Dan and Jodes… in Gulu, Uganda

It is the middle of the wet season here. There are two wet seasons in Gulu, but we are in the middle of the ‘big rains’. Last night was one of those nights. Loud cracks of thunder (never heard cracks of thunder quite like in Uganda). I wake at about 1.30am. First instinct: I should let the dogs in. A stumble out of bed to find one dog cowering near the side door of our hut, seeking shelter, and the other dog (neighbour’s) cowering near the front door getting wet. Dogs inside, back in bed. A lay for a while then my second thought: I should check the roof: I get up again, thankfully there is power (not always the case lately). I look around and find the roof leaking inside in three places. I put containers under these drips and move away things that could get wet. Our grass-thatched roof doesn’t normally leak, but it has done a couple of times during really intense rain. I then return to bed. Third thought. What is that smell? Firstly, blame Daniel. Quickly corrected, not Daniel. Must be the dog. Of course it is the neighbour’s dog, our dog would never make a smell like that. Dan’s turn: please take the dog out – can’t sleep with that awful smell! Dog refuses to move (we just brought him in from the rain, now we are forcing him out again!) After a lot of pushing and shoving, dog outside. Dan goes outside with dog, comes back in again. It’s not the dog, there’s just too much water, the sewerage is flooded and is coming up in the backyard. Oh dear. Bring the dog back inside, apologise to the dog. Spray. Then back to bed.

I think I lost my first round dealing with local authorities in Uganda. It’s a little bit difficult to explain what it is like dealing with people in authority here. I have slowly been collecting paperwork required to register as an organisation our education work with schools here. One of the hurdles was to get a letter from the local district office. Before I can go to that local district officer I need to go and see the district head of security for the area. A few months ago I approached the district head of security and discussed very clearly what I was doing and he gave me a long, ridiculous list of letters required from people and paperwork I needed. It took me a long time to get these letters. I even had Catherine helping me by following local officials to a local drinking place to get them to write a letter.

Alas, two weeks ago I had all the paperwork I was asked
! I handed it in, only to be told a week later that it was in a folder but not bound. They could not look at the documents until they were bound. I corrected this ov
ersight on my part.

Yesterday I was called back to this official’s office and presented with a long list of more letters and paperwork to gather. I then received a long lecture on how I needed to follow protocol. I asked for this official list of what was required, I said I needed this in writing. He then proceeded to give me a long lecture, how he didn’t have to answer to me, how he didn’t have to prove anything and I had to do anything he asked me to and he wouldn’t clear our paperwork until he got everything he personally wanted. At this stage I found it difficult to bite my tongue, I may have mentioned something about him just wanting to waste my time, didn’t see the point of
a lot of what he was saying, and then walking out of his office.

Consensus around me is he wants a bribe. And is going to make my life pretty difficult in the meantime. But he ain’t getting one from me!

Thank you to all our friends, friends-of-friends, relatives-of-friends and just all-round awesome people who threw in some dosh for our classroom – we reached the target! Dan has been busy organising the renovation. But we now have enough funds to finish the renovation of our demonstration classroom in Gulu. The room will be used as a space for us to draw teachers together for training, to demonstrate lessons and to work on teaching resources.

Thanks guys – we really appreciate your support in this!

Sometimes life gets too busy. So Dan rode almost two hours so we could escape to our little sanctuary in the bush. It was so quiet we could hear the birds and the flies – I haven’t heard flies in ages! We needed it.

Quite a lot of children in our area go to a government school near us, it’s the cheapest one around, hence its attraction. One of the boys who visits us for ad-hoc tutoring goes along to this school. He is in year 3 and couldn’t read one word a few months ago. Some of his peers are also having similar struggles. I had recently decided to put a hold on training teachers in government schools. Only because I am already working with quite a number of government schools and follow-up is proving quite challenging. I thought I would waiver my agreement just for this one school, possibly out of slightly selfish reasons because I am tired of tutoring these children at such a basic level. I had a training planned for a private school down the road for three days this week. I invited the reception/kindergarten to grade 3 teachers along to the training from the government school, we had a lovely three afternoons together and I was quite impressed with the level of engagement of these government teachers.

This afternoon the boy returned again to do some reading, he was very excited to tell me that his teacher was teaching him the same way I was in the afternoon. ‘We did S-a-m sam; and s-a-t sat’. I also shared his excitement. Phonics is working!

One of our little visitors brought along her latest Social Studies exam paper to show us when she visited today. I thought this question was REALLY HARD! And honestly, can’t think of a better answer than the one she gave 🙂

33% of Ugandans are living below the international poverty line of US$1.90 per day. I just did some small calculations and many teachers I know here in Gulu are earning less than this amount! Some teachers I know (not on the government payroll) are earning the equivalent of around US$30 per month, which is around $1 per day. And this is for their household. Some of these teachers are single parents and have many mouths to feed. It is quite incredible how they manage this. We could certainly take some house budgeting lessons from them.

This week the local community showed their support for the work we and local schools are doing by bringing along their own chairs for some teacher training. We conducted teacher training over three half days at a local nursery school. About 30 teachers from five different schools attended the training. The host nursery school is quite new and as yet doesn’t have any chairs for adults so they asked the community members to help out. It was quite beautiful to see a classroom jam-packed with chairs from the huts around the school. I don’t know how they manage to return them all after each session, but I think there was certainly some great organisation involved 🙂

At the end of the training the director gave a little motivational speech to the teachers – it was quite touching. She explained how Kampala was always the area mentioned for good education in Uganda, never Gulu. But in about five years time she believes we will see the fruits of these training sessions and the whole of northern Uganda will be transformed. We are praying that this will become a reality.

I think the owner of this chair made sure that it would be returned to them – their name is etched into it.