Firstly, a little reminder to myself: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interests of others." - Philippians 2:3-4
Deep breath. Africa can be so frustraaaaaating. I'm very hesitant to use the words "corruption" or "laziness" about any of the people here because they seem such dramatic words, but they're serious problems, at every level of organisation. Because they're so widespread and just 'part of the culture', it seems very difficult to do anything about them without feeling like a colonialist coming and stamping our own values and systems onto everything. On the other hand... there's a complete lack of accountability here ---
[[OH MY GOODNESS THERE IS THE MOST MASSIVE SPIDER I HAVE EVER SEEN ON THE WALL OPPOSITE ME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE COME HERE AND TAKE IT AWAY?!?!?!?!]]
More deep breaths. Complete lack of accountability. High levels of distractability. There's not really any need to keep proper financial records, or to get accreditation for a charity, so it's then very easy to, y'know, divert funds. The URF volunteer website gives the following breakdown of what the $400 donation might be used for:
On-ground Admin: $100 (airtime, taxis, internet, stationary, jjajja's services, etc) - So why are we paying for our own internet, and then the URF staff are borrowing the modem from us?!
Hope Academy: $90 (teachers' salaries, electricity, photocopying, stationary, chalk, etc) - Electricity, haha. Engineers Without Borders provided the solar panels for free, and the other power isn't even working. Maybe once it's fixed that will be a reasonable expense. Teachers' salaries etc, fair enough.
Orphanage: $90 (food and daily upkeep)
Health Care Fund: $60 (clinic/ clinic trips untill clinic is built ) - We've heard some complaints about the clinic; it's supposed to be a free service but charging for drugs to cover costs. However, locals are saying that they have to pay to see someone there. There's either a miscommunication between locals & clinic, or between clinic & us.
Women's Programs: $60 (crafts, piggery, poultry, etc)
So, in general this isn't so bad, but as I said there's not a great emphasis on record keeping so it's difficult to see how much the money is really being spent on this. When I sent my $400, the volunteer coordinator said that it would go towards the building of domitories for the school which is supposedly in progress. There are some half-built brick structures here, but they're not 'in progress', though they might have been a couple of years ago! I'm going to make some enquiries with the staff about the building work - like who's being paid to work on it, what's the schedule, where are the materials and equipment coming from? And why isn't it happening right now? And if they can't answer those questions, I'm going to take that $400 and spend it on doing up their science lab and computer room so they're of working standard, then set some kind of system in place so they will actually be used when I'm gone. As for the rest of the accountability questions, we're going to work on setting up some kind of spreadsheet for the finances so everything can be tracked properly. I don't mind donating this much money, but when I do it's incredibly frustrating to see the inefficiency with which it's used.
Right. Rant over for now.
Yesterday we went to a Ugandan wedding. I thought this would be super-exciting but we turned up at the wrong time. The event goes on all weekend, with the 'introduction' (hosted by the groom's family, with lots of speeches) on Friday, then the ceremony (at the church, with lots of speeches) on Saturday afternoon, the reception (hosted by the bride's family, with lots of speeches) on Saturday evening and the dancing and partying continuing until Sunday. We decided not to go to the ceremony since it was all in Luganda, so turned up just for the reception. The whole village, and everybody from the surrounding area, was invited. We thought it started at 6 so turned up at 6.30 knowing that 6 means at least 7 in African time. As it happened, it didn't start til at least 9. Then the bride and groom didn't turn up til 10 (in the meantime we had a lot of excitement with the power randomly cutting out and turning on again, giving us brief glimpses of the stunning night sky) and the speeches and present-giving (SO. MANY. SPEECHES.AND.PRESENTS.) went on and on and on and on until at about 11 I decided to go home because I found myself napping in my chair. It seems that was a good decision, as according to the others the dancing part of the party didn't start until past midnight. Anyway, the sitting around wasn't so bad as we got to admire lots of beautiful dresses and laugh at the alcohol being served - cloudy brown moonshine in clear plastic bags being handed out to everyone. Including pregnant and breast-feeding mothers. We didn't laugh at that bit. Also it was reeeeally strange when the bride and groom turned up because the bride just looked at the floor the whole time and almost never smiled. But we found out later that the bride isn't allowed to look at the groom until after the ceremony, so that's probably why. Seems like a silly tradition to me, but hey, TIA.
I feel like this post is coming out very complainy. It wasn't meant to be that way! In general I'm having a lovely time here and feeling very positive. Today (Sunday) some of us headed into Masaka on a very pleasant and reasonably-priced coach (let's ignore the fact that he dropped us off about 2 miles out of town) and had lunch at a very nice Western-style restaurant (with lovely Western-style prices to match) and then Katie and I headed to the orphanage sponsored by the URF, Nazareth Children's Home. The children are delightful though many of them are sick. One young girl, Bridget, has had TB recently and has a 'TB spine' and a nasty cough. She's adorable though, and curled up in my lap to sleep for a while. The others just love any attention you can give them, whether it's singing or dancing or playing with a ball or reading their alphabet poster to them for the millionth time. I know that of all the projects I can help with here, the orphanage is the one that I will probably have the least personal effect on in the long term, because although playing with kids is fun it's not exactly life-changing... but they're so beautiful, and even if they are snotty and half-naked I just want to burst with love when I play with them.
