I have now been here for just over two months, and I can honestly say it has been the best two months of my life. I am teaching at a school for special needs children in a tiny village that you can’t even find on a map called Kitanga. There are about 60 students at the school and there are numerous disabilities,some including deaf, dyslexia,down syndrome and cerebral palsy . I have absolutely fallen in love with these kids. I can always count on them to make me smile.
Everyday at school is different. I never know exactly what classes I will be teaching because I am basically a full time substitute. Whenever a teacher is absent (which is everyday because a lot of teachers here do not see the importance of their jobs and tend to leave school often) I fill in and teach whatever subjects they have been covering. It is a Primary School so it is 1st-5th grade classes, but the students range from 5-23 years old because they are placed in their classes based on their abilities rather than their ages.
On my first day at school, I was put into a Primary 4 class (about 3rd grade) of six students. Two of the students were deaf and the other four had other various disabilities. I think that was the scariest moment of my life. Here I was, an average 18 year old girl, fresh out of the Chicago suburbs, with no teaching experience expected to teach an English lesson in Ugandan sign language (which I did not know any of at the time) for three straight hours. “Oh my God… What do I do?!” Was pretty much the only thought going through my mind. But I slowly got the hang of it, and by the end of class the students had learned how to put words in alphabetical order, and I had learned how to sign the alphabet! I realized on that day that I would be learning just as much, if not even more, from these kids as they would learn from me (and I am supposed to be the teacher).
Now classes are fun and I am much more relaxed. I am learning a lot of sign language and am developing amazing relationships with these children. They are seriously the greatest people I have ever met. Sometimes I worry that I like them a little too much because I want to adopt all of them and bring them home with me. And even though I am constantly battling off spiders (the most terrifying creatures in the whole world) because my house is filled with them, I love every day that I spend here.
On the weekends I go to the nearest town about two hours away, Kabale, with the two other volunteers that I live with, Jen and Rachel. There, we are able to get some running water, internet, and eat food that is not beans and potatoes (which is what we eat for lunch every single day). I have traveled around the area a little bit and visited Lake Bunyonyi and the Ssese Islands on Lake Victoria. Gorgeous! My mom also came out to visit me! We went on a safari at Queen Elizabeth National Park and saw some elephants, lions and every other animal you can imagine. We went to Kigali, Rwanda and visited the genocide memorial, ate lunch at the Hotel des Mille Collines, which is the hotel that the movie Hotel Rwanda is based on, and visited some friends we have there. Pretty cool stuff. Then I got to show her around Kitanga, where she met all of my students! It was a very fun time, and we had some unforgettable mother-daughter bonding.
The school term ends in just a few week, and I am already sad thinking about how I will have to say bye to the children. But, I am excited because then I will have the chance to see more of Uganda before I head home at the end of May. I will go to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and hopefully go rafting at the source of the Nile River!
I am so grateful for this experience. If you asked me a year ago if I thought I could fly to Uganda, the country that the viral Kony video from last year was based on, by myself, I would have told you that you were crazy. But now I’m here, having the best time ever. Everyday is a challenge, but it is the best challenge and I cannot imagine spending my time anywhere else. I love the African culture, the people, the spectacular views of rolling hills and sunsets, and I especially love my students. These past few months in Uganda and the three months that I spent on the South America trip in the Fall have been unforgettable. I want to thank Carpe Diem for taking me to these awesome places, and for helping me realize how much I love traveling and learning about the world!
Shout out to all my fellow Latitudes students! I hope you guys are doing well and I hope to hear about all of your adventures!
Kale (“Goodbye” in Rukiga, the local language here)!
Katie