Today we began interviewing students and their guardians for a newly implemented scholarship program! Since it is a new program, we started small and will award 8 deserving students from Mwebaza School full ride scholarships to school for the entire year. This will not only benefit families in need and enable deserving students to attend school for free, but also provide the school with much needed financial assistance so they are able to maintain the school and pay teacher salaries. Mwebaza has been struggling to pay teacher salaries because many of the current students at Mwebaza School go to school for free or at a discounted rate.

                                                 

Naturally, everyone in the community wanted to apply for these scholarships, so I had asked Namatovu and the rest of the scholarship interview committee to preselect 20 applicants that we would interview as a committee when I arrived. I had created comprehensive application and interview questions before I had arrived in Uganda, not considering the time it would take to interview each child and guardian, especially when everything here runs on "African" time. We planned to start interviewing at promptly 8 this morning, however we didn't sit down with the first applicant until 10. And of course, at 11:30 we had to break for tea, then lunch was served at 1. Needless to say, we didn't even get half of the applicants interviewed and yet everyone seemed okay with the progress we had made. It has taken me some time to adjust to the way things work here. There is no use stressing over what has not yet been accomplished or trying to force something to happen, that would be like trying to swim up stream. I've had to learn to just go with the flow, and what will be will be.