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Report on Visit to Hosanna Primary School by a Team from Chipping Sodbury Baptist Church:  November 12th – 22nd 2006

A Brief History of Hosanna Church and School

In 1997, Hosanna Evangelistic Mission bought a plot of land in the slum area of Kampala called Kisenyi with a view to evangelising the area. They built a wooden Church on the land and began their mission. The adults did not respond but the children ‘flocked to our church, but with very poor morals’.

Anne Nsubuga, a pastor of the church and a qualified teacher felt that God was calling her to ‘reach out to the unreached’ and work with the disadvantaged children in the area. The church members welcomed the idea, and gave Anne permission to use the church as a school. So Hosanna School started in 1998 with 60 children and two teachers.

Although there are government schools in Uganda, they are not generally of a very high standard. All children have to pay school fees, and buy a uniform. In many schools the pupils cannot attend until they have bought their uniform. Anne and her staff run Hosanna School on different lines. They allow children to come to the school even if they do not yet have a uniform. They also allow parents/carers to pay the fees in small amounts, and the most needy to study without charge. As the children come from poor homes where there is little food, Anne arranged for the children to be able to buy a cup of maize porridge at school every day. Unfortunately, not all the children are able to afford this. The school follows the curriculum set out by the education authority, but also teaches the children about Jesus.

The school motto is from Proverbs Ch 22 verse 6: - ‘Train a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.’

The school Mission Statement is: - ‘Reaching out to the unreached through quality education that can equip them for an excellent future.’

Links with Chipping Sodbury

Maggie Maclean became interested in the school after her sister who works in Kampala with Mildmay International, visited and emailed her photos of the smiling faces of these children who were obviously happy to be in school, and yet had nothing in the way of equipment. Maggie started writing to Anne in the summer of 2002 and felt challenged to support the work of the school. The Hosanna Support Group was set up to channel funds from the UK, and by January 2003 friends, family and work colleagues had pledged sufficient regular donations to enable all pupils (about 200 by this time) to have their daily porridge free of charge.

Hosanna School now has many supporters: funds from Chipping Sodbury Baptist Church members, Brimsham Green School, and other well wishers have enabled the school to improve and enlarge: water has been piped on to the site, new toilets have been built, the permanent building has had doors and windows and a cement floor, desks have been bought for the older children, play equipment installed in the playground. The latest venture is a new classroom block of several storeys, which we are helping to fund.

Gifts of trainers, books, stationery equipment etc have also been sent out in containers that have been going from the UK to Mildmay International.

 Anne and Maggie correspond regularly. Anne keeps accurate accounts and regularly sends details of expenditure. The Support Group has a bank account and all donations go directly to the school. Maggie has investigated registering the Support Group with the Charity Commission, but has not felt it right to do this yet.

Maggie and her husband visited the school in October 2004 and were delighted to see the improvements made possible by the money that had been sent. Following a recommendation by the Senior minister at Chipping Sodbury Baptist Church, the Rev Dr Tom Brown, that the church should prayerfully consider becoming more actively involved in supporting Hosanna Church and School, church members agreed at a church meeting in July to send a small group to investigate this possibility.

Hosanna Primary School:  November 2006

The five people who represented Chipping Sodbury Baptist Church were, Sue Pearce, Sally Pettipher, Jason Reynold Williams, Roger and Maggie Maclean. We visited the school on four occasions, staying for the morning. We spent time with each class and did various activities: made simple kites, friendship bracelets, bookmarks and prayer pyramids. We taught all the children Christian action songs, and did a puppet show. We spent time with the older children talking about the differences between UK and Uganda.

We took sewing to do with the top classes, some purses and bookmarks prepared by Pat Leaman. However the conditions in the older pupils’ classrooms, which were like a sort of basement to the new building with very little light and no clean surfaces, made us realise that this would not be possible at present. We left them with Anne to use when the time is right.

