Africa-Press – Uganda. Students grow vegetables to beat lockdown blues
BY PATRICK EBONG
A group of female students in Lira City has turned to vegetable growing to keep occupied and earn a living following the abrupt closure of schools on June 7 to contain the spread of Covid-19.The school girls, who number about 10, are planting seedlings of Ethiopian eggplant, locally known as nakati, in nursery beds in Bar-onger, Go Down Cell, Railways Ward in East Division.Sarah Aceng Apedunu, 20, a Senior Three student of Mulusa Academy in Wobulenzi Town Council, Luweero District, is the group leader.She says they decided to come together and engage in productive work after realising that most of their colleagues, who are getting pregnant during the lockdown, are idle at home. “We started this initiative because in the lockdown, teenage pregnancy is becoming high. So, we want to be busy at home not to loiter around,” Aceng says.“Every evening we come here to work on our project because we don’t want to be idle,” she adds.The group says they want to promote the growing of Nakati in northern Uganda. The vegetable is mainly consumed in central region.“We want to give Lango and Acholi parliamentary groups 10,000 seedlings each but …in giving them, we also want financial support,” Aceng adds.The group’s treasurer, Prisca Layet, 17, a former Senior Four students of London College of St Lawrence in Wakiso District, says they sell each seedling at Shs100.The group wants to raise about Shs30 million from the sale of 300,000 seedlings.“We intend to open up a bank account where our money is going to be kept and we shall use part of the money for paying our school fees and buying other requirements when schools reopen,” Layet says.She adds that the money will also help them in buying personal requirements such as smartphones, which will help them in online studies.Justification“Some of our parents have lost their jobs and are no longer in position to continue paying our school fees. So, we want to support them. That is why we decided to mobilise ourselves and start a project of commercial vegetable growing to get some income during this lockdown instead of sitting idle at home,” Layet says.Samantha Isidi, 19, the group’s secretary, also a former Senior Six student at PMM Girls School in Jinja City, says they are formalising their group and they want to come up with an attractive name, which can attract other girls to join them.“We want to encourage other girls to support their parents by engaging in some income generating activities instead of begging for handouts from men who make them pregnant and they drop out of school,” Isidi says.Mr Wellborn Chengits Owiro, who donated the nakati seeds to the group, says the girls’ parents had been buying vegetables from him.Mr Chengits says he has been planting nakati for the last three years and has been supplying to schools and Lira City main market where the demand is very high.Thousands of school girls across the country did not return to school after getting pregnant or married during the first Covid-19 lockdown.BackgroundBetween March and June 2020, a total of 8,736 teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 years were impregnated, according to statistics compiled by Plan International in Uganda, an NGO. Data obtained by Daily Monitor from Kitgum Diocese indicates that 3,430 teenage girls under 14 got pregnant between March and October 2020. Kitgum had 780 pregnant school girls, Lamwo had 1,000, Agago registered 730 and Pader 920.
