Visit to Nurseries Supported by VSO/UNICEF

Sue on the boda-boda
at Nkuruba

One of the next big projects which Ndali Ventures is hoping to undertake and one about which I am personally very passionate is the development of Pre-Primary Education. Our plans range from minor improvements to the existing nursery at Aunt Susan’s through to the eventual building and running of our own nursery (more details and background to follow).

Sue Galer, someone who I met briefly on my first trip has been working through VSO on a UNICEF supported project aimed at “Transforming children’s learning through play in the Rwenzori” since October 2010. I was very hopeful about the advice and support she might be able to give us in the creation of our own projects - unfortunately I didn’t have any contact details, so a few weeks after the start of my second trip I was just contemplating the best way of locating them when, luckily for us Sue came to stay at the Lodge! Although technically on holiday, she allowed me to rack her brains for ideas and also offered to take me, Aunt Susan and James on a trip the following week to visit two of the nurseries (or Early Childhood Development Centres, ECDs) which she had been working with. 

We set off, in true Ugandan style in a Matatu, filled with teachers (or Caregivers) from a selection of the nurseries which Sue had been working with. The first nursery we visited was at Nkuruba, pretty much Ndali’s neighbor! Sue chose this nursery as it has a model outside play area built entirely from local materials.  

It was incredible to see how they had made such a variety of play equipment using such simple materials. It was also great to watch the children interacting with it, taking an interest, and, sometimes, even being a little imaginative. The teachers were clearly trying very hard to engage the children through play, such a stark contrast to the rows of children on wooden benches which is the norm for nurseries in the area.  I could see Aunt Susan and James getting very excited about the prospect of having a play area when their nursery moves to its new location; they were full of ideas and very eager to tell me that their plot of land was bigger than the one at Nkuruba so we would be able to do even more. We were then treated to a variety of songs by the children - the lyrics of my favourite one went something like "To be a teacher is not easy, to be a teacher is not easy, to be a teacher is not easy, but is easy when you are able" (teacher was also replaced by politician, doctor and a few other choice professions).

The second nursery was just the other side of Fort Portal, and one which Sue chose to show us because of the model indoor play resources which the teachers have developed. The nursery was a collection of two small mud buildings and one structure made from bamboo, but the array of resources which had been collected and used in innovative ways was astounding. It would take me hours to describe all the different items they had collected but please take a look at the photos on our Facebook album

They also had a school garden which was tended by the children (from P1 rather than the nursery) and the produce of which the children got to eat as a much needed addition to their poor diet. Building on the work Loren did with Aunt Susan’s school on the importance of school gardens, Aunt Susan and James can’t wait to start developing their own when the new plot of land comes into use.

It was a truly inspiring trip which left us all full of ideas and eager to get started!