Today was orientation day for me, which meant a lot of walking. First thing this morning (around 6am), I woke u and got ready with the other volunteers who had to start teaching between 8 and 9. Hollie made tea on the stove in our closet kitchen and I had passion fruit for the first time with a piece of somewhat stale bread. I learned though, that putting bread on top of your tea almost makes toast!
When Sam came back (Sam is one of the project directors...I think) he took Kelly and Mijeung to work and I tagged along. We hailed a van (taxi) with, what in the states would be an illegal number of people, and proceeded to the school (I later discovered this is a taxi). Once we dropped them off, Sam took me to the school I will be teaching at. It was a very long walk and as I walked, the local kids kept screaming "how are you muzungu?!" I waved at them and they got a big kick out of a muzungu walking around Uganda.
The school is called Good Hope and it is in Bulenga where I am staying. I am suppose to be teaching English and Math to Primary 1 and Primary 2 classes. As soon as we got to the school, a little girl came up to me and gave me a big stool to sit on. Later, when Kelly and I were waklking back to the house from the same school, a little boy ran up to him from out of nowhere and grabbed him by the hand. He walked with us for a few meters and then broke off to hang with his brother.
I did see something really sad. There was a kid walking through the bushes, couldn't have been more than 2 years old, who looked to be malnourished. His belly was swollen and he was just standing there and he started crying. There was no one else around and it got me wondering how, with all these kids walking around by themselves, how do you tell the ones who are cared for from the ones who are orphaned? Too used to Western culture, I guess. I'm a social worker, I can't help it.
Kids here bathe naked...outside. It's even in their textbooks under the word "bathe." At home that would border along the lines of neglect and suspicion of something wrong. There goes my social work thinking again.
After Sam showed me some of the other projects, the wells and the pig farm, we came home for lunch. Once we got back I sat on the deck and figured out a lesson plan. I have no idea where the kids are in their education so I just wrote down page numbers and concepts in hopes that I will magically figure this all out tomorrow. The school was a brick building that is missing a ceiling, half the bricks on the walls, and windows. It also doubles as an orphanage. It amazes me that kids can learn and sit and pay attention in such poverty here, and back home half the kids don't want to learn or be at school because there schools are shitty, but better than here. How is the mentality that different? Somehow I don't feel like I have traveled THAT far from home.
Upon finishing lunch, Derrick informed me that my luggage had been delivered to Entebbe. Here are the modes of transportation Kelly--who graciously forfeited his own plans to accompany me to the airport--and I took: taxi van, taxi-van, boda-boda (my mother will kill me, by the way, after she googles this). Then it took about 30 minutes to get my bag, which they never checked :/ Then we took a bus to the outskirts of Kampala, wandered around the market place looking for his friend, ate rolex (an egg wrapped in a tortilla-like thing) and bananas, wandered back to take a van that took us to the taxi park, caught a taxi van to Bulenga and finally got off and walked down the dirt path back to the house. All of this took roughly 5 or 6 hours. Now, I've vinished my lesson plan and am exhausted. Good night!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment