#28 July 6th- Monday

-Team Teaching
Three weeks left! Monday’s can be rough. At Gulu SS, it seemed to me that there were many teachers missing. One of them was David. I came a bit early hoping to get and head start on grading. I couldn’t find the exams so I worked on planning for my classes for next year. David cell was disconnected so I decided to go ahead and teach one of his classes for him. The difficulty with this is that some Ugandan teachers start to see us as an international substitute teacher service. I don’t think David sees me that way. The class went well, but the best scenario is that we teach together. In Uganda, the students will have the same social science teacher throughout high school. Why? That way they will know if the teacher has failed to teach them. David never showed, so I went home a bit early. Michael asked if I wanted to play basketball with him. We walked down to the courts. It is about a mile from where we live, but everyone walks in this town. A few use bicycles, some use motorcycles (boda-bodas), and fewer still use cars. I haven’t seen many accidents, although my roommate Matt said he saw a boda driver go over his handle bars. He was too drunk to drive, so some people nearby convinced him not to drive it. I’ve wondered from time to time how sober my drivers have been.
Down at the courts we shot around for a little. I’m amazed that these kids make baskets. They have no arc in their shots at all. Michael is a pretty good player, but it’s not really my strength. I decided to go over to play soccer with some of the local guys. These guys are talented beyond belief. They can dribble all over the place. The ball control is amazing. We split up to shirts and skins. Of course, I was on the skins team. My hairy white belly is quite a spectacle around here. I love to get into the mix. Really, that’s the only thing I had going for me. I wouldn’t stop running and chasing them down, so I think it might have opened up some opportunities for me team. I had two clear shots at the goal and missed them both. It was pretty embarrassing. At one point during the game my feet slipped from under me and I fell, face first, on the red clay dirt. When I jumped up someone pointed to my chest. They all wanted to make sure I was ok. One guy smiled at me and joked, “Hey Jon, you’re not a muzungu anymore.” Michael was playing in a pretty intense pickup game. The guys are pretty tall and talented. They like the full court passed and the only offence is run and gun so it was fun to watch.
I noticed the sun setting as a backdrop behind a beautiful tree. It looked like a postcard. I pointed it out to the guy next to me. I said, “Look at that!” He looked back at me and said, “We call it the sun.” It’s funny to me that something so beautiful is seen as common place. I wonder how many things we live with would seem as wonderful to him as that sunset seemed to me.
Dinner was actually really good tonight. We had rice and cabbage with spicy, SPICY, chicken. It was pretty awesome, but ridiculously hot. At the hotel, Phil (a professor from Boise state) came over with some of the group three folk to watch the movie Dodgeball. It was nice to have a good laugh.