Not much has happened...

Not much has happened since I last blogged, so I’ve written mainly about things I’ve missed out in the past.

I haven’t written about discipline here yet I don’t think, and it is an important part of my experience so I’ll describe it a little. Children are hit with a stick fairly regularly. From what I’ve heard from past volunteers it is not nearly as bad as it was, but still shocking to see. A few days ago I walked into P1’s classroom, and the teacher was caning three children. I think my face showed my distaste because she stopped and came over to me where I was standing in the doorway. I asked what the children had done, and by the sound of it they had just been unable to answer a question. They were all in the back row which was probably one of the problems – it is obvious when you’re both teaching from the front and observing from the back that the back rows often don’t take part in the repeat after me parts of the lesson, which is most of it. I told the teacher I wouldn’t come in if she used the stick because I thought the practice was horrible and pointless, and she (miraculously?) said she’d never do it again. I said ok, and took the stick off her. I have the stick in my room, and have tried it out on myself and it really hurts! Later that day in the same classroom I confiscated a stick from a girl who was using it on a classmate of hers. I’ve also watched and then stopped a girl being chased by a teacher (who turned out to be her mother) and then beaten for not wanting to go and get her lunch. The same teacher has beaten and hit kids whilst I’ve been teaching, but now that I’ve got upset with her about it I don’t think it will happen again – it better not. I’ve seen plenty of other children hit to varying degrees of harshness, and it never stops being upsetting.

I am very, very out of touch with what is happening in the world! There is a television at the school but it has poor reception and the news channel has little international news. Occasionally someone buys a newspaper, but they’re mainly in Luganda.

So apparently Gadaffi is dead? It has been interesting being here with all the Libya happenings as Gadaffi had close ties with Uganda and visited regularly. Apparently he was in love with a princess of one of the kingdoms or something, and there are a few of those huge poster board things with a picture of him, you know, the ones that tend to get destroyed during an uprising and the media love it so you see them everywhere. Gadaffi did something stupid every time he came, angering one minority group or another but he kept coming.

There is some discontent with the government here, and the Headmistress and Director think that after Somalia overthrows their government, there will be an uprising here if the president doesn’t change before. Museveni’s mother was from Rwanda, so during the time of political unrest in Rwanda, the government welcomed Rwandans with open arms. Luckily they are cattle herders rather than farmers so don’t compete for land with the locals, in fact the locals welcomed the milk and meat. They’ve maintained this way of life and although remained separate from the local people, until recently they got on fine. Now, Museveni has sensed the unease of the Ugandan people and has started to get worried. He knows that the Rwandans will remain loyal to him if anything happened, so has recruited them into the army and promoted them to high positions with high pay. In some areas you can see areas of grazing land with the distinctive round mud huts thatched with grass, but each hut has a big, luxurious (by local standards, not ours!) brick house next to it. As you would expect, the Ugandans are a little annoyed and resentful and the mood is tense. There have been many strikes by teachers (government schools only so I haven’t been affected) and lecturers, and plenty of anger at the corruption that accompanies the exploitation of oil that has recently been found in the western region. And inflation is a huge problem here – for example five months ago 10 tomatoes cost 100 shillings (around 2p), but now you get one tomato for 150 shillings. Sugar now costs something like five times more than it did, and some schools no longer buy sugar because it is just too expensive so the children have a diet that is really much too low in sugar. Fuel has gone up too, and the Director, who is a Headteacher at a government school 2 hours away, can only afford to come home once a week, and that is at a push.

I’m writing this at the hostel I mentioned before – Masaka Backpackers. I am the only person staying here which is sad but I’ve had a good day. This morning I taught my last normal lesson. The children have end of year exams from tomorrow, so no teaching. After exams they have a few days of hanging around the school being bored before being sent home for the holidays, so I’ll do some intensive IT/library teaching then – assuming it is sunny and the solar power can cope of course! Apparently around 10 children will be left behind at the school – the ones who have no family, or their family cannot support them. I plan to do some creative, fun things with them which will be good, if only because of the small number! I also plan to go to Murchison Falls National Park, in the north west, for more safari-ing.

It was pouring with rain when I was ready to leave the school this morning, but got a little better by the time I’d found a boda to take me to the matatu (minibus-taxi) stage to go to Masaka. The matatu was almost empty, but we carried on to Masaka anyway – it felt luxurious! The main aim of the trip was to get out money from an ATM, and good old Barclays made it a successful trip (very relieved!). I then went to the café I took Teacher Enock to a while back, and had a delicious lunch (pancake with guacamole and salad, cinnamon rolls) and took advantage of their free wifi. I’ve just finished my supper at Backpackers – spaghetti with vegetable sauce, and even some slices of cheese! It was really good, miles better than the spaghetti (‘macron’) back at school. The atmosphere here is very friendly, all the staff welcomed me when I arrived and are very helpful. The downside is that there are a lot of mosquitoes, I’d only seen about three (I’m as surprised as you are, I have had more than three bites though) before this evening and I’ve seen and heard plenty now! I think I’ll retreat to bed and the mosquito net fairly soon. Tomorrow I’ll do a bit of shopping and use the internet a little more, and then get a matatu back to Kyotera. Another nice break from life at the school.

