We love Buyaya!  Whenever we return there we are treated like family.  It is a humbling tremendously welcoming community.  If you ever find yourself in that part of the world, come on over and say hi!

Buyaya is located near the town of Sironko in western Uganda and is where our first school was constructed. 

Meaningful Volunteer conducted a very detailed census of Buyaya, the full results of which can be found here.

Highlights from the census include:

• Uganda has two educational policies called UPE and USE. These stand for Universal Primary Education and Universal Secondary Education respectively. These - in theory - guarantee all children a primary and secondary education.
  
  This appears to be working in Buyaya at the primary level (with 393 students enrolled), but not at the secondary level (with 54 students enrolled).
   
• Most students under nine cannot read a single letter.
   
• Most students under the age of fifteen struggle to read simple triplet words. (Triplet words have a consonant, then a vowel, then another consonant. Words like cat, dog, man and tap are all triplets).
   
• The reading levels further deteriorate when silent-e words (cape, Kate, Dave, cute and so on) and consonant blend words (blue, king, snow, gloves and so on) are added. 
   
• The students who could read still performed very poorly on English comprehension tests.
   
•  The average age for a male is 19.5, and the average age for a female is 20.5.
   
•  Malaria accounted for 53% of all deaths and HIV accounted for 15% of all deaths.
   
•  There is an average of 4.9 residents per household
   
•  Chickens (4.18/household) and goats (1.18/household) form the bulk of livestock.
   
•  Almost all residents are sustenance farmers with beans, maize, and cassava forming the bulk of the crops.
   
•  35% of residents farm coffee as a cash crop.
   
•  Residents spend an average of 1 hour and 49 minutes collecting water from the sole bore-hole water well, and 1 hour and 27 minutes from the various wells around the parish.
   
•  11% of children are orphans
   
•  HIV rates are hard to determine because of the stigma of associated with HIV+ people.