From Kris and Tim

Our work mainly involved working with P3, P4 and P5 at Divine Mercy School. (The older children had exams). We did maths and/or english and would then go outside for sport and games. (This is our background) At the end of 2 weeks with them at their Speech day we presented the pupils with a certificate of achievement in the “Super Sports Challenge” which was great. (I just did the certificate in word at the Internet Café and they printed it out for me)

We found them to be natural athletes and as you would expect very enthusiastic.

The sort of activities and games we played included:

Over/ Under, Seize the Flag, Stuck in the Mud, Rounders (hadn’t played this before), Soccer (no problem here – mad on it), Throwing and catching with tennis balls, (they especially loved going for the high ones) throwing and catching with big balls and netball, line dancing, obstacle courses involving hoops, skipping, bouncing balls, relays etc.

We bought some equipment while here – ‘Game” at Logogo Mall is good for stuff and big balls are available at the shops in Mukono. There are also a few specialist sports shops in Kampala (Frank and Kayiira can take you) or one in Garden City Mall. Pointless paying a lot of money for equipment though. We stored it in a big white bag and pleased to say apart from one ball getting a puncture and the hoops rather bent out of shape, nothing went missing.

With regard to the english and maths we tried to apply knowledge here and make it practical. They learn by rote so can do a sum if you lay it out for them but are not used to lateral thinking and problem solving.

I did the english and had them speak as much as possible, their reading skills are good but I suspect oral english could be worked on so they develop confidence as well especially when talking with muzungus.

At this stage they only had one text book per class – the teacher would have to write the whole lesson up on the board and the kids copy it down in their exercise books. They loved being able to see the book and read from so we have paid for 8-10 text books per class in the following four subjects - maths, english, social studies and science. They may have to share but this is a vast improvement on the current situation.

We have also started a library with 25 ‘readers’ – they are about 2.500-3,500 SH each so if future volunteers could add to this that would be great. We mainly went for books for the 9+ age group but the P1 and P2s have NO resources whatsoever so helping them would be huge.

We are also embarking on a project to fund some improvements to the school for the start of next year. This will involve filling in the holes in the floor, plaster boarding the rooms and getting desks, among other things. Anyone here in 2008 let us know what has been done!

Our time at Divine Mercy was a fulfilling experience. The teachers were all great. Sebastian can be a bit manic at times and we suspect pretty hard on the kids but all the others were very welcoming. The kids are well disciplined and well mannered, if they grab stuff on occasions it is understandable, if they don’t they may miss out. But they look out for each other, look after the little ones and I think are genuinely happy to have muzungus working with them.

Have a good time – if you want to email me feel free to do so kris.tynan@xtra.co.nz