Monday was the first official day of work in the schools. I’m
stationed in Namasagali, a forty-fie minute to hour and a half drive from where
I am staying. This drive allows a lot of time for thinking, napping, and
listening to American country hits from ten years ago that our driver plays on
repeat. If we’re lucky, we get some excitement from being pulled over by
Ugandan police. This never fails to make me nervous, but most of the time they
see a foreign person in the vehicle and hope they can make some money.
I have
mixed feelings about my experience at Namasagali throughout this week. Each day
is divided into gardening, teaching, and projects. Gardening is always an
adventure. I saw my first snake on the first day (promptly beheaded) and are
constantly finding termite and ant hills the size of a large tree stump.
African flies and insects also love hanging around which drives me insane. Not
only are they annoying, but they carry a lot of diseases that may affect me and
the American members of our team much more severely than our Ugandan
counterparts. Three of my coworkers have fallen ill with Malaria and I plan to
stay clear of that. So far we have transplanted tomatoes, raised nursery beds,
weeded eggplant, and planted banana trees. All with a hoe.
I teach
four class periods a week of fractions and crop growing with Juliet and Liz. So
far we’ve made a pretty successful team in our Primary 5 and 6 classes, and by
we, I mean them. My accent and
appearance in their classroom has caused a distraction to say the least. Even
though the students are taught in English, for students to actually understand
what is going on their native language has to be incorporated. I may explain a
lesson in English, then Liz and Juliet may interpret for the students. This
exposes a large problem in the rural schooling community. In order to advance
from Primary to Secondary school, students must pass a national exam given in
English after completing Primary seven. Of the approximate fifty students in
primary seven at Namasagali, on average only two will pass. We struggle
teaching in the native language because the students have become dependent on the
translation, yet at the same time we know that this information is important
for them to understand. For once in my life I have really appreciated math, as
it is easy to teach a subject that has a universal language.
The school feeding program at Namasagali is
often my favorite and biggest headache of each day. This is a unique program at
a government school that is made possible through VEDCO, Makerere, CSRL, ISU, and the
community. Our goal is to create a sustainable program in an area that often
struggles with food security. At Namasagali, each student is supposed to
receive a mixture of beans, maize, and vegetables called nyo-nyo each day.
Often this is the only meal students receive a day. In the past years the
program has been closely monitored, yet much of the responsibility has shifted
to the school. As in most cases, the teachers are overworked and underpaid, therefore
this extra bit of work is often hard to suggest.
The culture shock of arriving in
Uganda hit me this week. Hard. This is the first week I have truly lived in a
community and attempted to understand traditions and my role. No amount of
research could have prepared me for my reaction to seeing such poverty. My love
of people, specifically children, makes it difficult to see malnourishment and
injustice daily. All I want to do is give them some of my food, fix up their
houses, and take them to a clinic. Yet doing that for some 300 students at a
school is improbable and defeats our goal of establishing sustainable
development. Charity and development are not the same. There is a place for
both, but it is a delicate balance I am struggling to find.
Thankfully,
I am not experiencing this alone. I am so grateful for the group of friends I
am traveling with and those that have greeted me here. It has been nice to
share frustration, but more importantly joys during dinner and into the night.
At the end of the day it’s the positive stories that keep me motivated. Most of
those surround funny things students at school did or mistranslations. My recent
favorite includes a boy named Steven who has received some extra help from our
program because he showed up to school severely malnourished. After a week of
eating lunch with him and hanging out with him, we discovered his name was actually Brian. We now understand why he never reacted when
we called his name.
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