Schools out for winter!!!

I realized that the Ugandan that i have the deepest relationship with, that i know and like the most, isn't a person at all but rather my class. I think i know more about my class as a whole and interact with the class more than any individual member. I'm more comfortable and honest with my class than any other Ugandan and i think the question jar has a lot to do with that.

I started every class this term by reading four questions from the jar. i let them vote on how many i should read but had to cut them off at four. Sometimes students will write more questions while I'm answering one and pass them up to me. usually ill just put them in the jar for later but once a student was very insistent that i read the question right away. so i finish my answer and take a look. "sir your fly is unzipped" i look down and yup, there it is. I start laughing, zip up and all hell breaks loose, they erupted with laughter for a few minutes. kids from other classes popped their heads in the windows to see what all the commotion was about, teachers looked in ready with the cane, (A few times my class has been really loud while they were doing group work. Im usually sitting at a desk with a student so any teacher who walks in doesn't immediately see there is a teacher with these rowdy kids engaged in "hooliganism". They walk in with a cane, start to tell the kids to line up for their beating and stop mid sentence when they notice me.) So Ive learned that, unzipped fly humor, like getting hit in the nuts, is cross cultural.

Here are some of the question jar cream of the crop:

"tell me about the aliens that came to the Bermuda triangle that caused the rise in technology"  "you me go to America why?" "can you also distribute kicks?" "who is the father of god?" "is it true that those whites who come to Uganda are poor  then they are chased away from America?" "do you really belong to gods kingdom and if so why don't you go to church?" "have you tasted the forbidden fruit? (i mean the vagina)""what led to the separation of Rhianna and Chris brown?" "how does Obama treat you guys are you comfortable with his ruling?" "show us American traditional dance" "do you practice homosexuality on your side?" "sing for us any international song by Chris brown" "is Abe Lincoln's penis preserved in the treasury?"

Caroline is at a rural school and many of her students really struggle with English. my school has the luxury of a printer that occasionally works and a ink rolling printing device i imagine is some relic from a British school that they use to roll out the tests. Her school doesnt have such fancy equipment and she has to write the tests on the chalkboard. On her final she wrote a question about buying lemons at the market. "I bought 22 lemons at the market, each cost..." A student copied the question as: "I bought 2218 men at the market..." turns out people are cheap here, a man costs roughly 200 shillings.

I finished grading the final exams this week and the results are in, 91% of my class failed math. Not that really means anything for them, they will all move on and continue their math education. Nor does it reflect my teaching abilities, the midterm and final (the only two components of their grade) were both written by another teacher and contained roughly 2 questions each on the material id actually covered. the rest was made up of questions taken from a UNEB exam question bank covering everything they "learned" from primary school up to the present. Short of teaching them everything they were supposed to have learned im at a loss as to what to do with them. Luckily i have a handful of students i really like and a few of them are sharp and are right there with me when I'm explaining something, 6 out of 77 isn't too bad.

Three of my favorites students:

Ivan tries but just isn't quite there so far, but at least hes not ashamed to ask for help or to speak above a whisper in class, which sets him apart from his peers. He is one of the kids i routinely play ultimate frisbee with and has picked the game, as well as my language, quickly. he always yells oh sheeeet whenever something isn't working out for his team. He forgot to take the final because he was playing soccer.

Akol Samson comes up to the board to argue with me when he thinks I'm doing something wrong. I have to admire that a little. When i was his age, i was too nervous to get up in front of the class and challenge the teacher. He picks up everything quickly and likes to put ridiculous math problems in the question jar to try to throw me. He also has the best forehand in the ultimate group and likes to talk shit to me when we play. I just gave him Catcher in the Rye to read over the break, I'm curious if he'll get anything out of it.

Oplolot Isaac is a good student who usually will raise his hand at some point during class and tell me that he has another way to solve a problem that he would like to show the class. At the end of the term he asked me if i could give him something to work on over the break. I gave him a elementary math textbook one of my UO profs wrote id brought in case i had to teach primary. Turns out i used it quite a bit teaching secondary. Its all about developing problem solving skills, and if he works through it he'll be on his way. Once the word got out that i lent him the book, i had students coming over everyday asking for math to study during their break. can you imagine a student in the states asking for work over a holiday?

I've started lending novels to the students i know at school, and Ive found that for many of them their reading level is much higher than i expected. I gave a kid Twilght, and he said he "had an appetite", he ignored his revising to finish it. Oh man, surely i can do better than twilight. What I'm thinking is I'd like to start a novel library. I told the headmaster that if he can come up with some money i can handpick some good used novels while I'm back home. He's all for it, we'll see if the money appears.

Aspects of a situation that are the opposite of what is expected

Overpopulation is at the core of most problems in Uganda or at least is compounding those problems. There is such a simple answer; birth control and education as to how and why it will help enact real change. It has personal incentives built right in; fewer kids equal more money for food and shiny consumer electronics. Not so simple to carry out. Unfortunately, imposed puritanical ideas are discouraging condom education or use among students, many of whom have lost their virginity by time they leave primary school. Here they teach the ABC s of avoiding HIV, Abstinence, Be faithful, wear a Condom, but the emphasis is placed on A when we know that people are people, and people have sex. Especially when 800 high-schoolers are put in boarding school with at most 6 teachers designated to keep tabs on them, whom spend most of their time in the staffroom watching soap operas. Interesting/discouraging fact: almost all of Ugandan schools and businesses are on the same break schedule, lunch starts at 1:20 which is exactly when NTV starts airing “Don’t Mess with an Angel”. The real practical teaching should be on C. Furthermore this education doesn’t matter if condoms are banned at boarding schools. Being caught having sex or even possessing a condom means expulsion. So in practice condoms are not available to students. Why is that? What could possibly be contributing to this problem?

