Post Script

It's been almost two weeks since we've been back from Uganda, but it's still very much on our minds. Here's a little slide show with some video that I created using iMovie. Be forewarned it's a little under 9 minutes. If you've been reading this blog you'll recognize many of the places.

Wednesday, July 14 and Thursday June 15 On the Road Again

Wednesday, July 14 and Thursday June 15
On the Road Again

The 7 hour van ride from the Field Station to Entebbe was brutal. Most of the ride was on tarmac roads but not all. Even the main road between Fort Portal and Kampala is under construction. Unlike the US where they might repair one lane at a time, here in Uganda the entire road is ripped apart and what is left is barely navigable by vehicles, which often must come to a complete stop. And don’t expect a state police officer to be directing the traffic, we saw plenty of Ugandan police, but they were too busy looking cool with their shades and AK47s sitting by the side of the road.

Speaking of guns, it has been Christie’s goal for this entire trip to get her picture taken with a guy with an AK47 while holding a copy of Improper Bostonian magazine. This we accomplished late in the day yesterday. When we arrived at the Field Station after teaching, there was a British woman visiting and she was accompanied by 4 park ranger. One of those rangers by the name of Alex was carrying a good-sized gun, so Christie ran to her room to get her magazine. Alex was more than willing to have his picture taken with Janis and Christie and put on his most serious face for the shot. Christie plans on submitting this photo to the magazine for publication. My guess is that this picture has a good chance of making it.

The ride was extremely tiring, but using Pam and Cindy’s room at the Boma as a day room was inspirational, and we thank them for thinking of us. We spent some time at the pool in the Boma while the travelers took showers and rested for about an hour. Dinner at the Boma was one of the best meals we have had all trip; tilapia, lasagna, cheeseburgers, it was all available. We ate on the veranda with the East African Yellow Billed Plantain Easters calling in the trees overhead. Entebbe borders on Lake Victoria and has a huge variety of bird life as we learned about 20 days ago.

We left early for the airport and arrived at about 7:00 for a 9:50 flight. Plenty of time we thought. But KLM’s system was down and they only had 3 agents dealing with two phone lines (the computers are on dial-up) to be able to check us in. The long wait, however, allowed Christie to do some more bead shopping and she leaves Uganda with out a single shilling. After 2 hours in various lines we are finally ready to board our flight to Amsterdam. It’s about 7 hours to Schipol Airport where we have an 6 hour lay over. That could be interesting.

We arrived in Amsterdam about 20 minutes behind schedule. We checked in at the self-service kiosks and then found this area where they have these serious lounge chairs where we can get a quick nap before our flight leaves 5 hours from now. Janis, Chris and Christie still have plans to visit the spa here. This is a full service airport. They have lots of ways of taking your money.

The girls report that the spa was expensive but well worth it. They all started with the massage chairs and then went to the manicure and eventually pedicure. Chris and Christie boarded the airplane to Boston still wearing those paper sandals that are given to allow a pedicure the dry properly. I imagine some pampering is in order at this point for all of us.

We have plans for a get together sometime soon after this trip is over. We have collected video and still pictures in different places and will distribute these on disks once they are organized. When we were at dinner at the Boma (it seems so long ago) Pam asked us each to talk about the trips highlights. Many things were mentioned, Kanyawara Primary School, getting to know Koojo Mathew, Chimp tracking with Zarin, getting close to the Lions of Ishasha, Mugusu Market with our defenders, football at Kigarama and meeting our scholars.

This trip is hard to summarize, because there are so many rich and wonderful parts to it. We are happy and proud to continue to build the Weston-Uganda connection with our students, and keep it strong within the Weston Public Schools. We know also that there will be more teachers to follow. We hope this blog will serve as a resource for them as it will remain for us as we reflect on a life altering experience.

Mwebale muno to all our followers and readers.

Tuesday, July 13 Kanyawara Primary School

Kagaba Joshua arrived for breakfast this morning. Joshua is a “piece of work” as the saying goes. He does a hilarious American accent. His phone rings at least every 10 minutes and he answers it wherever he is. He told me that I was in charge of the sacrifice for tonight’s dinner. So I told him that I would sacrifice some pizza, but that was it.

Janis, Christie and Steve walked to Kanyawara this morning. It was only a short walk along the road that leads to the Field Station so we were pretty comfortable with the walk. Chris took the van that was going to Fort Portal, and met us at Kanyawara. We had heard a lot of good things about Kanyawara Primary School and are happy to report that we found those things to be true.

