David is pondering a blog post he’d like to write, on the theme that running a Ugandan boarding school isn’t so much like the analogy he though of before: owning a 30 year old Italian car. It’s more like using a 30 year old Italian car on the moon. I’m hoping he finds the time to illuminate you all on the details.

Yesterday David turned 47. It was better than last year’s birthday when I was in the hospital have a six hour surgery; but not so so much better. From a Christ School standpoint, a doozy of a day. The morning started with a serious sexual harassment by a male staff to a female one – this was not an off-hand sexual remark but a serious invasion of bodily space. The woman handled it beautifully; reporting it to David immediately and sitting in on his meeting with the other party to make sure the truth was told. Sadly this incident involves one of our male staff that we DON’T usually worry about; a real boy-scout who has demonstrated a lot of leadership potential. When you feel sure that a large percentage of your staff is probably involved in sexual misconduct, you just can’t find proof; learning that one of the few you trusted is doing the same stuff is like having your feet knocked out from under you.

All of the doors at Christ School’s admin block have big signs stating ” CSB has a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment. This includes relationships between staff as well as staff to student and student to student.” This sign went up last year after a sexual harassment incident in which we learned that perhaps some of our staff aren’t really aware that fondling a coworker is inappropriate. It’s hard to know here; where the sexual lines are drawn in such different places. So Kevin (David’s predecessor) did training on sexuality in the workplace and the big signs went up. We are thankful for those signs now and thankful that for one woman they or something else gave her the courage to speak out when most women in this culture would have remained silent. It takes strong women to stop a vicious cycle of domination and sexual power-taking. We want to take women’s side but it has been very hard to do so without their cooperation. When the man can insist with the support of his coworkers that it was just a joke, the woman has to be pretty strong to say “no way” to those kinds of jokes.

We have yet to be sure what the outcome will be for this male staff member, but another one was sacked yesterday for his inappropriate student relationship. Since there was only half-hearted denial and no appeal to the Board there is a real confirmation of the solid evidence we found. He is supposed to leave today by noon and we are hopeful that he will go quietly. We are praying for the safety of the girl he was involved with as well as many others that he had approached.

And David got a written statement from a student informer who came out of the woodwork to explain to us what REALLY happened at the first day of UNEB exams. It is too late to punish students for cheating, for these particular ones their exams have already ended. But a note will go in to the UNEB officials invalidating their scores on certain exams and providing the phone number of the person who sold the information. Let’s hope the officials who receive our paperwork were not also involved in the process of corruption.

Late afternoon we discovered that Naomi has cracked a second tooth. The first one cracked in July and was repaired in August only to break again a week later (we hear the quality of the repairing cement sent to Africa is not so great). Now she has a large crater in one of her back molars which is causing her a lot of pain in addition to the front tooth which is still half missing. Poor, poor baby. We scheduled an emergency trip to Kampala tomorrow for dental appointments. Thankfully David has a four day break in UNEB exams and can accompany us which will make it so much more tolerable. I am fighting to try to get the only American dentist in Kampala to see Naomi on Monday morning. Pray that we find a dentist who is caring and compassionate and excellent and who can fix this without too much unnecessary pain and trauma. It’s hardship for our kids that makes life here the hardest – and I am wishing for our pediatric dentistry in Annapolis right now.

So passed David’s birthday. The evening was a noticeable reprieve. Skip and Barb Ryan arrived from Kamapala by road – a pastor and his wife who are here to minister to us and the Babwisi for the next six weeks. They are full of joy and energy and refreshing to be around. Nathan also arrived, a two year short-termer who will work in nutrition and HIV/AIDs. We are so thrilled to have him here. Quinn has already begun to glom onto the new “guy.” So, after a brief team meeting, two mission houses were re-opened for use by the Ryans and Nathan and then we settled down to the serious business of pizza-eating, and celebrated David’s birthday with singing, chocolate chip cookies and a watching of an old Pink Panther movie. And so, all ended well.

