Text by Patty Huston-Holm, visuals by Irene Best Napendi
Daphine Oitamong talks about Sophie who walked to school two kilometers (1.3 miles) barefooted with rat bites on her heels. Nannyanga Restetuta talks about Dora who went from “jolly and active” to being withdrawn after her parents left her in the care of a sexually abusive uncle. Nancy Ongom, who mentions the name Jafa, grapples to pick just one.
There are so many.
Daphine, Nancy and Restetuta, who prefers the name Resty, are Uganda primary school teachers with over 100 students per class. While they barely know each other and work in different schools, the young women share the distinction of being Teach for Uganda fellows, having Uganda Christian University (UCU) degrees and owning a passion to serve “the least of these,” as they know from Matthew 25:40.
The three UCU alum are among 226 men and women engaged in two-year fellowships helping the poorest of the poor ages 4 to 10 in Uganda’s Kayunga, Mayuge, Namutumba, Mukono, Buikwe, Namayingo and Bugiri districts, according to Decimon Wandera, who serves as a coach for the fellows.
Charlotte Iraguha, co-founder and managing director for the seven-year-old Teach for Uganda NGO, says there are 40,000 students in 151 public schools where fellows are assigned. Uganda has nearly nine million elementary school children. Charlotte, a former teacher, explained that her organization’s model has government teachers working alongside fellows to build a “full child – not just focusing on grades.” Fellows with degrees in various programs teach children and, as time permits, engage with parents.
“When I first came here, I thought I had arrived in another country,” Daphine said of the primitive, rural Namutumba area of the Kamudooke Primary School where she teaches. “I grew up in Kampala and never traveled here.”
Namutumba is more than four hours from Uganda’s capital city as well as four hours from where Resty and Nancy teach in Mayuge district. The often-rugged roads leading to all three schools are lined with brick and mud-and-wattle homes, children carrying jerry cans of water from bore holes and fields of bananas, maize, cassava and sugarcane.
According to Decimon, 70 percent of the fellows stick it out despite that most didn’t grow up the way the schools’ students are.
Resty, 26, and Daphine, 29, who graduated with UCU Bachelor of Arts in Education degrees in 2021; and Nancy, 29, who got her UCU degree in law in 2017, are part of the retention group. For them, what started out as sh550,00 ($150) per month for a job vs. no job at all has become a mission for positive change and a reminder of the biblical lessons from UCU.
Quoting Luke 6:38 “give and it shall be given unto you,” Nancy said she interprets that verse to include love, compassion and skill that could break the cycle of poverty she sees every day. She entered her teaching post at Kaluuba Primary School with no formalized pedagogical training but a drive to “go deep in humanitarian action,” to challenge herself and to learn what she could from trained government teachers.
Resty and Daphine applaud the teacher training that came with their undergraduate degrees, citing the value of psychology, discipline and teaching methods they gleaned from the classroom. At the same time, they point out practical experience gaps – especially when working with children in high-poverty, rural areas. These children come to school dirty and hungry or not at all as they are needed at home to plant and harvest food. One frequently absent student explained that her belly is full if she climbs a tree to eat mangos near her home but empty as she sits at a desk at school.
“The school provides porridge as the main food for children during lunch but only for those whose parents can afford to bring some maize so we still have a lot who go the whole day without a meal,” Nancy said. “It breaks my heart.”
Resty and other teachers at Kigandaalo Primary School, start each day with a 7:45 a.m. hair, teeth, body, clothing cleanliness check. Discovery of lice means the child goes home.
“Many days, it helps to remember the servanthood, diligence and Christ-centeredness that was part of our UCU character building because that is what we do,” Resty said. “At the same time, I see now that our university life was too soft. We weren’t prepared for work this hard.”
Hard means understanding a non-native language from children and parents with little to no knowledge of English in a country with as many as 70 different dialects. Resty and Daphine have Luganda mother tongue in schools with children speaking Lusoga and Ateso, respectively. Nancy, who speaks Acholi from her native Gulu, is surrounded daily by indigenous Lusoga speakers.
“Every child is capable of learning,” says Uganda Christian University (UCU) alum, Nancy Ongom. This video, shot on July 10, 2023, gives a snapshot of how UCU graduates are teaching Uganda’s most economically disadvantaged children through a program called Teach for Uganda. (https://www.teachforuganda.org)
Dr. James Taabu Busimba, Head of the Department of Literature and Languages, UCU School of Education, agreed with the value of academic application in real-world contexts. “Knowledge gained is as useless as pride if filed away and never applied,” he said, repeating a quote often attributed to several writers and politicians.
On one day in July, Resty was using phonics and memorization to teach English while Nancy was teaching numbers and how to add them together. Crammed at desks in the two school locations, children were sounding out the words “poison” and “chicken” for Resty and adding the numbers three and four to equal seven for Nancy.
For the three UCU teaching alum, the work doesn’t end with a school day among small children. Their afternoon hours may find them seated with a child’s custodial parent, helping the secondary girls make and understand how to re-use sanitary pads, preparing lessons for the next day and fundraising. Using their UCU alum network, they have raised money for food and clothing for their neediest schoolchildren.
“I learned the value of helping others through UCU’s Save the Buddy program,” Daphine said. “At UCU, we would be looking around, especially at exam time, to see if we had extra money to help classmates pay fees so they can sit for exams.”
According to Daphine, Nancy and Resty, living amongst latrines, filth and dust and the challenged home lives of the children seated before them contains many life lessons and reminders of how Jesus might have lived.
Like Jesus, Daphine feels she is going deep and “testing my strength.” Resty believes that the work in the schools, no matter how difficult, is preparing them for other opportunities. Most days, the three are exhausted but ready to give more.
“If God gave his only son, we can give this,” Nancy said.
