My first day at school and I have already learned a lot!

Following our fabulous school opening party on Saturday our school opened it's gates for it's first day today. Some children arrived more than 30 minutes early, some more than 30 minutes late. The children, aged between 4 and 14 years old (just one is 14 - the rest are between 4 and 7) looked smart for about five minutes and then we got serious with the business of having fun learning. By the end of the day the uniforms were covered in dust and mud and a few children left with grazed knees!

We showed the children around the school and talked about our three rules - Respecting ourselves, respecting each other and respecting our environment. Suddenly, one girl calld Promise went into a long and animated story about a dog trying to bite her and how she feared and ran away. It didn't seem to have much to do with our school rules except maybe that dogs don't respect much!

Lunch was rice, matoke (savoury mashed bananas) and. We sat outside, under a gazebo seated on locally made mats. Unfortunately Promise put her feet in Ebenezer's food by accident and Opio spilt his drink on the mats. Every child refused to eat until each and everyone had their food in front of them. These children know a lot about living in a community. Unfortunately they were unable to contain their excitment at having such a good meal abd being together and sprayed a lot of food over us and each other as they talked and ate at the same time. We began the process of un-teaching this habit but I think it may well be a slow process.

Our Ugandan teacher Simon taught traditional music and dance. There was quite a lot of rivalry between the boys as to who should play the drums. I am gunning for a girl to surpass the boys at drumming but we will see.

The day ended with a story from 'The Happy Story Book followed by a slice of pineapple;. The children loved the puppets that accompanied the book and I was happy to have all eyes on the illustrations in the book and all mouths closed (no food being sprayed - no voices to sshush!)

I am tired but quite enthusiastic about the challenge of ensuring these children get a formal education that is as exciting as can be! Tomorrow I teach agriculture, drama and story-telling, integrated production skills (art and craft without the love of the process of producing!) and more English. I have learnt some African dance today and my Luganda has imrpoved a lot. I wonder what tomorrow will teach us?