Today I had ice cream. It was a lovely treat. Also I bought more airtime for my phone so I can call home again. If anyone wants to phone me and say hello, you can buy credit on skype and then call Ugandan numbers for about 15p/min which is cheaper than I can do from here. I can't use skype cos the internet connection isn't fast enough. I'm not entirely sure what my Ugandan number is cos I threw away the paper with it on by mistake, but maybe someone I've texted will post my number on here?
Less complaining next time, I promise!
Sunday, 24 July 2011
Friday, 22 July 2011
If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen
...or, more appropriately, if you can't stand the heat then don't do heavy physical work at the equator. Yesterday, we went to build drying stands and dig rubbish pits for rural villages. I was having great fun doing the digging, even though it was very tough because the ground is so hard and we only had really heavy hoes. But when we'd almost finished digging the hole I suddenly went very dizzy and nearly threw up - it seems I got dehydrated. So for most of the afternoon I had to sit around feeling pathetic and useless while everyone else did useful stuff. It was very frustrating because when I sat or led still I felt fine, but as soon as I moved I felt like throwing up. Also apparently I looked drunk whenever I tried to walk around!
Late in the afternoon I recovered enough to go and watch the school's football and netball matches. They name the teams after continents and Europe won the netball, yay! On the way home we passed a group of children who were thrilled to shake my hand, so I stayed with them and did some dancing and silly games for a bit. They were incredibly cute.
Late last night I had another wave of feeling ill, including being very cold and shivery at one point. I was kind of worried I might have a fever but I went to sleep and felt much better when I woke up. Still not well enough to walk anywhere though, so I couldn't go to the lesson I was meant to be helping in this morning :-(. At lunchtime I felt a bit better though, so I headed down to the school and helped Muhoozi with some chemistry and some physics. It's frustrating how much physics I've forgotten! But we managed to work through some problems together, like balancing equations in chemistry and specific heat capacities in physics.
The house I'm staying in has solar panels on the roof, but obviously they only work when it's sunny. In theory we're linked up to the Ugandan power grid as a back-up, but the transformer's broken so that's not working. Since it was cloudy yesterday and rainy today (and I mean *really* rainy - the saying "It never rains but it pours" is so true here!) we've had no power in the house. Luckily the laptop that the Chinese volunteers brought along has a really good battery!
We volunteers have a new favourite saying - "TIA" which stand for "This is Africa". For example, yesterday just before the football match we drove to a nearby town to attend a meeting. When we got there, we found that nobody was at the meeting because they were all going to a funeral. But nobody had thought to phone us and mention this! TIA. Also, at the end of the football match, some of the guys were having a kickabout and they were joined by a herd of cows. TIA.
I'm curious about how many people are reading this. Comment and say hello?
Late in the afternoon I recovered enough to go and watch the school's football and netball matches. They name the teams after continents and Europe won the netball, yay! On the way home we passed a group of children who were thrilled to shake my hand, so I stayed with them and did some dancing and silly games for a bit. They were incredibly cute.
Late last night I had another wave of feeling ill, including being very cold and shivery at one point. I was kind of worried I might have a fever but I went to sleep and felt much better when I woke up. Still not well enough to walk anywhere though, so I couldn't go to the lesson I was meant to be helping in this morning :-(. At lunchtime I felt a bit better though, so I headed down to the school and helped Muhoozi with some chemistry and some physics. It's frustrating how much physics I've forgotten! But we managed to work through some problems together, like balancing equations in chemistry and specific heat capacities in physics.
The house I'm staying in has solar panels on the roof, but obviously they only work when it's sunny. In theory we're linked up to the Ugandan power grid as a back-up, but the transformer's broken so that's not working. Since it was cloudy yesterday and rainy today (and I mean *really* rainy - the saying "It never rains but it pours" is so true here!) we've had no power in the house. Luckily the laptop that the Chinese volunteers brought along has a really good battery!
We volunteers have a new favourite saying - "TIA" which stand for "This is Africa". For example, yesterday just before the football match we drove to a nearby town to attend a meeting. When we got there, we found that nobody was at the meeting because they were all going to a funeral. But nobody had thought to phone us and mention this! TIA. Also, at the end of the football match, some of the guys were having a kickabout and they were joined by a herd of cows. TIA.
I'm curious about how many people are reading this. Comment and say hello?
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
"Educating of girls is a wastage of money"
This afternoon I phoned my old school's chemistry department to ask if they have any old equipment that they would be able to send over to the school. The staff all seemed very positive about the idea so hopefully they'll look into it! A school in Cheltenham recently closed down and merged with another so they've been getting rid of a lot of stuff, so the staff from my school are going to see if any of that is left and send it over. The school has a charity committee who raise funds for various causes so maybe some of that will be put towards postage. In a bit I'm going to try calling someone in Cambridge as well.
Carrying on in the tradition of asking me to do things very shortly before I have to do them, this afternoon I was asked at 2pm to teach the 2pm chemistry lesson. It was only about balancing equations, and the students are quite good at it already, so we just worked through a set of examples. It was good fun and I'm amazed how confident I am at standing up in front of a class even after only doing it for a couple of days. The girls who sit in the front row are SO keen, they remind me of me at school, haha. I had to explain to them halfway through the lesson that I want to pick different people to answer each question, not just the ones who have their hands highest in the air!
