Week 5 in Entebbe

The last week has been pretty routine, with a few fun adventures mixed in. We had 2 more successful pizza nights, we had 4 days with no running water, we had our first rainfall after 32 days of sun, and we used about $13 worth of internet to watch the Super Bowl. The most interesting, and frightening, part of my week is that I unintentionally joined a rugby team. Last Tuesday I went with Marta, Denise, and another volunteer named Anya to the older girls’ rugby practice. I thought it would be a good opportunity to spend more time with them and learn a bit about a sport I’d never played before. It turns out that one of their starters is injured and, after practicing again on Thursday, they needed me to play in the matches on Saturday. I really enjoyed the practices because most of the team is still learning how to play, and its fun to learn an entirely new sport, but they matches were terrifying. I spent most of the time trying to casually avoid being near the ball, although Evan says my game strategy was obvious. Both times that I had to try to tackle an opponent, it ended with me on the ground and them carrying the ball several meters past me. I did score a try, but as soon as I crossed the line I was thrown to the ground. So, needless to say, I’m a bit worried about getting hurt and having to visit a Ugandan hospital, but we’ll see if I can keep avoiding the ball until the injured player returns next month. All the children and aunties came to watch the matches on Saturday and had a good laugh when they saw me get run over. But it is fun to play with the girls, they’re improving greatly with each practice and they really enjoy the sport.

In other news, Evan and I took the babies to the zoo on Friday while the other children were at school. We left Diego at home because he’s too young and just took Mercy, Elijah, and Amina. I won’t say too much because Evan’s planning on writing about our day later, but we had fun and saw a lot of cool animals. On Saturday night we went to a barbeque at the hotel residence of a Spanish volunteer. His name is Raphael and he works for the UN, which has their Central African base here in Entebbe. There are 12 men in his crew and they are pilots, co-pilots, flight attendants, and mechanics. They stay here in a hotel that the UN rents out, and they fly to projects in Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Benin, Burkina Faso, and other countries. When Rapha’s here in Entebbe he comes to the Malayaka House to play with the children, and sometimes take them out on field trips. So we went to their hotel, enjoyed delicious food, and talked with some of the guys about their work. They have interesting stories because they go to places that most people aren’t allowed to visit, usually because it’s dangerous and/or there’s political unrest.

Two volunteers from Germany, Walther and Jessy, arrived early Sunday morning and the children were so happy to see them. They’ve both spent a lot of time here in the past couple years and are important people in this project. They’ll be planning some activities for the kids, implementing programs for us to continue once they’re gone, and contributing money that’s been raised for Malayaka House in Germany. Walther is a primary school teacher at home and played a big role in getting our children situated at Entebbe Junior School. He spent time observing classes there and establishing the necessary support for our students that are far behind in their education. So on Monday he took Evan, Marta, and I to Entebbe Junior and introduced us to the head teacher of Nursery. Miss Grace was very nice and showed us around her classrooms for the Nursery, Middle Class, and Top Class. Five of our kids are in her program, and we had heard tremendous things from Robert about how she runs the Nursery. The classrooms are colorful with displays of the children’s artwork, the school schedule, and effective teaching tools. Grace introduced us to the new headmaster, Erasmus, and we talked briefly in his office. The school just got a whole new staff last week so Walther explained to Erasmus who we were and what he had done at the school last year. He asked if we could spend some time observing in our students’ classrooms so that we’d have a better understanding of the Ugandan education system and how each of our kids learn, especially the older girls. Erasmus said he would love to collaborate to improve the education of our children, so hopefully sometime soon we’ll be going back to the school. Even without observing in the classroom yet, we’ve found major issues with the education here, but I’ll talk more about that later.

Thanks for reading!