I would like to take a moment to give a great big fuck you to all the missionaries out there. The religious beliefs and the sexual morals you are imposing on developing people run contrary to the facts. Feel free to enjoy your quaint superstitions but don’t shove them down the throats of those who don’t know any better. People back home getting too smart for your scare tactics? Sorry, we know how incomprehensibly gigantic the universe is now, your simplistic heaven/hell human-centric worldview doesn’t quite add up anymore. So you go someplace with plenty of ignorance, they don’t know any better, they don’t have the luxury of being acquainted with the modern world, they get an education that doesn’t encourage critical thinking. What easy targets.

Of course you really believe your own bullshit, but from a practical standpoint why are you really here? So you can satisfy your need to “save” people, your motivations are ultimately selfish, so get off your high horse. Sure you might be building an orphanage or teaching English or funding a local project, all good things. But the problem here is one of mentality and the result of yours is that my students tell me they want to “be fruitful and multiply” without the means to support their spawn, it is printed in textbooks that the most important thing students need to do to prepare for a test is pray, and condom education takes a backseat to just don’t do it ok? You need to take a wider perspective and seriously examine what you are doing to the developing world. Empower people with the knowledge and scientific mentality that can be used to actually change their lot in life. Now I’ll get off my high horse.

Muzungu! You Give Me Money!

I'm the patron of the journalism club at my school. Never been to a meeting, but I'm on the stationary so it must be true. The students decided that they wanted me as their leader despite the fact that i don't know anything about journalism and it didn't matter whether i wanted to or not because they went and told the headmaster that i was their patron. I was a little surprised when the club leader showed up at my door with a stack of invitations to local journalism types for the end of year club party for me to sign. My first duty as Patron, was to ignore his indirect request for me to finance the party, i guess my dollars were showing. i sign each  of the invitation and at the bottom of the pile there is an itemized list of party supplies with a price next to each. At first i didn't know what i was looking at but i connected the dots, and my reaction was to be a little pissed. You made me your Patron without my knowing it, ive never been to a meeting, i don't know the members but you think its ok to ask me to buy a bunch of food and soda for you and your friends. If i sound bitter, i guess i am a little because after a while, when a solid percentage of my interactions with Ugandans amount to them asking me for stuff or money, yeah its starts to wear on me and shape my attitude towards them. Im not really opposed to being part of this club, Ill do it and try to make it into something worth while for them and maybe after i know and like the kids ill want to finance a party for them, but for now its hard to care too much. So i gave the price list a good looking over put it back on the bottom of the stack. handed them back and gave him a big dumb smile.

In response to my last post, my friend Aubrey was inspired to write a post about me. Her blog is probably better than mine so you can start reading hers now.

http://aubsinthepeacecorps.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-good-friend-ryan.html

Big News!

I finally made it through my first bar of soap! I stocked up on soap when i arrived at site and I'm just now finishing my first one, maybe i shouldn't make that information public. I think ill look back at this phase of my life as the stinky years. Right now I take one real, hot shower a week when I go into town on the weekends. I guess if I'm going to be disgusting i might as well own up to it. Ugandans on the other hand, go through tremendous quantities of soap and bathe twice a day. Whitney will occasionally mop my floor for me and sometimes she'll ask me if Ive bathed. If my lie isn't convincing enough she'll refuse to mop my floor until i go clean up, so ill splash some water on my face and go next door for inspection, as long as she doesn't rub my arms to see the dirt and dead skin peel off, i get my floor cleaned.

Some would say that I stink, I prefer to say I have taken on an exotic odor befitting an exotic land. But really my friend max summed it up best. Dude, you smell like a Ugandan. And not the bathe twice a day variety either. I was actually pretty excited when he told me this, which gives you insight into just how exciting my life is right now. I when I first got here I really noticed a difference between Ugandan and American BO, maybe just because it was new but it didn't smell bad necessarily just interesting, and if you can stomach it i think i detected a hint of rhubarb. no joke. So i guess in a sense I'm integrating successfully, I smell like the people in the place i live. I like to think that my American BO producing bacteria living in my armpits were pushed off their land and i have a happy family of Ugandan bacteria in their place. At least my clothes don't smell, at least when i put them on... Changing clothes is the new bathing, shed some of that stink! I now have a house girl who does my laundry once a week so you'll be glad to know that i now change my underwear daily.

Mr. Muzungu

On the school front, my classes are much better this term. I’m no longer at all nervous before class and I have a good routine worked out. I wake up at 5am, spend exactly one hour thinking of ways to explain the material to be covered that day, jot down rough outline and leave the rest to spur of the moment creativity which is really where all my best teaching comes from. Today I was teaching logarithms and told the class that I was not going to teach them how to evaluate logs from log tables because it’s an antiquated method now that we have computers and I know that although there are some interesting ways to solve unrelated with these tables, the vast majority will miss the subtleties of this and gain nothing they can apply elsewhere. Instead I tell them I’m going to teach you how to estimate logarithms and how to use your calculator effectively. I had thought this up in my hour and wanted to tell them how calculators are programmed in base ten so any log you plug in will automatically be in that base and use this as a justification for teaching them the change of base formula. I planned on explaining all this. Instead, once I started writing how a calculator works in base ten on the blackboard, I think, ill just let them try to use their calculators and be confused by the results so they ask why it didn’t work. In the moment I thought this would get them involved and get the math off the blackboard but in hindsight I see that it was a good way to spark curiosity. So I find a student with a calculator and have him figure out what log base 10 of 1000 is. He does and reads it to the class, fine, no problem everyone is in agreement. Ok, now tell me what log base 2 of 4 is. He reads off a long steam of numbers and the students who are paying attention, quickly realize there is a problem, try it for themselves and look at me like what the fuck? We know log base 2 of 4 is 2! So I had a really nice transition into teaching the change of base formula.