Yesterday’s staff seminar dealt with the leadership topics of competence and courage. David linked the two, leading to the new insight for many that a sense of competence that can help us to have courage and that competence is built over time with patient trying. I was encouraged by the lively discussion among the staff members and the clear sense that they were thinking actively through these issues. Some said that confidence is something you are born with, while another said, in my favorite quote, “your heart is made up of a certain percentage of cowardice and a certain percentage of courage – you can change those percentages through your action.”

A less expected result of the morning’s talk was the revelation of evidence confirming our suspicions of inappropriate staff/student sexual relationships. A staff member came forward with this information that had been withheld out of fear stating, ” I haven’t felt okay since our talk about fear and courage this morning.” David had quoted that courage is not the absence of fear but the action in spite of it. For this one staff member, that teaching helped them to step forward in a move that promotes safety and health not only for one or two girls entangled in unhealthily coercive relationships but for a whole school and community of girls who have never been spoken up for.

Now we face the hard work, today, of confronting at least one male staff member with the evidence we have. The hard work of speaking the truth in love. And we must do this while praying that we are not motivated merely by justice but also by the desire for their repentance and seeking after Him. My heart is not there yet, so pray for me to move past thoughts of castration and have a heart aimed towards their spiritual rehabilitation.

Part of the UNEB exam process are invigilators – those teachers who act as exam monitors throughout the weeks of testing. Invigilators are drawn from local schools and must be qualified teachers who have been approved by UNEB and released by their school administration. We at Christ School join in doing our civic duty by providing the requested three teachers; Rosalyne, Mutombi and Godfrey all volunteered.

Our school takes a hit, though, with three teachers away. Senior 1 and 2 classrooms take advantage of their subject teachers being away to make more noise than usual and goof off whenever possible. We punish students mostly with “slashing” using the long scythe – like “slasher” to cut the long grass on the school compound, and over the last weeks of the exams there has been more slashing than usual as we react to the absence of teachers and the subsequent misbehavior of students.

Yet our teachers are in the community, doing good. The presence of Christ School teachers in the two other UNEB certified school’s in our district (imagine that, only three high schools in our entire district are certified schools which can take national exams) promotes a new level of care and honesty. We have a reputation, built over years of Kevin and Jd’s consistency, which says that corruption WILL be routed out when CSB’ers are around. That’s a good feeling. Especially when we see signs of corruption throughout the rest of the process, special favors asked and a special kind of friendship requested. Christ School is living up to it’s name, His name, when it promotes justice and mercy, here within our compound or in Bundibugyo at large.

And teachers come back from the other Bundibugyo high schools with stories that show us, despite our many shortcomings, how far ahead we are. We, at least, have provided all of the lab materials to allow students to do the practical parts of their exams – not all school’s have found the money. We don’t have students refusing to sit national exams because they’re ” not ready”, a horror story we heard from another school this year. And our Bunsen burners are held with actual lab equipment not sticks found in the schoolyard. Add to that our capacity to actually house and feed our boarding students and we realize how much we have to be thankful for.

Our big victory for the last week was two new successes in finding lower food prices. It seems small, but even working out the details of exactly how much maize flower costs per kikoppo (about two cups) on any given week isn’t simple. Last week we sent three different people to the market at three different times to buy one kikoppo each of about six staple foods. Each person came back with a different price. And each of those prices was different from the one we had paid through our purchaser that week. Corruption? Theft? Incompetence? Bad timing? Whatever creates that difference, it has to stop; a difference of only about 100 shillings (17 cents) per kicoppo on several of our staple foods totals up to an additional $200 loss EACH WEEK – do the math, on our skinny budget those small changes in price add up to almost an additional $1000/month.

