Key people: Justus Matsiko & Reuben Tumuheirwe
John Vlaming (BHW's agricultural director) and I met with Reuben and Justus on 15-17 June 2018. On 16th June we attended a church service at the Rukungiri Community Church attended by about 40 people.
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The school is continuing to progress quite well. It is now registered and has also recently received an additional source of funding, thereby changing the landscape in terms of BHW’s ongoing future involvement.
The first P7 students are in the process of being prepared for school leaving exams and have been doing exceptionally well. The school is now ranked 7 out of 36 in the Rukungiri district which is a great achievement for a school with a five year history and puts it on par with some of the very good schools in the area. Interestingly, for the school to get the recorded benefit of the childrens’ achievements they have to register as an examination centre otherwise the children sit the exams at another school which then gets the credit for having them as top performing students! At present Marumba is not able to register in this way but they are keeping records well.
The pressure put on the school by the Ministry last year to bring it up to standard for registration purposes seems to have paid off. The school is well presented and a huge amount of work was done to enable the school to meet Government requirements and not be forced to close. Several hundred schools in south western Uganda were forced to close and it is testimony to Justus’ perseverance that Marumba was not one of them. It is now well positioned to move ahead.
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The school is now audited as part of its registration requirements and it also now has its own bank account. The school has to pay for an auditor each year which provides a good level of protection and accountability. We have asked for a copy of the audit provided to the Government to be sent to us. This will be in December of this year.
There are currently 231 students which is up from 192 when we where there last year. The fee structure is as follows:
(a) Full fee paying students – 80,000/per term (100 students)
(b) Part paying students - 40,000/per term (no meals) (90 students)
(c) The rest of the students pay nothing (41 students)
The students that are unable to contribute do not have families and do not have homes. They are often being cared for by grandparents who are themselves extremely poor.
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The teacher salaries are all being paid and the school also pays the teachers' rent due to the location of the school being out of Rukungiri town.
A rain water tank has been installed and the school is now also on mains water.
Justus has now moved his family to Mbarara which is about two hours away from the school and Rukungiri. The move was needed to enable him to find appropriate grazing land and a reasonable lease for the cows and also to re-establish the milk cooler, both of which are now operating in Mbarara. John and I quizzed Justus very carefully about his reasons for moving and, in comparing notes afterwards, were quite satisfied with the explanations which also seemed to make financial sense. They were:
i) Good land for cattle grazing is easier to obtain around Mbarara. They are renting grazing.
ii) The milk cooler was not doing well in Rukungiri township due to its location. Another milk cooler had been opened right next door to it once the one that Justus had installed was seen to be making money. Milk vendors use unethical practices such as injecting and putting formalin (a poison used to embalm) in the milk to preserve it. Because Justus didn't do this there were losses associated with failure to sell all of the milk. The business is doing a lot better in Mbarara where there are dairy factories who take the excess production.
The milk cooler is now producing about 2.5m UGX (approx US$660) per month profit all of which is being used to support the school. Reuben and Justus do get some support from the milk cooler as well.
Reuben and Justus' vision is to extend the school into secondary and ultimately boarding. None of this will be part of what BHW will be involved with but we accept that this vision is likely to be successful given the rapid growth in development.
There is a lot that we don’t really understand about the financing to the school but what we can say is that there is a very creditable and well-presented school functioning in this very needy community. Initially we did have a few concerns about what we were faced with when we first arrived but these were more than satisfied during the course of the discussions that John and I had with Reuben and Justus over the course of the three day period.
With the school now receiving substantial funding from a new funding source BHW will cease its financial support of the school but will remain involved in other projects in Rukungiri (EM Fund and Foundations for Farming).