The final session on Wednesdays is a debate for S1 and S2. This week the S3s joined in too because their biology teacher didn't turn up. How are students expected to learn if their teachers don't even come to school?! And they're short of staff anyway, it's not like they can just call up a substitute at a minute's notice. Anyway, the debate was on the motion "Educating of girls is a wastage of money" and it was very educational for me in many ways. Although obviously I strongly oppose the motion, I ended up agreeing and disagreeing with points on both sides. For example, points for the proposition included:
Carrying on in the tradition of asking me to do things very shortly before I have to do them, this afternoon I was asked at 2pm to teach the 2pm chemistry lesson. It was only about balancing equations, and the students are quite good at it already, so we just worked through a set of examples. It was good fun and I'm amazed how confident I am at standing up in front of a class even after only doing it for a couple of days. The girls who sit in the front row are SO keen, they remind me of me at school, haha. I had to explain to them halfway through the lesson that I want to pick different people to answer each question, not just the ones who have their hands highest in the air!
The final session on Wednesdays is a debate for S1 and S2. This week the S3s joined in too because their biology teacher didn't turn up. How are students expected to learn if their teachers don't even come to school?! And they're short of staff anyway, it's not like they can just call up a substitute at a minute's notice. Anyway, the debate was on the motion "Educating of girls is a wastage of money" and it was very educational for me in many ways. Although obviously I strongly oppose the motion, I ended up agreeing and disagreeing with points on both sides. For example, points for the proposition included:
- Educated women don't show respect to their elders (i.e. kneeling in front of older women)
- Educated girls go to night discos and leave their homes because they think they can live by themselves (an interesting point of rebuttal to this one, from a boy, was "Surely that's a good thing because then I can land more chicks!")
- Girls often get pregnant before finishing their education and they have to drop out, so all the education before that was a waste of money.
- Girls in mixed schools seduce boys.
And for the opposition:
- Marriages where both the man and the woman are educated are stronger, and the family gets more respect
- The standard of living goes up when girls are educated
- Girls often have more practical skills than boys - when this is combined with education the result is a very skilled person
- Education for girls improves communication between men and women, both through speaking and writing
- Men cannot make decisions for women as well as women can
- God created men and women together and told them both to look after the planet, and women must be educated in order to play their part in this
- Many businesses have been mismanaged by men - they need women as well
- Education for women can prevent prostitution
- Having girls in schools reduces homosexuality (this one made me cringe a lot)
- Educated women can educate their children
At the end they asked me to stand up and give my points. I got a lot of cheers! It always feels a bit strange to be treated like a celebrity. I made three points in general - firstly, countries which treat men and women more equally and educate women well have a higher rate of development, so if Uganda wants to develop as a nation they need to make education of women a priority. Secondly, I said to the girls that being educated is no reason to be disrespectful, and that everyone (boys and girls) should be respectful to their elders. I told them that they should be as respectful as possible, and then nobody will be able to use that objection to their education. Finally I talked about girls getting pregnant/ seducing boys etc. I pointed out that girls can't get pregnant on their own (this got a lot of laughter) and that boys have to take an equal responsibility for this and not go about getting girls pregnant! And everybody laughed, but I hope they took the point seriously. I wish I'd had more time to prepare things to say, but surprise surprise, they just pointed at me and said "Madam Mzungu, what will you say about this motion?".
At the end of the debate I was chatting to a student called Muhoozi (or Ronald, but he prefers his Luganda name). He said he enjoyed chemistry in S1 but because he moved to Rwanda for S2 and now back to Uganda for S3 he's fallen behind in it and now he has no passion for it. So I'm meeting him tomorrow to tutor him. He wants to be a doctor or an engineer but he knows he can't do either of those if he's not good at chemistry. After we'd talked for a while he gave me a Luganda name - Bilungi, which means beautiful and great. Yay!
First lesson!
Today has been super-exciting. The biology teacher for S1/S2 asked me to be at the school at 8 for his first lesson. I was so excited that I woke up with the cockerels at about 6.30, in time to watch the beautiful sunrise through the banana plantation. The lesson was about insects - reasonably interesting, but do they seriously need to memorise the full classification (from kingdom to species) of all these different insects?! It seems a little pointless. Sure, it's interesting in some ways that mosquitoes, houseflies and tsetse flies are all in one class while cockroaches are in another and so on, but does it matter that the classes are called Diptera and Orthoptera? In total they have to learn 7 classes of insects, with their Latin names, and examples for each one. I know that all this knowledge is useful to someone in some way, but surely there are more important things to teach S2 students. Anyway, it was interesting to see the teaching style. One thing the teachers do a lot here which I find very odd is they finish a sentence halfway through the final word and then the students have to say the whole word. For example, teacher: "Now we're going to have a discu...", students: "discussion". Or they miss out the whole word and substitute it with "Whaaa?" - like "The heart pumps whaaa? Pumps blood." EVERY SINGLE SENTENCE. I feel like I'll fit in better if I do the same but I don't want to come back to the UK with all these different speaking patterns!