Of course our purchaser buys our staples on another day in a different market in a second country (DRC) so that SHOULD greatly improve our chances at good prices. DRC is where local women trek on foot to buy rice or cassava flower to resell at higher prices in the market here. We are trying to cut out one of the middlemen. And this week, finally, it worked. Though it took David creating about fifteen different inventory, purchasing, and food-use forms to find out where the money was being lost through the channels it travels and babysitting our purchaser with the insistence that “if you can’t pay the price I’ve given you don’t buy at all.” A scary prospect when you realize that the food we’re buying needs to feed 400 people starting two days after market day. But we’re desperate, we’re bleeding badly due to these food prices and we frankly feel a bit scared.

And as food prices continue to rise, we make our budget for next year, finding, against all odds, some way to balance it given the giving for this year. But we wonder what giving will look like next year, due to the American economic crisis. And we wonder how to recover from this past year of food prices. What does faith look like for us, right now? What do you do when you have a responsibility to 400 people 24/7 and the money just isn’t there? When we look back at our choices do we see unanswered faith or hopeful presumption? Do we see God not responding to our prayers and requests for funding or do we see us not being faithful enough to risk asking? I’m asking a lot of hard questions of God right now; and so far I haven’t gotten very far. Running a challenging ministry in a challenging place is hard enough when the money comes in; without it there is a sense of desperation, loss, fear and hopelessness. So we ask God again and again, what does faith look like right now and how can You grow ours.

And in case I haven’t been faithful enough to risk asking; PLEASE consider giving a monthly gift in ANY amount to Christ School Gifts of $50/month add up to $600/year, a huge help in our budget. It would only take giving of another $1000/month to make up the deficit in our budget.

My friend Amy wrote and gave me the perfect word picture for what I’ve been feeling lately. It’s that sense you get when you’re into the ocean just a little too far and the waves are big and they just keep knocking you over and pulling you under and swirling you around till you don’t know which way is up. And just when you find North and manage to stand up, you get hit by the next one and you’re down again. That’s how I feel right now. Of course it’s a limited perspective, I’m sure God’s grinning, but still, it’s one of those months – just feels like a water-view all day long.

Events? Well, today was our Padre Pio day, so back we trooped to the local primary school for more punishing hours of copying English sentences into our notebooks over and over and over. Not me, of course. I was sitting just around the corner in my ” mobile office” – yes, really, my car. The kids’ school chaperone isn’t doing the most wonderful job of really supervising the kids (you know there’s a problem when they are being regularly petted by their fellow students anytime the teacher’s not around which is about six times per hour). So there I sit, nearby, in my car, trying to give the illusion that I’m NOT there while still BEING there. I brought along my laptop, about a zillion letters for sponsor families of our orphans (all needing reading, sealing, stamping, addressing), and a book on educational philosophy. And I read, worked on spreadsheets for agriculture and worked my way through the pile of letters.

Being a muzungu, of course, I’m so NOT subtle sitting there in my huge all-terrain vehicle in the middle of Kanmphono – the slums of Nyhahuku. Inevitably I soon attracted the attention of one of Nyhuka’s resident crazy-people. Drawn by my presence, he entered the school yard and began his ritual acts around the campus. He approached Naomi and Quinn’s class and did some ritual acts there too then headed back to sit guard by my car while I continued my work – crazy people are remarkably drawn to our skin color. All was well until some teachers from the school noticed him circling my car and yelling about killing the Ugandan president (yep, they’re ON it.) When they politely asked him to leave he started screaming that I was his wife and he wasn’t going anywhere, then he picked up two BIG rocks (like cantalope sized) and began threatening to throw them at me. He stalked around angrily for the next thirty minutes while I discussed demon possession with the Catholic priest who had come over to mention that I had really gotten the guy excited (“perhaps his demon senses the Spirit of God within you” he said). I decided I would try my demon -intervention another day (yes, I will, later this week) and hung tight until the guy finally left.

