Photo Highlights (continued)

It was lovely to finally get to FaceTime my brothers at their Grandmas! I promised them they could go on my blog haha there you go boys :-) Left to right: Matthew Sam Tommy. Love you! xxxxx

 That toad under the shelf made the weirdest and loudest noises! And I really don't know what the thing on the left is, if it's a bee it was the Queen or something, to put it into perspective that was not a small piece of wood!

Feel free to inform me of what it is if you know haha

Love this. Friendship!

Beautiful African skies

...and less beautiful, more haunted looking African storms :)

I only visit the AIDS baby home once a week but this little boy is just gorgeous, so well behaved and just sucks his thumb, sits on my knee calling me mummy and giggles all morning. Adorable. The many cute faces of Richard:

 And a lovely sleeping baby

If you like people playing with your hair, come to Uganda, they looooove mzungu hair.

Constantly getting my hair plaited by girls!

Photo Highlights

Jackson falling asleep on me when I'm at the village is so adorable, I love carrying him to bed and cuddling him! It must be the best feeling being a Mum,

I love just spending afternoons playing with the kids. How can I complain when I still get to play duck duck goose at 19 years old haha!

I spend Mother's day with these lovely girls (from Village of Hope) They inspire me so much with their stories, most of them are 14/15, don't have Mums, and have some really moving life stories already. 

I hope you all like my church skirt!!! Wearing it to the next party in England... 

Just some photos of me and the kids outside church on Sunday. (Jeff on the right)

 Left: Jackson on my knee singing one night 

Right: His sister Deborah, beautiful!

Morning photos with Jeff and Blessing at home :)

Boys Day Out

Today was one of my favourite days. I really get on with the group of older boys at the village (aged like 9-14) we always have loads of fun:

I decided it would be nice to take them out for the day as they don't get to go out that much. Taking one or two was just not going to happen, how can you pick and choose?! So I had to take the whole group of friends. This amounted to 12 boys haha!

So I asked if I could take them into town on Saturday and we went :)
It was such a fun day for me as well as them. They loved being out in Jinja. I stopped at a supermarket and told them they could choose an ice cream. You can see by Samuel's face they loved that.
Walking through the main street I got so many looks of confusion.

"Did you adopt them?" "Do you sponsor them?" "Are they taking your money?!"

I resorted to telling people they were all my biological children and grinning.

I also stopped at a shop to buy a football and told Steven to carry the bag. They didn't know why I'd bought it or what the plan even was.

I decided just going to a cafe with them wouldn't be as fun and the only thing I could think of in town that they would really enjoy was to take them to a playing field I know and set them free with the ball.

Obviously they loved that as football is their favourite pass time so we spent a few hours just chilling on the field, kicking the ball about, cartwheeling about, they DJ'd music from my speaker, and just had fun together.
Also cool that they all love taking photos on my camera because it means I don't have to do all the taking and can get some nice ones of me with them too, as not being here in a team or group, I thought that would be hard.

I saw really black clouds coming towards the field and thunder started and I was convinced
it would be another African storm where it isn't just light rain. I prayed for it to somehow swivel and go in the other direction haha and somehow the storm literally moved AROUND the field. Which was crazy because it was moving in the exact direction on us, yet bended so it didn't actually come over us in the end. Which was nice as we stayed dry and still had fun.

Then I treated them all to whatever soda they wanted at a restaurant, and then we walked a bit playing (and they were rapping to) music. Just a really nice day hanging out with them and getting to know them even better. :-) [Videos at bottom]

Josh!

Happy moments

Just a short post because something really lovely happened today. Waswa (little Waswa not big Waswa) from Home of Hope, whom I haven't posted much about before, is a little boy aged 2 who has cerebral palsy.
One of the common symptoms of cerebral palsy is muscle stiffness and of all the children with cerebral palsy at the home he definitely appears the most stiff - he is always clenching his fists so tightly, his eyes very wide as if straining, when you pick him up he doesn't feel flexible at all, always looks uncomfortable, and generally looks like he is constantly tense, it breaks my heart to see.

Anyway, today he was in the stretch therapy room lying on a mat and I was sat with him and some other children. I was tickling him and he actually smiled! A really big grin, something I'd never seen him do because he's always looking so tense and rigid. It was such a lovely moment I couldn't stop smiling. Really made my day. :-) 

[Later added text:]

Since then I often pick him up and sit with him, and lift him in the air over my head like he's flying and it looks like he is actually enjoying himself. I even got a load of photos of him smiling for the poster I'm making with all the childrens portraits and names on!

   

Oh and a reaaaallly chilled one hahaha

Treating Tendo and An Offer of Cheap Abercrombie Boxers

enjoying her treats

Someone at school took one of Tendo's school shoes (she's part of the family I live with)  so she was wearing too-small-broken-old-ones.
I decided to treat her to a trip to town and get her some school shoes from the market.

I took her to one of my favourite cafes and we had chips and a soda and the photos show how much she loved it haha. We shared some icecream and as we finished she started helping the waitress take everything from the table and then even went and thanked the cook for cooking her food!

We then went to the market on a boda (motorbike) which she enjoys and when I arrived at the market I could not believe the amount of stuff there.

this is only one aisle of shoes...

