Masaka

Reading back over my last update, I’ve realised how much has happened since then and how it feels so long ago!

After coming back from Kabale I spent a lovely two weeks with Joshua, Dianah and their children (although Joshua works away a lot so I was mainly with Dianah and the children).

After buying some curriculum books, I headed to Mother Janet near Masaka. This is the school that the youth trip visited a few years ago, run by an amazing family. At the moment, I divide my time between teaching English to P3 and P4 (approx. Yr 4 and 5); trying to get my head around how content progresses throughout the Ugandan curriculum in preparation for Kotido (spoiler: it doesn’t well!); getting a charity registered in the UK; and sorting out the practicalities of moving like containers and visas.

It’s been great to be back in a Ugandan classroom but it’s also been a stark reminder of how imperfect the Ugandan system is. Both my classes have over 60 pupils in them. Both my classes have difficulty reading basic English (despite this being the language of instruction). These two factors make giving meaningful feedback very difficult! I think I’ve also pushed and stretched my classes as I show them the importance of understanding the why, instead of focussing on rote learning and “getting the answers right.”

Over the past few days, the container suddenly found itself much higher on my to-do list than it previously had been. I had expected it to reach here around late December but I also figured these things tend to be later rather than earlier so I sort of half expected it to be January. However, then I was contacted that it was expected to reach Mombasa (the nearest sea port in Kenya) on the 8th and could be in Uganda by the 15th of this month! (Although I’ve since had word, it’s likely to be in Mombasa on the 17th, which is still earlier than I’d expected).

My clearing agent (person who sorts out customs for you) is one of the most obnoxious people I have ever come across and working with him has been incredibly frustrating at times! On Saturday night I was given some laborious paperwork that he should really be doing, to do for Monday that took essentially all the time I had. Annoyingly, if it wasn’t done, I would be the one landed with the extra charges.

The school here has a “speech day” coming up – at the end of the year the parents are invited and each class prepares some kind of presentation or performance. Today has largely been taken up with rehearsals coming up, which has let me off the hook with my lessons and enabled me to take a bit of a breather after the stress of yesterday and do things like write blog posts!