Christmas parties!!

   The past 2 Fridays in December (the 12th and 19th) we have been running Christmas parties for the children at our 2 venues where we usually have kids clubs.  The First one was at Blessed Word of Life Church on the 12th, and the second one was at Family Believers Church (19th) in Nabulagala.   
 At both parties we put on a nativity for the kids, played games, gave out sweets, ate cake, sang songs, did face painting and gave out gifts!  This year we were able to give the kids soft toys that had previously been donated to Smile!  All in all it was a VERY hectic time!!  Here are some pictures to let you see what happened! 

 I can happily say we are now on holiday for the Christmas season!  We have been having a very relaxed time, yesterday going in to Kampala (to KFC!!) and also spending time relaxing around the house and catching up on much needed sleep.  As our visas expire at the end of the month, on Saturday (the 27th) we are heading to Kigali in Rwanda for a couple of days.  This is to leave the country and then renew our visas for another 3 months (I can't believe how fast time has gone!).  So I will have plenty to blog about over the next few weeks! 

Kenneth :)

Catch up class

When the school holidays began at Ruth Mother Care, it was decided that we would run a "catch up class" for the children at Family Believers Church in Nabulagala where we do the Slums outreach.  A catch up class  is basically a school run during the holidays to try and help kids go over things they find difficult etc.  We were teaching Maths and English.
  The first few days of the school holidays we spent preparing lessons and materials as well as visiting the people in the area to spread the word and let them know what was going to be happening.

 We ran the classes from the 8th to the 17th of December, teaching on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
   On Monday the 8th of  December we arrived and waited for the children to turn up.  We weren't really sure how many would come along, so it was perhaps it was a little overwhelming when 100+ kids turned up! As we only had 2 blackboards we split the children into two groups, those who were baby aged up to those in P1 and then in the other class p2+.  I led most of the lessons for the p2+ class, with Kathryn helping in crowd control and marking etc,  whilst Ruth taught the 'baby' class with the help of Moses a local volunteer.   We mostly taught sounds and how to write basic sentences and parts that make up a sentence.  In the mathematics we taught about fractions, addition and subtraction, and about time. 

  As I had a class ranging from p2 to p7 it was quite difficult to set lessons that would be appropriate for all the kids.   Usually I would try and set easier examples that would progressively get harder so the older ones would find some sort of challenge, but also ensuring the younger children could do some of the work.  I think I have found this the most challenging project we've worked on.  One day we had about 150 kids turning up!  80 of which were in the older class, certainly quite a challenge to teach and control all of them.  Though we got through it and survived! Despite the stresses it was also quite a rewarding experience. especially when teaching one on one with some of the kids.  It was very rewarding when the children understood what you were teaching them, when they had previously been getting the wrong answers.  We could actually see that we were indeed making a difference.  

  It was a very intense couple of days, and it definitely left us in need of a holiday!  Though after the holidays we are hopefully going to start some sort of school at the church, thus allowing us to work with only the children that don't get the chance to go to school.  Obviously this is still in the planning stage, but I am quite excited about the potential of working with the kids who need it most.  
Overall it was a very good experience, and I really hope that we were a blessing to the children and helped them in their work.  

Hope you're all having a great week!

Kenneth :)

Speech Days!

Hello! So I realise I have not updated the blog in the past month but we have been crazy busy and haven't had much time to update you all!  We are now on Christmas break for a couple of weeks so I will post a few updates of what we have been up to over the past month or so! 
   On the last two weekends of November we attended the 'Speech days' at the  two schools we have taught at.  Speech days are an end of year show, where the kids sing, dance and act for their parents.  There is often someone who gives a short speech or talk.  The speech day is also an opportunity to celebrate the children 'graduating' from Top class in nursery into Primary 1.

Center of Hope Junior School
   On Saturday the 23rd of November we returned to the school in the village Kalanamu. We were greeted by a very excited bunch of children happy to see us once again!  It was nice to be back and see all the kids and teachers again! Almost felt like we hadn't been away!
Each of the classes performed a couple of songs and dances.  Then the guest of honour... Not entirely sure who he was.. gave a speech.  It was a long day, but it was good to see the kids and listen to them sing.  Here are a couple of pictures and videos to let you get an idea of what it was like!

