The realisation that I would be living in Uganda has just finally hit.. Living with a group who are all so friendly and who are all just so genuine really does make the time and experience so much more worthwhile.
Since arriving in Entebbe on the 28th, everyone has achieved so much in such a small space of time, whether it was a bungee jump into the Nile or whitewater rafting the Nile or kayaking in Lake Bunyoni or overcoming any fears of teaching, it has been a crazy four weeks and to think about what's still to come is incredible.
The journey so far: When James, Kerstin and myself first arrived at Entebbe airport we was very nervous as you can imagine, we joined the queue to enter the country and paid for our visas and we then became legal immigrants of Uganda. We then met our team leaders and all of the other volunteers who would be teaching. As we landed at around 2pm local time we all stayed the night in a nearby hostel, before setting off to a small town called Jinja which is situated along the river Nile, where we stayed for two nights. After our two night stay we then drove to the capital, Kampala, where we stayed the night but we had to get up at four in the morning to then begin the nine hour car journey to Kanungu which will be our home for the next twelve weeks, which is also right on the border of Rwanda and DRCongo.
Week one:
The first week at the Volunteer Uganda lodge mainly involved many LRTT (Limited resource teacher training) sessions which is quite self explanatory. A few to many team building exercises, micro teaching and a lot of holiday school planning and preparation. The first week ended with a fancy dress party, which I will not go into further detail about.
Week two:
The second week began with our first day at holiday school which started well but ended with Giants, Wizards and Elves :)) GWE is the ultimate go to game when stuck for ideas! The week involved us teaching music, art, drama and sport. We then all spent the weekend at Lake Bunyoni which was good to just get out and visit a new location for a couple of days. For those that are interested Lake Bunyoni is the Deepest lake in Uganda, the second deepest lake in Africa and the third deepest lake in the World! Lake Bunyoni has twenty nine islands including the historic punishment island where they would send women who get pregnant before marriage. Myself, James and another volunteer all kayaked to one of the islands to explore which took all of twenty minutes to look around. But it was pretty cool to just hook up a kayak and go explore.
Week three:
The third week began with more holiday school which would come to an abrupt end on Wednesday. On the Tuesday it was good to see the children perform a presentation on what they had been learning about over the past week. We ended holiday school on Wednesday with sports day which held eight events including: long distance, long jump, three legged race, potato and spoon race, 100m sprints, relay race, penalty shoot out and then we ended it all with a good old fashioned game of tug of war! The rest of the week we had off due to the national elections. On the Thursday and Friday is volunteers cooked for everyone, so Thursday's theme was Mexican and Friday's theme was Italian and everyone seemed to enjoy it, this was possibly the highlight of my week.
Week four:
The weekend before the fourth week all the teaching volunteers found out their partners and the schools that they would be going to teach at so therefore the weekend resulted in a lot of lesson planning and prep. As the school that we're coaching at wasn't open on the Monday myself, James, Kerstin, and two other volunteer teachers all went around the local schools to hand out some text books to teachers and students, this has to be one of the most rewarding days so far! Week four was safari weekend which was just amazing! We camped on the Friday night and stayed in a hostel on the Saturday night this was possibly my favourite weekend out here so far. Our first week coaching went better than we expected our focus was on dribbling which the majority managed to pick up pretty quickly.
Week five:
This week we returned to Kazuru to coach for the second week running this week would be our last before moving onto another school in the area. The main focus for the week was passing which went well in parts but also we learnt a lot about what works and what doesn't work which we found was very positive. Our time at Kazuru finished on the Thursday, and over the two weeks we all kept a close eye on behaviour and looked out for the kids that impressed us the most. These kids would then be presented with a prize for their hard work. On Friday we held a HIV day at a local secondary school where we would inform all of the children about HIV and teenage pregnancy and all of the precautions to take. Majority of the children that attended all got a free HIV test at the school which we provided. The week then ended with a fair well party to those volunteers who would be leaving after the first six weeks which was a sad time :(.
MNF-Monday night football
Monday night football :)) every week we host a football match from 5pm til 7pm which is so much fun to be apart of especially seeing the smiles on the kids faces. We might not speak the same language, however, we all know the game and rules of football. The first week we turned up the Locals insisted that the teams would be us five mzungus vs thirty locals which wasn't easy by any means, however, I felt that a 3-3 draw was a decent result and we were content with a point ;). Over the past six weeks MNF has been just great to be involved in! And we are very much looking forward to the weeks to follow. Looking back at the half way point during stage two, it has honestly been the best experience of my life.
What's yet to come..
The new six weekers arrive this Thursday.
Coaching in seven schools in five weeks.
More excursions etc.