Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th July- BBQ and prepping for school

A few hours after breakfast we went for the first time into the local town of Kanungu to have a look at the market and get something to eat. The market consisted of what seems to be donated charity clothes in piles on a rug next to someone sitting on the floor. As a result there are a lot of rubbishy items but if you look hard enough and are willing to take the time you can find some good stuff.

After looking around the market which takes 30 minutes max, we went to a bar called ‘The Cave’ where we sat and had a drink and played pool. After a couple of hours I went off and got a chewy goat kebab and a Rolex (omelette wrapped in chapatti) to eat. Once I had finished, myself and a couple of the lads were asked if we would help sort out the evening’s BBQ atop of a huge hill a 20 minutes’ drive from town.

View from the BBQ

When the small group of us got as high as the vehicle would allow us, we got out and had to carry crates of bottles for 20 minutes through bushes and across a hill. The walk was absolutely exhausting and we had to pause for brief breaks every few minutes, but once we got to our destination it was definitely worth it. The view overlooked a large part of the region. While we had been walking, our small group had managed to attract the attention of 3 or 4 children who had proceeded to follow us and began playing and sitting with us when we gave them a Coca-Cola. By the time the rest of the volunteers had arrived half an hour later, there must have been 30 or so kids hanging around and playing with us, some of them were sitting in trees staring at us, or wearing our sunglasses and hats. We played some football and catch with the kids until the meal began, where the children left until we had finished.

Topics for the Kindergatten classes

After we had finished eating, the team leaders revealed to us what schools we would be teaching at, what year group and who we were with. I found out that I would be teaching P4 (equal to year 4 in a British school) at a small private school called Kinderkatten, terms at the school costing roughly £10-15 per student. I would have a class of roughly 20 kids and would be teaching English, Maths and Science. The volunteers going to my school were Kya (P6), Siobhan (P3) and Katie (P5).Once the team leaders had finished saying what schools and year groups we were teaching at, the kids came back and we continued playing football and taking photos. One of the kids had accidentally kicked the ball off the hill, and spent close to an hour trying to climb down the massive steep hill to find a ball amongst the farms at the bottom. After a few more hours we headed back to the lodge where we hit the sack.

Kindergatten timetable

On Sunday we spent the majority of the day chilling out and planning our lessons for our first day of school, as well as asking any questions that we had to the team leaders. The topics that I was doing were ‘Expression of the future’ for English, ‘Graphs and Interpretation of data’ for maths and ‘Vectors and Diseases’ for science. I planned an ice breaker lesson for my first period which would be maths at 9:30 and then some simple lessons for the other topics as to see what level the children were at. Afterwards, Frank (a Wachiga who works for Volunteer Uganda) turned up and we had to buy our class books and pens etc. from. As a result of everyone being pretty nervous we all had an early night straight after dinner as to get ready for our early start on Monday.