all that glitters....

the last couple of days have been eventful, to say the least. i have been feeling absolutely awful, but thats not really relevant. yesterday and the day before there has been a large intake of new people, and all of the volunteers who went to rwanda returned yesterday, so the lodge is fit to burst. It is technically supposed to accommodate 20 guests, but there are currently 34 volunteers staying there. Its quite nice having lots of people around though, and they all fit without too much trouble.

Yesterday four of the new people (two mothers and a daughter each) and I took 5 children from each of  the baby classes, and made glitter pictures with them. They thought it was great fun, and just like Tanzania, they couldn’t quite understand why we would waste glitter by putting it on paper, and they were really just interested in putting it all over themselves. We are planning to repeat that activity every day for a few days  until all of the children in the baby classes have done it.

Yesterday some very sad rumours were confirmed for us by the parents of affected children. On Thursday through the village gossip line, Anne heard that some of the children who had done badly in their exams had been beaten by their teachers, and some had been hospitalized. This was really horrible to hear about but we just hoped it wasn’t true. Jameel, the head, who works closely with the volunteers seemed appalled and promised to investigate. It turns out that it was actually jameel who did it, so it’s difficult to know who to trust. Beating children in school is illegal in Uganda and if he was reported (particularly by a mzungu) he would be in serious trouble. I also witnessed one of the baby class teachers smacking another teachers child. The child isn’t actually a student, but all of the teachers babies are brought to school and allowed to roam around. We have been told to reprimand teachers of we see anything, but when I asked her not to do tha, she just laughed in my face. This is one part of volunteering here that I’m not loving.

I haven’t been into school today because I was feeling ill, but I needed to come into town to top up on painkillers, so I thought I’d post while I was here. I’m sure I was charged the white price for the ibuprofen I bought, but it still only cost 75p for 30 tablets.

I should be able to post again tomorrow because we are coming to see the market. (I might see about buying a pig!)

Love, lucy xx