That was a good day. For every day when I’m on top of my game there are a few when im struggling to come up with different ways to look at a concept and trying not to get frustrated with my students, it’s not possible that you can’t get this stuff! You are just refusing to think! Some get frustrated and go to sleep, or maybe they’re just tired and hungry I don’t know. Sleeping is certainly easier than thinking. My class is at the point where most will answer honestly if I ask them, “have you picked?” and when I clarify slowly I think most are being helped. But when I’m asked to explain my instinct is to step back and try to explain the concept that’s at work and in doing so start to use bigger words and be less concrete and algorithmic, as in, getting away from, these are the steps you blindly follow, and so sometimes confuse the hell out of them. But it is fun for me… Which brings me back to an issue I’ve had, do I spend lots of time designing a lesson plan which neatly dissects the hour and twenty minutes like I’m supposed to, or do I teach on my feet, which is more fun and rewarding for me but has a lower success rate? Maybe a well made and executed lesson plan would end up being more rewarding but I’ve found that my best ideas come spontaneously in front of the class. In any case, I think I’ve found a happy medium that leaves me feeling prepared but also gives me free time.

Travel

Break is over and its back to school for us. Its pretty weird being back at site after spending almost a month with fellow americans. I was getting used to the company and not just that but the food. I gained a good 10 pounds being away from site eating like an american again and I dont have much of an appetite for posho and beans anymore. Teachers have been striking or threatening to strike country wide because they get shit for pay but as a result parents havent been sending there kids to school this term. So out of 800 students 239 have reported, and things are moving pretty slowly. I picked up a couple PE classes this term and was having fun teaching capture the flag to my students. Their former teacher was watching and decided that the girls probably should just watch, and that what the students really needed was a lecture on capture the flag strategy. I'm also going to be teaching computers this term, after I teach Word and Excel im thinking about putting Plants Vs Zombies on the school computers so the students can, um, increase their mouse skills and practice strategic thinking and number sense.... But really, these kids are bored and need something to do besides study and play sex. I'm bringing in more frisbees and saving up bottle caps so they can play mastermind so if nothing else hopefully I can relieve some of that boredom.

It was raining pretty heavily on the trip back and Mike, ever resourceful, was unlucky enough to get a seat with a leaky window.

On our way back through Kampala we stopped to get Ethiopean food. To get there you have to go through a brothel and up a few flights of stairs with questionable structural integrity to get to the restaruant which doubles as this woman's living room. The location has been passed down through the peace corps generations, and for good reason, the food was amazing.

Even evil-beast-crabs need a kissevery once and a while

Dont drink the water

My group was back together for in service training last month and while the training itself was kind of a joke, it was a good excuse to see everybody and we took the opportunity to raft the Nile as a group. The rafting company asked us to split up into groups based on how crazy of a ride we wanted. Naturally, Eric, Dylan, Caroline, Gaylen, Bailey, Josh and myself opted for the wild ride. Our guide was a ugandan with an aussie accent. Im pretty sure all rafting guides are required to take rafting guide lingo 101, half of what came out of his mouth contained a wicked or a sick, or tight bro. He was fun  though and in hindsight actually did know what he was doing, we flipped on five of the seven rapids but on most of those thats what he was going for. After the third rapid and the third time flipping, we told him maybe we should try not going into the rapid sideways and see how that works out for us so we made it through the fourth rapid without flipping but decided that it wasnt as much fun that way. The fifth rapid is called The Bad Place, here's a sequence of our raft owning it, wicked bro!

Most of the group that went got sick a few days later. I was peeing out my butt for three days, a small price to pay.

Mount Sabinyo

Three weeks ago, we traveled west to the intersection of the Rwanda, Uganda, DRC borders to hike Mt. Sabinyo. It was an eight hour hike and the only thing that I've done that really compares in difficulty is the south sister. This was the first time our group had been back together since training and it was really good to see everybody. They really have started to feel like family. I may not like everybody and some people can get on my nerves but they are all I've got, the only Americans ill be seeing anytime soon. To get out west from our sites in the east, Carolin, Bethany, and myself decided to take a bus. We also decided to do the journey in one day which wasn't the smartest decision. When we got to Kampala we discovered that the only bus going where we needed to go didn't leave until 4pm, which would have us arriving around 1am and leaving for the hike at 8am. We didn't have much of a choice though so we paid the ridiculously high 40,000 ush ticket price, less than $15 but I'm used to thinking in ush now, and loaded up on snacks. This would turn out to be the worst transport decision yet in Uganda. Wanting to get some rest for long day ahead of me I decided to drug myself, and popped a few tylenol pm but unfortunately tylenol doesn't help with constant stops, overcrowding, and mysteriously powerful bo. Although I guess I cant complain too much, I saw an overturned taxi on side of the road on the way there and another group had to wait for a new taxi after theirs caught on fire... We finally rolled into the town at the base of the mountain a little after 3am, by 3:30 we had found a place to sleep and passed out. Three hours later we're up and waiting for the car to meet up with the rest of the group. By the time we get there, all the sack lunches were gone. Three hours of sleep, one bottle of water, and a banana. Everything I need for an eight hour hike.

The last hour of the hike was spent on ladders, and with slopes ranges from 45-90 degrees they were pretty much necessary. When we reached the top we were in the clouds and so didn't get much of a view but I did manage to pee off a cliff onto the DRC, take that democracy! The hike down wasn't nearly as much fun because it started to rain and the ladders were slippery. Some of us were moving faster than others and my group made it down pretty quickly but the guides that came with us made us wait for the rest of the group at the bottom of the slopes. They wanted us to go through the last stretch of the hike as a group because it had been raining and so water buffalo were more likely to be out. I can only assume that he wanted us to be in a large group when the water buffalo charge to help decrease the chances of he himself getting trampled. Both the guides that came with us were carrying AK-47s, in case we ran into water buffalo or mountain gorillas, but alas, neither made an appearance. We arrived back at the camp cold, hungry, and exhausted. I did surprisingly well considering my lack of sleep, but the amount of goat i ate for dinner was obscene.

Peace Corps Brochure

 

This hike was the first time that I thought to myself, what I'm doing right now could be on a Peace Corps brochure. I've seen poverty everywhere I've been in Uganda so far but its been gritty real poverty not the romanticized, poor but happy in paradise poverty. Well this might be as close as it gets. No money or formal education, but all the food you can grow and a waterfall in your backyard.

