Another PCV Story

An addition to the previous post. This one is from PCV Haley White, who joined this project last month.

Community Volunteer Initiative for Development (COVOID)

COVOID is a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Rubirizi (formerly Bushenyi) District of south-western Uganda. Uganda is the “pearl of Africa”, then this specific region, called Bunyaruguru, is a paradise within a paradise. Bunyaruguru is often overlooked by government projects and civil society organizations because everyone knows the area is rich in fertile soils, diverse foods, natural water sources, plentiful rainfall, and Queen Elizabeth National Park. What other people overlook, however, is that the economic culture of intensive agriculture and fishing contributes to a high rate of large families, forced school-leaving and child labor. Faced with the option of earning immediate, though meager, income by working in the fields and lakes, many short-sighted students lose interest in school and remove themselves in search of an easy shilling
(or 0.00043 pennies).

As one of very few NGOs serving the region, COVOID opened the Bunyaruguru Community Library in September 2007 with a starter collection from the National Library of Uganda. Presently the books are few and include many repetitious copies of high school math and
science textbooks. While valuable and in use, these books don’t really scream the messages of “books for all ages!”, “explore new worlds with your kids!” or “reading can be FUN!” Unless you have a very special perspective on the world, there was nothing very FUN about 10th grade trigonometry. While we do boast a few rather mind-blowing Sesame Street toddler puzzles that challenge kids, adults, and Peace Corps Volunteers alike, the so-called “children’s section” of our library is lacking substance.

This new donation of nearly 500 school age-appropriate books, primarily for leisure reading and English skills, will help COVOID to fulfil its goal of creating community access to the wide world of reading from a young age. Through National Book Week 2010, COVOID strengthened partnerships with local nursery, primary and secondary schools, all of which will be able to borrow books for the students to read and take home to share with their families. It is a source of pride for a parent to be able to witness her or his child learn to read, or enjoy a book even just for the pictures—to see the child achieve levels of education that may never have been available to them. These parents might just support their children through higher

levels of schooling. I can safely say that I learned more from “Snuggle Piggy and the Magic Blanket” than “Algebra II”, or maybe the memories are just more pleasant. But I hope that these kids can experience the same kind of joy that I always experience upon turning the pages of a new book. COVOID and I are very grateful for this opportunity to expand young minds in Bunyaruguru.

As we wait for books.....

Excitement is building in several communities and schools around Uganda for the arrival of 30,000 donated books from an American organization. The books have reached the continent, and are now making a slow treacherous crawl around congested ports, across poor roads, and through stiff borders. As we wait for the arrival of the books to Kyenjojo, and then out to the various communities, I want to offer stories of the various schools and communities involved in this project. This falls well short of a proper 'thank you' to all of you that have donated to the project, but I hope it brings some smiles...and maybe a few tears. We are planning to put together follow-up stories and pictures from each community once the books arrive. This will form a clear picture of the enormous impact we have all made. In the meantime, I'll give you these as they come to me from the volunteers...

Masaka School for Children with Special Needs (MSCSN)

This school is located just outside of Masaka town and caters for children with partial and full hearing impairments. The school has a current enrolment of about 100 students. A majority of the students at the school begin their educations much later compared to their hearing peers. The average age of a child at MSCSN in Primary One (Kindergarten) is 10-12 years, compared with the average of 6 years for a child in a standard school. This late start for the children at MSCSN means that most of them will finish their final year of primary schooling (6^th Grade) at 17-20 years of age.

The children of MSCSN experience daily challenges well beyond the scope of a typical student. One major challenge they face is in the language of instruction. According to Ministry of Education standards, the students are taught in (written) English. However, they are supplemented by communication in sign language with their teachers and peers, which conforms to the Uganda Sign Language (USL) standard. This mixing of languages causes some confusion in the students as they approach their end of school examinations, which are in English, leading to many failures.

“It’s not because they don't know the answers, but simply because the exams are in English. This is why it is such a blessing that there will be books on hand. They need more exposure to the English language and this will make it possible.” (Commer)

These students have never had the opportunity to read books. None of the students has ever owned even a single book. The school and its Peace Corps Volunteer Amber Commer, have fought extremely hard to turn this situation around for the students. They have constructed a library on the school campus, complete with shelves, tables, reading areas, and posters. In addition, they have been able to pull together enough money to make a significant local contribution towards the Libraries for Life project. Through these efforts the school has secured an order of 2500 books for their new library.

