Sorry that it has been soooo long since my last update. The month of October just flew by because I was working a TON, like 60+ hour weeks. I’ve sent some of this post out via e-mail, so sorry for the repeat if you’ve already seen it. But I think it’s the best summary I have of the past MONTH, can’t believe it!
Sooo where to begin. First, I have a funny story to tell from a several weekends ago…I went to
watch the Uganda vs Kenya soccer game on TV in Mbale, and we met up with one of the other teachers at the school to watch it at this bar called Thatch. The bar was really nice, and had a big thatch roofed building and a gated grass/patio area. So anyways, after the game, they turned on music and eventually the placed turned in to this huggggeee dance party, haha. It was amazing! As you all well know, I am not a good dancer by any means, zero rhythm. And I rank that by American standards and now I'm in Uganda were I feel like almost everyone is an awesome dancer. I have little kids shimmy better than me, haha... But anyways, at this dance party, my roommate made friends with these 2 guys who took pity on my white self and taught me how to dance Ugandan style, hahah. It was GREAT! I may have also shown them how to crip walk, that was the only dance move I had to offer that they seemed even a little impressed with, haha. All in all, it was a really fun night!
Other than that, its been mostly work work work for me. At the beginning of October, AAH started a new outreach project where we distribute practice PLE exams to local government schools who normally can’t afford to print tests for their students. The PLE is a national exam that 7th graders have to pass in order to continue on to secondary school. Our district has a pretty high failure rate, around 35%, and to fail these exams you have to score below a 30% in 4 subject areas. It is reflective of the many challenges in our district's school system that the failure rate is so high. In addition, the student's score determines how good of a secondary school they can go to, so the PLE is a pretty big deal for them. In the initiation of the program, I was new and didn’t know anything, so the headteacher put together the list of schools that were to participate and the number of 7th graders at each school. Unfortunately, the contact he used for schools in the district next to us got the numbers wrong. Sooo we were short by about 150 “sets” of exams (include 4 tests/set) that we had already promised to these schools. We had ordered the tests from Kampala and to order more would be too expensive, so instead, we decided to print them at AAH on our duplicating machine. Tests are 8-10 pages each. Power was gone most of the time. Then, even when power was there the duplicating machine “on” switch would not work. So we hand cranked 3 sets of 150 exams each with 4 subjects. Do the math, and that’s about 1,800 tests… Times 10 pages each, makes about 18,000 pages copied, haha. You either laugh or you cry, right? It. Was. Epic.
Sooo where to begin. First, I have a funny story to tell from a several weekends ago…I went to
watch the Uganda vs Kenya soccer game on TV in Mbale, and we met up with one of the other teachers at the school to watch it at this bar called Thatch. The bar was really nice, and had a big thatch roofed building and a gated grass/patio area. So anyways, after the game, they turned on music and eventually the placed turned in to this huggggeee dance party, haha. It was amazing! As you all well know, I am not a good dancer by any means, zero rhythm. And I rank that by American standards and now I'm in Uganda were I feel like almost everyone is an awesome dancer. I have little kids shimmy better than me, haha... But anyways, at this dance party, my roommate made friends with these 2 guys who took pity on my white self and taught me how to dance Ugandan style, hahah. It was GREAT! I may have also shown them how to crip walk, that was the only dance move I had to offer that they seemed even a little impressed with, haha. All in all, it was a really fun night!
Other than that, its been mostly work work work for me. At the beginning of October, AAH started a new outreach project where we distribute practice PLE exams to local government schools who normally can’t afford to print tests for their students. The PLE is a national exam that 7th graders have to pass in order to continue on to secondary school. Our district has a pretty high failure rate, around 35%, and to fail these exams you have to score below a 30% in 4 subject areas. It is reflective of the many challenges in our district's school system that the failure rate is so high. In addition, the student's score determines how good of a secondary school they can go to, so the PLE is a pretty big deal for them. In the initiation of the program, I was new and didn’t know anything, so the headteacher put together the list of schools that were to participate and the number of 7th graders at each school. Unfortunately, the contact he used for schools in the district next to us got the numbers wrong. Sooo we were short by about 150 “sets” of exams (include 4 tests/set) that we had already promised to these schools. We had ordered the tests from Kampala and to order more would be too expensive, so instead, we decided to print them at AAH on our duplicating machine. Tests are 8-10 pages each. Power was gone most of the time. Then, even when power was there the duplicating machine “on” switch would not work. So we hand cranked 3 sets of 150 exams each with 4 subjects. Do the math, and that’s about 1,800 tests… Times 10 pages each, makes about 18,000 pages copied, haha. You either laugh or you cry, right? It. Was. Epic.
