Sunshine Trekking

Greetings to the masses! I'm impressed with myself - it's only been two days since I last wrote my blog, this is more like it!

Monday was a big day at Lords Meade, because for the first time (almost) all the students were there. The government has imposed some law which means that the Senior 1's i.e. the youngest students, do not have to start school until next week, and similarly with the Senior 5's, which is the start of A-Level. That said, the "Rendcomb African Hall" (their equivalent of big school) was packed out with young faces, and I have no idea what they'll do next week when the rest of the school has arrived. I half expected the inevitable event, which was that Sophie, Rachel and myself had to stand up in front of the school... and give a speech. Why oh why do they love their speeches so much? My job's going to seem like a doss when I'm PM... (haha if only) It was quite reassuring as my "Good evening school" was met with a unified chorus of "Good evening suh", and I spoke confidently for about half a minute, before thanking them for the warm welcome we received at the school and passing on the non-existent microphone to Soph. Juma pulled a classic line when talking about "illegal items" at the school; the students are not permitted to own phones or radios, and some of them have been found to be concealing a sim card or headphones in their pockets. But no phone or radio... mysterious... so Juma comes out with "If you are found with a sim card or headphones, we know that you are in possession of an illegal item. You do not plug headphones into your porridge."
The assembly erupted in laughter!!! Sometimes I don't get the Ugandan humour but on this occasion it was pretty funny.

Yesterday Juma had prepared a special stencil so that we could print "Uganda 2010" on the uniform blue t-shirts for the three of us gappies. So, I learned screen printing for the very first time, and went on to print a whole set of 18 t-shirts for the school, which will be worn by the students in their PE lessons! Today I taught maths again, and the class are definitely getting more responsive to the western teaching style. I got a chuckle when I changed the variables from "x and y" to "pig and posho" to illustrate the fact that they were arbitrary symbols, and even had to give them homework! I'm an actual "teacha" now. By the way, posho is a corn-flour-based bread with a squishy consistency, apparently like semolina. I don't know what semolina is, but it certainly sounds plausible. Some time, we're going to learn to prepare the local dishes and help out in the kitchen! By then I should know how to put photos on this blog, so look out for amusing/cultural snaps in the near future...Until next time...