“We are so excited to finally get our books and fill up the empty shelves and our minds.”

- Amber Commer (PCV)

Kisiki College, Namutumba

Kisiki College is a secondary school in the Busoga region of eastern Uganda. The school has both Ordinary Level (7-10^th grades) and Advanced Level (11-12^th grades) and consists of boarding and day students. Currently the school has over 1,200 students, and is under the Ugandan Government’s Universal Secondary Education (USE) program.

The school has a library, but the conditions – ventilation, poor lighting, lack of space – are not ideal and many of the books are too old and out-dated to be beneficial to the students. This is especially true for those in 'A' level, who are the largest users of the library. In addition to having an outdated collection, the school, like many others in Uganda, suffers from a serious lack of reading culture. By getting interesting and relative books for the students, the school, along with its Peace Corps Volunteer Becky Poore, are hoping for a shift in this reading culture. They have recently opened a new reading room to adjacent to the library to allow more space for the students, and are hoping for more renovations in the future. The school has secured an order of 750 books through this project.

- Becky Poore (PCV)

YY Okot Memorial College, Kitgum, Uganda

An Open Letter:

I am Heather Pasley, a Peace Corps volunteer teaching at YY Okot Memorial College, an all-girls school in Kitgum, Uganda. Currently, we have a small selection of textbooks available from the library, but few girls actually take advantage of the collection. Besides reading a few bits of the Bible, the girls’ reading is limited to their school notes. They simply find no joy in reading.

Like the rest of the country, the Northern Ugandan culture is not a reading culture. However, these girls are faced with a competitive education system that requires a strong handle on English and reading. Right now, most girls are failing English class and struggling to speak English in the academic setting. Therefore, our interest is in novels at 5th-11th grade reading levels.

Our idea is to allow the girls in the lowest three classes (7^th – 9^th grade) to experience the fun of picking out a book at the beginning of each term and keeping it as their personal item for the entire term. At the end of each term, they will be asked to turn in a book report to their English teachers for extra credit along with their book. These girls have very few personal items, so we feel that getting to pick out their own book and keep it for a term will be a special thing to them and inspire them to read for joy.

Additionally, encouraging the girls at the school to read novels gives them an outlet from the troubles they face. Being in northern Uganda, these are children of war. Most of them were born into communities amidst brutal attacks from the Lord’s Resistance Army during the 1990’s. The lasting effects of what they have seen are immeasurable and escapes from that world are few - even in the peaceful climate which they now live.

This project was inspired by a similar program that my elementary school did which encouraged me to be the avid reader that I am now. I greatly appreciate all the help you all have given me in implementing this program here.

-Heather Pasley

*This school is receiving over 900 books through the project

And so we built them a library

The first days.....

The view of the backside of the library. 72 feet in total length, it is the largest single room on the campus. The veranda still had of covering over it at this point for the concrete to dry, but it was removed later and we still have no major cracks. The painting (inside and out) will be done by the school next year.

Inside the main reading room. These are the tables and benches built by the students in the ovc (orphans and vulnerable children) youth carpentry program last year. We have space to add nine more tables in the future as the school grows in size. The room will remain without a ceiling, which makes the space it feel even bigger. There are six large halogen bulbs mounted in the main room as well as two wall sockets for computers. We also fixed wood strips along the walls (seen here between the windows). The upper strips will be used to hang permanent visual aids, photos, rules, etc., while the lower strip will be used to by students for hanging large science charts (received from the Ministry) and other items which they want to copy into their notebooks.

Our librarian, Susan, began over the weekend. She is a former student of the school who graduated in 2007, a year before I came. She spent the weekend organizing the school's current collection of 137 books (they have purchased about 80 new books this year in preparation for the library) onto the shelves which were finished last week.

All smiles from the first users....

I will try my best to get more pictures up in the coming weeks, but I wanted to give you all something, at least, for now. I can't thank you enough for all the support you've given to me and my kids. They are so so grateful, you can see it on their faces as soon as they step into the library. They would never say it, but this is really a dream for most of them.....schools that have libraries are supposed to be 500,000 Shillings a term (250 bucks), not a village school that charges 20 bucks each term. They weren't supposed to have a library, they realize that. But they do thanks to all of you.

