Enkuto Eratukura #12: Progress and Paint Marks

"Abazungu": Arriving under the watchful eye of a quartet of children.

Thursday 9th April 2015 - 9.30pm

Today was the day for me take the lead in a teaching and learning project. 

During Monday’s meeting, I had planned to try and work with Jonan, the head teacher at New Foundation Primary School on the Katuna Road in Kabale. The focus was to be on the coaching model that I had been using since moving to Fulham Cross, all with the aim of trying to improve the quality of teaching.

I had also arranged for Suweyda to run an Art session with a different class whilst I was with Jonan. 

Along with Huda, Molly and Sina, we headed over in a special hire to be greeted by a tidal wave of children chanting “abazungu” rhythmically at us through the gaps in the wooden fence.

New Foundation has a sprawling site set back from the recently re-laid road to the border with Rwanda. At regular intervals, large trucks, flanked by boda-bodas, would cough and splutter their way along, mingling their urban fumes with the early morning whisps of soft eucalyptus wood smoke from small fires that usually lend the area a more rural feel.

After some preliminary discussions, and the obligatory signing of the visitors’ book, I headed off to class P5 with Jonan and sat at the back of teacher James’ English class.

Sat with a good vantage over the whole classroom, it was clear that there was a large discrepancy between the ages of the students enrolled in P5. Some students were the expected age, but there were also a group of boys clearly in their mid-teens.

Often, if there are problems for a family in raising funds for scholastic equipment and uniform, there can be a delay in students starting their education despite the fact that Universal Primary Education means that all students, theoretically, have a place at any state primary school. Furthermore, pressures within a family may mean that a child is expected to work or support their family somehow. There are no attendance officers calling home to investigate.

Either way, this reality, where free education still isn’t necessarily free, can result in gaps in a child’s education meaning it isn’t that unusual for a 14-year-old to end up at the back of a primary school class.

As the school has been working with members of All Our Children over the years, namely Grigorios, the lesson that James had prepared was in fact quite inventive and involved group work techniques and role-play, both often absent in such large classes. It meant that, in my seventh visit, I was in many ways seeing the strongest student engagement in the learning environment to date.

After twenty minutes, keen not to cause James to panic about being too closely scrutinised, I suggested to Jonan that we left the room, thanking the teacher on the way out.

Whilst James continued his lesson, I talked Jonan through the basics of the GROW coaching model. It was safe to say that his natural enthusiasm for developing his small school meant that he was receptive to everything we discussed. Most importantly to me, he seemed to really enjoy the fact that coaching is best used as a constructive, rather than critical, approach to staff development – not a tool for monitoring or performance management.

Working with a consultant at Fulham Cross, I have worked on developing how I use my questioning to help coachees to deconstruct their own teaching, rather than me trying to impart my eight years of ‘wisdom’. With this is mind, I ran through a few scenarios with Jonan modelling the digging deeper approach of gently probing questions. We set a date for the feedback with James to take place shortly after morning break the following day.

Conscious that I had left Suweyda in charge of an art project with a large group of children usually run by teacher with nearly 20 years’ experience, I went over to investigate what was happening on the playing field. 

Expecting to see paint and paper strewn everywhere and the four WMSF students cowering in the corner, I was pleasantly surprised to find a hive of purposeful industry with only a few paint marks visible on hijabs and abayahs. 

Across the width of the field a line was hung up and all the various prints that the students had been working on for the last hour or so were pegged on it to dry. Every imaginable shape and design was attempted: Africa, Uganda, cars, Ankore cattle, houses and accidental back-to-front writing.

With the sun beginning to break out from behind the thick Kabale mist, and lunchtime beckoning, we said our goodbyes and headed back to the road to where our taxi driver had recently returned. 

Late that afternoon we got involved in what is fast becoming an annual custom: throwing the WMSF girls into mixed basketball teams with the well-drilled and well-trained girls of Kigezi High School. This year, the match was a closely run thing between the two teams and the reluctant west London ladies soon let the adrenaline take over and put up a good showing despite their fatigue from a busy morning. The coach even offered to sign a few of them, but couldn’t guarantee meeting their wage demands.

The night was a quiet one, spent at the hotel, with a few rounds of Waragi and tonic shared along with some improvised music courtesy of Tamera.

