Stephen S Mwanje
It is a humble village approximately two km from Mukono Town. My family happened to have moved there a few months before I met the LC chairperson. She happened to be the proprietor of Nangwa nursery school, the only school on the village having the infant and pre-primary classes. I talked to her about the school and how it fitted into the whole life style of the people in the area. My siblings were attending the semi urban private school in another village nearer to town about 1.5 km away. They despised the Nangwa nursery school which for their age was understandable given the difference in the living conditions of the school as compared to where they went.
In our conversation I came to learn that the school was started as a business to tap into the market since there was no other school in the area. She however realized that the parents in the area didn’t have the UShs 10,000 (approximately $ 5) to pay for their children’s schooling for a term. Even those who could have managed didn’t have education as a priority. As such very few kids were enrolled and even the money they paid could not run the school. Eventually she encouraged the parents to bring the children and pay the money in any form affordable to them for example making the bricks to use in constructing the class rooms. At the starting stage the classroom block was made of mud and grass thatched. This venture however failed since the parents’ response was quote low. A few other parents who valued their children’s studies enrolled them in the Governments’ Universal Primary Education School about 1.2 km away. This however is really a big distance for a 4 year old starting school
Because of the low cash flows the conditions in the school deteriorated to the extent that the time we visited the school for the first visit they had two black boards for three classes with one totally torn into two, the grass thatch had started to leak actually it just used the rain go through one side of the structure. The mud had been run own by the rain and one side of the structure was completely open. They had about 10 benches which doubled as well for desks.
The terrible need we realized demanded that we do something, otherwise she was considering closing down and sending the kids home. We collected resources together to have at least the roof mended as soon as possible. On the day of mending the roof however, we realized that the whole structure was too old and weak to even hold a new roof otherwise it would come down with the roof in a short time. We then agreed to step out in faith and raise approximately UShs 700,000 ($ 350) to put up a new structure using cheap materials but which would be more permanent than the existing one as well as equipping them with a few of the basic requirements for schooling purposes.
Humbly we started collecting the money mainly from amongst members as well as many people who believed that this was a good cause and so decided to offer a hand to see this through. We collected in total 600,000 and set out to go start the work. We bought the materials from Mukono town transported them to Nangwa.
The original structure after mending the roof with papairus mats and polythene paperpromised such people many times and never come back it was hard for them to believe our words. They were however all the same happy to see us this regardless of how small the work we were going to do.
We sought the help of an experienced mansion to over see our activities so that though being done by inexperienced engineering students we would at the end get a good piece of work done.
About 10:00 am the boundaries were being set every one having the determination to have the structure up by the close of the day. It was a tiring piece of work but thanks to everyone hard work and determination, by 7:00 pm when we had our lunch the structure was up waiting for the children to start schooling.
There were a few unaccomplished things however which were cleared later. This included some of the enclosing timber as seen in the budget. The power point presentation shows the process of setting up the structure.
The whole project from inception to completion of the structure took a whole year and two months from March 2002 to June 2003 and cost was 750,000 as detailed in the budget tables.
Table 1: first budget for the initial construction works including raising the structure
Table 2: the last works on the site
|
Item |
Amount |
Rate |
Total Cost |
|
Timber (1x10) |
15 |
3,000 |
45,000 |
|
Timber (2x3) |
4 |
2,500 |
10,000 |
|
Plywood |
1 |
11,000 |
11,000 |
|
Nail |
3 |
1,500 |
4,500 |
|
Transport |
1 |
15,000 |
15,000 |
|
Labour |
1 |
20,000 |
20,000 |
|
Charts |
8 |
400 |
3,200 |
|
Books |
8 |
700 |
5,600 |
|
Stationary Guide |
1 |
2,000 |
2,000 |
|
Total |
|
|
116,300 |
