Sorry if I sound stuck-up in that last post

This you will like - Quarterly Report Excerpt 3

Lesson Learned

Well, there is one thing I have learned about being a Peace Corps Volunteer; not many people can do it.

This quarter my school had two groups of foreigners visit our school; Dutch people for two weeks and Italians for one day. I was able to talk with all of them and explain what Peace Corps is, why I was here, and (most stunning) that it was a two year commitment.

Many of them gave me genuinely shocked looks. Two years. Here. Without running water. Electricity… sometimes. Without seeing your family. What? I can’t believe it! You are really brave.

For me, being a Peace Corps Volunteer is so natural. I have wanted to be a Volunteer for years. It was a part of my plan. But when you are actually serving as a Volunteer you forget how unique you are. You have good days and bad days. Your fellow Volunteers are just like you. They wanted to be here. You forget how remarkable it is to Volunteer until others visit. You get a great morale boost. You think to yourself; Yea I am here. This is my life. I guess it is pretty cool.

It leaves you smiling for the rest of the week.


(P.S. I have learned other lessons as well but this one seemed most appropriate at this moment.)

Quarterly Report Excerpt 2

Challenges

Well one challenge that I have had is the Ministry of Education itself. It is frustrating and difficult to understand how a ministry can expect to end a term one week early, shorten holidays by one week, and then have everything they require to be done on time.

Additionally, I find it ridiculous how school practice is operated. At my school we have our tutors divided into teams. Every day during the 4 weeks of school practice one team stays behind to teach the year one students. Now in an ideal world this would work. But at my school, and many schools, it doesn't. So we are double-booking teachers and the students suffer!

I digress.

Resource utilization at my school is a challenge. For example, I was going to investigate book aid for my school but then I discovered a room Full of Books! Full! This room was the old library that they hadn’t cleaned out in three years. When I went to the librarian to see if we could get all the books into the new library she said she only wants those that are not old and damaged! (An old book is still a good book!) Also in that same library we have Teaching/Learning aids that are still in their boxes! Clearly, resource utilization is now on my agenda.

Budgeting is also on my agenda, or at least trying to get my school resources on budgeting. We budget, then they don’t follow it, and then quite literally there is no more money. I won’t be handling money of course but at least attempting to get my school some assistance.

Another challenge is with my colleagues in the computer lab. First mistake, I haven’t sat down to talk with them about the potential I see in the computer lab. Second mistake, I haven’t talked with my school about where they want to go with their computer lab. Results, the two computer technicians have no idea what I am talking about and probably feel somewhat threatened that I am invading their space and could take their jobs. (Another Peace Corps Volunteer took over ICT at a school and they lost their jobs recently.)

But I am working on all of these. The key I think is communication. I complain that I my school doesn’t communicate with me but I am not much better!

Additionally, I think that some people do not take me seriously because I am a woman. I will be working on this too.

Success Story

So when we had IST training in August I was very surprised with my counterpart. I originally thought that we would develop a project about fruit drying. This project was what “I” wanted to do. But as we were walking into the workshop I mentioned, briefly, developing the computer lab.

Once we sat down she turned to me and said “[she] really [liked] the idea of the computer lab because so many of the school tutors [were] computer illiterate.” We began filling in the project handouts given to us in the workshop about a mission, vision, goals, timetable, etc for the project. Correction. I became the secretary as Jane was giving me all sorts of ideas. I knew right away that this project was Jane’s project and she was serious about it.

Since IST, Jane has been working with me to develop a computer curriculum for the college tutors and students. In her free time she is in the computer lab learning how to type! On several occasions she has even come to me saying “let’s go to the computer lab. I want to work on something.” It is great! She is so motivated and supportive of the project. And she is encouraging all the tutors at the college to learn computers and they are coming in!

Excerpts from my Quarterly Report - 1

Hello All,

It has been way too long. I know. Blame me. I owe your picture too!

Here is a little excerpt though to keep you going a bit:

Community Integration

Language learning is still as it was three months ago. I am learning words and phrases here and there but I am not advancing as I would like to be. One reason for this is my preferred language tutor is a fellow staff member and she is busier than I am! So now I am contemplating a different tutor, one of the school cooks, so I hope to progress.