Like a Wilting Flamboyant

Looking down from Blanchard towards the Atlantic Sea, Saint Lucia.

On Thursday 17th September 2015 I took a group of girls from Year 9 to the First Story Young Writers' Festival at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. The First Story project partners schools with a published writer who then leads a group of students in creating an anthology.

The event saw poetry performances from Caroline Bird, Anthony Anaxagorou and Andy Craven-Griffiths (who all instantly gained new fans), a lunchtime Q&A with Sally Green and an afternoon workshop to develop their creativity.

Alongside this, the teachers are also given the opportunity to attend a workshop to get new inspiration for teaching creative writing. The session I attended was led by Dan Powell, who introduced a technique of free-writing whereby a word is called out, every thirty seconds or so, and has to be woven into whatever you're writing.

Here is my attempt, evoking memories of Saint Lucia.

The shack stood alone

Like a wilting flamboyant

Braced against the Atlantic winds,

As they pushed,

Pulled,

And jabbed against the remnants of the battered tin roof.

Its foundations rocked and swayed as a series of gusts

Itched the landscape,

And a thousand lost voices floated

Up and away over the Ti Rocher gap

To be consumed by the dense emerald forest,

Huddled,

Waiting patiently beyond the next hill.

Enkuto Eratukura #11: Conversations in Bugongi

Mist, fading sunshine and lens flare over the trees of Bugongi, Kabale.

Wednesday 8th April 2015 - 5pm

When lunch at Kigezi High School was over, I led the group down the precipitous hillside path, across the playing fields between the cows, and into the Bugongi area of Kabale. 

This area is still one that I know very little about, yet, every morning, it is the part of Kabale that I see emerging first from the mist as I look over my balcony at Green Hills Hotel. 

Its relatively enigmatic status, to your average mzungu at least, means that as an area I had no real judgement of the place, just the general assumption that this quater may be less well off than other areas of the town. Indeed, this was my first observation of the place in 2009 when William Blake’s mind came to my mind. 

I sent the group off towards the town in order to visit Royal Supermarket and I departed in a different direction to rendezvous with Liz to head to Phionah’s house along the Bugongi Road.

There are many small traders along the side of the road: ‘pork joints’, small bars and shops selling various oddments. Children were wandering along as they headed home. Boda-bodas rattled past over the rough red road, darting in between the slower moving bicycles and pedestrians. Livestock meandered aimlessy and freely amongst the myriad pathways and byways of the area. 

We reached a slightly newer row of shops and from behind a corrugate iron gate Phionah emerged. 

A few years back, Phionah had had to seriously face the prospect of being unable to attend University. As a result of not having been able to pay a certain administrative fee, money her parents didn’t have, she wasn’t allowed to have the official transcript of her Senior 6 results. Without this information, no university would accept her. 

In the end Liz, frustrated with the lunacy of the situation, paid off the fees meaning that she was finally accepted onto a nursing course at uni. 

A few years of studying and an internship later, Phionah now resides in Kampala along with a dentist and a pharmacist in a shared house – surely a perfect polyclinic waiting to happen. 

Her parents’ house was in a small compound set behind the row of shops and away from the road, although not the general noise of Bugongi. 

The house was dark, but comfortably furnished. We were introduced briefly to her mother who then returned to kitchen to talk to a younger member of the family. In true Ugandan style, Phionah had gone all-out to accommodate us; Fresh bananas, butter, bread and Nescafé coffee are all laid-out in front of us. 

We talked a lot about health and naturally, as is often the case in sub-Saharan Africa, the conversation turned to HIV/AIDS. 

“There are still many people being infected in Uganda,” Phionah answered to Liz’s question about the prevalence of new cases of AIDS in the country. “As time has gone on, the government has made anti-retrovirals (ARVs) available for free to those infected by HIV/AIDS.” 

“So why haven’t the numbers of people being infected fallen?” I asked. 

“Maybe people are getting too relaxed about the risks of infection. Perhaps, in the knowledge that there are ARVs available, some people just think to themselves, ‘It’s okay. If I get infected, then I can take ARVs and be okay’.” 

What is clear is that the detrimental effect socially on everyday life and family life is profound, with or without ARVs. 

