25/02 – 26/02 ‘Teacher Jen’, what a joke!

This post is mainly for Charlie as he asked me before I left to go and visit Valley View Primary School. Hope (pronounced Hob…) is the P4 teacher and popped round to the Guest House a few days after a TAORP truck took a few people to visit the school. So after Livvy bailed this morning as she was still fast asleep, I went and met Hope and we started our looooooong boda ride.

To imagine this primary school, your need to think of pretty much the poorest school you can imagine, then multiply that by ten. The school was recently inspected and needs £25,000 invested in permanent building structures if not they’re going to have to close. They had someone who was on track to get the school £100,000 but unfortunately he got hit by truck a few months ago and his memory is pretty much non-existant.

I had to introduce myself in assembly in front of a few hundred kids as ‘the new Charlie’, and then anounced in class as Teacher Jen…how strange!! I spent the rest of the morning watching Hope’s Maths and English lessons, and I’m scheduled to teach next week Science and Maths.

The original toilets to the left, and Charlie’s brand spanking new toilets he built with help from Bujigali Trust last year on the right! :

 

A typical classroom:

Assembly was awesome, full of singing, dancing, clapping! The kids moved the desks from the classrooms and plonked them by a massive tree :

The soloists! :

P.S. The freaks in the room by the kitchen!!

18/02 - 24/02 Mazi or Mazzi??

So right now, I'm experiencing typical Ugandan time keeping (arranging to meet someone who just texted me saying they were going to be 2 hours late...), so this is my time filler for now!

So last Thursday and Monday I taught my first S1 class along with S2 just after. For some reason this particular S1 class all seem to be very old, more like 14 or 15 year olds rather than 12 year olds, and there's a white kid (!!), I think he's part Asian but there's some definate whiteness about him! But I must say, they are the most unresponsive class you could ever imagine. They won't even answer yes or no to me. They're just dull. SO MY PLAN is to get them out of their shells...somehow! My S2 class are a bit more entertaining, I've got this cheeky 17 year old who sits on the front row and repeats EVERYTHING I say mimicking my accent so I need to find a way to mock him back, any suggestions?! But at least they're not scared of answering my questions, but I did find myself in a sticky situation last lesson when one kid asked me how a cameleon changes colour to camouflage... Let's just say I was not smooth about getting out of that one!

Valley View didn't happen on Friday but it is this Friday...for 8am lessons...meaning I have to get up at STUPID o'clock as it's fairly far away.
The weekend was fairly uneventful, no stolen phones or anything this weekend! We went to see a Kiwi friend DJ at Sombreros on Friday night and it ended up being a club full of white people and about ten Ugandans! It was pretty weird actually. But a good night as we're getting to know the other gap year AVs (although they're not the most exciting bunch!) but there're 5 of them who are very cool - Brook is actually a friend of the Hampton boys we live with and he's a nutter, Hannah, Abbie and Rob are living in the same house in a little village with no running water (the guest house is apparently a palace in comparison!) and they're lovely, along with Mark who is your typical Irish man! Sunday was spent at the pool again :)