Love and miss everyone.

Eric.

Doing the backstroke

Last weekend I took an afternoon off to head up to where I started this whole crazy Uganda thing...Luweero District....to visit my homestay family - the Serwanga's. For the two months that I was training to be a volunteer I was given a room at this family's home room and taken in as their honorable son. This is something which is done for every peace corps volunteer everywhere (as far as I know). The Serwanga's helped me to learn the language - although I have since switched to a different one - as well as gave me a comfortable place to try out my many cultural faux paus and attempt to do all the difficult things (like washing clothes) in this country.

Although all the volunteers in my group were put into this same living condition during those first 2 months, not everyone had as pleasant an experience as I did (be it daily [accidental] food poisonings, babysitting duties, mean dads, etc) and for that I am extremely greatful to the Serwanga's. It was a difficult thing for me to handle - being in a completely different culture and thrown into someone's house, but equally as difficult for them as well as they now had the cultural pressure of hosting a westerner in their home. I think I blogged about many of these feelings and experiences way back then, so I won't get into it too much....and instead will move on to this visit, this much more comfortable and "veteran" visit to a Ugandan family.

I have blown by their house a couple times since I left last April, on my way to visit other PCV's or to national parks....so remembering where to go was no issue. I planned to arrive around 11am and spend the day with them, have lunch, play with the kids, then head back to Kampala before nightfall.

Being Uganda....and being me....I was late, but not without reason of course! The jam out of Kampala was horendous as usual, so I didn't make it up to their house until about 12:00. As I walked up to the house I was flooded with all these memories (of being scared shitless, mostly) in this place 17 months ago. I was greeted by the father of the family Hannington - who had sat with me nightly as we ate dinner together, staring at eachother between bites while the rest of the family ate on the floor in the adjacent room, then given me language lessons as I hurriedly tried to copy down new words and spell them somehow correctly. He had just as big of a smile as I remembered and shook my hand endlessly as he tried quizzing me on all the lengthy greeting we had practiced over and over (i stumbled....but got through it). The rest of the family was gathered around the kitchen about 10 feet behind the house. Hannington led me inside and pointed to "my customary seat" and told me to sit. Here we were again - staring at eachother, with a world of customs, traditions, cultures, languages, seperating us. Luckily he is a fairly good english speaker, so aside from the quizzes (which continued throughout the day) we caught eachother up on the last 17 months of our lives. (I think its time for a picture...this is a - very typical - ugandan family pictures. That's Hannington on the left and Mama Serwanga on the right)

As we continued catching up Mama came in with the first round of our (HUGE) lunch...boiled irish potatoes. Mama speaks absolutely no english....but it doesn't take a fluent person to understand what she was saying to me as she hugged me and nearly pulled me over "somethingsomethingsomethingsomething Eriki somethingsomething something something Eriki!!!" I get the feeling she didn't expect to ever see me again...and was extremely happy that this was not the case.

Hannington and I finished up our potatoes with some fresh passion fruit juice and then (again, just like when I first came to their house 17 months ago) headed to the bar across the street. After a quick drink and a few shared greetings we headed off for a walk through the town center. Kasana Town is quite large relatively speaking, and with the new familiarity of Uganda I've developed I was able to put this into perspective. We walked for about 30 mins as Hannington waved to all of the shopkeepers, boda drivers, old men walking, etc that he knew and re-intoduced his white son. Back at the house I found the Serwanga's children out front playing in the dirt. Morgan (below) came and gave me a hug first with his huge unforgettable smile. Hannington asked if he remembered me and he smiled and said "Eriki, mukwano gange" (Eric, he's my friend.....cue the tears). Morgan is the grandson of Hannington, and he and Mama now care for him - not sure where the father (their son) is.

After playing a for a few minutes with Morgan I headed inside for lunch - LOTS of boiled goat (sorry Annie, its really quite good), rice, posho, spinach, sweet potatoes, cassava, and more passion fruit juice. Wew! It was quite a lot, but I knew to expect it based on my two months there before. Just like all those meals back then here I was seated in the living room face to face with Hannington as the rest of the family sat in the other room. This time however, much to my agreement, Mama joined us for the last part of our meal. I ate my best share, sat back to chat some more Hannington as he translated everything to Mama, then headed outside and gave the kids the coloring books I had brought for them.

