Last lessons, tree planting, HIV testing

Sunday, July 20^th:
Here are Dennis and I with our P6/P7 class at Buweera Primary. Can you pick me out of the crowd? I bet you can!

After many days of ardent preparation, the Holy Missionary Childhood event reached its culmination yesterday. The morning began with a parade up to Buwenge and back, which featured a marching band and several hundred school kids. Dennis and I joined the march. There was a group of nursery school kids in lime green being led by a teacher who was taking his marching steps very seriously, and the children were following suit. It was pretty adorable. As we walked, more schools joined us from alongside the road and by the end it was quite a stretch. Whenever the band started playing a song the kids knew they would all start singing along in high little voices, and it was a happy time.

The theme of the day was “Jesus Is Our Freind.” Yes, freind. One of the schools had made t-shirts.

After the parade returned, everyone gathered on benches set up outside the church for the service. The bishop was in attendance, and lots of visiting priests and children. The student choir, which had been in nonstop rehearsals since last Thursday, gave some excellent performances, but it was kind of ruined by shoddy keyboard accompaniment. The day’s premise was “children helping children,” since it was a fundraiser for children in the north who are in refugee camps. There were a bunch of speeches and skits that the kids had prepared, and the mzungu bishop gave a sermon in Lusoga. Each school came forward with their donations of food, money, and school supplies. It’s pretty impressive that kids that have so little still manage to pull together contributions for the kids that have even less than them.

The rain held off until lunchtime, when Dennis and I retreated home and a few dozen kids took cover on our porch. There were more festivities in the afternoon, but I was out putting up posters for our VCT day so I missed the evening entertainment. I was bummed about that but I did see them practicing all week, so I bet I didn’t miss too much.

The girls in the choir had been having full-day rehearsals, and they spent a couple nights in the empty hall next to our house. It was a full-on slumber party. I think they only slept about two hours on Thursday night, since they were making noise well past midnight and were up shouting long before it was light outside. It was a little crazy but pretty fun, since it was mostly kids we knew who are pretty funny. Like Sandra. Teddy was around all weekend doing massive event preparation and a lot of the Kagoma teachers and older students were around to help too. It was really fun having everyone around and getting excited for the event.

Dennis and I were up late Thursday anyway, typing up letters and designing certificates for the stakeholders’ meeting we’re holding next Friday. We printed them out in town on Friday (the power was out at the SPW office) which was a huge fiasco, but they look really nice and we’ll be able to recognize each of the schools and NGOs we’ve been working with in Buwenge. Certificates are a big deal here.

Paul (priest-in-training) was back around this weekend for the event, and it was nice to see him.

I went to church this morning with Samali, the girl who stays with Teddy during the week. A nice woman with two little kids I like named Fiona and Anton came and sat with us, and I got to hold baby Anton for most of the service. They are really pretty kids. Anton peed on me at one point but it wasn’t too bad really. I was probably bouncing him too much.

This is from a few weeks ago, but Fiona and Anton are always this cute:

Father Charles left on his motorcycle in the morning to do outreach, so Father Francis and a visiting priest did the service today. I like Catholic services.

Dennis and I had lunch with Reet and Jack in Buwenge before I went in to town today. It was a really nice time. Lucy spent most of the weekend looking for Georgia’s lost camera in Kampala. Most of the international volunteers had planned to go to Sipi Falls but ended up staying in Jinja, so I saw a few of them today. It sounds like people are mostly done with lessons but still have an event or two this week.

Tomorrow is our last lesson with the P6 class at Kagoma, and we meet P7 for the final time on Tuesday. I really like those kids, and it will be sad being in class with them for the last time.

Tuesday, July 22^nd:
The last couple days have been really busy. Yesterday I showered, walked to Igombe to put up a VCT poster and talk to people about testing, cooked lunch, gave a last lesson for the P6 kids at Kagoma, confirmed with AIC, walked to Muguluka to deliver letters at the primary school and Pilkington and put up a VCT poster, ordered more talking boards, cooked dinner, and washed all our of plates.

