S:t Donati secondary school
In Kyeshero there is a school called s:t Donati secondary school (there is also a primary school and a s:t Donati church). It is named after the christian saint Donatus but it also, of course, has as strong connection to the person who built them all, our host mr Donati himself. Though it should be mentioned that the villagers of Kyeshero were the ones naming the schools and the church.
At the same day as Fredrik went to hospital with his unfortunate malaria incident, I payed a visit to s:t Donati sec. school.
Sometimes it’s easier to do charity than in other places. This was one of the easier ones. I was picked up at the place where we were staying in a big car accompanied by mr Donati, of course, a driver, the head chairman of the school board and the headmaster, John.
We started by visiting the school. The secondary school has 106 stundents of whom 95 are orphans. The school has been open for two years. The buildings are the old church and some new houses. Since mr Donati donated a new building for the church, these premises were freed to start a school in.
Most of the orphans who go to this school, have some relatives they can stay with, but some of them live in the school during terms.
Here you can see me trying out one of the mattresses of the students. It was actually quite comfortable. For five minutes. Luckily, this is not the only mattress for this student. There was also a foam mattress (not showing in the picture) together with this one. You can also see that the beds are naked. That is because the students are on holiday leave and everyone (except for the one who unknowingly lent their mattress to me) brings their mattress with them.
The Chairman and the headmaster are posing in the old church building. Behind them you can see some corn lay drying. The students do some work also to get something to eat.
We decided that a good thing for our fund to support this school with, was workbooks, pencils and similar things. To get this, we took the car to Butugota to shop for the things needed. This was one of the easiest shopping trips so far since John, did all the bargaining with the shopkeepers.
Usually, it is Fredrik and me who do that and the technique to not get mzungu-price (at least double of what the locals pay) is to laugh as if the seller just told you the funniest joke ever, and then say “yes I know, that’s the mzungu price, but what is the local price?” and then you go on for a while bargaining and hopefully land on half of the originally asked price.
The big challenge in Butugota was to find rulers for the school. We went to five or six different shops only to find like five or ten rulers in each shop.
Returning to the school, we leave the material in the safe hands of the headmaster to hand out to the students due time.
