Hello everyone! I hope this message finds you all happy and well! I cannot believe we are already half way through August. I have heard that it is hot; I hope you are all staying nice and cool in your air conditioned homes. As for me, I often find myself rather chilly. Fancy that.

Carol and Kennedy are home from school and I could not be happier! If you do not remember, Carol is the girl that was asked to babysit me when I first arrived here in Kiyumba. Both her and Kennedy attend the teachers college for whom I work and have been at school for the past two few month, but now they are on holiday. Not only are they hilarious, they are a huge help. After talking with many students about the lack of school fees and their fears about not being able to attend another year of school I realized that I really need to focus on doing both an income generating project, specifically for women, as well as a village savings and loans. I have been procrastinating a bit on both for a couple of reasons. The first being that I feel that it is important for my village to know and trust me before I am able to initiate these projects. However, I know feel that I am at this point. My second reason is that I have failed to find someone that would work with me. Because I am not anywhere close to being fluent in Luganda it is important for me to work with someone in the village who is fluent in both Luganda and English. While there are about a handful of people that know some amount, it is not nearly enough. However, eighteen year old Carol is fluent in both. I brought up the idea of starting the village savings and loans and I did not even have to ask her to help me. Immediately she said, “Nalubega that is great! We will contact the LC and he will call everyone to a meeting for us to explain the program to everyone.” I am so happy to have Miss Carol back in Kiyumba!

Over the years I have met several people that have thought their birthday was a national holiday. Others who not only had a birthday, but more of a celebrating not only a day, but for a full week opening a present each day. The other day my friend Lisandro celebrated his birthday and had made a comment about starting the year off right. I found it funny that unlike everyone else who considers New Year's Day to be the beginning of a new year, he considers his birthday to mark the new year. Things are different here in Uganda. The other day I asked my friend Kennedy when his birthday was and he told me, “It is soon approaching. It is June 26th.” I said, “Kennedy, it is August. June was two months ago.” He started laughing and said, “I guess I forgot my birthday.” Today I asked my friend Carol when her birthday was and she started laughing. She got her phone out and started looking at the calender and said, “Ummm, I don’t remember. I think it was in May. Yes, May 26.” Now, I know there are times when I get confused about if I am twenty-three or twenty-four, but I do not think I would ever forget my birthday. It’s your birthday for crying out loud! Perhaps all the celebrating we do for our birthdays in America makes up for the lack there of here in Uganda.

When I first arrived in Uganda the country director for Peace Corps Uganda was warning us about the amount of frustration we will endure as volunteers. He said, “If Uganda didn’t have these problems that frustrated us we wouldn’t be here.” This week I have been trying to remind myself of this. The education system here is a complete disaster and living at a primary school I see this first hand. The Ministry of Education, teachers, head teachers, parents, they are all setting their children up for failure. The Ministry never pays the teachers which requires children to pay outrageous fees that they are unable to pay. The teachers fail to assess children, use teaching methods other than lecture, teach in English when students will be tested in English, they beat the children for things such as wrong answers, and they have no relationship with the children nor do they communicate with the parents. The head teacher never shows up to school to supervise nor do they have anymore education than a regular teacher, which may be no more than a secondary education. Lastly, the parents are not involved in their child’s education; they never visit the school, contact teachers, or ask questions about their child’s education. For the past two to three weeks the children have done absolutely nothing. I mentioned that some were practicing the past couple of weeks for the open day ceremony, but not all of them. I assumed that this week they would get back to work, but it is not the case. The children arrive at school at eight and play until five when it is time to go home. The cook has not been here for the past week so children cook lunch for the teachers and their children, but they, themselves, go hungry. The upper classes have had exams the past couple of days and one of the teachers delegated Carol to grade the papers for him. I intercepted them and was incredibly disappointed to see their scores. Out of fifty marks, children were scoring twos and eights. As a teacher, if over half of my class was failing I would feel incredibly guilty for failing my students, but teachers here blame the children for not being bright.

