Christmas wish for Caroline: 'I pray to be able to continue my education'

Caroline, from Kaberamaido district, Uganda, who is trying to pursue her dreams. Photograph: Martin Godwin

Caroline struggled through her primary and secondary education by digging in the fields and selling cassava to pay the school fees and support her family, all with the aim of pursuing her dream to study catering.
When we met at her home in Kaberamaido district, in the Teso region of north-east Uganda, the 17-year-old was caked in mud from the fields. She was shy at first but warmed up quickly, talking with equal composure about the market value of millet, her mother's death from Aids and why dropping out of school has threatened her dreams.
"Ever since I was in primary school my ambition has been to do catering – I enjoy preparing food," she says, describing how she makes the family's main meal of beans and sweet potatoes each day, topped up at this time of year with mangoes and the oranges that fall all around the compound. "I want to learn to prepare new things, and make money – to help my family. I pray that I will be able to continue my education."
Life has got in the way of Caroline's ambition. Her mother, who conceived Caroline after being raped, paid her school fees until she died of Aids. Caroline's grandmother took over the farming to pay the fees, but just after Caroline began her A-levels, her grandmother fell sick and died.
"I couldn't feel good about dropping out of school," says Caroline, "but what could I do? I have to help my family and now my grandmother is gone there is no one to help pay my fees."

Afua Hirsch introduces the Guardian and Observer's 2009 Christmas appeal, which is raising money for the Mvule Trust to provide education scholarships to young people in north-east Uganda Link to this video Travelling through Teso earlier this month, I kept seeing the story of my own grandparents, which began in rural communities just like these. For me, it served as a constant reminder that those tied to an unforgiving dependence on the land can find their fortunes changed in a single generation through education.
My grandfather was the son of a cocoa farmer in the Gold Coast, as Ghana was then known. He was one of two students a year to win a scholarship from the colonial government to Cambridge in 1944. He came back after his English degree and translated Chaucer into our language - Twi – so that more Ghanaians could read it. He worked as a teacher, determined to contribute to the promising future of his country as independence approached.
My grandmother grew up in a village not dissimilar to those in Teso visited by the Guardian. Her family cultivated a small piece of land and she walked for miles carrying loaves of bread on her head, selling them for 3p each in surrounding villages. It was the free training she received from the colonial government in the 1940s that enabled her to become one of just 12 girls a year to learn midwifery. The training appealed to her, she told me, because she wanted to help her people.
My generation will always owe a debt of gratitude to our grandparents, who were born into colonies but whose vision and faith in the independent future of their countries is a source of hope and inspiration even now, when so many see only tragedy in Africa.

Transforming lives

The power of education is a constant theme running through the immense
diversity of the African continent. It is a gift that benefits two ways. On the one hand, training in crucial areas helps address chronic skills shortages; in Uganda 50% of health posts are vacant, and agricultural production could be boosted significantly by updating farming and livestock techniques. On the other, it helps lift the individual out of poverty and transforms the fortunes of future generations.
Most people in Teso are well aware of the value of education. But the colonial legacy, which worked in favour of educating my grandparents, has left behind an obsession with white-collar professions. Every schoolchild dreams of becoming a doctor, lawyer or engineer, but these careers are remote prospects in a region where fewer than 5% who start primary school manage to complete A-levels. Far more urgently needed in these communities is expertise in forestry, new farming techniques and teaching.
The potential for change in Teso is enormous. Despite the challenges of two decades of insurgency, cattle rustling, floods and drought, thousands of young people have made unimaginable sacrifices to get through school; digging, like Caroline, to pay the fees, and in many cases putting education before food. But when it comes to the final leg of technical and vocational training that is essential to do the work so badly needed in the region, they simply do not have the money to pay.
It is these young people the Guardian is targeting through its Christmas appeal this year. We are raising money for the Mvule Trust to pay for education at technical colleges for those who have already shown academic potential and overcome particular hardship. The majority of beneficiaries will be those who have lost one or both parents. Girls, who are significantly more likely to be pushed out of school by financial hardship and forced into marriage as young as 13, will benefit the most.

Business opportunities

The grave where Caroline's grandmother is buried is now one of nine at one end of the compound, alongside Caroline's mother, uncles and cousins. The graves are covered with pink flowers that smarten the sadness and keep snakes away.
"My mother had Aids," Caroline says. "Many people here do – it scares me very much. I hope to get married one day, but I worry about marrying a man who is immoral who could also bring me Aids."
Already at the age where marriage is expected in Teso, Caroline is adamant she wants to finish her education first and earn a decent living.
In theory, business opportunities for a young woman abound in this area. The nearby town is starting to come alive again after the recent insurgency by the Lord's Resistance Army in 2003. Local people, including Caroline's family, who were forced to seek refuge in a camp for internally displaced persons during the rebel invasion, have returned to their homes and their crops, fuelling extremely modest, but visible, growth in the local economy.
In Kaberamaido town, the newly renamed "Obama Plaza" has bread on the shelves, but none is produced locally. The only bakery in the town is run by an entrepreneur who spotted a gap in the market for "otumbero" – deep-fried doughnuts, nicknamed because of their popularity as a means of fattening women. The owner, who comes from a more prosperous part of Uganda, took out a bank loan to start the business, and brought his relatives with him. He now supplies more than 2,000 doughnuts a day to neighbouring villages.
But these opportunities are fraught with uncertainty. The paradoxes of
globalisation in a home like Caroline's are stark. The global obsession with Christmas has caused a spike in crime across villages like these, as livestock is stolen to fund the expensive demands of the festive season. "The Christmas season means more robbers," Caroline says. "They break into the kitchen, and they steal goats and chickens."
These are modern stories, but the more I talked to young people like Caroline, the more I saw my own grandparents, hearing over and over again the words of my grandmother, who was driven by the simple wish to help her people.
This same ambition drove every person I spoke to in Teso. Behind every story was a desire to support an extended family, gain new skills and develop a community.