Uganda concluded and the journey back to home...

I promised to write more about my time in Uganda, having ended my last post upon reaching Kampala. I arrived at Kampala during a slightly rainy midday that Saturday without really a plan or even a place to stay. Naturally, I did the most sensible thing upon arriving, which was to find a place to eat lunch, find my bearings, and flip through my guidebook to find somewhere to stay. The cheapest option was a tourist backpacking hostel, so I decided to opt for that and anonymity for the day. After all, if you want to be anonymous, go where all the other young, slightly dirty mzungus will be, and you can be pretty sure that you can relax, read your book and be left alone... even by the other dirty mzungus.

Then, I decided to go and get a good lesson in Ugandan history, visiting the Kasubi Tombs of the last four Buganda kings, or kabakas as they are called. The Buganda kingdom is the oldest in Uganda, dating back to the thirteenth century, and to this day they have a king, but his role is more ceremonial than political. The first president of Uganda was also a Buganda king, and apparently that was not a great combination.

These four kings, however, dated back to the beginning of colonial contact with Europe, and I could see in the summaries of their lives that my guide gave me, the struggles that that contact posed. The first kabaka invited European missionaries, but under the mistaken assumption that they would come and teach the Buganda how to make guns. Of course, even if they may have agreed to such a thing, the Europeans were not in the habit of giving out guns... They did give one ceremonial cannon, and in the drum house there was a wood cannon... Apparently, the kabaka would shoot off the little one, and then tell his guests that he would not shoot this other one because it was too terrifying. A clever strategy.

Anyway, after this first kabaka's experience, his son was not so willing to embrace the westerners, and even massacred some missionaries outside of town. It really is unfortunate that Christianity had to come to Africa so closely bound to colonialism... in many ways you see the church here still trying to work out that relationship, not that the church in the West doesn't have its own copious amounts of baggage to work out. Because of his antagonism though, this king was exiled to the Seychille islands(I remember when I was in Ghana learning about how the British exiled the Ashante and Fante royalty as well... anyone who sought to oppose, so also rebel leaders here in Kenya...), and his infant son suceeded him, somebody who could be handled more closely by the colonialists.

This third king then had quite a different experience than his father, having a more western education, serving for the British in the First World War, and becoming a Christian, having only one wife while his father or grandfather had had, if I recall correctly, somewhere like 800...

His son also was much more westernized, serving for the British during the Second World War, and then going on to lead Uganda to independence and become the first president. This experience of independence leaders  and movements in Africa was not uncommon. During the World Wars, the colonial powers would have their colonial subjects come fight on foreign fronts, often for such notions as freedom, but this freedom was never meant to extend to them... Thus, the soldiers would come home, horrified by the slaughter they had seen, disillusioned yet also empowered. In the 1950s and 60s, the world and Africa were ripe for independence.

I did not really have any knowledge of Uganda's history, so found my lesson quite interesting. These Kabaka's had ruled out of Kampala, and even around the compound of the tombs, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, descendents of the Kabaka's wives still live. Unfortunately, I could not see the tombs themselves as they had been burned down by an arsonist a year ago... They are in the proccess of rebuilding the traditional house to enclose the tombs. Thankfully, the kabakas were buried far enough down that during the fire, they were undamaged.

Kampala is a beautiful city. Originally it was built centered around seven hilltops(the kabakas would build their palaces on the hills for securities sake) and while it has grown from that original number, it is still very much a city of many hills, which also means a city of spectacular views. It is smaller than Nairobi, the city center has less modern skyscrapers and while a thriving business district, not quite the level one finds in Nairobi. However, as one of the primary modes of transportation is motorcycles instead of only mtatus, the traffic seemed better than Nairobi, if terrifying with all the motorbikes darting in and out around the cars. I thoroughly enjoyed my time though, and once I had my bearings(easy enough to get with all the hills and landmark buildings on them) I enjoyed walking all over.

Sunday I went to church at the Narimembe Cathedral, a big Anglican church on top of one of the major hills(incredible view!). It was nice, and one can always count on the Anglicans and Catholics to only last an hour in service... then from there I went to the Uganda Museum which I had been warned was rather underwhelming. It really was although it had some nice display cases with musical instruments... It had ethnographic exhibits about how the different tribes used to live, hunt, farm, play, etc, with a brief mention of the British and Germans striking a deal after the Berlin Conference allowing the British to take Uganda(they wanted Uganda because the Nile river runs through it and Egypt was at the time a strategic interest of the British). From the museum though you would not barely know Uganda was colonized, or how colonialism was in Uganda, or about the independence movement or subsequent almost fifty years of independence with its share of coups, awful leaders(think Idi Amin...) and current political strongman who just won another term last month...

