When preacher man confesses to destroying his own environment

A couple of weeks ago I went with my family to Zinga Island (L. Victoria) on a totally private visit. 

What I can tell you about our time there is that we really enjoyed.

What struck me however, on a sad note, is the way the island has been ripped of its trees.

For my night return to the mainland (I had to leave my family there due to other commitments), I hired a boat with a Pentecostal preacher whose confession really touched me.

“In the 1990s and early 2000s I fully participated in deforesting this island,” he told me, rather regretfully, as his daughter, about ten years old, looked on. 

“We cut the trees, very big trees. We made money. But when I look at this island now I feel sad,” he said.

People, crying will not help. Plant a tree today for each of your children and nurture them to serve nature. Join the Tree BillionaireGeneration (TBG) now. The campaign to restore our environment starts with us.

Block Your Nostrils, Uganda Advises Citizens on Coronavirus as Locusts Attack

The government has advised Ugandans on how to get around when the coronavirus (2019-nCoV) finally reaches Uganda. 

People have been told to block their nostrils with their fingers as a way of preventing the infection and spread of the virus.

Over 40,000 people have so far contracted the virus on mainland China and deaths are more than 1000. The virus, first detected in China’s Hubei province, has since spread to over 20 countries.

The national treasury has said there is no money to spend on face masks.

“Our coffers have been constrained by the fight against the desert locust which invaded us as a few days ago,” a representative of the Ministry of Finance said at a press conference today. 

“We have had to dispatch thousands of soldiers armed with stones, clubs and whistles to chase away those dangerous insects. We have spent 15 billion shillings in just two days. You can imagine what the cost will be in the end,” he added.

The representative of the Ministry of Health said that blocking one’s nostrils was more effective in preventing the contraction of the virus than wearing a face mask.

“That virus only enters a person through the nostrils so if you block them you have blocked it. We have done research and we are sure that method works,” she said.

The treasury added that a lot of money had already been spent to secure millions of cameras to capture LGBT people and those who promote the practice of labia pulling. The cameras are to be installed within the bushes of central and southern Uganda to catch “labia pullers". Cameras are also to secretly be installed in houses which have only single sex occupants to capture LGBTs.

In Uganda LGBT practices are outlawed while a decree is being prepared to ban labia elongation, a practice common among some Bantu groups. Communities which practice it say labia elongation enhances sexual pleasure.

“We want to balance these things. Why should a girl have things which are longer than those of her friend? This is unnatural,” the Gender ministry’s representative said.

Sources say that the proposal to stop women from “pulling” stemmed from a challenge by a Woman Parliamentary representative from the Kapchorwa region in eastern Uganda.

The MP, in defence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) – the cutting of the clitoris from a woman’s private parts – reportedly told the President that it was unfair to force the Sabiny to stop “cutting” while the Bantu continued to pull.

“The Bantu pull, the Sabiny cut. It is unfair to stop one group when both practices involve alteration of the vagina,” the MP reportedly told the President.

 This is a scene in William Odinga’s fiction film “My Lovely Country”

Schools rush for digital syllabus: Why your child may soon need a tablet for learning

Martha Abenaitwe of Mt. St. Mary's Namagunga with her tablet

Teaching and learning methods in Uganda have been changing over time. Before the coming of missionaries in the 19^th century learning was informal. People sat under trees, by the fireplace or anywhere else and listened to stories or learned a craft from their elders – no documentation. The missionaries introduced reading and writing, then the classroom. Today, with the digital revolution, the way we learn or are being taught in schools is changing again.

Today’s primary or secondary school learner can have access to the entire syllabus and all the necessary learning tools through just one small gadget, a tablet. This means that even if they stayed at home, they would still have access to what those in class are being taught. This is the digital learning system the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) is introducing.

For now it is optional but with time we might just see the entire country migrate in that direction. Already some schools including Mt. St. Mary’s Namagunga, Nabisunsa Girls School, Ndejje S.S.S, Seeta Hill College Mukono, Buloba Christian High School and Gombe S.S.S have shown much enthusiasm about the system and are already paying for the tablets. Nearly 200 secondary schools have so far registered for the “Virtual Learn” project through which the system is being introduced and the NCDC believes that by the turn of 2018 more than 500 will have registered.

The NCDC tablet is customised. The purpose is to control the kind of information students should have access to. The virtual learn system, however, works with any tablet powered by android. So if you prefer to use a different tablet from that of the NCDC they just install the system for you.

James Droti of the NCDC

“What we have brought in is an innovation and this is specifically to help students be abreast with the age of technology,” says James Droti, the project coordinator and Head of Curriculum, Secondary. “Our learners like interacting with particularly things to do with ICT and therefore we feel that to interest them to learn we should upload the content for all the subjects on to a tablet so that they can access it at their convenience.”

The system is both online and offline and will allow students access the same content, as uploaded by the NCDC, wherever they are, including in rural areas.

