Greetings everyone. I apologize for the large gap in blog entries this past month. I attribute it to a combination of slow internet connections and Joe laziness, mostly characterized by the latter.
This week marks the last of the term. We give our final assessments (report cards) to our students on Friday, so I’m told. I’m also told that most of the teachers will not have finished marking all the final papers by this time so this could be slightly (or largely J) delayed. Neither would surprise me.
So this week I’m finishing up random tasks before the break begins on August 7. I have a few days off then I’ll be in training for our Language IST (in service training) where we meet with our language groups and review any questions or difficulties we are encountering so far at site. This is also a time to learn more about a specific area of our language that we are interested in.
Then next week my entire cohort meets up in Mukono (outside of Kampala) for our Technical Training IST. This is more concerned with our actual assignments and how they are going. We will learn more about our respective programs and out Ugandan counterparts will also be joining us for the week.
For both of these training I’m generally just happy to see and spend a little time with my fellow volunteers. I see other volunteers in the East quite often but a vast majority of the volunteers in the Central, West, and Northern regions I haven’t seen since swearing in back in April. It will be a fun experience.
Then come August 23rd I’m jetting off to Amsterdam for one week to meet up with my Pops. I’m looking forward to delicious food, FAST internet, and maybe a little air conditioning if I’m lucky. If any of you have any must sees/dos in Amsterdam hit me up, I’d be interested in hearing them.
I come back from Amsterdam on August 30th. I have a couple free days and then September 2-3 we have our All Volunteer Conference. Most of the 120-130 volunteers in country will be there. It will definitely be cool to meet everyone who is in country, as I still have not met most people here. Throughout the day we will be attending workshops and sessions to help us out once we return to site.
Then, finally, I’m back in Kamuge on September 4th for third term teaching.
So that’s the plan for the next month or so, let me shift gears to recap what’s happened since my last post.
I think I left off sometime around Week 6 of the term. Well, both of weeks 6 and 7 were met with further interruption to my regular class schedule.
On Monday of Week 6 during assembly, our “Games Master” announced that we would begin practicing athletics in preparation for the upcoming competition on Thursday. He apologized for not starting at the beginning of term for some unclear reason. Anyways, the plan was to start practice this week. This translated into the entire school taking off the entire afternoon on Tuesday, the entire day on Wednesday, and the entire day on Thursday.
Tuesday was practice. Wednesday was inner school class competition. And Thursday was the district competition. It was definitely fun to watch. I would compare their athletics practice to our track and field events. There were sprints, long distance runners, high jump, long jump, javelin, and something called the triple jump, I’m still not quite sure what that is. And their high jump is quite different from ours. They pretty much just run really fast at a horizontal pole and leap as high as they can bending their knees up and hoping not to catch the pole. They could jump surprisingly high for this style.
Needless to say, classes were not taught and students did not learn during those days.
Week 7 it was announced that we would be having some guests from UNEB (Uganda National Examinations Board) to test the S2 students in Math, Biology, and English. So I was unable to teach my S2s all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning. I guess it was good to see UNEB making an effort to acquire some actual data. What results this data will yield still have yet to be determined and explained to me.
That brings us up through July 12. From there I had two more weeks of official teaching and then the next week final exams were set starting on July 27.
So, officially, the students received nine weeks of actual classroom instruction for term. Seven of which had major interruptions to the students even being in class. This translates into a 27 week school year spread out across the three terms. That’s almost seven months, with a five-month summer. Kids in America would love that!!! Furthermore, the nine week term was a result of the government shortening the second term!
I digress. About a week ago there was an announcement on the radio stating that the Ministry of Education had moved the end date for Term II from August 13 to August 6. Also, the government would be moving the start date of Term III from September 6 to August 23. I asked several of my teachers why this had been announced to which I received a plethora of differing explanations ranging from concerns about the election in FEBRUARY 2011 to concerns about the length of term breaks for teachers. I never found out the actual reason.
Now the critical reader may have noticed that the change or dates for Term III start conflicts directly with two major events in my schedule over the next month. However, the plane tickets are already bought and the hotel and workshop are already scheduled. Nothing we can do really. The Peace Corps Program Manager of Education is writing a letter to the ministry to inform them that we will not be able to be at our site performing our jobs because of their last minute “change of schedule”.
So final exams kicked off on July 27. The first day was a total cluster. It opened with a small assembly organized by our Master of Examinations in which the Head Teacher announced that the semester had been shortened by one week and that the students would now be sitting three exams per day instead of just two.
Once the assembly concluded, all 593 students just sort of scattered to different classrooms. The plan was to arrange their seating by class according to the colors of their t-shirts to prevent cheating (S1 – green, S2 – blue, S3 – yellow, S4 – white). But no formal announcement of just how exactly we were going to accomplish this was made during the assembly. All the students simply migrated to different classrooms. This resulted with one of our best teachers (my favorite) and myself organizing 593 students into 10 different classrooms by telling them exactly where to sit. It took forever. Oh, and I forgot to mention that we only had about four teachers there that day to help us proctor exams for 593 students spread out over 10 classrooms.
I don’t know why I continue to be surprised, but I’m trying to desensitize myself to the whole spectrum of possible things that could go wrong. I find that employing this method of thought is best for my mental health and sanity.
For every exam that week, there weren’t enough copies for all the students. The copies we had were riddles with typos and missing information, making the questions unanswerable or impossible. There weren’t enough chairs and stools for the students. They had to stand up for six hours while trying to write their exams. Apparently this is just business as usual. TIA!
So that’s enough about education (or lack thereof). That is just one hue of my experience in Africa.
It was fantastic watching the World Cup in Uganda. Even though the US didn’t win, I still had a great time. One of the most entertaining experiences I had was in Mbale the night the USA was playing Ghana. It was great because I was watching it with some fellow volunteers and enjoying their company. But it was also great watching it with other Ugandans, all of which were routing viciously for Ghana to take it.
One particular Ugandan woman whom I estimate to be in her late twenties was very excited about the game. She repeatedly chimed the words “thank you” every time the USA did something bad OR Ghana did something bad. I say chimed because the said “thank you” the exact same way every time much like a doorbell or a clock tower. It was great. She was very excited. I found listening to her to be quite hilarious and a little aggravating.
I was sad to hear that the overall spirit of the World Cup had taken a turn for the worst on July 11 when Somalian terrorists operating under the cloak of Al Shabaab bombed several locations in Kampala during the Word Cup final.
I want to assure everyone that as volunteers, we are very safe in our little villages and huts out in rural Uganda. As of right now, the only threat is against Kampala according to US intelligence from the embassy. And no volunteer is authorized to travel to Kampala at this time unless it is an emergency. Peace Corps is doing an excellent job at monitoring the situation and we are very safe here at our specific sites.
I’ve managed to stay really healthy the last couple of months and feel fortunate for doing so. I get a fever here in there but nothing too serious. I hope I can continue this trend.
That’s about it. Anyone wanting to hear more can email me at joepmathias@gmail.com. Your emails and phone calls are welcome. It’s definitely nice to get them. I will write more again soon.
Joe
