Bill and Wanda’s Incredible Journey

Children at school, no uniforms, no shoes

Well, you don’t have to go a long way out of Kisiizi before things become very threadbare indeed. 

Schools are scattered across the hills all around.  Out of view among the hillside, unseen until you are on top of them.  The objective of visiting the schools was to test salt for their Iodine content as part of an initiative to reduce iodine deficiency disorders (IDD). IDD can lead to a lower IQ, and mental retardation.

It was humbling to see the children so enthusiastic as Wanda gave them a health education talk, and then they went on, under close supervision, to test their lumps of salt.  How excited they were when the salt turn all shades of purple! At this particular school, none of the children had uniforms, (unlike the school children from around Kisiizi).  The classroom had no windows, and there were no resources at all around the classrooms which you find in schools in England. After lunch, about a quarter of the children didn’t return. A round trip being 2 hours, a return to school would have meant 4 hours walking over the hills a day, which in the rain, as it was on this day, isn’t much fun barefooted and clothed in cotton dresses.

At one the schools Wanda visited, some of the children’s salt did not have iodine in them.  Unfortunately at this school, the headmaster had gathered up all the supplies so it was not possible to identify the children or the specific areas these iodine deficient salt samples had come from. So another trip to the school is planned, to trace the source of this deficient salt, and see what can be done to rectify things (a lot of tramping up and down hills?).