My Voice

Notes from Conrad Mandsager

As I rode my bike through the bush at dawn each morning, I passed many men, women, and children making their way to their gardens, to market, or to school. That alone is remarkable evidence of the change that is occurring in northern Uganda. Just three years before, out of fear of the rebels still active in the area, you would not have dared venture into the bush without a military escort. Even if you did, the roads would be empty; since most people had abandoned their land and were living in displacement camps. Now, with the security situation more stable, people are beginning to move home. As I approached people on the road, I would offer a greeting in their local language, Luo. Invariably, the response was enthusiastic, accompanied by a smile or a grin.

One morning, I decided to do a little research project. Instead of greeting the locals in Luo, I decided to say hello in English. Over the next several mornings, I began to see some notable trends. If a woman was over the age of 30 (or thereabouts), she would look away and not respond, or simply greet me in Luo. Most men, on the other hand, would return the greeting in English. Virtually all the boys of school age would greet me in English and even venture a question or two. Only about half the girls of school age would greet me in English.

I was seeing real-life evidence of what has been documented by other researchers-- women in northern Uganda have significantly fewer educational opportunities than men.

While it is disappointing, this hard truth is not surprising in Uganda or, for that matter, in any other part of the developing world. However, some new research has shown that this lack of education in women has a much broader impact than first thought. Sarah Ssewanyana from the Economic Policy Research Centre and Stephen D. Younger from Cornell University, have shown that education can dramatically reduce infant mortality. Mortality rates for infants whose mother is a primary graduate are 24% lower than for those whose mother did not attend school. For infants of mothers who attended or completed secondary school or higher, mortality rates are 40% lower. In fact, apart from vaccination, education is proving to be the most important factor in reducing infant mortality.

A pivotal question is whether education can be implemented in ways efficient and effective enough to make deep impacts on quality-of-life indicators such as infant mortality. Uganda has a long way to go to meet its Millenium Development Goals (MDG) for infant mortality -- largely due to the problems in the north. One of the MDGs is to reduce under-five mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. In Uganda's case, this goal implies a reduction from about 90 per thousand in 1990 to about 30 per thousand in 2015. However, given that there is little evidence of improvement between 1990 and 2000, it is actually necessary to achieve the entire reduction of 60 deaths per thousand in the short period of 2000-2015. The most promising intervention is improving educational opportunities for girls. Since the government instituted Universal Primary Education in 1997, more and more girls have enrolled in school. According to surveys measuring enrollment trends, most girls in Uganda will have completed primary school by 2015. Good news, right? So what is the problem?

Unfortunately, this survey data does not reflect the reality of educational trends in northern Uganda. Most schools in this region were shut down for years as a result of the protracted war. Only in the past 18 months have schools reopened across the region. Yet their development has been uneven, with the more remote rural schools showing dismal results. Of the 80 districts in Uganda, Gulu District is at the very bottom in terms of Primary Leaving Exam scores. And Lukodi Primary School ranks near the bottom of Gulu District.

A number of issues contribute to the problem. Teachers are reluctant to take assignments at the rural schools because of security concerns, a lack of adequate housing, and low and inconsistent pay. The best teachers seek work in the schools in town while the least qualified reluctantly take the rural assignments. A lack of resources - books, desks, teaching materials -- adds to the problem. Huge class sizes - sometimes in excess of 100 per classroom -- make teaching a challenge even for the most experienced teachers. A lack of assessment tools makes it difficult to determine the appropriate placement for students, leaving a wide variety of ages in the same classroom.

On top of all that, prevailing cultural norms about girls and education make it difficult for girls to start school if they are adolescents or to continue in school after they reach puberty. And if she gets pregnant or has a child, her education is finished. Just this year in Gulu there was a high-profile case in which a girl was denied taking her final exams because she was pregnant.

Our work starts with the war-affected children in Lukodi and the surrounding communities. Pushing tirelessly for basic education but meeting the weight of reality pushing back, it continues to be an uphill battle. We fervently believe that the young mothers living at our Lukodi Centre in northern Uganda, who lost much of their school-age years to a nomadic life in the bush, deserve the dignity of basic education. But, to prepare them for self-sufficiency in the world outside the Centre's gate, where an economy is staggering back to life, there is so much more to be done than just that. We aim to spark momentum to strengthen the community's schools, particularly Lukodi Primary School. This school, which sits on our doorstep, serves students beyond its capacity, and suffers from its remoteness. Improving access to quality education is an imperative, and it goes hand in hand with our clinic in Punena that is improving health outcomes among, in particular, new mothers and their infants.

All of this is hard work. It requires attitude shifts, community buy-in, and, not least, funding. There is no single solution, no "silver bullet", for the problems created by war in northern Uganda - which is why ChildVoice employs multi-pronged strategies to help the community recover. Nevertheless, education is a powerful thing - transformative, actually - and we're working to make it more accessible.