Random thoughts

I admit that I am somewhat confused by Uganda. There is so much beauty standing
shoulder to shoulder with abject poverty. On my ride into Entebbe today as we drove
down the highway I saw large beautiful houses in various stages of completion
situated on red dirt roads next door to hovels made of tin. I don’t understand it.
There is neither rhyme nor reason  to it. Beautifully manicured yards with mature
mango, papaya, and banana trees, next to yards with mounds of piled trash. 

You need four things to drive in Kampala, shocks,

brakes, a horn, and nerves of steel. The streets

are forever crowded with masses of people, cars,

bicycles, and boda bodas-- motorcycles that zoom

out of nowhere, dodging in between cars.

Sometimes they even drive on the wrong side of

the street. If I die here it will be in an automobile

accident. According to Madame Patricia, accidents

involving bodabodas are so numerous that there is

an entire ward in the hospital just for them! 

Riding in a car is like playing chicken with your life. 

I’ve started keeping my eyes closed. I’d rather 

NOT know when I’m about to die! The vast 

majority of the roads are in horrible shape, and ALL 

the roads— good and bad — have excessive 

numbers of speed bumps! On some roads, instead 

of “chicken”, the game you are playing is “dodge 

the potholes”! You can  pretty much buy anything 

you want on the street here. Street vendors are everywhere, selling everything from 

chewing gum and children's toys to floor mats and windshield wipers!

Have I mentioned that it is the rainy season in Uganda? 

I should have brought my water shoes. When it rains— 

and it has a little bit each day— rivers of red muddy 

water flow through the campus. I managed to step in 

quite a puddle on my way to the staff room for lunch. 

You can pick whatever fresh produce you want to eat
here. Everyone owes a small plot of something. And
you will gains a number of crops growing by the side
of theroad. Corn, tomatoes, pumpkin, potatoes,
sugarcane, pineapple, plantains, cassava, beans,
peanuts, collards, and there are jackfruit, avocado, mango and banana trees in
abundance. Tea also grows in abundance.

This morning I mentioned to Ms. Tina, who is the head of the cafeteria and teaches food
and nutrition classes,  that I had fresh jackfruit for the first time this weekend. There are
jackfruit trees on the grounds. So she sent for a jackfruit and made sure to had some fresh
for me at lunch today. Lunch is a leisurely affair here. The teachers all eat together at the
same time in the staff room. It’s supposed to start between 1:00 and 1:20 but it kind of starts
whenever. They also have staff announcements during lunchtime. And they have morning
tea in the staff room every day at 10:20.

               

Tea time!

Fresh melon and jackfruit for dessert

                                   

Weekends are for culture

 

While my weekdays will be spent working at Kyambogo College, my weekends are reserved for cultural experiences, and one post per week will be dedicated to those weekends. On Friday evening, I went to an African cultural center called Ndere Centre with several faculty and staff members from KCS, and Ms. Diana, a teacher from another school who recently completed a study abroad in New York. The Ndere Centre preserves Africa's heritage through music, song, and dance. The troupe that performs there has been in existence since 1984, and as it happens, Mr. Idris -- one of the assistant administrators from KCS-- is one of the original members of the troupe. He delighted us by getting up from our table and performing with them for a few minutes. The Ndere Center is amazing.  The architecture of the buildings there are created with traditional materials used in Africa for centuries and are representations of those ancient structures. They also sell handmade African crafts in the gift store, and I am an avowed gift shop shopper!
                                                           

                                                       

On Saturday Joan called me an Uber so I could go visit the Kasubi Tombs, the houses and tombs of some long dead kings of Africa. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. When we got there it turned out to be closed for renovations, and it has been since a fire in 2011. But Yiga, my driver, talks to the men inside and they agree to let me in for a fee, but first they make me put on a scarf to wrap around my waist because I am wearing pants. Uganda is a very traditional, conservative society and women here rarely wear pants, and certainly not in a work environment or at a religious site. The scarf is so beautiful that I want to keep it. We enter first into the guard house and get a bit of a history lesson before being escorted into the courtyard that leads to the king's house. 

The Guard House

The king's house is what was burned in 2011 in what is to believed to be an act of terrorism.  There are numerous structures surrounding the courtyard and when I inquire about them I am told that they were the houses of the king's wives, and that he had one from each tribe in order to keep peace in the country.  There are people who live within the grounds of the old palace to this day and they are descendants of some of those secondary wives. There are two cemeteries on the grounds, the smaller one are the tombs of the widows-- I took that to mean the king's widows, and the larger one is that of the direct line of the royal family. It turns out that my guide is a grandson of one of the people in the cemetery.

