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PPS administrator gets eye-opening experience in Uganda
3/1/2019Jenny Withycombe remembers the feeling she had flying home to Portland after a two-week stay in Kampala, Uganda, where she and her husband did volunteer work with refugees trying to get to a better life but dealing with conditions few Americans ever experience.
“It was the most rewarding experience, but it was also a very devastating experience in that you see the extreme poverty,” said Withycombe, a program administrator for health and physical education in Portland Public Schools.
Withycombe worked with Soccer Without Borders, a worldwide organization that marries sport and social justice work. SWB has a center in Kampala, the capital and largest city in Uganda.
Withycombe originally became aware of SWB during her time teaching at the University of Colorado and was supposed to make the trip to Uganda in 2016, but put it off to take a job with PPS. In January, she got the opportunity to go, and she, her husband and about 10 college students from around the country joined the SWB center in putting on a children’s festival focused on soccer, held during a two-week winter school break for students in Kampala.
Because Uganda has open immigration policies, it brings in refugees from a variety of countries, including Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi. Refugees receive aid when they live in camps outside the city, but many choose to give up the aid to go to Kampala, hoping to thrive in the city.
The official language of Uganda is English, and for children to attend school, they must show a minimal level with the language and pay to attend class (school is not free). SWB helps students learn English and families prepare for the expense of educating their children through year-round programs intended to get refugees ready for school in a year.
The festival Withycombe and her party helped with involved full days of soccer and other activities that had an English focus to help children advance their language knowledge. Withycombe has played soccer, but was a competitive rower in college.
“The level of soccer the kids play varied widely, so I tended to be with the kids who don’t have tons of soccer skills yet,” she said.
During her stay, Withycombe received a crash course on life in Kampala. The city is built on a series of hills, and she quickly learned the social structure was reflected in where someone lived – people with money lived higher up.
“As you walk down, all of the valleys between the hills are where the slums exist,” she said. “You can literally walk down the social class.”
Withycombe toured the slums where refugees lived. Families had lean-tos built around common areas where people cooked with charcoal. The running water was undrinkable, so people had to walk long distances to fill large containers with water. Animals – goats, sheep, cows, pigs, dogs, cats – wandered around, all marked in a certain way to identify whom they belonged to.
Families ate what they grew, with rice, beans and cabbage a staple dish.
“It was really powerful,” Withycombe said of the tour. “It was difficult to do without feeling a little voyeuristic. You could tell someone what it would be like to live in a slum area, but without going there to see, to smell it, feel it, there’s probably no way to describe it.”
Most of the refugees are awaiting a chance to migrate to a different country. Withycombe recalled meeting an SWB coach who had just received word that he would be going to the United States. He had been in Uganda for 10 years, waiting.
“Most of them will spend a significant amount of time as a refugee in Uganda,” Withycombe said.
As Withycombe returned to Portland, one thing stayed with her. As challenging as the conditions were in Kampala, the children she worked with never seemed to reflect it.
“I never saw one unhappy child,” she said. “And I think when we go from a developed nation and we take this attitude like, ‘Oh poor them, they must be feeling so sad,’ but I never saw one child say ‘I’m bored,’ not one child that was unhappy. I just thought, wow, we need to be able to take that mentality and shift our thinking and take that back with us.”
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