As you turned up Ndali’s driveway you will have noticed the small school and, if it was the right time of day, the thousand children who attend it! Mbuga Primary School is part of the Uganda government’s ambitious ‘universal primary education’ policy, in which the government commited to build, maintain and staff enough primary schools to educate every child in the country.
That’s the theory, anyway. The absurdly high birth-rate in Uganda (the average woman has seven children!) makes the UPE policy almost impossible to execute effectively, meaning that Mbuga, and many schools like it, do not get the funding and attention they require.
As a result the education and learning environment available to the pupils is considerably below par. Ndali Lodge has affiliated itself with the school in an attempt to address some of their problems and ensure that the children come away having had some semblance of an education. So far we have built a classroom, the one with the solar-system painted on it, contributed towards a staff room, forwarded generous gifts of school equipment from guests and accommodated a number of young volunteers from England who have added their limited experience to that of the existing teaching staff - and given the children plenty to laugh at!