Houses of the King's Wives

Royal Tombs

On Sunday I attend church service up the street from my apartment at St. Luke's Church of Uganda. These are very religious people. St. Luke's is a beautiful octagonal structure with one big open space inside. They have three services each Sunday, 2 in English and one in Ugandan. I went to the second English service. Praise and worship, scripture readings, litanies, announcements, and a teaching. I felt like I was home.

Sunday evening, Yiga picked me up to take me to the Zoo in Entebbe, one of the places on my list of things to do while in the country. It's a forty five minute drive but well worth it.  The zoo is interesting. There are monkeys just roaming free throughout the grounds. And there is a lot of signage warning against feeding, teasing, and taunting them. The animals are in open air environments (except for the snakes of course). I see my first ever rhino.  They are a lot larger than I expected. The baboon enclosure contains a warning-- not that I was going to try to cross the barrier anyway. I found a gift shop (of course!) and purchased a mask that I will proudly add to my collection when I get home.

                                                                       

Lake Victoria- the source of the River Nile

Fun food facts

Uganda’s geography is very different from ours, as they are close to the equator.
Day break is at 6am and nightfall is between 6 and 7pm daily, all year round.
They only have two seasons here, rainy and dry. It is currently the rainy season.
It rains every day for a little while. I seriously need to find some rain boots. The
temperature is very pleasant.  In the week I’ve been here it has not been above
78 degrees. I have a hate/ hate relationship with a rooster near my apartment.
He starts crowing at 4 am, two hours before my alarm goes off. There is also a
cow somewhere near here but I am not sure where. I can hear everything very
well because the tops of the windows are actually just wooden slats and not glass
windows. This is to allow a breeze to continually flow, as no one that I have
encountered here has air conditioning. And quite frankly, the temperature is so
pleasant that no A/C is needed.

A little bit about what I am eating here.  My first evening here I met with some staff
from the school and we went to a restaurant next door to my apartment. I had a
vegetable samosa, which is a fried vegetable pie, and a cup of excellent African
spiced tea. I loved it so much that I have found the spice blend at the supermarket
up the block from my apartment. The supermarket has two floors, groceries on the
bottom floor and everything else on the top floor.  It is a super Walmart on steroids.
It is located inside the hugest market I’ve ever seen in my life called Capitol
Shoppers Market. Seriously, if you can’t find it here then it doesn’t exist. Most of
the vegetables in the market are local products and - not kidding- still have some
dirt on them. Capitol Shoppers has several restaurants inside of it, one of which--
Taste Budz -- I visited on Tuesday and purchased Pizza and french fries -- which
they call chips, like the British do. The french fries were yellow but tasty. I did not like
the vegetable pizza. The tomato sauce wasn’t “tomatoey” enough. On a good note,
the cheese didn’t bother my stomach as much.  And, FYI, there is a surcharge on
to go orders at some restaurants here. There is an amazing vegetable
and herb garden maintained by the agriculture classes at KCS. It has tomatoes,
eggplant, spinach, collards, peppers, onions. Madame Patricia

actually had some staff members pick me some fresh kale (what we call collards)
and bananas, which were delicious. I had my first faculty lunch on Friday. The
teachers all eat at the same time and in the staff room, separate from the students
who have their own eating space under a very large shed. Part of what we had for
lunch is apparently a national dish in Uganda, called matooke. If I understood
correctly, it is mashed with flour and steamed in banana leaves. They usually top it
with a ground nut (peanut) paste called binyebwa. Again, if I understood correctly,
the nuts are either roasted or raw peanuts, pounded into a type of meal (like we do
for corn meal) and mixed with something to make it a paste or sauce. The matooke
is very dry so the binyebwa sauce is a must.  They are quite good together. Also
there was herbed rice, a bean dish, some type of fresh picked greens that were
cooked with red onion, and a mashed corn dish.

I had a very similar meal when I
visited the Ndere Centre (more about that in my next post), but I also had Ugandan
sweet potatoes and yams. Their sweet potatoes are actually white, and the yams
are a speckled purple. The terminology throws me off sometimes. When they first
mentioned sweet potatoes I of course thought of the orange sweet potatoes we have
back home. 

Kyambogo College School

Uganda is a vibrant, beautiful country full of friendly people. Kampala has majestic
hills, and also city streets, both paved and unpaved. Traffic is insane. Probably
worse for me because they drive on the opposite side of the street. If I die here it
will be by motorcycle. I could never drive here. Everyone I encounter speaks
English. It is required in their schools. But even so I have to concentrate to
understand them because their vocal inflections are very different from ours.
I was told that I needed to slow down when speaking because of my accent.
I thought that was very funny.