I suggested to the teacher that instead of just drawing diagrams of the different parts of the insects, we could actually look at them down the microscope. That might prove to be too difficult since there's rarely power in the mornings, and the plugs on the microscope don't match the sockets. Not that that is always an obstacle for them - they just remove the head of the plug and insert the wires directly into the socket! I almost screamed when I saw that! Uncovered live wires hanging out of the wall. Eek. But anyway, if we're going to look at insects, whether it's with microscopes or magnifying glasses or just with our bare eyes, we need specimens. So the teacher set them an assignment for next Wednesday - bring in a cockroach, dead or alive! Also a housefly, which might be even more tricky. Eeeurgh. I was very happy to have seen no cockroaches yet, and now I'm going to have to go to a class with about 30 of them.
For some reason the S2s have biology twice on a Wednesday, so the teacher asked me to take the second lesson. Well, I say asked, it was more "So, the next biology class is at 11.15, you can teach them something." ... "Something?" ... "Yes, anything you like." Bear in mind that this was at 11.05. So... I decided to teach them how to do experiments! The simplest one I could think of on the spot that would almost certainly give good results was how heart rate changes with exercise. They've never carried out any experiments before so I also had to explain how to formulate a hypothesis, design the method, interpret the results, evaluate afterwards and so on. It worked really well - 8 students took part (one from each bench) and of the 8, 6 showed exactly what we expected and 2 were anomalous for the 'gentle exercise' reading. It was very lucky really - one was higher than expected, and one was lower, so we could have a good discussion about possible reasons for that. One suggestion was that the lower one was because he eats lots of vegetables so he's healthier! And they found it very funny that I suggested that it might just be that someone miscounted (a pulse rate of 200 after gentle exercise seems a little excessive, don't you think?!). At the start of the lesson it was a bit difficult to make them write sentences in their own words because they're used to having everything dictated to them, but by the end they seemed a bit more relaxed about it. It felt really good to give the kids their first experience of actually doing science. Yay. The teacher's really enthusiastic as well so we might be doing another one this afternoon!
Now, the most important part of the day - lunchtime! Hooray!
I suggested to the teacher that instead of just drawing diagrams of the different parts of the insects, we could actually look at them down the microscope. That might prove to be too difficult since there's rarely power in the mornings, and the plugs on the microscope don't match the sockets. Not that that is always an obstacle for them - they just remove the head of the plug and insert the wires directly into the socket! I almost screamed when I saw that! Uncovered live wires hanging out of the wall. Eek. But anyway, if we're going to look at insects, whether it's with microscopes or magnifying glasses or just with our bare eyes, we need specimens. So the teacher set them an assignment for next Wednesday - bring in a cockroach, dead or alive! Also a housefly, which might be even more tricky. Eeeurgh. I was very happy to have seen no cockroaches yet, and now I'm going to have to go to a class with about 30 of them.
For some reason the S2s have biology twice on a Wednesday, so the teacher asked me to take the second lesson. Well, I say asked, it was more "So, the next biology class is at 11.15, you can teach them something." ... "Something?" ... "Yes, anything you like." Bear in mind that this was at 11.05. So... I decided to teach them how to do experiments! The simplest one I could think of on the spot that would almost certainly give good results was how heart rate changes with exercise. They've never carried out any experiments before so I also had to explain how to formulate a hypothesis, design the method, interpret the results, evaluate afterwards and so on. It worked really well - 8 students took part (one from each bench) and of the 8, 6 showed exactly what we expected and 2 were anomalous for the 'gentle exercise' reading. It was very lucky really - one was higher than expected, and one was lower, so we could have a good discussion about possible reasons for that. One suggestion was that the lower one was because he eats lots of vegetables so he's healthier! And they found it very funny that I suggested that it might just be that someone miscounted (a pulse rate of 200 after gentle exercise seems a little excessive, don't you think?!). At the start of the lesson it was a bit difficult to make them write sentences in their own words because they're used to having everything dictated to them, but by the end they seemed a bit more relaxed about it. It felt really good to give the kids their first experience of actually doing science. Yay. The teacher's really enthusiastic as well so we might be doing another one this afternoon!
Now, the most important part of the day - lunchtime! Hooray!
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
Mzunguuuuuu I am so happy to see yoooooou
Yesterday was one of the least productive days I've ever had, just waiting for someone to turn up who never did. I was going to go and make an inventory of all the science equipment but then it turns out they already have one, although it is slightly out of date. I was going to check through it all but then the girls came to clean the lab so I got out of their way. Today I'm meeting the biology and chemistry teacher at 2pm, and then the physics teacher at 5pm, so I'll probably actually meet both of them at 6pm or something like that. African time. It's maddening.
This morning, after a lovely breakfast of a banana and jam sandwich, a group of us walked to a nearby village about 30 minutes walk away to help a child-headed family in their garden. The family are AIDS orphans - the oldest boy is 20 and he's in grade S4 at the school (so taking O-level type things soon). Recently the URF built them a house and also a drying rack for their washing up which helps prevent diseases. When we got there the first thing we had to do was collect water. Although boreholes are available in a lot of Uganda, this area doesn't usually have good groundwater and it often tastes very salty. So despite the fact that water from the "surface wells" (actually just muddy ponds) can spread diseases, they drink it because it tastes better. They do usually boil it first, but they water their plants with it before it's boiled. We walked for about a mile down a hill to this pond and then had to carry all the water back up again. It was a very authentic African experience :-S. I wish I knew how to carry the water on my head but last time I tried I ended up spilling the whole jerry can full of water over my head so I didn't try this time!
