The last week has been a blur of UNEB pre-preparations. UNEB (Uganda National Examinations Boards) is the exam period that our fourth and sixth year CSB students must pass to continue on to the final goal of a University degree. Similar in some ways to the SAT exam, UNEBs are far more intimidating. Imagine your four years of high school culminating in a single series of subject exams that test all you have learned in specific detail. (for example, biology may involve labeling any one of an array of animal diagrams, you must know all the detail on all of them to have hopes of a good grade.)

Due to the difficulty of this exam and the barrier that failure is to going on, corruption is an ongoing problem in the Ugandan UNEB system. So, unlike with our SATs, UNEB’s require applications months ahead (we are applying now for our students who will test just before the end of the year.) Every student’s UNEB application must feature a passport size picture, their official name, etc. A very common practice in Uganda is paying someone to sit your UNEB exam for you. Use of pictures and official applications helps with this but it still commonly happens because of yet more corruption at the testing centers. Christ School is now an official UNEB testing center so students from other schools join us for UNEB to be tested. In fact several years ago our Deputy HM (headmaster), a fine Ugandan man, became the area UNEB examiner. That’s a sign of the reputation that Christ School has developed for fair practices; the ministry of education is trusting us among others to prevent corruption in the system.

The process began a few months ago when students first arrived for the year and were identified as fourth or sixth year students. We took the proper photos of each one and printed them small. Our head admin guy has spent an enormous amount of time filling out all the forms for students and David came home this week with the file of applications and related paperwork, every one of the 100+ applications needing his signature and his official Christ School Headmaster stamp (stamping documents is one of the interesting practices common and necessary here.) We had a signing/stamping party – David signing while I helped the kids take turns officially stamping all the documents in just the right places.

Then on to the bank to look for a bank draft to be carried, instead of money, to submit with the applications. One of our staff members is submitting them for us. David spent four hours at the Bundibugyo bank trying to get the bank draft without success. He tried but was unable to fix their broken printers so yesterday he drove over the mountains – a six hour drive for 30 minutes getting a draft printed at the bank. UNEBs are a big expense for us, because unlike most schools in Uganda, we don’t charge our students separately for their applications and exams. Since we are already spending several thousand dollars and the late fees for applications are 50% we are being as certain as possible that we don’t have late applications.

And among the other complexities of the system, many of our student’s names change in their UNEB year (some of you orphan sponsors will notice your student’s name change soon). This is because names are so fluid and flexible here in the village, but with UNEB they require the names on the birth certificate and students may discover that the name they have been using wasn’t the one their parents signed up for!