Just Another Tuesday

5:00 a.m.     I wake up. It doesn’t get light out until 6:30 so this gives me some good time for morning devotions. The whole time, I debate whether or not to go running. I can hear it raining lightly on my tin roof.

6:30     I opt for a hot bath instead. In my bucket, of course. Running in the rain is not as much fun when there isn’t a long hot shower and sweatpants to follow.

7:30     I continue reading Jolly Phonics Teacher Guide to try to learn how to teach the primary children how to read. Jolly Phonics is a program started in the UK that a Dutch volunteer brought here two years ago. It is used in all of Noah’s Ark and is spreading to nearby Ugandan schools as well. While reading, I eat deliciously delicious samosas for breakfast, which I can buy at the Noah’s Ark kitchen. Did I mention they are delicious?

8:30     I teach English to my ten P7 students at the primary school. We are working on spelling words with the alternative spelling for vowel sounds. (This means words like rain, with an ‘ai’ to make a long ‘a’ sound—things like that.)

9:10     I conduct a reading assessment for Abbey, a P6 boy with whom I will be working for the rest of the term. During the assessment, he reads to me a bazillion flashcards so I can get an idea of where he is struggling and come up with a small program to get him up to speed with the rest of his class, or at least as close as we can get in the next seven weeks.

10:30     I walk down to the nursery school to look for some reading games in the office. After about two minutes, I get sidetracked by Blessing, one of the girls I met on my walk last week (see my previous blog). I sit down at her table for snack and then we play on the playground with the other kids before they have to go back to class. I forget to look for games.

11:00     I meet with two other students to work on their reading skills. Total, I have seven with whom I am working as often as I can. Usually I can only get in two or three a day between juggling when I am free, when they are in a class I can pull them from, and when the library doesn’t have a class in it. Any time I spend with them is an extra help to them, so hopefully it will still make a difference meeting two or three times a week.

1:00 p.m.     I go to the children’s home to eat lunch with the toddlers. The babies eat in their own section of the home and the older children all eat at school, so the dining room only has about thirty kids during lunch. We have the same thing everyday: posho and beans. Posho is like a very dry tofu. It is made from a grain that is ground up and mixed with water, then cooked until it makes a solid-ish mass that can be broken apart into pieces, kind of like really thick and dry powdered mashed potatoes. It barely absorbs the flavor of whatever you eat with it. This is the most common meal in all of Uganda—many families and schools eat this for every meal everyday.

2:00     I go back to the library to do more reading with students, but there is a class in there. I forgot to check ahead of time when it would be in use.

2:15     I go back down to the nursery school office to work on math games. They have a lot of games to practice basic reading, but one of the volunteers asked me to create some games for math to practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. So far, that has mostly consisted of making flashcards for the game Memory on my computer, but hopefully I will have enough time to make quite a few different ones before I leave. (If anyone has easy-to-create-and-understand math games or resources, please let me know!)

4:00     Baby time. Almost every afternoon, I hang out with the babies for a couple hours before supper. They are such a joy to be around. As soon as I walk in the door, Maurise sees me from down the hall and starts flailing his arms in the air for me to pick him up. That boy is heavy, which is a blessing because he was severely malnourished when he came. I spend quite a bit of time with a younger baby named Florence, who has been sick for a couple weeks now. She is my cuddle buddy. Our system is for me to hold her on my chest while I sit on the couch. She rests her head on me, grabs a handful of my shirt with her hand and sticks both my shirt and her thumb in her mouth, successfully covering my entire collar in drool in only a few minutes.

6:00     I walk to the dining room for a quick supper before returning to play with babies. When I get back, only the four older ones who can walk are still awake. Titus and I play on the couch, and then Jacintha climbs on top of me too. I notice her nappie (diaper) is coming undone and plan to fix it when I take her in to sleep. It would have been a good plan if she had not pooped right on my shirt at that moment. The stuff was smeared all over my side. Lovely girl. Now would be a great time to change a nappie.

7:00     I go back to my room and do a quick “load” of laundry, meaning I heat up some water and hand wash the two shirts with poop on them before they can stain. It is a success and the shirts are fine.

7:30     Tuesday night Teen Club! A Dutch volunteer, Christian, and I are leading a teenage Bible study once a week at the request of Peter and Pita. This is only our second week of leading and we are striving to get to know the students better so we can connect with them and find out what kinds of discussion work best with this particular group. At one point tonight, we break up into girls and boys and lead our own discussions. The girls are open and responsive and laugh together. The boys mostly grunt. We’re trying to figure out what to do with that.

9:00     Teen Club ends and Christian and I stay in the hut to debrief.

9:15     We forget we are supposed to be debriefing and start talking about everything from African brains to Dutch peanut butter (which he claims is the best in the world). It’s nice to have someone my age from the western world to process with. This is his fourth time here and at this point he is planning on staying for a year, but expects to stay even longer if God allows it.

11:00     I finally head back to my room and promptly get ready for bed and go to sleep. 

On the left is Janet and on the right is Anna-Christine. Most likely the cutest twins who ever existed. 

Maurise was having a hard time putting on "his" shoe. 

That is the grin that greets me every time I walk into the baby home. 

Blessing, my nursery school friend. She has a good habit of living up to her name. 

I am blessed!

This is Herman, of course. He's huge and lives outside. Do you see the four noses? The top two are for sensing light and dark and the bottom two are for smelling things. Cool, huh?