Arriving home the kids played, thrilled to be done with Ugandan school, while I headed off to chapel and more interactions with my surly cell group – I somehow got all of the most troubled girls in the school in my group and don’t seem to be getting through to them. Then off to print orphan letters, organize books in and out of the library, visit Christ School neighbors and talk about difficult issues with some.

So what feels so beach-front about it all? Hard to say. Perhaps it’s a lack of faith, a lack of seeing the future, of understanding how all these little events make up a life that will impact eternity. Perhaps it’s the moments when we break up student theft rings, when we face potential cheating scandals, when our food costs go up yet AGAIN, when girls indecently expose themselves and laugh, when a rat eats through a month of Christ School receipts in the office drawer . . . . . Perhaps it’s those moments that make the others feel harder and less worthwhile. And since they just keep coming in such succession (all these an more within the last week) it feels a little too intense. So pray that we would focus on the beautiful view and not forget to BREATH whenever possible.

The sun is setting and I sit, watching students pass by calling and laughing to each other as they prepare to head into their classroom for evening preps. My ear is pressed hard to my cell phone; I am listening for the sound of a baby squeal.

I talked to two American friends tonight. Yet my heart still feels sad. I am lonely. Talking tonight, however briefly, to two good friends, helped. Maybe it’s our lack of internet connection since Saturday night coupled with the events of exam week – things we don’t discuss with our staff friends because of confidentiality issues. I have been sick too, since Saturday night with intermittent fevers, vomiting, headaches and general aching weariness. I’m tired of killing roaches in my cabinets each morning, tired of thinking of what to prepare for dinner, tired of sweeping the sand from 14 small feet out my door each night and again each midday.

The kids returned to Padre Pio today. Poor sweet Quinn cried all the way there, tears of quiet desperation . They were both dreading the morning at school. But once there they did well and once again came out victorious. Survivors. Miss Ashley taught in their classroom for part of today, the special treat I dangled in front of them like a carrot to help them walk inside their class. As Quinn likes to say: “the best part of school is Miss Ashley.”

Uneb’s started on Monday (there is a backlog of blog posts because our internet has not been working since Saturday) and they have kept David extremely busy. We suspected we might have major trouble on our hands in the form of corruption on Monday morning in our first exam, but over the next two days events worked themselves out. David, in the process, has become a private investigator. His days have started early and ended late with multiple trips to the police station and official starting of exams each day, plus the normal business of managing a large school.

And what I have I been doing? I have been working on school issues too: creating a massive spreadsheet to track the economics of rabbit production( agriculture is complicated!), reading and mailing all of the letters from orphans to their sponsors, tracking problem students and talking to them about their falling grades, inventorying the science departments equipment and books and moving new shelving into their staff room, working on facilities repair for staff, and trying to decide who will move to make room for the new wives who are coming on campus. (Five staff members are marrying before the start of the new year, yikes! We are going to have to do some serious juggling to make everyone fit in our family housing!)

So that’s my week: sickness, tired, kids, corruption, sweeping, banana cream pie (from the girls, yum!), visits with friends, spreadsheets, malaria tests, inventories, talks with students, books, books and more books . . . . . Let me not forget to look Up.

Hope no one is offended by this Ode to Quinn on his official birthday – October 10th! We teach our kids the proper names for all their parts and Quinn is not slow to pick up on humor! (His career goal is to be Seinfeld when he grows up. )I wrote this last week, drinking in the soul-sustenance of enjoying my little boy. It’s a proper Happy 6th birthday to my little Man who is a complex and beautiful creature.

My ever-bigger-boy
Sits, still dirty in his tepid bath water
Enquiring eyes
Aimed up at mine
I have ordered him to wash his Whole Body.

“Uranus!” . . . . . giggles
Is that your favorite planet?, I ask wryly.
“it’s just a funny one”
“uranus!” . . . . . giggles
“my favorite planet is earth.
It’s my home planet”
(and I marvel
That this boy thinks in these terms
A traveler, at heart)

What’s your favorite country?, I ask
Ever-full of the mom questions.
He is barely thoughtful.
“of course I like at least two best,
America and Uganda.
Because I have friends both places
And favorite things.
Maybe I’ll like other countries best too.”

