Teacha Rora

Well, hello world of computers. I've missed you.

Let's talk about this week for a second. It's been a big change since the week before it.

First of all, the homesickness has hit. I'm not going to sit here and whine about it because I know that I'm here for a purpose and that it's good I'm staying and learning more about the culture and so on and so forth. With that said, let me be honest. I really want to go to Walmart. I want to go see a movie. I want to hug my family. I want to see my roommate. I want to be able to speak English really fast. I want a bowl of coco puffs. I want to go to a church where I feel like I'm fully able to worship God. This is normal, but it's also a struggle. It's weird, too, because I'm not one to be really homesick. It may have something to do with culture shock, like some sort of retreat from the culture, I'm really not sure. Fortunately, the missionaries who have been here two, four, ten years still struggle with it so I'm not alone.

Now let's get onto the main theme of this week: teaching. School started and so has my main assignment. Just dub me "teacha rora", because that's what the children here call me (because the people here mix up their "l"s and "r"s. It's pretty funny, I'm not gonna lie).

So I work at two schools. The first is Nkokunjeru Primary, a public school in the neighborhood I live in. I teach/observe/pretty much just teach the P5 English class of roughly 30-40 students. AAH. I've never taught a class that big, especially to a classroom of children who don't have good English. Technically I'm supposed to be observing and helping the teacher with whatever she needs, but after the first day she gave me the book and the teacher's guide and I had to start planning lessons. My first day of teaching was actually really stressful. The kids were whispering to one another in Ruyankole [sidenote: I've seen the name of the language spelled two different ways. orunya kore and Runyankole. It's just stick with the latter] and I'm pretty sure they were making fun of me. That, and I was kind of sick. Right after I taught, I had to take tea with the other teachers and they made me drink almost all of it (Ugandan tea = hot milk with a slight tea flavor and they have really big mugs). Not a good day. The second day I taught was actually really fun. Then it broke my heart. I gave them a simple composition exercise, and while it was fun in class, the kid just really didn't get it. When I was grading afterwards, I found that many of them had written the same thing--aka copied the wrong answers off of one another--and they didn't know anything about paragraphs at all. They've been learning English since they were four. I wanted to cry.

My second teaching job is at Bible Baptist, a private Christian school. This is a lot different. The classes are only about ten pupils large, and I skip from grade to grade. Because of the small class size, the kids understand better and are easier to teach. They are also a lot more affectionate. The teachers there are actually really glad I'm there, unlike the teachers at Nkokunjeru, who don't care all that much. The headmaster is, like, REALLY REALLY glad that I'm there. Christina and Davey go too, and he just wants us to teach as much as possible. We even led chapel.

There are similarities between the schools, however. They both use the same teaching methods, which is basically rote memorization. Kids copy off of each other like crazy. There aren't enough books at all. Lots of the kids have aids. And I love all of those children.

It's hard.

On another note, I'm also learning about actual missionary life. That's hard too. Just to see that it's not a really huge adventure, but it's daily, grueling living sometimes. I knew this in my head, but it's different to see it. Yesterday I went to Matt and Crystal's house to help Crystal. They have two kids, one boy by blood and one boy by adoption. They are foster caring for a baby and Crystal is six months pregnant. She's home by herself a lot and can't lift anything heavy. Here's the catch: they don't have running water, and they have to bring all the water in with huge jerry cans. When Matt leaves for the weekend to do ministry, she has a hard time. Just before we got here, their house was almost broken into. They tried to adopt a baby in January, but a week or so after they brought her home, she died. Their adopted son is having attachment problems. She has to hang her mops out to dry on a line. I mean, there's all these things that would be a big deal in America, and she deals with it. It's life. Some of these people are my heroes because they don't mind being realistic about all this.

Seven weeks to go and I'm already exhausted. The power at home has been out pretty much all week and I really want to call my mom. There's a rat hiding somewhere in the house. The birds wake me up at 6:30 every morning. My allergies are driving me crazy. It's impossible to get rest from anything or anyone but Jesus here.

But he is good. He loves me. I need to love his people.

Have I mentioned that I'm ridiculously glad I'm here?

Thing I love most about Uganda: All you have to do is smile at someone and they'll give you a huge smile back. I think I have a gift for smiling and it's my favorite thing in the world.