Ruth Mother Care
On the 30th of November we were at the speech day at Ruth Mother Care.  We were told it would start at 9am, though we knew this would be highly unlikely...  We decided to go along for 9:30am expecting it to start at about 10ish or so..  However.... When we arrived, we were as expected the first people to arrive... Though just as we got in side it started to rain!  And boy did it rain..!  So for the next 4 hours until 1pm! We were sat inside waiting for the rain to stop!  (it is a legitamate excuse not to go anywhere when it rains here....) Thankfully we were given lunch and didn't get wet! But it wasn't exactly the most exciting way to spend a Saturday morning..! So at 2pm when the parents finally arrived the show got started!  It was nice to see the kids singing and things, even though we'd already seen them practice!  We also got up and gave a short introduction to the parents as we will be teaching the kids again when we start after the holidays. Here are some pics to let you see what happened here!

I will update about what else we have been up to every soon! 
Hope you are all well..

Kenneth :)


P.S  Sorry Barry if this was too long for you.. I know you struggle with reading ;)  I put in lots of pictures for your benefit....

Ruth Mother Care!

Last Monday (10th of Nov.)  we started our work helping out at the school Ruth Mother Care.  This is a very small school, with only about 45 pupils.  The Classes range from "baby," Top and Middle (this is the nursery classes), and then Primary 1 and Primary 2.  The school day starts at about 8am, and ends at 3pm with an hour for lunch.  Most of the baby class go home at lunch time, only 4 kids staying for day care.  We be helping out on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, mostly teaching English, reading,  and RME, though there will be plenty of opportunity to teach other lessons and support the school in other ways.  The school term ends in 3 weeks time for holidays, so we wont have all that long to get started just now.  But the new year starts in February so we will be able to get properly stuck in then with the new classes.

After a very early start on Monday (we must leave the house at 7am!) we arrived about 745am and were greeted by some very excited kids!  We have decided that we would each spend a day helping in each class. So on Monday I will be helped out in Primary 1 and 2.  The morning was spent mostly observing the lessons. I also helped with the corrections and helping any child that needed help with explaining their work.  The kids were very excited when they got a "V. Good!" written in their books if they had done well.  Especially if they had been given a stamp in their book!  Showing them  off to their friends and teacher.
In the afternoon the teacher asked if I would teach phonetics.  I wasn't exactly the best prepared, as we were expecting just to be observing the lessons on the first day.  However since I had done quite a few lessons in the village school in this, I improvised a little and did one of the lessons I had taught there.  At training we were told to 'expect the unexpected' and I think this was truly one of the first experiences I've had to think on the spot.  Not my finest lesson I admit, but I survived.  Needless to say, on Tuesday and Wednesday we were much better organised and actually had more of a lesson plan.  Very tired from the early rise we went home and rested for the next day.

On Tuesday I was helping in Baby class.  This is for very young children, from about 2 to age 4 depending on the ability of the pupil.  Most of the work in this class is focused on learning the very basic sounds of the alphabet.  I should mention that all classes are taught in English, though obviously somethings are explained in Luganda.  I helped as the class went through the alphabet sounding out each letter with it's relevant actions.  The pupils then practiced writing the letters in their books.  Sitting with pupils individually seeing that they could carry out the work. There was quite a broad range of abilities in the class, the youngest pupils tracing letters in the books, whilst the oldest were matching 3 letter words to the pictures and practicing copying the words.  We also spent time counting from 1 to 10.

On the Wednesday I helped in Top and Middle.  Pupils in Top will be going in to Primary 1 after the holidays, and middle in to Top etc.  Again we focused on the more basic sounds of the alphabet. Obviously the pupils needed a lot less support when writing the words and things. So it was more checking the spelling and things.  They copied words of the board and drew pictures next to it.
We also did some 'revision' of addition for the upcoming end of year tests, which will determine whether they get to progress up to the next class.  On the Wednesday afternoon I actually taught P1/2 phonetics again.  I am starting to wonder if the kids will grow up pronouncing words with a Scottish accent, as they copy the sounds you make exactly how they hear them...

Each day after morning break, the kids were practicing for their end of year school presentation.  So each class performs a couple of dances or songs.  It was quite entertaining hearing the kids sing enthusiastically and seeing them perform the dances.  We particularly enjoyed hearing the school anthem "Ruth Mother Care, the school of wonders!" (Video to come soon!)

I am really looking forward to getting involved with this school and seeing how we can impact the kids and hopefully help them towards a better future.  They have certainly been very excited to have us as teachers so far. Hopefully our work can actually help make a difference.

I will update soon with the rest of what we got up to last week and this week.
Hope you're all well

Kenneth

Community outreach, Kids clubs and Lake Victoria!

Good evening!

I hope you are all well!  Thought I would update you all on what we got up at the end of last week and over the weekend.