There are about ten children that I know rather well and they can usually be found at my house when they are not in class. I think the teachers get annoyed by the fact that I would enjoy spending time with the children and that I am so well liked by the children. The teachers teach their classes, make the students fetch water for them, wash their clothes and dishes, and take care of their children. However, I do these things for myself and enjoy spending time with the children. Today I had a teacher who I really like come up to me while I was playing a game with some kids including Bonny and Martin. She looked at me and said, “These two are your best friends?” Teachers always do this when they have a problem with a child. They cannot take care of the problem themselves so they make it out to sound like it is my problem because they are my “friends.” Anyway, she reminded them that they were not to be seen with one another any longer. I was baffled they are best friends and both incredibly great kids. I have never had a problem with either one of them and while Bonny is rather bright naturally, Martin tries to learn and always reminds me of how much he wants to learn. This teacher informed me that Martin is “destroying” Bonny. That Martin has very bad manners and never does as his teachers ask. Apparently during the exams he had Bonny do his for him. She was also mad because during school Bonny and Martin always go to his house instead of staying at school. I was incredibly shocked to hear about Martin having bad manners because he always does as I ask and always offers to do things for me. I am not surprised about them going to his house during school because the students are never in class. Why would you stay at school where you have no food and you are not learning anything? As for Bonny doing the exam for him I guess I understand that as well. Martin wants to succeed, but under the circumstances unless you are incredibly bright you cannot succeed in this school system. I was asking the teacher if she has talked with Martin about these issues to find out if something else has been going on and she said no that they have think that he doesn’t want to learn. I said, “He told you that?” She said, “No, I just know.” I asked if she had contacted his parents and she said that she had talked with his father awhile back. I told her that I thought she should follow up and she does not see the point. Now let me tell you something else about Martin and his life. Martin’s mother runs a small shop in town that sells alcohol. I have never walked past that store and not seen at least five drunk men sitting there all day long. On top of that, Martin is usually left to run the store when he is not at school. Martin a) probably realizes that if he doesn’t preform well in school this will be his life and b) he’s a sixteen year old boy who spends most of his free time with drunks; how do you think he is going to behave? Tell me how keeping his best friends, who is a good influence, away from him is going to help anyone. If they insist on this I guarantee Martin will not be back in school next term. What is most frustrating is that she kept mentioning what a good student Martin was last year and how well he was doing, but at the same time she doesn’t believe that there could be something else going on to make him behave in this way. I try to remind myself that America didn’t always have a great educational system. It still is far from perfect, but we are coming. Uganda, in a way, is like America sixty years ago. America has come a long way in the past sixty years and I pray that one day Uganda’s educational system will be where we are today. Things take time. I just hate waiting when I am so invested in these children and want so many great things for them. Sometimes I wish I could run a school here with American teachers to show them how things could be, even without money.

Who gets to decide what is beautiful and what is not? In America we hear a lot about body image and there has been a push to try to influence the entertainment business into displaying a diverse group of people. The other day I was talking to Martin and somehow he started talking about how my skin was beautiful because it was white. When I told him his skin was beautiful he told me I was lying and that only white skin is beautiful. Even after I told him all the disadvantages of having white skin such as sun burns, skin caner, and the fact that I am always visibly dirty in this country he still insisted that mine was much more beautiful. I was heartbroken. Martin is a sixteen year old boy that lives deep in the village. Who told him that white skin was beautiful? To my knowledge, he doesn’t have access to entertainment as we do in the western world, but perhaps it goes way back to colonialism. Martin is not the only person I have had this conversation with it happens often and each time I wish they would truly believe me when I tell them that they are beautiful. I always try to explain to them how much I love to photograph them because of the way the sun always reflects off of their skin, but they do not believe me.

The other day a girl in secondary school brought be a book of poems to explain an English word she did not know. She said, “My teacher is an expert in English, but even she has failed to know this word.” The word was “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

A student of mine, Paol, is leaving Kiyumba for the holiday to earn some money fishing with his father in Entebbe. Paol has been worried that the other children will know more English than him because they will have me to practice with during holiday. I gave Paol my English/Luganda dictionary and told him to write down important words and their meanings to study while he is gone. He started doing so, but then got called away and I had to leave for town. I brought the paper to him and he got this worried look on his face and said, “But Madam Nalubega, I am missing a word.” The word he was worried about not having was “wizard.” WIZARD! Seriously? WIZARD! How often in everyday conversation does one use the world “wizard”? I would say that for Americans not too many people would complain if we decided to remove it from the dictionary. Who knows though, this is a rather superstitious culture perhaps it is an important word.

Uganda is a rather conservative culture when concerning dress. I cannot even imagine what would happen if I ever wore something short enough to see my knees in the village. I have a picture in an album where some friends from home and I went camping and we are all wearing shorts and the kids are absolutely shocked. At first I didn’t think anything of it, but now I am starting to get self conscious about the fact that these kids have seen my knees. A friend donated a Cosmo Girl magazine for me to cut up to make beads. I had torn the pages out and the wind had blown them all over my house. I picked most of them up, but there were some I had forgotten about. The worst picture was a page where they had six celebraties wearing two different things and readers were asked to choose which one they preferred. In each picture the girl was either wearing a thong swimsuit or a skimpy swimsuit. I almost died. It was as if I just introduced these fifteen year old boys to porn. I can only imagine what Ugandans have to think of Americans after all the movies and magazines they see of us.

