“You have a valid complaint.”

I say to one of my students in S3. This was in response to an issue he had just raised.

The class of Senior 3 is split into two streams (classes) of equal sizes, S3 Green and S3 Red. Last term, I taught math to Green only while my colleague taught Red. This particular student was from Red and was raising the issue that last term they had not received nearly as much instruction as Green and that they had missed crucial topics, matrices, for example.

There are a few reasons for this. Perhaps the most substantial reason is that our school lacks enough math teachers to begin with. During Term II, we had three. This term, we are down to two, myself included. I’m working to do the best I can with my assignments and am actually teaching both streams of S3s this term. This is great because I feel like I can make the largest impact on this class specifically. Come next year, they will be S4s and will sit their major UNEB exams in October 2011. With me teaching them the entire duration leading up to their exams. I’m excited to see how well they do, even though it is still very far away.

So I’ve been at site for nearly six months now and feel more and more at home with each week that passes. That’s not to say that there haven’t been challenges and frustrations along every step of the way. However, overall I have no major complaints.

Teaching is going significantly better this term compared to last. A lighter class load and more focused instruction has no doubt contributed to this improvement. I’m able to devote more time and energy to each of the streams I am responsible for. I’m able to give my students at least one quiz per week, which is awesome for multiple reasons.

One, it gets their minds into the exam taking mentality. Most of these kids only get one test per term (at the end of the term) with no quizzes or performance measures taken during the term itself, at all. Many kids do not even get homework. So my strategy and commitment this term has been to assign homework after every class and sit at least one short quiz per week. I think they really value these informal feedback systems and it gives them one more reason to come to school instead of dodge since their quizzes go towards their final marks.

I got to attend my first Ugandan burial last Thursday. This, like most thing here, was a truly unique experience. My teachers approached me the day of the burials saying that they were taking donations because the brother of one of our colleagues had passed. I told them I would contribute. They then informed that they planned on attending the burial service that same day and asked if I would attend. It seemed like a good decision to attend with the rest of my school community, thus I did. I figured I would be gone from the school for a couple of hours max.

That was a large mistake that I should have foreseen from the outset. We departed towards the burial around 11 am and I reached back home around 5 pm. It was a long day. Needless to say, the school was basically on a holiday that day since almost no classes were taught.

The community really got involved in the ceremony there. There had to be around 500-600 people there, at least. This particular gentleman happened to be a teacher and he grew up in a family full of teachers. So there were hundreds of students at the funeral from the various surrounding schools in addition to the many adult friends and family.

Most of the ceremony consisted of a plethora of Ugandans standing up to speak about the late and what a tragedy it was that he had passed. Some speeches were in Lugwere, others in English. I tried to pick up on some of the Lugwere words and was intrigued to hear the English speeches. However, it did become a struggle to sit in that hot Ugandan sun after about the first hour, and after the fourth hour, I was pretty well bruised and drained of all mental energy. I returned to site and enjoyed my weekend at peace in the village.

Shifting topics, I wanted to remark briefly on a recent conversation I had while talking to a fellow PCV in Mbale a few weeks ago. I often times draw comparisons between Uganda and the U.S. It’s just a part of my nature/personality to do so. We were talking about the relative difficulty of life in general between the two countries.

“Do you think life in the U.S. seems easier?” I asked him. We got to talking for a few minutes and concluded that the two countries really do have their own separate but distinct stressors. Here in Uganda, people have to work exponentially harder to accomplish the simple tasks of cleaning, washing clothes, bathing, cooking, working, etc.

In the U.S., we are blessed with mass automation and consumer appliances to help us accomplish these seemingly simple tasks. Here in Uganda, people have to struggle with the stress of getting their daily tasks done, which consist of all the tasks mentioned above.

In America, we may not have the same degree or even type of stress. But we do have stress nonetheless. And maybe it’s a different type of stress. The stress that comes with a challenging or frustrating career. The stress of trying to do your best all the time. The stress of trying to do things in the most time efficient manner and always be punctual for everything. The stress of balancing all the major components in life (family, friends, career, etc.) while trying to excel at all of them. So it seems life isn’t always that much easier when you really take a close look at different societies.

I do accept that life here can be extremely difficult and in most cases much more so than the U.S. But there are more similarities than we often think.