On Wednesday and Thursday we started to prepare for the children's clubs.  Over the course of the year we will be focusing on teaching the children the parables Jesus told. We received help from 'Mama' Carol to prepare the material and plan how we can carry out the lessons most effectively.  She is an American missionary, who works a lot with children, so she was a very useful resource to have.  She was also very strong in her beliefs that preaching the gospel and showing people Jesus is the most important thing in life.  Often bringing up that scenario of when we are stood before God in the afterlife and him asking "why didn't we pray for friends/families/neighbours/the kids at the clubs etc? or tell them about Jesus."  I have not really been used to this kinda view on things so it has challenged me in my faith and how I serve God.   Perhaps this might sound very strange to any non-christians reading this.  However for the Christians reading this, are you seeking to serve God each day and really work for Him?  Or is being a Christian just something for a Sunday, and what you can get from being "blessed" by God. Would God be pleased with your 'work' if you were to die today?  

On Thursday afternoons we will be taking part in 'community outreach.' This takes place in the slum area.  The main aim is to meet with local families and get to know them.  Smile International also supports a number of sponsored families in this area.  As it was out first week of this, we decided we would go about in a large group, rather than splitting in to smaller groups which will probably happen in the coming weeks.  We walked around the various houses meeting a number of families.  There were a number of refugees from Congo living there.  It was a very strange experience, seeing the conditions people live in first hand.  It is almost unimaginable living in the UK. Perhaps the first thing you notice is the smell from the open sewers.   It was quite heartbreaking seeing some of  the kids in nothing more than rags and living in these conditions.  The people were incredibly welcoming and friendly though. The kids very excited to see us, following us round the various houses as we met the people.  They all wanted to hold our hands or be carried.  I am looking forward to getting to know the people of the community better hopefully finding ways in which we can support them.

On Thursday evening we went along to the choir practice for the Sunday worship.  Ruth and I took part in the singing.  However on Sunday I didn't actually help with the worship.  I plan to take part in coming weeks though.  Ruth did take part though so it is good that we are able to get involved at the church.

On Friday we started kids clubs.  Currently we run two clubs, one at Family Believers Church (in the slum area) and one at Blessed Word of Life Church.  I was helping at the club at Blessed Word, which is about 30 minutes walk from the house.  This week we were just welcoming the kids back, playing various games such as "simon says" and "duck, duck, chicken"  which was fun. We also sang a couple of  short songs such as "our God is a great big God" and also the "hokey cokey" that kinda thing!  We then registered the kids and handed out biscuits before we headed home!

On Saturday we went along to the church student group's "fun day."  This was a day out to the 'beach' at Lake Victoria. This was really cool to see! This was the first time we'd seen Lake Victoria as when we landed at Entebbe it was already dark.  We spent the time there playing games and generally sociaising, getting to know the students from the church.  This was good fun and I enjoyed it a lot, hopefully we will get to know the guys better over the coming months.

I didn't actually take any photos over the course of last week..... However I will make an extra effort to take some this week and have a special picture blog or something, so you guys (if anyone's reading this..) can actually see some of the places and people!

Today we started teaching at Ruth Mother Care, however I will update you about our experiences there later on this week!

Thanks for  all your prayer  support.  Those of you praying please pray that we would have strength and energy to carry out the teaching and help support the school. It would be good to pray for the kids clubs too and so we can serve God well and really touch the children's lives.  

Hope you are all well,

Kenneth  :)

The Village!

Hello all!

Well where to begin... I am struggling to believe it is November already! The first month has gone quickly, although it does feel like we have been here for much longer in a strange way as well!  Also finding it particularly bizarre that I can wear shorts and t-shirt everyday, and have the best tan I've had in years (possibly ever!!), but it's November??!

This post will probably be pretty long, so you may want to make a pot of tea and get some biscuits!! Oh and feel free to send me some too... :)

Anyway... I do have a legitimate excuse for not having updated the blog over the past two weeks.  On Saturday the 18th of October we headed out as a team (Me, Ruth, Kathryn, and Innocent) to a village called Kalanamu.  This village was quite remote (basically the middle of nowhere it seemed!), about 2 hours drive from Kampala.  So we had no internet access.

On the Saturday we left the Smile house just after lunch, and after a long, warm and sticky, drive to the village we arrived about 4pm.  I think the first thing to hit me was how quiet it was compared to being in Nansana and Kampala!  It was quite nice to be out in the countryside and not have the constant busyness and chaos of the traffic or people going on around.  After a quick look around the grounds we spent the rest of the day chilling out.  

