November

As I wrote briefly in my last post, since being back from the village we have had a new weekly routine. Throughout November we have been helping at a school called Ruth Mother Care on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, doing community outreach in the slums in Thursdays, and kids clubs on Fridays. It has been pretty tiring but very enjoyable.

At Ruth Mother Care the school term has just ended, so this month we have been helping out as they finish lessons and complete exams. We have been teaching some R.E. and English/sounds lessons. The kids there have better English than those at the village school and even the baby class can do their phonetic alphabet well which was introduced to them by last year's gap year team. We have got to know the kids and the classes over this month and look forward to getting into the new term where the timetable will be less disrupted due to exams.

We also really enjoyed the end of year graduating ceremony which we attended today. The children put on performances - singing, dancing and acting - for the parents and visitors which was really fun to watch. We had a great time and now the school term is over we will be starting a new project on Mondays to Wednesdays in December which I will tell you about soon.

Baby class dancing

P2 ballet

School choir singing

Top class graduating to Primary 1

Ken with some children from the slums

On Thursdays at community outreach we visit a slum area in Kampala and go around visiting families and children who live there. With a few of the local volunteers and previous gap year teams, Smile have developed connections and relationships with people around this area so we are welcomed by many people into their homes and we talk with them, pray with them and share the gospel. We also seem to collect a following children and babies as we go around the different houses! The area is densely populated with adjoining houses everywhere, small passages, open sewers and streams which smell strongly, and broken glass and all kinds of rubbish on the ground. We enjoy going there but it was very hard-hitting at first - and still is - especially seeing the children running around in bare feet and rags, and seeing some of the homes the people live in. 

This slum area is the same place that we hold one of the kids clubs at a church called Family Believers Church.

Slum area around FBC

Between the houses in the slum area

Moses, Kathryn and me with some children from the slums

On Fridays we do kids clubs one is at a church called Blessed Word and the other is in the slum area at FBC. At the moment I am working at FBC kids club which usually has about 60 children and is crazy. The ages range from babies to about 12 years and some of the children go to school and others have never been to school so it is quite a mix. Although it is a bit manic at times it is a lot of fun! We do songs and games with the children and then tell them a Bible story - this season we are doing parables - and sometimes act it out for them, then at the end we give them all biscuits.

Teaching

Drama

Games

At FBC one of the women's empowerment projects goes on while we run the kids club. The women are taught to make baskets and jewellery and later they will sell them. This gives the women from the slums a skill which they can use to make extra income for themselves and to help support their families. It is also another way Smile builds relationships in this area.

Women's club - basket making

Basket making

Village life - part 2

In the village we stayed in a house, owned by a man called Leonard, which is still being built but is mostly finished. It is a lovely house in beautiful surroundings - it is right next to Leonard's plantations of various crops such as bananas, maize and coffee. All it was missing was a gas cooker, hot water, beds, phone signal and internet! However we had mattresses, a charcoal stove outside, and even proper toilets and cold showers so we were very lucky. And in fact I didn't miss the internet or my phone hardly at all, it was nice to have a different pace of life.

Leanord's house

Mine and Kathryn's room

Our room was great, the only bad things were the giant insects ... and biting Ants ...and Ghekos ...and Mice! I have a great collection of bites. The worst time was when Kathryn woke me up at four in the morning because there was a mouse on her mattress! I was thankful to get away from the wildlife centre that was our room but I do think I will be able to cope better with insects and rodents from now on!

As well as working in the school we had some free time to relax and explore the surroundings a bit. I enjoyed reading on the beautiful balcony at the house which overlooked some of the farm land. We also went on a few bike rides on the plantation and to the Smile farm, which was nearby. There were four bikes and I got stuck with the small bike which looked quite funny. I think sometimes the people in the village thought we were a bit mad!

Me on my 'bike'

Some of the surroundings

The other rally enjoyable thing about the village was the church. It was a small church of about 25 people and it was a very 'African' style church which was brilliant to experience. The services lasted from 9.30 til 1.00 - but we soon discovered that most people turned up at about 11! I really enjoyed the worship time they had there. They didn't have any instruments apart from drums and rice shakers but the worship was so lively and completely focused on God. I loved the freedom they had, it felt very lead by the spirit and a completely open time of worship and praise whether you were dancing, praying, or singing. Most of it was in Luanda but they did a few English songs as well which was nice. Similarly the sermon and teaching time was also very interesting and enjoyable. It was translated for us by Innocent which was really great. The teaching was really helpful and again it felt very spirit led, even though they didn't have anything apart from Bibles - no projectors, microphones, visual aids etc it was the most interested I have been in sermons for a long time! No offence Mum and Dad! The teaching was just very honest and straight to the point. Also, one Sunday the preacher went round the congregation asking for 'words' from everyone so we had to give a thought to the church which put us on the spot - I hope Innocent made mine sound better in translation! For the three Sundays we were at the village I loved going to the church and felt very connected to God there. On our last Sunday the congregation prayed for us all which was lovely and I really didn't want to leave.

The outside of the church

The inside of the church

Overall I really really enjoyed our time in the village. The combination of the wonderful people, the children, the school, the church, the house and the surroundings it was all such a great experience.

Now we are back in the Smile house near Kampala, and this week we have started our regular routine we will be following for the next few weeks until the Christmas holidays. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are spent at a school called Ruth Mother Care, where we were digging the foundations for the new building last month. A short term team came while we were in the village and finished the new school building which is a much better structure than the old building. The school day lasts from 8 til 3 and the school is great, though quite different from the village school. \On Thursdays we do outreach work in the slums in Kampala which is an eye-opening experience but it is so worthwhile and I think it is one of, if not my favourite, project we have been involved in so far. Fridays are kids clubs and the one I help at is in the same slum area so I feel like I am getting to know the place and the children already. There were 70 kids at the club last Friday so it is pretty hectic but I love it. Also in the evenings I have been getting involved with the music groups at Kampala Baptist church and helping at the Saturday and Sunday services. Last Saturday we went to the beach - at Lake Victoria with the youth from church which was really fun. So I have been very busy this week but I am enjoying having so much to do!