Max and I decided to bike up the plateau just outside Mbale that I mentioned a while back. Turns out, riding at this altitude is really hard work, I didn't know until now how much sweat I could produce.

This is about half way up.

Muzungu, you give me your bike!

A shop by a water tower where we locked up our bikes and proceeded on foot. That's goat hanging up in the shop.

Yeah, that should hold.

Hide and seek!

A fair amount of traffic going up and down, most people barefoot or in sandals. Somehow they didn't have any problems. Max ate shit pretty badly on the way down.

 Planting on the slopes, look at the upper left corner, how the hell do they do it?

The summit; houses and onion fields in the clouds.

The weirdest thing, there was a shop next door to this house that sold sodas. As far as know there is no way to get anything up top by car or boda, maybe that's what people passing us on the way up were carrying on their heads. We found a place to eat lunch away from people so as not to rub in the fact that we were eating tasty food, but inevitably a crowd of kids formed to stare at us. We are used to being stared at by now and don't find it at all out of the ordinary for a group of slack jawed kids to silently stare at us unblinking for twenty minutes. So we were just talking as usual, but the crowd of kids was getting closer. Finally, a kid was standing right behind max and stopping mid sentence he says to me: there's someone right behind me isn't there? Yup. So he turns around and yells as loud as he can, and the kid runs off. This is the good work we're doing here in Uganda. Its fine though, theres always a few kids who laugh along.

The perfect mango grabbing tool. She was on her way up with it as we came down.

School Daze

This is a typical view from my desk under a shady tree at one end of the school. I usually don’t have much business at school if I don’t have a class, but I show up and do some sort of work every day because if I don’t the next time I go everyone tells me ive been lost, which get annoying once it stops being funny. I get it from people that I don’t even talk to and sometimes it can take on an accusing tone, meaning a mixture of you should be around more and what do you have do that’s more important than us? Its just part of the community atmosphere. Anyway, killing time at school got way better once I started sitting under that tree instead of the stuffy teachers lounge. It also works better for students who want to ask questions because they are fearing (Uganglish is starting to enter my working vocabulary, I am going to suck at English when I come home) to come into the teacher’s lounge. If they do, they have to be ridiculously formal, greet every teacher and risk being ridiculed for stupid shit like not having their shirt tucked in while they just stand there and take it until the teachers decide to dismiss them. Not only does my tree give shade and refuge to students, it also gives lemons! When I’ve had enough school I reach up and grab a few lemons and go make tea.

Most of my students failed their midterm, which was written by the teacher I took over from and was composed of roughly 10% material I actually covered. The high score was 54/81, low was 2/81, and the average 19/81. There is wicked combination here of a difficult curriculum adopted from the British, and poor teaching by rote. I decided to hold review sessions at night to go through the entire midterm and try to catch them up. On especially bad tests, that basically consisted of writing down numbers and symbols in random order, I wrote at the bottom: you are going to fail MTC unless you come talk to me. Since then more of my students have been trying to talk with me in the schoolyard. They’re going to be surprised when they fail. What? We did the thing he said! I should have been more specific. During one review session, it got loud enough I had to yell to hear myself and I resorted to telling them I can wait for you guys to be quiet and pulled out my phone and started texting. Not the best approach but some of them thought it was funny and it worked for a while, but then I had to do it again. Well, one girl who actually wanted to learn got sick of this and while I was facing the board snuck out of the class with a list of names of the kids who were talking the most and handed it to the teachers on duty. A few minutes later, the teachers come to the class and ask for those students. I figured they did something stupid earlier in the day, or skipped cleaning or something so I let them go, didn’t think much of it and went back to the board. A minute later I hear the snap of a flexible stick connecting with the students. The kids are marched back in and the teachers tell the class to be quiet. It worked. No one said anything the rest of the class, but I was pretty uncomfortable. After class, a few students told me what happened,and I affirmed that I won’t ever cane them, I think it’s stupid, but what could I do? I guess I indirectly caused it, leaving that girl feeling like he had no other option. Since then when they get rowdy I sometimes want to tell them: look I won’t cane you, but if I stand here silent long enough someone will get you caned because some of you actually want to learn this crap, and that one degree of separation is enough to ease this conscience!

Discipline is the biggest problem here for me, I’m not much of an authoritative figure and I don’t like pretending to be. I remember school, it was boring. Math is as well if its too easy or you are completely lost. And I can’t take it seriously enough to try to convince freshman in high school on the merits of math education. Which is too bad because I do want to do a good job for those who want to be there. My solutions so far have been mostly brute force, I can get louder than they can. In my small class it was fine, I knew them better and if someone was talking I could make fun of them a bit and figure out if they were lost or bored and go from there. But with the range of ability in my large class I really can’t win. If I go slowly and explain adding fractions for the 20th time I get audible sighs from the brighter students in front which sucks because I feel more obligated to them. If I go too fast I lose ¾ of the class and then they start to talk. I definitely have a new understanding for why teachers are always complaining of large class sizes.


Last week we had a student vs. teacher soccer game. The teachers took it very seriously. We had matching jerseys, soccer socks, cleats and wouldn’t let the students warm up with the ball before the game. Most of the students were barefoot. I’d say half the school came out to watch, and they were loud! I only lasted 15 minutes because I got a nasty burn on my leg earlier in the week and my bandage kept falling off. I thought it might, so I brought an extra and some tape. Once it fell off I knelt down, fixed myself up and got up and kept playing, the students watching must have been confused. I think I surprised them, some of my middle school soccer skills are still there and I could hold my own, but I was the only one walking up and down the field, only running when the ball came near me. So now they think I’m a lazy muzungu. I hate running as it is unless I’m chasing something or being chased but the heat and altitude make it especially miserable here. At half time the teachers got out packet of glucose to re energize. Surprisingly the final score was only 1-0. This was a classic battle of good vs. evil. Thankfully the students were able to exact some revenge on the teachers that cane them. I can imagine the cane being bearable if you’re imagining yourself running circles around the fat ass whos caning you.

