On the Highs
I’ve put off writing about Uganda till now from the fear that whatever I muster up will never be good enough. But that’s an awfully sorry excuse not to at least try and say something to all of you who have supported me. So here goes.
Foreign places can be scary. Foreign places where you are instantly identified as a foreigner with money can be scarier. And foreign places can be extremely scary for a morbidly imaginative hypochondriac such as me.
Uganda is plagued by erratic electricity, ongoing civil conflict in the north and suicidal two-way traffic on pot-holey roads (I use “pot holey” here only in an attempt to soften the fact that they were really death traps). And of course, there's the rampant malaria, yellow fever and the much less worrisome but highly unpleasant traveler’s diarrhea. Let’s just say, I was very uncomfortable for most of this trip.
This is a piece on the highs of my travels, and I’m getting there right now. Just about the only time I wasn’t completely uncomfortable in Uganda was when I was doing what I went there to do: train teachers who work with orphans and vulnerable children.
We sat on benches under impossibly leafy trees (trees that are clearly a blessing for the people who toil under the fierce gaze of the equatorial sun) and taught. We walked past hills of stinking garbage, which when burned smells almost exactly like pot, and taught. We tried to keep our faces neutral as we walked over cloudy rivers of more garbage and human waste to schools in the unlikeliest places, and taught. We rode in jam-packed mini-buses with live chickens tied upside down in the back row to villages of forgotten people, and we taught.
My fellow teachers and I had zealously prepared stacks of notes and handouts. I myself contributed pages and pages of grad-school seminar worthy stuff on everything from Bloom’s Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligences to teaching ESL strategies. We just barely used those notes. What these teachers needed most were real life strategies—-how to help students stay focused in classrooms of 80+ students, how to discipline without resorting to the rod, how to make do with one ancient textbook and no teaching aides...
The Ugandan teachers we met with were unfailingly polite and always told us that our workshops were helpful. But we could tell when something was truly helpful because that’s when faces lit up, applause burst out and the words, “This is something new! God bless you! Bless you! We will try it!” flew out of their mouths.
Their students would linger in the doorways, creep up to our benches, climb up barred windows to catch glimpses of us mzungus, the strange “white people”. These students live in slums, live with HIV, are recovering from malaria or recovering from a former life on the street. Realizing that we were, in our own small small way, helping them by helping their teachers brought each of us on the team, at one point or another, to tears.
Yes, teaching, doing something that I love to do for children whose lives are unimaginably difficult was the high of this trip.
Foreign places can be scary. Foreign places where you are instantly identified as a foreigner with money can be scarier. And foreign places can be extremely scary for a morbidly imaginative hypochondriac such as me.
Uganda is plagued by erratic electricity, ongoing civil conflict in the north and suicidal two-way traffic on pot-holey roads (I use “pot holey” here only in an attempt to soften the fact that they were really death traps). And of course, there's the rampant malaria, yellow fever and the much less worrisome but highly unpleasant traveler’s diarrhea. Let’s just say, I was very uncomfortable for most of this trip.
This is a piece on the highs of my travels, and I’m getting there right now. Just about the only time I wasn’t completely uncomfortable in Uganda was when I was doing what I went there to do: train teachers who work with orphans and vulnerable children.
We sat on benches under impossibly leafy trees (trees that are clearly a blessing for the people who toil under the fierce gaze of the equatorial sun) and taught. We walked past hills of stinking garbage, which when burned smells almost exactly like pot, and taught. We tried to keep our faces neutral as we walked over cloudy rivers of more garbage and human waste to schools in the unlikeliest places, and taught. We rode in jam-packed mini-buses with live chickens tied upside down in the back row to villages of forgotten people, and we taught.
My fellow teachers and I had zealously prepared stacks of notes and handouts. I myself contributed pages and pages of grad-school seminar worthy stuff on everything from Bloom’s Taxonomy and Multiple Intelligences to teaching ESL strategies. We just barely used those notes. What these teachers needed most were real life strategies—-how to help students stay focused in classrooms of 80+ students, how to discipline without resorting to the rod, how to make do with one ancient textbook and no teaching aides...
The Ugandan teachers we met with were unfailingly polite and always told us that our workshops were helpful. But we could tell when something was truly helpful because that’s when faces lit up, applause burst out and the words, “This is something new! God bless you! Bless you! We will try it!” flew out of their mouths.
Their students would linger in the doorways, creep up to our benches, climb up barred windows to catch glimpses of us mzungus, the strange “white people”. These students live in slums, live with HIV, are recovering from malaria or recovering from a former life on the street. Realizing that we were, in our own small small way, helping them by helping their teachers brought each of us on the team, at one point or another, to tears.
Yes, teaching, doing something that I love to do for children whose lives are unimaginably difficult was the high of this trip.
posted by Duncan and Jen | 11:55 AM
1 Comments:
candeo, i am incredibly encouraged by the way you go out of your comfort zone to meet the needs of the people God loves. thanks for sharing this! i have been waiting for it since your return. i'd like to hear more though - we'll chat soon. :)
Post a Comment
<< Home