Site Visit Activity

Site Visit Activity is one of the training program for us to visit the working place in couple of days. For me, I went to Luwero for three nights from Tuesday. I went to Hippo's school and met students. My school is located in Woblenzi, Luwero, where it is north about one hour from Kampala.

On the first day, I went to Woblenzi and met director, or principal at school and I went to the school. As I told you the number of students have been decreasing, it was like a after-school care of schoolchildren. There is no window, no ceiling but they have building, blackboard, desks and chairs. After I shortly looked school I went to the town with my director to do some tasks. Then I went back to the hotel in the evening. The hotel cost 50,000Ush.(about 1500yen). It is totally different from outside. I felt safe and cozy.

On the second day, I went to the school in the morning. Since there was only one teacher who teaches at school and she had to look after four classes, a class for infant, pre-primary, primary1, primary2-3, she looked very hard and I decided to support her. Then I tought math and English in the morning. It was tough because they understood English a little. And I couldn't understand Luganda, which is local language spoken in Luwero district. And the teacher told me that I can speak only English while I am teaching English. I did my best what I could do.
In the afternoon, I visited one of my senior who he have already came to the school as a teacher since last year. His school is also located in Luwero. Since government as well as church support his school is was totally different from Hippo's school. I felt this school is similar school which I taught in Japan. The number of students is over 800 and about 30% of the students live in the school. It is a kind of boarding school but also more than half of the students come to school from their house.

On the third day, I watched a lesson which my senior did. It was math class. His class has about 50 students. It was a lot. The topic was to ascending and descending decimals in order. It was complicated one. He taught as we did in Japan by showing some examples and then gave them some practices. I felt they understood well while he explained examples. But when they started to practice I felt I was wrong. It was hard for them to understand those complicated decimals which is bigger or smaller such as 0.3, 0.33. 0.03, 3.3. They repeated a lot what the teacher said but at the same time they needed a time to understand what the teacher said. I helped them some parts. What was good is they understand my English. After I watched his class I went back to my hotel.

On the forth day, today, I also went to Hippo's school in the morning and I tought English. They were waiting on the road and said "muzung"(It means white person). They are so cute!! This time there were three words, gray, drive, and fly. The purpose of that lesson is student's will make a sentence by using those three words. It was kind of hard because they can understand about 10-20% what I said. But I used some drawings and gestures and tried them understood what I said. Then I could barely understand them by using three simple sentences; My shoes is gray. I can drive a car. and A bird is flying. I felt that it is very important to use pictures and some images for them to understand especially for those who are hard to communicate by using words.

After the lesson, I went back to Kampala.

There is a week before dispatch, I am going to think what I can do for them.

Kenya@Kampala