Two weekends ago Steve and I took our first weekend away from the clinic. I spent Friday night and Saturday day in Jinja. Jinja is located where the Nile comes out of Lake Victoria. This entire region is littered with sugar cane and tea leaf plantations. The drive coming in was unbelievably beautiful and picturesque. Since the town itself was relatively unaffected by the Amin years and the wars with Tanzania it is still littered with mansions on lush landscaped compounds and does not have the dilapidated look that many larger towns in Uganda, like Masaka, have. On Friday night I was able to visit the mouth of the Nile, while quite unimpressive it was nice to see. The Bell Beer company sponcers the national park and therefore the park is littered with Bell Beer signs and much of it is painted red and yellow the companies colors. There are about a dozen stalls full of “authentic” Ugandan crafts. While I was there a group of school children arrived on a field trip. They all crowed around the ice-cream vendor and afterward the boys crowed in one area and threw small sticks at the girls while they drifted toward the other side of the manicured lawn. It was nice to see that at least rich Ugandan teenagers are much like the teenagers you find at my local high school.
That night I had a few beers and wrote blogs in the hostel’s bar. I decided to go to bed early because the next day I was going rafting on the Nile. The next morning is when the fun started. At 9:00 the seven rafts of people I went rafting with meet in the lobby of the hostel. We all went into the back for the complementary breakfast and safety talk. For some reason I had missed the video of the rafting trip playing on replay in the bar, this is a good thing because if I had seen the footage of the rafts going over the two meter vertical water fall the night before I may not have gone. However, I did not and therefore, unaware of what I was getting myself into I climbed happily into my raft with six other people (four Australians on term abroad, and two English dudes). We ended up having a blast. All in all we rafted 12 rapids 4 of which were class five and one of which included a two meter high vertical water fall. Our raft guide was a local with a great sense of humor. He new just how to handle seven 22 year olds. At the end of the tip there was a complementary BBQ next to Bunjagali Falls (the most famous set of waterfalls we rafted down) that included two free Nile Beers. Yes, they do have a brand of beer here called Nile Beer which is actually brewed in Jinja right next to the Nile. Their slogan is “The true reward. From the Source!” I got to watch the sun set over the Nile while having a nice cold beer. Then it was off to Kampala to join Steve, because the next day we went to the Uganda Cranes Game (national soccer team).
The Uganda Cranes Game was at the National Stadium in Nambole about twenty minutes east of Kampala. The stadium can hold about forty thousand people. I would estimate that the stadium was about half full for the game. Cheep tickets cost 10,000 Ush (6 USD) and expensive seats cost 20,000 Ush (12 USD). Outside the stadium women sat on palm leaf mats and sold the Uganda verson of pop corn and hot dogs, Mandas (fried dough) and grilled goat meat skewers. We got the more expensive seats and ended up in what Steve has termed the Mzungu Section. We ended up sitting with all the other white people at the game. What we paid for was not actually better seats, but shade. The game itself was really interesting. First came out the riot police with complete riot gear including guns. These police stationed themselves around the field at regular intervals. After the police came the Ugandan version of cheerleaders came out. They were a bunch of men dressed in tan colored robes lead by a guy in white robes. These men had drums and maracas and widely encouraged the crowd to cheer. After the Ugandan Cheer leaders came out the Ugandan version of crazy drunken shirtless paint covered college boys. We had seen one of them earlier running around Kampala announcing the game. There was a group of about fifteen shirtless men in their twenties that had painted themselves red yellow and black (the Cranes colors). These men were let onto the field to rile the crowd even more. Now I don’t really know much about soccer, so I was really impressed with all of the players and their skills and ability. The game was good and moved quickly so even for a soccer novice like myself it wasn’t boring. In the end the Cranes won!! This was awesome. However, they had needed to win by four goals to continue in the World Cup and the African Cup of Nations. Unfortunately they only one by one goal and therefore will not continue in the competitions.