“If one parent gets infected and the other one doesn’t then the relationship can be over,” Phionah continued. “Even though the partner may have been faithful, the trust can easily go as soon as one partner is diagnosed.” 

“The worst case scenario is that a woman is left alone with her child and with very little social support.” 

After finishing our coffee and bananas we made to leave. As we were doing so, we were greeted at the gate by a smartly dressed, softly-spoken gentleman, Enock; Phionah’s father. He was a jovial fellow and couldn’t help but beam with pride as Liz talked about his daughter’s successes in her nurse training. 

The noise from the Pentecostal Church next door had been slowly rising over the last few hours, but, just as we were leaving, the power cuts and the pastor was left voiceless. Liz raised a wry smile. 

Primary school children were heading home in throngs now and Liz, Phionnah and I were swept along in the unending flow of small life calling out ‘abazungu’ as they went. Phionah found it all rather amusing. 

We walked a little way before taking a right and then a left down a narrow alleyway. The alley lead past some smaller houses before gently descending. 

The path had been heavily eroded and more closely resembled an ephemeral river than a walkway. 

We emerged from the narrow path and into a small valley covered in tall eucalyptus trees. Here a small stream flowed into a concrete channel designed to facilitate water collection. 

After walking over a slender log doubling as a bridge, we started to ascend the other side. We climbed up a slippery red mud path, reaching the level of the tree tops and finally stepped out of this small green oasis and found ourselves at the gate of Green Hills. 

❦

Shortly after our return to the United Kingdom we received the unfortunate news that Phionah’s father, Enock, had passed away on the 16th April. My one meeting with him, although brief, was enough for me to see that he was a gentle character who had a genuine abundance of pride in his daughter’s achievements.

Goldfinger by Ian Fleming

Cover image © Penguin Viking

With the occasional shadows of the clouds moving up the hillside from the Atlantic Ocean, my James Bond summer holiday reading continued this year in Blanchard, Saint Lucia. Sheltering from the occasional downpour, I settled down on the loggia to read Goldfinger (1959) by Ian Fleming – the seventh novel in the Bond series.

The novel opens with James Bond in the departure lounge at Miami Airport having just successfully dispatched with a Mexican heroine smuggling operation. Whilst musing on the dirty nature of his job, as Bond does so with increasing frequency through the first six books, he is approached by Junius Du Pont, a fellow gambler he’d met briefly in Casino Royale, to look into the Canasta playing of his playing partner. 

Auric Goldfinger seems to be on an inconceivably long winning streak and Bond, taking on this bit of private non-Secret Service work, soon discovers that, along with his assistant, Goldfinger is cheating Du Pont during each of their card games. It also doesn’t take long for Bond to have his first interaction with a member of the opposite sex – Goldfinger's assistant.

This chance meeting between Bond and Goldfinger sets the tone for the novel, sensibly divided into three sections: Happenstance, Coincidence and Enemy Action.

Upon his return to the UK, Bond is on night duty and decides to do a little digging into the Secret Service’s archives to see what can be found on Goldfinger. The files are empty, but, by coincidence, the following morning M calls Bond for a meeting. The Bank of England are concerned about the amount of gold being smuggled out of the country and there are no prizes for guessing who the prime suspect is.

The action moves forward to the fairways of a Kent golf course, continental Europe and eventually America, the location of Goldfinger’s exceptionally audacious planned gold heist.

The action in Goldfinger is, in many ways, a lot slower and more drawn-out compared to other more action-packed novels in the series such as Moonraker and From Russia With Love, but the character of James Bond is definitely explored in a greater level of detail. The time waiting at Miami Airport and on night duty does give the reader a greater insight into his thought process compared to other novels.

In the words of novelist Kate Mosse, “There is more doubt and something of Rider Haggard’s unglamorous Allan Quartermain than in the slap-bang-wallop superhero of some of the other Bond novels.”

Goldfinger is also the novel in which we meet the amusingly named Pussy Galore, leader of band of lesbian gangsters in America. There is something quite awkward about elements of Miss Galore’s inclusion in the story, not least the fact that Bond ends up ‘turning her’ in a very dated and misogynist perspective on sexuality, but, perhaps within late 50s British society this was the prevailing view.

All in all, I like the pensive, thoughtful 007, but I did miss the sweeping action set pieces and opulence of the earlier novels in the series.