It is rainy season in Katine. There can be a heavy downpour one minute, only for the sun to shine an hour later. But while the rain can signal the arrival of budding crops and heavy agricultural yields, it can also signal trouble. In recent years, Amorikot primary school in Katine sub-county has had to deal with the constant threat of classrooms collapsing in strong weather.
But this week marked the dawn of a new era for Amorikot's 400 children, as Amref started constructing seven classrooms, an office block and two blocks of pit latrines. The latrines come with a urinal for the boys and a washroom for the girls.
Besides Amorikot, Kadinya-Katine primary school is to get five classrooms and two latrine blocks. In each case, Amref will follow construction standards set by Uganda's education ministry and will fit the classrooms with desks.
Until now the school has used temporary mud-and-wattle structures with grass-thatched roofs that look like they would collapse at the slightest provocation. Inside these structures, children from primary one to three mostly sit on non-cemented ground, and emerge bathed in dust and infested with jiggers (a pest that burrows into the skin of its host, generally under the toenails and fingernails).
"The classrooms we have are really bad, they are leaking," explains Justine Okoropot, a teacher at Amorikot. "Normally when it rains very heavily, we just close the school to avoid accidents because these classrooms can easily fall."
So poor is this community school that it does not have a single permanent structure – not a classroom, nor a teacher's house (many teachers prefer to live near their school). Okoropot says that, once completed, the new classrooms will improve the health of the pupils as they will have cement floors as well as furniture.
Amref's project officer for education, Lillian Viko, explains that Amorikot and Kadinya schools were selected for classroom construction because they were deemed to be in most dire need of assistance. The selection process was done by local government and education authorities.
While the Ugandan government has built thousands of classrooms over the last decade, schools such as Amorikot have not benefited because they are community owned. They are set up by parents eager to save their children from having to walk long distances to the nearest government schools. Three of Katine's 13 primary schools are owned by the community.
As the construction got underway, curious pupils appeared to have their attention split between their break-time games and the site. "I am very happy that they are building new classrooms for us," smiles Proscovia Anuro, a 14-year-old pupil in primary five. "The new classrooms will be good because they are made of bricks and there will be no dust."
Anuro and her schoolmates are also getting new, modern latrines built using blue, plastic panels. Until now the school has had two filthy latrine blocks, each with two stances, meaning that each 100 pupils have been sharing a stance. The recommended ration according to Uganda government standards is 40 pupils per stance.
"The new latrines are beautiful," Anuro says, using her teacher as an interpreter, and drawing a smile from Amref's water and sanitation officer Ignatius Epuwat. "You can easily get germs from the old latrines."