Butterflies

On Monday and Tuesday this week, all of the children at Rwentutu School took their Midterm Exams. Every term, all schoolchildren in Uganda take a National Standardized Midterm exam and a Final exam. I'm not sure what we were expecting, but the exams were challenging for the kids, to say the least, and the children really struggled. I mean really struggled. The children had exams in every subject (Reading, Math, Social Studies & Science, Religious Education, and English Grammar), and each exam consisted of approximately 60 questions all requiring a handwritten response (no multiple-choice). The exams were written in English, pretty strong "Academic English" actually, which made it very difficult for children to understand the directions. They tried their best and oftentimes took the entire two hours they were given to complete their tests, but as we flipped through page after page of completed exams, we began to realize how much work we had ahead of us for the rest of the summer.

The Pearl of Africa

This weekend we discovered why Uganda is known as "The Pearl of Africa," and it was completely by chance.  Going into the weekend, we had absolutely no plans whatsoever.  In fact, Saturday morning at 11:00 we still had no idea what we were going to do.  We finally decided to head out to the village of Kilembe, about 30 km west of Kasese, to check out something we had heard about hiking and copper mines.  Jimmy (our host) stayed home, but his sister Joy and cousin John accompanied us.  John works at the school during the week and we have become good friends with him since our first day here.  In August he will begin his studies at a University nearby and hopes to major in, coincidentally, Tourism.  We were obviously his tourists for the day, and after experiencing a day hiking in the Rwenzori Mountains in Kilembe under the guidance of John, I would recommend him in a heartbeat for any Tourism job that comes his way.

John spent four years in Kilembe attending Secondary School so he knew the area quite well.  After showing us his school, he led us up and back into the foot-hills of the Rwenzori Mountains.  We hiked up through eucalyptus trees and banana groves, continuing our trek upwards with John.  The views were absolutely breathtaking – gorgeous, rolling hills and mountains everywhere you look with patches of sunlight beaming down at different angles.  Tucked into the mountains you can see tiny houses; apparently there used to be more but they were destroyed during the war.  The ones that remain, though, are fascinating, and the plots of land that slope along the mountainside even more so.

I took pictures everywhere I looked, hoping for at least one of them to capture the phenomenal scenery around us, but I was never satisfied with the image on my screen, only the one right in front of me.  It's so hard to write about it…I feel like you just have to see it.

After going on a safari last weekend and watching elephants, I wasn't sure how we were going to top that experience this weekend, but Kilembe far exceeded my expectations.  You can't find a single sentence written about Kilembe in our Uganda Tourist guide we brought with us from home, but I feel like I could easily write a book about it.  I guess sometimes the best things in life happen when you least expect them to…and are sometimes waiting for you only 30 km away.

 Jumping over rocks in the stream with John

 The village of Kilembe

John leading the way through the mountains

Evan sifting through the sand for some copper...

The Power of Praise

This week I have been teaching Primary Four students, so technically equivalent to fourth-grade in the United States, but since children begin school at various times in this rural area, I have about thirty students that range in age from 10-14 years old.  Jackie, Evan and I arrive at the school around 9:00 each morning and teach pretty much all day, on our own, until 3:00.  Many of the Ugandan teachers sit in on our lessons to observe how we teach and what we ask students to do.  At first it was nerve-wracking to have so many people hold our teaching in such high regard, and in many ways we still don't feel we deserve this much credit, but the response of the teachers has been phenomenal.  We enjoy watching them teach as much as they enjoy watching and learning from us.

The hardest part about teaching this week was wanting the students to be at a certain level and realizing they are so far behind. Open-ended thinking is very rare.  The students are used to being asked questions for which there is only one correct answer, and that answer is usually written up on the board for them to recite.  Evan, Jackie and I ask critical-thinking questions to our classes and are met with blank stares, but we keep trying.  Gradually, as we give more encouragement for students to use their own thinking, and provide more opportunities for students to respond in their own words, we see more and more hands in the air and more and more "thinking" happening in the classroom.