Stuff from a few weeks ago

You know its going to be a good day when you walk outside in the morning and there's a guy making the ugandan equivalent of breakfast burritos in your front yard!

Been playing teacher for almost  five weeks now and I'm comfortable with it now and have some routine set up, although I still don't have a consistent schedule with my senior five class. A little background info. The high school I'm at has 6 grades, senior one through six. The first four are Ordinary level, and the last two are Advanced level. there are 7 years of primary before high school so they have one extra year of pre university education. So my senior 2 and 5 classes correspond roughly to freshman and senior year of high school in the states, although the curriculum is more challenging in my opinion. I say roughly because the ages of my students are all over the place, i know of at least one S5 students who is a year older than me. There has a been a push for universal secondary education here and so the first four years are free at government schools and many older kids are coming back to get their education on. Bugwere High School is only partially funded by the government and is also a boarding school so students here pay 310,000 USH ($135) a term, which is low compared to other schools but judging by how many students are being sent home this week because they didn't pay all their fees, is pretty hard to come by. Throw in the fact that there are seven kids in a family on average, one outlier i heard about was a guy who fathered 80 kids and its easy to see why money is a problem for pretty much everyone. There are roughly 800 students here and 50 teachers, but somehow not enough classes for all the teachers to have a full load. So there are many teachers, like myself, teaching only a few classes a week and yet they all get paid a full time salary. And the management wonders why the school is always broke. Its not uncommon to see a classroom full of students with no teacher. Missing class isn't considered a big deal here, certainly not enough to get you fired, sometimes things just happen. Maybe your kids get malaria and you have to take them to the hospital or you have to go to your home in the village to harvest your maize and ground nuts, or maybe its just raining.

The teaching itself is getting better slowly as i experiment with different approaches and realize that i have to slow way way down both in speech and with material. In my S2 class we have covered slope, equations of lines and simultaneous equations in 5 weeks and many still cant do it. The lecturing doesn't seem to be working at all, i think because Ive been trying to take a conceptual approach, explaining why things work and expecting them to apply the ideas to problem solving, which is difficult enough as it is but very hard when they hardly understand my English. Its more frustrating with my S5 class who chose math to specialize in so they either like it or at least want to be good at it for their career. They get bored and frustrated when I'm showing them some easy example, but at soon as i ask them to generalize or apply a concept to a novel situation they give me blank stares. I still haven't found a middle ground with them. As of now, I no longer have my S5 class because we have a group of student teachers from university doing their practical work which means i teach a total of three times a week for an hour and a half each.  One thing that has really helped is to use the students love of having their papers marked. If I set aside half of a lesson for group work to give them practice and allow me to do some one on one teaching, most students wont even start to write down the work until i walk over them and explicitly tell them to. But if I write the same problem set on the board and tell them these are questions for marking, they will get right to work and I can move around the room answering questions. The thing is, the marking doesn't affect their grade at all, only the midterm and the final do. They just need to see that red pen mark on their paper. I might have mentioned this before but the only thing that really matters is the test they take at the end of S4, which determines where they can go for A level and the test at the end of S6 which determines where they can go to college. Nothing else matters, GPA doesn't get factored in, just those two numbers.

The most success that Ive had at my school is with Frisbee. I brought it out a few weeks ago and everyone thought it was the coolest thing ever, which it is. I taught them how to throw and made a routine out of it, going out into the field every evening at five when classes end til sunset and  the dinner bell rings. After they could more or less throw i taught them the rules to ultimate Frisbee, and they love it. I have a group of regulars who play ever day and are actually getting pretty good, so if nothing else ill at least have some folks to play ultimate with these next two years. I feel simultaneously fat and skinny, skinny when i think about how Ive lost 10lbs since i arrived and fat when I'm trying to keep up with my students who appear to be made of solid muscle. The week i taught them the rules to the game, i was gone for the weekend. when i came back i found them playing ultimate with their dinner plates!

The students here are on a strict schedule. They wake up at 4am for morning studying till classes start at 8am. 40 min break at 1040 when they get one cup of porridge. back to class till 120. hour break for a lunch of posho and beans, bring your own plate, they wanted my Frisbee to use as a plate.then back to class till 5. hour and a half free time then dinner and evening studying or class until lights out at 10.

The school doesn't have its own water supply, the borehole on school grounds was spoiled last term and so now 3 times a week everyone piles their empty Jerry cans outside the dorms and a truck takes them to Budaka and returns with clean water. For the first month my neighbor's kid was getting my water for me from a nearby borehole but with him back at school i had to find another option. It took me way longer than it should have to figure out the schedule and i was getting mixed information about what the teachers do for water, because often Jerry cans disappear when they get thrown in with the students. I wasn't there when the truck came back and when i went out to where they are supposed to be dropped off mine were not there. I asked around with no luck and figured that they had been taken. I was pissed, because i assumed they were taken and that whoever took them knew they were mine and thought its no big deal, the rich muzungu can always buy more, but I refused to let it go and was determined to make some noise about it. The next day I started class by drawing my Jerry cans on the board showing where i had marked my name, and offered a 20 piece of candy reward to whoever could find my jerry cans. With 70 candy craving students scouring the dorms for my cans i was sure they would turn up, but the next day nothing. I started talking to some teachers i trust and they said would ask around but that sometimes teachers will take them as well. At this point it wasn't really about the cans but that i wanted to make a point and i was preparing to go door to door and ask the teachers if their kids "accidentally" took my cans, before i did i went home to change and found my cans sitting outside my house. As has happened to me many times, my mistrust was misplaced and a neighbor had taken care of them for me, not wanting them to be stolen.

