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Hello Everyone!
It's been quite a while since i last updated it but i figured it would be better to do it all in one big go than lots of small ones... So here goes the last 12 weeks at project known as Term 1.
So, let's start at the beginning, or where I left off. In my last blog I mentioned a bull party to celebrate our winning of the Christmas cup. Well it was originally delayed by a week because the President of Uganda was visiting the area. Nontheless, on Sunday 6th Feb we had our long-awaited Bull party although truth be told it was a bit of a dissappointment. Unfortunately with the elections being 2 weeks away, all the politicians turned up and donated money, essentially as a way of gaining votes. It was still a good night, with us getting good community recognition and seeing the whole community turn out to be fed rice and meat (About 200-300 people turned up) and the Players vip meal was to get given 3 or 4 meals of Rice and meat instead of one! I actually couldn't have eaten any more and needless to say we stayed away from Rice and meat for a couple of weeks! But it was nice to see the community come together and the dancing went on into the night, until about 4 or 5am.... I hit the hay at 11pm just because i still had school the next day.
As we were slowly getting back into our routine, we saw an article in a 4-4-2 magazine about Diego Forlan's 24 hour food diary. Just by looking at the pictures, our mouths watered so we set ourselves the challenge of reproducing this food diary (allbeit only the breakfast was feesible). We stocked up and planned hard and although this breakfast may not sound much, i assure you it was the best breakfast i've ever had. We had an omelette or 2 with Toast (More like grilled bread), a Pineapple, and a Smoothie which we substituted for a Katunda which is the local Juice of Passionfruit, Orange water and Sugar. About 2 hours after starting we finally sat down proudly to eat our masterpiece using nothing but a charcoal stove and a few pans.... It proves if you really try you can produce the best food around.
There's been quite a lot of small stories which have really helped me and Kieran this term, so many memories that will stay with us for the rest of our life, here's a few. So we had an issue of rats in the house and in particular one rat in our room which was constantly eating our clothes. Kieran kept losing football shirts and the rat ate my pyjama shorts which i still use despite having 4 holes in! So one night after eating, we thought, enough for one night, let's go to bed. We got to our room, only to realise the rat had climbed up onto Kieran's bed, up some string and jumped into Kieran's bag which is hanging up on a peg! Panicking, we got James and Patrick (Our Brother and Father in Uganda) to help us out and after 10 minutes of slowly getting each item of clothes out of the bag, we were left with just the rat in the bag. Then along comes Patrick, an Anglican Reverand and with no mercy or compassion whatsoever takes the bag and smashes the bag repeatedly for a minute in order to essentially smash the rat to pieces. It was honestly one of the funniest moments in my life. Especially when the rat fell out and Patrick was shouting "There's no rat! There's no rat here!" Just for us to continue laughing and pointing at a dead rat sprawled out on the floor, dead. So if you ever wondered what your Religious Leaders are like in Uganda, I think it's safe to say they're not fans of rats. However the solution was to then get a cat.... So on April 1st we woke up to be told we now had a kitten to kill the rats! We thought it was an April fool's but no it wasn't. There was indeed a tiny kitten mewing away in the corner. We decided to call it 'Kuba' which translated from Luganda means "Beater", in theory to beat the rats. It really was quite cute but unfortunately things didn't work out.... The kids we also live with, one being a mischievious 7 year old boy, decided 3 days after getting the cat to experiment by throwing the cat as high into the air as he could... Unfortunately one bad landing and the Cat was disabled for the next 3 days and to make matters worse, it seemed to have some sort of epilepsy and kept having fits. Sadly, a week later, it died. So although the rats haven't come back it seems our family is set on doing whatever needs be to keep them away.
