Learning Experience

At that point, Wanda made a "very, very emotional" appeal to the scholarship committee at Bethel church. When he was done, a parishioner named Susan Peters stood up and pledged $5,000. Beatrice Tierney pledged $3,000. It was enough to get the school into a condition that would weather the rains.

By the summer of 2004, the U-shaped concrete building was nearly completed. Accompanied by Jaime Mulligan (a co-worker who is vice president of the board) and by Margeson, Wanda traveled there for the ribbon-cutting and watched 200 children in red-and-white gingham uniforms excitedly begin their first day. A few months later, Margeson returned, spending four months teaching and working as interim headmaster. (Instruction is in English, as it is in most Ugandan schools.)

As word spread, more Arlingtonians got involved. ATS and Arlington Academy of Hope (AAH) children exchanged letters and photos; ATS sent more books; families signed up to sponsor students. One Arlington couple contributed $5,100 for a year of school lunches. A delegation of Arlingtonians decided to join Wanda on his next visit, in July 2005.

Shortly before the group left, Margeson returned from Uganda. She wrapped herself in a rainbow-colored gown called a busuti, and stood before rows of fourth-graders in the ATS gym, showing slides of AAH.

"They don't see any movies, there's no television, there's no idea of what goes on outside the village," Margeson told the students. "The school does not have a globe." On the day the school got a generator and illuminated a classroom for the first time, she said, the children sang and danced and lifted their arms into the air in wonder.

ON THE AMERICANS' FIRST WALK THROUGH BUMWALUKANI, a little boy fell into stride with them.

"I was attending the Arlington Academy of Hope," he said softly to Wanda. "But my father could no longer pay the school fees, so I had to leave. I want to return to Arlington."

Wanda, who had arrived two weeks earlier, had been getting 15 or 20 requests like this every day. Admission to AAH takes more than pulling together the fees -- the school considers applicants' test scores, gender (for balance), and need, with additional consideration given to poor students and orphans.

Speaking in his native Lugisu, Wanda gently encouraged the boy to talk to teachers at Arlington Academy. Wanda promised that if he did well at his own school he would be noticed, and might earn a scholarship to AAH. For now, it was all Wanda could do.

Exuberant singing and flute-playing floated down the path. The visitors rounded a bend and saw a gaggle of children crowded around the school's gate, gyrating, dancing and holding signs of welcome. Village women lined the path, smiling and waving.

Watching his visitors enter the school, Wanda felt a little nervous. Even with all that AAH had accomplished, he feared it might not look so impressive to people accustomed to American standards and amenities. The bathrooms were better than what other schools had, but still they were outhouses with no plumbing; the sinks were plastic containers with taps attached; the classrooms had roofs, but, because of the cost, some still lacked ceilings.

More than anything, though, he feared a cultural breakdown. "I was worried," he said later, "that people will say things that the visitors will not appreciate, that someone will make a comment that the visitors may not understand." For example, some parents had objected to their daughters wearing shorts -- part of the PE uniform, but not part of the Bugisu tribe's culture. "If that is heard out of context," Wanda said, "they may immediately rush to a judgment that girls are not treated equally."