Winding down- Wednesday, July 15

I can’t believe I only have one and a half weeks left here in Gulu. The time has gone by so quickly, and I will be so sad to leave when it is time.
Grace and I have been working really well together. We are now focusing on the S1 students; we were also teaching S4, but the students stopped coming to class so they could study for their national exams. It doesn’t really make sense to me why students would stop coming to work with a teacher who could help them perform better, but that is Ugandan thought for you (or lack thereof). So we are back with the S1 students, and we have been working on adjectives. Grace works on giving the students the rules, and I then provide reinforcement through activities. Today I had the students choose an emotion (angry, happy, tired), and in groups, they had to act it out. The group had to guess the emotion and then write a sentence using it. We then looked at the sentence structure and discussed it. It took a while for the students to understand as they never do activities. Information is conveyed to them through lecture and copying notes. It is the idea of the student as a sponge who just sits there and soaks up the information instead of interacting. The teacher is seen as the authority figure and is never doubted, and there is rarely discussion. Consider that these students have been taught this way since primary school, and you could understand why they might think the American muno teacher seems a little crazy. So I literally have to set up the activity one step at a time. The other issue with this particular activity was that they had to demonstrate an emotion. These students rarely show emotion, and even when they do, it is very subtle. So to engage them and get buy in for this activity, I had to encourage them to be silly for a couple of minutes just to warm up. The great thing about teaching them is that once they understand the activity, they really enjoy it and become very involved. They also work in groups really well together and teach each other. And they love to get “high fives” from me.
This past Monday, several of us went to Bambu. Derek, the owner sold Bambu, they threw him a going away party. It was a lot of fun hanging out with other NGOs. We used our dinner coupon from winning trivia the week before to buy dinner. I ordered the fish fingers, which are the equivalent of fish sticks. Before I actually placed the order, I had to be reassured that there would not be any eyes looking at me nor any bones. Most of the time when you order fish here, you literally get the whole fish: face, skin, and bones included at no extra charge. I have to say it’s pretty disgusting. I never really thought of myself as a picky eater, but I am picky over here. I hope that it is because the food is SO different, and I will get over it when I return to the States.
I have to share something that I think is hysterical… One of the main roads that we take daily to Sir Samuel Baker is undergoing construction. It is a dirt road, and a couple of days ago, we noticed that there were work men digging at the ground in the middle of the road. I couldn’t figure out why they were making the road worse by adding more holes. When we returned from school, we were driving and turned onto this road only to have to slow down because they had put a skinny rope across the road. The idea is that it would prevent people from driving down it; however it is right at neck level and therefore is a prime opportunity to close line anyone on a bike or boda if they are not paying attention. The rope does not stop people from driving down the road; they just lift the rope up and go under it.
At the end of the work day Monday, they covered the holes with a log and some leaves. On Tuesday, they put telephone poles in these holes- now keep in mind that these holes are in the middle of the street. Well it turns out that they are poles that they will use to string electricity, but they are in the middle of the road and one pole is even in the middle of an intersection. It is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. I will try to get some pictures so you can enjoy it. My thought is if they want to improve the town, they should pave the roads first. The roads are completely ridiculous.
That is all for now. Let’s see what other adventures I can hunt up.