After the game we were latterly shoved into moving taxies as they drove by the stadium and raced back to Kampala. I think that they tried to go so fast so that they could go back for a second trip.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Thankyou for the Packages
Thank you to everyone who has sent me a package! Everything has been so helpful and useful. Both Steve and I have posted “wish lists” for our morning program. If anyone else who wants to send a package could hold off for a bit so we can figure out what we have and what we still need that would be awesome. If you absolutely can’t wait to send a package we definitely children’s books (age 2-5) for the morning program and children’s books we can read with the primary school students (things like Rohald Dohl, Boxcar Children, etc).
I have just created a Webshots account and have tried to upload pictures. The internet is really slow and over the past hour I have only been able to upload six out of the forty-eight photos I tried to upload. I guess over the next couple weeks I will get them all up there. Here is the link to the album http://good-times.webshots.com/album/568150940uLXzZB .
Also there is another phone number that you can reach me at. It is 0751556015. To reach this number from the United States you dial 011-256-0751556015. I hope all is well over in the States.
I have just created a Webshots account and have tried to upload pictures. The internet is really slow and over the past hour I have only been able to upload six out of the forty-eight photos I tried to upload. I guess over the next couple weeks I will get them all up there. Here is the link to the album http://good-times.webshots.com/album/568150940uLXzZB .
Also there is another phone number that you can reach me at. It is 0751556015. To reach this number from the United States you dial 011-256-0751556015. I hope all is well over in the States.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Recap of the Past Week
Disclaimer: I have had very little time over the past week to write, so this blog is very poorly written, please do not judge me or stop being my friend.
The Public School Education System
Over the past week or so we have tried to follow the schedule we have created, working with the kids in the morning, working at the school Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and filling the rest of our time working on projects around the clinic (planting, blogs, and letters). The first week this worked relatively well. While the school did not follow the schedule we gave them the classes we were supposed to teach never had a teacher in them. In addition, we had to finish planting our peanuts, and transplanting the cabbage from the nursery beds to the garden. We started working 10 hour days. YAY!
The next week was not as successful. This is mostly due to the poor management of the school. While we arrive at the scheduled times the teachers do not follow the schedule, in fact they do not follow any schedule. When the teachers actually make it into school, which is not always often, they just walk into classrooms that are empty and teach for a while and then leave. This means many of the classes are left unattended for long periods of time. The teachers often do not come into school, this includes the head mistress. I estimate that the head mistress makes it into school twice a week for a half day. The teachers vary a little more, some like Mr. Mugerwa make it in every day, others may only come three or four times a week. The lack of dedication is due to the lack money.
The government is supposed to pay public school teacher’s salaries. However, since the government is really corrupt all that money disappears long before it makes it out to the rural villages to pay the teachers. John’s sister, Rose, is a teacher outside of Masaka. Rose has not received her salary for over 3 months. This means she has been teaching without receiving any money for months now. Rose is a really dedicated teacher. While she was on holiday she stayed at the clinic, and every night she would spend a couple hours planning her lessons. However, not everyone is a dedicated as Rose, and certainly not everyone is as dedicated as Rose is when they are not receiving their salary for months at a time. The way the public schools keep pay their teachers enough to live is to charge all of the students a “building maintenance fee” of 5000 to 10,000 Ush (3 to 6 USd). This fee ends up covering the school supplies the teachers use, lunch for the teachers everyday, and maybe a little for each of the teachers to take home. Now this is a problem because many student’s families can not afford to pay even this small fee. And this means that children do not go to school. Or if they do go to school, they do not have books, pens, or food to bring with them.
In 2000 the United Nations created fifteen millennium goals. The were things like to end extreme poverty, create access to clean water for everyone, reverse HIV/AIDS prevalence etc. One of the goals was to bring free primary school education to every child. Uganda has recently been able to start its free primary school education system due to UN money and people donated to create the program. However, the money does not end up going to the public schools because Yoweri Museveni’s corrupt government soaks all the money up before it can make it to the teachers in the rural areas. What makes it even worse is that many people here think that Yoweri Museveni started the public primary school system and don’t really understand why the teachers do not receive their salaries. They don’t understand that it is Museveni’s corrupt government soaking up the cash, but think that it Museveni and his government just doesn’t have the money. So while Museveni and his cronies are getting rich and living the high life, many children are not even receiving a primary school education.
