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.