Bumps in the Night: Wednesday, July 8

I have some down time between classes today, so I decided to bring my laptop with me and try to get something written down. It is Wednesday, July 8, and we are in our 3rd week at Sir Samuel Baker. I am working more in the classroom, which is great. In S1, we were finishing up Transitive and Intransitive Verbs, and now we are working on Adjectives. It seems to me that the students learns the same concepts each year, but as they move up in streams, a little more detail is given. Overall, I think it is ridiculous repetition and again does not foster creative thinking.
I think out of all of my frustrations with teaching here, the lack of critical thinking makes me the most insane. When I try to incorporate activities and games into the lesson to make it more interesting, I am shocked by how long it takes to explain what we are going to do. You have to break it down so much to help the students understand each point. Then you have to demonstrate because they have no skills to help visualize or conceptualize. I also feel bad for these students because out of everything they learn while in school, critical thinking would be the most important no matter what path they walk down in their life.
I see the lack of critical thinking in my daily life here. The boda bodas drivers have to physically be shown where to stop to let you off, the servers in our restaurants cannot bring out more than one order at a time and they get it wrong most of the time, etc. They do not seem to be able to synthesize information very well. I think part of this is due to the type of life they have had for the last 20 years. If you are concerned about whether you are going to live or die each day, nothing else really seems to matter. Hopefully as peace remains in the north, people will learn to think critically more than they are doing now.
Grace and I were to teach at 8:00 am this morning to S1 East. Grace was not on time, so I went ahead and started the class. She finally showed up at 8:40 am. As we were walking back to the classroom at the end of the class, she said that she had a hard time getting up this morning because she did not get very much sleep last night. I asked her why, and she said that someone tried to get into her house. She was able to chase them off and alert her neighbors, but no one was able to catch the person. As I listened to her, I thought about how in America that would be pretty scary, but here in Uganda, it must be terrifying. I would think that it would bring back the fear of the LRA returning. I am sure that thought ran through her mind, which led to her not being able to go back to sleep. It makes me believe that while most of the people are living normal lives now, at any moment, something could trigger them to remember the time of war or react based on that mindset. There are things in this world that I find scary, but in my normal life, the odds of me encountering them are very slim. Here it is a different story. In all seriousness, at any moment, the LRA or another rebel army that seems to be forming around Gulu, could pop back up and hurt the people. Here the bush comes right up to buildings, roads, and schools, so it would be easy for soldiers to sneak in and attack. I can understand why Grace did not get much sleep last night. I wonder if time is what it takes to get over that feeling.