Tad Poles
Speaking of millennium goals I should discuses the worsening water situation. The entire village gets its water from a bore hole. The people used to use a well with a pump, but it broke. This water had been tested by a past volunteer and this water was safe to drink. Now everyone uses the bore hole filled with algae, frogs, cow poop that the rain has washed down the hill to get water. Lately, the sun has been so strong that by the end of the day the entire hole is covered with algae. This has caused the tad pole/ fog population to increase drastically over the past month. I think that I have seen every stage of frog development. In addition, someone scoped up a little tadpole into one of our jerry cans when he or she was getting us water, and now we have a resident tadpole growing in the 12 gallon bucket of cooking water we keep in the kitchen. We boil all of our water and everything is cooked well, so I am not concerned about my health, however, I can only imagine if we have a resident tad pole in our cooking water and I am at a clinic how bad the water situation must be in people’s houses.
Running
John came back he asked if I had been running. Apparently when he met my parents they told him that I liked to run and that he should run with me everyday. I had not been running because I hadn’t seen any other girls exercise and I did not want to make a scene. However, with John back and running with me I figured it was ok to try. I definitely turned many heads, but everything went smoothly.
Because I have now been able to run by myself and with John every morning I have decided to start training for a half marathon. I get up at 6:00 every morning and go. When John is not in Kampala he comes with me. I have started to really enjoy these runs. First, I get to watch the sun rise over absolutely beautiful farm land every morning. Second, many of the boys and sometimes girls like to race me on their way to school. I always get a great work out.
One of the sad parts of running is passing two of the morning program students Tye and Boy. Tye and Boy were not originally asked to join the morning program. However, the first day their mother brought them by. She said she understood that they could not be added to the list, but asked if she could leave them at the clinic for just that day because she had to walk to Kinoni (a town 2 miles away) and they were too small to walk. The next day she brought them back saying they had so much fun that she had to try. We felt so bad we had to add them. However, they live about half a mile past where I run every morning. This means that they walk two and a half miles every morning to get to the clinic. In addition, they are dropped off by their sister who needs to get to school by 8:00 instead of 9:00 which is when they are supposed to arrive at the clinic. So they wake up at 6:00 every morning and start walking to the clinic to get there in time for their sister to walk to school. I often see them on my run. They always greet me with friendly faces and try to run along with me. However, later in the day they often get tried and grumpy. The other day Tye fell asleep sitting up and fell of the bench onto the concrete porch. In addition, while someone is supposed to pick them up at 1:00 and take them home, they often wait at the clinic until their sister gets out of school at 4:00. If they do happen to disappear it is only because their sister has taken them to the school and hid them there until she is done at four. Also during this time they have nothing to eat, John or I often rummage around the clinic for bananas, or fried cassava for them to snack on.
The Public School Education System
Over the past week or so we have tried to follow the schedule we have created, working with the kids in the morning, working at the school Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and filling the rest of our time working on projects around the clinic (planting, blogs, and letters). The first week this worked relatively well. While the school did not follow the schedule we gave them the classes we were supposed to teach never had a teacher in them. In addition, we had to finish planting our peanuts, and transplanting the cabbage from the nursery beds to the garden. We started working 10 hour days. YAY!
The next week was not as successful. This is mostly due to the poor management of the school. While we arrive at the scheduled times the teachers do not follow the schedule, in fact they do not follow any schedule. When the teachers actually make it into school, which is not always often, they just walk into classrooms that are empty and teach for a while and then leave. This means many of the classes are left unattended for long periods of time. The teachers often do not come into school, this includes the head mistress. I estimate that the head mistress makes it into school twice a week for a half day. The teachers vary a little more, some like Mr. Mugerwa make it in every day, others may only come three or four times a week. The lack of dedication is due to the lack money.