We went to the morning service at Hosanna Church on Sunday morning, which was a very cheerful and informal time of worship. We enjoyed the singing and drum accompaniment. Sue and Sally spent a short time with the children when they went out to Sunday School while we listened to the Pastor’s sermon which was delivered in English and Lugandan. Sue gave a short address to the congregation and we presented the Bibles in Lugandan, and the photo montage of Chipping Sodbury and the Baptist Church. 

The School Speech Day was brought forward in our honour, and took place at 2pm the same day. Staff and pupils had worked hard to prepare for the occasion, building a special stage, putting out chairs and erecting a shelter for the spectators. A sound system had also been hired. Unfortunately the heavens opened just before 2pm and the deluge turned the school site into a sea of mud. We all waited for a while to see if the rain would stop, but eventually everything was transferred into the school building, with very little fuss. A shortened programme of singing, dancing and speeches kicked off at about 3.15 with the National Anthem of Uganda sung by all the Ugandans, and our National Anthem sung by us! It was a very memorable afternoon and before we left at about 6pm Maggie gave a short speech and we presented the banner to the Head Teacher.

On the first day of our visit we bought a cd/tape player and batteries with some of the donated money. We took this into school and used some cds from home to teach some christian songs. The children loved this and were very quick to learn. We left the cd/tape player and one cd on our last day, and I wish you could have seen the excitement that caused among the staff. We also bought some coloured pencils, pens and ordinary pencils to leave behind as there is so little equipment at the school. At present the parents provide a pencil for each child and an exercise book

As English is the National language our meetings with the staff, Anne and the Pastor were easy to conduct. The teachers translated for us when working with the younger children.  We had two meetings with the teachers and by the end of our visit they were happy to share some of their hopes and problems with us. We also had a separate meeting with Anne and Pastor Hannington to learn more about Hosanna Church.

We decided that it would be good to arrive at the school at the same time as the children at least once during our stay, so on our Friday visit we left the guest house at 7am and arrived to find most of the children and teachers there at 7.30am, picking up litter and sweeping the classrooms. We were each given a task to do and joined in.

On our last day Anne took us for a walk around the local area with some of the children, to show us their homes. We were advised not to wear any jewellery and to take off our watches. Anne said that it would not be a good idea to take photos, as the people may find this intrusive. It was a really sobering experience, and helped us to begin to realise the level of poverty these people live with.

Housing conditions are very poor, small shacks, many without windows, huddled together in tiny alleyways. A curtain across the entrance provides privacy. Cooking pots sit outside on charcoal stoves. There is no running water or sanitation. The toilets are all too public as you walk around, and the general smell is certainly interesting. Some of the mothers/carers are sick and all do what they can to earn some money - taking in washing, selling charcoal, collecting leftovers from the market to sell.

The area was bustling with activity and we saw cottage industries on our walk; - a blacksmith making cooking pots out of aluminium engine parts, vehicle repair by the roadside, people making cooking stoves and pots and also preparing food. It was the grasshopper season and there were piles of them waiting to be prepared for eating. There were goats and chickens wandering around, and also many children who were not at school. Sickness is common among the community and medical care too expensive. There is high unemployment and also a high crime rate. The local brew is very potent and drug use is prevalent. As Anne explained to us, ‘People in Kisenyi are different. Most of them have come to the end of their road. They are robbers, thieves, harlots, drunkards, abusers and drug addicts, name it.’

I should now like to try and give you a picture of Hosanna School.

The school site slopes downward from the ‘road’ and is very uneven. The bright red earth is dry and dusty in the dry weather and a quagmire in the wet season. The site seemed scruffier than when we visited in 2004, probably due to the increased number of children attending the school. One of the few trees had been cut down and had presumably been used as firewood in the ‘kitchen’. There was less grass, and a pile of bricks left from the first phase of the building work was at the bottom of the site by a smouldering fire for rubbish. Attempts had been made to fence off parts of the site to limit access to goats, other children etc. This fencing was rather makeshift: corrugated iron and barbed wire in some places.