That afternoon I just walked around downtown, making my route by the Parliament building, past the high end hotels and then back down into the CBD. Monday morning I headed my journey homewards to Kenya, catching a taxi mini-bus to the border.

Taxis as they are called in Uganda or mtatus as we call them here in Kenya are an experience in themselves, as are taxi yards. Nairobi has stages that are less congested, and so not the full taxi yard experience. Being in Kampala reminded me of my time in Ghana though. In Kampala, the city on hills, the taxi parks are down, and as you descend into them you feel like you will drown in the crowd of people. They are really just a big yard with hundreds of minibuses, and you have to find the sign with your destination, or ask directions and be pointed in the very rough right direction... as it had been raining, in Kampala they were very muddy, and as a quite muddy mzungu I raised a few eyebrows. I caught a few people quite openly laughing at the amount of mud I had collected around my sandals. Then truly, you find one, and before you know it there are twenty people on this little bus... you think small thoughts... as you wait for the taxi to fill, vendors ply you with an array of wares, mostly water, soda and biscuits, but sometimes and odd assortment of junk(plastic cars? sunglasses? calenders...)... then when it fills, the taxi somehow manages to get out of the park despite the fact that there seems to be no proper roads and the minibuses seem pressed bumper to bumper even parked... still, you think small thoughts and settle back to enjoy the ride...

I do enjoy the rides as it is a great way to see the countryside, the beautiful hills of Uganda, the sugar cane fields, and then crossing the border on foot(this time at the Busia crossing) fitting twenty more into a mtatu now, and then the beautiful hills of Western Kenya coming down into Kisumu and Lake Victoria. I had wanted to see more of Kisumu and even had an acquaintance from the states who was studying there, so Monday night I met up with her, and then Tuesday I walked around town and down to the lake, which looked like a field. Lake Victoria is the biggest lake in Africa and divided between Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, although Kenya, with only 6%, probably has the smallest part. Currently, all the lake weed has blown into shore though and it really looked like you were looking out over a great, green field, with a passing fishing boat where a canal had opened up reminding you it was in fact the lake. I really liked Kisumu, but by Tuesday afternoon, was ready to head back to Nairobi.

This time, I took a direct shuttle, which means I even had a seat to myself, and got to see more stunning crountyside; the tea fields of Kericho, the sloping hills with farms that seemed to want to roll off, the Rift Valley with its lakes... it was a good six hour drive...

Then a few days in Nairobi, my MCC team meeting which is always lovely to see the other MCC'ers, and Saturday back to Hope.

It was a lovely break, I had some good adventures, got to see a lot of friends, but now I am so glad to be back here. I missed the children, teaching, the crazy life that I live here... I'm not convinced the school did break while I was away, but apparently they had some American visitors for a week, and I am quite happy to have been away because groups make me feel awkward in my own home(and the child who told me about them seemed underwhelmed himself)... Now we are preparing for exams which start Thursday, and with the rains came the common cold(the poor children are so miserably sick!) so I am hoping they are feeling a little better before the exams. In other news, we got three more little infants last Friday, so the family keeps on growing...

Greetings from Uganda!

Greetings from Uganda! My school is on break, and all the teachers were told to leave, so I decided I would leave to visit my neighbor country of Uganda. And yes, I still don't understand how we break these two weeks while the rest of Kenya breaks in April... And yes, I am still apprehensive that the students have to take exams the moment we resume on the 28th... And yes, despite my concerns, real or imagined, I was thankfully able to leave those behind when the time came to go... And yes, I thought I was leaving on Sunday but then my ride to Nairobi switched to Saturday so I packed and left without saying goodbye which is never a good feeling... surely they know I am coming back because they ask at least once a week when I am leaving(not because they are trying to get rid of me, just because they know that everyone is always leaving...)

Meanwhile, while missing my children, I am having an amazing time. I was able to get a ride into Nairobi Saturday, stayed that night with my MCC country reps who just happened to be having a potluck that evening so I was able to catch up with some other MCC friends as well. Then I went to church Sunday with two of the MCC service workers, and joined them and some retired MCC people(legends was how they were described to me) for lunch after. We had the most amazing Indian food! Meanwhile, the conversation was an amazing combination of history and Kenya and peace... and I mostly just listened because the MCC legends are legendary for a reason. They have lived in Kenya or East Africa since the seventies(and she grew up in Tanzania even before then) and are very wise.

