More Girls Hygiene Education

Papyrus ten feet tall!

What a thoroughly delightful trip to Mpigi District about 50 miles south of Kampala, just a few miles from the equator.  Ssimbwa, our dear friend & frequent driver, took us to his home villages where we saw what could be considered the most beautiful part of Uganda. We traversed a giant papyrus swamp to get to a pretty remote and extremely impoverished little primary school called Jalamba Primary School.  No electricity. Not a toy in sight, but in the most pristine tropical paradise we've ever seen. Here's what was growing across the street: Arabica coffee (cash crop); corn; mango; papaya; avocado; potatoes; tomatoes; mangos; cassava; yams; sweet potato; beans; squash (I used to be a good squash player); tons of bananas and pineapples.

With this type of year-round growth and abundance, this part of the earth has never known famine and it's obvious that electricity is a luxury many can live just fine without. Indeed, the beauty and bounty of the place is half of the problem when it comes to development, since for eons these people have not needed to plan for the future: wake up, pick an avocado, a pineapple, a papaya.  Take nap.  For dinner maybe some guava and beans.  Year round growth = no need to store up or plan for a cold winter.  This is one reason why most of the wealth is in the northern latitudes: without preparation and cooperation we Bazungu (whities) would all freeze to death or starve.  For cooking everybody uses charcoal, which is quickly destroying what's left of the forests.  Each kid coming home from school either had a jerry can (water) or a bunch of sticks on their heads (charcoal).  Each evening the entire nation, the entire continent, gets a low-level haze from everybody using charcoal.  We call this energy poverty, since the electricity is unreliable or inaccessible.  If civilization imploded tomorrow, these people would still go along as they always have done & wonder what all the fuss was about.

A real treat for us and for them.

The girls at the school were in absolute desperate need for what we had to offer. Kathleen was told that the traditional methods to take care of their menstruation were so abrasive that they often couldn't attend school just because of the sores it made on their thighs (sorry for the lack of discretion, but this is real for these girls!) Many of their dresses were torn and threadbare.  But they were radiant, sincere, and delightful.  Kathleen would talk, the "Senior Woman" (teacher over all the girls, like a headmistress) would translate, and they would all start to laugh.  Mary and Kathleen were becoming a little self-conscious until the Senior Woman told them that the girls were just so happy!  She said that for many of them, this might be the first thing of their own in their lives.