neighboring many of the women’s gardens! Unfortunately, it comes at a price. So how much is too much?
In a dire moment, I saw with new clarity how almost everything in my daily life could be burned and I would still be relatively… fine. It begs the question, if all this can be lost, what’s worth saving? What lasts?
Muwanguzi and her children live in a rural Ugandan village forty minutes from the nearest town. Here in Bubugo village, attending school above Primary 7 (the American equivalent of 7th grade), or even regularly attending school at all, is rare. Studies show that 68% of Ugandan students are likely to drop out before even completing primary school (Mwesigwa).
Why, 20 years after primary education, and 10 years after secondary education, was made free, is finishing primary school a rarity, rather than the norm? This is a look into the Ugandan school system and what makes it the way it is today.
