The Odds that Kreshia and Her Friends Face Everyday.

Very curious about this kid with tattered sandals following me.

Towards the end of last year, I was walking in countryside about thirty miles from Kampala. It was a hot dry day. I had prepared well for the day; wearing my big clumpy walking boots, I had three litters of water and I had mapped my route well. I had taken great care to make sure that my loved ones knew where I was and they also expected to get regular calls from me. The walk took me through some pretty isolated areas and a swamp so I wanted to be sure of my own safety. The walk was to take me about six hours I presumed.

We finally meet after that walk.

About half way through this walk, I noticed a young girl whom I thought was about five, maybe six following me. I noticed she had a pretty dark complexion and she was wearing tattered plastic sandals. Nothing bothered me about her for about a mile or so until I stopped to have a drink. She also stopped. When I got up to walk, she walked as well, always keeping a distance from me.

By this time, I had started sharing my experience on social media. Some people thought she was an angle willing me on. Others thought she was a ghost. Many people came up with all sorts of ideas. We kept walking and she followed. After two hours, I asked her what her name was. She told me and where she went to school. Still, we kept a distance. Villagers can be quite tetchy when they see a stranger more so with a girl following him. They can think you're abducting her. Soon after I asked for her name, she disappeared in thin air. I took my eyes off her for a minute. When I looked back she was gone!! Gone like she had appeared. Into thin air. But I knew her name and her school. I was asked by a friend later to go and find her. When I did, there was joy and uproar. For I had been joined again to my walking companion Kreshia (or is it Cresha?) Namala.

Kresha was an ordinary seven year old girl. I found out that she had stopped going to school because of school fees. I also found out that she appeared out of thin air and disappeared as well the same way because the kids in this village have warren runs; small paths that lead off the main roads that only they know. Kreshia comes from a poor family with them struggling to make ends meet. I made an appeal for assistance and since then Kreshia has gone back to school with the help of donations and she at least has one square meal a day that is provided by the school.

The tattered sandals that I identified her with.

However, the problem is not solved. Kreshia is one of many girls in the Nsujjumpolwe and Galatiya areas who are falling between the cracks. The area is so poor that many kids cant actually afford the fees despite the fact that the government helps with some money. I found that at her school Galatiya Primary School many kids attend school according to what you paid for. Many will only go to school for half the day and they will go back home because they can not afford the afternoon.

It is all fun after a donation of bikes.

Like so many rural schools, the kids here are actually borne of kids themselves. On one of my visits one of my taxi drivers told me of the rampant teenage pregnancies in the area. That means that many girls have dropped out of school to look after there kids, while they are still kids themselves. As for the girls in these rural schools, when they get their periods, that is it. School is out for the duration because sanitary pads are still either too expensive or they are not as readily available to them. There is a concerted government effort to rectify this.

At her school, the government put up one building which houses Primary one to three classes. Students in the upper classes attend class in what one might think is a badly converted barn. It has no partitioning walls, the floors are filled with holes. There are no window panes so when it rains it gets wet inside. 

While many parts of Ugandan society are seeing an economic boom, many are being left behind. A group of men once approached me asking for land to till and grow crops to feed their families. I don't own land there but they told me that people from towns like myself go to these areas, buy land and fence it off. What is therefore happening is that even when the rains come, there are huge tracts of land lying idle not being used for agriculture while the locals look on hungry. These youths have now resorted to buying mopeds (boda boda) which is their main source of income. The ladies meanwhile sit and idle time away at home.

It is not all dire however, once I attended class with Kreshia and her friends and I was inspired by what I saw. There teacher had just recently given birth. Her baby, hardly three months old was in a cradle at the back of a stiflingly hot class. She, and her charges, Kreshia and her friends were learning English and Maths. Occasionally the baby would cry and the teacher would pick her up and continue breastfeeding while teaching.

I visited the school administration block. I could hardly find a place to sit but the headmistress  Ms Beatrice Kabonesa seemed completely oblivious to the challenges she had. She is a stoic deeply Christian lady with a very strong sense of duty and purpose. She told me that many of the kids in the school had been registered by other kids. That means she had never seen the parents. "There is a very strange attitude to education with some of the parents" she told me. "They do not appreciate the value of education and ,many times pupils will miss school because they have to help out in the gardens."

