28 March 2009

Post date: Apr 7, 2009 6:36:12 AM

March 28^th (Saturday) Afternoon

Well yesterday was an adventure that reminded me of Gilligan’s Island. I met Edith at Makerere University at 9:30 (30 min late) – not bad. She was 25 minutes closer to being on time compared to Wednesday. Calendar and clock time historically and culturally have much less meaning here than in Western society. As I’m writing this the Indian man that runs the sandwich shop I’m eating at has a shirt on that says “No Hurry – This Is Africa.” In many ways I think we could learn from this easy going attitude. There really doesn’t seem to be a concept of ‘wasted time’ that we learn so early in our culture.

Edith and I headed off to visit her first school. She had a little two year old orphan girl with her that has been put into her care. When I got in the car her eyes just about popped out of her head and she couldn’t stop looking at me. I asked Edith if the little girl had ever seen a mazungu [white person] before and she laughed a “No.” So I turned to the back seat and assured her that I was okay – God had made me this way and I wasn’t sick or anything. This gained a few more laughs from Edith and even wider Eyes from the little girl who hadn’t heard much, if any, English before.

I took a little over an hour to get the first school. From past experience it seems that all the schools around Kampala that I’ve worked with take an hour to get to and involve driving down torn up roads – so I wasn’t much surprised. I met all of the students and teachers – of course – it’s the whole three cups of tea thing. That totaled 8 teachers plus support staff and about 300 students grades P4 through P7. Then I talked extensively with the P7 teachers, Daniel and Hermann, about the Kids Journey. I asked them some tough questions about physical punishment to try and gauge their openness and honesty with me. Yes, children who misbehave can be physically punished. The frequency is about one+ student per quarter per class and it is carried out by one school administrator that has that responsibility. For reference, this type of punishment was one of the primary concerns brought forth be the students in APCT. I forgot to ask if the school kept records of this. It would also be good data to collect. This work is outside of my work with APCT. APCT only works with secondary schools and I want to work with a primary school and introduce the Kids Journey. If we are successful in shifting behavior and eliminating physical punishment this will be a big victory for all involved.

Edith and I, along with the Deputy Head Master discussed which teacher we thought had a closer connection and trust with his students. I only want to work with one teacher in an interest of the limited time I have and for having a control group. We picked Hermann. I reviewed the school records and they have good paper records dating back over 10 years for all students. It won’t be much fun entering all of the data into the computer for analysis, but it is essential. Maybe I’ll be able to get a few friends here to help. Maybe Hermann could help able to help some too, but the school doesn’t have any computers so that will be a little difficult. He will have his work cut out for him just going to an internet site to send me the grades for all 70 primary students.

Around noon Edith and I headed to her next school. It’s near Entebbe airport. I could see the medical evacuation planes from the school in the area where “The Last King of Scotland” was filmed. To get there we drove for about 25 min and then took a ferry across a section of Lake Victoria. We were lucky to be the last of six cars that were able to fit on with a pile of people, bicycles, and bodda boddas. It was about a 20 minute ferry ride and it felt good to be out on the water. Mind you this was no fancy ferry and the loading and unloading procedures were a bit sketchy – but it did have railings around it to keep the cars and people from falling over into the water.

When we got to the second school it was again time for ‘three cups of tea.’ This is a school the Edith started for orphans in her little village and it sits next to the house she grew up in. So I met her mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunties, nieces, nephews, chicken, pigs, cats, dogs, goats, etc. Then we walked to the school and the children performed three beautiful songs and dances for Edith and me. They weren’t peace related in particular – but beautiful all the same. I didn’t have my camera (or Margot like last visit) with me so I didn’t get it recorded.

I met all of the children and teachers. The classes are combined here because there are such a small number of children. They have school records but they’re a little sketchy. So, although Edith would prefer I work with this school because it is her school that she started it’s a little too remote and small. There is no electricity and to use the internet the teacher would need to go across the ferry which only runs 2x a day. I decided that it would be nice to try a Classroom Journey with the P6/P7 class. I could tell that only about half of them could comprehend my accent. I talked with the teacher some and he said that their exposure to English was limited. He took a copy of the Classroom Journey and was going to translate it and use it weekly with them. We’ll see how it goes. He seems to have a lot of interest and motivation.

Then we had lunch at about 3:00. For many Ugandans this is their only meal of the day – and it was my first meal of the day. I couldn’t find a place to get a byte to eat in the morning when I met Edith. I had walked to a plaza where there is usually a guy making rolexes but he wasn’t around. A rolex is a very rich buttered tortilla like thing with eggs and potatoes wrapped up inside. It’s so rich you can really only eat one – but one would have been great. Needless to say I was so hungry that they could have fed me tree bark and I would have thought it was the best food on Earth. It was a very good meal – matoke, sweet potato, baby egg plant (look like peas), some beef broth.