Cooking has also progressed with my neighbors. We are teaching each other food preps and have continued making cakes. (Matoke peeling is harder than it looks!)

The World Cup soccer games were a nice way to integrate this quarter too. My husband and I would go to his school and to my counterpart’s house to watch the games. We would talk soccer at our schools and pick our favorites and so forth. It was great seeing their excitement and then being with them during the games.

I have also attended two weddings; one a traditional marriage ceremony and the other was a church wedding. The traditional ceremony was great because it was cross-cultural for all of us. We asked questions and really enjoyed ourselves. Then I was invited to taste the local brew with my colleagues. I do not know if you would call it integration necessarily but I find that sitting with people and talking, whether over food or drinks, is a casual (and fantastic) way to talk openly about what is happening around us.

This quarter I also help spread Ugandan culture. I attended the Busoga Opening Circumcision Ceremony in Mbale. I took many pictures and brought them back to my school. One of my tutors, Madam Zauma, is from that area and she was very excited that I went to the ceremony! She then proceeded to explain what was happening in the pictures to my neighbors and I. She was the only one from that region and no one else had ever been to the ceremony either. It was a great time.

I was also invited to an Ede celebration by my college’s Muslim students this September. They gave presentations about Ede and the Muslim faith. They were completely blown away that I did not grow up in a community with Muslims and that really they were the first Muslims I had talked to about their faith. I think we will have great conversations in the future about faith.

Ok, this may or may not be integration but I feel I have had a breakthrough with my neighborhood children. My husband’s aunt sent us coloring books and crayons. So far each day the kids get a coloring book page and one crayon. They switch colors back and forth and once they are done I tape their pictures to the window so they can see it. Usually after coloring we play games and run around. This helped solved a problem I had with one kid trying to kick me!

Additionally, my husband and I have attending minor celebrations here and there. We have been around our schools more often just to talk and give our neighbors/students/colleagues face time. We both have really enjoyed it.

The gift of Sports

Last term was trying. It took a lot out of me, and even when I had the successes I still knew I wasn't doing all that I wanted and I wasn't being truly myself. I set to resolve that this term both with my teaching and how I was interacting with the students.

To be more of myself, that was the approach I gave myself and I started it with my classes. I already knew that I was goofy looking and the kids all thought I was goofy sounding, so I decided the best way to keep there attention was through a little goofy teaching. I was simply more relaxed with them. I started doing things to keep them engaged just by being a little silly. I started exaggerating examples or mime different actions. The students also are used to chorus answers and shouting things out. I make it a point to tell them I can't hear an answer unless a hand is in the air and I usually make a funny sound to mimic the chatter they create. I started taking role and have been butchering names, but they like it all the same.

The biggest thing is I wasn't as active as I wanted to be and I wasn't as present outside of class as I intended. Last term taught me that the day scholars were a difficult crowd just because they wanted to cut so early, so I turned my attentions to the boarders. We only have girl boarders at my school which I think is an even better set up. First I encouraged Stacey to come to school one day and we just started throwing the frisbee around. It quickly picked up interest and we started an impromptu game of ultimate. The girls had also been clamoring for football for a while so I had snuck to Mbale and bought a used football using money from the Teacher Welfare I get from my school every month. I brought it to school one day and they started pushing for more. I started setting up Thursdays with the ladies, and after other plans didn't materialize, I added Tuesdays as well. The girls have been eating it up. Tuesdays they just scrimmage and have some fun with it and on Thursdays we actually do a little bit of training. They are all enthusiastic about it and they have never had the opportunity to do something like this before.

I hadn't been very active at site and now I have three days a week to run around a little and to show the girls a little different side. Also when I get Stacey to come and play they are even more excited. We are getting to learn each other a little more each week and I have big plans for them. We are setting aside a space in the compound for a pitch just for the girls. Mr. Oriokot and I have started some minor surveying and pacing of the field. We have also had some girls work on leveling some of the ant and termite mounds. I want to also encourage interclass competitions so more girls will come out to practice.