The students' response to praise has been incredible.  After correcting student work one night, I wrote simple things like, "Wonderful!" or "Marvelous!" or "Fantastic!" on their papers.  The next day when I handed them back, you would have thought I'd given them an acceptance letter to Harvard.  They were ecstatic.  "Teacher said I was wonderful!" they would tell their neighbor, "Look, Teacher said I was fan-tas-tic!"  Even simple words of encouragement as I moved around the classroom would instantly bring a smile and a new "life" to a child's face.

During the next lesson, we corrected work as a whole class, and the students still wanted me to "write the words" on their papers.  Since we were running out of time, and there were 30 students in the class, I told them this time they could mark their own work.  The students went from shock ("But Teacher, you must mark it!!") to squeals of delight when I told them they could choose their own marking and write it on their paper. They loved writing their own "words," and it was hilarious watching them compliment their own work.  "BEAUTIFUL BOY" one boy wrote on his paper, or "I LOVE YOU SO MUCH" a girl wrote on hers.  My favorite one was a little girl in the front row…a quick glance down at her self-corrected paper and I saw she had written, "DELICIOUS!"  At least they understand the concept of positive phrasing!

Also this week we went on our first all-school field trip, if you could call it that.  On Tuesday afternoon the Head Teacher called all 300 students together by the flagpole and announced that we would all be going to collect firewood for the school.  The children were less than excited about this, and Evan, Jackie and I kind of looked at each other like, "Are you serious?" but sure enough, we followed the mass of children down the path, through the field, across a few roads, and probably a good half-mile later we came upon a huge pile of sticks.  The Primary Five students immediately began taking charge, gathering large piles of sticks and passing them on to the younger ones who would turn around and carry their load back to the school.  We participated as well, and it was like a line of little ants carrying piles of sticks to and from the school, and except for the initial groans of disappointment, I never heard a child complain once during the multiple trips.

Finally, this week we have been receiving tiny letters written to us by some of the students.  They don't say too much, but we have enjoyed reading them.  Here is one of them :)

"Hello to my dear friend Whiteny

I love you and I like a apple and I like education

I am 11 years old and I like to be with you

Do you no (know) my mother maskia rose mary

I like to write this letter to you and

I love you so match (much) and I am in primary three

I like to write this letter to you when I am happy

I like to be a unrse (nurse)

I love you like a fish loves water

Great job and nice job

My name is Mbambu Jetrida

Great girl"

African Safari

 Yesterday we spent the day in Queen Elizabeth National Park, an hour's drive south from Kasese. The park is over 1,798 sqare kilometers and boasts over 95 mammal species and over 600 bird species. I don't think I can even name 95 different animals, let alone 600 different types of birds…

When we reached the park, we hired a guide to ride with us as we drove through the open savannah. He began explaining a little bit about the park, how it used to be named Kazinga National Park until Queen Elizabeth visited in 1978 and decided to claim it for herself, when all of a sudden our driver slammed on the brakes and our guide pointed out the window and motioned for us to be quiet. An elephant. Not more than 20 feet away from our van. It was absolutely unbelievable, and then, to make it even more exciting, two baby elephants came running up next to it! We watched in awe for 5-10 minutes before continuing our safari and seeing more animals like the warthog (sooo unattractive), water buffalo, and kob (possibly my new favorite animal because they always stopped to pose for beautiful pictures on my camera).

We quietly drove around in search of a lion, listening to our guide explain to us how you could find lions by observing the kob. Apparently the kob are top prey for lions, and by looking at the direction the kob are facing you can detect where a lion could be hiding. Unfortunately, we did not spot a lion but we did see the bushes they were sleeping in. Too bad I didn't have my ipod and speakers – I'm sure if I would have blasted some "Lion King" music that would have woken them up.

Following our safari drive, we then hopped on a boat and road up and down the Kazinga Channel to observe even more animals and wildlife. Crowd favorites from the boat ride were the hippopotamuses and elephants. It was fascinating to be that close to them. At one point, Evan turned around and said, "I can't believe we're looking at elephants in Africa," and he said exactly what I was thinking. Never in my life did I think I would one day be on an African safari watching elephants, and yet here we were in Uganda with a whole elephant family right before our eyes. It was incredible!