On the way to this little village we passed through Kyetume again and I stopped to buy a soda as always. A very drunk man came up and was hugging me and shaking my hand and shouting how happy he was to see me, and then he was asking me for money and didn't seem to understand "no". Luckily Charles and Martin, who live in the house next to ours and work for the URF, were with us, and Charles dragged the guy away.
One thing I've found really funny since I've been here is how many people ask how the queen is. When I mention the royal wedding they get very excited and say they all watched it! They must have all crowded round some of the very few TVs there are here. I wonder what it looked like through the eyes of the desperately poor people around here.
It's about 2 o'clock now so I'd better head off to my meeting :-)
This morning, after a lovely breakfast of a banana and jam sandwich, a group of us walked to a nearby village about 30 minutes walk away to help a child-headed family in their garden. The family are AIDS orphans - the oldest boy is 20 and he's in grade S4 at the school (so taking O-level type things soon). Recently the URF built them a house and also a drying rack for their washing up which helps prevent diseases. When we got there the first thing we had to do was collect water. Although boreholes are available in a lot of Uganda, this area doesn't usually have good groundwater and it often tastes very salty. So despite the fact that water from the "surface wells" (actually just muddy ponds) can spread diseases, they drink it because it tastes better. They do usually boil it first, but they water their plants with it before it's boiled. We walked for about a mile down a hill to this pond and then had to carry all the water back up again. It was a very authentic African experience :-S. I wish I knew how to carry the water on my head but last time I tried I ended up spilling the whole jerry can full of water over my head so I didn't try this time!
On the way to this little village we passed through Kyetume again and I stopped to buy a soda as always. A very drunk man came up and was hugging me and shaking my hand and shouting how happy he was to see me, and then he was asking me for money and didn't seem to understand "no". Luckily Charles and Martin, who live in the house next to ours and work for the URF, were with us, and Charles dragged the guy away.
One thing I've found really funny since I've been here is how many people ask how the queen is. When I mention the royal wedding they get very excited and say they all watched it! They must have all crowded round some of the very few TVs there are here. I wonder what it looked like through the eyes of the desperately poor people around here.
It's about 2 o'clock now so I'd better head off to my meeting :-)
Monday, 18 July 2011
African tiiiime
So, when they say they have science equipment in the secondary school here, they mean they have some pots of chemicals, about 8 test tubes, some variable resistors and some stopwatches. Still, they don't really know what to do with any of it so they're using the lab as a store room at the moment. Also, they keep boasting that they have 8 computers, but what they mean is that they have 8 monitors. Of those, some have no processors attached, some have no mouse or keyboard and some just don't work. So overall only about 3 or 4 can be used. Then they have about 50 kids per grade and 4 grades... and power only in the afternoons once the solar panels have charged up... so the result is that even though they have these 'facilities', they never get used. I'm hoping that part of my project for the summer can involve sorting this out in some way, maybe starting up a science club and a computer club. Particularly I want to teach some of the older students to use the computers and encourage them to then pass on the skills to the younger ones. A problem that's been mentioned here is that kids aren't keen to mentor each other and help each other with homework because they want to be the cleverest or whatever. It would be good to persuade them that teaching and tutoring others can actually help your own progress.
Oh, bother, I didn't notice that the power cut out again so the laptop's about to run out of battery. All these things we take for granted in the UK!
Today I walked to Kyetume with David and we bought rolexes and bananas and sodas for breakfast. I saw a fruit I'd never tasted before so asked the lady at the stall if I could buy some thinking I was buying a piece... but ended up buying the whole thing, about the size of a football! It's jackfruit. Not bad, but smells funny (kind of like its namesake Jack Jackson).
All out of power now. Love xxxx
Oh, bother, I didn't notice that the power cut out again so the laptop's about to run out of battery. All these things we take for granted in the UK!
Today I walked to Kyetume with David and we bought rolexes and bananas and sodas for breakfast. I saw a fruit I'd never tasted before so asked the lady at the stall if I could buy some thinking I was buying a piece... but ended up buying the whole thing, about the size of a football! It's jackfruit. Not bad, but smells funny (kind of like its namesake Jack Jackson).
All out of power now. Love xxxx
Sunday, 17 July 2011
Only 20 minutes of battery remaining on the laptop so this will have to be a short one. The power here cuts out every evening, usually sometime between 8 and 9, so we have to remember to charge everything up before then.
Yesterday's sex education class was pretty interesting - the kind of information we take for granted just isn't available for these girls. They asked things like "Why am I bleeding?", "Am I going to die because it hurts so much?", "Can I wash pads and re-use them?". And then they told us about things their peers tell them - like you're strange if you don't have a boyfriend - which don't seem so different to the UK. Several of the girls (who were aged between about 13 and 18, I guess) said they had been pressured into sex by boys who offered them soap and vaseline in return. Horrible. One of the volunteers from Kampala gave a really powerful speech to the girls about how soap, vaseline and even money might seem really tempting now - but if they have sex and catch HIV, they may have to give up all their dreams and plans for the future. It's a really big problem round here, especially as about half the kids in this school are AIDS orphans.
