Uganda Time

I'd like to apologize in advance because these post will be mostly me rambling. A lot of things have happened in two days and I don't really have a good way of organizing them. But hey I'm not forcing you to read this so get over it haha.

Anyways time runs a little differently over here. People talk a lot about how Americans are in much more of a rush than other places in the world and nowhere is that more true than in Uganda. If you set a time for something people could be hours late. If you set a date for something people could be days late (seriously). First example: school.

I started teaching yesterday. I use the word teaching loosely because I didn't teach anything. Nobody did. School started yesterday but like i said things start a few days late. Maybe a third of the kids were there. I was introduced to the kids but they were just, for lack of a better term, dicking around. See class officially started yesterday but most people haven't quite gotten around to it yet. So I met some people and that was about it. The academic head wasn't even there yet to make me a schedule.

Today I came back and got to actually sit in on a class with one of the OLMs named Terry. (I don't think I've told you about them yet. Holy cross sends four lay people to Uganda in year and a half stints to do pretty much the exact same thing I'm doing but for longer. So they've been showing us the ropes and whatnot. Very helpful.) But anyways I sat in on a P6 (primary six, same thing as 5th grade) math class for one period today. It was a lot of fun but the education system is a little backwards here. The only thing that matters are the state exams at the end of the year. If you pass you move on, If you don't you're held back. Comprehension is almost irrelevant so a lot of the time students are just memorizing information without actually learning it. I get the feeling this could be a very frustrating teaching experience.

But it's not all bad. These are pretty much the most adorable kids on the planet. All the way on the walk to school there are little toddlers running out of their houses half naked shouting muzungu BYEE at us. (muzungu means basicalyl means white person but apparently it's not derrogative) Anyways no matter how many times you wave and say bye in return the just keep waving and smiling until they can't see you. And the young kids at school can't understand anything I say because they abrely speak english but when I told them i brought footballs to play with them, every class exploded in cheers. I could get used to this kind of attention.

Anyways that's all for now. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the orphanage we go to that's run by the orphans and the new gig I found teaching english to girls who used to be prostitutes. Yeah, no big deal, we do some pretty cool stuff here. Kaleh (which I can't spell but sort of means goodbye and sort of means ok in lusoga which is sort of the language they speak here. Yeah I'm just as confused as you are)