Followers

Friday 30 September 2011

Lake Nabugabo


Lake Nabugabo at 6.30am. A rare moment of peace and tranquility on our Outdoor Ed trip last week - it was just me and the monkeys awake at that time! It's now my fourth visit there and the sunrise never fails to take my breath away - surely one of the prettiest places in Uganda!

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Ntinda School for the Deaf

These cuties performed an elephant poem in sign language!

Today we visited our new Community Development project, Ntinda School for the Deaf. Children come from all over the country to study with the specialist teachers here and board at the school, many of them having been abandoned once they developed the disability. Some of the children were born deaf, while others were left with impaired hearing or total deafness following simple childhood diseases such as mumps, measles or whooping cough that could easily have been cured or prevented, had their parents access to decent medical care.

When we first arrived at the school, we all felt a little alienated. We wanted to communicate with the students, but it was like being in a new foreign country, where you don't speak the lingo. Our children quickly learnt how to introduce themselves and managed a few exchanges with the deaf students. With my sore throat and crackly voice, I wished that I was fluent in sign language and could use it in class until I recover! 

The teachers are hardworking and talented and displayed a patience that I admired. This is one of the only places in Uganda where deaf people are valued and invested in; it is sad to say that in 2011, they are still marginalised in most aspects of society here. I enjoyed watching the fascination and enthusiasm from our children and felt like it was a genuine exchange. I am looking forward to the next visit.

Learning to sew on an ancient Singer!

Saturday 17 September 2011

A Meeting with Royalty



This evening I was privileged enough to be invited to a reception at the British High Commission for the visit to Uganda of HRH the Earl of Wessex - otherwise known as Prince Edward!

This is not a normal occurrence for a humble Primary school teacher! I had expected him to walk past us, or perhaps to shake his hand. In actual fact, it was a lovely, relaxed (well the guests were quite relaxed - I'm sure those working for the BHC must have felt under a little pressure, but everything was very smooth and no stress showed) gathering in the garden. I discovered that they really DO drink Pimms at posh functions - I thought it was just a clever marketing tool! He walked around the garden and chatted to people throughout the evening.

Now I can't imagine what it must be like to be a member of the Royal Family. You must have to get used to lots of nervous giggling, whispering and people saying really daft things. The all must think that the British public are like a group of mischievous Year 3 girls!

When my moment came, I managed to keep it together very well! I curtsied, shook his hand and said:
"Good evening, Your Highness," as advised.  He asked what I did and where else I had lived in such a friendly and genuine manner that I was immediately put at ease. I think I may have sounded a little ridiculous when I declared that 'International teaching is all about networking' ... erm yeah well done Crosbie for telling a member of the royal family how it all works - doh! I may have sounded quite confident, but let me tell you, my hand was shaking afterwards!

Well, that's enough excitement for one day I think!  Now I'm sitting at home in my pajamas, drinking a glass of Ribena the whole experience seems a bit like a dream. My strangely surreal weekend continues tomorrow with a 45 km bike ride, so I must get some rest! I'm still grinning like a Cheshire cat though!

Sean K in K Town

Last year, R Kelly played in Kampala. I point blank refused to go on account of hating R & B, hating crowds and hating the horrible stories surrounding his pretty sordid past. My friends who did go reported being squashed, pushed around and pick pocketed. Then there was a shooting in town, following the concert.

Last night, it was Sean Kingston's turn to visit K-town. Again, it's not really my musical cup of tea - I'd be more at home seeing Noah and the Whale or Florence and the Machine, but folksie indie stuff does not go down too well in Africa!

VIP tickets bought you a separate, less crowded entrance, a few more square feet to dance in, beer tokens and glo-sticks! Now I was more excited about the glo-sticks than anything else. I was never allowed them as a kid, as my Mum was convinced that the reason they glowed was because they were filled with toxic nuclear waste from Chernobyl. 

And how was the concert? After several hours of watching sequin mini-skirted girls dance and gyrate, a Nigerian warm up band, Sean Kingston  appeared on stage. For one so young, he needed to take an awful lot of rests. He barely seemed to be able to get through a song without having a little 'time out'. Maybe it was a clever ploy to spin out limited material - oh and if in any doubt - just stop and repeat at high volume 'Sean Kingston is playing Kampalaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' and so on.

That being said, the crowd was fantastic - very well behaved, positive and light hearted. I won't be following him around the world on the rest of the tour though!

Sunday 11 September 2011

September 11th

September 11th 2001.

