Nine of us, 7 teachers and 2 Head Teachers, had been selected for the adventure and training took place over 2 weekends in Edinburgh. The charities supporting the project were LINK and The Wood Foundation. It was both daunting and exciting to meet my fellow adventurers. While we would train together and spend some time together during 2 of the weekends in Uganda, we would fundamentally be entirely on our own, living and working in a rural community in Masindi district.
The most important aspects of the training were learning about the country and culture and learning about ourselves. We were NOT going to Uganda to show them how it’s done. We were going to help them achieve their own goals – not ours! As our understanding deepened, I realised there would be no place for well-meaning benevolence in terms of resources, projects or money. this would only enhance the stereotypes we were trying to break down. The key message coming across time and time again was that WE WERE THE RESOURCE.
One of my fellow Global teachers described the project as a spider’s web. It was about inter-connections between teaching colleagues in Scotland and Uganda, between children from both cultures and between wider communities. Vibrations on a spider’s web go both ways.
Even at this stage, I began to realise that I was going to learn as much as I taught. As the Head Teacher of a small primary school, in Aberdeenshire, in Scotland it was going to be an interesting challenge and a steep learning curve.
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