Kyabirwa Primary School Volunteer Project

About the Owino Family, our hosts and now our friends. (Moses Owino is the Volunteer Project Manager)

Question: How easy is it to share your home and your life with a succession of complete strangers from far overseas, for anything between a few days and a few months? We’ll never be able to tell because they have shared theirs with such kindness, such friendliness and such unquestioning politeness that they’ve never given anything away about how hard (or how annoying) it might be. It’s hugely impressive, because we’re guessing we volunteers are not always easy to live with, but we have been looked after so well, fed so much, and welcomed so generously that we haven’t had to worry about anything. We know Moses actually works long and hard to be the ever-gracious and effortless host, and we have really appreciated what he’s done, enabling us to come here, supporting us while we’ve been here, and helping us with anything we’ve asked to do. In this respect he has been ably supported by his whole family, from the very young to really quite old. Florence, Moses’s wife, has always been friendly and helpful, regardless of the amount of work she has faced, and she has cooked up some wondrous feasts for us. But she is not just a chef: we should appreciate, too, all the behind-the-scenes work she has done for us. Flowers, too, for Agnes, who deputized for Florence many times, and who gave Andy the most talked-about hairstyle in the District.

Then there are the teachers.

They’ve been 100% supportive of our efforts in the classroom, and we thank them deeply for letting us invade their territory and (in at least one of our cases) attempt some sort of amateur teaching. With the help and guidance of Robinah (the head) and Moses (the Volunteer Coordinator) we’ve enjoyed a smooth and always interesting programme of activities to do and lessons to teach (we’ve both taught three or four lessons a day, so we’ve always been busy), and we’ve developed some great relationships with our class teachers, who we’re going to miss a lot. A term really flies by, especially when you have to fit so much into it, but although we’re gone the teachers will stay here, and will continue to do a remarkable job in really quite difficult surroundings. But despite the challenges the school maintains a genuinely impressive and refreshing atmosphere and ethos, and the teachers are always friendly with each other and always welcoming to us interferers. We wish them the very best.

Then there are the children.

All 1300 of them, from the smallest P1 sprog to the biggest P7 'yob'. They’ve been a blast from the first day we arrived. Never rude or sarcastic, although sometimes a little bit cheeky, they have been great ambassadors for the school, and have made our time both rewarding and enjoyable. As for the classes we taught, well, P3 (180 children) are lots of fun, always enthusiastic and always willing to take part in lessons. We think they’ll probably miss Pop more than they’ll miss Teacher Linda, but that’s okay with us.

In the final analysis, we’ve discovered that often it isn’t actually what you do, or how you spend money, or in what ways you intervene in the story of a community, which brings the greatest impact. In fact, the only difference that you can ever truly make, and often it’s the one you can never actually measure, happens just by you being there. Even if you don’t feel you’ve helped, you probably have. For people in remote places, often forgotten by central government, often neglected by local government, and often feeling like no-one in the world actually knows or cares they exist, it is -we’re sure of it- an uplifting thing to have someone fly halfway round the world just to spend some time with them; to talk to them; to be made a figure of relentless fun by them; whatever. That simple act of recognition -done by one human to another- is so incredibly powerful and important in places where recognition has rarely, if ever existed, that no volunteer should ever feel that their work or their time has been fruitless. The kid you played with; the old lady you smiled at; the soda you bought at the grocers; they all made a difference, tiny and beyond measurement as it may have been in your eyes. But help isn’t always about building classrooms or delivering sacks of maize or handing out exercise books: it can be psychological, too, and it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance this can have on an individual, or sometimes even a whole group of people.
And then, of course, you can look at it from the other way round. Countless people have touched our lives, have changed us for the better, and have burned into our minds memories of amazing things. And wouldn’t that have been worthwhile on its own?