The students at Kanyawara did the best work in our lessons that we had seen at any of the five schools. The teachers were very involved in our lessons and the HM, Josephine, was the perfect host. Chris and Christie report the same thing in their lessons. They taught two P1 classes and a P2 class as well.

After lunch Josephine showed us around the school grounds. First we viewed the lunch program. Kanyawara is also serving a porridge lunch to its students. They are using a temporary shed, but are building a new kitchen next to this temporary one. After this we were shown a demonstration of the P6 students tending to a number of banana trees. They were mulching the plants with elephant grass and spear grass. We were given the opportunity to prune the banana trees; Janis with a large hook on the end of a 10 foot pole, and Christie and Steve with a machete (yes a real machete). The students then demonstrated a highly organic method of fertilizing the plants. They dug a trench with large digging hoes and then they proceeded to put manure in the trench. This they did by hand. The manure was quite fresh. It was wrapped in banana leaves and the students had brought it from home. It was a little difficult to watch children with their hands in manure, but we were told they would wash later. Another TIA (this is Africa) moment.

We were then shown another area. Last year the teacher group had brought the book “One Hen” to use in their lessons in the schools. Josephine had the vision to put the message of that book into reality. Starting with one hen they began to expand their flock, acquired a rooster, built a hen house and kept on adding to the area. The result is an entire chicken raising area complete with its own goat (based on the book “Beatrice’s Goat”). Students supervised by teachers tend all of these agricultural areas.

We then met in the HM’s office with the entire team of teachers, who spoke with us and thanked us for our work in their classrooms. Josephine completed the perfect day in their school by giving us T- Shirts that said, “Kanyawara Loves You.” All in all it was a great day at a school, which is doing some innovative and important work.

We walked home and found that Pam and Cindy had brought us pizza from Fort Portal. Alice and Scott had found it at this little place in the city that makes excellent pizza and it was still warm. After almost 3 weeks away from American food it was a great afternoon snack. We devoured it.

At about 4:00 we heard some strong rumbling and Chris and I came out of our rooms. Chris said, “What was that?” I said that I thought it was thunder. Chris said it felt like and earthquake. It turns out that Chris was right. It was an earthquake. The researchers from the Chimp House knew exactly what it was and evacuated their buildings. However, we were oblivious to this and went about our business as if it was a thunderstorm.

In the afternoon Chris pointed out an activity taking place over to the side of our dorm rooms. It was a man butchering a goat. Apparently, that goat was to be dinner later on that night. Kagaba Joshua had, indeed, donated a goat to be slaughtered and roasted for our dinner. So we had two different kinds of pasta, yams, potatoes, rice, and goat on a stick. It was a very interesting and ceremonial dinner, with lots of speeches and emotional thank you messages from the Africans and from the Muzungus.

We hear that Barbara Stevens is coming here late tonight. However, we will likely miss her as we have an early wake up call for the 6 hour ride to Entebbe tomorrow. It’s just the beginning leg of our 36 hour travel towards home. I’ll post more as we get access during our travel.

Monday July 12 Kasiisi Primary School

For many of us going to Kasiisi School feels like we are going to our home school. We know so many of the staff and children at this school that we feel very comfortable there. Elizabeth (Lydia) Kasenene, the Head Mistress of Kasiisi Primary School was at a meeting here at the Field Station in the morning. Still we knew the Assistant Head Mistress, Joyce, Moses, Beatrice and some of the other teachers. The walls of the HM’s (the student’s pronounce this (haitch em) are covered with pictures, posters and news stories celebrating the Weston-Kasiisi connection.

There are several pictures of Courtney Massotti both from her visit here and during her fundraising in Weston. When Courtney was a first grader at Country School, she was struck by the fact that Ugandan children do not all go to Secondary School. So she asked me if she could collect change in order to raise some money to sponsor a Kasiisi student to go to secondary school. She put a big change jar outside of her classroom and got a few donations. Then Courtney wanted to make a presentation at a whole school meeting, and she showed me a notebook that she had created with pictures and text that outlined what she wanted to say. Again I said yes, but I sent Courtney to Lucille Beeth our technology/library teacher for technical assistance (she was only seven). Together they converted the notebook into a slide show, which Courtney presented at a school meeting. The change jar got a lot more contributions, and adults, teachers and parents started to put in money as well. Courtney then asked if she could make her presentation at Woodland School and I arranged for that to happen. Then she made her presentation at her father’s place of business and then some community organizations. The end result was that Courtney eventually raised over $3600, enough to send two Kasiisi students to 4 years of secondary school each. It’s a remarkable story and one that is not lost on the Ugandans. Courtney is quite well known at Kasiisi School.