Another good side effect is since I have turned away the boys, they have been pushing more and more for a program of their own. I have challenged them to organize themselves better before I am willing to work with them on this. Even if they get their stuff together I don't know if I will shift focus away from the girls. They have been getting better each and every week and it is fun to watch them enjoying themselves in a place they rarely have freedom. With the school system the way it is and the length and demand of their day, I am happy to add a little distraction for them to cut loose into that chaos. Who knows, everything might change next year if the Head Teacher lets me tackle the time table.

A whole new term

Two weeks. That was the time frame between when our first term teaching at our schools ended and our second term began. Durring that time we had two weeks of training from Peace Corps. We had new ideas pop into our head and we had no time to assess the ideas from last term. We had no time to implement any new improvements or strategies for making our next lessons more successful, making our presence more broad and our impact begin to show. No time to work out all the challenges we experienced in our first 12 weeks of teaching in Uganda.

And somehow everything is different.

Confronted with no time to change, Stacey and I are already feeling so much better about our second term teaching. Some simple changes are already having tangible results. The biggest things so far is Stacey and I are excited and enthusiastic about what is happening at our schools and finally defining our roles for ourselves.

The first thing I have done has been to start playing and letting my personality come through. The students already know who I am now. The initial shock from both sides has worn off and now they are going to get to know me. I have introduced ultimate to the girl boarders and have started doing a somewhat training regiment with football. In class I have found myself being a little more goofy. I let the students laugh at me a little more in class and I let them laugh at each other a little more as well. I tried to make myself available between classes last term, but I am sticking around after school to talk with teachers or be visible for the students. I have also started having Stacey come to the school once a week to interact with the studetns a little as well.

I have really started to focus my efforts on the boarders at the school. The day scholars are just too flakey to involve them because they want be out the door after a half an hour of activity. My first attempt to get to know the students was a discussion group and all the day scholars left after twenty five minutes. At lot of students come back and do work during the evening at evening preps, so I may try to use that time sometime soon to work with them, but I have nothing in the works at the moment.

I also came back to a school where my teachers were a little more excited as well. The science teachers went to another round of workshops and they were really pumped up on the inclusion of computers in teaching sciences. The workshop gave them the challenge to have a computer for ever department and passed out a ton of resources for the computer. I came back to a school where there was a drive to install and use more computers as well as materials to show them. The biggest challenge is teaching them how they can use all the resources and not abuse the information they were giving. One component was a bunch of old exams for every subject and every level so now the teachers don't want to put any effort into writing their own. They just want to print off what is there and give it to the students without really checking whether it is information they have reached or not yet. We will work on that this term though.

Another thing has been my disregard for the syllabus. Last term I was approached a couple of times by students to cover lessons they had already been 'taught'. I started this term with a completely blatant balk of the curriculum and just started with review of chemical formulae, equations, reactions and ionic equations. The students are enjooying having pproblems to work on and getting material they know they will need. So often they arent given the practice just the notes so they are getting so much more out of these lessons compared to their other ones on the same topics.

There have been some draw backs as well. I have already missed a week of time due to All Volunteer Conference and even though it was during beginning of term exams I haven't been able to start a routine. I also started a time table assessment and realized my school is completely inept at formulating a time table, keeping a time table and changing schedules as problems arise. I could literally devote an entire blog post to how messed up my time table is and the lack of effort or action to change any of it. On top of everything I am now starting to run out of time for all the activities I want to work into a week. I am trying to teach computers to the science teachers twice a week, have football twice a week, play ultimate once a week, start my discussion group up again, introduce a pen pal program for the students and address the other interests the students bring up to me. Something will have to give.

All in all things have been really solid so far this term and even though I know there will be other factors to stress us our, momentum is in our favor now. Get ready for a crazy few weeks to come. On our docket is school practice for the year twos for Stacey and the UNEB exam for the Senior 4 at my school. Only four more weeks for them to cram before the most important exam of their lives.

Transportation

Oh transportation in Uganda...How difficult you can be...Hah

(I would like to preface this by saying I love Uganda. Even though this is a rant I love this country and am very happy I am here. After my last frustrating post I remembered all the awesome kids I am here for! Anyway I digress.)

