Uji Time!

Today is an exciting day at Bukiriro Secondary School! Why? We are beginning to serve uji (porridge) to the students! My students walk up to 8km to school on an empty stomach, sit through classes all day, and walk home the same distance on an even emptier stomach. The new uji campaign will do wonders for the students, hopefully keeping them awake during afternoon lessons, improving performance in school, and giving them strength to complete all of the days activities. I am very excited to see the impact that one cup of uji has for these students, and to be part of this wonderful new thing!

Now, just in case you’re curious, what exactly does serving uji everyday at school entail. Well, let me illustrate this for you. First, you need a cook and a supplier for maize flour and sugar. Then, you need giant pots to cook the uji in, as well as firewood to cook over. You also need a shelter for the cook to work his magic, as well as enough water to cook the uji everyday. Lastly, you need to work out the budget, and determine that every student should pay 12 cents per day, or $25 per year for uji. Alright, that doesn’t sound too bad. And in reality, it wouldn’t be too bad, except that most of my students’ families cannot even afford the initial $25 for annual school fees, and with uji costs, that amount literally doubles. And without money to fund this project, how will you pay the cook or buy maize flour? How will you buy the pots, build the shelter, or get firewood? And with the closest water source being nearly 2km away, how will you ever fetch enough water in buckets to cook uji for 200 or 300 students daily???

Oh boy…this is going to be quite the project, isn’t it?!

Thankfully, enough students were able to pay the uji fee, which has allowed us to hire the cook, buy the pots, and buy the first few weeks worth of maize flour and sugar. As for the shelter, my students may not speak English or have the ability to solve a math problem, but ask them to chop down a tree and build a hut and they will be successful. We spent the afternoons on Thursday and Friday last week chopping down trees, securing the walls, and constructing the roof out of grasses found in the bush….

Step 1: Chop down the tree and carry it across the school grounds.

Step 2: Chop the leaves off the tree to secure long poles used to construct the frame.

Step 3: Build the frame of the hut.

Step 4: Stand on desks and chairs to finish the structure.

 Step 5: Go out into the bush to collect grasses for the roof.

Ingenious. And crazy, if you ask me. Would you hand a 16 year old boy in America an axe and tell him to chop down the tree? Or a hammer and tell him to stand on this chair that’s on top of this desk to nail this log to the roof of this shelter? NO! NEVER! You can’t even give the students in America a compass in math class for fear that they’ll stab each other…So anyways, I digress. We have successfully constructed our shelter, and there will be a picture of the finished product to come!

To continue, I said we need firewood to cook over. While you can purchase firewood and have it delivered, why not just collect it from the bush? So we just sent the students off, and they were successful yet again in finding the best logs for our fire.

Lastly, as for the water, for the time being, we will simply send several students with buckets to the nearest well. But this is where I am fortunate to have the ability to step in and help out. If we purchase a water tank, we can store water at school, and eliminate the need to send so many students miles away to fetch water. Hopefully this week I will be able to get the funds from America to purchase the new water tank to help expedite the uji making process! How exciting! Also, stay tuned for more details on this project and ways that you can help fund uji for these students.  While the school is initially going to have the money to serve porridge, I’m afraid that once the funds run dry, so will the students uji cups. Together we can help keep these students fed in school!