Facing a long bus journey

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I've got a few minutes while the students are being asked to get their packs for boarding our bus to Kabale, but I may have to finish this when we get there. Last night we were visited by one of the students we had sponsored through school, Saidi, and who is now at uni here! He was a real celebrity - everyone taking his photo; Liz was in raptures. More later..

Everything takes a long time here (special African time). In our hippy bus we drove through many small towns on the way to Kabale, small ribbons of concrete and red dust, corrugated iron and wooden staffs, and really varied scenery too (you wait for the pictures!) Impressions: many mopeds, women carrying towers of stuff on their heads, freshly skinned animal hide drying in the sun and beaten with stones and clubs, ramshackle lean-tos just placed on the red earth and seeming to prop each other up; wooden scaffolding. Banana trees with little shacks in between now and again, each perhaps small areas of subsistence farming. Solitary women hoeing, sometimes with a baby affixed to their backs with brightly coloured cloth. Termite mounds galore: 4 -6ft high. Goats hobbled, chickens in baskets, the odd pig. Cows with fantastic, long horns; the ubiquitous Marabou stork. As we neared Kabale the scenery became greener, hillier (we are higher than Ben Nevis after all), and there were signs of terraced farming occasionally - it does actually seem quite lush. It was dark when we finally rolled up at Green Hills Hotel about 8pm. The headmaster of KHS , Twino, and Aggrey who had fixed up the project with us, came there to meet us and we had a buffet-style dinner with them amid much laughter and back slapping!They seem thrilled we are actually here.

Weds (I think). Everything is still surreal. Today we have been to the school and I will have to send another blog with more details, but we had a very, very moving assembly outdoors and the children sang. We met the bishop (we did not have to kiss his ring) and signed visitors' books. When we met the other teachers there was whooping for joy, and cries of "she is here! She is here!" from Penninah, the head of English, as she squeezed me in a big hug and then we stared into each other's eyes. It is all you can do to swallow down the threat of tears. Anyway, I love them all. I have taught a sonnet to class 2C (which had 50 pupils in it, varying in age) - Liz had to entertain them while I wrote it on the board, and tomorrow I shall teach Senior 6 (2A Lit as it were) and an English language class to 3C. I have never taught such well-behaved, attentive, friendly,warm, smiling students. And speaking of students, ours are being real stars - just joining in, befriending KHS students, learning phrases in Swahili and Rukiga (the mother tongue) and teaching KHS pupils to say 'it's cool' and 'fab' and give high fives. (very American!) Anyway, kiboniire! (it's all good)

The school has had its internet cable cut by vandals so I cannot blog from there, but am in the White Horse Inn and will try to come back here at the end of the week.

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Comments

[Catherine]

Warm Thursday in London
Was unsuccessful in swallowing down threat of tears reading your last entry! Wonderful description of your welcome at the school - keep blogging when you can.