This particular students name is Nelson and he took an immediate and rather overwhelming liking to me that made me a little uneasy. Nelson always wanted to come clean my house or do things for me. We had chatted a little but not really enough to warrant his telling me that he loves me so so much, in that creepy born-again way. He really loves all muzungus because when he was little one came to his village with sweeties and taught his family about jesus. Man those earlier missionaries must have had it easy. Jesus? oh yeah my personal savior, sure, sounds good. Whatever you say, just keep those sweeties coming and ill pray to whatever you want me to. I went with the students on a field trip to Sipi falls and sat next to him on the bus ride there, hes on my right.

We talked for a bit but i got this sense that he was nervous, as though he had to present himself just so or risk falling out of favor with me, i really got the vibe that he was just waiting to ask me for something probably money. He had a book with him on the trip that he was reading but he never flipped the page once on the 2 hour bus ride which made me a little uncomfortable. while he was pretending to read i was talking with the other student i was sitting next to, Ronald, who is in charge of entertainment at the high school, specifically DJing. Conversation can be very hard to come by here, so it was nice to be able to talk about music for a while. This guy is from a bigger city and has some money and a laptop and we knew some of the same music. A week later, the students were bugging me for prints of the snaps i took on the trip but i didn't want to collect money from 50 students so i put the pics on ronald's computer and gave him the task. Turns out hes something of an entrepreneur and printed photos for 250 each and sold them to other students for 500. I was kind of proud of him.

Nelson had mentioned more than a few times that he wanted to talk with me at length in private and i always dodged because he made me uncomfortable, but finally he wore me down and i was like fuck it ill sit with you for a while while you butter me up to ask for money. So we make plans to go visit his village and meet his family. At this point i know him better and no longer find him creepy but I'm still pretty sure he wants money. as the day approaches he keeps adding things to the list of things we need to bring. It doesn't bother me that he wanted me to bring a little something for his family, but its the indirect hinting way he would ask that got to me. First its sugar, the next day a little bread, and then when we are getting these things on the way its a little tea and sweeties for the kids. Its fine, i get it. I am a rich muzungu but its annoying having a dollar sign stamped on your forehead, especially when you think you're making friends and then you  realize, they just want to ask for something.

We traveled 15 km off the main road, and concrete and tin housing quickly gave way to the mud and grass variety. His family was huge. His dad was pretty successful in his day and managed three wives and more kids than he can remember the names of. They have an expansive plot of land with all sorts of crops and probably 20 houses for all the wives, cousins, and kids. They start with one house and spiral outward building more as the family gets bigger. Seeing the family grave plots, really made me realize how tied to the place they were. They were born there and that's where they will live till they die. The idea of moving away just doesn't seem to exist, even Nelson who is fairly educated, has no desire to live anywhere else and showed me the plot of land where his house will be once he makes some money. His moms made us some supper, some more awkward conversation and its getting dark so its time for me to push for the ride home. His hinting had become less subtle, saying things like, i don't like to ask but if god wills you to give... but now he gave a little speech about how now that Ive seen his home and met everyone I am now part of the family and so am obligated to do something if there is a problem. Ive been here long enough to know one dinner does not make me part of the family, and that is not our wife that is some girl you knocked up and wouldn't let have an abortion, is what i was thinking while smiling and nodding. Again, I get it. They have reason to believe that all muzungus are rich and will give them money, those folks are pretty much the only ones they come in contact with, and everyone here knows stories of some lucky Ugandan who got an American sponsor who paid for their education or travel to the states. I cant blame them for trying, they should. But man does it get annoying. There is only one friend that Ive made here who hasn't in some way hinted at asking me for money. He just wants me to proof read a math textbook he is writing. I'm accepting that its just a fact that they re going to try to use me so i should just get used to it. But I'm also starting to realize that it isn't quite so black and white, most people will try to ask for stuff but after i make it clear that I'm not here to give my shit away or give them money they ignore me for a while and then they're friendly again.

Question Everything!

We've been getting some pretty amazing questions about America from Ugandans, mostly kids. Aubrey was asked if Americans have flying houses. Caroline's land lady asked her if all Americans leave their will in their pets names. That one is actually fair because it has happened, and we do plenty of other absurd things.

This is my neighbor's daughter Whitney, notice the wig. Also, know most of my friends at this point in my life are under the age of 13. She is pretty cool though, I taught her SET and now she can give me a run for my money because she spreads the cards all over and picks some of them up so its more fair because I cant see them all. This picture is one of roughly 100 that we took the night they found out i have a digital camera. The whole family wanted their pictures taken over and over, adding new props each time, the best being a poster that they felt needed to be in the snap. The grandma cracked me up, she had me take a few of her and then rushed into the other room to change her dress and came back for more. After a while they wanted to start taking the pictures and this progressed into them taking pictures of the pictures on the walls. They had a lot of fun with it, and they asked me for the prints but sorry I'm not going to print out 100 photos, although i probably should do a few once i find a place that can do it. this is a rare smile, ugandans for the most part dont smile for pictures and the majority of them look pretty somber.

The other day Whitney asked me if its true that muzungus are like plants, that is do they breath in CO2 and breath out O2? Of course its true! Why would you think otherwise? Its amazing that the two ideas can exist simultaneously. You know enough science to know how plants work but think that humans can have completely different chemistry when it comes to respiration. It reminds me of how Feynman would talk about how fragile knowledge is for most people. Not that I judge her at all, I'm sure id be asking the same question if I was in her place.

Today at the beginning of class I had everybody write down a question about me, the united states, or anything and put it in a jar with the idea that id answer a few at the beginning of each class. I tried to emphasize the idea of anonymity, hoping to encourage some real questions and I was pleasantly surprised. One question I answered today was about the cost to travel to the united states, they were shocked when I converted the figure into shillings. After class I took a look at some of them. Here's a sampling that will give you more insight into culture here than I ever could.