I will hopefully put up some pictures and describe in more detail the things we have been doing since the village when we are more organised but I thought I would give you a quick overview so you know what I have been up to. 

Thanks again to everyone from Preston Baptist Church, family, friends and everyone who is supporting me. It is really encouraging to hear all the lovely things from home and to know I have so many people thinking and praying for me. I hope you are all well and enjoying the winter! Lots of love.x

Village life - part 1

For the last two weeks we have been working in village called  Kalanamu, at a small school called 'Centre of Hope' teaching English and doing games and PE with the children. It is a school of about 60 children ranging from baby class to Primary 4. The classes are baby, P1, P2, P3, P4 and the age of the pupils range from about 2 - 9. The classes are quite small and we noticed that within each class the abilities are very mixed. 

The school building

The school has 4 classrooms and a small office. The walls are brick and the roof is corrugated iron. The structure is good compared to some places we have seen made of wood or mud, the outside walls have been painted with pictures and inside the classrooms there are lots of posters and displays which the teachers have made. This décor really brightens the school, however it was still lacking in many basic things our schools take for granted. There is no power, so no lights or sockets or anything electrical. Definitely no computers, no whiteboards, or even chairs - only wooden benches - the toilets were holes in the ground and there was a pump tap on the site but no running water otherwise. The school day lasted from 8 to about 4 so it was a long day for the children but they never complained. They were so well behaved and really wanted to learn, they also loved asking us questions about the UK.

The P3 and P4 classroom

English lesson with P4

We taught the children English using text books and blackboards. With the younger children (P1, P2) we did a lot of pronunciation work, so in each lesson we would focus in a certain letter or sound and show them how to say words and how to put them in sentences. For example one of the lessons I did was the 'r' sound, however I had noticed that most people in the village interchanged the sounds 'r' and 'l', so the lesson was a quite challenging for them. A big hindrance to the children's English is that most of the adults and teachers around them often have improper english or bad pronunciation and so the children naturally developed the same problems. With the older classes (P3, P4) we did more advanced reading and comprehension tasks. With P3, they would read a set text in small groups - depending on how many books were available - and we would help them pronounce hard words or explain the meanings of new words to them. Then one of us would read the text aloud - when I first did this they found my accent very funny! Then they answered questions about the text to check their understanding. Some of them did this no problem whereas others kept getting very simple questions wrong, we would correct their work and some seemed to improve over the time we were there. I hope that they will continue to improve and hopefully we can return in future to see their progress. P4 was the oldest class so we did quite a lot of reading with them as well as a few lessons teaching them harder words and their meanings and where they would be used. For example I did two lessons on 'good behaviour' and 'bad behaviour' so we explained and used words such as polite, excuse, abuse, borrow, unkind, please, thank you etc. I enjoyed the lessons with the older classes the most because you could teach them more complicated words and harder reading, but also because they were smaller classes and by the second week you start to learn their personalities and understand them as individuals. I wished we could have stayed longer just because we had started getting to know them by the time we left! We may get to return which would be really great. 

Relay races with P1 and P2

Rounders with P1

We also did games lessons and PE with the 4 classes every day which was a good work out for us! We took resources for games from the Smile Centre so we used hoops, tunnels, footballs, tennis balls and bats. We also introduced some English games to them - they really enjoyed duck, duck, goose but they kept picking us to chase them! We also taught them Simon says or as we called it Teacher Ken/Kathryn/Ruth says. They also loved the hokey cokey, especially running into the middle shouting 'woooahh the hokey cokey'. Other games included relay races which were fun as they were so enthusiastic, rounders and piggy in the middle. Games were really fun and the children seemed to really enjoy them too. We left some of the balls and bats there as they have no PE resources, so hopefully that will be enjoyable and encouraging for them. 

Hoop games with P4

Relay races with tunnels, P1, P2

There are about 8 teachers at the school, one man and the rest women, who were so welcoming to us. The headmistress was lovely and there were some young trainee teachers there who we made friends with too. They were all great fun and most had good English. We had lunch with them a few times and we tried some more local foods like posho (made from maize flower, quite starchy and plain tasting), porriage (which was quite thin and needed a lot of sugar) and matoke (green bananas which are cooked and often eaten with beans and rice).

Having lunch with the teachers

Me with some of the teachers

On our last day we took some aid from the Smile Centre and gave it to the teachers, it included maths sets, pens, pencils, colouring pens, chalks etc. along with some sports equipment. Also, Kathryn and I had the idea of making loom band bracelets for all the children, and, with the help of Ken and Innocent, we made about 70 bracelets and gave them all out on the last day. The children loved them and we had enough for the teachers as well. We had such a lovely time and hopefully Smile will be able to help them further in the future.

The supplies we gave the teachers on our last day

Some of the girls with their bracelets

Overall it was great to get experience with teaching as well as getting to know the kids and teachers. Although we were only there a short time I think we were an encouragement and hopefully a blessing to them. It did hit me how different their lives are and how hard in comparison to ours. The teachers work all day in the extreme heat which on its own was exhausting to us, they have their own children and babies to look after, food to cook on charcoal or wood fires which takes ages and is hot and dirty. They hand wash all of their clothes which get dirty easily in all the dust and mud and have no electricity or easily accessible water to make their jobs easier. I have huge admiration for the teachers there, and they were so welcoming and grateful to us which was very humbling for me. 

The children LOVED the cameras!