Blog

Burim Blog #2 From Uganda!

Feb 24, 2011

Life has been good here in Gulu, Uganda.  The electricity is getting better.  Where I am staying does not have water right now, but there have been promises that it will soon be fixed.

I am having a lot of fun teaching the Youth Volunteers.  While I was gone they didn’t practice very much, and when I first got back they were embarrassed to play in front of the other volunteers in our group training classes.

Sometimes they even pretended that they forgot their instruments.   But now I am working with each of them individually, and they are improving so fast.   I am able to accomplish much more with them in their individual lessons and I also get to know more about them personally.  It is definitely helping them feel comfortable when they play for each other and the children now, and has increased their courage and desire to play more music.  They have told me that now they know how much they love playing music and practicing. I am more than happy when I see how confident they are now.

We started our classes at GUSCO (a local NGO working with formerly abducted and camp children) last Saturday. I taught two songs and told them about our music program, and they told me that they are very excited to be able to do something that other kids their age cannot do.  I can’t wait to start them on the instruments and really give them this feeling that they want– to make them feel special and build their self-esteem.

The children at GUSCO are the kids that are the most left out of the community, and Gusco is trying to help them to integrate.  Our music program is a great way to help them be integrated into the community and feel good about themselves.

Innocent, one of our Youth Volunteers came with me to the Holy Rosary Primary (elementary) School in Gulu to introduce our program to the Head Teachers there.  He was so confident and did a very good job, and now we have our program back in this Primary School, and it is looking like we will have around 100 students.

We are still doing classes at the Pabo IDP Camp.  The camp, which had a population of over 75,000 when we first came to Uganda, is now officially closed but still has over 10,000 people living there.  We are teaching three different groups in the camp.