This PLE outreach project has been such a crazy crash course in working/supervising in a developing country. I’ve learned a TON and I think overall the program did a lot of good. Schools are already talking to me about next year, and starting earlier, and trying to get more tests, so those are all good signs! But man o’ man, its been a learning experience from the beginning. I realized very quickly that I was going to be expected to do pretty much everything without knowing pretty much anything, haha. So the headteacher at my school wanted to have a teacher grading workshop (motivate teachers to grade… pretty crazy huh? But surprisingly necessary). Unfortunately though, he had to go out of town because of death in the family, so I planned a workshop for 70 local teachers in one week pretty much on the fly, haha. It felt like craziness, but actually came together pretty well. We had exactly 70 teachers attend and were expecting 72. The only drawback in the whole day was that one of the teacher’s collapsed. We took him to the FIMRC clinic where they gave him an IV, and then we got him a car home. But when I got back up to the school, one of the AAH teachers told me that the man smelled like alcohol.. sooo he had probably been drunk last night, got dehydrated, came to my workshop, and passed out. Ohhh child educators. I’ve had a couple other crazy things happen with the project. We had reports of one of the receiving schools selling our free practice exams to their students, making them pay to take the exams and then to grade the exams. When I went to investigate, the teachers told me that they actually had their own program where the parents paid for the school to order tests from Mbale. The more I followed up with them though, I realized that they had ordered the tests, but not given them to the students. So in essence, the students had paid, and then received the free tests from AAH. That was kind of a tricky one to deal with, and eventually, I think I pressured the teachers into giving at least one of the exams from “their program” because I visited the school every day for a week to follow up on it… I also had a school call me during the program and ask if they were getting a monetary “allowance”. I asked, “for what?” and he said for giving out our FREE tests and grading them…. Ummmm I don't think so! I told him that the tests were a gift to his students and it was his job as a teacher to grade. I’ve learned to be a little blunt since coming here, haha. Ugandan English can be pretty basic, so that’s the only way to get a point across clearly. Anyways… that’s all the crazy things because they are more interesting. Most everything else with the project has been good and most schools say their students were improving and test anxiety was reducing, so I’m really happy for that! Overall, its been a pretty successful first go at a project!
Three weeks ago now, I went on a field trip with our 6th and 7th graders to Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and it was really fun/ exhausting! We went to the zoo, airport, weather station, parliament, museum and a sea port. It was quite an experience going through a field trip “Ugandan style”. The first day, we were supposed to leave at 6 am, left closer to 7:30 am. Arrived in Kampala around lunch time, then went to the port, parliament, and museum straight without taking a lunch break because they had already paid for all these other things that were about to close. So I ate “lunch” at 5:30 pm, haha. Then we got to the hostel at the zoo (so cool!) that we stayed in, and everyone was sooooo tired, but they had also paid for dinner. So at 10:45 at night, dinner arrives and they made everyone come out the pavilion and eat, haha. It was pretty crazy and illogical, but such is life these days :) The parliament was pretty nice, similar in set up to ours actually. Except much more antagonistic, the tour guide said that the “ruling party” and the “opposition parties” sat on opposite sides of the room and if they crossed the midline then they were kicked out of their office position. Not super conducive to compromise I wouldn’t think… The next day, we started in the zoo which was really great actually!! Usually I find zoos in developing countries to be depressing. (The one in India was not so great.) But this one was actually really nice, the animals had a lot of room and it was right on Lake Victoria which was great to be near water again! They had ostriches and warthogs which were cool! Everything else was pretty standard zoo animals. Some of the kids also paid to go on a boat ride on Lake Victoria which was great/hilarious. None of these kids can swim, and you could tell the ones that went were really proud of how brave they were being and the ones that stayed kept giving the excuse “I cannot take the risk. They are risking their lives!” :) (They gave them live jackets btw, and it was a huge metal boat). It was just so interesting because most of these kids have never left the village life, except through our school’s field trips, which means there were so many things that were novel to them. For instance, the fire extinguisher at the hostel… they had never seen one before, so a teacher was telling them all about it and how to use it and running around “chasing fire” to demonstrate. It was funny. We also had to teach the kids how to use flush toilets and showers. At times, I kept feeling like the Beverly Hill Billies, haha, but in the BEST sort of way! All in all, a very good trip!