Then Sunday evening I got the night bus to Kampala, befriending most of the other bus riders as my means of security... or Ugandans are more open than Kenyans... or something. Anyways, I was glad to have chatted with some of them when we hit the border at five in the morning, still dark, and had to walk through this wide expanse of no mans land between the Kenyan and Ugandan immigration offices.

I arrived in Kampala around ten, met up with my friend Amanda who is doing SALT in Uganda, and we got lunch. I had an amazing calzone! Monday Kampala was electing a mayor, so we opted to lay low that day because elections can often mean conflict. There was no conflict on Monday, but I think the police did fire tear gas on people celebrating their candidates victory a day or two later... It was great to catch up with Amanda though and to hear how her SALT experience compared to mine.

Then, Tuesday I followed her back to Kamuli where she is living and working and got to see first hand how her SALT year was going which was lovely. I got to meet and stay with her host family who were incredible: while my position has me with the biggest host family ever, who I love, sometimes I wish I had a more traditional host family. I enjoyed borrowing hers for a few days. Then I got to see her work, where she works split between some teaching and some social work.

I really enjoyed visiting the schools and seeing how they compared to my experience. My school is not typical. Our class sizes are a dream, and education is such a priority that I don't have to worry about convincing my kids to study. Not so at the primary where Amanda teaches. Class sizes averaged around 100, and with so many children, the teachers had a daunting task. The teachers were very welcoming of me as their visitor, and I had a good conversation with one of them when Amanda was off doing some home visits. He says education is a real struggle in Uganda because people have so many children and there is free primary education(which is good) but with so many children that can make 100 children in a class. It does seem here like there is an abundance of primary schools, probably in Kenya too. I got to help with one of his classes, reviewing a social studies exam with p. 7, and then the next day another school had asked Amanda if I could visit so I taught their P. 7's English. The second school was much smaller, not in a permanent building but a subdivided hall, but the class sizes were much more reasonable. It was great to have an insight into education in Uganda.

As I showed up midweek I really just tagged along for daily life, but another fun experience was getting to sit in on Amanda's churches school outreach practices. The church youth had a trip planned for this weekend where they would go and visit secondary schools doing outreach and encouraging youth to be smart about AIDS. They had songs, dances, skits and plays that they were practicing, and it was fun to meet them and also to watch them practice. At a certain point, their leader had to confiscate all their cellphones because they kept talking during practice... some things are the same the world over... cellphones are taking over the world.

Truly, it was a rich couple of days, and then Friday morning I headed out for some solo traveling adventures, starting in Jinja a few hours away from Kamuli. Jinja is famous as the source of the Nile, and I went to the site where Lake Victoria becomes the Nile river. It was a beautiful sunny day(despite the rains starting this week, which while a blessing has left me often enough quite damp) and I rented a boat to take me out to see the source better and then to go out onto Lake Victoria. I had a great and knowledgeable guide, and while I feel I might have paid more than I should(I am a poor bargainer) it was well worth the $10 I paid... I takes a drop of water 3 months to make it from the source of the Nile to the Mediterranean. There were many beautiful birds along the source, and I even saw a monitor lizard. Then, after my tour, I had fried Tillapia and chips.

That afternoon I just walked around Jinja as I had decided to stay the night before heading onto Kampala. It is a medium sized town, but as it was also the first port in Uganda along Lake Victoria and connecting as a trade route to Tanzania and Kenya,  it has some beautiful colonial architecture and just a friendly feel. I like walking, finding it the best way to get a sense of a place. I also had a cup of really good coffee.

Then, this morning I headed upriver to look at the Bujangali Falls, falls made famous mostly by the rafting industry which runs the Nile. I decided to save my money, remembering how scared I was rafting the Spokane river one summer in college with its non-existant rapids. Still, it was a beautiful falls to look at. I have a deep love of waterfalls, probably stemming from my time in Ghana where we would go chasing waterfalls for weekend adventures. They also are very majestic, but this waterfall will soon disappear as a dam is going in nearby. It will be good for the electricity it will provide, but I also can't help feel a little sad for the waterfall. When I left Jinja, it was starting to rain, and by the time I reached the Bujangali falls it was raining quite properly. I think I amused the people working there, having trekked through the rain to just look at the falls...