Kasiisi School has every year the most students who receive a grade one pass in their PLE’s. Thus they get the most scholars of any of the five primary schools in the project. So we wondered if we would see a significant difference in the children from the other schools we had visited. Janis and I taught lessons in the two P4 classrooms with 80 and 89 students in each class. The classrooms were small and the students were crowded 5 to a bench. We had a difficult time physically getting to every student to see his or her work. The quality of the work that we saw was not different from any other P4 classroom. There were a few individuals who stood out with better English than their peers, but the overall work and neediness of the students was similar to other schools.

Chris and Christie report that in the classrooms they were in some of the benches were moved so that they face each other. This allowed the teacher to move around the classroom more freely and get to every student. At the same time it encourages students to talk to each other. So much of the teaching that goes on her is for rote knowledge or skill, not for understanding concepts. You can often hear students repeating facts in unison outside of a classroom. We have tried with very limited success to get students to talk to each other, but that is going to take some time. Just the moving of the benches is a big step forward.

Kasiisi School is one of the two project schools that serves lunch to their students. They make a maize porridge, which we tried. It’s quite good. It also smells grainy and nutritious. Students sit outside on the grass with green and blue mugs of warm porridge and drink while they socialize. Teachers have the porridge for lunch also. It’s quite remarkable to see. The last time we were here most of these students went the whole day without anything to eat. That is still true at Kiko, Kigarama, and Rweterra.

Chris and Christie visited the library after their lessons and had some maize porridge. There they encountered a group of P6 students who were preparing for a literature circle that afternoon. The book they were reading was Sadako and the Paper Crane. The students were doing some research about Japan in preparation for the discussions and they were surprised that the teachers knew this book. Chris explained to them that students all over the world read this book. The teachers left very impressed with these girls and their initiative in their work. All of this leaves us to wonder why girls represent so few of the scholars that come out of Kasiisi or any of the primary schools.

It was also great that Chris was finally able to see the preschool today. She came away very impressed with the structure, and hopefully the interiors will be finished soon so that three and four year old students can begin learning. Once again Kasiisi School will be the only public school in this part of the country with a preschool as part of its program. All the other preschools in the area are private.

Janis, Chris, Christie and I also visited both P7 classrooms at Kasiisi to talk to the students about the United States. They have very limited knowledge about us, but we did get one question about the petrol spill (they thought it was in a lake) in the Gulf of Mexico. But most of their questions were about climate, vegetation and the animals that are the same and different in both countries. One of the key skills for these students as they leave primary school is their English. Even if they don’t receive a scholarship for secondary school, speaking English well is a key to their economic future. With good English they could get jobs in the hotel or tourist industry, they could be employed at any number of businesses in Fort Portal. But with limited English they will be relegated to being a subsistence farmer like their ancestors. This was part of the message we tried to impart to these P7 students.

Earlier in the day Scott and Koojo Mathew spoke with the P7 boys separately. This discussion was also about their futures. The students wrote letters to their future selves and talked about the options open to them after they leave primary school. Many of these students will not receive scholarships to be able to go to secondary school.

During our visit to Kasiisi we heard of the double bombing in Kampala of people watching the football match last night. Fortunately, no one we know was among the victims of that bombing. Uganda is a political supporter of the United States and they are among the nations that have sent troops to Somalia to help with the chaotic situation there. That is likely why these targets were chosen. We spent the afternoon contacting family to assure them we are all fine.

Teaching in these classrooms is very draining of our energy. It may be because we are dealing with so many students and trying to get to every one of them. Or it may simply be that we have been away from home for too long (it’s been 17 days since we left) and the stress of travel is getting to us. After contacting family we relaxed at the Oasis before an excellent dinner and an early bedtime.

Leaving the Oasis I got bit on the ankle by something. I killed it and showed it to a local woman who said it was a Tse Tse fly. I’ve read that sleeping sickness has been eradicated in Africa. Let’s hope it’s true.

