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| Greetings!
I regret that it has been too long since I last wrote and the reason might be that I have just been too busy. But, as usual, a lot has happened since the last newsletter -- read on for news and stories.
Barbara Wybar
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Bududa Vocational Institute
The school is ticking along nicely. We continue to get new students, but as this is term two, they are not enrolling at such a fast pace. We now have Carpentry and Joinery - 4; Bricklaying and Concrete Practice - 13; Tailoring -17; Nursery Teacher Training - 23 and Computer -3 for a total of 60 (full time).
The students and the faculty are now gearing up for the nine visitors we are expecting in the next few weeks. When they come and bring with them money to start building, we will be ready to start construction for a new cookhouse and then most importantly, a new classroom block. In anticipation, the boys of the BCP class (bricklaying and concrete practice) have been making concrete blocks for the new buildings. They are not bricks, but interlocking blocks. It is an economical way to build. The land has been leveled and we are ready.
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Children of Peace
Here is a very brief story about a child who came last Saturday, Ivan.
There are heart breaks here too. Yesterday, when we hosted the weekly orphans program, one 12 year old, Ivan, was not with the others. He said he was sick and so I left him to wait to see the medical officer. He never did, but one of the fine teachers reminded me that he was not well. We talked to him and again I saw those silent embarassed tears flowing as he tried to look at his belly button. He said his mum had gone to Kenya and he was living with a step Mum and he did not have enough to eat. Sure enough under his jacket he was skin and bones. He was starving and he had so many jiggers in his feet he could hardly walk. My friends at the guest house worked for two hours to remove the jiggers and I fed him everything I could and then when the program was over, I took one of the teachers and we went to visit his family. It was the worst. Step Mum was wretched and filthy herself and surrounded by six kids and many many more who had come to see the white visitor. Dad could not cope and so he had turned to drink and he was not around and Ivan was unfed and unloved and miserable. So so sad and what to do. Feed the whole family, and for how long? My heart breaks in these situations.
Two days later, I called a neighbor of this family, Simon, and asked him to send the parents of this child here and we would give them food. Dad and son arrived. No step mum. Our headmaster at the school counseled them and we gave them food and soap and more preventative treatment for the jiggers. I am getting bold now that I have been at this for a while and so I asked if they were doing any family planning and he said no. He said this wife only had two girls and so she hoped for a boy. I just said we would be unable to help if they did not get with the program and get on some kind of a birth control plan. Dad and step mum have to come back tomorrow and we will talk more about this before we will give any more food. Can you imagine? This is not an uncommon story here in these rural areas.
Sequel: Step Mum and Dad arrive a few days later and we talk to them and find that step mum has already conceived!
Playing ball on Saturdays
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| LET THE SUN SHINE!!!!
In the last newsletter, I mentioned we needed more electrical power and the need for more solar panels. Within a few days I had an email from Laura and Marc McKenna, friends from Philadelphia, who loved the report about what we are doing here and wanted to help. Laura sent $2,000.00 for four more solar panels! We had our solar man out here and now we have no more power issues in the school. The sun shines and we run all the laptops and computer teaching programs we want and now print whenever we want. So a huge thank-you to our generously minded friends Laura and Marc Mckenna.
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VISITORS TO BUDUDA-A two way street!
 Since my last newsletter, Sally, my sister, has been here for part of March and April. It has been wonderful and she was much loved and oh so helpful with all there is to do here. This is what she had to say about her visit.
(photo -L to R- Henry, the new tailoring teacher, Maimuna, the bead teacher,
Sally, Doreen, daughter of Simon, Barbara, and Mary, our guesthouse director
and cook)
""In March I arrived in Bududa in the dark, after a long trip from Toronto, to visit my sister, Barbara Wybar at her new home. The driver let us off on the mud road and we were greeted by the guest housekeeper, Mary, one of her teachers, Henry, and Robert, the Deputy Principal. Barbara said we were now going to climb a long steep hill in pitch black to get to the house and I was to follow the man in front of me who had a headlamp. At the top was the house that Barbara, the teachers and students built last summer so guests could come and participate in the Bududa projects. Mary had the table set with cosmos from the new garden, lanterns around the room, candles on the table and we had a fine welcoming dinner. The house has four bedrooms with an annex behind with a toilet room and three more bedrooms. (There is no electricity or running water there or anywhere in Bududa, an area with a population of 300,000 scattered all over the mountains.)
I woke the next morning with sun shining in through my mosquito net and joyful sounds of young people wafting up from the school in the valley below. I peered out to see where I'd landed the night before. I took in a lyrical scene of tilled fields going down the hill from the house, the school in a valley below surrounded on all sides by green hills and mountains. A few meters away I spotted two gorgeous, enormous cranes perched on a big tree. I saw colorful figures in the school grounds, all milling about before classes began. And I saw one figure that stood out because of its purposeful stride. In one moment I realized this had to be my sister and I understood why she was there and that this was her domain.
Looking up from school to guesthouse.
The next three weeks unfolded happily with an expanding knowledge of the people of Bududa and the students and teachers of the Bududa Vocational Institute. In spite of the enthusiastic, handsome young students and the teaching staff who are so proud to be part of the team growing this successful new school, the region is the poorest in Uganda, with what is estimated to be the highest birth rate in Africa. In spite of the fertile land where everything grows easily, many there are hungry. However the simple life and the ease of growing their own food and the beauty seems to leave them remarkably peaceful and free of stress.