Here are some more pictures from the safari…

Ugandan Kob

Hippo Yawn

Evan, Elephant, Jackie, Whitney :)

You Are Most Welcome

Monday was my first day of school in Uganda, and the week since has been exhausting, overwhelming, incredible and amazing.  On Monday we drove from our home in Kasese out 45 minutes into the foothills of the Rwenzori mountains, winding around on gravel roads until a tiny clearing appeared and we saw the Rwentutu Community School for the first time.  300 little children were eagerly waiting for us around their flagpole, and when we got out of the van they were absolutely giddy with excitement.  I have never had that many people or children watch my every move, and would soon learn that this would become the standard for the rest of the week.  Everywhere we go, we have "followers" that cling to us, walk by us, and do anything they can to be with us.  When we leave at 4:00, all of the children want high-fives or handshakes; we were laughing yesterday saying we felt like the Pope, reaching out our hands to touch as many franticly waving fingers as we can before getting in the van and going home.

On the first morning, the children had prepared a "Welcome Assembly" for us.  After receiving extremely grateful, heart-felt welcomes from each member of the teaching staff, we were seated in chairs in front of the student body.  With one student on the drums and the rest singing and dancing, we were entertained with several songs they had prepared for us to welcome them to their school.  The last song included the line "We shake shake shake, to welcome you!" repeated in the chorus, accompanied with a "shake" dance move.  After it had been repeated several times by the children, we decided to get out of our chairs and shake like the kids!  This sent them into fits of laughter, so we kept going with it and continued to shake, disco dance, rave-ball, air guitar…anything we could think of to keep the kids (and teachers!) laughing hysterically.  I loved that moment because I felt like it kind of broke our mold of being "the visitors" and showed them all that we were willing to become part of their community this summer and were definitely happy to be there.  Either that or it just made us look like fools…

 This is a typical scene at the end of the day --- a mob of students chasing us all the way to our van!

I was placed in a Primary 5 classroom this week, but will be rotating the rest of the summer so each week I will teach a new grade level.  There are 5 grades and 3 levels of Nursery school, but I will be sticking with Primary 1-5.  Jackie and Evan have the same type of rotation so all the children will have the opportunity to have each one of us as their teacher.  I was under the impression that the first day or two would consist mainly of observations, so I walked into my Primary 5 classroom after the Assembly on Monday and quietly sat down to observe their English lesson.  I had probably been sitting for 30 minutes, taking notes on how the teacher was going about teaching Active and Passive Verb Tenses, when all of a sudden he walked over to me with a huge smile, handed me the chalk, and exclaimed, "Now, please, you can teach us!!!"  "Me??" I asked, heart starting to pound as I was completely unprepared to teach any sort of lesson, "What do you want me to teach?"  "Anything that you want!" he said, eyes glowing and still smiling a mile-wide. 

And so began my summer of teaching at Rwentutu Community School.  Apparently the Ugandan teachers are so eager to learn from us, and hold us in such high regard, that they often request (at the last minute) that we teach lessons while they watch and learn with the students.  In only a few days, I have grown accustomed to learning that I will be teaching the next lesson approximately five minutes before class is to start.  This usually results in a frantic scan of the material from the Teacher Book, a quick glance at what students have in their notebooks, and an hour of teaching pretty much on the fly.  There is one book per grade for each subject, which belongs to the teacher, and the only other materials available are pencils and paper.  We are learning to be extremely creative in teaching with limited resources, and have also been able to negotiate at least some type of a teaching-schedule with the teachers so we can do our best to prepare material a day in advance!

The children are absolutely amazing.  I have never seen a group of happier kids in my entire life.  They have three "break times" throughout the school day, and Jackie, Evan, and I have out there playing with the kids the whole time.  We tried to teach them tag, but they still do not understand the concept that if you get tagged, you then become "it" and try to tag others, so it is basically a free-for-all with children running everywhere and Jackie, Evan and I trying to catch them, only to have them get up and continue running again after they have been tagged. We have taught them a few other games (I knew my years as a YMCA Day Camp counselor would come in handy someday!), but this is clearly their favorite.  They even came up with a name for it --- today during the first break we asked the children what they wanted to play, and they all replied, "We want to play 'Running'!"