Hippos, crocodiles and monkeys, oh my!

It is another long one I’m afraid… but less of a saga this time. There are photo captions but no photos because the internet is dodgier then ever, so you'll just have to imagine them!
(Now edited to include photos)

I can’t remember if I wrote about Kim before, so apologies if I’m repeating myself. Kim was a volunteer from the Netherlands at the school five or so years ago, then came back as a matron for a year, and is now settled here. Malnutrition and child abuse is a big problem and she has a family of rescued children and lives in a big house not too far away. Kim is an amazing woman, and it has been really, really helpful to talk to someone that knows what it is like to live at the school. People here don’t show emotion or much affection, and crying is very frowned upon (apparently you get beaten if you scream during childbirth!). They are unbelievably tough, and I suppose they have to be because life is so hard here. There is always work to be done so no time to show love, and the mortality rate is so high that you need to be tough to deal with the people around you getting ill and dieing. It must have been obvious to people how unhappy I’ve been at times, but there is never any support – no hug or words of comfort, or even showing real interest in my emotions. It has been really difficult to deal with, so talking to Kim has really helped. She has volunteers stay with her, and it has been great seeing them too. Nadine is also Dutch and is here for longer than me, and Alex, Cris and Nuria came from Spain for a few weeks. I’ve had lots of hugs – just what I wanted!

I’ve had a few meals at Kim’s and they have been great. Good food (some local, some local with a twist, and some western) and good conversation, and it is nice to see everybody sitting at the same table. The people that work for her, the children, visitors and the volunteers all chat happily together, with many languages being spoken.

Cris, Nuria and Alex came to the school to do a mural and collage with the children. They’d printed lots of photos that the children could stick onto a giant map of Africa and then got the P.7s to do handprints in blue paint around it on the wall to make the sea. It looked brilliant and the children really enjoyed themselves. I’d like to do more of that kind of thing with them but doing it on my own would just be complete chaos. The children get very overexcited and will do anything to do more than their fair share, so you need eyes everywhere to keep control of the situation!

The Spanish girls invited me to go to Lake Mburo National Park with them to see the animals. We drove for a few hours, made a big detour because of a flooded road, and arrived at midday. The landscape was more rolling hills, but this time covered in savannah rather than bananas, and the lake was really beautiful. We drove along the game viewing tracks and also went on a boat tour of the lake. We saw zebra, impala, water buffalo, hippos, crocodiles, water buck, bush buck, pied kingfishers, fish eagles, hammer birds, vervet monkeys, warthogs, topi, crested cranes and many more. Some of the animals were not bothered at all by us, or by the car, so we were very close to the monkeys and warthogs. My favourite were the zebra, they look and behave just like wild horses and are stunning to look at. We saw many hippos from the boat, and one even opened its mouth for us. Not something to get too close to! The crocodiles were tiny, only around 50 cm long and almost invisible in the water and weeds. I really wish we could have spent more time in the park and gone on a guided walk as I found the noise of the car and boat very annoying, and felt we could have seen many more things if it had been quiet. I also wish I knew more about the birds we saw, there were so many and some very beautiful but often couldn’t get a photo and I have no idea what they were. It was an unforgettable experience and I’ll definitely go to another national park before leaving Uganda.

Flooded road – this one was passable

Longhorn cattle

Alex, Cris and Nuria waiting for lunch at Lake Mburu

Hippos

Zebra!

More zebra!

 

Vervet monkey. No false colours!

A warthog and the lake

We left just as the park was closing and drove to Masaka, where we stayed the night at a great hostel. The food was nice, especially breakfast (I had my first cup of milky tea since leaving the UK), the staff friendly, and only about £3.50/night. In the morning it was raining, so we waited for it to stop and then went to build fuel saving stoves with a local charity in a village. It was a very messy business, involving mixing clay and dried grass with your feet and then shaping it into a stove. It was good fun, but very hot and I got sunburnt for the first time here (well it was going to happen sometime, and I’m surprised I lasted so long). All in all it was a fantastic break from life at the school, and the girls were great company. I was pretty upset when they left a few days later after enjoying myself so much with them, and had quite a downer following their visit.

Best breakfast EVER at Masaka Backpackers

Me, Julius and Ronnie at Masaka Backpackers

Me mixing clay with a hoe for the stove

Cris mixing clay and grass with her feet

Our finished stove

Nadine and I have started helping some of children in P.5 that are poor readers. They come and read to us once a week, but it is really difficult to find books that are appropriate for them. Most of the books in the library have been donated by volunteers so are very western and have words like ‘sandwich’, ‘feta’ and ‘wagged’ that the children here have never heard of, either because of the cultural differences, or their English is just not good enough. It means that getting them to understand the words they are reading is an issue, and often involves a lot of stopping and starting so even I find it hard to follow the story sometimes! They learn to read as a class here, with the whole class reading words off the blackboard together, so they get no individual help. This leaves some of them far, far behind and is quite obvious when you ask just the back row or something to read a sentence and they struggle with it. I’m not sure what the solution is but I think it is helpful anyway.

Sunday 6^th November was the school visiting day. This one was a special because it was also a fundraising day, so even more effort than usual went into the preparations. The children have traditional dance lessons once or twice a week which involves a lot of bum and hip wiggling (you need to see a video to understand, I’ll put one up when I’m back), and in the week preceding the festival they practiced every day for two hours solid, and it is energetic stuff! The choir practiced for the mass and also to accompany the dancing. People were hired to build a stage, scaffolding (pine, not metal) built to provide shade/rain cover, marquees assembled and chairs laid out.

The day was meant to start at 9 am with mass, but in true Ugandan style it started at 11 am or so. Apparently this was because of the rain (to be fair it had rained heavily in the night, and continued to do so throughout the morning), but I don’t think it would have started on time whatever the weather. The mass was unbelievably long! There were about four baptisms, 80 confirmations and 40 first communions, so it lasted for three hours. THREE HOURS. Had it been in English it might have been ok, but no, it was all in Luganda. The novelty of seeing the children being confirmed all dressed up quickly wore off. They all looked smart, in new, clean clothes. Some of the girls had also gone home and had their hair done (normally they all have their heads shaven to deter lice), and many had white patent shoes with white socks pulled up high. They were quite something, but it still didn’t amuse me all that time. I sat with a few of the teachers and sang with the choir (or sometimes pretended to, I can’t read Luganda anywhere near fast enough) which was fun, particularly when three of us came in a whole phrase early at the top of our voices. All the children turned to look at us and we collapsed with laughter/embarrassment!

When the mass had eventually finished I wandered about chatting to children and teachers, and ended up having lunch with the bishop, the vicar and a monk. All spoke excellent English, and had even been to England a couple of times so it was interesting to talk to them. The food was the normal local stuff but much tastier than usual. I’ve now realized that the food ‘Aunt’ cooks for Rose (headmistress) and I is not a good example of Ugandan food, other peoples’ chapattis, groundnut sauce, matooke and rice are far, far better. After lunch I chatted to Kim and Nadine (we were avoiding the interminable speeches in Luganda), and then watched the children’s dancing/singing/storytelling. The children did really well and looked great in their traditional clothing, and seemed to enjoy themselves too.

It was really nice to see them with their families eating matooke (they love it, for the few days before the event the girls in my house kept saying “We’re going to eat MATOOKE! And macron [spaghetti]! And rice! And NO posho!”), and particularly nice to see the fathers that had come too. Apparently Ugandan men, especially if not well educated, care little for their children. They want as many children as possible because it shows their manliness, but take little interest in them. People are always shocked when I say I only have one sibling, and only a sister at that, but envious that I am the ‘first born’.  Polygamous marriages are very common here so some of the teachers have over 30 children. There is still the feeling here that you must have children to look after you when you are old and to grow food (or ‘dig’ as they put it), and talking to the children you get mixed answers to the question “How many children will you have?”. Some say many, some say a few, some say “As many as God gives me”, and some “As many as I can support”. All the teachers, matrons and other staff have children, and just whilst I’ve been here two teachers have had babies. The women take little time off so their babies are often in classes with them or are passed around the girls or the other women, and breastfeeding happens very openly. The teachers are mainly in their mid twenties, and have several children already. It was quite a shock at first seeing all these people not far off my own age with so many children, but then when you think that the life expectancy is about 47 here, when you reach your twenties you’re middle aged so it is hardly surprising! Anyway, I have drifted way off subject here, so back to visiting day. One particularly memorable moment was when Julius Ceasar (yes, I really know someone called that) asked me to help find one particular girl as he’d brought her sister along to see her. It was a surprise visit and her parents hadn’t come so she was so happy! There was lots of hugging, laughing and squealing. By the time darkness had fallen many parents had gone home, leaving some children quite upset and others quite happy eating the food their mothers had brought for them. I felt really bad for the children whose parents hadn’t come, and especially bad for the children who have no family at all. It must be really hard seeing all your friends eating mandas (doughnuts), sugary drinks and bread when you have none. It was a comfort to see them sharing their food with their friends later that evening, and in the last few days.