The village visit in the afternoon was great fun, even though it was all in Luganda so I only understood occasional words (amazzi = water, that came up a lot). I introduced myself in Luganda and told them I couldn't speak much Luganda. They thought it was hilarious. Then I took photos of the kids wearing my very British sunhat and they were delighted.
First marriage proposal yesterday! From a drunkard in the village. He even bought me banana pancakes to try to woo me. But I showed him my ring and told him I'm already engaged, haha :-).
The power's about to go now, so I'll write more another day. I'm looking forward to tomorrow because the kids will be at school so I can go and see how I can be useful. Hopefully in the science labs cos one of the problems they've reported recently is that they have equipment but don't know how to use it! So I'm going to go tinker with whatever they have.
Love to everyone. Please leave comments - missing you all!
Yesterday's sex education class was pretty interesting - the kind of information we take for granted just isn't available for these girls. They asked things like "Why am I bleeding?", "Am I going to die because it hurts so much?", "Can I wash pads and re-use them?". And then they told us about things their peers tell them - like you're strange if you don't have a boyfriend - which don't seem so different to the UK. Several of the girls (who were aged between about 13 and 18, I guess) said they had been pressured into sex by boys who offered them soap and vaseline in return. Horrible. One of the volunteers from Kampala gave a really powerful speech to the girls about how soap, vaseline and even money might seem really tempting now - but if they have sex and catch HIV, they may have to give up all their dreams and plans for the future. It's a really big problem round here, especially as about half the kids in this school are AIDS orphans.
The village visit in the afternoon was great fun, even though it was all in Luganda so I only understood occasional words (amazzi = water, that came up a lot). I introduced myself in Luganda and told them I couldn't speak much Luganda. They thought it was hilarious. Then I took photos of the kids wearing my very British sunhat and they were delighted.
First marriage proposal yesterday! From a drunkard in the village. He even bought me banana pancakes to try to woo me. But I showed him my ring and told him I'm already engaged, haha :-).
The power's about to go now, so I'll write more another day. I'm looking forward to tomorrow because the kids will be at school so I can go and see how I can be useful. Hopefully in the science labs cos one of the problems they've reported recently is that they have equipment but don't know how to use it! So I'm going to go tinker with whatever they have.
Love to everyone. Please leave comments - missing you all!
Saturday, 16 July 2011
Go!
I'm here! Hooray!
The journey was all very smooth, at least until I reached Uganda. When I stepped off the plane I was smiling so much I thought I might break my face. We were the only flight to arrive that late at night so there wasn't much of a queue for visas. I had been a little worried about getting a visa on entry in case they turned me away but it turned out that of the 100 or so people who got off the flight in Entebbe only about 3 had already bought visas, and there was no problem at all. After I'd got my bags I headed to the airport pick-up point to look for my car. Having searched the crowds of signs for several minutes I concluded that there was nobody there to pick me up... so I went to the information desk and asked them to phone the hotel, who informed me that someone had come but because the flight was slightly delayed they went home again. Hmph. Anyway, someone gave me a lift for $10. The hotel was lovely and I was very glad to have a double bed to myself so I didn't bash into the mosquito net when I slept. I HATE sleeping under mosquito nets. It's much worse here in the house because I'm on the bottom bunk bed so the net doesn't hang very high. I woke up this morning tangled up in it and very confused. Anyway, the hotel was pretty luxurious by Ugandan standards - flushing toilet and hot shower!
On Friday morning I thought I'd set an alarm on my watch but it turned out I'd just set it to beep once every hour (why would you even want it to do that?!) so I overslept until 11.30, when the receptionist phoned me up to inform me that checkout time is 10am and was I planning to stay another night? So very sheepishly I rushed down to reception with my bags. Adrian was due to pick me up at 2 so I thought I might walk into town quickly to change money, buy a phone etc. When I left the compound the security guard asked where I was going and laughed at me when I said I was walking into town. I couldn't take a boda-boda (motorbike taxi) because I'm not insured if I ride one without a helmet, so he asked his friend with a van to take me there. That turned out to be a good thing because Entebbe is bigger than I thought. Also, the guy helped me out by taking me to his friend's money exchange place and making sure they didn't charge me any commission! He also helped me pick out a phone - it has a torch on the end which has already come in useful as my hand sanitiser leaked all over my head torch (the one bottle I didn't wrap up in a bag, typical). The network isn't exactly reliable or fast. I sent a few texts and I know that my mum replied to them yesterday but the replies STILL haven't come through 24 hours later. So maybe that's not the best way of communicating.
As I said above, Adrian was meant to pick me up at 2. I added on a bit in my head to take into account 'African time' but by the time he turned up at 5.30 I was beginning to lose hope! The drive from Entebbe to here wasn't the most comfortable ever but I did have some company in the form of volunteers from Kampala. I was sitting next to a girl called Rita who's really nice; she thinks it's hilarious that we don't have boda-bodas in the UK, and that we have something that's like maize but much softer and sweeter (sweetcorn). We arrived at the house just after midnight and I moved into the room that will be home for the next 10 weeks. It's bigger than my bedroom at home! Though that's not saying very much. I'm sharing it with another volunteer, David, for the next couple of weeks.
