Grew's News 3: Busagazi School Visit!

I had an amazing day today. Words cannot capture the range of emotions that I experienced but the strongest one was joy. Our CanAssist group made a 3.5 hour trek to the Busagazi School in Uganda. This school was built with funding from ETFO's Humanity Fund and a partnership between CanAssist and MCODE, a local development agency. Almost two hours of the journey were spent on narrow hard pack red clay roads. The ride was very slow, bumpy and dusty. In fact the roads were so poor that the last kilometre had to made on foot. After a slow approach up a steep hill we spotted the school on a green plateau. Despite the fact that today was a school holiday, many villagers, teachers, community leaders and children turned up. We had a warm greeting with multiple speeches expressing gratitude. The beautiful women sang and danced for us in a rainbow of colours and the children were excited to receive books, uniforms and balls from our group.
This school serves over 600 students and it originally had only two classrooms paid for by the government. At this time students had to take turns attending school on alternate days, much like our A/B Kindergarten schedule or they attended school under a tree on the property. The addition of two new classrooms by CanAssist and two more by another NGO means that the children have more space to engage in learning. Together we are stronger!