Travel

The school is about 15-20 minutes by car from where I am living. Accommodation is quite comfortable – spacious rooms, shared TV that has been been showing a soapie (called “Hidden Passions”) that possibly originally from South America and is dubbed into English – the script and acting are so bad it’s almost good. Like most houses around here, the house is surrounded by a thick cement wall 2 meters high, entrance into the yard is via solid metal gate. The local village is maybe 500m (if that) away along a dirt track. I haven’t had a chance to investigate any of it other than than the “supermarket” for bottled water. I bought three 1.5 bottles and 2 erasers for school – the total bill was 4,000 ugandan shillings (roughly $2.00). The girl at the cash register didn’t have change for 10,000 shillings ($5.00) -I had to find a 5000 shilling note to make the transaction possible.

The school is very small – I don’t know the exact details but 4 classes of around 10 – 15 students would be near enough. I’ve been sort of let loose with a bunch of 7-8yo’s. It’s a challenge – not all the students understand english.

They can respond appropriately to “put your hand up”, but a request such as “Put your hand up if you understand me” gets nil response every time. I’ve been telling them the story of Goldilocks and the three bears, with lots of appropriate actions and voice changes, which they seem to enjoy. I doubt they know what a bear isbut they could answer questions about the story.

The school is also very basic. Electricity is not connected yet because setting up the connection is too expensive. There is a water tank connected to the mains supply, but at present the mains supply in that area is not working, which explains why washing up after meals is done in 2 inches (5cm) or less of cold water with generous slurp of detergent. I’m told the toilets are pit toilets – I haven’t checked – and the entire school library would be maybe 30 books presumably donated by various volunteers. The classroom shown below is part of a small block of three rooms (the one below is the largest) built from hand made bricks two years ago.

Students use cheap lead pencils that break frequently, and a considerable amount of school time is spent resharpening pencils with razor blades. There are a number of packets of felt pens, but using them is a special treat because paper is considered to be very expensive. Freda, the volunteer from the UK who is also here, starts at an orphanage next week that apparently makes conditions at the school look luxurious. So many students are crowded into small classrooms that the classroom becomes hot and smelly. Current government regulations require that all students take an end of year exam. For year 3 the  time allowed for the paper is 2 hours and 40 minutes. The format is a relic that hasn’t changed from the days when the British were still in power in Uganda. I’m told it doesn’t take the students that long too do – not suprising as the questions are ridiculous for the age group – “Why is it important to rotate crops?”  “Name the home of a rabbit”  “Why do people need to save?” “What is the best time for transplanting seedlings?” “Write any four causes of road accidents?” “Give any one danger of too much sunshine to people”  (The correct answer is too much sun means not enough rain to grow crops).

Breakfast

On Wednesday night we went to watch a local show demonstrating local dances and top value for 10,000 shillings. ($5.00)  at a very nice venue. Although there were only about 50 of us in the audience as the mid week performance is poorly attended, it was an excellent show. A lot of the success of the show can be attributed to the guy who apparently created the show. He intersperses the dancing with some excellent stand-up comedy, including jokes about Idi Amin. In one part of the show he wandered amongst the tiny audience finding out where people were from, and claimed that I was the first Australian he had met and shook my hand. It turns out that I have now shaken hands with “The First King of Scotland”, as I later learned he is the man who played the role of Idi Amin in the “First King of Scotland” movie.

Which reminds me – in a blackboard quiz given to “my” class recently by another teacher, one of the questions was “Name a national holiday”. Correct answers were also supplied, and the children write down the questions and answers in their books. A suggested correct answer was “Indipendence Day”, which a couple of children shortened to “Idi Day”. Students can read surprisingly well considering it is their second language, and make a pretty good stab at correctly pronouncing unfamiliar words.

I’ve already briefly seen some markets en route to the dancing show – a maze of people sitting on a blanket where their goods and wares are displayed, chatting on their mobile phones. Plans for the coming weekend include a trip to what is described as a very hectic market and a trip to the countryside. Stay tuned.

Well the conference has officially ended and a good time was had by all. I don’t know that it achieved all that it set out to achieve but I certainly found it very informative and I think most appreciated the opportunity to network with an interesting group of people.

On Friday about  10 of us went to nearby Akagera National Park. It wasn’t as spectacular as Murchison Falls – apparently we were very lucky to see lions -a Ugandan girl next to me on the bus says she has been to many national parks but has never seen a lion in Uganda – but there were plenty of zebras and the elephants were much closer.  A big bull elephant was walking down the road directly towards our parked car, apparently doing his duty of defending the nearby females from potential agressors. After we reversed away from him a couple of times he left us alone.

On the way back one of our two hire cars broke an exhaust pipe. We stopped a small village to mend it with barb wire, and again were greeted by a group of children.

Jyotiman (Nepal) with boy

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found myself thinking I can’t believe I’m here and this is all happening. Friday night 12 of us went out to a fantastic restaurant (actually we had the entire restaurant to ourselves) owned by a guy from Nepal. I have no idea what my meal was called, but it included cashews, cottage cheese and grapes (on a bed of sliced tomatoes). In contrast to much of our past experience in Kigali, service as polished as you could ever wish to find anywhere.  With such a large group and such variety in the menu there was also a fair amount of sampling one another’s orders and some community ordered nan and rice (the menu included local food and western food as well as Indian food – though sometimes the spelling was a little odd – humburger). The bill came to 7000 rwandian francs each – around $12. After the meal we walked about 200 metres to find a place to catch a taxi – from in front of Hotel des Mille Collines (the hotel that the movie Hotel Rwanda was based on – though the actual movie was apparently filmed in South Africa )

On Saturday morning a group of us headed off to get some cash from the ATM (the hotel doesn’t take visa, it needed to be paid in cash), and visit the local market.The ATM didn’t work because it had run out of money, and the staff were busy hand counting he money to refill it.  Opposite the ATM it seemed that a cement floor of a building was being poured. By poured, I mean men and women climbed up a ladder carrying buckets of cement, unloaded and went back for another one.

Next stop was the market with the usual market assortment of everything from live chickens to plastic buckets. I was intrigued to find that the clothes are made on site using treadle sewing machines ie no power) and ironed using  the old style iron that gets its heat from the hot coals inside.

Back to the ATM – now working but limited to maximum withdrawals of $50 at a time, dispensing only the smallest demonination note – equivalent to $1.50. It would have been a horrendously large bundle of bills to carry around, so it was a trip into the main centre of Kigali and a bigger bank with 3 ATM’s – except that they didn’t work either. They were supposed to be fixed in twenty minutes time, but when the bank closed at around 5pm they still didn’t work – each one had an “out of order message” in spanish(????!!!!) It was starting to look as though I was going to have to hang around until Monday to withdraw money, but eventually we found a bank that worked.

Mobile phone recharging station at the bus depot

The bus trip back to Kampara was relatively uneventful – the TV worked,  and every person was allocated a numbered seat, although the windows leaked when it rained (fortunately not often) and rest stops consisted of roadside stops beside the road in the middle of nowhere alongside clumps of strategic bushes. Being already conspicous as the only white person on board I didn’t feel like drawing attention to myself further by joining those dashing for the bushes.

Once in Kampala I was picked up from the bus station by my local contact and host, Herman, and driven to his house, where it turns out that there is another volunteer my age – a retired nurse from UK. The house is spacious and comfortable, we share a large bedroom with a generously sized ensuite with a $400 fancy shower fitting and no hot water. Apparently the landlord won’t agree to fix it. If you ever feel the need to learn to take things as they come then may I suggest that a trip to Africa might do the trick!