He scrubs vigorously
At his truly filthy
Little boy body
Scrubs till the soaps lathers hard
Then does his upside-down hair-rinsing trick.
Oh, how I love this boy.

Barely dry
“Cause I’m so URGENT!”
A vessel is pulled from his window-sill jar collection.
‘Ugandan Grenadian Syrup’, the elegant bottle reads.
Now a new home for fireflies which are
“totally tame” according to him.
He tells me how their lights help them to attract their mates,
As he slurps the noodles out of his chicken noodle soup
And recites his meal time prayer with extra strength.

“I think you and Dad might really be
. . . . .aliens.” he tells me,
Straight-faced,
At bedtime.
We question, how then he came to be human??
“It’s possible”, he says. “Hard to be sure.
What if our imaginings can make things true?”,
He wonders.
And I am reminded that my job is to allow his
Fantasy to fly while reassuring him
That reality is solidly behind, before and around him.
He is safe.

He hates underwear.
He loves weapons.
He tells gruesome fantasy stories.
And he cries to me not to kill the insects
Making their home, uninvited, with us.
He is hopeful that he may someday
Be able to marry his sister or his
Mother.
And he fervently declares that he hates us,
Whenever we cross his will.

This is the boy-man that I hold,
Lightly,
In my arms. Whose face I stroke
In sleep.
The one who wiped my kisses off
This evening.
But who will burrow into me in the morning
Desperate for snuggles.
Oh, how I love this boy.

It stands for Ugandan National Exam Boards and is the most feared and revered measure of success for young people in Uganda. Unlike our SATs, students who score poorly have no future chances in this country. And sadly, the exams themselves are often poor indicators of intelligence or study skills, reflecting more of a dependence on rote memorization. Students sit for ten papers in their various subjects of study.
Exams are closely guarded secrets. Every aspect of the testing process is fraught with red tape and confidentiality. The UNEB exam room at our school was set up on Friday for our Monday morning beginning exams. Each desk must seat a single person and must be separated by a designated number of centimeters from it’s surrounding desks. Students across the country all sit for their exams on the exact same date at the exact same time thus preventing some common forms of cheating. Students must apply for UNEB six months before the actual test including photo ids and the slightest discrepancy in their paperwork will disqualify them. Got malaria and unable to sit for your exam? Wait till next year, paying another year of school fees and another series of UNEB dues . . . . . Sorry.
Five days before the exams begin we got our phone call for receipt of the “Confidentials” – the secret information that explains what materials are needed for the lab practical exams, to allow each school time to prepare. They are hand delivered in sealed envelopes by the area supervisor for UNEB (this year, one of our former teachers, Andrew) and revealed to two to three people who will prepare the labs. Then an emergency request goes out to a lab supplier who will rush the supplies to us by Monday.

Each day of UNEB exams, which go on for about six weeks including both Ordinary level and Advanced Level students, David must report to the Nyahuka police station and enter a locked room for which only the area supervisor holds the key. There he will be handed sealed envelopes with the days exams. The envelope for each exam may not be opened until the moment the exam is to begin. This process appears more ludicrous when you take note of the Nyahuka Police Station itself. A small building with a decrepit “jail” – really a holding cell made of floor to ceiling wooden boards, smelling strongly of human waste and with hunted eyes peering out from behind. Police in our part of the country (like most parts) are not known for their honesty or devotion to civil duty. Perhaps that explains why only the area supervisor holds the key.

For the last week Ordinary level (senior 4, senior high school equivalent) students have been in their final reading week. Classes have ended and they are “reading and revising” a process of going through four years of notebooks holding the collected wisdom from teacher lectures, chalkboard dictations and occasional access to textbooks. They seek to organize themselves and prepare for the papers that will tell their future. Their best eight papers will form their score; their hope is to score Division 1 or 2 . . . Even Division 3 has some possibilities.

