Holla From Kampala: True Confessions

One year ago, I came to Namengo Girls for “future site visit.” I was reading through my site visit blog post and I realized that I seriously played down my experience. I did not want to freak out all of you back home and have you thinking that I was going to be miserable for the next two years. Now that I have been at site for almost a year, and I can honestly say that I love it, I will tell you how I actually felt about future site visit.

Let me just start of by saying that I did not have a “great time” like I led you all to believe. I was honest about one thing in my blog: future site visit was a reality check. For eight weeks, I was in the company of 43 other Americans and I was living in a really nice homestay. I was completely thrown for a loop when I arrived at Namengo Girls and saw where I would be living for the next two years. I think the best word to describe my future site visit experience is “terrifying” – it was a three-day anxiety attack. First of all, my house was pretty dirty when I arrived. The walls were black in some parts, there were tiny bugs everywhere, and there were tons of termite mounds. The electricity looked like an 8-year old had hooked it up because there were stray wires everywhere. The house was barren because I did not have any of my things with me except for a few changes of clothes – it did not feel like “home.” My neighbors and fellow teachers came to greet me, but it was really overwhelming and I couldn’t keep their names straight. Also, I had to completely rely on Sauya for my food, drinks, and bathing water – I felt pretty helpless as I sat on my couch waiting for my dinner to be delivered.

Cosmas, my counterpart, was not aware that I would be in town for future site visit. He picked me up when I arrived, but he had prior engagements for the next three days. Therefore, I had nothing to do. I awkwardly roamed around the school compound and introduced myself to students and teachers. All of the students stared at me – they were probably wondering whom this crazy mzungu was and why she was staying at Namengo. There was a lot of awkward small talk. Fortunately, I had at least brought a book to read. Unfortunately, I was reading the Stieg Larson series at the time. Nothing like a book with rape, murder, and kidnapping to make me feel super safe in an unfamiliar environment…NOT! I do not think I slept a wink during those three nights – I kept hearing strange noises and I was unsure about the security of my flimsy, wooden, front and back doors. I was also sleeping in a bed with someone else’s sheets and I was unsure of their cleanliness.

I went through a ton of airtime those three days texting Ryan, Caroline and Bethany. Most of our texts were “GET ME OUT OF HERE!” or “Is it Saturday, yet?” We all felt the same way and we could not wait until it was finally time to leave. I could not get away fast enough on Saturday. Jennifer and Annette (teachers), however, insisted that I take lunch before I left. Of course, lunch was late to arrive and then it started to pour rain. I thought I was going to be stranded another night and I was going to have a full-blown panic attack. The rain finally let up and I made a mad dash for the Budaka taxi stage. Caroline, Ryan, and I all met up so we could travel back together. I wish there was a photo of us reuniting – the look of relief on our faces was probably priceless. Misery really does enjoy company because for the next four hours we discussed our awful and awkward experiences at future site visit. We kept saying, “Thank god it’s over!” and “What are we going to do when we actually have to live there.” We kept trying to reassure each other and ourselves that it would be different when we actually had our things with us. In the back of our minds, however, I think we were all thinking, “What did I just sign up for? I want to go home, now!” Rest assured, though, I am now very happy at Namengo Girls and I do not want to come home.

As you might recall, a couple of weeks ago, Cosmas and I held a Learning Aids Workshop for the five model schools in Budaka. On Wednesday, we went to each of the five schools in order to check to see if they were actually using learning aids and developing resource rooms. My supervisor, Noel, and his colleague, Bernadette, even came from St. Aloysius Core PTC in order to check out our work. (PTC = Primary Teachers College. All the Coordinating Centers work under a PTC). Noel provided an evaluation form for Bernadette and me so that we could all three evaluate the resource rooms and learning aids. (Cosmas did not evaluate because he didn’t think he would be objective). We started at Budaka FHP, which is where our Coordinating Center is located, so it is supposed to hold the main resource room for the schools in the district. I was pretty impressed with the teachers’ work because a month ago, the room was completely bare. The teachers had a ton of learning aids and some of the activities were pretty creative. As soon as we started our observations, however, I realized that this was going to be a long day. Noel and Bernadette critiqued every single learning aid. Here are some of the critiques:

- “Your letters in the title are too squished together. And the title is not in the center”

- “Why did you put the article ‘a’ before ‘fish?’ You should just write ‘Fish’ because ‘A Fish’ is confusing.”