Children dancing

Norah singing

 

In the evening there was a disco and I danced with some of the teachers. The music was the normal Ugandan pop music where every track is at an identical tempo to the last, making DJ-ing very easy but it is very boring to dance to, and I was almost sleep-dancing by 10.30 (which, to be fair, is late by standards here), and in bed by 11 pm! Despite the music being very loud and the speakers about three metres from my window I fell asleep very easily. Before you ask, no, I did not pass out in a drunken stupor – I’d had no alcohol at all! The people here drink mass produced beer (not a beer fan), a kind of banana beer (yuck) and waragi. Waragi is gin made from bananas, and is actually illegal because it has such a high alcohol content – around 80%! Despite this it is drunk widely, presumably because it is a very cheap way to buy alcohol (a litre of waragi is less than double the price of an ordinary beer) and you could tell who had been at it – the village drunkards were out in force!

As part of the fundraising effort there were school calendars and magazines for sale. Both are hilarious. On the calendar is a picture of me ‘teaching’ (it was very much set up) how to use a computer, with the caption “Teacher Karty conducting a practical computer lesson”, and a few other spelling mistakes. The magazine has passages by some of the teachers, photos (more set ups) and pieces of writing ‘by’ a few children, but it is quite obvious from the words they use that they have been very heavily edited. The best part of the magazine is the photos of the teachers and staff as they are captioned so I’ve been able to sort out a few uncertainties about names!

So far the total amount raised is around five million shillings, around £1000. This will cover about a fifth of the cost of constructing another girls’ dormitory, and I’m not sure how they’ll raise the rest. The school struggles more than ever for money now with the high cost of food.

The oldest class, Primary 7, had their final exams last week. They are really important because they determine what secondary schools they can get in to, and because of the wide range in education standards here they have a huge impact on the course of their lives. They have worked so unbelievably hard this term. All the children here do a lot of studying, but the P.7 lessons run over into what should be break times, and then the girls in my house would often study with torches until 10.30 pm, which is very late for 13 year olds who must get up at 5.30 am the next morning! The school is not registered as an exam centre yet so they went to another school for a few days to do the exams. When they returned they were very happy, and it was great to see them just relaxing and laughing with each other. I remember one girl announcing very happily that she was going to bed, and when I pretended to be very shocked at how early it was she laughed. It was also funny to hear the girls in my house speaking much more Luganda than before, because as diligent students they made a real effort to speak English and I rarely heard Luganda before their exams. I even managed to do some painting with them, to make decorations for visiting day, which they enjoyed. They were all very excited to be leaving, which I was really surprised at. Most won’t go to secondary school with any of their KAASO classmates, and as they come from all over the country (there are even a few children from Tanzania here) and have little means of communication they are unlikely to keep in touch. There are still a few P7s here (the children dependent on the school, i.e. the ones too poor to pay school fees, are expected to do some work for the school before leaving) are sad though.

Happy P7s on the evening they returned

I gave the girls in my house sandwich biscuits and jelly worms as a good-luck-and-thank-you-for-cleaning-the-house-so-well-presents before their exams, and they were very happy. They said they’d treasure the wrappers forever, and for some of them it was the first time they’d had biscuits with filling and all thought the jelly worms were hilarious!

In the way of day-to-day life I’ve been teaching library and computer lessons and helping out with the younger classes as usual. All the children from P4, 5 and 6 have now written a sentence, some have written three and I’ve started showing them how to save their work now. You always get a big grin when you show them that their name has appeared at the top of the screen as the document title and that you can make it disappear and come back. Discipline has also got much easier now, they really understand that I will call them up when it is their turn, and when they’ve had their turn they go back to the library to do the work I’ve set for them. They now line up before coming in and if they come in noisily or run then they get sent back out again, and books seem to be put back in the correct place, or if not the correct place at least more appropriate places! I’m really glad that my effort has paid off, but it is disappointing to think that it is unlikely to be carried on by any of the teachers after I leave. I can only hope that some long-term volunteers come that can continue with it after Christmas. The library itself is looking much better, with tidier shelves, colour coded books and all the posters I’ve made. Who knows how permanent that will be though!

A P.1 lesson

It is ant and grasshopper season here at the moment – when I was told this I thought that they would be crawling everywhere, but actually what they meant was that it is ant and grasshopper EATING season here. They are considered great delicacies but I haven’t tried and have no intention of doing so! I watched Rose and another teacher sorting stones from trays and trays of ants ready for cooking, and some were still walking. It was horrible, and who knew ants had such a strong smell?! They fry them with salt and onion. EUGH.

 

The children love having their photos taken, and once the camera is out it is difficult to put it away again! They also like to take them themselves so here is a selection of photos.

Kids on the school field

As always, I’ve had big ups and big downs. I’ve no idea if my mood swings are real or side effects from antimalarials or hormones being crazy, but at the moment I’m on an up so I’ll make do with that!