Meanwhile David looks forward to a stress filled month of supervising details; from lab equipment to testing room set ups to photo id checks. A mistake in any of these areas carries federal fines and jail times – a risk we are not interested in taking. Headmasters from all over the country are regularly jailed for infractions that we might not even have been aware of – which sure does keep us on our toes. So pray us through – our first UNEBs – nothing to be taken lightly.

Uganda marked another year of Independence on Thursday, October 9th. Staff and students worked together to prepare a full day of celebrations. We assembled early in the morning for a reading of Ugandan History which students actually seemed to enjoy! Then several students performed ceremonies involving a color change – it was amateur but still quite well done. A very spirited debate followed, sponsored by the CSB debate club and titled: ” Has Uganda gained independence through the front door only to lose it through the backdoor?” This debate was one of the most encouraging moments I have seen in our time at Christ School. Students forumed the debate but staff got involved in a peer manner, sharing their viewpoints with obvious energy and passion. The crowd roared time and time again as various speakers made their points. Many of the points circled on what I see as peripheral issues of symbolic independence (western clothing and hairstyles) but many also reached further to ask why our own Ugandan leaders are failing to act in an positively independent manner. Education is an obvious example: Uganda still struggles with an imported, outdated and illogical system. But the Ministry of Education is now Ugandan-run. Why don’t we see change? Perhaps these questions are more complicated than they appear. And perhaps our students will someday be the ones to make these positive changes.
Remembering our last Independence Day here, where we were the recipients of stones, I felt some trepidation as I attended the debate. The most positively received speaker statements centered on anti-white sentiment. I think that I have to receive that criticism, willingly, as penance for the sins of the white ones before us who treated humans as animals and used and abused for their own welfare.
Students watched a special movie brought by Scotticus last year: Endurance is the story of an Ethiopian runner who came from abject poverty to win the Olympics. Students made more noise than I have ever heard while watching this inspiring video about African success. Then they acted out their own success in subsequent table tennis, football, volleyball and running competitions. Fun was had by all.

The evening ended with the Candidates Party; a sort of homecoming as we discovered. Candidates are students who will sit for their national exams this year. For many it will be their last year with us. Candidates Party is a time to celebrate these kids, to encourage them, and to give them one last night of fun before the hard work of sitting exams starts. Girls dressed in party clothes, boys were smart too. There was meat and soda, the requisite speeches, and a little bit of dancing. And now, starting Monday, we face UNEB together.

Naomi and Quinn started school yesterday. Started Ugandan school for the very first time. Took a leap of faith that I consider miraculous – and survived.

It all began several years ago with a dream that someday our kids would share education with their Ugandan friends, that they would acculturate in this important way. Schooling within a host culture is one of the few proven ways to assimilate healthily for children. It seemed like an impossible dream given our experiences with local schools, local teachers and cultural traditions surrounding children.

As we learned of the Bartkovich and Masso departures and foresaw our children with no team friends their ages we began to long even more for a shared school experience. And then in the past few months we set our eyes on a school that is taking a higher road than many here. Details worked out in amazing ways; our American curriculum being adjusted for four days of school a week. Ashley, our kids’ teacher, wanting to work in this local school as well. And so, a month ago, we set the goal of beginning local school one day a week.

St. Padre Pio Primary School is located about 1/2 mile away from us in Kanampono – “the place of the pig”, where pigs can safely be butchered away from our local muslim market. The road from Christ School to Padre Pio leads through “Palm Oil Ave.” – where old Fanta bottles are filled with thick greasy orange cooking oil, extracted from local palm nuts. Barber shops line this dusty road as do small local restaurants comprised of a cookpot balanced on the requisite three stones and a sweating, tired woman.