- “You did not write in a straight line, this should be redone.” (This was an elaborate learning aid of the human heart, and the line was only slightly crooked. It looked perfectly fine to me).

- “There are too many questions on this activity, students will get confused.”

- “There are too little questions on this activity.”

- “The colors you used here are no good – they are not friendly for students.”

The whole time I was glaring and thinking, “Are you serious right now?!” I was really annoyed and the observing process was taking an hour and a half instead of the allotted 30 minutes. The teachers were clearly proud of their work and wanted to show it off, but they were being critiqued on very minor details. Needless to say, I was starting to get in a bad mood. I was also hungry. Not a very good combination. (Thankfully, the headmaster, Chris, gave me some biscuits and a soda!).

Noel had a car, so we were able to drive to the other four schools, which was great. We visited Kabuna down the road, which had developed a sub-par resource room. A lot of the learning aids had spelling errors and it looked like the teachers had pulled a few things together at the last minute. I do not think any of these learning aids were actually used in the classroom either. Also, the resource room was tiny and all of the teachers were inside to observe. I was so hot and I was profusely sweating – I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. There was, however, this really awesome list of PIASCY Questions in the Resource room:

No, there was not an answer key – so you will just have to answer these questions yourselves. (PIASCY = Presidential Initiative on AIDS Strategy for Communication to Youth).

Afterwards, we went to Namirembe Primary, which had a pretty decent resource room. By that point, it was 3:00 and I had not eaten lunch, yet. I was so hungry and I just wanted to get to Namengo Girls because they were providing lunch. Namengo, of course, had the best resource room with the most creative learning aids. (Okay, I’m probably not the most objective observer!) Sister Goretti prepared a delicious lunch for us too – rice, matoke, chicken, potatoes, greens and fish. We also got another soda! (Yes, this is considered very exciting. My life is a little pathetic). The good meal gave me the extra push I needed for the last school, Butove. We did not get there until 5:00 (way behind schedule!) so we went quickly because the teachers were anxious to leave. Overall, I was impressed that most of the schools were serious about creating and using learning aids – hopefully they keep it up!

Chelsea came over on Thursday because she wanted me to help her cut cloth for RUMPS (Re-usable Menstrual Pads). She is doing this as a secondary project for girl students in upper primary, which is great. A lot of girls do not come to school when they have their period because they do not have access to disposable pads (they are very expensive). Also, there is no health education in Uganda, so most girls do not understand what is going on with their body. Chelsea is going to be teaching girls how to make their own re-usable menstrual pads out of inexpensive, local materials and teach them about the menstrual cycle. I helped her cut out over 200 pieces of cloth that will be used as the base of the pad. (Chelsea will teach the girls how to sew it all together at her workshop). I was glad I could help because it’s a great project – I don’t think I’m mature enough to actually lead this type of workshop because I’d probably laugh every time I said “menstruation” or talked about sex. After we finished cutting, we decided to go for a run. (This month is Active April after all of the eating we did in Kampala!). People are usually pretty excited when they see me running and kids love to follow after me. On Thursday, there were TWO mzungu running – kids were going nuts.

Students are taking their exams, now, so I am done with work for this term. The books from the Libraries for Life project are arriving in ONE month, so I have a lot of work to do to get my school organized. We need to build more bookshelves and get more tables and chairs for the library. Hopefully we can get that all done before the books get here!
I hope you all have a wonderful Easter! I just watched Ice Age and The Lion King with my neighbors' kids. I'm banking on being invited to a really good Easter dinner tonight :)