Tuesday was my first day seeing the school, but Wednesday was my proper introduction and my first full day. The school has 1,000 students and 78 teachers and sits within the grounds of Kyambogo (pronounced CHAM bogo) University. The students have a total of 21 class offerings and at Senior 1 (S1) and Senior 2 (S2) level are expected to take them all. There are 7 compulsory classes-- English, math, physics, chemistry, biology, history, and geography. At Senior 3 (S3) level they are allowed to drop down to three elective offerings and start to tailor their studies towards their interests. The highest level is S6. S5 and S6 are referred to as “A levels”, or advanced levels,  while the lower levels are referred to as “O levels” or ordinary levels. Classes are 80 minutes long, and the students do not change classes-- the teachers do! All instruction is in English. The school day runs from 8am until 4:30 pm, but students are here by 7am. The students are in uniform, and it is refreshing not to have to see sagging pants on boys or too short shorts on girls. Girls must wear knee length skirts and must have short hair cuts. The exception is the Indian and Middle Eastern female students, who can keep their hair long but must wear it pulled back in a bun or ponytail. There are approximately 60 Indian or Middle Eastern students here and one Korean student.  There is some relaxing of the dress code, however as students are also allowed to wear their “house” tee shirts with their gray bottoms. Sort of like Harry Potter, they are sorted into “houses” or groups when they enroll. The houses are all named after animals native to Uganda. Today I saw zebra, lion, rhino, cheetah tee shirts. 

View from the school grounds

I spent most of the day in Mrs. Patricia’s office, which is where my desk is set up. Mr. Okech, who is the assistant to the head teacher took me on a tour of the school.  The head teacher is Helen Twongyiere, and is what we would call the principal. I also was able to observe instructional styles in two classes, a Senior 1 East African history class led by Mrs. Esther, and a Senior 2 English class, led by Mrs. Josephine.

English Class

                                           

                                      Pottery produced by the art classes

Karibu (Welcome to) Uganda!

I arrived at Entebbe Airport in Uganda at 11:00 pm Sunday night after 28 hours of total travel. It took an hour to clear passport control and customs, so it was 1am Monday before I arrived at my apartment for the month. Dina Apartments is located in the area called Ntinda on a very busy street. 

 Joan, the apartment manger, and Joshua, the night manager, are both extremely nice and helpful. The apartment is quite nice and so far everything I need is within walking distance. They drive on the left side of the road here so I have to be very careful crossing the street.

View from my living room balcony

I met with several faculty members from Kyambogo College School Monday evening for tea and to

Helen Twongiyere, head teacher

discuss more about the project, the problems that they have had that led up to them requesting assistance, and expectations. Spiced African tea is very tasty by the way.  My first Ugandan meal was a vegetable samosa, and it was very good as well. Today-- Tuesday-- will be my first time going to the school, although I learned a bit about it yesterday. I learned that the school is 65 years old, and has approximately 1,000 students in six grades -- what we would call junior high and high school. They are divided into two levels-- "senior level" being the lower grades, and "A level" being the higher grades. Students take seven compulsory courses, and a LOT of what we would refer to as electives, which they only attend once a week. Their classes are also quite large-- up to 100 students!  I am excited, but still a little apprehensive because I desire to do well and be of service.

View from the back stairs of my apartment

The avocado tree by my bedroom terrace

The Adventure Begins (again)

As I type this I am sitting in Schipol Airport in Amsterdam enjoying a coffee and a croissant with some apricot jam.  It is 7am and pitch black outside. (The wonders of latitude!) The first leg of my journey started yesterday morning when I left Montgomery to drive to Birmingham and drop my dog off with my daughter before heading to Atlanta. The flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam was 8 1/2 hours long-- enough time for me to doze fitfully and watch two movies. I now have another four hours before my second-- and longest flight at 10 1/2 hours before I arrive in Kampala. Hopefully I will be able to sleep on that flight. I may need to double up on the melatonin. However, Schipol is a "silent" airport and they don't make public announcements of flights.  Makes for a peaceful time as I continue to work on my materials for KCS.

Uganda forever!

On August 30 I received the incredible news that I had been chosen as a recipient of the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Short Term Teaching Scholarship. Very soon I will be leaving for five weeks in Uganda. While there I will be working at Kyambogo College School as part of a program to introduce learner assessment techniques.  I am honored, excited, blessed, and overwhelmed all at once. The preparation has been lightning quick and super intense: several doctor's visits, numerous immunizations, registering with the U. S. Embassy in Kampala, applying for a VISA, trying to order currency, filing for official eave from my teaching job, prepping resources to take to Uganda, pulling together assignments for my students to do here while I am away... the list seems endless, but so do the possibilities of growth from this experience.  I have have had opportunities several times in the past to travel abroad and learn while doing so.  I am excited to have this chance to impart to others a some of what I know in hopes that it will help improve a child's life half a world away.

Kyambogo College School