Most of the older children speak English quite well, but the younger children are definitely still learning and only know a few phrases.  For example, our first day I saw a young one with a soccer ball.  "Wow, do you play soccer?" I asked him.  "I am fine, thank you," he replied with a smile.  My children in Primary 5 class, on the other hand, can read, write, and speak English just fine.  They enjoy hearing me talk because of my accent, and that is the only thing that has proved to be a little difficult when teaching.  I try to say things and then write words on the board as often as possible, because words like "heart, board, etc." sound different when I say them.  Names have also not been an issue because all of the children have American first names and Ugandan last names.  The only one that confused me was a little boy in the front row --- I asked him his name and he replied, "I am Robot."  "Robot?" I asked.  "Yes, Robot," he told me.  I couldn't believe someone would actually name their kid Robot, but I just went with it and called him Robot all day.  Finally, I glanced at his paper during work time and there, written on the cover, was his actual name: ROBERT.

And so, this week I have been teaching everything from English Grammar to The Circulatory System to Multiplication and Division of Fractions.  My "pizza method" for teaching fractions no longer works as a go-to model, as the students have never heard of or seen a pizza before.  They enjoyed saying the word, though, and I quickly switched my story problem from "Teacher Whitney has 4 pizzas and wants to cut each into five pieces" to "Teacher Whitney has 4 sticks of chalk and breaks each stick into 5 pieces.  How many pieces will she have at the end of the lesson?"  They loved this even more, because in my first two days I have already broken the chalk multiple times in a matter of minutes.  I guess that's what I get for growing up with white-boards and SMART boards!

Here are a few more pictures from our first week...

Our excuse for being late the first day --- cows in the road.

Just out for a nice walk when I bumped into the Equator!  Totally did not see that coming...not sure how I missed it.

Group photo

Evan, Jackie, and our taxi-van outside our home sweet home!

"Nothing is good when better is possible"

Last Friday was our first visit to a Ugandan school, and it was absolutely incredible. We visited a Primary school in Uganda that was the largest school in the country, holding approximately 3,000 students. Children begin their schooling as early as two-years of age, and attend Nursery school until they are five. Then, they take an examination at the end of Nursery school (holding pencils and paper to make graded marks at age five!) and go on to Primary School until they are eleven or twelve. At the end of each term, students take examinations that determine their rank and status in their particular class. The students really value their position and are extremely competitive to be the best in the class – hence the title of this blog post, a quote given to us by our supervisor, Enoch, to explain the mentality of children at school. Enoch told us that many students feel pressure from their parents to be at the top and get good grades because then they can continue their schooling and hopefully receive a high-paying job. Parents also pay quite a bit of money for their children to attend schools, and children will do anything so as not to let their parents down.

For these reasons and for many other reasons embedded in Ugandan culture, schools are examination-centered and teacher-centered. Rarely will you find a teacher who encourages students to be independent thinkers and creative problem-solvers; students totally rely on the teachers to tell them the right answers, and they always take the teacher's perspective because they believe that is always correct. The teachers have the responsibility to provide the students with answers that will lead the students to score well on their exams, and since the students care so much about the exams they never question what the teacher tells them.

At this particular school, there were approximately 60-70 students in a classroom, and never in my life have I seen students who are so obedient and disciplined. We began by touring the school with the Head Teacher (principal), and whenever he walked into a room the students would all stand and say, in unison, "GOOD MORNING TEACHER (his name)." He would then say something like, "Good morning students! How are you today?" and they would respond, again in unison, "WE ARE ALRIGHT THANK YOU." Then he usually asked them if they could guess who we were. One little boy yelled out, "They are Indians!" We were the first people from the United States to visit the school and the children's reactions were priceless.

I observed a Primary 4 level class (children ages 9-10), and at this point in the day the children were having their Religious studies class. This class read a passage from the Bible, but there were only 10 or so Bibles and over 60 kids, so the teacher had half of them stand up and read while the other half listened and then she would switch. Then, she asked the students questions after the story. She would call on one student to respond, and the student must respond in a complete sentence. Then, the rest of the class repeats word-for-word what the child had said.She was really a wonderful teacher and did wonders to keep all children engaged in the reading and responding.  In this picture, the children are copying questions about the story into their notebooks and then responding to the questions with the answers.

