grasshoppers, etc...

FYI, grasshoppers don't taste that bad. How do I know, you ask? I know because on Thursday evening I had the opportunity to eat one, actually I ate two. Grasshoppers are a delicacy here and are a sign of respect and admiration, so when our neighbor offered me and one of the other interns, Cassie, some we felt that we couldn't refuse. The whole experience was actually quite fascinating. First they pull off the wings, legs, and tails then they fry the bodies and salt them. By the time they are all cooked they don't really look like grasshoppers and more, they look something like crunchy fried onions. The taste is pretty unique. I'd say that that best way I could describe it is that it tasted sort of like buttered popcorn and chicken mixed together. It was definitely not the worst thing I've ever tasted but I certainly do not plan on eating them again anytime soon. Thankfully grasshoppers are not really in season so I don't think I will have too many people offering them to me again. I have some pictures of my first grasshopper tasting and I will try to post them using a different computer sometime within the next few days.

*Interesting fact: Grasshoppers are so special in this culture that if a wife prepares them for her husband he must go out and buy her a gift, usually a new clothe, to show his gratitude for the snack.

The second interesting cultural experience I had this week was attending an introduction. An introduction is kind of a pre-wedding wedding. Traditionally it is the time when the groom comes to declare his desire to marry the the bride and a bride price is negotiated between the groom's family and the bride's family. This still happens today, but now it is usually all a dramatic performance. The dowry is usually arranged ahead of time, so the negotiating is really just for show. The whole ceremony is VERY long. We arrived at 11:00am, we sat around until almost 1:00pm waiting for the groom to be invited to the house, from 1:00pm until almost 4:00pm we all sat around outside under a make-shift tent and watched as the two families debated how many cows the bride was worth (literally, I'm not just saying that to be funny). Then lunch was served. By the time we left it was just about 5:00pm and we were the first to leave! The introduction continued long after we left. In general I found it interesting but I'm not gonna lie it eventually got a bit boring. I think it might have been better had I understood more of what was being said. There was some interpretation, but not much.

Lastly, here's the up-date on teaching at Hope school. I am now splitting my time between the P2 class and the nursery class (like Kindergarten). The nursery class is particularly interesting. There are 48 students and only one teacher. They have very limited resources to work with. The only toys they have are dolls that they have made out of straw, balls that they have made out of various materials roped together, and two floppy, Frisbee-like discs. The teacher does a pretty good job with the children. She tries her best to give them opportunities to learn by doing hands-on activities but it is difficult with so many kids. I have enjoyed watching how classes are conducted. In general, Ugandan education is very different from Western education. To begin with, they do not have any textbooks so the students spend the majority to their time in class copying down everything the teacher has written on the board. Secondly, they are taught to memorize everything. Third, the national curriculum is, in my opinion, extremely random. For example, last week the children in the nursery class were learning about different parts of the body (i.e. arms, legs, etc...), next week they are going to learn about the creation of the world and the numbers 11-20. I don't really understand why the Ugandan government has created a curriculum like this, but they have and the teachers are required to follow it. It is all very interesting.