Staff stories: Famuel Walter Odongo, Remedial Teacher

• Age: 29
• Marital status: Married

Academic qualifications

• Secondary examinations - 1996
• Primary examinations - 1992

My work at Double Joy

I was employed in the year 1997 as an evening preps teacher. Later I taught as a full time teacher before working as a house parent up to the year 2001. I moved back to class as a remedial teacher. In this class, I mainly teach new children who had had no proper education from their homes on how to read and write. The work was challenging at the start, but with the experience I now have, I've come to love it and I enjoy it so much.

My place in the community

I'm the third born in my family and the sole breadwinner in the family because the parents are old and my followers are still in school.

My village is near to the lake (Victoria) and my home is the last home to the lake same to Double Joy. This place was a nice place to live in some years back. You could sit and relax outside during the day and feel a cool breeze from the lake. The place had green vegetation and tall trees with a reliable rainfall. The people used to fish and grow vegetables around the lake, but these days, its glory is gone. It has turned to be a dry land with brown scarce and scattered bushes due to a change in climate.

Fishing has become impossible and people are losing their moral in growing vegetables because the lake water is drying up steadily each day. It is shallow and it has moved nearly a kilometre from its original shore.

The water surface is covered with water weeds (hyacinth) which is now a great problem in Lake Victoria.

We have formed a youth group within our village, of which I'm the vice-chairman, to educate the community members on how to take care of the environment and on matters of hygiene to avoid diseases like typhoid, cholera and bilharzia, which are water related, and HIV/Aids. I also plan to take my mother's place as a church teacher next year when she retires.