We say goodbye to the Krimsky/Kee family today as they head back to Entebbe today before leaving for the U.S. We’ll be visiting our last primary school today, Kanyawara, about which we hear good reports. Thanks to all of you who are reading and following and for the great comments. Keep em coming!

Quick Update

Just a note to let you know everyone here is doing well. You may have heard that there was a double bombing in Kampala, but everyone we know is fine. We finished work at Kasiisi School today and tomorrow we are at Kanyawara Primary School. More later.

Sunday July 11 Field Station and Ndali Lodge

We slept in relatively late this morning with breakfast for most of us at a leisurely 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. Pam and Cindy had work to do with Lydia and John Kasenene and the Kee family were off to 8:30 church service and lunch on their own. Later in the day Pam and Cindy will conduct a GPS activity at Kanyawara with students from P6 and P7.

This morning Lucas the P4 (third grade) student who was too young to do the chimpanzee tracking yesterday spent some time with us. So we taught him how to play baseball. There was a whiffle ball bat and ball in the Kasiisi Project office, so we taught him how to hit. He already knew how to throw and catch. Janis, Christie, Scott, Alice and Steve comprised the remainder of our group which we named the Kanyawara Kob. We had a spirited session of whiffle ball hitting. Lucas was surprisingly good at his first time hitting. He has good eye hand coordination and made several very good hits. Janis, however, hit the only grand slam of the day, hitting a deep ball that went into the Men’s shower area where it was retrieved by Christie!

Baseball over, we had a good conversation about the Girls Health Project and the progress it has made. The long term vision of this project is to create locally made biodegradable sanitary products made from locally grown papyrus for women and girls that can be created at a low enough price point to be affordable to local women. Alice Bator, the creator and coordinator of this project has met with a local professor Dr. Muzazi, who has created a process for making these products. It is conceivable that within the next year a production site can be set up in the Kasiisi area and begin to manufacture these products. Right now there is no such production in Africa. That’s right this would be the first in the entire continent. Right now every NGO in Africa imports sanitary products from outside of Africa at a much higher price than it would be if products could be made locally. It’s a remarkable project that if successful will provide needed health products, education to young girls about their physical development, and an economic boost to the local economy. You can find out more about this program at www.kasiisiproject.org.

Lucas joined us for lunch at the Field Station and I was able to show him the chimpanzee photographs from yesterday that he was unable to see. Zarin brought over a number of great shots from her excellent camera last night and I imported them into a slide show along with the few that we were able to take. You can’t use flash photography with the chimps and the rainforest has little light. Thus Zarin’s expert photography was very welcome. A picture of our new favorite chimp Magasi is my new wall paper.

We spent an leisurely afternoon reading and napping. I decided to corrupt the youth of Uganda by letting Lucas use my iPhone to play video games. Like most children he was able to figure out how to navigate his way around the device with little difficulty. He also proved to be quite good at Doodle Jump.

Dinner at Ndali Lodge was outstanding. Google Ndali Lodge for the web site. The lodge is a guest house in the middle of a series of Crater Lakes. These lakes are another part of the remarkable beauty of this country. In fact there is a picture on the 20,000-shilling ($10) bill of the road we used with crater lakes on either side (yes, it does seem like monopoly money). We ate supper overlooking one of those lakes, which was about 100 feet below us. Aubrey, the owner, is a British ex-pat who charmingly came to our table to introduce himself and give us the story of the Lodge. On the way out Christie saw a poster on the wall labeled “Snakes of Uganda,” fortunately for her this was as close as she would get to a legless reptile in this country.

Back at the Field Station we are all missing our families very much. The rest of the country is watching football tonight, but early to bed tonight for us as we have a full day at Kasiisi School tomorrow.

Post Script: Brushing your teeth before bed is not a simple proposition at the Field Station. You can’t use the tap water here because it contains bacteria that our bodies are not used to. We have to use bottled water. That fact, plus the fact that the bathrooms with sinks are about 50 yards away through the dark African night has led to a nightly event called “Spitting from the Ledge.” Just before bed we stand on the ledge of the sidewalk outside our rooms in front of the lawn with toothbrush, paste and bottled water. Brush, swish, spit and then rinse. Tonight Christie decided to have a spitting contest to see who could spit the farthest. I think she won, but then it was dribbling down her face afterwards.