Moving on, the small boys we live with, Sam and Nelson have almost become problematic... They have had a troublesome background and haven't ever been taught that stealing is wrong.... Slowly they've been stealing bigger and bigger items until it reached it's peak, moving from small bits of food to eventually my ipod and Kieran's Camera (Although the photo's the took are hilarious just to think what went through their mind when they decided to take 20 photos of a goat...) So with our "Don't beat them attitude", We think we've slowly changed the attitude of some people's thinking that beating children doesn't actually work. Our punishment for the kids, At school all the kids at school take a cup of porridge for lunch every day. So we got Sam and Nelson to wash all 804 cups of all the students for 3 days.... When we asked them later, would you rather wash cps of get beat, they said get beat. It's sad we have to punish them in the first place but otherwise it's a slippery slope. They have already admitted to stealing money off us and Patrick (inc. 10,000/= which is about 3 quid), However were quite proud that we're slowly making them realise that beating isn't the solution which has been shown with how we hae good class control without resorting to violence. One of Africa's biggest problems is slowly changing, but it's nice to know were helping.
After that random detour... We celebrated our 6month anniversary in Gombe. Uganda in the middle of term quite nicely. We were invited to on of the biggest memorial services in the district, one which the Bishop of Central Buganda leads and turns up to. So from 8 til 2pm we spent the time with the Bishop eating breakfast and lunch and having the memorial service, and boy was it some good food! For the record, We appreciate the basics now. This is a typical day for food with me. For breakfast, we'll have porridge with water, maybe sugar to make it bearable. Then for lunch, we have what's called Kawunga, Posho and Beans. For those that don't know, Posho is cassava flour and water.... It is as tasteless as it sounds but with some beans it makes for a nice lunch. Then for a good african dinner we'll have Matooke and make a cabbage/tomatoe broth. Yet again, for those that don't know, Matooke is unripe bananas. That's considered a good day for food by me... so next time your stuck with bangers and mash, spare a thought. I don't miss english foods any more but i am looking forward to that day.... That day which sadly is less than 100 days away. To help me remember the last days i've started doing a video journal once a day for 30 seconds or so with what i'm doing and when i get back i'll upload it. Hoping it'll make a nice watch.
Another big story of Term 1 has been Student teachers. Fair enough they need to do their practice... but when there's 13 members of staff and they send 18, yes 18 Students teachers; It takes the biscuit. So we've slowly battled on, we lost our music and Pe lessons but we've stuck by it and this term we've really been rewarded by the fact we can name most students in P6 and P7 now, almost 200 kids which is really nice because you realise you're starting to bond with them.One Student, called Bashir was offered a scholarship at a nearby private school, tuition fees paid for because he was a pretty good footballer. It was a perfect chance but after one week, he returned back to Kayenje C/u for good. his reason; He wanted to be taught by the whites.... It was quite humbling to hear that they have that level of respect for us but maybe it wasn't his wisest choice but at least we know that his level of English will be better than if he went to the other school because the kids understand us completely now, even with our twangs and accents.
We've finally had our PT visit, where after having a lovely trip with Susie to visit who we call Chairman and an eventful trip through his garden and after a big issue with Staff politics we've finally got to the bottom of it but at one point the ultimatum was either the Headmaster our host goes, or every single staff member goes.... Thankfully, it hasn't got to that but our headmaster looks like he will be departing during this holidays and we may have a new host for next year.
I'm coming to the end of the term now... Me and Kieran were almost sad to leave because of the routine we'd got ourselves into.We even made ourselves a little treat night, each night giving ourselves a little treat.
Mon - Bread
Tues- Rolex (Chappti and Eggs, lush, even for UK standards)
Wed- Hot Chocolate, for some inexplicable reason, Cadbury's hot chocolate is ridiculously available and cheap here
Thurs- Street food, we go out and eat local food instead of cooking
Fri - Custard, yes Custard is also available here...
Sat - Soda/Fizzy drink
Sun - We back something, either Chapatti's or Pancakes which we douse with sugar and if were lucky, honey.
I guess that's all i have to say for this term, thank you for reading. Me and a few others are leaving for Kenya tomorrow, this is the last time we'll leave the country which is quite sad but when i get back i'll come back with so many stories and what we've done. :)
For now, take care
Shaun x
=)
- comments
Julia Jasper Great to hear of your experience again Shaun. Something that will stay with you for the rest of your life. Really looking forward to seeing you when you get back. Can't believe it is almost over. How time flies. I am now almost back to normal after the op. It broke up what was a very long term though! Take care and God bless JMJx