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Uganda Refugee Camp School Work

This school is a community cohesion and empowerment center for the entire camp of more than 600 souls. It was started a couple of years ago by my friend Mugisha Namwangwa, a resident refugee at the camp and fellow educator and storyteller recently deceased at the age of 26. Early in childhood, he and his brother Ndagano fled civil war in DR Congo, alone, on their own, in the middle of the night, barefoot and half naked. with no adults to help them, they made their way some three-hundred miles to the Uganda border and this camp. When he and his brother became young adults (in the camp), they decided what the camp needed was a school, so they started this school and began to teach and offer other vital social services to their fellow camp residents. The school helps the residents overcome traumatic and difficult circumstances and creates pathways for residents to greater opportunities and successful lives which strengthens their families and community both inside and outside the camp.

I started working with Mugisha in September 2022 after I’d messaged him through facebook, wanting to know more about his school project and thinking his story would make a great storybook for young readers. It also occurred to me that we might be able to implement an ethnographic-autoethnographic writing program into their ELL classes. He responded almost immediately, and we met a few days later via zoom. about a week after that, he sent me his personal story, not a rough draft for a journal, but a rough draft for what I was about to do with it, which was convert it from that level of accessibility to a 3rd to 5th-grade reading level. The priority while doing this conversion was to maintain the authenticity of Mugisha’s voice and experiences rather than alter and diminish ninth editing process. This was complicated of course because Mugisha’s 1st language was Swahili, and Mugisha was to be involved throughout the entire process for the English version and the Swahili version of the 3rd to 5th-grade autoethnographic storybook. Not only did I want his approval of the text before finalizing, but also of the artwork I produced for his story. Ideally, I would like the storyteller to provide the artwork themselves or from an individual within the storyteller’s culture. This would ensure the integrity of authentic representation of the storyteller. As writer and multimedia artist, I know how easily the editing process can often leave the storyteller feeling silenced or adulterated or replaced and with little connection to the final piece.

Tragically, one morning mid-September 2023 via messenger, I learned Mugisha had died. His brother Ndagano responded to a message I’d sent Mugisha that morning. We messaged back and forth for about an hour. he wanted to speak with me and learn more about what his brother and I had been working on. It’s funny that people can become friends and form such strong bonds and connections through Zoom. I cried on and off for two days for the loss of my friend, not just for having known him but because I knew the world had been a better place for having Mugisha in it, and “now,” I thought, “the world is less than it was, diminished for having lost him.” I knew his story in a deeply personal way because of the nature of our collaboration, the struggles he’d survived and all he’d accomplished despite and because of those struggles. He worked tirelessly to help others and so strengthen his community who’d become his family of circumstance. Mugisha can no longer represent himself in the editing process, so, his brother is writing his own story which will be coupled with Mugisha’s and Ndagano will represent them both as best he can.

Today, am collaborating with Ndagano, the students, and the camp school teacher on the English curriculum for children and adults as part of my PhD dissertation work and as a means of mitigating climate change through education and individual sustainability. The adults cannot leave to find work unless they learn to read, write, and speak English. We are using their personal stories as a way of teaching them English. They will write their stories in their native languages and then translate their own stories into English with help from the teacher. The teacher and I will then work together to get the English version and the Native Language versions which will be publish as individual stories at targeted reading levels and in an anthology at the high school and college level. 50% to 75% of any and all sales revenues will go back to the storytellers, artists, and translators to help improve their lives and provide future supplies and technology for the camp school. This type of Freire-esque curriculum helps adults and children emotionally with trauma they’ve suffered and helps both to feel heard and seen while increasing their opportunities and potential for social contribution both inside and outside the camp. It helps preserve in story all they’ve lost and their identities and cultures. Autoethnography can be a powerful method for education, support, and recovery and increase global awareness, tolerance, and empathy, and may even serve as an educational template for other refugee camp schools across the planet.

Update: 10/12/2023
Ndagano messaged me that he had an idea for creating and integrating a sustainable community farm project into the school curricula to help combat food scarcity and food insecurity. He asked if I could help and suggested we meet to discuss. I told him, I’ve never done the food foresting at that large of a scale, nor had I done it in Africa, so while I could easily design the curricula, I felt there was a much more qualified person to do the sustainable farming and food foresting instruction and science. of course, this was my friend Kenneth Omondi Ochieng in rural Kenya, whom I’d become great friends with via zoom over the last year working through the English and Omondi versions of his personal narrative, I Am Kenneth Omondi Ochieng, for 3rd to 5th-grade readers and on his This Is My Village title at the same reading level. Kenneth has a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi in forestry and agriculture, specializing in food forestry, reforesting, and sustainable community farming. Kenneth agreed to collaborate on the project.

Update: 10/25/2023
Kenneth Omondi Ochieng, our Reforesting and Food foresting expert and educator from Kenya and who recently finished his first 3rd through 5th-grade listen while you read storybook with us will be joining Ndagano and myself in discussions about solving the the camp’s food crisis along with a new contact Abdul in Nigeria who specializes in social media fundraising across Africa who’ll help strategize ways of increasing our fundraising reach and success.

THE ASK

Residents have to pay pennies on the dollar to attend the classes, though if they do not have the money they are still permitted to attend, but the teachers cannot teach for free since they too have to eat and pay for life essentials. The exists on bare minimum with no supplies nor technology. Barely scraping by and managing to keep sixteen teachers specializing in different areas, all camp residents themselves and struggling and not including writing tablets and pens and pencils takes $8K per year, $10K per year would afford writing and reading supplies and some technology. What we need to make this ethnographic English curriculum functional for them are a couple of computers and a thousand writing notebooks, pencils, pens, and erasures. If 5000 people gave one dollar each, that would give us the $5000 we need to meet their educational project needs right now. If 10K people each gave $1 dollar, that would keep the school operational, provide much needed supplies and learning materials, and eliminate fees for students who already struggle to prove themselves and their families with food.. SO PLEASE, invest your dollar and more if you can. Everyone at the camp and I would be extremely grateful!

https://www.spotfund.com/organization/d54264e0-f405-4183-8c7c-784e323b3435/stories-active