Due to a shortage of exciting material, I’m going to take my everyday life and hype it up to see what happens.
SO I’M STILL TEACHING!
Although my second-year students are getting restless and thoroughly irritated with me, as they want to do nothing but review for three weeks for their final exams, I continue to drive through my last topic, drugs and medicine. I try to make my lessons fun, but it seems that when I do that, the students don’t take me as seriously, even when I’m still teaching a lot of new information. I won’t give up though, I continue to do REALLY EXCITING, STUDENT-CENTERED LESSONS! WOOT! For example, to wrap up drugs and medicine, we talked about alcohol--particularly alcohol in Uganda. Here are some quick facts I got from a report available from the yeahuganda.org website:
“Worldwide, adults (age 15 years and older) consume on average 5 liters of pure alcohol from beer, wine and spirits each year. For the Africa region, the adult (15 years and older) consumption of alcohol is about 4 liters of pure alcohol each year. The WHO Global Status Report on Alcohol released in 2004 showed that in Uganda, 19.47 liters of pure alcohol are consumed per capita each year.”
19.47 liters...I just went ahead and rounded that up to 20. To open this lesson, I flooded them with stats from this one report, and then showed them, through the use of colored water and liter-sized water bottles, how much 20 liters really is. (In hindsight, I could have just brought in a jerrycan...) I think it was informative to the students, and somehow eye-opening. I then had them do a skit of someone getting progressively more drunk at a party, and how the drinker acts according to his increasing BAC level.
One question that arose from class was, “How is it that Uganda has such a high alcohol consumption rate, yet there is also a high poverty rate?” As in--how can Ugandans afford to drink that much? Great question--the answer? Mwenge bigere/Tonto/Malwa/Kwete/Waragi...also known as the home brew. “Informally produced alcohol make up about 80% of alcohol drunk in Uganda today.”
MID-BLOG ENERGIZER:
What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?
BACK TO ME
I'm hoping that the class was effective in opening students eyes to the drinking situation in Uganda, and I left them with something to reflect upon as what their role as educators is in influencing their future students positively. Next week I will bend down and bow to the evil monster that is standardized exams, and begin doing some serious review with them.
I READ SOMETIMES!
I finished Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad. I love any true survivor stories--it was a good one. I lent it to a Ugandan tutor at the college, who said he enjoyed it. (Truthfully, I hardly believe he understood any good portion of it, especially when Ollestad narrated in surfer and skiier lingo--I didn’t even understand those parts. Additionally, it’s laced with American cultural references, of which I’m certain he wouldn’t grasp). I am now reading The Book Thief, which I’m loving. I clearly do not read as much as my fellow PCVs. Perhaps that’s next month’s goal.
I ALSO WATCH THINGS ON MY COMPUTER!
I started and finished the whole of Friday Night Lights. I want to thank the good people at Owen Falls Dam for giving me a solid week of power. I at the same time want to apologize to the students at college who were hoping that I would open the library at night that week (it was raining...kinda...)
I HANG OUT IN JINJA TOWN!
I think that some shopkeepers think that I live there, actually. I celebrated Halloween with other PCVs at the NRE (Nile River Explorers) and it was a blast! It was a very American event. The following day I didn’t have much energy to do my wash...which really disorganised me. I explained this to my counterparts Nora and Immy, and they INSISTED on coming over and helping me do my wash that Monday afternoon. Not only that, they pretty much cleaned my whole house. I consider myself the luckiest in terms of workmates. They probably won’t read this but THANKS GUYS! :D
MY LIFE IS SUPER EXCITING! UGANDA!
This blog was brought to you by the letter M.
Hint, hint.
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