Gulu town, St. Jude's, and First Day of School - oh my!

A semi relaxing weekend was much needed before my first day of school today. Let’s back, back, back, back, back, back it up. On Saturday, we were lucky enough to be allowed to sleep in a bit. A delicious breaky was prepared for us, and then we eventually meandered out into town. A few friends and I made our way through a couple markets and chatted with locals, including a local TV station broadcaster as we were interviewed for the nightly news! Getting a tailor seems to be all the rage, and while I am no Project Runway contestant, I think I might design a thang or two to be made before I leave.  We grabbed some local food for lunch and just took in the passerbys as the hot Ugandan sun shone down on us. Eventually, we made it back to the house and I convinced Rachel to hit the back roads with me. Thanks to Mark and Laura who had already tested some new routes out, we headed the opposite direction of town. What we found was an endless red dirt dirt road with all types of people commuting to and from their weekend activities. The majority of people walk, a lot of people take boda bodas if they’re going far, some use bicycles, and a very small percentage use automobiles. Not only were the people interesting and interested in us, as children shrieked “MUNO!” or “MIZUNGO!” (white person!), the scenery was beautiful. The sun set over grass covered huts and the city simultaneously. The highlight for me was when a 60+ year old woman decided to join me. Her counterparts at the local establishment were cracking up and her genuine eyes and appreciate thanks made my day! I felt like I could have run all night, but after the sun sets, running is a tragedy for my ankles. Found a local place with a great buffet (albeit a bit expensive, even for home) and Wi-fi, so that’s when I uploaded the last three blogs. Pictures take for-ev-er to upload though, so sometimes you might have to struggle through my blabbering without pics (sorry visual learners!).

Debbie, Laura, Lauren and I on our way into town

Bout to find somebody that can "Make it WORK!"

Post interview

The town center, with a statue I still can't figure out who/what it is

Rachel runnin' it out!

After a lazy Saturday, a packed Sunday was a change of pace. A slew of us woke up early to make it to a local church, Iwato. Walked after a night long downpour and had mud all over the bottom half of my body upon arrival. Classy. I did a lot of reflecting in my journal about this, but I have more observations and personal feelings than I can really express publicly, so I’ll just leave it at, “it was interesting”.  The same goes for our trip to St. Jude’s, a local children’s home. Children here are either orphaned, or accepted if their parents have decided they can no longer care for the child as is necessary. There were over 80 children that reside here. Again, I had mixed emotions and opinions about this visit, so I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.

A silent cutie patootie

I'm awful at soccer, but they accepted me anyway

John McGee - stands 6'11'' and handles kids like it's nothin'

Beth is so sweet - she taught these kiddos how to work her camera, old school style with film... they went through three rolls.

St Jude's football team

Upon our return, we met Madame Molly, a woman IC has worked closely with to set up an entrepreneurship with who manages several single mothers in their endeavors to establish and maintain a bead making business. Very touching personal stories as well as incredible art work with their beads.

And then today. Oh today. Well, it’s 8:00pm and I’m at home, I haven’t run, and I’m exhausted. Today was my first day at school! I didn’t even really “do” anything particularly exhausting; it was just everything that was SO new and/or different and meeting so many people and attempting so much Luo. Other than the stellar headache I have, I feel really great about how the day went. I met the head teacher (ie principal) and she seems like a strong and sincere woman. I’m learning a TON about the Ugandan educational system, but still have so many questions. Madam Alice is every bit as amazing as I got the impression she was on Friday, and Sir Geoff is still as sincere and quiet as before. I only observed one class period (Senior 3), but was thoroughly impressed with the level of interaction Alice had with the students. She manipulated the students into a graph to represent line fluctuation, had students demonstrate the difference between riding a bike on a paved road versus a ‘broken’ road as students described their roads which led to the discussion of the effect on product delivery, had me explain hail, again relating it to the effect on products (in our case we were discussing cocoa), and finally had a debate with boys versus girls to see who could name more solutions to the problems they had generated about cocoa production. At the end, she even had an exit survey slip to see 1) What students had learned 2) What students liked about the lesson and 3) what students did not like. We took part of the afternoon to analyze their (all 80+ students) answers. 

My experience was VERY unique. Not one other US teacher had a similar experience. In practice, the majority of Ugandan teachers take the ‘teacher as the vessel of knowledge’ approach where they lecture the entire 40 – 80 minute period. Essentially, they dictate the information the textbook would contain, but since students don’t have textbooks, they write what the teacher writes (and explains, ideally) on the board. While this goes against every ‘best practice’ approach we know of in the US, I completely understand why it is done here. In short, with a class of around 100 students, minimal classroom space, minimal to no resources and pressure to convey all the necessary information students must know for the exams, lecturing is the most practical approach. Hopefully together though, we can work with our fellow Ugandan teachers to share ideas for interactive learning and test them out in class. I’m looking forward to observing a few more times before I’m ready to hop in and teach (especially in Math!), however Alice and I already developed the lesson plans for the rest of this week and I think I’m diving right in with her on Wednesday. I think. You’ll find out soon enough how that goes!!!

Classic 'first day of school' pic, just like Mom used to take:)

Headache inducing schedule