The school is a great boon to the community. It is much needed. With so many unable to pay fees for high school and without any prospects of being able to earn a living with so little education, BVI offers skills training in areas where they are needed for local jobs: brick laying and cement practice;carpentry; tailoring and dressmaking; nursery teacher training, and computer skills. Last year's graduates all found gainful employment within a few months of finishing. I met the principal of one of the many elementary schools who said his head nursery school teacher was from last year's graduating class.
The school now has a principal, eight teachers and about 60 students, double the size of the first year. Then there is Robina the cook and her assistant who make a big fire every morning to cook a big hot lunch for eighty plus. There is a school garden growing vegetables to help with food supplies. Although there is no electricity or running water, there are now solar panels in the school's roof and a small generator to run the computers and provide power for a few light bulbs in the office. The school has its own rain collector system to provide water most of the time. Besides the school, Barbara is kept busy dealing with the many health and nourishment problems of not just the students but their families.
What did I do while I was there? I offered to paint an alphabet frieze and mural in the nursery training classroom, with help from the students. But first the room needed to be painted. I traveled by bus to the big town an hour's bus ride away and got a huge container of orange/terracotta paint for the walls and some light blue paint for the ceiling and the background frieze just below the ceiling. Farmer Moses came in after classes were over to paint the room and the carpentry students provided scaffolding for me to get up near the ceiling to space the letters around the room. We picked bright primary colours for the letters (red for the vowels) and the students filled in the letters. They were assigned to come up with an African image for each letter, to be painted underneath. And finally I designed a mural for the far wall with a scene of Bududa's main road full of colorful villagers and the hills beyond. I also went on hikes into the hills with Barbara and Mary and Henry to visit and bring medicine to families with sick babies. And sometimes after school I sat out on the terrace at the house and had tea and drank in the scene of all the women laughing and working together in the fields below tending their crops of maize and tomatoes. When Maimouna, a wonderful jewelry maker came to stay for a few days to teach the orphans how to make paper beads, we strung beads together on the terrace. It was another world and I understood my sister's deep commitment to help make it work."
In the month of May, we had two 17 year olds, seniors from Chestnut Hill Academy in Philly, Andrew Sivick, and Bobby McArthur. They were a hit. They played such a role and helped in every way they could, but really they just ate their way into all of our hearts. What I like best about my role here is that it is a two way street. The visitors give to the African community in the way of their skills, and they love their experience and so they go back filled with joy at the remarkable experience they have had living another culture for a few weeks.
To quote Andrew in his thank-you letter, he says," This was easily the best experience of my life and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I met people and did things that will be forever in my memory. You have done an amazing thing with the school and I wish more people were like you. I did not know what to expect when I first came, but it was greater than I could have ever dreamed. As George Kutosi, (our head master) so elegantly stated, we learn from each other and I definitely learned from all of you." Andrew Sivick, CHA sr., aged 19.
Bobby McArthur, also a CHA Student. stated, "I cannot thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to come to work with you at Bududa Vocational Institute. You gave me an opportunity to see a completely different world and work with kids just like me from that world. You allowed me to learn more about myself than I have learned in most of the rest of my life. I feel like this experience was key in my maturation as I go off to college. Working at BVI reassured me of my passion to help people. It amazed me how people can be happy in such bad living conditions."
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 Principal Kutosi, Margaret and Barbara
A Story About One of Our Mature Students, Margaret I wanted to tell a story as I like stories better than reports. I think this one tells best what we are trying to do and how your donations are spent. In November, the headmaster of the school and I walked the hillsides surrounding Bududa and spoke at as many schools as possible to recruit new students for the new year. On the way down, it began to rain hard. We took shelter in a peasant's home and waited for the rain to stop. It took an hour. We sat with Margaret, a woman of about 50 years with a sad expression on her face that spoke of one who is resigned to her lot (and the lot of women in this community is miserable). After a while, the headmaster began to get Margaret's story. She had five children and they had been in private schools when her husband decided to take up with a much younger woman and had two children with her and built her a house just across the clearing. Margaret had to look out her door everyday and watch this as she and her children are ignored and have had to pull out of private school, as there is no money.
We suggested to Margaret that she come to our school and learn a trade. She came the next day having walked for four miles barefoot in her best dress. We signed her up and we sponsor her and she comes everyday to learn to be a tailor. We have made her a uniform and she wears it with pride. Best of all, her teachers tell us that she is a very good student and although she has not been educated beyond Primary seven. She tries hard and she can do the calculations for garment cutting. Now Margaret can be seen with a smile on her face and it comes easily. It makes me happy.
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A sister's portrait from Bududa
So these are our stories. The longer I live here, and the more I learn about the place and the people, the more I realize that we are needed here and that we are doing a good thing in this district. The people are very poor and getting poorer as the population explodes and the land will not support them and the effects of global warming are affecting the rainfall, which affects their crops. So I will stay and keep working to help this community help itself. Thanks for your support!
Sincerely,
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Barbara Wybar
Coordinator, AGLI's Bududa Projects, bwybar@yahoo.com
(all comments/suggestions/feedback welcome!)
http://bviuganda.org/index.htm
USA Mailing Address: c/o Geri Fitzgerald, 324 Kings Highway, Kennebunkport, Maine, 04046 (checks payable to Friends Peace Teams)
Canada Mailing Address: c/o Sally Bongard, 54 Aberdeen Ave., Toronto, ON M4X-1A2 (checks payable to Canadian Friends Service Committee)
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