Then I headed to Kampala, but will leave my time here(still ongoing) for another post. Random Uganda observations... people here are very welcoming(a stereotype my Kenyan friends had told me about Ugandans, but it is true)... a primary means of transportation is riding boda-bodas, motorcycle taxis, and in rural communities the proper way to ride for women in skirts is sideways which was a slightly terrifying, if completely safe on rural backroads, experience... also on transportation I was in a 14 person minibus taxi yesterday that easily was holding twenty people(as I ride more popular routes in Kenya... i.e. police checks... this was a new experience)...

Anyways, that is all for now... I will blog again about my adventures in Kampala and beyond. We have MCC team meeting Friday and then I head back to Hope next Saturday. It feels strange to be away for so long, and I hope things are going well on this break that I never felt anybody knew anything about...

More on school

Greetings friends,

Another week... they seem to be racing by these days! How is it already March?

Last weekend was a lovely break, and allowed me to plunge fully into this past week, and the week was full and good. This term really keeps on getting better and better as I feel more fully integrated into the school and more accepted as part of ordinary life here and less and less as some distinguished visitor(although I do still here myself often referred to as mzungu, which is a little frustrating as people are quick to tell you if asked, that this in fact is not a respectful reference... I told my PE class to at least call me mwalimu mzungu, meaning teacher white person...)

What does a regular school day look like here? Well, for the children it means getting up at the crack of dawn or before to clean their dorms before the 6:30 devotion bell(for me it means getting out of bed hopefully a few minutes before the bell so I can be ready and not late). After devotions, around seven, we take our uji(hot maize porridge). As it is bitingly cold that early in the morning, steam rises from our cups and warms us up. Honestly, it is quite good.

Then, after breakfast, the children go to their classrooms to wait for parade at 8 where the teachers instruct them in discipline and encourage them in their studies. At 8:20, classes begin. Periods last 35 minutes(there are nine in a day... I normally teach between five and six between English and PE), and there is a twenty minute break at 9:30 and a half hour break at 11. At 12:40, we break for devotions and lunch(beans and maize, truly quite delicious) with classes resuming from 2-3:45. At 3:45 the students have parade again and are either sent for chores or games. Games are a lot of fun, especially lately as the teachers are really into it, and breaking into girls and boys, they play volleyball or football with much laughter. Then at 6 the bell summons us for devotions and dinner, with the younger children being sent to bed after dinner(and me going to my room) while the older primary and secondary stay and study until 9.These children are committed to their studies, but as the primary means of learning is memorization, they probably need all that time... It was the same when I was in University in Ghana... to perform well we needed to memorize(at times verbatim) what we had been taught; at least in Ghana, critical thinking was not taught or encouraged, and thankfully it was pass/fail for me, because I did not get good marks...

Classes are 35 minutes. For English, this means going over our material and hopefully having time for the students to complete an in class exercise. If they do not finish, the exercise becomes homework, and if they do finish, I try to assign some review material as homework because they like homework... crazy children, but these children are pretty serious about their educations and have dreams of university and careers even in the lower grades. I was asked recently what my career was, and had to confess I wasn't sure. Different cultural expectations between here and home, where my generation seems to be moving away from the idea of careers in the pursuit of happiness, meaning, or some other vague ideal... For many of the children, they dream of becoming lawyers, doctors, and pilots, although one of my grade fours wants to be a baker so he can make cakes and chapatis(he told me this with the biggest smile, clearly he intends to eat a good amount of his wares!)

Thinking over why this term is so good, it is teaching properly in the school and being in the timetable as a real teacher. Also, it is the level of acceptance the other teachers have granted me, both primary and even secondary. While before I felt there was a level of wariness, this past week I have had good conversations with many of the teachers, and I think they are seeing I am not such a distinguished visitor anymore but perhaps a slightly eccentric peer. They can see I am trying, and I feel very blessed to get to work alongside such committed men and women(well, to be honest, there is only one other woman teacher, but she is incredible!) 

Another reason perhaps why this term is so good, is that I understand how things work here so much better. Last term I was perpetually confused and afraid I was doing something wrong, and now while I may never know what is going on, I realize that that is alright and as long as I do my part well, I am okay. 

As for my language ability, I now understand what people are saying most of the time, but haven't practiced speaking enough to be able to participate. This leaves me a little silent often, but entertained by the conversations around me.

Overall, things are good, and I have hopes that things will just continue to get better and better. This is why I wanted to come for a year, because relationships take time, and integrating cross-culturally takes time... To come for less time would have left me leaving before I had begun to belong... Coming for a year will make leaving quite hard, as already this feels like one home of many, and while I will also be so happy to see family and friends in America, I will be leaving so many friends and this family behind... That is life though, and life is real. Praise God!