Dan and Jodes… in Gulu, Uganda

 

 

 

 

Three days into the new year (not counting day one). And now feeling more focused, refreshed and humbled. What crack in the window?

I am not one to do New Year resolutions, and I always struggle to stay on track with daily devotions. However this year two close friends of mine, my brother and I are going to be working our way through psalms under the direction of one of the greats Timothy Keller. A psalm a day. I was encouraged and inspired by a line in Psalm 1: ‘…that person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither…’

This year I want to be like a tree planted by streams of water. I know I need a lot of watering and the fruit may taste a bit sour… but that’s my goal for 2017.

We started off having a quiet New Year’s Eve. Home-made pizza at a friend’s house, then home by 9pm. The music on either side from parties was way too loud to go to bed early so we decided to play cards until midnight. We didn’t really keep an eye on the time but could tell it was midnight by the raucous which later erupted on the road. Our instinct: turn the lights off and keep the dogs inside, which we did. We didn’t expect to receive a few missiles of rocks/clods of dirt which soon followed, aimed for our compound. Dan ducked outside to put a blanket over the  the car. And about 30 minutes later, continuing our card game by candlelight with dogs inside, one clod thumped into the front kitchen window and shattered the glass. Why? We will never know. Alcohol mixed with hyped up youth never bode well, and last night we experienced it first hand…AGAIN!

We stay up until the noise of revellers die down and around 1.40am we roll into bed, to lay and hear the loud thump of music at the parties still continuing nearby. As it turned out the music continued to thump out until 6am this morning. I know this because I got up at about 4am since it was futile to even try sleeping. I turned on the light in the lounge and snuggled up on the couch wrapped in two sarongs to avoid mosquito bites, with my computer; then the power went off (solar cut out). What else do you do? I stayed up for an hour and a half cleaning the cluttered desktop of my computer – it looks beautiful now.

We were frustrated, disappointed and to be honest I was fuming on the inside about why people would even try to damage our house and how people can be so inconsiderate to blast music all night. The thoughts that go through my mind during those wee hours!

Alas, Happy New Year everyone! We might begin ours again tonight 🙂

To all our dear friends, family and loved ones – Merry Christmas! Sorry for the lack of personal Christmas greetings to you all. Please accept this post as Christmas greeting with love from the three of us. May you all have a wonderful Christmas/New Year season.

This year our Christmas started on Christmas Eve with a visit to St Jude Children’s Home (Myron’s former home), we thought we would give them a gift of two goats – what a sight we were walking those goats up the road wrapped in tinsel 🙂 We were met with some serious cheering and Myron being passed around by all the carers who were so happy to see him again – worth the visit! His first visit back and it was lovely.

Christmas Eve was capped off with picnic candlelight carols hosted by some lovely Aussie friends and lunch at our place Christmas Day follow by a post of cricket. Felt like Christmas at home 🙂

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Excited for the new adventures in 2017.

Dan, Jodes and Myron

xxx

Myron’s first day at a swimming pool – he loved it! We had the baby pool and 25m pool all to ourselves for his introduction to swimming -it was magical 🙂

Myron has been with us for more than eight weeks now. He is settling in so well! We were told at the ‘hand over’ that we had to get a care order approved by the magistrate for us to be his guardians. We were assured this would only take a few days, and the probation officer was just waiting to see the magistrate. It’s now almost two months down the track and we are still waiting. The probation officer has deferred us to her colleague who has relocated to another district but lives in Gulu. We met with this ‘lovely’ chap a couple of weeks ago and the conversation centred around having to ‘facilitate him’ for his work and his journey to do this (even though he is a paid government employee). Facilitation is code word for: pay him money (aka a bribe). We had a long conversation about corruption and bribery. We did make it clear that we would be willing to pay for the cost of the fuel for him to get to Gulu and after asking him numerous times how much this would be, he ducked, dodged and never answered. We have asked our local lawyer to step in and help us with this process.

Please pray for peace, wisdom, our hearts and the hearts of those in official positions we are dealing with. Pray that we can get this care order soon. Once we have the care order, we then wait one year before we can apply for adoption. Thank you! xxx

Since Myron came to join our family I have only managed to get out once for a jog in the morning. No excuses, just how it is. On this particular jog I wasn’t feeling very fit, so took it quite slowly. Later in the day I saw one of my regular boda (motorbike) drivers. He said to me: ‘I saw you trying to run this morning. You were going so slowly. Why didn’t you just walk? I think you were even going as slow as though you were walking, I think you should just walk’.

