Hey Jude.....

We met Jude a couple of months ago. He popped into our office at Mvara one morning, “just to say hello”, but he was also very keen that we should visit him at his school just over the way from our office.

Jude, I guess, is in his early 40s, but quite youthful in appearance and manner, as seems to be the case with many Ugandans. He is a teacher, and by all accounts a good one; indeed, a few years ago he won an award as the Best Teacher in Uganda. Drama and music are passions for him, and over the years he has been responsible for a number of singing and dance groups which have performed at weddings and other events in the area. But his particular specialism is as a teacher of special needs students.

It was about three weeks later that we visited Jude in his classroom/workshop. We met some of his students, one of whom who had no use of his hands, played the odungu with his feet! Unusually for a Ugandan classroom, the walls were adorned with posters, many concerned with health issues, and it was full of all sorts of equipment, much of which looked as though it had come out of the ark. In particular, there were many broken Braille machines. Jude explained they were all second-hand and waiting for him to repair them. He took in other pieces of equipment from other institutions in Arua for repair and used the additional income to supplement his rather small government teacher’s salary.

But there were other things Jude wanted to share with us. Resources for Special Needs Education are as scarce, if not more so, than other resources in Uganda. But Jude is not one to be put off, and with some pride he produced some of his own creations – modifications of the abacus and other calculating machines for use by visually impaired students, and many other ideas to aid the learning and mobility of his students.

One piece he was particularly proud of was a model solar system with an assortment of spherical objects attached at varying distances by wires to a central spindle. These rotated around a light bulb suspended in the middle of them, and representing the Sun. The model was driven by battery power and he used it to teach the principles of planetary motion, seasons, and so on to students with different special educational needs – they are all kept together in one group. It was remarkably inventive and did actually work.

Talking to Jude, he had a real passion for his work and at one time had been employed as a lecturer in SEN at the Teacher Training College next door to the school. Despite having worked there for some time, he was bitterly disappointed when told he could no longer teach there because he didn’t have the required qualifications. If he wanted to teach there again he would have to go and gain further certificates.

Sadly, the educational system here in Uganda, has hardly heard of part-time or distance learning, and the only way you can gain an academic qualification is by becoming a full-time student. This is a very expensive option and taking professionals out of the workplace for a number of years whilst they study – not the best economic option either for the student or the workplace – although I suppose it’s not so bad for the training institution!

Jude clearly hopes we can help him in some way – and he probably deserves help – but so do so many other people here. That’s one of the challenges it’s hard to come to terms with.

Another is, how to make sense of the fact that since Jude lost his job at the Teacher Training College, they now have no one to teach about Special Educational Needs.