As I’m sitting here in my house tonight grading papers from
my Senior 2 classes, I’m starting to realize how bittersweet it is really gonna
be to leave here. I got to thinking
about this mostly because I was grading the Senior 2 papers. These students, the Senior 2s, are my students more than any other group of
students. These were the ones I was
teaching from the beginning. I’ve been
teaching them computers from the time I got here a year and a half ago and I
also taught them Math for a while. I can’t
say I know any other students better.
These are the ones that I even know a lot of their names. For a lot of them I can even put together
both their names (their Christian name and their local name) and I can also
pronounce most of them. This was
something I never thought I would learn.
As I’m grading their papers and looking at the list of names, I can
picture the students.
A lot of people here keep asking when I’m leaving. I think people are concerned that they won’t
know and then they can’t say goodbye to me before I leave. And as the end of the year is approaching
even more people ask me this because it is really natural for teachers to leave
at the end of a year. But no students
ask me this question more than the Senior 2s.
They heard that I wasn’t going to be here for the rest of this term
starting next week. They found this out
because their computer exam was moved to this week to accommodate me. I think they took this as I was possibly
never coming back and so the questions were even more than usual.
As I sit here thinking about all this, I look back on the
progress some of these girls have made since I got here. I also can’t help but think of the girls that
are always at the top. These are the
ones I seem to know the best. They are
the ones that keep going to camp and they seem to be the ones that are most
likely to come and chat with me. Many
people would probably look at my situation and say how much I’ve changed the
lives of some of these girls. Going to
camp alone really gives them something they would have never had
otherwise. They also have all these new
computers in their computer lab. And who
knows, maybe I’ve been such an influence that a lot of these Senior 2s will opt
to take computers next year as Senior 3s.
But what most people don’t see or think about is how much these girls
have changed me. Upon arriving in this
country I was told that girls here are told they are no good at Math and
Science and because of that they often just give up. I was told girls here are generally not
assertive and won’t look you in the eye.
They don’t speak up. Just from
taking a handful of my students I could prove most of these myths wrong. They’ve changed the way I look at Ugandans
and stereotypes in general.
A lot of students (or people in general) will ask me to take
them back to America. Usually I would
just brush them off, but I knew I crossed a certain point when I actually
wanted to take some of my students back with me. As far as Uganda goes I’m at a pretty good
school and therefore we have some really good students. It just kills me that if these girls were
given the chance to go to University in the U.S. (or any other developed
country), they could really make it. But
because they were born here and their families don’t have money, they will
never live up to their full potential.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the means to make this happen. Not to mention the fact that these girls aren’t
ready to go to University yet, but even if they were I’m still helpless when it
comes to this matter.
Despite any ill will or discouraged feelings I may have
developed toward my school, especially lately, it will be bittersweet to leave my
students. I can’t wait to get out of
here, but I hate to leave them. As a
whole, they have never truly disappointed or disgusted me. There are very few things in this country
that I will really miss, but this is one of them.
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