Tuesday was an INCREDIBLE day! For starters it was Sophie's birthday so we decided to go all out for her celebrations! At midnight Monday night, everyone stormed into our room with twenty pink and silver balloons, followed by Soph and Rach deciding to play crazy golf using balloons and jack fruit as golf balls (jack fruit are THE BIGGEST FRUIT I HAVE EVER SEEN!!). (Rach is another nutter in the group as displayed last Saturday night when she attempted to climb on the DJ podium four times while I was being told by the security guards that she will get her head chopped off by a fan on the ceiling if she continues, and attempted crowd surfing at least twice!).
In the morning, Soph, Connor, Ollie and I went with a lady called Fishy (yes, no joke, she's about 50 and her name is FISHY) to a HIV clinic in Bukeeka, about a 45 minute matatu ride out of Jinja, and we visited her clinic. Fishy is a trained nurse, midwife and missionary and her clinic is part of an international project called YWAM. We bumped into her on a matatu last week and after we got chatting, it turns out she's been here 9 years, is hosting 6 gap year students in Jinja for three months and their office is on the same road as us! Ollie spent most of the morning in the clinic lab and learnt how to test for malaria and HIV, and how to find malaria parasites in a blood sample. I spent my morning counting out pills into 'packets' which wasn't thrilling but I get to see them being distributed in the afternoon at an antenatal outreach programme! Connor, Soph and I followed Fishy to a mango tree in the village where they do their outreach. We were equipped with a blood pressure kit, a tape measure, a baby weigher, some vaccinations, contraceptives, and not much else. We saw about ten ladies with their babies so that involved checking the baby was a healthy weight for his age, checking the mothers' blood pressure and looking for anaemia. Usually everything was ok, it was very much a basic health check but if anything was unusual they were referred to a doctor in the local town. When were waiting for the women to arrive we were taught how to count in either Lusogan or Lugandan (I can't remember to save my life the differences in language!) and the differences between asking for mazi (water) or mazzi (poo). Not a good one to get wrong I feel. Whilst Connor entertained the local school children, Soph learnt how to take blood pressure and is a natural! I however am terrible but hopefully with a bit of practice I'll work it out! Connor and Soph had to go back into Jinja after lunch so I was left with Fishy and ten pregnant women. One of the women lends her home (a room with a bed) for the afternoon so at first I was watching Fishy check these ladies - finding out the position of the baby, finding the hearbeat, and measuring the bump to predict how far along they are (often the women don't know or pay attention to when their last period was). Fishy was explaining and teaching me the whole time and I ended up doing all this on five women (obviously being checked by Fishy)! IT WAS AWESOME. Everything was so simple, done manually with no machines and they've had to find ways with graphs etc. to replace what a computer program could do automatically. It makes you wonder how much they miss if something was wrong, or whether back to basics is actually all they need. They've asked us to back and help out on their busy outreach days.

As for the evening birthday celebrations, the twelve Guest Housers and the 5 AVs went to dinner at Gately on the Nile (the best restaurant in town) and it was AMAZING. For Ugandan standards it's expensive, but the food was so good (sweet and sour talapia with veg and rice, YUM) and actually, my main course was 16,000USh, about a fiver, and then drinks and desert ('Never Say Die Chocolate and Banana cake) was another 10,000USh, 3 pounds! Then the TAORP house had a party for Soph which was really lovely!

Anyway, time for my meeting...2 hours on! Love to all!

13/02 – 17/02 You’re pretty when the sun don’t shine <3

So the main event of this weekend, VALENTINE’S DAY!

But before that – a brief overview of our weekend, SWIMMING! It’s been boiling again so we’ve had the laziest weekend by the pool meeting the other gap year AVs – there’s about 30 of them staying in villages around Jinja but at the weekend they all flock to Backpackers so we’re getting to know them!

For you family members who would like to know the state of my bed area:

HOMELY ORGANISED CHAOS :) (Maman, note the bottles of water, deet, and travel first aid by my day pack! Bruv, the use of the woven bag. Marianne and Emran, your beaming faces over my bed! Old Man, the slightly red English skin tinge on my shoulders, YOUR FAULT.)

Friday night we experienced Ugandan Karaoke and Stand Up Comedy. It was TERRIBLE. The ‘karaoke’ was people dancing on stage and miming badly to reggae Ugandan music, and the stand up comedy was all in Lugandan so we didn’t have a clue what was going on except when it was obvious they were doing a ‘we hate gays’ sketch!

Sunday evening we went out to meet some friends, both English and Ugandan, and the boys from the Guest House were all acting very suspiciously – they were being mysterious, all huddling together and whispering – and Marianne had already found paper cut out hearts all over her pillow. Turns out they’d picked a girl’s name out of a hat and had to do a cheesy anonymous romantic gesture! When we got back to the Guest House, on the communal chalk board outside the kitchen he’d written the song lyrics ‘JENNY <3, You’re pretty when the sun don’t shine, I’m coming out to meet you, I’ll be there to make you mine. <3 xxx’ for EVERYONE to see! Rachel found a mirror on her bed saying ‘…so that you can always see your beautiful face <3 <3 <3’ (VOM). Sophie had a quote from ‘The Notebook’ - ‘I wrote you 365 letters, IT’S NOT OVER’ with a pile of 365 pieces of torn paper each with a letter from the alphabet. Liberty had the lyrics from ‘Hero’ written on individual pieces of paper - ‘Would you dance if I asked you to dance? Would you run and never look back? Would you cry if you saw me crying? Would you save my soul tonight? PS. I can be your hero.’ Livvy had a Queen of Hearts card with the poem ‘Diamonds are red, Clubs are not blue, Olivia is lovely and my heart is for you’ – naturally written by Connor! The cheesiness was INCREDIBLE, but it totally sums up the environment of the Guest House: everyone gets along so well, up for a laugh, and really look after eachother.