After months of thinking, praying and wondering how to soften the inevitable blows of my children’s experiences at school, I had made some decisions. We would drive most of the way, sparing them the road with the constant cries of “mazungu mazungu” and the local children running up to touch their hair and skin. I would send sweet Assimwe (her name aptly means blessing), my house helper, to school along-side my children, to safeguard them and provide backup for the lack of true childcare within school. Should rebels strike or a fire break out, Asiimwe will grab them and run. I will limit their time at school to a single day a week. I will explain clearly to the school authorities that my children may NEVER be beaten. I will be on-campus as often as I can to watch staff at work and look for the normal human rights violations found in our local schools. I will pray for my children. Most of all I will trust God with them because I want His plans for them and not my fearful own.

This process has been nothing less than miraculous so far. A walk of true faith starting with a hope as small as mustard seed. God has walked us through each fear, each need, giving us enough for the problems of today without reassuring us about tomorrow. A month ago when I first announced to Naomi and Quinn that they would soon start school at Padre Pio; both clearly said “no way.” I kept a confident, positive approach – yes, this will happen; but in my heart I kept asking God, “can this really happen?” By this week Naomi’s mind had completely changed so that when I came home with her new uniform for school she paraded around proudly in it and even went to bed early so as to be at school more quickly in the morning. This is nothing less than miracle. The path has been harder for Quinn. As we headed off to school yesterday, Quinn steadfastly refused that he would go. As we parked on the road near the school he refused to leave the car and as I finally coaxed him out and we walked onto the school yard together he was stuck to my side like super-glue amidst the cries and stares of the other students.

Padre Pio is a Catholic school so we sat through the morning prayers together, me explaining things to the kids. Quinn barely budged from his clutch on my arm and I just kept praying and asking for God to help him, miraculously, into the classroom. I knew I couldn’t force him to go in. And God did, time after time providing Quinn just enough to move on to the next step of his day at school. Perhaps it sounds simple when written but I felt I was watching miracles unfold all morning. God is enough.

The classroom was a big adjustment for the kids. I made the decision to place them together in the P1 (similar to 1st grade) classroom. Naomi flies through the material while Quinn is challenged by some of it but they are there to learn culture not academics. It seemed to work. They studied math; mostly a lesson about the three most basic shapes, giving them confidence that they would be fine here! Then on to English where they answered basic questions about objects found in a classroom. For each subject they have small exercise books that they write copiously in. Quinn’s biggest challenge at school is the writing, as Ugandan schools start from nursery school tediously copying sentences from the board whether or not they understand how to read, know the alphabet or have any comprehension. Social Studies and science followed with parts of the body in English and some songs. There were the usual disruptions of classrooms here – the teacher, an old man whose name I never got, left the classroom about four times every hour and the headmaster came in multiple times to yell at the students for various small infractions. Quinn was most horrified and fascinated by the “beating” of students within class. The teacher made liberal use of a switch on children’s arms and legs – a sight I had hoped to spare my kids. Discipline within Ugandan schools is really just beating – there is generally no consistency of application or understanding of the infraction. As the headmaster told me when I questioned him on this illegal practice I had noticed in his school – “yes, we should find other forms of intimidation.” Um, yea.

We have a long way to go. The morning lasted from 7:30 am to 1:30 pm – I never knew Quinn could sit for two and half hours at a time on a wooden bench, staring at the blackboard! And Naomi and Quinn need confidence to join their friends in play at recess time. I need to work with Asiimwe on standing up to the men at the school as her natural tendency is to do whatever they tell her to. And we will have to address the students’ tendency to stroke Naomi and Quinn whenever the teacher is out of the classroom. Yes, there are many details to work out and my heart is still heavy with this burden. But I can not forget the miracles I saw and how God came through for me and most of all my kids. This is one of the hardest things I have walked them through but I sense that true blessing will come from responding to God’s challenge to take this step of faith. And I am pleading that all of you will pray us through.