I was on holiday in Turkey and had spent the day on an excursion to Gallipoli. We saw the graves of the men who had died in this First World War campaign and had even explored the trenches in which they fought. The conditions were brutal and unforgiving. I remember snippets of conversation, 'nothing so tragic should ever happen again', 'the loss of young lives' and so forth.

When I returned to the hostel I noticed the big screen in the communal room. I paid it little attention, and headed to my room to put down my bags and relax for a while. It was only when I returned to the lounge that I noticed the television was still showing the same images. It wasn't part of an action film, as I had first thought, but live footage of the first plane hitting the Twin Towers. It must have been about 5pm in Turkey, while it was early morning in New York. As the evening went on, everybody stayed in the room, transfixed by this act of pure devastation.

This act of destruction and terrorism was of a whole new level. Destroying lives and changing the world as we knew it in one single blow.

I don't personally know anybody who was affected by 9/11, but I have been moved reading some of these memoirs. Let's have some hope for the future.

Friday 9 September 2011

Wartime Memories

One of my favourite things about international teaching is the mix of children in our classes. We have practically the whole world under one roof!

At the moment, my class is learning about the Second World War. I asked the children to find out about their family histories. Unfortunately, not everybody was able to do so as the war fades out of living memory and deeper into the history books. If only I had listened a little more closely to those stories that my grandparents repeated at what seemed like every family gathering!

The stories from my class are just fascinating. One boy's great aunt was part of the French Resistance and even helped shelter Jews, escaping persecution. The same boy's grandfather was very young during the war, but remembers having to flee Rouen to the countryside to escape the heavy bombing

The most amazing coincidence is that one boy's great grandfather was in the RAF and stationed at RAF Squires Gate (now Blackpool Airport). He worked on plane maintenance - perhaps the same Wellington Bombers my Granny worked on at a site just down the road! They lived near Stanley Park and his grandad remembers meeting lots of Prisoners of War - now I always thought that Pontins was a POW camp, but perhaps I'm wrong!

There are many more stories, but it would take too long to talk about them all.



Take a look at the little movie I made for my assembly. Some of the pictures are the actual photos of the children's grandparents (and my Grandad), but I used images from the Internet where the originals couldn't be found. I'm pretty impressed that anybody old enough to have fought in the war knows how to scan and upload a photo to email - but I guess they were quite a resourceful generation!

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Stuck in da jam!

The only way to describe the traffic in Kampala at the moment is ridiculous.

Yesterday, a 4km journey to a restaurant took nearly an hour. I could have walked it more quickly. In the end, I honked the horn for the entirety of Acacia Avenue, drove on the pavement and tried to breathe in so my car could pass through the tiniest of gaps.

Tonight was meant to be book club, hosted by a friend who, quite literally, lives over the hills and far away. We crawled through the traffic at a glacial pace feeling quite miserable and sorry for ourselves (not helped by the dismal Leonard Cohen music emitting from ipod). As hunger and temporary insanity gradually kicked in, we had the realisation that we had plenty of food and drink to keep us going. Moments later, the cork was popped on a bottle of sparkling wine, narrowly missing a passing boda driver! The ipod was hijacked and after a few bursts of S Club 7 and other cheesy classics later, spirits were somewhat lifted.

Unfortunately, we never made our final destination. There were too many anecdotes along the way about people being stuck in traffic until 11pm the day before. Instead we turned back and went to the nearest member's house for a mini book club on our side of town.

Ten out of ten for effort though. Better luck next time I hope ...

Sunday 4 September 2011

Royal Ascot 2011


In short: hats, pink champagne with strawberries, goats and muddy shoes. A good time was had by all!

Thursday 1 September 2011

Arty farty

Many of you will have heard this story before, so I do apologise for repeating myself, but I was reminded of it again tonight.

Soon after arriving in Colombia, a group of us travelled to the quaint colonial town of Villa de Leyva. It was a beautiful day in the land of eternal spring, and we sat in a sunny courtyard drinking wine with our lunch. Inevitably, the first bottle soon ran out and was replaced with a second, a third and who knows how many more.

As the sun set, we decided that we really ought to move, if only to browse the small craft shops in the courtyard. Bolstered with the false confidence that only 6 glasses of Chilean red can give you, I decided to try out my new acquired Spanish with a few of the locals. So proud of myself was I for conversing about art in a foreign language, that I decided to purchase a painting.

I still have it now ... and let's just say that you should never buy art under the influence of alcohol!

Tonight, at a fundraising art show, I was in no such danger. I wonder if anybody has red-stickered the $1200 on the painting of a gorilla playing the flute!