Settling in to Kotido

So, as you know, I arrived in Kotido about 10 days ago. I can’t say it was quite the first week I was expecting. I thought I would be meeting with the teachers to start planning for the term and then have some time to look at the school registration requirements and see how we can work towards those. Instead I arrived and discovered that the teachers were due back a week later than I had anticipated but that we needed to recruit for 3 more (which I naively assumed would have already been done). Enter crash course in how to read applications and conduct interviews in a different culture, and lots of prayer! We have appointed the three teachers we needed, who started work yesterday, and I’ve been asked to sit on a panel today interviewing for a new social worker so I guess I didn’t do a terrible job!

Yesterday I met with the teachers to go through the principles of Christian education so that they can create the schemes of work for the term (I am always amused that Ugandans refer to this process as “scheming” and have mental images of the teachers planning mischief but I digress) . This is a very laborious process in Uganda, partly because their schemes of work are detailed, partly because they’ve got to be done by hand and partly because there’s no way of looking at and then tweaking and editing what was done the previous year. I am hoping to move towards digitised copies as this will cut both the teacher’s time and mine in preparing them, the obstacle for now is that not many of the teachers are particularly comfortable with even basic word processing and there isn’t time to go over how to deal with complex tables in Word.

The government sets how both the schemes of work and lesson plans should be laid out, which I think gives quite a good example of the kind of government overreach there is in education here. One of the unfortunate results of this is that teachers, particularly trained teachers, often focus on getting this exactly right, rather than on the quality of the lessons or how they fit together into a sequence.

I’ve ended up involved in more of the admin than I ideally wanted, having discovered that nobody had calculated how many lessons each teacher would teach, or even seemed to have a clear idea of how the day is timed! Fortunately I love any excuse for a spreadsheet!

Personally, I’m staying in temporary accomodation at the moment which has ended up rather full of wildlife. The crickets were so loud *inside* my room they woke me up on Saturday morning! Despite the fact that I have shoed out several alive ones and swept out several dead ones, I still have a chorus on a daily basis and have largely got used to the sudden movements! The setting is beautiful though, on three sides the site is surrounded by scrubland and I’ve enjoyed several stunning sunrises and sunsets. I’m thoroughly enjoying having my own space, as well as using some of the things brought in the container. Ugandan pans, pillows and facilities to dry washing are always questionable, despite the fact that they are all used on a regular basis. It’s been nice to have an airer, non-stick pans with handles (yes the Ugandan ones don’t have where to hold onto and nobody has oven gloves either, it’s mad!), and non-lumpy pillows (having a lumpy pillow is actually a bit of a luxury, most people don’t have one at all). The stuff for the school (which is most of what came across) is in storage for the moment and will most likely come out for use once the school building is built (construction has already started) so that it can all be kept and organised properly.

I always knew I was a bit clumsy but I think I’ve surpassed myself with the number of injuries I’ve acquired in the past week! I’ve got scrapes and grazes from falling of my bicycle (I was rushing to get somewhere, went too fast and hit a patch of sand and a stone wrongly), a cut thumb from cooking, a pulled muscle and a scalded thumb from preparing a hot water bottle for the pulled muscle! They’re all on the mend and I’m fine, just a bit grumpy sometimes!

Term starts on the 5th Feb, so between now and then I’ll be working on a timetable for the year, moving the school towards meeting the requirements to be registered and going back to my curriculum analysis whenever I’ve got the time!