Bat to School

Hello! Hope everyone’s well. We are well and have had a good week. We started school! It was well exciting going in with our pencil cases.

On the first day all the teachers were there but only about 5 kids turned up! Imagine that at the first day back in the UK! The teachers were like, ‘yeah this happens a lot, they’ll all be here by Friday’. So, on the Tuesday there were a few more. We had around 10 in each class. I taught P5 and P6 English and James taught Science. It was loads of fun but I was pretty worried about having to correct their spelling as I can’t spell myself! It was fine though. I asked the students to write me letters telling me about themselves. Some were so sad, telling me they were orphans because of AIDS. Others were writing I love teacher Amy, I want to be friends with her family! It was sweet.

On Thursday we went to a different school in Mukono to do some outreach work. We gave a talk to 200 kids about HIV. We tried to make it fun. We acted out a drama on how HIV works in the body. It went really well. It was me, James, Frank and Kayiira!(ill put some photos up of that soon) It was loads of fun. Then we played true or false games with them. At the end they were asking loads of questions which felt good because it meant they had been listening. One student asked us if HIV had been invented to kill all Africans… I didn’t know what to say, I was pretty taken back by it. We explained that anyone can get it, even white people. Then they were shocked, even the teachers were like, really??

Yesterday we went to Jinja to Interview more of the Pik Tek women (women who make the beads). This time it was women who had fled from the north. Again their stories were fascinating. I enjoy working with these women, they tell you a lot about life in Uganda.

Then in the evening it was the most surreal night ever. We were sat chilling out in the guesthouse, there were around 7 other volunteers and us. We were just chatting when a bat flew in. I was pretty scared but Esther (the house manager) caught it (after about an hour of it flying round the living room). Then.. 10 more flew in. It was terrifying; it felt like something out of a teen horror film. Esther and James ended up killing them all with brooms. Esther was like, this has never happened before it’s so strange. I wouldn’t come out of my room, I was such a wimp but it was sooo horrible! We think what happened is that they normally live up in the roof minding their own business but that day someone decided to smoke them out so they had all flown into our house.. Nice! I just hope it doesn’t happen tonight otherwise I’m not coming out from under my mozzie net! I think Esther said they were going to poison them or something.

So that was our eventful week. The internet has been pretty poor recently so I haven’t had chance to upload photos.. I’m going to try it now so fingers crossed! Love Amy xxx