So on Sunday we celebrated our schools speech day which closed the school year and marked the end of our first term as teachers in Uganda.
The work started on Saturday with a full day of school decorating! We made cute little flower ribbons that no one believed we made but the hall looked so nice and we were proud of the work done.
The next day was SOOO tiring. We woke up at 6 to try and get Clara's choir together for a last practice - unsuccessfully. Brother John gave the boarders a final goodbye assembly where the students were given the chance to talk about what they disliked about the year. A boy called Derek raised the fact that the school cook started mixing sugar in the posho when they came late for food, to which Brother John replied that all students should thank him for teaching them time management... It was funny.
We met the Father who came to conduct speech day mass, he was a muzungu and the look on the children's faces when he started to speak in fluent Luganda was priceless. After mass we had entertainment; Satome put together a Japanese acrobat team, which was INCREDIBLE! Choirs sang, Brother John gave a beautiful speech and the students put on traditional Chiganda dancing!!
After some typical Ugandan disorganisation Clara unfortunately had to pull her choir.
After the entertainment we had the mad lunch rush in which I served rice to the parents. I was originally given the role of Matoke server but was too inexperienced to give the parents the huge African helpings that they expected. Hahah. Everyone seemed to get some kind of enjoyment out of being served by Bazungu anyway.
Re reading over this it doesn't sound like we did much but between keeping the kids quiet in mass, running across the muddy field and serving groups of hungry parents, we were absolutely knackered by the time lunch was over.
Brother Johns speech marked an official close, he thanked us for our volunteerism and introduced us to the parents. After wards our children came and said goodbye as they headed off for the holidays and one even cried as she said goodbye to Clara. It was a truly beautiful day and such a great close. I miss my kiddies already.
After speech day we had a day of rest and then had to set off to Jinja for our PT induction. We met for a overview on Jens visit on Thursday (which was highly successful!) and some more brief training. We arrived at the Nile River Camp at about 6:30pm, had an evening to relax and the next morning had talks on travel, health, teaching and immigration.
Between lectures we were given time to relax and swim! I swam in the Nile!!! It was scary! They say there are no crocodiles but I still screamed for the whole 4 minutes that I was in the water!
That evening we went for dinner in a nice restaurant courtesy of PT, which was great. And now we're having our breakfast, overlooking the source of the Nile and preparing to go back to project. It's always so much fun when all the cola get together. We are by faaaaar the best country group and it was certainly a nice little celebration of closing the term.
We're officially on holiday now so I'm sure there will be some fabulous travel posts for you soon! Our PT rep Ian put me in contact with a children's home in Hoima that I'm hoping to spend some of the holiday at and apart from that I'm just going with the flow!
Speak soooooooooon!