After a cup of tea (very bitter compared to what we drink at home, and with no milk) I fell asleep very quickly. Breakfast this morning was roasted cassava... I'll get used to it, I'm sure! Then I sat outside chatting to some of the other volunteers for a bit until meetings started. This weekend is unusual because volunteers from Kampala have come down for a conference. We had a talk for about an hour and a half about what's going on this weekend, in which they said the same things many many times - firstly, we're meeting students from this school (Hope Academy) to do some mentoring, encouraging them to plan for their future and so on. Often they say "I want to be a doctor" or "I want to be a teacher" but they really have no idea how to make these plans a reality. Then this afternoon they'll split into boys and girls for talks about puberty and sex and other such fun things. Later, we're going to visit some of the nearby villages to do assessments of their needs. The principle of the URF is that they don't help people unless they really can't help themselves - so the assessment of their "needs" will also include an assessment of what resources they have, and what they could do to use those resources better to fulfill their own needs. Then the URF can 'fill the gap' and help them to reach their potential. But they were very emphatic about it not just being 'give, give, give'.
I'm so happy and comfortable in this house - the toilets, despite being outside and just holes in the ground, are cockroach free and very clean. There are sofas and armchairs in the living room, an indoor shower room, a TV and... God answered my prayers and there's a guitar! Another volunteer left it here in the past. It's missing two strings and one of the tuning knobs is broken but still, a guitar! Adrian said they have a problem because nobody knows how to play it so I'm going to see if I can find some strings for it (anyone want to post me some? :-) ) and then I can teach people some basic chords and so on. Happy Amy. Also, some past volunteers left their old laptops here and there's a wireless modem so I can use the internet whenever (so long as the power is working, which seems to be about 50% of the time).
We've just had lunch, including fresh pineapple which is so so so nice. It was self-service from a whole range of things so I could just pass by the posho. I did prod the spoon to test its consistency though and it is pretty rubbery and bouncy, though not as much as that disastrous attempt I made.
Special message for Katie: someone told me "tuula wansi" last night! I thought of you :-)
Lots of love to everyone. Please do comment and let me know how you're all doing. Time to go talk to some African kids about sex now!
The journey was all very smooth, at least until I reached Uganda. When I stepped off the plane I was smiling so much I thought I might break my face. We were the only flight to arrive that late at night so there wasn't much of a queue for visas. I had been a little worried about getting a visa on entry in case they turned me away but it turned out that of the 100 or so people who got off the flight in Entebbe only about 3 had already bought visas, and there was no problem at all. After I'd got my bags I headed to the airport pick-up point to look for my car. Having searched the crowds of signs for several minutes I concluded that there was nobody there to pick me up... so I went to the information desk and asked them to phone the hotel, who informed me that someone had come but because the flight was slightly delayed they went home again. Hmph. Anyway, someone gave me a lift for $10. The hotel was lovely and I was very glad to have a double bed to myself so I didn't bash into the mosquito net when I slept. I HATE sleeping under mosquito nets. It's much worse here in the house because I'm on the bottom bunk bed so the net doesn't hang very high. I woke up this morning tangled up in it and very confused. Anyway, the hotel was pretty luxurious by Ugandan standards - flushing toilet and hot shower!
On Friday morning I thought I'd set an alarm on my watch but it turned out I'd just set it to beep once every hour (why would you even want it to do that?!) so I overslept until 11.30, when the receptionist phoned me up to inform me that checkout time is 10am and was I planning to stay another night? So very sheepishly I rushed down to reception with my bags. Adrian was due to pick me up at 2 so I thought I might walk into town quickly to change money, buy a phone etc. When I left the compound the security guard asked where I was going and laughed at me when I said I was walking into town. I couldn't take a boda-boda (motorbike taxi) because I'm not insured if I ride one without a helmet, so he asked his friend with a van to take me there. That turned out to be a good thing because Entebbe is bigger than I thought. Also, the guy helped me out by taking me to his friend's money exchange place and making sure they didn't charge me any commission! He also helped me pick out a phone - it has a torch on the end which has already come in useful as my hand sanitiser leaked all over my head torch (the one bottle I didn't wrap up in a bag, typical). The network isn't exactly reliable or fast. I sent a few texts and I know that my mum replied to them yesterday but the replies STILL haven't come through 24 hours later. So maybe that's not the best way of communicating.
As I said above, Adrian was meant to pick me up at 2. I added on a bit in my head to take into account 'African time' but by the time he turned up at 5.30 I was beginning to lose hope! The drive from Entebbe to here wasn't the most comfortable ever but I did have some company in the form of volunteers from Kampala. I was sitting next to a girl called Rita who's really nice; she thinks it's hilarious that we don't have boda-bodas in the UK, and that we have something that's like maize but much softer and sweeter (sweetcorn). We arrived at the house just after midnight and I moved into the room that will be home for the next 10 weeks. It's bigger than my bedroom at home! Though that's not saying very much. I'm sharing it with another volunteer, David, for the next couple of weeks.