All in all I spent about 4 hours with the Serwanga's. 4 hours that reminded me how far I've come since first landing here last year, and 4 hours that showed me how much impact I will continue to have for many years after I leave next year :) If a 5 year old remembers me as his friend after only two months, I can just imagine what the friendships I've developed in Kyenjojo (with 5 y/o's - 75 y/o's) will yield.

Love and miss you all,

Eric.

P.S. here's a picture of some purple chickens that the Serwanga's own. I've been told they paint them like that to prevent the birds of prey from picking them out - but really, who knows.

nope, sorry......go phish.

Word of the day: Library

I just wrapped up a four-day workshop (as a participant) on using, fixing, and building science equipment from locally available resources. The workshop was created by RPCV Alan Olsen (Malaysia, Uganda) and involved fellow RPCV Carl Katsu (Morocco) and a very successful physics teacher, author of textbooks and training director for schoolnetuganda Daniel Kakinda. The workshop got off to a bit of a slow start but ended with some serious momentum as Kakinda showed many incredible things his group is doing with computer technology for classrooms here in uganda. He also provided cd's to each participating shool with tons of simulations for various physics, biology and chemistry labs, which will be great for schools such as ours where we don't have enough resources for the students to each conduct the labs on their own. Carl gave some great tips about good teaching practices and simple demonstrations for physics and biology. It was nice for me as he has 18 years of teaching experience in the US and offered a good example of what a "teacher" is supposed to do. Unlike many teachers here who simply stand in front of their classes and read notes verbatim for entire class periods and the students hurriedly try to copy them into their books.

During the workshop I took the chance to tour the library of Mbarara High School, where the workshop was being held. I got lots of good ideas to use in the construction of our library as well as some things that don't work so well.

Oh, btw.....if you haven't heard already - the road to building a full-fledged library at St. Adolf High School got a huuuge boost as the grant I wrote through peace corps got approved for $9,400!!!! This leaves us short by about $10,000, but with the incredible efforts of my mom back in the states and the parish's promise to foot the remaining costs, we should see the library up and running by February 2010!!

We're slated to begin construction on October 1st of this year, just as the rains begin - which should make things interesting, but my school's administration promises to push through this sligh hinderance. The library will provide enough space for about 100 students to sit at tables comfortably. We're also hoping to have a large collection of books donated through booksforafrica.org and the Rotary clubs of Fort Portal (here in Uganda) and back in NC. If all goes according to plan (which it won't, but we'll survive somehow) we should be able to leave a lasting resource for the students to use for many many years to come.

This will give my students the first access they have EVER had to ANY books in their entire lives. Think about that - imagine going to school and never touching or reading a book! Going to class everyday and listening to a teacher lecture, trying to write down everything he/she says or writes on the board. Then going home and wanting to improve your biology grade, but having nothing but those notes to look at - no google, no encyclopedias, no textbooks, no dictionary, no television documentaries, not even any posters or pictures to look at. Everything the teacher says has to be taken as complete truth, since there is no where to verify it. It's incredible these kids learn anything. And to be honest, they don't. Since all they have is this notebook full of lecture notes they go home and memorize every single word of it - it's the best thing they can do with only one (very limited) resource. They memorize it and hope it's the same information that is asked on the test. The problem with this is since they are only memorizing the info they can only regurgitate it in the exact way it was given. Ask for the information in a different way and they are completely lost. After about 5 years, they remember nothing, because they never applied it to anything but a test.

But, hopefully all that will change - at least for the 4 years these kids will be at St. Adolf. After getting their notes they can rush over to the library, grab a book and sit down and read the information in a different way, compare it to what they were given in class, ask questions to someone (or something) other than their teacher. If their curious about a certain topic they can read more about it on their own. We're also hoping to set up a few computers in the library and put different types of educational resources on them (britannica, wikipedia, learning games, cia factbook, maps, diagrams, you name it). We won't have internet in any foreseeable future, but we do have power, and therefore a computer is a free resource. We're hoping to take as much information as possible from the internet and other sources and put it directly onto the computers or a server so they can access it. If anyone has any software resources they think the kids would be interested in please let me know!

