December 2022:
The 2020 and 2021 calendar years have been lost years in Ugandan education.
It will probably take over 5 or more years to fully recover, but we are
trying, after the schools were basically shut down for those two years. We
did finish an adjustment year with vastly different school days scheduled.
The year 2021 was supposed to be finished at the end of November 2021, but
the new modified school schedule ended it in March of this year. Thus, the
2022 school year, which would normally start in mid to later January started
in April. Each of the three semesters was shortened by one or two weeks, and
weeks were taken from the normal vacation period. What we know now is that
the expected 2023 school year will not start until the first week of
February. In any event, we will adopt.
As this is written, the AVRS
school is in the process of changing the eating area while the school is
shut down during December and January. We are converting from using charcoal
and firewood to cook, to using gas. Changing from what everyone is used to
is very difficult. The old is comfortable, while the new brings unknown
problems. To Americans, it may seem simple, but it is a struggle to convince
the cooks that his is faster and better. We will find out in February.
The progress some of our graduates are making is significant. Gorret is now
about to enter her senior year as a math major with her graduation scheduled
for January of 2024. Isaac will be going into his sophomore year, and our
latest is Nicholas following Isaac to Houston to begin his senior year.
Progress is being made. Meanwhile our two players signed by the Dodgers to
baseball contracts in January appear to have progressed past the Dominican
Republic and are expected to be attending minor league spring camp in
Arizona come February. From there, they are expected to be playing in the
Arizona League during this coming summer.
303 Development continues to do amazing things. This next project is the
construction and start up of a Breast Cancer Medical Center with an opening
date tentatively scheduled for mid June 2023. We are in the process of
starting the project up. We have the money and the property to build on. We
need to staff the facility and we need to bring the equipment to Uganda and
make sure it works. This will be a major break through in the use of ultra
sound to help diagnose and to lead to the treatment and cure of breast
cancer. The use of ultra sound in this way is only the beginning of the
development procedure that will have an impact upon doing bone scans without
X Rays that we hope will lead to the process of determining age of students
regardless of what a false birth certificate might say. The breast cancer
diagnosis and treatment have FDA approval and is being used now. The use of
ultra sound for bone scans is being developed and is expected to have FDA
approval sometime in the spring of 2023.
We will keep you informed of our progress.
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