Friday, November 5, 2010

Here I am...in Uganda

Please accept my humblest apologies for “being lost” (in Ugandan English, this means “being absent, unseen, etc.”) for the past 2 months, but we have been without power basically for the past 2 months (these past 36 hours have been the longest I’ve had power, much less power that is stable enough to charge a computer—knock on wood). The secret plan (don’t tell the Kitgum Local Government) is to charge into town backed by 900 YY Okot students with torches and burn down the power company’s office—I think somebody may have informed the company of this plan and so poof, we have power.
The term is almost at an end with about a week and a half of classes left before exams, one week of duty for me (this is the time that I and two other teachers take our turn running the school), exams, and a variety of activities that I’ll talk about in just a bit. Most of the Ordinary Level candidates (Senior 4) have finished their exams and are now leaving the school and eagerly (or fearfully) awaiting the results of the tests that will determine if they can continue in school. At the same time that our non-candidate students take their internal exams in a little less than 2 weeks, our Advanced Level candidates (S6) will take their exams that will determine if they can continue in school (university or a national teacher’s college). In other words, especially with the lack of power, this has been a bit of a stressful term for everyone.
All in all, however, life is good. My house is a bit roomier now that I have removed the guest bed (those of you bold enough to visit me, don’t worry, there’s still a mattress and a nice cold cement floor…) so that in the near future some female teachers and I can start doing yoga and ab workout sessions in my hut…truly, it probably will be just as ridiculous as it sounds. Also in the near future (before the end of the term), my debate club will host a debate tournament in the school, my life skills club will host a Music, Dance and Drama competition (complete with our Senior 5’s leading the audience in Christmas carols in between the performances) and will start their bee keeping project, and some absolutely wonderful Peace Corps volunteers of Kitgum and Gulu are going to help me, the kitchen staff, and the newly reactivated Green Club build an industrial mud stove for our kitchen so that we can save money and not use as much firewood.
These things, however, are yet to come and so let us turn to the past and present so you have a better sense what’s shaking in Kitgum. PC hosted a life skills training outside Kampala for my Training Group about a week ago, which was great, but nothing compared to the hospitality I experienced in Lira as I visited Bernadette (pictured with her awesome counterpart—probably one of the strongest women I’ve met—in a typical primary school classroom, minus the 100+ students) and Hellen (pictured with her Women’s group making and teaching me how to make bar soap). Both are phenomenal volunteers, and really an inspiration to visit. As you read this, there are some 500 or so novels trying desperately somewhere in Southern Uganda (or for 50 of them (if we are unlucky) somewhere in or over the Atlantic Ocean) to reach a cute little room in YY Okot’s library. In other words, the book project or mission “Bring Fun Books to YY Okot” is alive and well and about to reach a home near me. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this mission, the English department here is always complaining about how the girls write very poorly in English. Most girls don’t own any books (if they do, it’s probably the Bible which (as any of you who have tried or succeeded to read the Bible before can attest) is not an easy read) and rarely, if ever, check out a book from the library. Should they want to check a book out of the library, they can choose a text book or an abridged or unabridged classic novel (Charles Dickens and the like). If you are good at reading English, this is fine, but if you are not, you probably avoid the library like the plague. I fully believe, however, that everyone has an avid reader within them and that they just need the spark of a certain good “fun” book to bring it out (example: Harry Potter phenomenon). I do fear with all my heart the variety of books that I will get from these book donation places, but in the words of PCV Zach Bagley (also in Kitgum), I “don’t let them (the students, teachers, and administration) see fear in [my] eyes.”
Also, yesterday, my life skills club, counterpart, and I made our first 40L of liquid soap (it was the first chemistry experiment I have done under a mango tree, stirring with bamboo sticks, next to a hut, but definitely not the last). We have hypothesized that it will be a huge success, but we have to let the soap sit for a week before we know for certain and can start reining in the business. All in all, I greatly miss all of my lab books with exact instructions since yesterday we were getting 3 different sets of instructions and deciding to do a nice little mixture of the three (I’m sure Madam Marie Curie worked in the same way once upon a time…but of course, I hope we are more successful in the long run than she).
Other projects on the horizon: Bar Soap making with a local women’s group (I’m going to have no excuse for not being squeaky clean 24/7 with 2 sources of soap at my fingertips), World Map Mural (for next term), having the girls of my Life skills club teach how to make reusable menstrual pads to the teachers (at the end of the term) and to primary school students/local women’s groups (next term), and lastly, but not least, GLOW camp. GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) camp is happening for the first time in Uganda at the end of this term (it’s a program that focuses on girl empowerment and occurs in a lot of PC countries already—the new head of the PC wants it to spread to more countries). My counterpart and I will transport 12 girls from Kitgum/Gulu to Kampala, be counselors for the camp for about a week, and then I, after saying a few Hail Mary’s, will transport 15 back to Kitgum/Gulu.
Funniest things that I now am used to:
1) Seeing “brown” people (this is not Indian, this is basically the
color of most African Americans in America) and for a split second, thinking they are white—no joke, I do it all the time
2) About a third of the teachers at my school have a ring tone of
Obama giving a speech: “America, we cannot turn back….”—I die every time
I wish you all a bit belated Happy Halloween and an early Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you everyone who has written me (I have a stack of letters that I’ll send out as soon as this week (I’m on duty right now) is over and I’m once again allowed to leave the campus). Please know that I get a ridiculously big smile on my face every time I read a letter or email about you all (think the Grinch’s smile in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”).