Kampala & primary school

Still in Africa, still alive.

We ventured into Kampala, Uganda’s capitol, the day after everyone else arrived. By taxi, it’s only about 15 minutes to city center. After converting some cash at the foreign exchange, we walked around for a bit and got a feel for the city. The actual urban area is not that big, and you can walk pretty much everywhere – which most people do anyway, because cars are so expensive. Since traffic laws aren’t very well enforced (SLASH aren’t actually enforced AT ALL) the city streets are really congested and noisy. If you don’t want to walk, you can either flag down a taxi (which will pick you up even if they already have some passengers) or charter a boda boda. The bodas are motorcycle taxis that FLY through the streets, swerving through traffic and cutting everyone off. We’ve repeatedly seen them run red lights at one of the only three stoplights in the city. The bodas are a little more expensive than cabs, but I guess the trade off is that they’re WAY faster than sitting in a cab in traffic (unless, of course, you DIE).

Kampala is definitely a developing world city in SO many ways. A lot of the buildings have tin roofs and everything is covered in a blanket of red Ugandan dust. You’ll see vendors and construction workers walking through the streets with wooden carts or riding by on bicycles stacked with straw or sticks or other supplies. However, since all the wealthy Ugandan elite live in the city, the shanties and beggars are contrasted by luxury SUVs and sparkling new buildings. On our first trip into the city, our taxi was passed by a police escort made of probably four shiny cop cars, six to eight more cops on motorcycles (much newer than the bodas), an ambulance, and three brand new BMWs. This is a pretty good illustration of how wealth in Uganda is distributed – the handful of elites at the top control the parliament and the resources, and everyone else is left to fend for themselves.

Walking by the offices of Parliament reiterated this. The government buildings, which in theory are there to give all Ugandans due representation, are surrounded by vast green lawns and high gates. In the few days I’ve been here, a few of the youth have asked me what I study at university, and when I tell them I study international politics, they scoff. “I don’t like politics,” one told me, “because in politics, nothing ever changes.” I guess you can’t bring about much change in policy when the people in power never change.

After our day in Kampala, we jumped right into life at the youth center. We’re part teachers, part camp counselors here, though unfortunately it’s much harder to pull out my old camp counselor tricks when not all the kids speak English. They are all absolutely adorable though, and SO much easier than American children to entertain. We colored in pictures with them, and as we handed out the papers and markers, not a single child complained or asked for a different paper or color, and then they all just sat quietly and colored intently for 15 min. We gave them stickers when they finished and they were SO excited. A few of them put them on the front of their school books and then ran over to show us because they were so proud. Some things are kind of sad though — one little boy handed me what looked like a folded up newspaper that he had out his sticker on. I was like, “That’s great, but why did you put it here?” I then opened it and discovered it was actually his school notebook, of which apparently didn’t have a real cover so he had put the newspaper around it instead.

It’s interesting because all the kids here, from primary school to high school-age, are so intent on going to school and learning because it really is a privilege to be able to. We have one Ugandan youth leader who is 17 and an incredible dancer, who is taking the year off of school because his mom is sick and in the hospital so his family can no longer afford to send all the kids to school. Some of the other youth leaders go to school but pretty much have to fend for themselves and work to pay their own school fees. More so than feeling badly for them though, it makes me sad to think that so many kids in the US goof off and totally take their education for granted.

We’ve been teaching at a couple schools in the area, which is trippy because they are so incredibly different from US schools. Aside from the aesthetics ofit (peeling plaster walls, rough wooden benches, hand-drawn educational posters on the walls) the teaching methods here are SO RIGID. They basically don’t incorporate any creative/interactive learning into their schools, so even though the kids are really smart (bc they have to memorize and relay back EVERYTHING), every time we ask them to be creative or think critically they’re soooo hesitant to do so. One of the younger teachers who was a little more down with what were trying to do actually told a couple of my friends not to be offended that none of the kids wanted to share their opinion or work with the class, but that the kids were just not used to being asked their opinion about anything. Ibra, one of the youth center’s co-directors, explained to us too that in Uganda, until you’re 18 and living on your own you’re still considered a baby, and no one really cares what you think.

So it’s really interesting to see the same kids who are so timid and quiet at school come to the youth center afterward and be loud and crazy and talkative. That I think is one of the things their most focused on with their non-profit — empower kids so they don’t grow up to be passive adults like so many of the poor lower class here.

Alright I got to run — eating lunch than headed to market (like, straight up African bazaar). Another update coming soon.