The government is supposed to pay public school teacher’s salaries. However, since the government is really corrupt all that money disappears long before it makes it out to the rural villages to pay the teachers. John’s sister, Rose, is a teacher outside of Masaka. Rose has not received her salary for over 3 months. This means she has been teaching without receiving any money for months now. Rose is a really dedicated teacher. While she was on holiday she stayed at the clinic, and every night she would spend a couple hours planning her lessons. However, not everyone is a dedicated as Rose, and certainly not everyone is as dedicated as Rose is when they are not receiving their salary for months at a time. The way the public schools keep pay their teachers enough to live is to charge all of the students a “building maintenance fee” of 5000 to 10,000 Ush (3 to 6 USd). This fee ends up covering the school supplies the teachers use, lunch for the teachers everyday, and maybe a little for each of the teachers to take home. Now this is a problem because many student’s families can not afford to pay even this small fee. And this means that children do not go to school. Or if they do go to school, they do not have books, pens, or food to bring with them.
In 2000 the United Nations created fifteen millennium goals. The were things like to end extreme poverty, create access to clean water for everyone, reverse HIV/AIDS prevalence etc. One of the goals was to bring free primary school education to every child. Uganda has recently been able to start its free primary school education system due to UN money and people donated to create the program. However, the money does not end up going to the public schools because Yoweri Museveni’s corrupt government soaks all the money up before it can make it to the teachers in the rural areas. What makes it even worse is that many people here think that Yoweri Museveni started the public primary school system and don’t really understand why the teachers do not receive their salaries. They don’t understand that it is Museveni’s corrupt government soaking up the cash, but think that it Museveni and his government just doesn’t have the money. So while Museveni and his cronies are getting rich and living the high life, many children are not even receiving a primary school education.
Tad Poles
Speaking of millennium goals I should discuses the worsening water situation. The entire village gets its water from a bore hole. The people used to use a well with a pump, but it broke. This water had been tested by a past volunteer and this water was safe to drink. Now everyone uses the bore hole filled with algae, frogs, cow poop that the rain has washed down the hill to get water. Lately, the sun has been so strong that by the end of the day the entire hole is covered with algae. This has caused the tad pole/ fog population to increase drastically over the past month. I think that I have seen every stage of frog development. In addition, someone scoped up a little tadpole into one of our jerry cans when he or she was getting us water, and now we have a resident tadpole growing in the 12 gallon bucket of cooking water we keep in the kitchen. We boil all of our water and everything is cooked well, so I am not concerned about my health, however, I can only imagine if we have a resident tad pole in our cooking water and I am at a clinic how bad the water situation must be in people’s houses.
Running
John came back he asked if I had been running. Apparently when he met my parents they told him that I liked to run and that he should run with me everyday. I had not been running because I hadn’t seen any other girls exercise and I did not want to make a scene. However, with John back and running with me I figured it was ok to try. I definitely turned many heads, but everything went smoothly.
Because I have now been able to run by myself and with John every morning I have decided to start training for a half marathon. I get up at 6:00 every morning and go. When John is not in Kampala he comes with me. I have started to really enjoy these runs. First, I get to watch the sun rise over absolutely beautiful farm land every morning. Second, many of the boys and sometimes girls like to race me on their way to school. I always get a great work out.