The land to the right of the site, which was unused in 2004, was fenced off and being used to dry and roast millet for the local brew - quite noisy and smelly! There is still no fence at the entrance to the site, and the rubbish tip at the side of the temporary classroom (not on school land) is bigger and smellier than at our last visit. Water is metered and thus the water pipe is padlocked when not in use.

At the time of our visit, there were approximately 500 pupils, 12 teachers and Anne the Head. Also employed are three kitchen boys and the lady seamstress. Pastor Hannington, the pastor of Hosanna Church is the Director of the school. As our visit was in was the rainy season, it was useful to see how this affects daily school life.

There is one permanent brick building which is also used as the Church. This is separated into four classrooms by thin wooden partitions, which are removed on Sundays. There are two offices at one end, and a small room with a hand sewing machine for the lady who makes and repairs the uniforms. One of the offices is used by the Pastor, and is a secure store, having a big padlock on the door. The other is the Head Teacher’s office. There is a fuse box on the wall in Anne’s office and a light, but electricity is expensive and unreliable, so not often used. There is a small generator in the secure room, which is used on special occasions e.g. School Speech Day, or when the Church is holding a mission in the villages

There are two temporary wooden buildings with uneven earth floors, each containing two classrooms. The new brick ‘storey building’ has been started, and the first phase completed. The two older classes are housed in the basement part of this building, which is very dark. There is a fitting for an electric light sometime in the future. None of the other classrooms have proper windows. Nothing valuable can be left in these rooms overnight as it will be stolen.

There are some desks for the older pupils, but mostly the children sit on benches, and kneel on the floor when they have to write in their exercise books. Each classroom has a blackboard on the wall. There are not enough text books to go round; so much of the work involves copying from the board. (The handwriting in the books I looked at was neat and legible.)  Lessons can be quite noisy as much of the teaching is in the oral tradition, and the classes are very large.

The subjects taught (mainly in English) are: Maths, Science, English, Social Studies and RE, Current Affairs, PE, Singing, Story telling, Local language (Luganda), Arts and Craft.

The parents are now very supportive of the school, and are proud that their children are learning English. They particularly appreciate the free daily cup of porridge as many cannot afford to feed their children before they go to school.

Structure of the School

At the time of our visit P 7 pupils had just finished taking their Primary Leaving exams and had left school.

The ages of the pupils in each class are approximate as children move on when they have completed the work set for the year and passed the end of year exam. Children often have time out of school as their families may need them to work, or may not be able to afford fees. There were some pupils aged 15 in P6 when we were there.

The School fees are approx £7.00 a term. Parents pay in small amounts and a certain number are educated free of charge. This obviously affects the school budget. A high percentage of the children are orphans.

The school buys the material for uniforms and the seamstress makes them up and mends torn ones. The cost of a small uniform is 6,000 Ug Sh (about £2.00), and 7,000 Ug Sh for the larger ones.

Not many of the pupils go on to Secondary School as the fees are much higher, and Anne says that they do not understand Kisenyi children. Also the temptation to do other things exerts itself. Kisenyi is a difficult area in which to grow up. There are many single parent families, and families where the main carer is not the parent.

The school day starts at 7.30am. When the children arrive they help to clean the playground and sweep the classrooms. Staff clean out the toilets. The rubbish gets put on a smouldering fire at the bottom of the playground. At 8am all the children assemble for prayers and a song, they then start their lessons.

Break is from 10.30 – 11am. This is when they all have their porridge. The baby class go home at 12.30. School stops at 1pm for the lunch hour. Some children go home, but not necessarily to eat. Some food is provided at school, funded by an American missionary. Anne gives the staff money for their lunch. Afternoon school continues until 5.30 for the younger children and until 7.30 for the older ones.

The teachers earn considerably less than teachers at government schools. The monthly salary for a teacher at a government school is 250,000 UG Shillings a month, Hosanna Teachers earn 150,000 UG Sh per month (about £45) and the Nursery staff get less than this.