Otherwise, stay tuned for updates on our progress with this project.

That's it for now.

Love and miss you all, ------ And THANK YOU to all who have already contributed to the project. I'm hoping to put up a fundraising application in the near future to raise money for the books if we need it. Will let you know!

-Eric

Brutal Honesty...

Ok folks, time for some very american, in-your-face honesty: I am officially a lazy blogger.

Yep. Although I'm sure this is something you have all figured out now, I think it's time I admit it. I think there are a few reasons for this I would like to share with you all now to quell my guilt:

1) I have become used to Africa.
- this is a scary thought, but I think it can help to explain my terrible regularity with postings. I am now viewing things that happen here as normal. This leads to less surprise, and therefore less motivation to quickly share the strangeness with you all.

2) Twitter syndrome.
- even when strange things do happen, I can twitter them and then don't feel the need to ramble on in a posting about the event. Also, I feel like the punchline of a potential posting has been ruined as the tweet usually exposes the whole point of a posting.

3) Lack of internet.
- here's a softball but humor me. I am now using internet about 1 hour per week, and this is usually spent catching up on emails (or lately, catching up on phish tour news....sorry - i do have priorities).

4) I'm a lazy african.
- yes, all the excuses in the world could be placed here, but the fact of the matter is i'm lazy. Not that this is a new development, but it is now translating itself into more of my daily life here.

SOLUTIONS: As commendable as it is to admit you are wrong, it does nothing without posing some solutions. So here they are.

Stick with me, i will try to improve.
- As i type this i am watching my internet timer quickly tick down to under 5 mins and once again i have not posted any meaningful news from here. But i am going to try to update more, so just stick with me. In the meantime keep watching twitter for randomness in my daily life.

That's it for now!! Hope someone is still out there reading this.


Love to you all,
Eric.

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack

Ok, i'll admit it - as they say in Uganda, "I have been lost". SERIOUSLY lost actually. Just looked at the last time I posted (something fulfilling at least) and realized it was almost 5 months ago! Hopefully there are still people reading this thing. To those who have been patient, thank you, and sorry for the delay....i'll do better from here on out.

I've contemplated trying to update on everything (or at least major things) that's happened since my last update, but I get overwhelmed just thinking about it and fail to post anything, hence the 5 month hiatus. So instead of drawing out ridiculously long rambles, here's a pictorial update of my life in last 5 months. I think when we last met I was preparing for my aerofoil competition...so we'll start from there, enjoy...



Aerofoil competition was a success (somehow). I like to look at it from this angle...90 Senior 3 students worked in teams of 3 to develop a solution for a practical problem (make something that can fly using a strict set of materials). A great "stretching" exercise for brains which are usually asked only to memorize and regurgitate info. The teams each developed a plan complete with a blueprint, built their apparatuses, and flew them. They saw it through to the end, they applied themselves to a problem. Great.

Downside: Winning team flew 90cm. Yep, thats less than a meter...from about 40 feet up in the air. But I can take some blame as my launcher was less than ideal.
(Next term we're egg-dropping!)


Senior 3 Class was crowned inter-class champions in the annual competition, which has now been moved to third term to allow our football team to better prepare for their season (first term of the following year).


Goat slaughter #1. An overdue feast with the teachers at Kelly's school. I have really grown to enjoy goat meat (sorry Anne, but whats else is a man to do with no crabs?) One minute your shaking the leg of the little fella and then next your eating him on a stick. (ok that was low....but i could have gone much more graphic....your welcome.)



BTW, just as a sidenote: goat is extremely popular here and a lot of people even prefer it to beef. Easier to raise them on a limited plot of land, and many prefer the taste. In case you were wondering...



Bringing football (yeah, the real one) to Uganda. We put the footballs we received in a care package to good use with some of the kids in Kel's village. I found quarterback, a wide receiver and a running back. Only problem is you have to hand the ball to the RB and then chase him to make him start running the direction you want, but nothing wrong with his endzone celebration (below). Oh and the above picture is a boy....the dress is for errr easy access to relieve himself?



I got a proper thanksgiving, thanks in no small part to kel's efforts and a few well-timed care packages from the states...