So in Uganda there are several different types of transportation; Bike, Motorcycle (illegal to us), Private Hire, Matatu Taxis, and Huge Buses. And well feet, I guess, but that is not the point today.

Bike transport is awesome and convenient. Tony and I both have bikes to ride around site and when we are away in other towns we could utilize Bike Bodas or Bike Taxis. These are nice and you can actually talk with the Boda men about there day and what is this or that.

Motorcycles are illegal for PC Volunteers to use and ride on.

Private Hire cars are nice sometimes, but can be expensive. We don't use them much but they can have competitive prices and fits lots of people. For example, another PCV learned that ten people can fit into a manual Toyota Corola car. Impressive.

Matatus are what we take most often. Imagine a van in the US but with more seats. Usually you have three people in the front, driver included, and 4 rows of 3 seats in the back. Legally they can carry 14 passengers, the driver, and conductor (the money man). The seats farthest on the left fold down and swing to the side to make an instant row. The matatus are often in varying degrees of disrepair. In our area it is not uncommon for the doors to only open from the outside, the main door to fall off its hinges, windows to be stuck open closed, metal poking out of the far left seats (watch your clothes!), I think you get the idea.

Plus depending on where you live matatus have “bonuses”. On average there are 5 chickens and several rice sacks of posho flour. Monthly we ride with goats. And because we are lucky in Teso, instead of carrying 14 passengers we typically have 20 passengers. Oh yes, bonding time is had by all.

The Buses are roller-coasters. Depending on the company you travel with you could have a bus that is falling a part without any suspension (or a driver without concern for pot holes) or a nice bus. Some even have movies! Poorly dumbed over movies but still movies! These bad boys often have sweet horns as well. High pitched musical squeelings happen a lot. They are just something you need to hear.

Safety on these things is pretty self-explanatory; don't be stupid. Don't take a Bike Boda on a really busy street. Never get into an empty matatu. Never travel at night. Never sit in the back of the bus (you will bounce so high your back will hate you for days).

So today, Tony and I were traveling from Kampala back to our site. Overall the trip went well. It took a long time but that is not uncommon and the bus driver was pretty safe.

This bus was supposed to travel to Soroti; a town past our site and we were going to get off early. Well we got to Mbale (thirty minutes from site) around 7, it was getting dark, and the bus emptied. It was about to over heat. So in light of this new situation our bus conductor made arrangements for a matatu taxi to take the rest of us out to Bukedea, Kumi, and finally Soroti. This didn't sound so bad because there were enough people going that direction to completely fill the taxi. We could have taken off right away. We all wanted to take off right away because it was getting dark. Literally the whole taxi was full and just waiting for the conductor and driver to get there butts in the taxi and leave.

We waited.

The conductor brought 8 pineapples into the taxi because he wanted to take them home. Imagine the annoyance!

We waited.

After our bus conductor made arrangements with the taxi driver and conductor they came over. We thought we were going to get going. Nope. They decided to have all the people going to Soroti get out of our full taxi and get into a different one going to Soroti. They wanted to fill some other one!

Tony, me, and one other person were the only people not going to Soroti! They pulled everyone out and tried to tell us that now our taxi was only going to go to Kumi and would leave right away. Mind you there would be a total of 5 of us in a taxi that usually has 22 people in it on a regular day. BS! I was so mad they didn't just leave with our original group.

Then Tony and I got out of the taxi because we didn't feel safe at all. I mean two white people all alone in an empty taxi at night driving with who knows what people. Bad news. Either they would rob us or once we got to Bukedea make us pay for the empty seats. My gut said they would rob us.

The conductor and driver were not happy. They tried convincing us that they would leave then and the driver said he would “eat the cost” of an empty taxi. We still refused. The conductor then tried to pull over another taxi to take us to Bukedea. We still refused. Now this meant that the conductor had to give us our change back. Which he did and was still trying to convince us to go in the taxi but we kindly thanked him for his efforts and then headed to a hotel.

Frustrating, yes.

Overall good transport, yes.

Glad I listened to my gut, yes.

Had a drink, yes.

Love,

Me

PS – More blogs to come!