You couldn’t make this up!

When I give feedback to teachers, I always love to say a few things that I really liked about the teaching/lesson before I suggest a few areas of improvement.

I have just returned from a three-day trip to Arua with my colleague, Beatrice, for a meeting with one of our partner organisations. So let me start with a few things that I liked about our time away: 

The positive parts: 

• We travelled with public transport and reserved the front seat of the van. Win! And… I got to wear a seatbelt! 
• I had some great chats with my colleague. 
• There was a jerrycan of water in my room to make up for no running water
• My phone was fully charged when we had no power, so I had a flash light in our room. 
• We had the foresight on the second night to order dinner and then ‘relax’ in our rooms so even when dinner took two and a half hours to cook, it didn’t bother us.
• During the nine-hour meeting we had with our partner organisation I had a well-placed position and whilst I hoped it looked like I was taking down notes, I wrote ten emails, a reading assessment, a summary reading report, sample report card comments and had countless Whatsapp conversations. 
• I bought a head-scarf for the return journey so my hair wouldn’t be in a knotted mess for only 2000 shillings (80c). I paid no attention to the design and when I got home Dan pointed out it was a marijuana leaf print. Oops!
• I bought a jar of local honey for 6,000 shillings ($2.50). 
• Spoiler alert (linked to a negative comment) I witnessed some pretty incredible creativity and ‘fix-it’ solutions to the road we were travelling on. 
• The hotel/restaurant menu which was particularly humorous: I did pass on the ‘chicken bugger’ and the beef stroganoff made with goat. 
• Being able to listen to six podcasts on a longer than anticipated journey.

What could have been better: 

• The quality of the road construction which washed away along our journey. 
• The solution to repairing the road that was washed away: let’s just dump dirt and rocks in that big empty hole and then we can drive across… and when it sinks a bit, just add more dirt. Repeat. 
• The estimated five-hour journey which took nine and a half hours. 
• The greeting I received at our gate in Gulu – a truck slipped and broke the entrance of our driveway/drainage area.