20/10/2024
Kasamba Latifu, 11 is a shy, curious boy. I had no plans whatsoever of speaking to him when I met him in the heart of Busakira, Mayuge. What, however, drew me to him was the fact that he was not eating while the rest of the kids around him were having a meal of posho and beans for lunch. Younger kids were eating porridge out of plastic cups. Here, I would learn that parents who cannot afford to pay for lunch contribute modestly to enable the school to serve unsugared maize porridge to the kids at 1 pm every lunch day.
"My mother delays to pay my school fees because money issues trouble her," Latifu explains. 'Nange njagala kulya ku kawunga.' "I also want to start eating kawunga (posho) at lunch."
Every term, Latifu finishes top of his class. In the picture below, he was absentmindedly filling in answers on a question paper we randomly found inside one of the desks.
Latifu is exceptionally bright and polite.
Latifu lives with his mother. He's not met his father in years. The only time his smile fades is when I mention his father. Latifu's mother takes work wherever she can find it. She does laundry, babysits, cleans, and tills gardens in the village to find bread for her two children. Work of this nature doesn't pay much in the village. Even then it's not forthcoming.
When I asked Latifu what his immediate needs are:
"I want to eat posho at school. School shoes, school bag, a water bottle and maybe books."
