Keneth

This past weekend we met up with Keneth, a friend James made through the church he attended while he was in Uganda. I was asked by James to meet up with Keneth once we were settled at the school so that I might deliver a few items to him. A couple of weeks before we left and I began to correspond with him via e-mail and from his letters I could tell this kid was a bundle of energy. I only got around to e-mailing him our phone number about two weeks ago, but heard from him that night. The deep and powerful voice that greeted me on the phone hardly matched the image of the exuberant kid I had pictures from his e-mails. We made plans to meet in Kampala hat Saturday. Upon meeting Keneth that afternoon I realized that it was just that his big voice matched his big personality. He was really, really happy to see us. He showed us immediate friendship and affection, the way we were told Ugandans often do. He was so warm and excited that we had come to see him. This is Keneth.

Our first stop was to visit his mother. His family’s accommodations were modest to put it mildly. His mother, two of his sisters, I believe his niece and on the weekends him all live in a one room concrete apartment about the size of a moderately-large bedroom in the States. His mother, Agnes, was just as excited to see us as he was even though she speaks hardly any English. At one point she even got up and sang and danced for us because she was so happy to have us in her house. Agnes had also prepared a large meal of native Ugandan dishes, they were easily the best home cooked meal we have had here. We could tell that for a woman of small means she had put much effort into preparing our food. Keneth even killed one of his ducks, he keeps ducks to sell for extra cash, for us to eat. These gestures made us realize just how honored they felt to have us come and visit them. As wonderful as it was it also made me feel a little strange as I didn’t think I had done anything to deserve such treatment other than come to meet him and his family. It was once we started talking, and Keneth began to tell us about his life and what James and his church in Mill Valley have done for him, that we realized why they were so happy to have us there.

Keneth has lead a rather hard life, and in spite of this he has emerged as one of the most genuinely giving and loving individuals you will ever meet. His father died of AIDS when he was young leaving his mother to raise him and his numerous siblings. He was also born with a hole in his heart and was not supposed to have lived even this long, let alone exude the sort of energy he does. His condition makes it dangerous for him to perform hard manual labor for extended periods of time. Unfortunately in Uganda that is how most people in his economic situation have to make a living. Office work was his only real option. Fortunately for Keneth he is a rather intelligent individual and scored rather well on his A Levels, making him a candidate for university if he can afford it. Here is where James and his church come in. Keneth was accepted to Makerere University one of the most prestigious colleges in Africa, but lacked the funds for tuition. He had remained in contact with James but had kept his condition secret from him, until one day when he disclosed the information to him. Upon hear of Keneth’s predicament James turned to his church to see if they could sponsor Keneth and raise funds for his school fees. James asked one of his fellow church members named Ben to help him to set this project up. Though unsure of himself at first Ben has been quite successful in getting at least the majority of Keneth’s school fees paid. The church is also working on seeing if they can pay for him to have surgery in South Africa, so that he might have that hole in his heart closed.

So, when we entered their house that afternoon we inherited the legacy of James and Ben, and were reaping the rewards of their good work. As the meal continued we were promptly adopted by Agnes as her children and became brother and sister to Keneth (sorry to our biological mothers but we now have an African mother as well, the first of many I think). She even went so far as to place one of her half eaten pieces of duck on Renee’s plate, a gesture that would seem odd and rude in America but coming from a Ugandan mother is a great sign of respect and favoritism. Even Keneth was jealous. It was swiftly becoming the best day we had had since our arrival.
Renee and our African mother Agnes.

After food Keneth, who is a deeply committed Christian (as are most of the people we have met in Uganda), told us about the mission he had gone on recently. He sold some of his ducks to travel to a poor village in the south and help to alleviate the poverty of some of the children living their. He went on to tell use about his desire to continue with such work, reaching out to villages were no NGO will travel and help the children there. Though his vision is rooted in Christian philosophy he welcomes the help of any who desire to do good with him regardless of their religious affiliation or lack there of. To see how grateful he is to the people who have helped him and how he only wishes to in turn help other people was quite touching. It felt so good to hear him say that no matter how little he had he would always desire to share it with those in need, especially children.

He has severed as our guide to some of the sight of Kampala the last two weekends and has worn us out each time. Last week he took us to see the Palace of the Kabaka (the king of Buganda, Buganda being a Ugandan kingdom centered around Kampala) and the shrine where the last four Kabakas are buried. As a history person I very much enjoyed this. The most interesting part of the palace for me was seeing a series of chambers where Idi Amin and his predecessor Milton Obote would have political prisoners held and executed. These chambers were on the palace grounds because in 1966 Obote had the Kabaka Mutesa II (the then President of Uganda) run out of the country so he could take over. The palace was then turned into an army base. The chambers still had blood and messages scrawled by the prisoners all over the walls. It was very chilling. But I digress.

Keneth is awesome. I look forward to many more outings with him. He will make our experience here all the better. Sula Bulungi.

-- B

What it looks like to teach in Uganda

So last time we showed what our living accommodation look like, this time we have some shots of where we teach. I teach primarily, and Renee exclusively, at Kikaaya Vocational School. This is located on a separate campus just down the road from Kikaaya College School (in the Ugandan system, as in the British system, college means late middle school and high school) where we board and I teach once to twice a week.