One of the sad parts of running is passing two of the morning program students Tye and Boy. Tye and Boy were not originally asked to join the morning program. However, the first day their mother brought them by. She said she understood that they could not be added to the list, but asked if she could leave them at the clinic for just that day because she had to walk to Kinoni (a town 2 miles away) and they were too small to walk. The next day she brought them back saying they had so much fun that she had to try. We felt so bad we had to add them. However, they live about half a mile past where I run every morning. This means that they walk two and a half miles every morning to get to the clinic. In addition, they are dropped off by their sister who needs to get to school by 8:00 instead of 9:00 which is when they are supposed to arrive at the clinic. So they wake up at 6:00 every morning and start walking to the clinic to get there in time for their sister to walk to school. I often see them on my run. They always greet me with friendly faces and try to run along with me. However, later in the day they often get tried and grumpy. The other day Tye fell asleep sitting up and fell of the bench onto the concrete porch. In addition, while someone is supposed to pick them up at 1:00 and take them home, they often wait at the clinic until their sister gets out of school at 4:00. If they do happen to disappear it is only because their sister has taken them to the school and hid them there until she is done at four. Also during this time they have nothing to eat, John or I often rummage around the clinic for bananas, or fried cassava for them to snack on.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Wish List and Contact Information
Many of you have asked if you can send me a package. Of course you can. Here is a wish list consisting of things that would be really useful while teaching at the primary school or teaching the morning program Steve and I have started. For the morning program Steve and I have decided to invite about thirty local children to come to the clinic from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. The children are between 2 and 7 and none of them attend school. During these hours we work on writing, numbers, and letters. We also plan to give out multi-vitamins and peanut butter(that we make from peanuts we plant!!!) in order to combat malnutrition.
Wish List:
Wish List:
- Children's Chewable Multi-Vitamins(We can not get these in Uganda)
- Arts and Crafts Supplies (pipe cleaners, string, construction paper, etc.)
- World Map
- Puzzles (very simple)
- Children's Books
- Flash Cards with the Letter and Numbers on Them
- Cream of Tartar (to make play dough)
- Dodge Balls
- Dollar Tree Stuff
- Educational Coloring Books
Personal Wish List:
- ReaLemon that fake lemon juice they sell in supermarkets. I love to put it on Avocados. Avocados are really cheap here and I eat them all the time, but I really miss being able to put ReaLemon on them.
Steve and I have purchased a Ugandan sim card and put it in John's old phone. It is free for us if you call us and it's only 15 cents a minute if you use skype. We leave the phone on every night from 8:00am to 3:00pm Eastern Standard Time. The phone number is 011-256-779-175-450.
Friday, October 3, 2008
The Pen Pal Program
Over the past few weeks I have been working on a Pen Pal program with my P.5 class. I knew it would be a huge challenge to get fifty seven 11 year olds to write appropriate well written letters. It took over four hours of class time, but in the end I got 42 somewhat well written letters to American students. I started the first class by explaining what we were doing, writing letters. Then I went through the letter format I wanted, who it should be directed to (Dear American Student), and what you put in a letter. For example, I said they needed to write three sentences about themselves (aka My name is … or I am from …), three sentences about their life (I have three brothers and two sisters, I have a mother and a father, I like my grandfather), three sentences about what they like, and three questions asking about either their pen pal or the United States (I gave examples of these as well). This explanation took about an hour. For the second hour I helped kids write.
At first I was really impressed. I walked up to one girl and she had written “Dear American Student, My name is Ratifah. Next Saturday is my birthday. I am having a party. I would like you to come. All of my brothers and sisters will be there. They are looking forward to meeting you”. When I read this I though wow that is so sweet Ratifah is inviting her American pen pal to her birthday party. And while Ratifah didn’t follow the directions it was creative and nice, plus she didn’t understand when I tried to explain to her that the American Student couldn’t come to the party anyways. However, I soon found out why Ratifah didn’t understand me. I went to the next student and it was also her birthday next Saturday. My first thought was “OMG what a coincidence!” But then after the third birthday invitation I realized that they were all just copying a sample letter out of their text books. They have already had a unit on letters and just decided to copy the sample letter out of their text book instead of write what I said. In addition to the birthday invitation there was also a reply to a post card that I apparently sent them. It went like this “Dear Becky, thank you so much for the postcard with the picture of New York City. What are those yellow followers next to the city wall called?...” I then spent the next hour trying to explain that they were not supposed to write any letter but a letter to a person in America. By the end of the first class I had 55 first drafts. Many started out as birthday invitations and then ended as actual letters. However, they were good enough that I could go through and correct them and try for a second better draft.