Edith had half a dozen other things to take care of so I chatted with the P6/P7 teacher for a few hours and we left a 5PM for the ferry. Unfortunately it was full --- and we had to drive around. At 8:00 PM we weren’t home yet and Edith got a call that someone had been injured and needed to get to a hospital so she dropped me off ‘somewhere’ and told me I could get a matatu into Kampala – from there I could figure things out on how to get home. After about four matatus went by that were completely full I decided to start walking. I kind of had a sense of where I might be and what direction to go in – but I wasn’t absolutely sure.

When I got to a private hire taxi stand I asked them if the road I was looking at was Entebbe Road --- they couldn’t understand my English - because they said no. They of course wanted to give me a ride and pick up a fare and asked me where I needed to go. I gave them about a dozen landmarks to reference where I wanted to go – but none of them registers. Geez I thought – where the heck am I? So then I made a big mistake and pulled out a map. Most Ugandans have never seen a map. I pointed to where I thought we might be Southwest of the city and they pointed to a place Northwest of the city. Well, that got me pretty confused so I just decided to have one of them take me to the city and then I could figure things out from there. Within a mile we were in place I recognized and I said to the driver, “This is Entebbe road,” and he said, “Yes?” Ummm --- anyway --- after fighting through traffic for about 30 minutes I was able to guide him back to my guest house. Cory was there when I arrived and I shared some of my day with him. He said Jessica was coming to La Fontaine and wanted to have dinner with me. That was cool – I like it when things manifest with the smallest thought. Jessica is Cory’s co-worker that works in microfinance and I wanted to learn more about what she’s doing and more about microfinance.

I took a shower --- it had been a long hot day --- and had dinner with Jessica. She’s a recent University graduate and has only been in Uganda for a month. She spent six months in Kenya on an internship that she had busted out of to do her own thing. It’s interesting the people I have me on this trip. They’re all in their early 20s to early 30s and they’re all very similar to me in that they are pretty much doing their own work instead of working for some big charity. Cory and Jessica are both here working for a microfinance charity out of San Diego but they pretty do their own thing. Ryan and Kate are very similar in terms of being “Independent Charity Workers” and Naashom is close behind.

After dinner the gang went to Patrick O’Leary’s (Bubbles) and I met a lot of old friends. Bubbles has been my home away from home and main networking station. Perhaps more about that place another day. Later, about midnight, we went to the Iguana - the bar next to La Fontaine and the main source of my lack of sleep Thursday through Saturday nights. They play loud dance music until 3AM and there's really no need to go to bed because you can't sleep anyway. I'll be glad to move into Naashom's place on Monday. Need to run now and do some work for Mango Tree before the party tonight at Kate's.

March 28^th (Saturday) Evening

I went to Garden City today. It’s a four story shopping complex – the most modern shopping area in all of Uganda. There’s actually a movie theatre there where they have semi-current Hollywood and Bollywood hits. I needed to go back to the grocery store where I bought my 20,000 UGX international phone card that hasn’t worked all week. They asked me to go shopping for a while and they would look into it. I went to eat lunch and bought a receipt book at Uganda’s biggest book store – Argonaunts. Yes – a receipt book. What a brilliant idea. One of the women met recently told me that she carries one around for all the situations where someone doesn’t have a receipt – all you need is a signature and phone number with the rest of the details and it’s valid.

When I returned to grocery they were still working on my problem. They told me that they talked with Talk Telecom Solutions and that it should be working later today - in Africa that means sometime next week or the week after. So I asked them for a different phone card and they finally gave me a 20,000 UGX MTN phone card for local calling time. The funny part was the girls at the customer service counter. They had called some of their girlfriends in the store so they could come and look at my shoes. I was wearing my new Keen’s like Rick’s that Deb just bought me, and they thought they were the greatest thing going. “What kind of shoes are those – what are they for – where do you get them – do they glow in the dark (they have reflective strips) – etc?”

I’m having dinner alone this evening at La Fontaine. It’s interesting to walk out back of the restaurant up to the guest house and see your food running around in the alleyway - poor little chickens. Chicken dishes are some of the best here --- very fresh. I just talked on the phone with Ryan who is sweating it out in one of the downtown internet café’s – probably submitting a last minute article to the paper. He said be here around 7 (probably more like 8) and we’ll head off to Kate’s together.