Attended a wedding ceremony just before Christmas for the Director of Studies at my school. Fairly similar ceremony to ours at home. One difference that sticks out is that they put these sort of sparkler type candles on the wedding cake. Definitely a bit more exciting than ours, but seems like something I saw on funniest home videos. Also lots of food....for everyone. And eeeeeveryone comes. The custom is to ask for donations from friends/family to help pay for the costs, but even with these it is quite an undertaking by the family. I believe it is the groom's family who foots the bill, but i'm not positive. Here is me and my parish priest Father Moses in our traditional kanzu's prior to the ceremony.



Christmas. Spent the holiday at my site with the fathers and two volunteers (Kel and Margaret) - the fathers really enjoyed that we were there and all around a very memorable Christmas was had by all.



Christmas morning we exchanged presents (10,000 shilling limit - that's about 5 bucks). I got a battery operated rickshaw, a bottle of whiskey, and a spiderman kite. All smiles. We cooked a big breakfast of passion fruit pancakes - which you'll just have to take my word for - amazing, then I took advantage of a windy 85 degree Christmas afternoon to fly spiderman with Margaret.



Christmas eve (i know i'm out of order, but I wanted to get the pleasantries out first) was spent on goat slaughter #2. This time I took hold of the machete and did the deed....



Zanzibar!! Wow, what a new years. For those who don't know, and I didn't before Jack Black, this is a small island off the cost of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean and is absolute visual overload. We had some issues with our hotel, but hey this is africa. Check the old twitter messages for the details. On the upside our cottage was about 10 yards from the water...at least during high tide. The tidal changes in the portion of the island we were on were unbelievable. High tide was essentially at our doorstep and during low tide the water was beyond the horizon...about a 15 minute walk straight out across the sand. The picture below was taken at low tide looking straight out into the ocean. At high tide I would have been completely submerged standing in the same spot.



By far my favorite memory of zanzibar was the boys from the village and their sailboats. As soon as the tide went out in the morning the village kids came out and gathered around small pools of water and sailed their homemade sailboats (called dows in swahili). They were made of local plants and sticks, plus garbage from the beach (flipflops, plastic bags, etc). All day you would hear them cheering for their boats as they raced them from one side of the pool to the other.



I confess this trip needs a more thorough post. I'll try to get to it...

Then there was the time earlier this year that I found red bananas...



Who knew?

Was fortunate enough to spend Valentine's Day with Kel at an amazing resort overlooking Queen Elizabeth National Park. Can't beat dinner overlooking an elephant savanna. Spent two days here relaxing and swimming.



Got a chance to volunteer helping a group of medical students from America run an impromptu clinic in the bush. My language and cultural knowledge gave me an advantage of being able to talk to the villagers and play a sort of crowd control role for the day, freeing them up to just concentrate on treatment.



Spent Easter weekend in the extreme southwestern portion of the country. Did some hiking on a volcano which stradles the Uganda/Rwanda border and rises to about 15000 feet.



(We had to hike w/an armed guard btw...breath mom, it was for animals...i think)



And the rest of the weekend relaxing on a beautiful lake nearby.



And welcome to today!

I'm sitting here in Kampala for a mid-service training (yep, I'm halfway done! a scary thought) on wireless internet catching you up on the last half year of my life. This weekend I am heading to Fort Portal to coach my school's first ever girl's football team through the national tournament (my boy's got knocked out of the district tournament a couple weeks back, more on that later).

I have acquired 2 new toys to keep me entertained the next few months - a mountain bike and a mandolin. We'll see which one gets more use.

And I am extremely happy to say that my family will be here in less than a month! We are all very excited to welcome them to Uganda, and I hope they are ready for a whirlwind 10 days in the motherland. Can't wait to see you all!!! Have fun with your shots! If it makes you feel better I got a bitter flu shot and tb test today, so stop your whining.

Hopefully this sufficiently satisfies everyone's appetites out there and helps to relieve your curiosity of what exactly I am doing out here these days. Please let me know if anyone has issues with this entry loading - i know its a big one with a tons of pictures but I think we all deserve it :)

Also, if anyone is interested in helping Kelly cement her school's classrooms you will be ensuring that her kids no longer have to do this:


(Every little bit helps) Find out the details about the project and how you can help here:

And stay tuned for upcoming news on my library which is in the pipeline.

Love and miss you all,
Eric