The house we stayed in was very nice.  It is owned by a friend of Alex,  Leonard, a business man who owns some farm land near the village.  The aim of the house is to be a retreat for people to get experience of village life.  So anyone looking to spend sometime in a Ugandan village, I will more than happily put you in touch with Leonard!  The house was very beautiful, we did just sleep on a mattress on the floor and the showers were VERY cold but very grateful we were not camping and had electricity!   As the house is still a work in progress, we cooked on small charcoal stoves, which was fun, though perhaps a little more time consuming. I think I have learned just to get on with things here in Uganda!  Even though it may seem a little disorganised or impractical compared to home. A couple of the volunteers here say that Uganda is the land where anything is possible!  And after seeing a lady and 3 big bunches of bananas on the back of a boda boda (aswell as the driver), I am beginning to believe the may just be right! 
We shared the house with the caretaker Sam, he was was very friendly and asked a lot about where we were from and other things.  He also helped us a lot with cooking and showing us things round the house, which we were very grateful for.  He asked about Kilts and Scotland, so I showed him a couple of pics of me from my sisters wedding last year, which he liked.  he also showed me the traditional Ugandan dress which was quite cool! It was nice getting to know him, and a little sad leaving him on his own again.

The surrounding area was largely farm land, where they grow a lot of different crops.  The farm had quite a large Banana plantation immediately next to the house which was cool to see, but there was also various other crops such as maize in the other fields. As well as lots of cows, sheep, chickens and goats!  

View from near the house

Some Nursery plants nearby

On the first Sunday we attended the church that is linked to the school that we would be working at during out time there (the pastor is the principle I think or something like that..) We received a very warm welcome from everybody there. It was quite a different experience from church back at home and Kampala.  The service ran from 9:30am - 1pm,  however we went at about 1030/11ish, that seems to be when most people begin to arrive.  There were no instruments other than the african drums to accompany the singing and most of the songs were in Lugandan, so we mostly just clapped along.  It was very joyful and quite upbeat, and loud considering there was only about 30 people at most!  We did sing a couple of simple english songs (probably for our benefit!) but it was nice, and very interesting to see how people in different cultures worship. Another thing was, for that week, instead of the pastor sharing a sermon, everybody in the congregation had to share a short, 5 minute encouraging word or mini sermon about a verse.  So it was a case of some quick thinking and praying to come up with something to share!  I guess it is all about being prepared for the unexpected! As the service was in Lunganda Innocent very kindly acted as the "Interpreacher" which was great!  So we could understand at least most of what was going on.

Prayer Palace church

On the Monday we went to the school for the first time. It is called "Centre of Hope Juniour School."  It was a quite a small school with classes going from Baby (nursery level) upto p4.  The first day we were introduced to the staff and children in the morning assembly, and then we spent the day observing the lessons to see how things were done, as well as get an idea of where we could possibly help.  I was observing the p1/2 class. The kids were very friendly but spent a lot of the time looking at me rather than doing there work! 

Centre of Hope Juniour school

The first week we were teaching PE to the p1,2,3&4s and also english to the p3s and p4s.  As the english classes happened at the same time as the PE for p1/2 Kathryn and I mostly led the PE, and Ruth and Innocent took the reading. 
It was great fun doing the PE lessons.   We had taken some hoola-hoops with us from the smile house so we did a lot of various relay races with the kids as well as teaching them games such as duck, duck, goose, which proved very popular. We also taught them the Hokey Cokey. Which was a little manic but very good fun!  One day we even tried to teach the kids how to play rounders... However as there was no teachers to interpret for us, the kids ended up creating their own game. in which the fielding team would start at the opposite base to the batting team and race them around in a circle. So the first person back to their home base won. It was interesting to see them make up what they were supposed to do, quite imaginative I thought!  We mostly did games like this for the two weeks, mixing it up a bit each day. Sometimes playing games like piggy in the middle, anything to get them running about.  

Jump!

Relay races

    My favourite days were when we took the  tunnels along for PE and used them in the relay races!  This was just absolute chaos!! hahaha.  The kids really really enjoyed using these, but it was a little tricky to keep track of everything that was going on. With hoops and balls flying across the place!!  It is quite amazing to see how much joy even some simple equipment brings to them.  I have been really struck by how little people have over here and how much need there is.  Some children didn't even have a pen or pencil to do their work, or some only had one set of slightly smarter clothes they would wear every single day to school.  This has really started to make me think about how I can use my life to hopefully help people like this even after my time here will come to an end.  
  It was great that we could bless the school with some gifts of Geometry sets, and pens, pencils etc. We also gave them some footballs which were very highly appreciated!  But it really got me thinking, that this was just one school in one village in one country, and how many more there must be scattered across the world, that would have very little in terms of equipment, that we take for granted in the west.  How many of us have several footballs or other sports things lying about the house that never get used? Sorry went off on a tangent....

