Mid term exams are upon us at Nakirebe
Primary School which means between supervising and marking we have
very little time and this blog post may be brief.
Life in Uganda is settleing in to a
steady routine. We wake up, go to school, plan lessons and venture
around the dormetries.
The work load is huge and anyone who
thought I was fundraising for a year of holiday and fun is severely
mistaken. I wish I could show you the pile of P5 maths papers on my
bed to be marked for tomorrow.
A couple of weeks ago now we had our
first Kampala expirience. We had planned on only going to stay for
the day and meet with some other volunteers but ended up staying the
night for a beautifully spontaneous night out in which we got lost,
ate out and explored the city! You have to seriously keep your wits
about you in that place though. Three times Clara's backpack was
opened by strangers trying to take what they could and we were almost
killed after coming out on the wrong side of Owino and running
through mud and crowds of people excited to see Muzungu! I feel like
I could handle almost any situation in England after some of these
things...The people in the restaurant saw that we were group of all
whites and added 100,000 to our bill and then the taxi drivers got
lost and tried to insist that we payed! I'm seriously proud of us
though. 18 year olds navigating Kampala is quite an accomplishment I
feel. Being proud is not a good quality but this is my blog and I
can't help but be proud of how this year is developing.
In other travel news we just got back
from visiting our friends in Kyenje again and the coming weekend
we're travelling to Kabale for another volunteers 18th!
Which we are SO excited about! We make regular trips to Mpigi and
often branch in Katende to see our friend who boards there – Last
week we went for his visitation day, where parents go and prepare
food and see how their kids are doing. This boy obviously isnt our
kid but he's like our Brother and doesn't have anyone else. We're
seeing a fair bit of Uganda in our weekends and it's getting us
excited for holidays to really really explore.
That's the independent travel side of
things though and on the school side of things it's at times slow. We
teach our lessons and spend all day interacting with the children but
we're still looking for a way to really do some real good and help in
the project. Another volunteer here, Satome, uses her evening lessons
to teach the children to make bookmarks, which she then sends to
Japan to be sold to raise money for new mosquito nets in the
dormetries. We'd love to do something like that we've just got to
figure out what. There's a big shortage here of books and maths sets
which limit so many kids from being able to sit exams so a couple of
weeks I sent out a request for some of them which I hope will really
help. If anyone has any ideas we're so happy to hear them, we're
seriously keen to know we're making a difference.
On top of the hill that our school is
based on there's another project/orphanage/school called Watoto! It's
huge in Uganda and was started by a muzungu pastor as just a small
orphanage – now it's a chain of huge homes for children, churches,
schools, clinics for the needy and so much else that I'm sure I'm not
even aware of. One of the people we stay with grew up in Watoto and
the things it provides for children here is inspiring. The stories
you hear from there are harrowing though... something I was so
ignorant to upon coming out here was that I was coming into a society
so recently shaken by the Kony war. I watched the youtube videos and
read the news but never imagined I'd see the effects. Children who've
been forced to kill their parents and one who even carried Kony's
baby are all being rehabilitated up at that Watato. It's an
incredible things to see, even so far from the outside.
I was toying with the idea of
re-applying for university this year with the thought that my Uganda
adventures may clarify what I should be doing with me life but I'm
still as clueless as ever. No matter how much I am LOVING teaching
here I have to remind myself how completley different it is in the
UK. There are obviously pro's and con's to each but I don't know if
my first teaching expirience being such a free and unrestricted one
is going to leave me unabe to adapt to what I'm percieving the UK to
be like. I can't really pretend that I have a clue what teaching
primary in the UK is like though, because I've never done it. Beside
from that though, although the amount of change we do offer here is
limited, I fear doing anything less may just not satisfy me now.
We've been here only two months but I keep telling everyone that I'm
never going to leave. Ahaha. Last weekend actually we had like a
'compete' day in which St. Peters P/School from Kampala came and
challenged our school in a quiz, debate and football match. St.
Peters is one of the top schools in Uganda and our kids beat them in
every single thing which made me SO PROUD. The debate motion was 'The
coming of foreigners to Africa has done more harm than good' and
ofcourse our kids were opposing while we sat in the audience cheering
them on intensly. It was hilarious and so intense though – the
whole time I was just like “I have never seen primary school kids
debate this way.” Then walking down to 'the Field of Dreams' for
football with our kids in a completley unorganised fashion – racing
them up and down and cheering on our school until the sun set. Aaaah,
it's unexplainable how much I love this school...
Brother John continues to be hilarious,
this time stating that if people in England are so concerned with
immigration they need to be having more than two children at a time,
so not to be outnumbered. Hahah – Brother John's wise words of the
week.
At the end of next month the schools
break up and we'll have our first holiday period, in which we will be
learning to travel on a serious budget and explore Uganda as Ugandan
citizens! I'm so excited. At first I was a bit uncertain and thought
I wanted to spend a lot of time at home with the project family, but
I'm so so keen to get out of Nakirebe and see what's out there now.
We've got two months to travel and so far have climbing mt. Elgon and
going to Zanzibar on our list of 'must do's'.
ooooooh so this 'breif' blog post
turned out to be not so brief but I'm not sure when I'll next get to
write and worry I'm not at all giving a clear view of life in Uganda
with these sporadic blog posts! Again sorry for the lack of pictures,
it's so difficult to get them that it looks like you might just have
to have a 'month in pictures' update every now and again.
I'm having an incredible time and
learning a serious amount about myself, can't lie and say I'm missing
home because I don't get much time to think about it at the minute! I
did miss home on my dads birthday last week though so HAPPY BIRTHDAY
FOR THEN, DAD!
As always, hope everyone is well! If
you've got any great ideas for how we can help the school my email
adress is bethcrook11@hotmail.com
Speak soon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
