Saturday, March 29th:Our surprise meeting last Tuesday was an attempt to reconcile the multitude of placement problems that have come up in the last month. Apparently, there are way more interpersonal issues emerging this year than ever before, and the emergency mediation trips are costing SPW a bundle. After a good three hours of heated discussion we had listed 33 problems, and identified which ones were the worst. The resolution part comes later, I suppose.
Dennis, Peter, Lucy and I had a separate meeting to go over our security concerns, and SPW arranged for us to have a meeting with our sub-county on Monday to talk about a course of action.
Last week flew by, since we only taught the last three days. Yesterday, Dennis and I arrived home from a lesson to find Lucy, Peter, and a very muddy and shaken teenage girl on the doorstop. “This is Sylvia,” said Lucy. Sylvia had run into Peter from behind while he and Lucy were walking to a youth group in the rain, and crashed her bike into a ditch. A group of secondary kids immediately gathered, and told Lucy to make Peter forgive her, give Sylvia her jacket, give her money, etc. They ended up taking her home to get cleaned up, since they weren’t sure what to do and didn’t want to leave her muddied in the ditch.
It was all pretty comical, especially since Sylvia didn’t say a word the whole time I was around and no one seemed to know what to do with her. She borrowed my sarong while she washed her skirt, then went on her way after Lucy gave her a sandwich.
Peter complained of a sore butt for a while, but seems to have made a recovery. I told him it was a good thing we didn’t give her money, as we would likely have kids crashing their bikes into us every time we left the house.
It’s the rainy season! The overcast days remind me of home, and everyone has been out tilling their fields now that the ground is soft enough. Peter planted some cabbage and collard seedlings (courtesy of Wilber) in the backyard.
I had a lovely day in Jinja today. I went to a restaurant called Ozzie’s that sells burgers and baked goods and had a cinnamon roll with Lucy and Georgia, then sat drinking coffee and writing letters after they left for a family reunion thing. It was all so civilized. I ran into Darcy later and had lunch with her, then spent some time on the internet before heading home to Magamaga.
Dennis and Peter had gone out, and had taken the key to their side of the house (which includes our makeshift kitchen) with them. I couldn’t cook, get to our food, or use the power outlets, so I had a pretty lonely evening reading in my room. They finally showed up about
At one of our lessons on Friday, a kid asked Dennis in Lusoga: If someone with HIV has sex using a condom, then throws the condom away, and a chicken eats the condom, could you get HIV from eating the chicken? Some questions are easier than others.
Monday, March 31st:
Almost three months down. I feel like I’ve been on placement for years, and with that adjustment comes a degree of boredom. The new situations and instances of “Wow, I’m in
Murchison was a great break, but also a bit of a tease as to how much fun it is to go and play.
I’m not apathetic to what I’m doing, but my initial ambitions are starting to wane. We put up with a lot of shit sometimes, and it can be hard to tell whether the kids are actually learning anything or just practicing their well-honed habit of reciting back whatever is written on the board.
I suppose that’s life as a teacher. I get the feeling I would like this so much more if the kids understood me when I spoke normally.
There are things to look forward to in the upcoming months, however. I’m hoping our AIDS Day will be a big success. The holiday break in May is going to be awesome. I do enjoy the downtime, too – I’ve gotten to read a lot, learned how to make a mean origami squirrel, and learned how to french braid my hair. Still, the lifestyle hybrid of being in high school and camping is a little trying.
Wednesday, April 2nd:
Last night during dinner, we watched the lizards on the wall eat bugs. That might sound lame, but I found it really entertaining.
Dennis and I had some good lessons today and yesterday – we’re starting to do a lot more question-and-answer time with the secondary students, which seems to work rather well. The kids pass forward questions on slips of paper while we teach. Some highlights from this past week:
“I hear that AIDS can be cured in the
“1. Is it true that when you wash a vaginal cococal soda you cannot lose your virginity. 2. Is it true that when you try a stomach with a piece of clothe while playing sex you cannot get pregnant.”
“When you buy a condom when it has a hole in it how do you know that it has a hole? You put air in it? Or when it doesn’t have a hole? How do you know?”
We’ve been covering the male and female reproductive systems with most of our primary kids this week, which gets the kids pretty wound up. We get lots of good questions though. It’s still pretty frustrating to me that I can say something in class and the kids won’t have a clue what I’m talking about, and Dennis will say the exact same thing (in English) and they all pick it up. After two months, I want to say, seriously? My accent is still that difficult? I speak slowly and even do the Ugandan pronunciation on some of the key words: vol-OON-tary, va-JINE-al, a-DOLE-escence, mari-jew-auna. Still, nothing.
I haven’t seen the ugly sheep in a few weeks. I hope it didn’t get eaten.
Friday, April 4th:
I woke up this morning to the sounds of shovels on rocks and children shouting. I put on my headphones and listened to Röyksopp in an attempt to get back to sleep, but it was fruitless. When Lucy and I peered outside, we were surprised that our dirt front yard now looked like this:
It’s funny to me that pulling 30 or so kids out of school for a landscaping project is totally normal around here.
I accompanied Peter to a group called Youth2Youth this afternoon, since Lucy was taking forms to the SPW office and my lesson was cancelled due to a visit from President Museveni. The session was kind of dull (“What is an entrepreneur?”) but I rode the bike there and back with Peter on the back, which was entertaining for me. It entertained several dozen spectators too. Well done! Well done!
No comments:
Post a Comment