I am not fat. I know that. Most people know that. I am not self conscious about being fat (because I am not), but come on people, give me a break! They love calling me fat here. It’s actually more that they like to tell me that I have become fat since I have moved here which is not true; or maybe it is and I just haven’t realized it because my clothes are all stretching out. Could this be a situation like my freshman year of college where me and my entire dorm got fat and blamed our clothes not fitting on how hot the dyers in the basement got? Not noticing how much we “porked out,” as Jess’ mom later informed us, until we saw pictures of ourselves? Anyway, back to the point. The other day it got brought up with thirteen year old Frank, him calling me fat that is. I told him that it makes me sad to hear that and that if I am fat no one in America will like me. Of course I was joking, but he didn’t know this. Frank, with the most serious face I have ever seen on him, says, “But Nalubega, for you, you are fat. You enjoy Uganda’s food.” I get it, it’s a cultural thing, but what about this little thing known as tact. You know I don’t enjoy being called fat and that while we both understand that it is a compliment in Uganda I have told you a thousand times that it is a negative thing for Americas so lay off; I am not fat. Bless the American who ever comes to my village and is a bit sensitive about their weight.

Again, I hope all is well with you! Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to take an interest in my life here in Kiyumba!

Peace and love,

Autumn

P.S. Mandy, Jacob, and Michelle thank you so much for the wonderful things you sent! You are all wonderful and I appreciate the time and effort it took you to do so!

Hello everyone! I hope this message finds you all happy and well! I cannot believe that August is already here!

At the beginning of my English classes I have my students write a journal entry. While I think it is a great way to give them practice writing, I often dread this part of the class. Children in Uganda are taught in a way that is so different then we are taught in the states and getting them to do anything that does not involve remote memorization is like pulling teeth. I started out by giving them a question to answer such as what do you do before you come to school? I would give them an example of what I did before I came to school. After explaining it to the whole class a couple of times I would go around to each of the five groups and explain it again. After that I would then go around to individual students and ask them things like, “Do you fetch water? Do you greet your mother and father? Do you put on your uniform?” I then began giving them a word bank to choose vocabulary from and explaining everything in both English and Luganda. It really did not make much of a difference. Yesterday I asked them what they would like to do after they finished secondary school and in the word bank I put possible careers along with other options. Over half of the class’ entry went something like this, “I want to be a shop keeper. I want to be a driver. I want to be a doctor. I want to be a singer. I want to be a dancer. I want to be a priest. I want to go to university. I want to be a teacher. I want to be a farmer.” I was thinking a bit about this and why they would answer this question in this way and I came up with two reasons. The first being that from the time they begin school they are taught to memorize sentence structures. For example, I cannot tell you how many times I hear classes repeat “I see a boat. I see a car. I see a house. I see a person.” When the children master reading this out loud the teacher says, “Great they can read.” It is clearly memorization. If you ask the child what they just read means they could not tell you. If you changed the sentence structure they could not “read” the words. My second hypothesis is that children are never asked or given the chance to think about their future. As Americans from a very early age in life we are asked what we want to be when we grow up. When we say we want to be a doctor, a singer, or the president, we are encouraged. This simply is not the case here. It seems that most children assume that their future will be the same as that of their parents a farmer or a shop keeper.

I have talked with my counterpart about the issue of memorization and the lack of creativity and critical thinking in the education system and we are planning to hold a workshop with teachers after the holiday. I have been doing some research, but if you have any ideas of activities I could do in my class or share with the teachers please be sure to let me know.

While my Luganda is improving, my English is slowly deteriorating. I was grading my students papers the other day and I starting getting confused whether or not what they were writing was correct. For example, almost all of them would put that they lived at Kiyumba instead of in Kiyumba. I had to ask a friend if using at was correct. I can no longer spell anything. Now, the children at Discovery Middle School where I student taught would tell you that I was never very good at spelling in the first place, but it has gotten much worse. I was trying to write the word doctor the other day and I could not figure out how to spell it. This sort of thing happens all the time and I often find myself with my face in my dictionary. I fear my life after Uganda.



