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Juggling life between motherhood, home schooling and work during the Covid-19 lockdown
I am a mother of 5 children, whose ages range between 4 and 8 years old. In March 2020, Uganda went into full lockdown due to the Covid-19 outbreak. This meant that schools, and other institutions, closed as a way of containing the spread of the virus. Children had to study at home for their safety, and parents had to stay at home too. All of this happened in a very short space of time, and as parents, we had to reorganise our lives to create conducive spaces for everyone in the household, and to ensure that we remained productive.
To help us manage, we came up with several ideas, including creating timetables for different daily activities for us to partake in, synchronised mealtimes which would run for about 30-60 minutes, plus we would ensure that the young ones had some snacks that would see them through the day. Additionally, we organised workstations to accommodate us, which were usually selected on a first come first served basis (a trick that would guarantee that everyone organised themselves quickly to ensure that they didn’t get the worst workstations for the day!).
Image 1: some easy-to-grab snacks available throughout the day
After the morning meals, the young ones had two hours of schoolwork that the schools were sending to the parents. This meant that us parents would also have these two hours of quiet, uninterrupted time to get some work done before the little ones had a break. The break would run over lunch, and during this time, we would turn into teachers to look through the work completed, guide on difficult tasks and set up the children’s second part of the day’s work, which would last for another two hours in the afternoon. The long break was mostly filled with the children catching up on some small household chores, like cleaning utensils, sweeping up, weeding flowers and playing games. The chores were mostly aimed at keeping the noise created by the little ones down for some extra time for us parents to be able to work.
Image 2: my two girls learning together
Generally, these were not completely smooth-running breaks/work times, as every now and then there were cases between party A and party B that had to be resolved as soon as possible, to avoid World War 4 from happening!
After three months, the schools were not sending work as often as was needed, and this was challenging because it meant that the children had a lot of spare time available, which translated into extra noise, and again, this also meant that we had to surrender more of our time to resolve “children at home issues,” including endless complaints, noise etc.
We resolved to get teachers to home school this term, and it has not been an easy task, as most teachers had returned to their native homes due to the fear of the ‘unknown’ that came with lockdown. We finally managed to get two teachers who would come and teach the children between 8:00am and 12:00pm. This was the best decision ever, as it relieved us of our teaching responsibilities, and freed up a lot of our time.
This arrangement lasted for seven months, after which the schools reopened, and children had to return to their normal school program. This lasted for about a month, during which, the country went through its second Covid-19 wave, with the number of positive cases skyrocketing, and the number of deaths also increasing. With this came concerns, practicalities and constraints affecting field project teams. So, after a month of the schools re-opening, the country went through a second lockdown, and everyone had to return and work from home again.
It’s been an interesting and challenging 18 months, and I’d like to share what has worked for us over this time:
• Having a regular schedule for the children to do their schoolwork that aligns with our work schedule. During the first lockdown, having a teacher come over for home schooling was the best option, as infection rates as well as the number of cases were very low, however, this changed during the second lockdown.
Image 3: An example timetable
• Signing up to online learning platforms where the young ones could be part of virtual classrooms and stay in touch with other children worked well, especially as they could continue socialising with others.
• Making time to learn life skills that would otherwise not have been learnt at school, like creating chores for everyone to take part in. This not only kept them busy but also taught them a great deal. Over the weekend, we harvested beans that were planted by broadcasting, and we watered them daily, even during the rain (by the boys). So now everyone knows where beans come from! This also gave them a feeling of being independent.
Image 4: Our recently opened garden where we will be planting spinach and cucumbers
• Creating regular time at the end of each day for games (mostly football, volleyball and bike-riding), where every member of the family participated as a way of exercising their body and relaxing the mind helped a lot.
Image 5: everyone playing football together
• Availing simple snacks and fruits that anyone could easily pick without requiring extra help from the adults was a great idea as it avoided interruptions.
• Creating designated office/schoolwork spaces in the house to bring in a formal work element helped to boost productivity.
• Having flexible working hours and creating care-taking shifts for the adults.
• Taking a mandatory 30 minutes off for ‘me time’, daily, for self-care to refocus and recharge that was not interrupted - unless someone has a broken bone, or the house is on fire!
• We also created departments (referred to as ministries) where each of the 5 little ones were the heads, and these were the Food, Security, Welfare, Entertainment and the Liaison departments. This reduced the number of arguments that the adults had to referee on.
These are tips that have worked for me over the last 18 months in terms of juggling life as a working mother from Uganda. I am still continuing to learn. I would love to hear if you have any thoughts or experiences to share. Please do so in the comments box below ?.
Author: Shiphar Mulumba
Shiphar is a Research Methods specialist for Stats4SD in Uganda, working with the National SP Program and previously with CCRP. Her aims are to make research for development more effective through improved methods and the implementation of training programmes for scientists and students.
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Ric
Sep 01 2021