Monday I went into school for a short 2 hours to be told I’m not teaching S2 this week… So instead I went to the street kids project now named ASCO (African Street Children Organisation, it’s just completed the process to become a CBO and on it’s way to being a registered charity) and helped clean up the rented room. We sanded down all the walls, cleaned out and reorganised boxes as well as feeding, washing and entertaining the kids. The week’s aim is to clean and equip the room with desks, tables, chairs, lockable cupboards etc. and art materials to make paintings, t-shirts, frames and postcards which can then be sold to help sustain the running of the project. Eventually – when the project has enough money and is well established but this won’t happen for a long time – there will also be a hostel attached to it in order to get the kids off the street at night where they’re exposed to paraffin abuse and to just give them a roof over their heads!

Tuesday morning we were again back at ASCO, we painted the dingy dark room a bright blue and cream colour, although painting with the kids was a bit of a mission! They’d get bored half way through doing a section or paint blue over the cream or just painted themselves so we had to send them with the boys to play football while the girls were left slaving away!! A lick of paint does make all the difference though.

Then Son Rise in the afternoon! We met baby Steven who’d been isolated for the last couple of weeks due to measles. And I saw Brenda smile for the first time!! She’s been looking miserable since I started as she’s still recovering from TB and an ear infection but she seemed actually happy!

Wednesday, I went with the Ollie and Joe to Deseret Community School which is a rural primary school outside of Jinja. Originally, Connor and I were supposed to teach at Lake Site as part of the BCS link but due to them still illegally using corporal punishment on the kids (that was definately not a pleasant experience to watch, it was the first and only time I’ve cried since I’ve been here) I refused to go back and in the end, the link has been cut and we’re looking at other schools/projects BCS can support. So Deseret Community School is basically one permanent  brick building for 2 classrooms and 3 tin shacks at the end of a long dirt track. I turned up with Ollie, was introduced and then sent to a P3 class in the brick building to teach English straight away! I spent an hour and twenty minutes explaining and doing exercises on ‘There is’ and ‘There are’… but the partition between the classrooms is a tin barrier with open space at the top so all the time I could hear Ollie’s P4 class repeating ‘OX-ygen’ and ‘phototheeeeesis’! But I really enjoyed the overall experience and they will pretty much welcome me at any time of day there, they’re pretty desperate for any help. Really simple ways to help the school would be to buy them new blackboards as theirs are flaking bits of dried plants painted black stuck to a wall.

Friday I plan to visit Valley View, another really poor rural primary school which was recently inspected and was told they have to invest £25,000 in new buildings otherwise the school has to close. Charlie and other gap year students from last year got involved with Valley View and built them toilets with help from the Bujigali Trust and made them lesson timetables etc. so it’s obvious it’s a school that needs a lot of help!

I apologise for the essay… !!

Loveee an’ ting

09/02 – 12/02 GET INVOLVED!!

I’m not going to lie, I have spent most of my time at Son Rise, AND I LOVE IT!

I went to Welcome Home Orphanage on Tuesday with Sophie (who by the way just called me fat!!) but if I’m honest we felt a bit like lemons there – the kids have toys, climbing frames, slides, colouring books and crayons with a fair few helpers there already so after a few hours of attempting to get involved we swiftly left. Son Rise in comparison has the bare minimum - only a few toys, not a lot of outdoor play space…and not a lot of indoor play space for that matter, and you feel so much more involved with the kids which is probably both good and bad.

In the evening Marianne (HYT girl who happens to be half french too!) and I cooked a mean jacket potato extravaganza for 12 which in all honesty is surprisingly difficult when you’re not sure if there’s enough gas for the oven…

Wednesday, I went back to Son Rise with Sophie and Liberty. Little legend Mark seems to be a big hit with everyone, Liberty didn’t let go of him for about 3 hours! We took them out into the garden/patio area and the kids went MENTAL. Apparently it was the first time they’d been beyond the balcony of the front door in weeks because of children in the area being taken from gardens and used in tribal sacrifices. There’d been 4 murders in the last few weeks alone. I was so paranoid we were going to lose one I was doing head counts every five minutes! But that’s another reason for us to go there, something as simple as having a couple more volunteers means the children can go outside. A couple more from Son Rise (we apologise for the sweatiness, it was a particularly hot day!) …

Brenda (who is the smallest one year old I’ve ever seen due to malnutrition and now has an ear infection):

Sophie with Gift and Livvy with the legend that is Mark!:

Gift, she’d only returned to the orphanage on Monday as she was in hospital suffering from diarrhoea and fever:

 

Edwin and Catherine stealing our shoes!:

 

And Thursday, I TAUGHT MY FIRST LESSON!! It was to a Senior 2 (Year 9 equivalent) class of around 50 kids ranging from 13 years old to at least 17 years old (!!) - if a family can’t pay senior education, their children’s education can be delayed by years. So I taught Biology, more precisely Insects, more precisely the legs of the honey bee and the life cycles. Needless to say I had to learn all of this from scratch in the days leading up to my lesson! At first I was so nervous to get up in front of all those faces staring at the mzungu attempting to spit out some words, but it got better! By the end of the lesson, they were getting involved in my mini pop quizzes and shouting out answers, laughing at the way I spoke so I ended up laughing at them laughing at me :) not the best way to show authority but at least they were warming to me and hopefully learning at the same time! Next week is mid term exams (naturally delayed by two weeks) so I have no idea if I’m teaching or not, but I know I’m finishing off the butterfly with S2 at some point, then moving onto Grains. Exactly the Biology I love. Not.

Needless to say I then spent the afternoon at Son Rise again :D

In the evening we had THE BIG NIGHT IN. Connor whipped up an awesome meal of marinated chicken with rice and fresh peas and carrots from the market, then we all slobbed in front of ‘The Notebook’ with only 4 girls and 2 guys making it to the end crying our eyes out!

Today, Connor and I went to Lake Site Primary SchoolIt’s a poor – it’s rural school over a gorgeous setting of Lake Victoria. We had our first experience of anger at the culture difference, let’s just say we’re a bit unsure of going back next week.

View from P1 Blue classroom:

Lake Victoria from a boda:

 

Loveeee x

06/02 – 08/02 Standard Socialising!

The weekend’s been pretty busy!

Friday night we were invited by a guy called Moses who’s a painter to a party at Kiira Kids International. We weren’t sure at all what to expect but it ended up being an evening with us twelve from the guest house, some other volunteers from England and Germany, and Ugandans who run different charity projects. The idea of the evening was to get to know us and to talk to us about their projects as most of them are funded out of their own pockets. For example, Moses runs the Street Kids project, he picks up kids begging off the streets in the mornings and takes them to a room off Main St which he rents with money from his paintings. A lot of the time the kids need to go to hospital because of infected cuts and illnesses and the treatment is again paid for by Moses and the volunteers, so hopefully the idea is to get sponsership from England. In the weekdays they teach them literacy and art but in the evening the kids have nowhere to go but the streets again. Another guy we met was running Son Rise baby orphanage with his sister out of their own pocket as well. They have 15 to 20 babies at one time and when they arrive they’re often suffering from malnutrition and are suspected HIV positive. Again, they’re looking to English charities for sponsership. We then all went to Nile View casino and nightclub for some more lighthearted socialising!

A couple of the boys at the Guest House have joined Jinja Nile rugby club and played a team with 7 Ugandan national team players on Saturday…needless to say the defeat resembled a true BCS match! In the evening we went to a rafting campsite and watched an Ozzie/Kiwi band play some timeless classics, was AWESOME :)

Yesterday (Monday) Joe, Dom and myself went to Son Rise Orphanage. At the party on Friday we met Moses’ brother, Joseph, who runs this orphanage with his sister out of their own pocket as well. They have around 15 babies at one time ranging from new borns (the youngest is ten days old!) to 2 years old. They often arrive suffering from illnesses such as TB, malnutrition or malaria but luckily at the moment none of them are HIV positive. We arrived as the older kids were having lunch, had a tour around and then got stuck in. Mark, a 3 month old baby who had previously suffered from malnutrition, is a little legend! But it was great fun to be silly with the kids although by 6pm we were EXHAUSTED! They have so much energy and seem pretty happy, well fed and loved :)

Joe with Ali:

Dom with Trust (I think…) and Junior:

Loving it here so far, we’re finally getting stuck in to projects now. My clothes are pretty much orange because of the dust, I’m constantly washing my feet and hair, ants are EVERYWHERE (shower, washbasin, bread!) and the birds out here are HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE! Here are a couple of pictures SO FAR…

The Busoga Trust Guest House:

The graduation party on our first day:

My roomies, Sophie and Rachel:

10/12 of the gap years at the Guest House:

Swimming at the Nile Resort:

The MASSIVE birds:

Lots of love and stuff <3

01/02 – 05/02 Monsoon season looms!