One thing that happened that I did not like while I was doing the first draft was the head mistress came in. The first thing she did was to yell at all the kids for not coming into school. This made me angry, because she only comes into school one or two days a week when she is supposed to be there five days a week eight hours a day. The second thing that annoyed me was that she wanted to tell the kids what to put in the letters. She kept telling them to put depressing bad things about their lives, for example if their parents were dead or if they were poor. She also told them to tell the American students things they wanted but did not have. I thought that this was completely inappropriate. These are two young children getting to know each other and there is no reason that the Ugandan students should feel that they are supposed to talk about what they lack.
Correcting the letters was a riot. They were so funny. I got countless responses to post cards I never sent and invitations to fake birthday parties. Something that was nice was I got lots of letters telling me they liked me as a teacher. What suck ups! To bad I don’t grade their tests on a regular basis ;).
Doing the second draft was easier. I decided to cave and have John come in with me. He helped translate everything I wanted to convey and the second draft went much more smoothly. In the end I got 43 second drafts. I only got 43 because not all the students who wrote first drafts were at school that day. All of the drafts were addressed to “Dear American Student” or something close to that and what followed at least resembled an original letter trying to introduce ones self to a new person.
These letters will be going to a school in Yonkers, NY where Megan Sesil’s mom works. So shout out to Megan and her mom for helping us out with this. All in all we sent just under 100 letters and I cost 11,000 USh (7 USD) to send. I am really hoping that we can get a response to the students before the term ends in November. It would mean so much to them.
At first I was really impressed. I walked up to one girl and she had written “Dear American Student, My name is Ratifah. Next Saturday is my birthday. I am having a party. I would like you to come. All of my brothers and sisters will be there. They are looking forward to meeting you”. When I read this I though wow that is so sweet Ratifah is inviting her American pen pal to her birthday party. And while Ratifah didn’t follow the directions it was creative and nice, plus she didn’t understand when I tried to explain to her that the American Student couldn’t come to the party anyways. However, I soon found out why Ratifah didn’t understand me. I went to the next student and it was also her birthday next Saturday. My first thought was “OMG what a coincidence!” But then after the third birthday invitation I realized that they were all just copying a sample letter out of their text books. They have already had a unit on letters and just decided to copy the sample letter out of their text book instead of write what I said. In addition to the birthday invitation there was also a reply to a post card that I apparently sent them. It went like this “Dear Becky, thank you so much for the postcard with the picture of New York City. What are those yellow followers next to the city wall called?...” I then spent the next hour trying to explain that they were not supposed to write any letter but a letter to a person in America. By the end of the first class I had 55 first drafts. Many started out as birthday invitations and then ended as actual letters. However, they were good enough that I could go through and correct them and try for a second better draft.
One thing that happened that I did not like while I was doing the first draft was the head mistress came in. The first thing she did was to yell at all the kids for not coming into school. This made me angry, because she only comes into school one or two days a week when she is supposed to be there five days a week eight hours a day. The second thing that annoyed me was that she wanted to tell the kids what to put in the letters. She kept telling them to put depressing bad things about their lives, for example if their parents were dead or if they were poor. She also told them to tell the American students things they wanted but did not have. I thought that this was completely inappropriate. These are two young children getting to know each other and there is no reason that the Ugandan students should feel that they are supposed to talk about what they lack.
Correcting the letters was a riot. They were so funny. I got countless responses to post cards I never sent and invitations to fake birthday parties. Something that was nice was I got lots of letters telling me they liked me as a teacher. What suck ups! To bad I don’t grade their tests on a regular basis ;).
Doing the second draft was easier. I decided to cave and have John come in with me. He helped translate everything I wanted to convey and the second draft went much more smoothly. In the end I got 43 second drafts. I only got 43 because not all the students who wrote first drafts were at school that day. All of the drafts were addressed to “Dear American Student” or something close to that and what followed at least resembled an original letter trying to introduce ones self to a new person.
These letters will be going to a school in Yonkers, NY where Megan Sesil’s mom works. So shout out to Megan and her mom for helping us out with this. All in all we sent just under 100 letters and I cost 11,000 USh (7 USD) to send. I am really hoping that we can get a response to the students before the term ends in November. It would mean so much to them.
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