How it works
The way it works is that the UNCDC uploads content – the syllabus, tests and other learning tools – on the system. When the tablet is online it downloads the content and thereafter the student has access to that information even when they are offline. The system also allows administrators see what the student is reading at any given time. Parents too can access information on what subjects their children are spending time on through their mobile phones.

“The reason we have developed it [virtual learn] is to provide a platform which will allow students to have access to quality information, unfiltered, and it can easily be used by all students whether rural or urban. With virtual learn students don’t need to write notes. They come to class, pullout the tablet, turn it on and open the application and they are ready to go,” says Ivan Mukasa Ssensalire, a software engineer and the Programme Manager of Virtual Learn.

Because students have access to the entire syllabus, they can read on their own, even ahead of the teacher, and assess themselves with the provided tests in the system. This implies that learning changes from what we have been used to, with the teacher dictating while students take notes, to a system where the teacher and the student can discuss about a given topic with the teacher facilitating.
“We want to shift from the traditional way of having the teacher centred approaches to our learning and teaching processes to learner centred approaches and technology is one such opportunity,” says Grace Baguma, the Director of NCDC.

“One of the challenges the country has and especially in education is that we have continued to do research and ask questions when technology is running faster than us. We need to harness the technology. The whole world has moved there,” Baguma adds.

At the moment the tablet costs slightly over UGX600,000 but this could go down to between UGX 200,000 and 300,000, if the NCDC gets the tax waiver it is seeking from the government.
Every generation has its challenges and opportunities. While many of us never got to see what a syllabus looked like, and never owned a mobile phone until we started working, today’s learners have technology through which they can access a lot of information right before them. Some of our neighbours including Rwanda and Kenya have already embraced ICTs in education. It is modern times and smart people move with the times. Digital learning here we come!

Story published in Print and Online by The Sunrise
 

Bududa's misery is political

Smarter Living with William Odinga Balikuddembe

 

Photo by Busein Samilu

I was in office last week when a young man I supervised a few months ago during internship sent a message that disaster had struck Bududa again. River Tsuume had burst its banks and was raking havoc through some villages on the slopes of Mt. Elgon. This would leave over 40 people dead and many injured. In 2010 about 150 people were killed and over 10,000 displaced under similar circumstances.

I have supervised several journalism students over the years and not many have been as impressive as Busein Samilu, now in his last year of the Mass Communication bachelor’s degree course at the Islamic University in Uganda. Samilu’s main interest is politics. But with disaster falling in the neighbourhood, any journalist would naturally find him or herself there – even our audience is mostly attracted to sudden occurrences – news. 

The Bududa story would normally pass off as an environmental disaster – heavy rains on a volcanic slope; gushes, rolling boulders, falling trees, crumbling houses, and wails! But a combination of recklessness and inaction makes it a human error and therefore a political story as well. Samilu should be able to enjoy environmental reporting from this angle. 

I have covered the environment beat for over 15 years. My first environmental stories were lamentations – crying over pollution of our water and air, degradation of wetlands, deforestation, endangered species and so on. With more exposure to science, however, I got more interested in presenting the problem but also the possible solutions— my stories became more positive. 

Let us understand Bududa a bit. These areas were originally well forested. As people continued to demand more food and energy from the land they subsequently undermined the forest cover. Volcanic soils are soft. When you take away the trees that would hold them firm, you are inviting them to give way during rains. The first blander was for the local people to take the unwise decision of recklessly managing their environment. 

In the recent scenario, Samilu informs me, almost all the people who were swept away by the mudslides, had built on the river’s banks. Those who were a safe distance away from Tsuume were not affected.

 

 

Photo by Busein Samilu

OK. The problem is already there – the population has grown and the people continue to almost entirely live off natural resources – so what should government do? There is the option of re-settling the victims. But when this was decided in 2010, it was partially done, as the Ministry of Finance did not release some UGX32.8bn for the project, according to reports. Resettlement is what the government is saying again, and the land they are talking about to resettle people on in Bulambuli district is disputed. 

This approach is simply reactionary. It does not provide solid ground for dealing with natural disasters (and unnatural disasters as some of these are clearly caused by human error). 

Degradation of Mt. Elgon continues and therefore landslides will intensify. The Kyoga basin frequently floods and the Iteso suffer, Karamoja experiences long dry spells and people there starve and die. In the Albertine Rift, the rate at which River Semuliki burst her banks and ravages the land due to extensive environmental degradation has been increasing over the years. 

While our population continues to increase, and disasters intensify, the land we occupy is inelastic. The best thing to do is to deal with the problem, not to run away from it. Can we find a way of restoring the vegetation of Bududa and let people use their land in a way that is in harmony with nature? And this should apply elsewhere.

It starts with investing in human resource – in building people’s basic understanding of how nature works and the best way to relate with it. 

Resettlement of Bududa victims should only be viewed as a short term solution, not a long term approach to human settlement. Unfortunately our politics only works in a reactionary way – and even there the performance is pathetic.