Week 54 (29 – 4 Aug 2007)
Picture: "Dressed" beds in the girl's dormitory
The students from Ringili came to the Sunday service for their last week, with an assessor. The Bible Study had 23 students and they managed to start without me as I discovered that the hall was out of action and tables and chairs were being moved. I didn’t know what was happening at first – but then I’m only the teacher on duty this week. The S4 Mock Practical examinations start on Monday and they needed to prepare the laboratory / library / hall in advance.
Monday was a hard day as we spent most of it writing and typing our exam papers.
After teaching on Tuesday I decided to visit Arua on my own – Andrea’s stomach is still unsettled although it’s the effects of being up set that made her decide not to go. I managed to get all the usual bits and pieces apart from the fresh food in the market. I even managed to buy some used car engine oil. Not the sort of thing one normally gets but we’ve been told that a layer of oil in the latrine helps to prevent the mosquitoes from breeding – so far it seems to have improved things but I might need to get another 5 litres. We’ve been meaning to make another visit the Scripture Union offices for several weeks but always seem to run out of time or energy but today I decided at the last minute to make the extra trip. But the office was no more! Due to termites destroying the roof over the Christmas break the diocese had decided to renovate all the office buildings, including that of the SU. I just happened to meet the Bishop as he was taking a group around to check the work in progress. One of the group was another white – from the UK. Within minutes we both realised that we had been at Aston together and had not met since 1977! If any from those days read this, you may also remember Paul Dean who did Civil Engineering and finished the year after me. He spent some time at Ringli (over the hill from Ushindi) during the 1980’s and did the initial surveys for the dam which gives the hospital and now the school some electricity! He is visiting with his family for a few weeks and we hope to meet up again before he leaves. It really is a small world now.
Apart from teaching, we spent the rest of Wednesday writing and checking our remaining end of term exam papers. Chemistry and maths symbols are a pig to type even on a laptop but by doing them ourselves at least we can check that they are accurate! Some student save bought revision aids for some subjects – typed sheets stapled together rather than the shiny, colour booklets students in the UK have. I looked at one for the geography of East Africa which started with information on volcanoes. I gave up on page two after finding “volcanoe” twice and couldn’t help laughing at the “violet” (violent) eruptions which produce “larvae” (lava). Even the student found the errors amusing when I explained the different meanings! But I also have to remember that I can’t write about chemistry in any other language and have difficulty with English myself!
We celebrated our 27th Wedding Anniversary on Thursday by watching a DVD! Otherwise it was a normal day with me teaching three double periods and spending the afternoon recovering! Andrea found things to do around the house as she had only one lesson to teach.
The S3 Chemistry did their first practical examination on Friday morning. As I’ve only taught them how to do an acid-base titration there were no surprise questions on the paper. We had three groups of 14 for 1 hour session with only a 10 min break between each one. I did warn them that, not being African, the exam would start and end on time and if they arrived late I would not let them in. In fact, I was wrong. They all arrived early to their sessions and were so efficient in sorting themselves out that we started each session early! Only one of them read the burette correctly but they were so consistent in their errors that the results were very good. However, their calculations were hopeless with only one student out of 42 getting the correct answer! I suspected this would happen and will award very few marks for the calculations and will test this again in the written paper in two weeks time.
Andrea spent most of Saturday morning digging trenches outside our house to try to catch the rainwater before it flowed in though our front door. She also went digging in the afternoon. I spent my time looking at the practical exam papers and catching up with other bits & pieces I haven’t been able to do for a couple of weeks.
Monday was a hard day as we spent most of it writing and typing our exam papers.
After teaching on Tuesday I decided to visit Arua on my own – Andrea’s stomach is still unsettled although it’s the effects of being up set that made her decide not to go. I managed to get all the usual bits and pieces apart from the fresh food in the market. I even managed to buy some used car engine oil. Not the sort of thing one normally gets but we’ve been told that a layer of oil in the latrine helps to prevent the mosquitoes from breeding – so far it seems to have improved things but I might need to get another 5 litres. We’ve been meaning to make another visit the Scripture Union offices for several weeks but always seem to run out of time or energy but today I decided at the last minute to make the extra trip. But the office was no more! Due to termites destroying the roof over the Christmas break the diocese had decided to renovate all the office buildings, including that of the SU. I just happened to meet the Bishop as he was taking a group around to check the work in progress. One of the group was another white – from the UK. Within minutes we both realised that we had been at Aston together and had not met since 1977! If any from those days read this, you may also remember Paul Dean who did Civil Engineering and finished the year after me. He spent some time at Ringli (over the hill from Ushindi) during the 1980’s and did the initial surveys for the dam which gives the hospital and now the school some electricity! He is visiting with his family for a few weeks and we hope to meet up again before he leaves. It really is a small world now.
Apart from teaching, we spent the rest of Wednesday writing and checking our remaining end of term exam papers. Chemistry and maths symbols are a pig to type even on a laptop but by doing them ourselves at least we can check that they are accurate! Some student save bought revision aids for some subjects – typed sheets stapled together rather than the shiny, colour booklets students in the UK have. I looked at one for the geography of East Africa which started with information on volcanoes. I gave up on page two after finding “volcanoe” twice and couldn’t help laughing at the “violet” (violent) eruptions which produce “larvae” (lava). Even the student found the errors amusing when I explained the different meanings! But I also have to remember that I can’t write about chemistry in any other language and have difficulty with English myself!
We celebrated our 27th Wedding Anniversary on Thursday by watching a DVD! Otherwise it was a normal day with me teaching three double periods and spending the afternoon recovering! Andrea found things to do around the house as she had only one lesson to teach.
The S3 Chemistry did their first practical examination on Friday morning. As I’ve only taught them how to do an acid-base titration there were no surprise questions on the paper. We had three groups of 14 for 1 hour session with only a 10 min break between each one. I did warn them that, not being African, the exam would start and end on time and if they arrived late I would not let them in. In fact, I was wrong. They all arrived early to their sessions and were so efficient in sorting themselves out that we started each session early! Only one of them read the burette correctly but they were so consistent in their errors that the results were very good. However, their calculations were hopeless with only one student out of 42 getting the correct answer! I suspected this would happen and will award very few marks for the calculations and will test this again in the written paper in two weeks time.
Andrea spent most of Saturday morning digging trenches outside our house to try to catch the rainwater before it flowed in though our front door. She also went digging in the afternoon. I spent my time looking at the practical exam papers and catching up with other bits & pieces I haven’t been able to do for a couple of weeks.
posted by J & A McAdam at 3:00 PM
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