Sleepover at my Practicum

So on Tuesday Alayna and I decided to stay the night at CHAIN in order to experience what happens in the evening, and to work on our hours.

On Tuesday we worked in the classroom P1 mostly observing the teacher. It was quite interesting however. Neither of us had ever been on that class, and there was a girl named Anna there that confused us. We took Dorthy and Brigit out to dinner tonight to talk about CHAIN, and learn more. We are normally there till about 6:15. So when Vincent (our bus driver) came to pick up the other girls, me, Alayna, our field instructor - Dorthy, and Brigit, all went out to eat. It turned out to be really good. We talked alot about the kids, and about Uganda in general. We also decided to ask them about this girl. When we were in the classroom with her, first off she looked quite old for P1. Then she was hitting the other children quite violently, pulled a girls skirt up cause she knew somehow that she was not wearing underwear, and just seemed quite off. Dorthy told us that she was 15 and had some severe mental disabilities. She apparently has a hard time working around other children, and will more than likely never finish school. We may get the chance to work with her one-on-one to see if that can help her progress at all. After dinner we came back to CHAIN and watched a movie with the kids. I borrowed Little Rascals from my roommate, and we were unsure how successful it would be, but the children loved it. All ages were there, and they thought it was the greatest thing ever, and laughed the whole time.

On Wednesday we got up early and helped the mothers. We swept and mopped the floors. Then we attended staff devotions. After that we went out to help Auntie Olivia with the laundry. We then took a break at tea time and walked with one of the child development interns into a village to get rollex. We had tea and talked to Dorthy.

We then served the children lunch and then went and had lunch with Dorthy. We spent some time discussing CHAIN, and Uganda and social work . Then we went down to the school. Dorthy had previously given Alayna a list of children for us to work with. We were able to meet with three. We basically just talked to them to understand their backgrounds. This was difficult to do as we felt as though we were slightly frightening to the children. Quite frankly I do not blame them, if someone came in and told me that the two white girls were in the office (we found out later that sometimes the kids get disciplined - spanked in that office) I would be scared too. One of the children also did not speak much English. The only one that did not look terrified was the blind child... We are going to talk to some more on Tuesday, we have two children that only go to the school and four that live at CHAIN I believe. We did tell them that they could talk to us whenever they needed someone to talk to, and that we wanted to just be friends and talk to them, so I am hoping that maybe as weeks go on the kids will trust us more. Yet at the same time, I know that in four weeks my hours will be over, and I am not sure that I have enough time to really do anything.

After we talked to the kids we spent some time talking to Dorthy about how it went, and she told us some more of their story, at least for the girl who spoke little English. I think she wants us to redo some of the profiles, to update them, so that should be interesting as well.

I cannot believe how close I am to done. I have gotten 92 of my 150 hours, and my time here is going by so quickly. Two months from yesterday I fly out and two months from today I will land in the United States. It is so crazy to me that it is going by so fast, that it is going to come to an end. I love it here, and in some ways I know that I will be ready to go back to the U.S. but I do love it here, and it will be hard to leave my kids at practicum along with all the people I have grown so close to here. This is such a different world than the one I live in in America, and I know that I am going to have culture shock. Even though we have not been here that long, life is so different. I am sure though that you will have to hear alot more about this when it comes close to the time that I have to leave, so I shall stop for now.

Tomorrow I am going rafting on the Nile, Grade 5 so that should be lots of fun!!!