The other day my school had an open day in which they invited the community and political leaders in the community. They have been preparing for this event for the past few weeks which means that the children have not been in class. Instead they have been making crafts and singing. Those who were not involved with this project spent their day playing football or practicing multiplication at my house. I found this whole even rather frustrating. Music, crafts, and P.E. are all part of the curriculum, but it is never taught at the school. Now they have this event and they do nothing but these things. If they would have been teaching these courses all along these children would have had time for learning core subjects as well these past few weeks. Also, why aren’t all the children involved? Here they tend to pick out students who have “ability” and only those ones are allowed to participate. The invitation I received for this event invited the public to come see what their children learn at school. I found this quite amusing. It should have said, “Come see what some of your children have been doing in the past two weeks.” The day of the event I invited Lisandro, the Peace Corps volunteer that lives nearest me, to come. The day was long, but for the most part entertaining. Many people gave speeches and talked about me for a while, it was in Luganda so I am not sure exactly what they were saying. I smiled and nodded as if agreeing. I can only hope that they were saying good things; Fredrick assures me that they were. Towards the end of the event the children were singing their last song, a catchy number in local language wishing us all farewell. I soon noticed that in the song the were calling out the names of certain “important” guest to come up and dance a bit. Lisandro and I are enjoying the performance and then the Vicar leans over and tells me that they are calling me up to dance. Thankfully Lisandro was kind enough to come up with me and we danced in front of the entire village. The village thought it was great because they are always surprised when the find out I can do anything. They honestly do not think muzungus know how to do anything, but be a doctor. After the ceremony we get escorted to the important peoples’ room to eat more expensive food than the villagers. I hate when this happens. The villagers got beans, rice, and sweet potatoes which are some of my favorite foods. I on the other hand was served beef and rice. The most important people were served chicken.

Yesterday I went for a run and on my way back I stopped to greet some villagers at the shop. They immediately said, “Nalubega, you know how to run?” After explaining that yes, I do know how to run. They then continued to tell me that I was becoming fat. I found this rather interesting because I am not becoming fat, but also because can you imagine coming back from a run in states and someone telling you that you are becoming fat? They would tell you the opposite to encourage you. But here in Uganda things are different. If you are big you are considered beautiful. It is a sign of wealth, showing that you can afford to eat. They are shocked when I tell them that I do not want to become big, but seem to accept it when I tell them that if I become big that I will have to buy new clothes and that I do not have money.
When a child in America loses a parent we call it a tragedy. When a child in Uganda loses a parent they call it life. One of students that I am the closest to is Bonny. He is an amazing child. He is smart and eager to learn. He has great manners and is just a great kid to be around. The other day I was talking with him and he told me that both of his parents are dead and that he lives with his seventy-four year old grandfather. Another student, Irene, has also lost both of her parents and is living with her grandmother. Most of the time I speak with students and they tell me that they have lost at least one of their parents. I have chosen to speak about Bonny and Irene because they are constantly amazing me. They are beautiful children who I believe will do great things if they are given the opportunity, which is something hard to come by here in Uganda.

Recently I had a friend from home write me an e-mail and she told me that she would not even have a clue as to how to do half of the things I do here. It got me thinking about what it means to be an American and living in another country has definitely given me the opportunity to see how incredibly lucky we are. I would say that most Americans could easily do the things I am doing here in Uganda. As Americans there are many things that we do and that we expect that all people can easily do. We assume that if there is a problem that there is a solution. While we may not know the solution we most likely know how to find the solution. We understand how important communication is and most people find a means to do so. I cannot tell you how many times there has been a problem here which is the direct result of no communication. We understand the importance of showing up for work and doing your best. We believe that people should be held accountable for their work and majority of people hold themselves accountable. We know how to think critically and we love to ask “why?” While many feel that politicians are corrupt in comparison to the corruption elsewhere in the world we have nothing to worry about. We have hope for the future. As children we are told that we can be anything we want to be and I believe that for Americans that is pretty realistic. A majority of us do not have to worry about becoming an orphan. We do not have to worry about finding clean drinking water or water in general. My point to all of this is twofold. First, as Americans we know how to do things and we do not even realize it. I would say that I am a rather average American. I’m not incredibly smart or creative, but here, in comparison, I am because as a product of the American school systems I have been taught to think in a way that people in Uganda have not been taught to do. There are some very bright Ugandans, but they have no idea what to do with their intelligence. I have a friend here named Peace and every time I tell her I am going to do something she tells me that it is impossible. I love showing her she is wrong and that I am able to do most things I try because I find a way. My second point of all of this remember how privilege you are. I feel that Americans catch a lot of slack, but be proud you are an American. You do not realize how talented you are and how much you know how to do until you live in a country that has not been taught to do much more than memorize. I stopped refruting when Ugandans tell me that I am rich. They are right. Materially I have more than they probably will ever have in their lives and I do not even have a job. The amount of resources and privileges I have is incomparable to theirs. My education, not even counting university, far surmounts theirs. No matter how much or little you feel you have, you are rich.

Anyway, I apologize if this is just a bunch of rambling. It is a product of my writing in an internet cafe. I hope you are happy and well!

Peace and Love,

Autumn