A Year in Retrospect

Mid-year decoding test for my P4 students

I'm back at Kulika, in central Uganda, in mid-November except this time I'm here as a trainer, not a trainee. Our new group of Education volunteers have just arrived in country and I'm here as a technical trainer for positive reinforcement, teaching in Uganda and making instructional materials. We having PST (pre-service training) at the same locations as last year so it feels a bit like I'm going back in time. So much has happened in the past 12 months, but at the same time, I can't believe a year has passed since I first arrived to the green rolling hills of Uganda. We are the first Education group to pilot this program with a heavy focus on literacy at the primary level. With this second group, we've had a lot of opportunities to share our wisdom, best practices and lessons learned, and encourage them to try new things. I'm very excited for them to start at their sites in January because they're going to be rockstars! Next week we move to a new site to start our school-based practice and I will have the pleasure of observing hours upon hours of observing lessons. 

A little of what's been happening in the past month-- I attended an HIV conference in Masaka in early November to discuss new projects and cross-sector collaboration. The conference was extremely helpful and informative, but mostly highlighted what an incredibly complex disease we're talking about. There's a massive difference between tackling malaria and HIV, since the latter revolves around sex. As soon as sex gets involved, things get complicated. Think about how many issues revolve sex, especially in a religious country. We got into all sorts of issues: gender-based violence, controversy around condoms, the church's role in advocating for abstinence and its ineffectiveness, power imbalance and the role of women, homosexuality, taboo around wearing condoms or male circumcision, etc. There are so many issues around this disease; it highlighted for me just how complex and difficult it is to tackle. Especially in a country where people refuse to talk about or advocate for condoms! 

It did get me jumpstarted on starting a life-skills club at my school next year with my fellow teacher, and teaching HIV curriculum after school. 

Halloween was also a blast, we all migrated out to Mbale in the East to celebrate for a 2-night event. Our friends organized the Hallloween party in a fantastic cave near Sipi Falls. Mbale is at the base of Mount Elgon and it very mountainous and beautiful-- the scenery around Mbale reminded me a lot of Grenoble's vistas. 

I'll be training with our new group until mid-December and then it's Christmas and New Year's when my sister Claire comes to visit!