Three weeks ago now, I went on a field trip with our 6th and 7th graders to Kampala, Uganda’s capital, and it was really fun/ exhausting! We went to the zoo, airport, weather station, parliament, museum and a sea port. It was quite an experience going through a field trip “Ugandan style”. The first day, we were supposed to leave at 6 am, left closer to 7:30 am. Arrived in Kampala around lunch time, then went to the port, parliament, and museum straight without taking a lunch break because they had already paid for all these other things that were about to close. So I ate “lunch” at 5:30 pm, haha. Then we got to the hostel at the zoo (so cool!) that we stayed in, and everyone was sooooo tired, but they had also paid for dinner. So at 10:45 at night, dinner arrives and they made everyone come out the pavilion and eat, haha. It was pretty crazy and illogical, but such is life these days :) The parliament was pretty nice, similar in set up to ours actually. Except much more antagonistic, the tour guide said that the “ruling party” and the “opposition parties” sat on opposite sides of the room and if they crossed the midline then they were kicked out of their office position. Not super conducive to compromise I wouldn’t think… The next day, we started in the zoo which was really great actually!! Usually I find zoos in developing countries to be depressing. (The one in India was not so great.) But this one was actually really nice, the animals had a lot of room and it was right on Lake Victoria which was great to be near water again! They had ostriches and warthogs which were cool! Everything else was pretty standard zoo animals. Some of the kids also paid to go on a boat ride on Lake Victoria which was great/hilarious. None of these kids can swim, and you could tell the ones that went were really proud of how brave they were being and the ones that stayed kept giving the excuse “I cannot take the risk. They are risking their lives!” :) (They gave them live jackets btw, and it was a huge metal boat). It was just so interesting because most of these kids have never left the village life, except through our school’s field trips, which means there were so many things that were novel to them. For instance, the fire extinguisher at the hostel… they had never seen one before, so a teacher was telling them all about it and how to use it and running around “chasing fire” to demonstrate. It was funny. We also had to teach the kids how to use flush toilets and showers. At times, I kept feeling like the Beverly Hill Billies, haha, but in the BEST sort of way! All in all, a very good trip!
Then, two weeks ago, I got to go with ninety of our 4th and 5th graders to Jinja, most famous for being the mouth of the Nile River. This was also a really great trip, and I was happy to get to travel some more, especially with the students. We started off by going to a textile factory, which I guess was good for exposing the students to industry and mass production. Then, we went to a cool sea port, where boats would dock from the islands on Lake Victoria. And the final stop was to the source of Nile, by far my favorite part of the day! The source of the Nile is more of a compound/park, and they took us on a boat ride to a small island to show us the source. (These kids did not fear the water at all.) After seeing it, I think the “source” definitely deserves quotation marks, as I’m pretty sure its all for show. It was just a very small part of the river near the island with no current from an underground spring. The story is that this supplies the water source to the whole river = Highly unlikely (for the Knoxvillians out there, the whole thing reminded me of the Lost Sea) But it was really fun to hear the story though, take a boat ride on the Nile, and see the kids get so excited. On the bus ride home, there was loads of singing in cute Ugandan accents, which I thoroughly enjoyed and made me fall asleep happy.