Overall, though, what I noticed the most was that kids are kids – no matter where you are in the world. Sure these children were phenomenally focused on their studies and incredibly disciplined, but I still saw their smiles, their playfulness, and their youthfulness in the classroom and during their free time.

Tomorrow I begin my first day at my new school!  Hope you all are enjoying the summer and possibly the end of your school year...mine is just beginning!

"Wascuzeyota" means "Good Morning"

After traveling 15,000 miles in 3 days, including a fabulous lay-over in Dubai where we stayed with my friend Adam, we arrived in Kampala, Uganda on Monday, May 31^st.  I can't even begin to explain what it felt like getting off the airplane and realizing we were finally in Africa.  We went outside the airport where we were greeted by hundreds of Ugandans, all with signs that had names and organizations on them.  It was frantic, terrifying, and exciting all at the same time.  Soon enough, we saw "EVAN WHITNEY JACKIE" written on crumpled notebook paper, held up by Enoch, our supervisor, Jimmy, our companion for the summer, and two other friends.  Enoch was wearing a suit, topped off with a Lebron James hat, which, we have realized, is his standard outfit of choice.  Together, the seven of us made our way to a taxi-van and drove to the Makarere University Guest House, where we have been staying all week.

Uganda is not at all what I expected it to be.  It is not better or worse, it is just Uganda, and it is perfect.  I don't know how to describe it but instead wish that you could all experience what I see and do every day.  I can't use American culture as a frame of reference because everything in Uganda is so different.  Uganda has a free-market economy; as Enoch told us, "anyone can sell anything at anytime."  For this reason, the streets are lined with shops, markets, stands, and people are walking in between cars selling everything from bananas to bed frames to belts.  It is chaotic and liberal, and appears to be highly disorganized from our perspective, but it is part of their culture and has been fascinating for us to observe.  Enoch told us that the concept of keeping time and maintaining organization is not high in priority in their culture; people here mainly speak of "today, tomorrow, and yesterday" instead of planning for next week, next month, or next year.  Even our concepts of sunrise, morning, afternoon, dusk, evening, and twilight are too much; "For us, the sun just comes up and goes down!" he said with a laugh.

Enoch is a fantastic man with so much to share about the Ugandan people and their history.  He wants so much for us to understand his culture that he is quick to explain, teach, and reflect with  us every day.  He seems to know exactly what we are feeling – a false sense of being rich when we exchanged $200 and got 40,000 shillings back, or shocked when we learned Ugandan schools are teacher-centered and students never question things but rather rely solely on the teacher's perspective.  He and Jimmy also both have a wonderful sense of humor; we have bonded so well in the week we have been together.

They had a hilarious time trying to pronounce my name; apparently a consonant, "T" followed by another consonant, "N," is impossible in their language, so they said either "Winnie" or "Whi-TTTAAA-ney" at first.  Jimmy and Enoch speak several different languages, Luganda and Lukonzo being the main ones, followed closely by English.  We have learned a few phrases here and there, but it is absolutely nothing like the English language so it is pretty hard to remember.

My skin has also intrigued them more than my red hair – Jimmy was fascinated with the fact that it would turn red, instead of dark, if I didn't put on my sun block.

Our days in Kampala have been full and exhilarating; we have seen wild animals (that's me and Jackie with a monkey at the right), attended a traditional dance ceremony, ventured out to see waterfalls and the source of the Nile river (the very first picture is the three of us with Enoch, our supervisor, at some waterfalls), and tomorrow we are going to a school visit followed by the market.  Saturday we drive to Kasese, and I am becoming more and more anxious to see where I will be living for the rest of the summer, and more importantly, the school were we will all be teaching!

This last picture was taken on a drive to the source of the Nile River in Jinja.  We drove past rural Uganda and these children were outside their homes in a village.  When they saw us drive by, we waved to them, and they joyfully smiled and waved back and began chasing our van :) It makes me so excited to see the children we will be teaching in Kasese!