Bat in the Latrine

Wasuzotia (good morning), everyone...

All is well here in Kyabirwa. A few tidbits for the past few days are:
1) Porridge is as bland tasting as it sounds. And you have to eat it when it is offered to you.
2) When you see these flying ants crawling around these banana leaf wrapped bundles, which look to you like yummy tamales, guess what? The bundles are actually just packages of the flying ants, wrapped up in a package to save you from having to catch them yourselves.
3) It is actually possible to shower in two minutes (family, you should be impressed). It helps when your water is freezing rainwater that you pour over your head.
4) It is best to try to get to the latrine either before or after the monsoon rains. Not in the middle of them.
5) If you are going to the latrine in the night, and you are wearing your headlamp so you don't trip over the cow, it is QUITE LIKELY that you will be followed by a bat. And he will get there first. And then, it is him or you. Probably him.

Another thing I've been thinking a lot about is being a mzungu... which means white person (really, it means white European, but the children on the road don't distinguish). It's quite interesting. You'll be walking along and they will just call out, "mzungu!" It makes me wonder which is worse... someone noticing a difference and not saying anything, or having it be so out in the open that it is totally okay to call it out. White people here refer to ourselves as mzungus, too.
This whole "white minority" experience reminds me a lot of my time in the Rio Grande Valley. Actually, Kyabirwa has a lot in common with Mercedes, Texas, in how insular it feels, and how much like an outsider I feel. This whole thing is giving me a lot to chew on.

The teaching is going really well, and is really interesting. My day starts like this. I go in to the class. They stand up and say, "You are welcome, madam." Then I say, "Good morning, children." They say, "Good morning, madam." Then I say, "How are you today?" Then they say, "We are very well thank you, madam." Then I tell them they can be seated. The whole time, I am wondering if they have any idea what the exchange has been about. It is very sweet, and extremely programmed. The teachers do this the same way every day.

All the classes are taught out of these Ugandan textbooks. That is great, of course, in that they are culturally relevant to an extent, but what is interesting is that even so, a lot of the concepts are over the heads of these particular Ugandan children because of how rural their lives are. We read a story about a girl who goes with her grandfather to a hospital, and they couldn't conceptualize it. The grandfather in the story is supposed to write down that his occupation is "farmer." How do you explain to children for whom farming is just LIFE-- kids who milk cows in the morning and pick potatoes or cassava or beans at night every day of their lives-- that for some people it is a job, and you should write it on a f0rm in the line that says "occupation"? Seriously, teaching in rural Uganda is stretching my mind tremendously in terms of what sort of assumptions we can and can't make about what children know.

The songs continue to be a big hit. I have begun to invent them-- because we had another lesson on carpentry and I didn't know any songs with the words foundation and scaffolding in them, so I had to make one up. I have also dipped into my deep reserve pool of childhood classics and spread "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" widely as well. The other teachers seem to get a kick out of the songs (er, out of me?) as well.

Okay, got to run back to the village now. It gets dark at 7 pm, so that's when I turn into a pumpkin.

Love to all.