Installment #14--Not My Day

Thursday morning Charles and I sat down to plan a lesson together. After talking through his normal lesson for a reading, I showed Charles a list of all of the different strategies that I had used in the lessons I taught, and asked what he thought might work or if we could change any of the strategies to better fit. We went back and forth for a little while, and made no progress. I didn’t want to tell Charles to change how he teaches-that is not my place-but it is very frustrating being in an exchange with a teacher and seeing a lack of commitment to exchanging ideas. The conversation got a little tense because I expressed my frustrations with Charles. I asked him about his goals for the program, shared mine, and tried to be diplomatic, but in the end, I don’t know if there was any resolution. Charles ultimately asked me to teach the lesson anyway, and he said that he would watch and try to teach the next lesson in the same way. I said fine, but the feeling that I am here simply to ease the workload of another teacher is not. I taught the first class, we had lunch, and I asked Charles if he would be willing to try using one of the simple strategies that I had used earlier. He agreed, but wound up teaching the same way he had before. Also, rain delayed our lesson by about an hour. When it rains hard in Uganda, the raindrops hitting the corrugated metal roof cause a noise so loud that none of the teachers teach during the rain. The rain happened during our class, and I think that we probably would not have had class, but because Charles knew I was frustrated (and because I asked), he talked with the physics teacher (the class after ours), and he let us take his class period—a little sign of hope at the end of the day.

This hope didn’t last long though. When we returned home, Trisha, Danielle, and I all found pools of water in our room from the rain earlier in the day. Unfortunately, the pool of water in my room was very small because my clothes had soaked up most of the mud and water. I laid my clothes on my mosquito net to try to dry them out, but many were stained and will have to be cleaned. Hopefully harriet will be able to take care of them. Another thing that was bothering me is that I haven’t shaved in almost two weeks, and it is really starting to itch. Unfortunately, there are no mirrors in Pabo, so in order to see my face, I grabbed my camera. To add to my day, the lens motor on my camera has somehow broken, and my camera no longer works. Big bummer. I an attempt to salvage the day, I put a pot of water on the stove to take a warm bath, and in the process, got black soot all over a clean pair of pants. At least there is no disco on Thursday nights.