An Earthquake And A Class

Written: 21/9/2014

The Front Of The House

We had an earthquake which was about a four on the rector scale and lasted about ten to fifteen seconds. It is my second one since being here. The first one was in Hoima a couple months back. The African plate is splitting into two so the ground needs to stretch out time to time. It was entertaining as we all stood in the front yard debating what the best thing to do… “should we run outside or do we hide under desks or in the doorways?” It is a free for all here in Uganda as the housing structures are not well made but after much debate we all agreed we would rather be outside away from the building in an event of a large earthquake because no doubt the house will have a hard time standing. Earthquakes sound like a large fighter jet or train making its way through the countryside. 

Well this week has been a lot of rain and when I say rain I mean a lot of rain. I have forgotten my umbrella and rain jacket a lot heading into work and I don’t need a shower at the end of the day anymore because of how wet I get walking/running back in the rain (don’t worry I still shower). We had hail one day and a large downdraft of cold air the rain was so cold it felt like frozen lake water in Minnesota in January.

Kyanyawara Primary School - Eve Teaching A Health Talk

I attended a couple classes at Kasiisi Primary school, a literacy circle and also a Primary 1 English class. I have been so jealous of the teachers here getting to teach and also those back home teaching in the schools. I love getting up in front of a class and teaching. It’s a lot of work and the Ugandan school system fails its students but the teachers are very different from the generation of teachers before them - They are more open with their students and now the system fails and tries to make it the best they can. I heard from three different schools when we were doing our health talks the exact word for word definition of Menstruation repeated by five different students from different schools…word for word these children memorize word for word definitions and you can ask them to define anything and they will answer it correctly but when it comes to asking them what that definition means most of the time they do not know what it means they only know the definition because that I what they need to learn for the tests.  

I will write more about the school system when I learn and observe more about it during my time here. It is very interesting and I am grateful for the US School system even with how messed up it is.