How covid 19 pandemic has affected me?
I'm called Kihembo Damian Turu a first year student at St Francis Counsellor Training Institute, in Mbarara offering bachelor of science in counselling psychology.
I'm a profesional primary school teacher working in a private school in Mbarara.
Due to covid 19 pandemic out break, the presidential directive came out on 18th March 2020 that all schools and institutions should close as a preventive measure and that all students/ pupils should go home. Like most private schools, ours was not an exception. Private schools in Uganda were begun by groups of people interested in education when there were not enough government schools to support the ever growing number of children who enter the system. Governments do not pay teachers in private schools. Salaries come out of school fees which are paid by parents during visiting day.
We had scheduled our visiting day for 28th March 2020 and the presidential directive came in on 18th March 2020. Parents came and picked their children and none of them paid.
As teachers, we were left in the dilemma b'se our salaries entirely depends on the school fees collections. And since March we have never received any salary. This has affected us as individuals, our families as well as our dependents. We are now living a miserable life and surviving by God's grace.
As teachers in private schools, covid 19 has affected us badly.
It should be known that unlike countries in Europe or the States, governments in African countries do not step in with social security assistance when individuals lose their jobs. There is absolutely no assistance during this time. Our only blessing and it is surely a life saver, is that many of us have small, very small plots of land, so we try to grow enough food to feed our families. Any surplus is sold to bring in cash. We are now in a stressful survival mode of existence and do not know when it will end.
I wrote this because our director wrote to us and asked if anyone wanted to write something for our website and this was my response.
People of the West/Northern Hemisphere, thank God for social security in your countries! Perhaps someday in the far future we shall have a more equitable world where all people can eat and live securely and perhaps the 3-4% of those grossly rich people who own so much of the world's wealth will wake up and share what they have with those who have not.