Who is your wife? is she beautiful?  Do you love your wife? Is she Ugandan or American? How many kids do you have? Do you have HIV/AIDS in America? Do you love Uganda or not? Is USA better than Uganda? Do people of the US eat posho and beans? Can you get for us a friend (sponsor) in the US? Which team do you support? Do they play sex like me? How many plates of food do you eat in a day? What is your tribe? One of my favorites: Draw a map of the united states and label the following items 1) the districts 2) the physical features 3) The St. Lawrence Seaway 4) The Great Lakes Region. LOL! No way could I do that, but I'm sure many of them can, and it would be a beautiful map too. I like to think of this one as a challenge from the student which makes me really like whoever wrote it. Do you also posses witch doctors in the united states? Sir do mind when you go with me to USA. Let the answer be secret and I will find the answer at the door. What is the name of your local language? Can you also manage to wash clothes using your hands? Why is it for you you're brown and and me am black? I want to be your friend will you accept? Am poor in maths will you help me become a  good mathematician? And my favorite: Please sir, could you be knowing the email for Koko Krunch Manufacturers? And if yes, is it bad to send an email to them? Help me with the email.

That last one is about a cereal, why they want to write them an email I have no idea. I told the class that whoever wrote it can come talk to me after class and we can try to make it happen, but no one has come to me yet.

This is a view of Mbale from the third story of the hotel we stayed in last weekend. Mbale is 25-50 minutes from my site depending on the taxi I catch. This is where I come to get the supplies that I can't get nearby, and to use the Internet cafe. The market here is amazing and I can find most types of fruits and veggies, would love to show you but I feel weird taking pictures of people unless I talk to them first and there are just too many people in the market. I plan on climbing that plateau in the background next weekend. There is a road going up the side you can see but the other side is steeper and you have to climb ladders and carved out rock steps to get up! Guess which route I'll be taking.

I did manage to snap this shot, but before I asked him he was doing it with no hands!

concerning women

So i thought yall might like a glimpse of the cast of characters. This is my language group and my closest muzungu neighbors at site and pretty much the only PCVs i talk to. Out of sight out of mind, unfortunately. Training seems like a lifetime ago and I forget that i know 40 other Americans in this country. I was pretty disappointed that my guy friends are at the other end of the country, but if i had to be with a bunch of girls, I lucked out and ended up with some of the better humored and laid back ladies in the group. Its hard being a women in a Uganda. As a Ugandan women, it seems your destiny is to work, and work hard from the time you can lift a hoe while men drink local brew. And as a volunteer there are so many things that i take for granted, so many things that i can get away with just because i have a penis, that these three continually deal with.

On the left is Caroline, from new Hampshire, worked in radio before coming here and is one of the only volunteers in our group that is not a math or science nerd. she is a little bewildered as to how the PC found her qualified to be here as she is also teaching secondary level math and physics, or at least she was. she rearranged her schedule so that she is now teaching one low level math class and four classes of PE. I did a little rearranging myself, dropped my physics class and added more math, at least i thought i added more math, they keep telling me we'll take care of it tomorrow. so for now i only have one class. like so much of what we were told in training, the idea that we will be working 24/7 is blatantly false. Caroline is currently in Kampala after the medical team came and picked her up last night because she has been sick on and off all week and because of sharp pain in her right side. they thought maybe her appendix was about to burst. Now PC almost never goes to your site to pick you up, you have to get your own sick ass to medical. turns out her parents were worried about her and so called DC and bitched them out. So take note, if i get really sick harass the PC office to save me from taking crowded public transport. When she arrived at the hospital, the Ugandan surgeon had her on a bed and was preparing to remove her appendix when he was told to wait for PC medical staff to get there. good thing he did because her appendix is fine, she has kidney stones. minus one for the Ugandan school of medicine.

Caroline is consistently proposed to when she is out in the community. like myself, she made the mistake of giving out her phone number and on a bad day can get 20 calls from various Ugandans who think they are going to marry her. I only get calls when i show up in town with the girls, from Ugandans who are sure Ive brought them a present. Her host brother still calls her and pretty much thinks they're engaged. When she arrived at her site she met a guy who she thought worked at her school. He showed her around her town, but then wanted to take her to dinner, emphasizing, you drink alcohol right? She finds out he doesn't work for the school but is instead a local politician, people here know me, I'm kind of a big deal. she got a creepy vibe from him so politely at first and then not so politely turned down his offers of dinners and joyrides. So he started showing up at her house, and asking where shes been and why she hasn't called. Caroline finally told him off enough to keep him away, but was fighting tears throughout the encounter and was relieved when she could finally go into the comfort of her house to let it all out. The last time she rode her bike into town to meet up with Aubrey and I, she was followed by two guys on a boda, who stayed just behind her taking pictures of her while she rode. She has a good sense of humor and can mostly laugh it off  but I know its really getting to her and she is still trying to find a way to deal with it.

I've been offered a Ugandan wife a few times but  more often I'm offered someone's child to take back to the states. I think its a indicator that maybe Ive become a little too comfortable here, that last time this happened, I was buying produce when the women says, take my baby. Before I even had a chance to think, I said plainly, no thanks, I'm a vegetarian. Thank god she didn't understand English very well, and that it got a laugh and not a horrified look from my friend Maksim. I think maybe baby-eating humor is not so universal.

Next to Caroline is Aubrey. Aubrey reminds me of Dana, if Dana was from LA and had a princess complex. This is an amazing coincidence and I cant wait to tell her its going in my blog, but she just now called me: why are you taking so long at the Internet cafe? I want my chicken tiki masala! Type faster! She is very LA and and can prove it on the dance floor. Ugandans think we're related, not that that means much because they think we all look alike, but it has worked to her advantage. The boda boda (motor cycle) drivers in our trading center don't hit on her quite as much now that they think she's my sister. Or maybe its because she had her counter part talk to them, but i like to think its because I'm so manly and intimidating. The one thing she found that works as a deterent to ugandan guys it tell them she cant cook. She was smart enough to not give her phone number freely and so doesn't have the same problem as Caroline, but back during training her host cousin did try to sell her to his friend. 