Here a couple of shots of what the vocational campus looks like. The large pile of wood is used by the kitchen to cook lunch and dinner for the students.

This is the school's cow, sadly it is their only cow. It spends most days grazing at the vocational campus. Not pictured is the dog that follows it around all day.

Here is my classroom. On the right are some of the students hard at work.




















Ms. Renee teaching away, note the hole in the wall behind her. And a pair of students helping me put the computer lab together.


Me and Sam, one of my best students.

And finally, for those of you who asked, what our typical meal in Uganda looks like.

Not pictured are any of the staff members, as they either objected to having their picture taken or we don't know them well enough to try. Until next time.


--B

Teaching English and guidance counseling

So I have not yet posted my experiences here but I am excited to say it is quite thrilling. At first, it was a little confusing, and to some extent it still is. I don't have a classroom of my own so I just go to whatever classroom has the fewest students and hope the ones I am supposed to teach find me. It's getting a little easier to figure out the best classroom to wait in. Sometimes, the vocational principal gathers my students for me but otherwise I have no idea who is supposed to be in my class and when. On the positive side, teaching English is rather fun. We are going slowly but surely with each subject: adjectives, nouns, pronouns, et cetera. A really rewarding moment was when one of my students asked me for a novel, and another asked me for a dictionary to study on his own.
The guidance and counseling is really interesting. it is meant to be sex education but that is a taboo subject. So, much like "family life" education in high school, this is guidance and counseling. It is a two hour block so i decided to spend the first hour giving them information and answering group questions and then the second hour with private counseling. This has been quite revealing. Some students have told me very personal information and have asked for resources that I am attempting to uncover here. I can already feel the impact as I dispel the myths many of them have grown up hearing.
I am looking forward to the next session. I am going to show everyone how to properly put on a condom. The good ol' banana-condom. They are pretty excited for this as well. I think at first they thought I was going to need a volunteer. One of the boys was eager to have his friend participate. I quickly squashed that idea. This is a lot of fun so far. I hope to have some exciting stories to tell everyone soon.

-Renee

This message has been aproved by the Government of the Republic of Uganda

This has got to be one of the greatest PSAs in the history of government sponsorship.

Home Sweet Home

So here are the afore promised pictures.

Welcome to Kikaaya (pronounced Chi-ky-ya) College and Vocational School.

Here is view of the bedroom. It is really not a comfortable as it looks.

This is the front room. As you can see it has all the comforts of home a camper stove, a lanter, a thermos for hot water and big plastic gas cans to pump water into. The red and green water basins on the floor serve as our shower/sink/dishwasher/laundry machine.

Here is our bathroom. Our bathing chamber is about the same but a little bigger and with no hole in the floor. Sorry I was unable to capture any of the flies buzzing around or the cockroaches crawling out of the hole.

This is a view of the yard in front of our complex. Our place is the one on the far left with the bathrooms behind. The only thing missing from this scene is the ever increasing mob of chickens that peck around the area all day.

Here is Renee with our best Ugandan friend Suzan. She has been very kind to us, we have lunch with her on most days.


This shot doesn't really capture the place but this is a papyrus field near the village we are staying in.

Well I hope you have enjoyed this glimpse into our life in Uganda. This series will be the first of many. I hope everyone is well. Sula bulungi.

-- B.

STOP THIEF........ errrr could you turn the lights back on.

Sooooooooo, I was going to post some picture today but my camera was stolen on the way over here. It was a classic pickpocket move they pilfered the thing straight out of my backpack while we were caught in the crush of downtown Kampala. Yeah, well I at least hope that the little punk that took the thing uses what ever profits they might find from it to feed their family or something similarly worthwhile. You live you learn and I reluctantly dropped the cash on a new camera (that I will guard with my life) so that we may continue to record our exploits here. Other than this unfortunate incident thing have been great here, we began teaching our classes, have met some interesting and extremely friendly people and have been getting a general feel for the culture and pace of life here.

Teaching the kids how to use computers has been quite interesting many of the students have a lot of trouble with my accent so they don’t understand what I am saying half the time. The student’s range of computer knowledge also varies widely. A couple of the kids probably know how to use Microsoft Office better than I do, while others have never touched a computer in their life. My first lectures were quite awkward as I attempted to explain the advantage of computers in business and life to a group of kids who have very limited access to them. This was made abundantly clear to me while I was attempting to explain the advantages of word processing over hand written documents to a group of carpentry students (we are teaching at a vocational school), I asked a student to name one of the benefits of word processing and he replied, “It’s not practical.” True enough for most of these kids. However many of them are very eager to learn and are grateful for the opportunity to actually play around with a computer and not have to pay for it.

There have been other challenges to teaching as well. For all the great work the school does it is not very well organized. Very often the ground of students that show up are not the ones we a scheduled to teach, Renee didn’t even know what room/s she was suppose to teach in until her second day on the job. I have only been able to teach a handful of the classes I have been scheduled because either the computers were missing power chords, the IT guy lost power before he could finish updating Windows leaving two of the three computers without an OS and the third without any of the Office programs I was set to teach on it, or because the power has been out at the school. It has been an interesting week on campus. Still, this promises to be a rewarding experience. Once we get settled in our teacher roles and routines I think things will start running more smoothly, that is if the power ever comes back on.

-- B.