By Amwato from Uganda 

My name is Amwato, and I live in Soroti which is in northeastern Uganda. 

My school is beautiful. Our uniform is a light blue button up shirt and a blue skirt. We have to also wear a grey pullover with our badge. Girls are allowed to wear make-up, just no loud make-up. It is better to have simple make-up because, then the school has no problem with it. You can also wear jewelry. The school does not like dangly earrings, just small ones. We call studs, ear pins. We are not allowed to wear heels or sandals. Girls have to wear flat black shoes with white socks. There is also a uniform for sports. It’s a yellow shirt that we wear with our skirts.

After school we love to dance. That’s really all we do with friends. I like traditional dances most. We also aren’t supposed to dance in our school uniforms. There is a very specific dress that we wear when we dance.

Just like girls all over the world, girls living in Uganda love to play games. We like to play volleyball, soccer (which we call football), baseball and netball (which is similar to basketball). We also have local games.

This personal essay was developed as part of the Girl Child Project. For the project, Peace Corps Volunteers around the world collected and shared stories of girls in their communities to celebrate their diverse paths toward opportunity and success. This project was facilitated by the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Working Group at Peace Corps Headquarters.