This morning Dennis and I had our last lesson with the P7 kids at Kagoma, which is my favorite class. When we arrive at the school Teddy had called an assembly so the whole school could say goodbye to us.

The last lesson with review prizes went over well and we got some class pictures. Then I walked over to the sub-county to deliver more letters about our wrap-up stakeholders’ meeting on Friday and make sure AIC had arrived to do HIV testing. They were supposed to show up at 10:00am. At 10:15 I called and the said they had stopped at the trade show in Jinja but were “on their way” and would be there in 30 minutes. I called again at 11:40. Same story. They finally arrived at 12:20, leisurely hung around while Dennis and I set up a table and chairs for them, then the sole technician and driver promptly left to have lunch while one of the counselors answered questions from the 100 or so kids from St. Gonzaga that were waiting to test.

This is SO FRUSTRATING to me. I came home before the technician reappeared, but they delayed starting by at least three hours with no explanation. That’s a lot of people who could have been tested and now aren’t going to. I had to turn people away who showed up at the time I had advertised this morning, and everyone was expecting me to explain what the holdup was. I’ve gotten more patient with “African time,” and I expected they would be about an hour late, but wasting the entire morning is totally unacceptable to me. People are testing now and hopefully they’ll get through a lot before they split, but I hate that I can’t depend on people to uphold their agreements here and it makes me (and SPW) look bad when I have absolutely no control over it.

Two of the Kagoma teachers didn’t show up today, so Teddy has the kids over watching a movie about the apostle John on our porch so that the one teacher who did come to school can have a break. It’s an American movie and the narration is horrendous. They just went through the water-into-wine story, and now it’s on the money changers in the temple. I bet Jesus is blond.

When I was delivering a letter to the Sub-County Chief I got called in to the office to chat with some official dudes that had turned up. They were having a discussion about people they’d heard of that could be summarized as “innocent people that got killed by mob justice.” Someone who had stopped to help after a vehicle hit and killed a kid, someone who was shot while chasing a thief because they were mistaken for the thief, someone who had gotten a ride and then was killed after the driver hit someone and fled, etc. People always laugh about these stories here but I find them pretty unsettling. One of the guys kept calling me his sweetheart and wanted to take me to his village but I told him he had to get an HIV test first.

I’m about to go check on the VCT progress. It’s threatening to rain, but we have access to the hall in the sub-county so hopefully testing will continue as long as people keep coming. I’m tempted not to pay the AIC workers, but I’ll get over it.

We found out last Friday that our SPW debrief is being held at Rubaga Students Center. Everyone is so disappointed. We had our first three days of training and our mid-placement workshop there, and it’s scratty and has no good communal place to hang out. It’s in Jinja, which means people will probably go into town at night and it’ll be nationals and internationals splitting up and the community volunteers stuck at the dorms because they won’t be able to afford nights out. In past years debrief has been held at the Adrift rafting campsite, which would have been a nice send-off. It’s been a long time since that first morning in Uganda crying in my bunk before anyone else was awake, but being at Rubaga still dregs up feelings of anxiety and loneliness. I really don’t like being there.

Hopefully I’ll be able to report that the VCT day was a big success, despite the late start. We’ll see how it wraps up…

Wednesday, July 23^rd:
I am tired. We had a long last visit to Kalebera, which included a very rainy last lesson, a very muddy tree-planting session, and a soda-infused farewell from the teachers. Each teacher wanted their picture planting a tree with Dennis and I, and we had to write down all of our contacts for quite a few people. It took quite a while, but it was a nice time and I’ve really enjoyed working at that school. The kids didn’t understand me very well but the students and staff were always really friendly, especially the headmaster, Aron.

Dennis and I had a big high-five afterwards: our last lesson, complete!