Tunnels!!

Back to the school....  The second week we had a slight change to the time table which meant we were also teaching the p1s and 2s English.  
I mostly took the responsibility of teaching the p1 class, though Ruth did take a couple of lessons with them.  We mostly focused on teaching the phonetics, "Th" "Bl and Bk" "R" and "ck"  so it was quite advanced for their age, but it was what the teacher gave us to teach.
It was good, though the children did struggle a couple of the sounds. Particularly the Bl and Br sounds.  The letters R and L quite often get switched round. So a word such as "black" sounds more like "brack." So it was quite a challenge trying to get them to make a distinction in how the words "blanket" and "bracket" sounded, but by the end of it they were at least pronouncing the simpler words much clearer I thought.  This was the same with "th" which often is pronounced "s/sy"  so my name would often be Kennesy, or Kaseryn and Ruth became Lusy.  Hopefully it helped them a bit, it did feel like a bit of a shame leaving after only two weeks, as by week 2 we had started to get into the swing of things and it felt we were actually starting to make a difference. 
  
 We all taught the p4s and 3s reading the second week.  With the p4s we each got a small group of kids and went through their reading books with them.  This was good, though sometimes it was a challenge trying to explain the meaning of the words to them with their limited English and our very limited Luganda. The story books were qimed at raising awareness about how to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS, though I wondered how well they actually understood what was happening as sometimes they seemed a bit oblivious to what it was about.  I also kindof questioned how appropriate it was for the age group...  Trying to explain what "rape" is to a 8 year old didn't seem quite right. Obviously I do understand the importance of raising awareness of HIV/AIDS, though maybe there is a better way to explain it, and also in a language that they would fully understand it too.  

Some kids at the school

Other interesting things that happened at the school included trying maize porridge, it was quite nice when you added sugar!  And some various fruits, they didnt have English names, and tasted quite sour all part of the experience though.  As a gift for helping at the school we were given a big bunch of bananas which are really tasty and sweet!  And 2 "oranges" but even  the other volunteers from here had never seen them before.  They are quite big and green.  They didnt really taste like Oranges  either, kind of a cross between an orange or lemon and a grapefruit or those sour watermelon sweeties you get.. I am not sure they really were Oranges.....  It was interesting to say the least... 

In our spare time we spent a lot of time reading or playing cards and sleeping! We also went for a cycle around the area which was really cool, though if not slightly terrifying going down the big hill at the end..... One Saturday the student teachers that were on placement at the school came and visited us.  They were Esther, Liz and Ethor, and Javan Esther's 2 year old son came too. We spent the day chatting and playing games, we even ended up playing musical statues at one point.... All good fun though!   It was nice of them to come and visit, it really did help us feel accepted and welcomed in to the community.  

All in all we really enjoyed our time in the village and were quite sad to leave everyone after such a short time.  It was quite a humbling experience, seeing people who have very little, but are so willing to share all they have.  It has made me realise just how rich we really are in the west.  Especially when explaining to Sam what an iPod was, who had never seen one before.  I really hope that we were a blessing to the community in Kalanamu, they certainly had a profound effect on my life.  

We left the village on Monday just past, and arrived back in the chaos of the city early evening.  Though there were things I missed about the village, it was good to be back home and see everyone again.  Also very thankful that the ants are a lot smaller here!! and that there is a lot less wildlife in the house.....! 

This week we begin the outreach work in the slum areas, meeting families that Smile supports, spending time getting to know the people.  I am looking forward to it, but again I expect to be challenged by seeing the way the people live.  
We also start kids clubs this Friday which is exciting!  This week we will be just having an introductory time, and play some games and sing songs with the kids, but next week we will start on the teaching material.  We are going to be teaching the parables, so please pray that is received well and that we can really touch the kids lives.  
Next week we start teaching at Ruth Mother Care, where we had previously done building work. I am excited to see the new structure, and also to get more involved helping to teach and get to know the kids there. 
 Thanks to everybody who is praying and who has sent messages of encouragement over the past month. It is highly appreciated and I miss you all dearly.  We are all in good health and quite happy, so that is good.  I will keep you updated soon with the work that is set to begin this week.
I hope this has given you an incite into what we have been up to... i will hopefully add more photos to facebook if not here...
Remember to check out the girls blogs for a different perspective... Ruth and Kathryn

Hope you are all well,

Kenneth

P.S.  A special shout out to Anna Ruth Harris who starts exams this week! Good luck!! You will do great! We wish you were here! You are great! :)

byee...