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Back in her three roomed house, Kyomugisha lays inside her bed awake. She has nowhere to go apart from her bed because darkness reins her house like it does in almost all families in her village.
Kyomugisha can hardly afford buying enough kerosene to light the traditional Etadoba lamp which is the only source of light in her home at night. The only option her family has is to eat supper before the sun sets to benefit from its natural light.
Kyomugisha’s family is among millions of rural families in Uganda that rush to accomplish all their daily chores before it gets dark. They simply cannot afford paying for artificial light. Just only one percent of the households in Uganda’s rural areas have access to electricity.
Dream
In these remote areas, solar energy, hydro electric power and even a generator are a dream that villagers think can never come to reality. Some children in such families grow up to ten years of age before they come to know that electricity exists, after studying about it in Primary School.
At this era of information age, this sounds untrue but it is the reality as Kyomugisha’s child Kyomuhangi (7) testified, “I have never used electricity, but I think I will when I join secondary school,’ she said. Kyomuhangi is now in primary four and she has to complete three more years before she joins any secondary school.
Her mother, Kyomugisha, says she is not able to do any work at night because it is always dark and so she resorts to sleeping before darkness. She however agrees that this is making her waste time, which she would have put to other use. “Imagine I enter my bed close to 7pm and actually sleep after about two hours. If I can work in those two hours, may be I would be rich now,” she narrates in the local Runyankole language.
Kerosene
To many rural Ugandans buying kerosene at this time of global financial crisis is impossible. A liter of kerosene goes for about one and a half a dollar on most of Uganda’s fuel stations. Like many other rural Ugandans, Kyomugisha says she is unable to raise such money because she does not have a job. “I put the money I get after selling my crops into buying some necessities for my children to enable them study well, such as books and pens,” she discloses further.
She acknowledges that her children need to do home work at night. Her two daughters stress that when there is no kerosene in the lamp, they cannot do their homework. They however seem not to be worried about this. “We are not the only ones; even other children come with undone home work. It is dark in most homes in the village at night. Our teachers also know it. Maybe that is why they sometimes don’t cane us,” Kyomugisha’s two daughters said.
Kyomugisha agrees that the lack of light could be contributing to the poor performance of her children at school. The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) last month released the 2008 Primary Leaving Examination results which showed a declining performance compared to 2007 and 2006. Most of those who failed were from rural schools such as Kinshasa Primary School, the school where Kyomugisha’s children go to.
High electricity tariffs
Even those who are connected to hydro electric power grid in Uganda are threatening to abandon it following its high tariffs. UMEME, the national distributor of electricity in Uganda has actually proposed to increase connection fee. It is bidding to increase single phase connection fees from 98,000 ($50) to 197,000 ($100) Uganda Shillings per year.
Tumwiine Lauben has actually abandoned UMEME’s services. He says he used to operate a bar in Biharwe town in Mbarara but could not cope up with electricity tariffs especially when using refrigerators. He says he is now joined the banana selling business at Ahabitookye in Ruti Mbarara. He says this does not need electricity.
There is need for an alternative energy in rural parts of Uganda to help people there cope up with life in the 21st century. On may ask the question: Why does Uganda lie on the equator? Was this by accident? Maybe the creator wanted Ugandans to tap the solar energy from the sun.
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