The teaching staff do not live in Kisenyi, and some have quite a long journey to work as they cannot afford public transport. One teacher told us that it took him an hour to walk to work. Bearing in mind that his working day is from 7.30 am -7.30pm, as he works with the older children, we felt humbled by his dedication.

All the staff impressed us with their enthusiasm for their work, and their care and love for the children of Kisenyi. They certainly share Anne’s vision and mission. The challenge for us here in Chipping Sodbury is whether we feel that God is calling us to share in this commitment to His work in this poor area of Kampala.

Hosanna Church of Glory/ Hosanna Evangelistic Mission

Hosanna School grew out of the Church and they are mutually supportive. The head teacher Anne is a pastor at the Church, and the church members help to fund the school. The Church bought the land, and uses the school building for Sunday worship and weekday activities. There are about 50 Church members at present. We were impressed to see offering envelopes in the collection basket at the service we went to.

‘The Church has a burden to reach the community, individuals and the Nation with the love of God, both spiritually, morally and physically and in many ways possible as the Lord God will provide and open doors. The priority of the vision is evangelism’.

The Church has cell groups, they visit people who are sick and have fellowship in homes.

Regular Church Activities:

Sunday Morning Service and Sunday school, Sunday afternoon: visiting the sick/hospital ministry

Monday and Thursday:  6pm   intercessions

Tuesday and Friday:  10pm…….. Night prayers

Wednesday: Deacons Meeting

Tuesday and Friday: Choir Practice

Youth Activities are planned for Saturday

The Church also undertakes evangelistic work in the area. For example they visit local homes and spray the houses (to kill cockroaches etc) and preach the gospel. They also take part in mission in the villages.

The Pastor has a daily lunchtime mission in Kampala. 

The Church members have a desire to build a Church to enable them to increase the work they do in the area. The plans have been drawn up and a building fund started. The plan is to build on the school site which would mean that eventually the school would need more land to enable it to provide enough space for the playground and for any new building.

How can Chipping Sodbury Baptist Church Support Hosanna Church and School?

As a result of visits to the school, discussions with the staff and among ourselves, we have drawn up a list of the suggestions for the church to prayerfully consider.

Hosanna School

• More land – the most suitable piece of land adjoins the school site and is used by local brewers. The head teacher is going to contact the owner and find out if he is willing to sell and the cost. Estimate £5,000 +
• Finish the storey building. Money to complete the first floor is on account and work is being done during the school holidays – December and January. Two more storeys are planned. Approx cost £3,000
• Furniture – more desks and nursery tables are needed. The head teacher has suggested that this is something people from our church could do, and also teach some of the older pupils woodwork skills.
• More toilets –
• Courses for teachers. Support for the teachers is much needed. It could take the form of pen-friends, undertaking to write regularly to a member of staff, and giving prayer support.  Also people could consider topping up the teacher’s salaries on a regular basis.
• Support for the school in general: - As many of the parents cannot afford the fees the financial resources of the school are very limited. There is little money to spend on books or equipment. Small sums of money could be given specifically to provide books/equipment for each class. Also there is the possibility of sponsoring individual children, paying their school fees, about £7.00 a term, and buying their uniform, about £2.00 -£2.50 depending on the size of the child. Anne would organise a photo of the child and an annual school report.
• A fence for the school grounds and a guard. This would give security to both the equipment and the children. We were told by staff that children are sometimes stolen from the playground. Further enquiries revealed that this may be so that they can be used in ritual sacrifices. Fencing would be expensive and is not an immediate priority.

Hosanna Church

• Public address system to use for services and outdoor crusades.
• New church building to enable the church to be in use during the day time and thus take a greater role in evangelising the area. It is limited at present as it shares the school building.
• Praise and Worship training

The long term vision of the teachers is to provide boarding accommodation for the children to keep them safe, Also to provide secondary education and technical training.

Anne, the head teacher has suggested that a group from Chipping Sodbury combine a mission to the area with some practical woodwork for the school.