That August/September school feeling but it’s February & it's Uganda

Within the next 10 days, O & A’ level results will be out, sent by text directly to the students and published in the national papers. The new academic year is beginning in schools all over East Africa. Both results & a new academic year mean big changes all around. 

At WTA, newly promoted ‘candidate classes’ S4 and S6 arrived back a week early to begin the marathon of study that leads inevitably to November & the next exam season. At this point, the familiar clock definitely starts ticking. School life has a cyclical rhythm & pattern which is both reassuring yet alarming at times. How does the academic year move so fast?? 

Like hundreds of thousands of students across Uganda, we are also ‘returning to school’, as the new term starts. Laden down with bags & bags of donated & charity-shop books, we have almost enough baggage to take up the entire hold on the tiny connecting plane from Rwanda to Uganda. Oops.. what happened to ‘travelling light’? ServeDirect doesn't currently have a budget for chartering planes/container ships/lorries, although we'd be lying to say it hadn't crossed our minds... we are joking, mostly....

Of course, we have literally ‘packed to the max’ this time, as there is no room in the luggage for any personal belongings apart from those essentials of Marmite & some cheese!  

Such long holidays give time for important maintenance & painting work to be done around the site. WTA is making staffing adjustments & significant timetable changes for 2024 - it will be interesting to see the effect they have on school organisation in general. Both Connect Education Centres have run vital training for teachers & amazing holiday programmes for community children. In addition, there are new staff & new developments at The Rock; Michèle explains more in the next article… 

Meanwhile, back to work & back to school as usual.