Monday morning and back to work again...

Monday 13^th July

This morning it was back to the work routine again. The birds start their dawn chorus around 6am as the sun rises although there is one particular bird which seems to start around 5am and sounds just like my alarm clock. I keep waking early thinking it’s time to get up!

It feels strange to be getting up in the dark at this time of the year but it’s usually light by half past 6 and then it’s off to a breakfast of toast, coffee, fresh pineapple and water melon and the occasional Spanish omlette. The honey from Masindi is particularly delicious on the morning slice of toast.

Our drivers are waiting to take us to our respective schools by 7.30am and then Kate, Elaine, Patrick and I begin the day with the sound of the radio (or Phil Collins!) for the remaining 30 - 40 minutes. Our driver has a very clapped out car which rattles and shakes along the red dusty road. There’s a strong smell of petrol fumes and the windows don’t open. However, the driver insists on driving us door to door and I’m sure would drive into the classroom given the opportunity!

I really couldn’t believe Phil Collins was playing full volume in the car on the way home again today – arghh!

The rest of our daily routine consists of school from around 8.15am till about 4pm or 5pm and then the morning trip in reverse back to Masindi. Usually a quick shower is needed to wash off the dust followed by a meeting together at 6pm and then dinner somewhere. After logging on to blog at the other end of the hotel from my room it’s then into bed by 10 or 11pm and off to sleep under the mosquito net.

Today we arrived at school to find James the HT waiting for us. Nybeya School came third place in the music competition which was an excellent effort but means they are knocked out of the next round.  After commiserating on not getting through to the next level we agreed our plan for the rest of the week and headed off to observe different classes. It was interesting to look at the record of class observations and see the form that they use to observe the teachers.

I went to P1 who were trying to write numbers between 31 and 60. There are around 150 in each of the P1 classes. I then watched some lessons in P3 on things they spend money on and numbers over a thousand. It was interesting to see how lessons were differentiated to meet the needs of everyone in the class.

I went over to the library at one point to see what was happening there and had a surprise when I came face to face with another ‘Muzungu!’ It turns out Maggie has been volunteering there for a couple of months on one day a week. She lives in Masindi with her husband who is a Doctor working for VSO in the hospital. We had a great chat about life out here but I think it must be very hard to be so far away from home and be in a culture that despite being welcoming is really quite different. She has been doing a great job of helping to set up the library and catalogue the books. It turns out she is good friends with the chimp researchers at the Budongo Conservation Field Office near the school. This is the place that has the link with Edinburgh Zoo. It turns out that the chimps we saw are not part of that research programme at all but are being monitored through a local initiative to educate the villagers so they can protect them due to that part of the forest being cut off from the main.

The afternoon saw the Community Meeting with all the stakeholders in the school to discuss the School Performance Review and set the priorities for the next Development Plan. The SDO (School Development Officer) from Link was excellent and tactfully kept the meeting on track. The chairman of the School Management Committee also seemed to be on the ball and chaired the meeting well. As is typical in Africa the meeting that was scheduled to start at 2pm (although we were told last week it would be 10am!) actually kicked off nearer quarter to 3. Two hours in they had finally selected 5 priorities and were in the process of serving up chapatis and sodas to everyone when we really had to leave as the driver was waiting and we had our colleagues to collect. I’m not sure quite what we’ll find when we go back tomorrow as nobody appeared to be taking notes except for us and they still had to break down the priorities into action points. I suspect we may find ourselves working on this with James in the morning as well as preparing for a staff training session in the afternoon. I was delighted to get the first priority on the plan to be ‘Improving the quality of the teaching and learning process’ as this is fundamental to raising standards.

Kate and I decided to head off to get some photocopying done for our staff training tomorrow afternoon but the lure of the fabric shop was too much to resist so we ended up buying some beautiful fabric while we were out as well. Dinner was at the Travellers Inn again for a tasty bowl of veg stew with rice.