Saturday, July 10, 2010 Kanyanchu

Although we are staying right next to a Chimp research station, we are not allowed to track or view the Kanayawara Chimps, as the Field Station group is known. The Kanyawara Chimps are an habituated research group and visitors, and even residents, are not allowed to view them. So we had to drive about an hour south of here to a different part of Kibale Forest to Kanyanchu. Along the way we stopped to pick up some students from Kasiisi School to share this experience with them. Unfortunately one of the students was underage for Chimp tracking and thus he stayed and had a nature walk at the Ranger station instead.

At Kanyanchu the Ugandan Wildlife Authority have set up a Chimp tracking station complete with guides and rangers for tourists. Similar to our Gorilla experience we had to divide up into small groups each with a Ranger/Guide. The Guide was carrying an AK47 in case we ran into elephants, of which there was plenty of evidence in the forest. We were also very fortunate to have Zarin, one of the Harvard chimp researchers from the Field Station, in our group. Her expertise in chimpanzee research was invaluable to us, but it was her knowledge of the forest that Christie was counting on to help her through this experience. Christie is very afraid of snakes, so Zarin would walk in front of her, and I had her back. Zarin had explained that chimps are afraid of snakes also and won’t stay around if they see them. We never did see a snake today (Christie owes Zarin a beer), but we did see the largest spider any of us had ever seen and a millipede that was likely poisonous.

We tucked our pants into our socks in order to deter safari ants and drove to an area where we knew the chimps might be. We could hear some hooting from the road and plunged right into the forest. Within minutes Sawya, our student from Kasiisi, spotted a pair of chimps high above us in a tree. It turns out that Sawya was to be our best spotter on this tracking expedition. The first one we saw was a female who was very visibly in estrus. Soon a male became visibie as well and as quick as could be, copulation occurred and was over. Zarin explained that this was very typical for chimps.

We moved on and hiked through some very dense forest. Kibale national forest is technically an arid rainforest. It is an area we would call a jungle with huge trees with buttresses, dense undergrowth and vines everywhere. The chimps use the tree buttresses to drum on, making a low pounding sound that we could hear. Zarin explained that this is a display behavior that chimps do by hanging onto the tree with her hands and drumming with their feet. It has nothing to do with communication, just with displaying the cleverness and skill of the chimp who is drumming.

We hiked for quite some time through thick going, encountering a few chimps high in the canopy and hearing lots of hoots and screams. Our guide was moving very quickly and told us that we were following some males who were moving much more quickly through the forest than we could. Finally we saw a large group of chimps on the ground making a racket of hooting and screaming. We were able to get close to them to get pictures and saw many antics in the trees and on the ground around us. One of the males charged Koojo Mathew who started to run before Zarin told him to stand still and avert his eyes. The chimp veered off, as they almost always do, but that was a very close encounter.

We stayed in that area and got a very close up view of two male chimps grooming each other. These two chimps are close friends (very close friends from the way they were grooming) and were very relaxed in front of us. One of those two males was “leaf clipping” a cultural behavior that may mean he wants to be groomed by his friend. These two were very relaxed in front of our group, and after grooming decided to hang out and take a nap.

We are only allowed an hour to stay with the chimps, but it was a very exciting hour as we got to see a lot of different kinds of chimp behavior. This clearly was a highlight of our trip, right up there with viewing the Mountain Gorillas.

After chimp tracking we met up with Pam, Cindy, Chris, Alice and Scott at the Bigodi Women’s Cooperative. This is a group of local women who set up a craft shop, with one shop at Kanyanchu and one on the main road, with the goal of raising money to build a local nursery school. They have done so well in this venture that they have almost met their fundraising goal. We patronized their shop and then walked next door to Tinka’s for lunch

Lunch with the Tinkas was another Ugandan cultural experience. There were 20 of us for lunch and we were given a humorous lesson in Ugandan hospitality and culture by John Tinka. Lunch consisted of traditional Ugandan fare, matoke, beef stew, fried sweet potatoes, rice, and groundnut sauce. This was followed by pineapple and bananas for desert. John told us that Bigoti is a derivation of a word that means “I am tired.” Many years ago when Uganda was still under colonial rule most of this area was still forest. People who were walking from Fort Portal would get as far as Bigoti and would stop for the night saying “I am tired.” Thus the name stuck for this village.

We were back early to the Field Station for showers and dinner with great conversation and humor at dinner. Christie in fact, was laughing so hard a pea lodged in her nose. This, I’m sure, will not surprise Scott.

Tomorrow is a rest day with only Ndali Lodge scheduled for a sunset dinner on the schedule.