This host cousin told her that his friend wanted to meet her, and although it was a little weird she agreed. at this point we were all naive and thought that we had to be nice and culturally sensitive to every single Ugandan. When they met at the bar, don't worry there were over PCVs there, the friend hands her host cousin 20,000 USH as the host brother walks off laughing. The guy proceeds to tell her how badly he wants to be her friend and says things like, i see you places when you leave Lweza, and, i know you're going to live in budaka and i want to come visit you. Aubrey basically says, aww fuck no, and leaves him sitting there. She had an extremely awkward dinner at home stay that night with the cousin and family. Rightfully so she was pretty shaken up and so got Fred, the Ugandan security officer for the PC involved. Now Fred is basically a bad ass. He was chatting with some volunteers from our group out by his truck and decided to open up his trunk to reveal a false floor with a compartment filled with automatic weapons. I'm not sure where PC found him but he is the man for the job. They told us a story during training of a PCV who called Fred because she was being harassed by taxi drivers at the taxi park near her site. Fred made a few calls and the next day when she went to catch a taxi, all of the drivers lined up to give her a formal apology. Needless to say Fred had the matter with Aubrey's host cousin cleared up right quick and nothing else ever happened, but i do like to remind her that she is worth roughly eight dollars.  

One of the people I foolishly gave my phone number to was a boda driver in my trading center, budaka. He waited until after I gave him my number to tell me that he had seen muzungu women around and he wanted me to get him one. I tried to tell him that it doesnt quite work that way, but he didnt get the message and wouldnt leave me alone until i told him, i would at least try. So the next time I go into the trading center with Aubrey, he starts to call me. I realize what he thinks is happening but try to ignore him. After 3 missed calls, he comes running up to me while Aubrey is at a Duka (shop/stall) and hints at that thing we'd talked about. I try again to explain that I did not and will not bring him a muzungu women but try to be nice about it and I introduce him to Aubrey when she comes back. At this point he has taken hold of my hand and is visibly nervous with his hand slightly trembling. We do the usual Lugwere greeting and then the conversation dies. He looks at me and says, so now what? What do you mean so now what? Obviously now you take her and have your way with her, duh, is what I wanted to say but instead something like now we're going home came out and that was that. I've only talked to him once since and I think now he finally gets it.

As is the case for most of us, the kids around Aubrey are very curious about her and like to peek in the windows just to see what the muzungu is up to. So Aubrey usually had a pack of kids watching her through her window while she prepared dinner, and was getting a little annoyed. One day, she forgot to completely close the valve on her gas stove, so when she went to start it a huge fireball erupted from the stove with a bang. The kids screamed and ran away and haven't been back since. So it seems to have worked out nicely for her, that is as long as they don't start to think shes a witch, because they have real ones here. One of the topics at my staff meeting this week was about teacher conduct outside of school. We just covered the basics like avoiding alcoholism and witchcraft. My school is very progressive by Ugandan standards, no corporal punishment, female teachers, etc so the only brush Ive had with witchcraft is when i was playing with my green LED frisbee at night with some kids and the next day a teacher told me he saw it and thought, what juju is this? People that I've met don't seem to put too much stock into witchcraft but they also don't seem quite ready to let it go.

Aubrey never learned how to ride a bike, and for her assignment she 

has to ride 7-8 km a day, so we had to teach her.

Bethany is on my right, another fellow math major with a sarcastic sense of humor. She talks to the rats and bats living in her house and scolds them for not going to sleep at a reasonable hour. She looks a bit different now after shaving her head. She decided washing your hair in a bucket is just too much damn work and she's right, which is why Friday is my designated hair washing day! At first i felt dirty all the time here but now I'm used to it, although its pretty gross when you can rub your arm and see the dead skin and dirt ball up. I'm also continually surprised to find that I'm not really as tan as i thought i was after a good shower. I think i'll be investing in a lufa in my near future. Bethany has avoided most of the harassment that Aubrey and Caroline and Aubrey have dealt with, frankly because she isn't as nice and will give guys a piece of her mind. But she has different issues. Her site is the most remote of the four of us, she has no electricity and has to travel 45 minutes to reach a main road or get food and supplies. For comparison, i have power when its there and can see the main highway in Uganda from my window. Other PCVs have running water, refrigerators, and homes that would be nice by american standards. As her community is not nearly as progressive, she has to be very conscious of what she wears, long skirts all the time, and the men at her school don't take her seriously. 

Everything changes here at night. Ugandans come out after dark and hold markets and eat tasty street food and everything is lit by fires and lanterns, a really cool atmosphere. Unfortunately, folks who wouldn't dare in the light now are much more likely to rape you. After a storm had her stranded at a school with her driver at dusk, halfway to meet up with us, Bethany was shitting bricks, and with her phone out of service so were we. I feel pretty free to walk around at night as long as there are enough people around, and have never felt unsafe in my house. I was scared once, not because of any real danger but because the rain was soooo loud on my tin roof, my sympathetic nervous system was telling me, be scared you idiot! nothing that loud can be good for your health!

I was talking to my neighbor a few weeks back about the peace corps and he told me that he had recently read that a volunteer had been raped in kampala. We talked about this reality for a while and I thought we were pretty much on the same page. Then he says something like, rape is incorrect, if you want her and she says no you don't rape her, you just keep trying until she says yes. And what if she never says yes? Oh, that doesn't happen. This is the mentality the girls in our group are dealing with. All in all, I feel exceedingly lucky to be a white American male with a college degree. I really feel like I cant fuck up here.

A snap-shot of my life

My room

My bathroom. This is what happens if I leave my front door open.

After being gone for a weekend, this is how much dust I swept up in my house.

This is horrible. It should not exist.

This my sandal for scale next to Jackfruit, the pinnacle of nature's line of fruit design. Its a pain in the ass to open up and prepare, but the insides are delicious little fleshy pouches that look weird but remind me of pink starburst only way better. Between these and mangoes, I am eating more fresh fruit then ever before.