After a cup of tea (very bitter compared to what we drink at home, and with no milk) I fell asleep very quickly. Breakfast this morning was roasted cassava... I'll get used to it, I'm sure! Then I sat outside chatting to some of the other volunteers for a bit until meetings started. This weekend is unusual because volunteers from Kampala have come down for a conference. We had a talk for about an hour and a half about what's going on this weekend, in which they said the same things many many times - firstly, we're meeting students from this school (Hope Academy) to do some mentoring, encouraging them to plan for their future and so on. Often they say "I want to be a doctor" or "I want to be a teacher" but they really have no idea how to make these plans a reality. Then this afternoon they'll split into boys and girls for talks about puberty and sex and other such fun things. Later, we're going to visit some of the nearby villages to do assessments of their needs. The principle of the URF is that they don't help people unless they really can't help themselves - so the assessment of their "needs" will also include an assessment of what resources they have, and what they could do to use those resources better to fulfill their own needs. Then the URF can 'fill the gap' and help them to reach their potential. But they were very emphatic about it not just being 'give, give, give'.
I'm so happy and comfortable in this house - the toilets, despite being outside and just holes in the ground, are cockroach free and very clean. There are sofas and armchairs in the living room, an indoor shower room, a TV and... God answered my prayers and there's a guitar! Another volunteer left it here in the past. It's missing two strings and one of the tuning knobs is broken but still, a guitar! Adrian said they have a problem because nobody knows how to play it so I'm going to see if I can find some strings for it (anyone want to post me some? :-) ) and then I can teach people some basic chords and so on. Happy Amy. Also, some past volunteers left their old laptops here and there's a wireless modem so I can use the internet whenever (so long as the power is working, which seems to be about 50% of the time).
We've just had lunch, including fresh pineapple which is so so so nice. It was self-service from a whole range of things so I could just pass by the posho. I did prod the spoon to test its consistency though and it is pretty rubbery and bouncy, though not as much as that disastrous attempt I made.
Special message for Katie: someone told me "tuula wansi" last night! I thought of you :-)
Lots of love to everyone. Please do comment and let me know how you're all doing. Time to go talk to some African kids about sex now!
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Get set...
Postal address when I'm in Uganda:
Amy Buchanan-Hughes
c/o Waliggo Family
PO Box 1220
Masaka, Uganda
I'll add my mobile number to this post once I've bought the phone and sim card.
Everything's packed now! About 45 minutes til I leave the house to catch the coach.
"If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast."
Amy Buchanan-Hughes
c/o Waliggo Family
PO Box 1220
Masaka, Uganda
I'll add my mobile number to this post once I've bought the phone and sim card.
Everything's packed now! About 45 minutes til I leave the house to catch the coach.
"If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast."
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
On your marks...
It's about 27 hours until I leave to spend 10 weeks working in Uganda, and my to-do list is currently two pages long. It worries me a bit that pretty much everything about this trip was my responsibility, and nobody's been checking that I've sorted everything I should. I think all the really important stuff is done - I have a passport, all my vaccinations are up-to-date from last time I went, the transport is all booked, I know where I'm staying... well, I know the rough area I'm going to anyway! As my dad says, what could possibly go wrong?! And as my heavenly Father says, "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." Hooray!
If you want to know what I'll be doing while I'm out there, I suggest reading this page, because I don't know a whole lot more than that. In my discussions with the volunteer coordinator, he suggested that I should make it known to students at the school that I can tutor them in maths, physics, chemistry and biology, as well as how to use the computers. As well as that I'm particularly interested in helping with the health projects and the "women empowerment program", but we'll see what happens when I get there. I think God's got some ideas of what he wants me to do so I'll have to wait to find out.
I don't know what my access to the internet will be like when I'm out there but I'll try to check e-mails and blog fairly regularly. I'm also hoping to get hold of a mobile phone so I might be able to send and receive text messages but that might cost a lot. Please feel free to send me e-mails about anything at all, I would love to keep up-to-date with how everyone at home is doing and even if I can't reply to loads of e-mails individually it will probably help me feel less homesick. Not that I've ever felt badly homesick before, but then I've never gone away on my own for 10 weeks to a place where, for over half the time I'm there, I'll be the only mzungu (white person) in the village...
I'm going to stress myself out if I keep thinking about how nervous I actually am so I shall finish here :-)
If you want to know what I'll be doing while I'm out there, I suggest reading this page, because I don't know a whole lot more than that. In my discussions with the volunteer coordinator, he suggested that I should make it known to students at the school that I can tutor them in maths, physics, chemistry and biology, as well as how to use the computers. As well as that I'm particularly interested in helping with the health projects and the "women empowerment program", but we'll see what happens when I get there. I think God's got some ideas of what he wants me to do so I'll have to wait to find out.
I don't know what my access to the internet will be like when I'm out there but I'll try to check e-mails and blog fairly regularly. I'm also hoping to get hold of a mobile phone so I might be able to send and receive text messages but that might cost a lot. Please feel free to send me e-mails about anything at all, I would love to keep up-to-date with how everyone at home is doing and even if I can't reply to loads of e-mails individually it will probably help me feel less homesick. Not that I've ever felt badly homesick before, but then I've never gone away on my own for 10 weeks to a place where, for over half the time I'm there, I'll be the only mzungu (white person) in the village...
I'm going to stress myself out if I keep thinking about how nervous I actually am so I shall finish here :-)
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