Tomorrow we have lunch with the headmistress at Nkondo Primary, and Dennis should be picking up our talking boards for Kagoma. Friday is our stakeholders’ meeting at the sub-county and we have farewells planned at St. Gonzaga and Kagoma.

The VCT day wasn’t a complete loss, but I was disappointed in it. We had about 70 people tested, and we could have had at least twice that many if AIC had shown up on time. They told me that one of their service trucks had broken down, and they’d had to drop off another outreach group before coming out. A lot of people who were waiting to test were turned away at the end. One person tested positive, and the technician said it was one of the adults from the community, not one of the school kids. Most of the people who tested were from St. Gonzaga. Weirdly, a bunch of the secondary school kids today were saying that they doubted the results, because some people thought they were positive. I trust the blood tests but that seemed really strange to me.

People waiting to get tested:

I didn’t sleep much last night and have been feeling pretty exhausted. It feels good to be finishing up and we’re getting a lot of positive feedback from the community. Everyone seems to want some kind of send-off in the next few days. I’m missing a few people already but it’s fun to think about getting home and sending people pictures and letters. Only nine more days now!

Thursday, July 24^th:
Lucy and I made a kitchen garden for the priests with Father Charles this morning. I think this is our best one yet. Shoveling manure:

While collecting bricks for the walkway I uncovered a bunch of toads!

I went over to the priests’ place last night to transfer some pictures from my USB drive to their computer. I managed to load a virus that prevented their desktop icons and start menu from showing up. I was really anxious that I had ruined their computer but after an hour of Tom talking me through things on the phone I was able to restore it to normal function – thank God! They didn’t have their Windows disk for a reload and you can’t exactly call in the IT in rural Uganda, so it was pretty tense there for a while.

We were going to have lunch in Nkondo today, but our host has been called to an emergency headteachers’ meeting in Muguluka. It’s the first day in a while I haven’t been running around all day and it’s nice to relax at home for a bit.

I can’t believe placement is almost over. I’m not sure if I’ll head in to Jinja on Monday or Tuesday, but either way it’s nothing but packing and filling in forms once tomorrow is over. Dennis and Wilber are going to take us to visit their school in Jinja on Saturday, which should be fun.

Friday, July 25^th:
What a long day! We had our stakeholders’ meeting this morning, which started a couple hours late but went really well. We all shared our volunteering experiences, had a nice round of thank yous from our head teachers and NGO directors, and ate some tasty snacks. Nat came from the SPW office and handed out some data sheets which were very well received. The certificates were a hit too. It was a nice way to wrap things up and say goodbye to most of our key contacts.

Handing over a certificate to key teacher Godfrey from St. Gonzaga:

After the meeting we had a quick goodbye with the students and teachers at St. Gonzaga, then joined a parents’ meeting at Kagoma. We were supposed to just stop in, say goodbye, and go, but the teachers wanted us to stay until lunch was served at the end so we ended up sitting through a few hours of discussion in Lusoga. I kind of wanted to kill myself but didn’t want to cause offense at our final showing, so we waited it out and then had a nice meal of matoke, rice, chicken, and cabbage around 6 or so.

Teddy said some students had prepared songs for us, but one of the teachers sent them home on accident. So we’ll get to see the performance on Monday morning.

Our lunch with Nkondo teacher Molly has been rescheduled for tomorrow, which messes up our plans of going to the agricultural show in Jinja and seeing Dennis and Wilber’s old school. Sunday’s kind of busy already so I hope we can fit everything in.

Dennis brought home the first set of our talking boards for Kagoma Primary last night. They all look good, except for one that reads, “Be Panctual.” I think the teacher that made them will redo that one. They’re painted blue, with the messages carved into the wood and painted black.

Saturday, July 26^th:
Sadly, Molly’s brother has been in a bus accident so our lunch with her is off today. It’s back to the original plan to go to Jinja to the agricultural show and Dennis’s school. I’m almost packed! Two more nights on placement.