The kitchen at her school.

Kreshia and her friends face an almost improbable situation. They seem, like their headmistress unaware of it. They soldier on to school (some of them) every morning in the search of a brighter future. When the bell goes for lunch, some will go home. Some will stay and have lunch. Many of them are yet to meet their school fees. Many dont wear shoes. Many dont have school uniform. But they chatter away in their classes and when they head back home after school disappear in one of the many hidden paths home.

On Monday, the cycle will start again. Thankfully one girl, Kreshia Namala is partly shielded from so many things now. She is certain that she will go to school and all bills are settled. Many of these kids are not certain of that. That is the one haunting thing they have. Will they be able to study next term? The school will recieve them not aware of what the weekend has been for the kids. Their parents; the men will go and ride their mopeds, the mothers will stay at home. Some may be lucky to have a piece of land to till. But life goes on in this very beautiful corner of Uganda in the shadows of Kampala where Kreshia and her friends rule the village.

Kreshia is now a happy healthy girl. She is still an eight year old and on occasion; if she does not get what she wants she will throw an almighty strop!!! She is one of a few who, by a sheer stroke of luck followed this talkative fellow with a penchant for sharing parts of his his life in public. She has a future to look forward to. But she goes to school with friends whose future is still uncertain.She goes to school with kids who are hungry, with kids who dont have school uniform, with kids who are not certain that they will attend school next year. She goes to school with friends who dont have shoes. What binds them together is their beautiful innocence. They play together. They dance together and many times fight together without a bother in the world. We should not abandon these kids!!

Rethinking Online Banking.

By Arthur M. Katabalwa.

A while ago I found myself in need of some banking services. I am never good in such situations. I had a fascinating thought; something struck me. I was looking at the banking sector in a rather archaic way. Being a “son of the 70s”, there are things with which we are stuck in. There are processes that we hang on to until our knuckles can hardly take the weight. After all, “if it ain’t broke why mend it?” It was the great huge queues that one finds in banking halls. In my quest to find out some answers, I found myself confronted with this monstrosity. It may be made up of many individuals but it seemed to act as one. Whereas I had been happy to join one in the past and patiently wait, this time I was getting agitated by it. Why?

I  wanted to open a new bank account. This being the second time I was opening a bank account in Uganda, I was very apprehensive. Joining at the back of a long snaking queue wasn’t going to help. I was sweating profusely as I walked into this banking hall.  The Kampala heat was running riot. The streets and the buildings and the car horns and the street beggars and the boda boda bikes………they were all making me go mad. But I knew that I was going to find sanctuary in this great big hall which I had recced earlier before. It had these high ceilings. There was air conditioning. I knew that all would be good but nothing prepared me for the queue. It snaked through this great big banking hall with those ropes that are linked all around. My heart sank.

Well, the dreaded queue in banking halls is about to be made a thing of the past. Banks like Stanbic bank which are introducing an online bank account are making these queues a thing of the past. With advances in technology, the queue will be at home. Say for example if one were to be opening a new bank account the anxiety can be all encompassing. You may be that one person who is going to hold up the whole bank when you are asking if banks regulations allow for coloured passport photos or the use of a maiden name.

If one were to be opening an account online, then the anxiety of that long queue is non-existent. You are at the front of the queue. There is no one behind you. You have a virtual personal banker who has all the time that you want to spend for you. If you were to find that a certain piece of information was missing like a copy of your identity card then you will not have to go back home and pick it up queue again. In your comfort, you will come back and once again you will be at the head of the queue. At Stanbic, the process is quickly sorted out with steps that are easy to follow online. Within a short while, one has an account that is fully functioning with a bank card. The dreaded visit to a branch where one might be stuck in a queue is organised by the bank itself to minimise that inconvenience.

We are all much better off now that we are having such services unveiled in the Ugandan banking sector. We are having a sector that is bringing services closer to the people when they want those services and where they want them. The need to battle through traffic and the heat is being swept away. These are services that are fit for the economy of Uganda today. We are getting services that are making banks truly for the community.