The school term started about 2 weeks ago with beginning-of-term exams and I started teaching this past Monday. Let’s just say that it’s be a bit busy around here and my responsibilities seemed to have grown exponentially during the time I’ve spent grading about 150 exams, attending staff meetings, and making syllabi and lesson plans. In the time since I wrote my last blog entry, I have acquired three night biology classes, at least two computer classes (this might increase) and have become a dorm mistress for about 120 girls (thankfully, this does not actually mean I have to live in the dorm—which consists of 60 girls crammed into a room with 3 rows of bunk beds about 2 feet apart from each other—it just means that I have to make sure they clean their room and the surrounding compound (my parents joked with me that this is all those times I was reluctant to clean my room catching up to me and kicking me in the butt)). The schedule itself is not too bad, except for Wednesday when I teach from 8am to 830pm (4 double periods/80 minute classes and 1 triple period). It’s an absolute trip to go from 70 girls in my first double to a triple period with just two girls (an advanced level class) and then back to another 70. Teaching computers is especially interesting because it’s a crammed classroom of 3 girls to a computer with all of the girls really getting experience on the computer for the first time, once a week, for 80 minutes: last year, this class only got through booting up and shutting down the computer. The staff is a fun bunch and most seem to work really hard (we are definitely understaffed). There are about three times more men than women on the staff and the ages are quite mixed, but they seem to still all get along well and are very welcoming to me (helping me with my Acholi and filling my head with such questions as “I hear that no blacks in America can get any job but manual labor, is it true? How can I transfer to be a teacher in America? I hear that it has been scientifically proven that the world will end in 2012. What do you know about the Mayans? What do you think about Obama, Hilary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Dolly Parton?....). There are a few others who don’t speak Acholi (I actually know more than them…which is quite a shocker) since they are either from Central Uganda or Northwest Uganda so some of the conversations/jokes are actually in English which makes life a bit easier. I have really lucked out with my head teacher/principal (who is my closest neighbor at about 10 feet away and spends a good amount of time with family in Kampala, but is an extremely strong and admirable woman). She has been quite supportive during my settling-in period and is a leader in the community who will be a great asset to me if/when I start working with groups outside of the school for my secondary projects (she even bought me seeds for my garden and lent me the book “Girl with a Dragon Tattoo). For those of you musically or religiously inclined, you would really enjoy spending a day on my campus. These girls are singing their praises to the Lord with drums every morning and all day on the weekends…mixed with those Xena-type yells of theirs, it really hits it home that I live in Africa.
I was told by a returned Peace Corps Volunteer that the biggest compliment that she ever received during her service was someone referring to her as a man, not a woman. Here, where women are credited with a lot of the work, I find it quite nice when people look at me and say “Here is a real Ugandan/African woman,” usually partnered with a comment like: “It’s hard to be an African woman.”
To end this entry on a funny note, I refer you all to Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven” http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html.... well in my case, I heard this scratching from my bathroom the other morning at around 6am. Now, I am blessed with a flush toilet, but it is a bit tempermental (to put it lightly) so after hearing this scratching for a few minutes, I thought I'd better go check to see if there were about to be an explosion of some sort. Now, I'm a good girl and I always put down the lid of the toilet and this morning, there it was, closed with no possible way for anything to get in unless from below...but lo, I open the lid to see a large rat trying desperately to claw its way out. I had pity on his soul and used a scrubber to help him out, but then the schmuck pulled a fast one on me somewhere between the toilet and my front door and has been causing mayhem in my rafters (I fear that he has been trying to eat his way through my thatched roof which would just me no fun for me). Last night was the night that he finally wore out his welcome and I set a trap for him using horrible tasting little dried fish and a pill called Indocin, but the mystery remains: how did that rat get into my closed toilet? I even looked for an outside way in without success and have a strange fear that if (as said in Finding Nemo) "all drains lead to the Ocean" what leads to my toilet? I think this is the only time in my life that I would prefer a pit latrine.
Many of the girls have requested American Pen Pals (if you have a class that you want to connect to some Ugandan students or if you yourself have an interest, just send me an email). This is not sponsorship or anything like that, just letters.
Should you not want to communicate with Uganda Secondary students, but rather with me, please feel free to send me an update on your life via email, mail, or now by skype! (my username is heather_pasley and the reception is not amazing, but it’s possible)
Thinking about you all often.
PS. As you see in this blog entry, there are pictures of my house on the inside! Here you can see my machete, hoe, and brooms next to my desk with my exams piled on top, the bookshelf I had built with a bit of William and Mary memorabilia on the side, the nested tables I had built to complete my compact cooking space of hanging food and a temporary non-exploding stove, and finally a picture of my bed and the guest bed you would be staying on should you visit here. Please note that lining the inside of the hut are pictures of all of you which really make this place feel like home.
I was told by a returned Peace Corps Volunteer that the biggest compliment that she ever received during her service was someone referring to her as a man, not a woman. Here, where women are credited with a lot of the work, I find it quite nice when people look at me and say “Here is a real Ugandan/African woman,” usually partnered with a comment like: “It’s hard to be an African woman.”
To end this entry on a funny note, I refer you all to Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Raven” http://www.heise.de/ix/raven/Literature/Lore/TheRaven.html.... well in my case, I heard this scratching from my bathroom the other morning at around 6am. Now, I am blessed with a flush toilet, but it is a bit tempermental (to put it lightly) so after hearing this scratching for a few minutes, I thought I'd better go check to see if there were about to be an explosion of some sort. Now, I'm a good girl and I always put down the lid of the toilet and this morning, there it was, closed with no possible way for anything to get in unless from below...but lo, I open the lid to see a large rat trying desperately to claw its way out. I had pity on his soul and used a scrubber to help him out, but then the schmuck pulled a fast one on me somewhere between the toilet and my front door and has been causing mayhem in my rafters (I fear that he has been trying to eat his way through my thatched roof which would just me no fun for me). Last night was the night that he finally wore out his welcome and I set a trap for him using horrible tasting little dried fish and a pill called Indocin, but the mystery remains: how did that rat get into my closed toilet? I even looked for an outside way in without success and have a strange fear that if (as said in Finding Nemo) "all drains lead to the Ocean" what leads to my toilet? I think this is the only time in my life that I would prefer a pit latrine.
Many of the girls have requested American Pen Pals (if you have a class that you want to connect to some Ugandan students or if you yourself have an interest, just send me an email). This is not sponsorship or anything like that, just letters.
Should you not want to communicate with Uganda Secondary students, but rather with me, please feel free to send me an update on your life via email, mail, or now by skype! (my username is heather_pasley and the reception is not amazing, but it’s possible)
Thinking about you all often.
PS. As you see in this blog entry, there are pictures of my house on the inside! Here you can see my machete, hoe, and brooms next to my desk with my exams piled on top, the bookshelf I had built with a bit of William and Mary memorabilia on the side, the nested tables I had built to complete my compact cooking space of hanging food and a temporary non-exploding stove, and finally a picture of my bed and the guest bed you would be staying on should you visit here. Please note that lining the inside of the hut are pictures of all of you which really make this place feel like home.