There is literally a whole strip of stalls selling shoes, a whole market for second hand clothes and one for food and animals etc. I have never seen so many shows in my life. It's amazing how they clean and repair shows from places like England and sell them looking pretty much brand new! If you want a pair of Nikes, any style, just come to Uganda and you'll get a p-aid for about £9.50.

boda riding

The clothes bit is even bigger, literally every stall just has this massive pile of clothes lying on a table for you to dive through. Lots of clothes from our country (I have no idea how they get here, they come in big sacks to be bought by sellers and they are second hand but it's not via a charity) and quite interesting seeing branded clothes lying among clothes we would pay much less for, all priced the same. Abercrombie and Fitch items next to ASDA George items. Here, brands don't really mean anything at all. Again, if anyone fancies a pair of Abercrombie boxers for about 50p then please contact me. Note: they are second hand.
Ha.

My family in their new outfits :)

I picked out an outfit for the three kids I live with as a little present, each piece was 3000 shillings - about 75p....!

After a long time of trying shoes on Tendo's feet, feeling like a Clarks employee feeling where her toe was and making her walk up and down in each pair, bartering the price down to a fair one (rather than a white person price - yes they always start with a higher price if you're a mzungu) we finally had a pair of good school shoes, and went home happy.

"Teacher Rachael"

Staff Polo :)

Teaching has been a challenge for me at times because I may be able to speak fluent English but I'm not qualified or trained to TEACH.

However it's been such a good learning curve, I have gained so much confidence in teaching children and adults in the past two months and found myself enjoying seeing progress in the students.
When I say learning curve, I am also learning stuff about my own language too, for example since when was the number 40 spelt "forty" !?!?!?! I have written "fourty" all of my life... haha
(Also feel very privileged to have been given a staff polo for Jinja Christian Primary School - now officially "Teacher Rachael" yay)

Sometime's I've struggled with my busy program and not been able to plan lessons the night before. Also It's hard to plan lessons when I am not familiar with the Ugandan curriculum. I have had to read through some syllabuses and exam papers to work out what they should know. I've woken up some mornings before teaching, especially the women's class, and literally had a blank mind about what to teach.
On these occasions I've prayed about it and suddenly all these ideas come to mind and I start scribbling them all down, so God's helping me every day to get through small challenges that I face to make sure I'm of use during each part of my program.

Women's Tailoring Class - English Sessions
I'm really enjoying seeing the tailoring ladies improving, as they are older (18-25) and really want to learn. I've got to know them well now and we have covered loads of topics including telling the time - for some reason Ugandans call 12 o'clock "six o'clock" 1=7 2=8 and so on. Basically the time is the number directly opposite to the one the little hand is pointing to... I basically re taught them time reading and then explained that our way is actually much easier as we just say what the hand is pointing to... haha.

End of lesson summary to copy down haha

Jinja Christian Primary School P7
Sometimes teaching the school kids is harder because they have real exams to take and I have to make sure what I teach them is relevant. Also, sometimes what I know to be correct, isn't always what is the right answer here:

For example, in my first p7 (top year of primary school) lesson, I was helping the students with persuasive letter writing. In my experience of English at school, good techniques in persuasive writing to get top marks were using emotive language and rhetorical questions...

Therefore when the kids were writing to a parent/guardian to "attend a sports day" I encouraged them to use rhetorical questions and gave them a few ideas.
They showed the teacher their work which included questions such as "How could you not come and support my sports day?!" "If you don't come I will cry. DO YOU WANT ME TO CRY?" "If you love me you would come, do you love me??" among all the other persuasive points they used. Personally I think they would have got great marks in a UK exam.

Unfortunately Teacher Sarah was not as impressed. "Why are you questioning your parent? Is this showing respect to them? You need to respectfully invite them to the even using good reasons why, not telling them what to do and asking "Do you love me" now please write your work again properly.

I sat there in utter disbelief and feeling guilty about ruining the children's education and futures... haha although the teacher found it funny in the end when I explained how we use those techniques in exams in the UK. I suppose her disagreement could also be due to cultural differences as respecting elders is enforced a lot more here.

Apart from that small hurdle, I have been teaching the class by myself since then and have seen some good improvements in their work. You would NOT believe the exams that these kids take at primary school level, they are probably equally as hard if not maybe harder than most GCSE exams! Especially the science or social studies questions, I literally would fail the entire paper even at my age. Luckily I teach English only.

I suppose this is all good practice for doing an English degree at uni next year - I'm very excited because I just got my fifth offer (Newcastle) so now I have some choosing to do :) 



Here's a few videos of the kids after the lessons... I promise they work hard and focus during teaching time hahaha

 

Computers and Dancing Cats

Today was a looong day I had to go to town in the morning, and get back in time for teaching P7 English at 2pm. I was really tired and just as I thought the day was over and I could collapse in bed, I remembered that I had told some teachers I would do a session with them about using computers.

After running home for a drink, I felt better and although I hadn't planned out the session it went really well! Teacher Charles really wanted help with using his email so we practiced basic things like logging in, finding how to create a new message, entering recipient and sending.

I then showed him how to attach
photos and documents. I told him to send a picture from Google images to teacher Rachel who was sat with us too. They loved searching through Google and the outcome was a moving image of a dancing Skrillex cat... They were very amused and excited at this.

We then learned about using Microsoft word to create tests for students and other documents. It was nice teaching something I am so familiar with and don't usually have to think about, as it made me strip back to the basics and show them things like what bold text was and how to underline haha. I showed them how they can use specific tools to make an exam paper for students like making dotted lines for answers etc.

I worried that they wouldn't take everything in all in one go and forget some things I showed them so I sat and made a big poster with tips and explanations on to go on the wall in the staff room so they can see it whenever they need to!

I also told them that if they sent an email every morning to one other teacher, their typing (which is currently very slow) will improve so much and they will become fast. I used the example of English teenagers being like machines when they type as we are on computers so much tweeting and Facebooking or occasionally actually doing school work, that we become ridiculously good at typing!