Tipton native helps teachers teach in Uganda

Company develops materials especially for African schools

 

By Jameson O’Neal

The Gazette

TIPTON – Abdul Kagga didn’t spit his watermelon seeds onto the ground the way others did. He saved them in a napkin so he could send them to his relatives for planting.

That concern for the value of everyday things was one of the qualities Craig Esbeck had in mind when, years later, he asked Kagga to join his effort to provide simple, durable educational materials to Ugandan schools in Africa.

Esbeck, a native of Tipton, shared that melon with Kagga and other language instructors shortly after he joined the Peace Corps in 1997.

Esbeck, who taught grade school in Tipton and Minnesota, trained teachers during his two-year stint in the Peace Corps. He had signed up for a third year and stayed, even when the Peace Corps temporarily pulled volunteers out of Uganda in 1999 after rebels killed eight foreign tourists.

“I didn’t feel unsafe,” he said in a recent interview at the Tipton home of his father and stepmother, Gordon and Jan Esbeck. “There’s a lot going on in education reform, and I wanted to be a part of it.”

Esbeck’s work with village teachers had made him aware of the lack of educational materials in Uganda.

U.S. and European development agencies had periodically provided teaching tools, but those goods sometimes were culturally inappropriate – the games were peculiar, the animals on the charts were unlike those in Uganda – and teachers were protective of the mass-produced products.

“They were too beautiful,” Esbeck said. “They were too special. They become sort of museum pieces.”

Esbeck began making wall charts, games, puzzles, picture cards and books from locally obtained materials such as grain sacks, flip-flops and bottle caps.

He marketed the products, designed to support the primary school curriculum used throughout Uganda, through a company he called Mango Tree Educational Enterprises. He chose the name because teachers in Ugandan villages without school facilities customarily hold classes under the expansive shade trees.

Esbeck soon employed full-time tailors, carpenters and graphic artists to meet demand for his products. The company now also subcontracts with artisan groups. In all, it employs about 100 people.

“When I started the business, I was focused on getting good learning aids into the hands of teachers,” Esbeck said. “But what I’ve found more satisfying on a daily basis is providing people with an income – and work that’s meaningful and has growth opportunities.

“You really see how it changes people’s lives when they’re given the opportunity to work. I like that – seeing the results of people being able to build a house or buy a cell phone or send their child to university.”

Esbeck began his company in Busolwe, an eastern Uganda village where he served in the Peace Corps. In 2001, Esbeck decided to expand into Kampala, the nation’s capital, and for that he needed an associate.

Kagga, then a high school teacher, told Esbeck he shared his sense of mission.

“Our teachers have very little in terms of tools to use, and this has a very big impact on the way you instruct,” said Kagga, 34, who accompanied Esbeck to the United States. “I felt that at least if somebody got a very good foundation in primary school, he would be provided with lifelong literacy skills and learning skills.”

Esbeck and Kagga want to make Mango Tree a model business.

“If Uganda is going to develop, it’s going to have to have businesses that run on a professional standard – that pay taxes, that respect their employees, that do the right thing for the community,” Esbeck said. “We want to show people that you can make a profit and support your community.”

The partners also share a commitment to raising educational norms in a country where nearly 40 percent of the population is illiterate.

Esbeck, 46, said he does not miss the states and has no plans to move back.

“There’s poverty in Uganda, but there’s a poverty of spirit in the United States,” he said. “The problems people have here are problems of affluence, and those problems I don’t know how to solve. I’m paralyzed by those problems.

“In Uganda, the problems are of lack, and I can see solutions to that.”