Jelly beans

With some of the kids at the school I feel like a fly trapped indoors, buzzing against the window. I keep hitting an invisible wall, but if I aim for different spots and fly from different angles eventually I find an opening. Sometimes, anyway.

I brought jelly beans to class yesterday and held between one and three in my hand, in front of each child. If the kid could count the number of jelly beans I was holding, they got to eat them. If they got it wrong, I ate them myself.

I ate a lot of jelly beans. About half the children couldn't count to one, and some of them have been at the school for over a year, doing math every day. They can repeat numbers one to ten easily, but they have no idea what they're saying. Only two of the kids can count past five, and the ages range from 4 to 7.

School here has to be taught in English by law, but none of the kids speak English at home, so as a result there are 12 year old children who can't do basic math because they have never understood their lessons. The teachers teach through songs and repetition but many of the children don't understand what they're saying. It's frustrating to watch.

There's also a strong emphasis on negative reinforcement which I'm not sure works. One time when a kid, Bukenya, was being disruptive the teacher threw me the cane so I could punish him. Instead I told him to stand up and moved his chair so he was sitting outside the classroom looking in, still under the watch of the teacher but unable to interact with the other children. I gave him some work to do, and when he finished, I held it up in front of the class to show everyone what a great job he'd done. I won't say he hasn't been disruptive since, but his behaviour has definitely improved. And he sits next to me at break now and actually does his work rather than just hit his peers and steal their pencils.

I'm making it sound like I'm the saviour of the Ugandan education system but obviously I haven't been there long and don't really know what I'm doing, it's mostly guesswork. And what works for one kid will by no means necessarily work for the next, I just think that turned out to be the opening in the window for Bukenya, at least for the time being.

Today was a really great day at the school, because it was the first day the children had access to the new cups I bought. Before today I would see two or three children eating porridge at break, but today almost all 50 of them had porridge, and those that didn't eat could have if they'd wanted to. It was a feast! I don't know if the school was making a show of it to please me or if this will continue long term, but it was great seeing all the kids fed, instead of the usual four or five. Money well spent.

After school I took a tour around a couple of other NGOs in Kampala. The first was called Kids in Need, and it's a centre for helping street children. Many come in with drug addictions or with a history of crime in varying degrees. I agreed to help run a music program there in the afternoons. I start on Monday.

I also went to a place called Missionaries of the Poor which helps mentally handicapped and HIV positive people of all ages. It was a pretty intense place. There was an elderly men's ward where most of the men were crippled, an elderly women's ward, and two children's wards. About 150 handicapped and dying people in a pretty small building. I'll admit some of the patients there made me quite queasy, but I'm planning to work there after I return from the refugee camp in Gulu.

I'm a bit nervous about Gulu. The average annual income there is US$30, which makes it ten times poorer than here, and it's been in civil for 20 years. But I can't imagine it being much more dangerous than your average boda boda ride. On Tuesday I was riding back from Kampala in the rain, without a helmet, the wrong way down the highway in the dark. It wasn't the first time that's happened either. The boda boda rides have made me really want a motorbike actually. Maybe I'll save up for one when I get home.