So there goes our first Monday to Friday week! I’m not going to lie, right now I feel so unbelievably chilled – watching the sun set from the Guest House Garden with one of the Hampton guys playing the guitar eating the juiciest mango ever :)

We started the week with Martin and Gerald showing us different places in Jinja – Welcome Home Orphanage, quite a rich from donations orphanage with around 70 kids from newborn babies to 4 or 5 years old; Child Restoration Outreach, a street kids charity; Lake Site Primary School, the link primary school to BCS in the most gorgeous setting just above Lake Victoria but pretty poor, broken glass in all the windows and right by the fish port where the smell is a slap in the face!

Tuesday, I went back to Welcome Home to meet the manager. He was supposed to be out for five minutes, but FORTY FIVE MINUTES later, I was still waiting. The way Ugandans treat time (why do something today when you can do it tomorrow?!) can be quite convenient sometimes but other times, like waiting for a bottle of water in a cafe, it can be the most frustrating thing! While I was waiting, the 2 – 5 year olds had be let out of their playground and about twenty of them ran to me shouting and were stroking my arms and legs because of my white skin. It’s strange because you don’t see them as children with no parents because they look so happy!

Wednesday, I went into school with Connor for 8:30am to arrange out timetable and I was finished by 9am! The afternoon we decided to go to swimming at Nile Resort (amazing views over the River Nile but quite a western hotel) as we were MELTING in the heat of the day, and then came the first rain of our trip! It rained it down REALLY HARD for about half an hour, then stopped and an hour later it was bright blue sky again! But since then it’s been a lot cooler and so much more bearable, THANK GOD.

Thursday was my first day at St James’. The Biology teacher whose lessons I will eventually be taking over is called Ben, really nice, and is actually quite interactive with the kids, however unresponsive they are! I’ll be teaching S1 and S2 classes and my first lesson teaching is next Thursday!!!! But fortunately Ben will be there watching! The afternoon was quite interesting as there was no running water in the whole of Jinja from midday until the middle of the night – no running taps, no showers, no flushing toilets, no water to boil to cook! NIGHTMARE.

Today, we had the day off (with running water again!) :) However, getting money from ATMs here is a bit of a mission. Despite everywhere saying they accept Visa cards, so far my debit card works in 2/6 mainstream banks but quite often the ATM machines aren’t working anyway… The rest of the day was spent at the market which smells pretty funky, but we bought the most delicious mangos I’ve ever tasted!!

29/1 – 31/1 So you thought Speech Day was bad…

 

So the flights were loooong but luckily in the 21st century KLM have a library of films and interactive sudoku for us to keep ourselves entertained! Martin (link man) and Fred (head at St James') picked us up and we experienced the CRAZY Ugandan driving. We almost died about five times because lorries decided to overtake in front of us!

The Guest House is awesome, by the time we'd got there everyone had already arrived, there are 12 of us in total from 5 different schools. It's very nice to go out for the day in Jinja or go the schools and be able to come back to people in exactly the same position as you, finding everything as weird as you do or as shocking! I'm sharing a room with 2 girls from Wolverhampton who are really nice :)

Saturday, we went to a Graduation Ceremony. So this involved a mass to bless the graduates and then (I feel I have to emphasise this point) 4 HOURS OF SPEECHES, I am not even exagerating! There was speeches from about five women claiming to be the graduate’s mother, one father, two grandparents, about 100000 friends, head teachers, primary school teachers, you name it – they speeched it (in English and Lusogan to make it better!). Even Martin said it was ridiculous how long it was! But the food - motoke (banana and potato), beans, posho (corn starch), g-nut sauce (grey peanut butter tasting liquidy slop) and rice - and the dancing with the locals totally made up for the most boring hours of my life! We met so many people who welcomed us and made some friends who've offered to show us the best places in town. We finished the night in a club called Sombreros which was AWESOME although it did kindof smell of the 80s room at Oceana!

On Sunday night we went to Martin's pub to watch the football on Sky. It's more of a shack which in England would probably hold 30 to 40 people but this one had 170 Ugandans squeezed on 15 benches watching two different games on 3 TV sets. It was very odd. But Martin took good care of us and bought us a Rolex (chapati type pancake with egg rolled in it, it's SO GOOD) so we're going back this Sunday to help him and Grace (his wife) serve the drinks.

The weather is pretty intense, it's apparently the hottest month in 5 years making it fairly difficult to cover up!!

Love to everyone :)