On Saturday I attended two nursery graduations. I received 5 invitations from different nursery school graduations, but could only squeeze in two. I should be excited about these events. There are many things about them that are encouraging, but I also find them quite ‘painful’ at the same time.

They are encouraging because:

• It is wonderful to see parents celebrating education and the finishing of a landmark year for their child (last year of nursery).
• Nursery schools here are all private, so it is certainly an investment from the parents and it is an achievement that they have finished.
• It is a community event; it is always nice when the community gathers around together for a celebration (in daylight hours).
• Teachers are appreciated verbally and encouraged.

I find it ‘painful’, although that is possibly not the best adjective: disappointing? Because:

• Parents spend an awful lot of money on these events! Only last week I had one mother ask me for two cups of posho flour (a staple food here) because she had spent all her salary and money in the house on graduation expenses and had no food left in the house.
  • Graduation expenses include: hiring a graduation gown for the child to wear, buying cakes, presents for the child, money for the hiring of the photographer, certificate, feeding everyone present, hiring a sound system and marquees, hiring a marching band and local entertainers… the list goes on…
• As mentioned earlier, nurseries here are all private, so it is only the middle-high income families who can afford them. All other families wait until their children reach the age for primary school and just send them then.
• Graduations seem to become competitive among parents: an overflowing pile of gifts for the children. Some children receive many gifts, others one (or possibly none). Why bring the gifts to graduation to put on display? This encourages a bit of a class system early on in a child’s life, and encourages materialism and children to want more.
• Speeches, speeches and more speeches. The event normally takes at least eight hours.
• It also pains me to see that the nursery graduation becomes just a celebration of the finishing of school, regardless of the quality of education or what the child has learnt (or has not learnt). Nursery schools tend to be taught in English (the academic language). On the weekend I asked one of the graduants in English where his mother was (I could see her nearby); he could not answer; I asked him did he enjoy the day; again he could not answer me; I then asked him ‘how are you?’ the textbook question which all Ugandan children are spoon-fed to reply ‘I’m fine’ – that was his only response to me.

The children who graduated this weekend will most likely be attending private schools next year. They will not be attending the government schools which we are predominantly working with in Gulu. I know I am sounding extremely critical and need to be careful of my attitude here. I should be looking more for the positives. Thankfully my work is not directly related with graduations, just what happens in the classroom in the lead up to them 🙂

This week we filmed my colleague Teacher Catherine teaching a ‘model reading lesson’ in my former school, Layibi Techo Primary. This was the daily attendance for the class: in case you can’t figure it out: B = Boys; G = Girls and T = Total. Yep – there were 160 in the class! She taught one pretty awesome demonstration lesson! With this, we won’t have teachers complaining that they can’t teach 100 children when Catherine demonstrates beautifully how to teach 160 🙂

I watched as two local toddlers played and interacted with each other and their mothers/mothers’ friends looked on. This scene made me very annoyed. And the longer they played and the mothers looked on, commenting, the more annoyed and irate I became!

Why? These toddlers were children of teachers. These teachers were sitting outside their classroom, on a bench, whilst their P3 (year 2) class remained inside without a teacher. I (and my faithful helpers) were visiting this particular school carrying out reading tests on 45 children. I sat outside this classroom for two hours. From 8.30am to 10.30am not one lesson was taught. As I regularly entered the classroom, picking children at random, I found one child ‘controlling’ the class (with a stick), and it seemed they were taking it in turns to tell stories from the front of the class. During these two hours I observed one of the teachers go and set up a solar panel to go and charge her mobile phone; during break time she had the most interaction with one child when she sent her up the road to buy snacks for herself. I observed the teachers casually marking exam papers and filling in report cards, but most of the time they were chatting, taking tea and eating. The children? Well they remained inside with no lessons taking place.

There were remnants of lesson notes on the chalkboard, and that was from the early morning lesson. Children attend school from 7.30am for ‘extra morning lessons’ or ‘extended programme’; school administration state that children need to attend longer school times because children are so far behind that they need to catch up, etc. And parents pay extra money for this. It is common to find a government school where teachers will teach the extra lessons but do no teaching during the main school hours. This school is a ‘control school’; I have been monitoring the children’s reading levels throughout the year but I am not working directly with them yet. I plan to work with them next year but after this experience (and previous experiences) I am worried that I am going to have a big struggle on my hands.

There are many reasons why children have a poor education here in Uganda. And this is an insight into just a few of those reasons…