Many of\u00a0the questions read out during assembly at Newcastle High School for Girls\u00a0reflected the everyday concerns of teenagers: career ambitions, family, the weather.<\/p>\n
Others, less so:\u00a0HIV infection, rape\u00a0and how to avoid being forced into marriage before the end of school also came up.<\/p>\n
When Hilary French\u00a0(pictured, centre left), headteacher of the Newcastle upon Tyne independent school, was invited\u00a0to accompany representatives from the girls\u2019rights charity Plan UK<\/a><\/strong> on a trip to Uganda, she asked her pupils to compile a list of questions for their Ugandan counterparts.<\/p>\n \u201cThey wrote the kinds of questions you\u2019d expect secondary school girls here to ask,\u201d Mrs French said. \u201cWhat do you like reading? What subjects do you like at school? What\u2019s your favourite food? Do you go to the cinema? What do you want to be?\u201d\u00a0She took the questions with her during her \u00a0visit to a girls\u2019 school in Kamuli, a rural area of Uganda. And, along with the answers, she returned to Newcastle with a list of reciprocal questions from the Ugandan teenagers.<\/p>\n Some of the questions were exactly what the Newcastle pupils might have expected: \u201cWhat\u2019s the weather like in your country?\u201d and\u00a0\u201cIs your country as beautiful as ours?\u201d\u00a0And then there were others. \u201cMy parents want me to get married, and I\u2019m only 13,\u201d one Ugandan girl wrote. \u201cWhat do you think I should do?\u201d<\/p>\n