Another meeting...

March 17, 2008
Rotary Mengo

Speaker: Rotarian Stephen Mwanje
Attendance: 39

Today’s meeting was a little different because our president was in Northern Uganda working on prospective Rotary projects, so we had a substitute!

The meeting started as usual with the four-way test, introductions, and a salute to the president of Uganda. Followed by announcements:

The final report is being written about “home of champions” project in Iganga and that a provisional club that is sponsored by the club will be holding a meeting a new hotel in town, Imperial Royale, on Friday’s at 6pm.

Then a Rotarian summarized the February edition of the Rotarian, but paying special attention to polio facts. He stressed how important it was to support and continue to support the 4 pandemic areas: Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.

Guest speaker Rtn. Mwanje spoke about literacy and explained that after to water, literacy is the most important. He asked Rotarians if they understood the meaning of literacy and then explained that of the 60% of countries that are illiterate 50% of them are in Sub-Sahara Africa and of those most are women and children.

Mr. Mwanje told a story to explain that literacy leads to poverty. He explained that in his village people sign things without understanding what is written and people take their property, land, and animals.

He went on to talk about an election that was held and how over 50% of the votes were voided because the voters did not understand what they had to do. People were crossing out all of the boxes except for one thinking that they couldn’t place an X beside the name of the person that they wanted.

Ugandan Rotarians were urged to help think of ways to educate, but more importantly the speaker urged the importance of planning. He said, “Planning helps us to focus, to appreciate, to inform members, and to iron out failures.”

Mr. Mwanje’s speech was short, but his words were clear and concise. Too many Ugandans are illiterate and there is no time like the present to start to end this problem.

After the speech there was a time for questions and comments. I will share one of the questions. “Can someone be illiterate if they can’t speak the language: for example; if I were to go to China and I cant speak Chinese does that mean I am illiterate?”

The speaker did not really answer the question…but again this is an all to common problem here in Uganda. A majority of people are too quick to find excuses and point out why problems exist or find someone to blame the problem on. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter that Ugandan’s are illiterate. The national language is English…that means people should be able to read and write in English. Let’s stop finding people to blame and excuses for the problems and lets work on solving it.

Isn’t part of a solution admitting that a problem exists in the first place?