Reading the Hills: Paul's Literacy Journey
Omulubanda village sits high in the Kigezi hills of Kabale District, where the land is cut into steep green terraces and the mornings come in cold and misty. It's a place known for its farmers more than its schools — most families here grow sorghum, Irish potatoes, and beans on slopes so steep that children often walk long, uneven paths just to reach a classroom.
Paul Tumusiime is eight years old and the third of five children in his family. His parents farm a small terraced plot on the hillside above the village trading centre. Like many children in Omulubanda, Paul spent much of his early school years missing class during planting and harvest seasons, when every set of hands — his included — was needed on the land.
By the time he reached Primary Two, Paul had fallen quietly behind. He could recognize a handful of letters but couldn't yet blend them into words. He rarely brought his exercise book home.
"I didn't want my father to see it empty," Paul says. "So I would leave it at school."
In July 2025, Learn Plus Foundation ran a community-based literacy program in Omulubanda, working with local primary schools to reach children like Paul during a period when many were at risk of falling through the cracks entirely. The program paired small-group reading instruction with take-home materials designed for children who split their time between the classroom and the family farm — short, simple exercises that could be done in the evening by lamplight or on a Sunday between chores.
Paul's group met under a large avocado tree near the trading centre most afternoons, when the day's fieldwork was done. His facilitator, a local secondary school leaver trained by the program, used flashcards and songs to help the children connect letters to sounds — a method Paul says finally made sense to him.
"We used to just copy from the board," he says. "This time, someone showed me how the letters make the sound, and then the sound makes the word."
Within a few weeks, Paul was sounding out short words on his own. By the end of the program, he was reading simple sentences aloud — including, for the first time, out loud to his father.
"He read a whole line to me from a takataka piece of paper," his father says, laughing. "I did not believe it was my son."
Paul's teacher back at school has since moved him into the group of pupils reading at grade level, and Paul now asks to take his exercise book home every day — no longer to hide it, but to show it.
Omulubanda's hills make it a beautiful place, but also a hard one to reach consistently with services like this. Paul's progress is a small but real example of what a few weeks of the right kind of attention can do, even in a village where school has always had to compete with the land.
Paul Tumusiime is eight years old and the third of five children in his family. His parents farm a small terraced plot on the hillside above the village trading centre. Like many children in Omulubanda, Paul spent much of his early school years missing class during planting and harvest seasons, when every set of hands — his included — was needed on the land.
By the time he reached Primary Two, Paul had fallen quietly behind. He could recognize a handful of letters but couldn't yet blend them into words. He rarely brought his exercise book home.
"I didn't want my father to see it empty," Paul says. "So I would leave it at school."
In July 2025, Learn Plus Foundation ran a community-based literacy program in Omulubanda, working with local primary schools to reach children like Paul during a period when many were at risk of falling through the cracks entirely. The program paired small-group reading instruction with take-home materials designed for children who split their time between the classroom and the family farm — short, simple exercises that could be done in the evening by lamplight or on a Sunday between chores.
Paul's group met under a large avocado tree near the trading centre most afternoons, when the day's fieldwork was done. His facilitator, a local secondary school leaver trained by the program, used flashcards and songs to help the children connect letters to sounds — a method Paul says finally made sense to him.
"We used to just copy from the board," he says. "This time, someone showed me how the letters make the sound, and then the sound makes the word."
Within a few weeks, Paul was sounding out short words on his own. By the end of the program, he was reading simple sentences aloud — including, for the first time, out loud to his father.
"He read a whole line to me from a takataka piece of paper," his father says, laughing. "I did not believe it was my son."
Paul's teacher back at school has since moved him into the group of pupils reading at grade level, and Paul now asks to take his exercise book home every day — no longer to hide it, but to show it.
Omulubanda's hills make it a beautiful place, but also a hard one to reach consistently with services like this. Paul's progress is a small but real example of what a few weeks of the right kind of attention can do, even in a village where school has always had to compete with the land.