Still in Uganda...

I have finally surpassed the five month mark of my stay in Uganda. “Surpassed?” some of you might be thinking with surprise. “Wasn’t she supposed to come back after five months?” That’s right. I decided to extend my stay – instead of coming back on March 11th, I am now flying back to Germany on May 27th and Vancouver on July 14th. Why have I decided to stay? Travel opportunities, being a bride’s maid in Kenya in May and getting a part-time job teaching English at a primary school for pay.

That’s right, almost overnight I transformed into Teacher Maureen, teacher of primary 6 & 7 English (not as a second language, mind you. While it is their second language, they are all quite fluent). And it’s been quite the experience: discussing pros & cons of polygamy with 6th graders, shouting over rain pounding on the iron sheet roof, teaching in a skeleton of a classroom in a building still in the preliminary stages of construction, teaching pronunciation class with all the students inadvertently copy my strong ‘r,’ having Kofi Annan (twin of Tony Blair) unintentionally caned for not doing his homework, later finding out that corporal punishment in schools is actually illegal and then even later having to discuss the pros and cons of punishment with my students, and much more. But enough about teaching.

People always say that Africa gets under one’s skin and one will always want to come back. I am not entirely convinced this is true and, while apprehensive about returning to a world of “affluence,” I am looking forward to coming back to the West, although much of this vast continent remains to be explored by me later in life. People here just have a different way of relating and thinking and the mode of interaction of people in the West is what I miss most. But I am curious to know how the backwards cultural adjustment will be and what strange things I will miss about Uganda… I am sure that I will bore many with “Uganda this…” and “Uganda that…” stories.