Week 68 (4 - 10 Nov 2007)

Photo: The result when lightening hits a solar battery - this was in the boys dormitory.

On Sunday I decided to see how many boys were still in bed 5 minutes before the service was due to start. Only about 5 and they soon jumped out! Too many were still slow in getting to the hall but the girl’s weren’t much better. But why is the service at 8am I wonder? The Chaplain, Isaac, took the communion service. As we were resting back in our house I realized that there was a general commotion coming from the boys dormitory – strange as they should all have been in prep. in the classrooms. I arrived to find the boys lining up, with others searching them and another keeping the dormitory doors closed. Some money had been stolen so they were investigating themselves. They did not find the money and agreed to make a voluntary donation to cover some of the loss. This raises some issues about security, especially of cash, as well as student investigations. The only other issues I had do deal with were the low battery power in the classrooms (it was a grey day so little charging form the solar panels) and a student who had walked for nearly 6 hours back to school but had still not managed to get her school fees. Those who had not paid their fees were being denied food. I gave her permission to get food – I wasn’t going to send her back to her Uncle’s house again.

Due to our schedule and plans for the week, life skills day on Friday and workshops on Saturday, we decided to collect some things from town after teaching our Monday lessons. The flip chard we ordered arrived but the holes in the paper pad are in a different place from those in the stand. This is Africa, the home of innovation when things don’t go as expected! We called into Cathy Asiki’s – she was in the middle of some party games with one of her daughters and her friends. It was good just to relax and watch them. We also called at Diguna for some post and met Hannah, whom we haven’t seen for many months.

Tuesday and my turn to go to Kuluva for some electricity and peace. I got the peace. But the hydropower had broken down so no electricity. The engineer who usually fixed it is in Germany but Diguna knew of another engineer who was coming from Congo. A bit frustrating but I was still able to do some other things and think about the Life Sills and workshops.

After teaching my biology lesson on Wednesday morning I prepared to drive to Kuluva to join Andrea only to realise that I still had the key to the Lacey’s house on my key-ring. Andrea also left her key-ring at Ushindi – so we both got it wrong! When I arrived, at about 11.30am she was sitting on the veranda finishing her marking. The only problem was that veranda’s generally don’t have toilets. There was still no power but much frustration. I tried to phone the Hospital Administrator, Jackson, to find out the progress on the power but we were cut off before he could say much and I couldn’t get him back again – it turns out he was in town. The meat in the freezer was beginning to thaw so we decided to return to Diguna in town and see if we could use their power for a while and some space in their freezer. We also arrived just before lunch and they allowed us to join them giving us a chance to meet some of their current team. So this is where we are, on top of Arua Hill, with power for the afternoon so that we can finish our preparations for the Life Skills on Friday and Workshops on Saturday.

Our heads hurt after all our thinking yesterday. All we needed to do on Thursday, was teach. And make the final preparations for Friday and Saturday. I spent the afternoon and evening writing notes on the flip-chart. That’s a paper version of PowerPoint, for those who’ve forgotten. And we finally agreed which parts each of us would do on Saturday so that we could be free on Friday evening to have a rest. At least, that was the plan. But ….

Life Skills Day. Friday. Normal lessons cancelled for different activities. First problem, the breakfast for the students was late – or at least not enough was cooked the first time. So the planned start at 8.30am was delayed by half an hour, putting the rest of the day’s programme out. Then some of the teachers hadn’t arrived by 9am. Andrea had difficulty getting information from some of the others to find out what they were doing so that overlap would be limited. No chance. She was taking the first two sessions, on different topics one of which was “coping with emotions”! Practice what you preach! I patrolled around and went into some of the sessions. There was still much teacher talk but where there were student activities I’m not convinced that the students (or the teachers) realised the point of them! My own sessions followed (self awareness and self esteem) and were fairly reflective for the students. They were very co operative and did try but the idea of reflection was beyond some of them. We had planned that I would only do this with one older group but the teachers from another session pulled out. Or rather never arrived in the first place. Still, we could look forward to the afternoon session by an experienced group from the HIV/AIDS unit at Kuluva Hospital. Except that they arrived an hour late and their programme was over three hours long. In the end, I had to stop a film so that the students could prepare for their evening meal before dark. There was not allowance for their being an hour late. We also thought that we had agreed that they would talk for no more than an hour to the whole school to leave time for more individual question sessions. However, parts were good (i.e. parts were dire too!) but the students who had the stamina to remain in the hall found it useful and informative. We were very hot and tired and thinking about what we still needed to do for Saturday. Andrea was also doing the student evening devotions and simply read Psalm 139 – the original emotional intelligence. Being delayed in the afternoon, I spend the rest of the evening finishing writing on the flip chart.

On Saturday we arrived bright and early to set up the staff room for the workshops on Managing Student Behaviour and Assessment. We were ready to start at 8.50am. But we had only seen one other teacher and she was busy organising the catering for the day. Therefore, we started half an hour late, again putting pressure on our schedule. But we made generous time allowances and made up most of it by lunch time. In the end, 13 of the 16 staff were present although the Principal was unable to stay for most of it. It was hard work but the staff were co-operative and seemed to begin to understand the reasons behind our assertions e.g. look at the underlying causes of student behaviour and try to change those by changing the experiences of the students. They realised that many of the student behaviours were as a result of teacher actions! As for assessment, we asked some hard questions about our testing, invigilation and reporting. Time will tell if we were able to communicate effectively. We were exhausted by the evening but had some power left on the laptops so watched a short DVD.