Category Archives: Observations

August 19, 2014 · 7:15 am

A Solution to Poverty & Corruption

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There’s a strong and unmistakable feeling of pride that one gains as a teacher. The feeling when you teach a student a new concept and watch them apply it. It’s truly wonderful and one of the greatest perks of the job. However, with training teachers, I experienced something even greater. The feeling when you teach a teacher a new concept and watch them apply it. You can then watch the students become more engaged in the lesson and learn more. It is a truly rewarding experience and one that I find incomparable.

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August 5, 2014 · 5:14 am

Sharing Skills with Ugandan Teachers

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The nineteen year old headmaster – with a second level qualification – leads me to our shelter from the morning sun. We sit in the shade of a pine tree, around a locally-produced wooden table and chairs. I am warmly greeted by the other members of staff, a man in his late-teens and an eighteen year old mother nursing her baby boy, as I take a sit at the rather delicately-placed table. The school – a cobbled concoction of mud, concrete and bricks – sits almost apologetically beside some eavesdropping cows and goats. This was my first experience of being a ‘teacher-trainer’ last week.

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July 29, 2014 · 7:35 am

The Disarming effect of Ugandan Religious Fervor

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I am, and have always been, a staunch atheist with a respect and fascination with religion but a firm belief that it shouldn’t be aggressively re-enforced or alluded to, publicly. Personal experience has dictated that people who vocalize their beliefs are the same people that disregard those of others. Further being raised in the semi-rural Ireland of the 1990’s, I had a Catholic-immersed childhood. The most positive result of which having ample imagination-developing time at Mass each week. However, peculiarly I don’t find the reality of religion seeping into every facet of life in Uganda as abhorrent as I thought I would.

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June 28, 2014 · 9:41 am

Pessimism Greets Victory

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Ireland tops a – grammatically adventurous – survey to win ‘goodest’ country to live. Now that in itself isn’t something that I deem worthy of comment[1] . However, the outrage (within my homeland) over the victory needs to be unpacked. Irish people greeted the award with angry emails denouncing the country’s status.

On the surface, this seems like a ludicrous concept rooted in a deep-seeded, anti-nationalistic, pessimism. A society so lacking in patriotism that any celebration of the nation leads to cries of treason. However, such a reasoning lacks an understanding of the self-deprecating and cynical nature of the Irish.

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June 10, 2014 · 8:01 am

The Wasted Third

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I started thinking yesterday after work about our relationship with our working lives. I personally really enjoy my work – I’m a teacher – and gain great satisfaction and pleasure from my job. It really got me thinking. As I speculated, I sought the assistance of a thesaurus for language manipulation. If we consider the synonyms of work we find the words toil, labour, grind and drudgery. All of which paint a Dickensian portrait in charcoal and darkness on the innocent canvas of youth. We are almost trained to believe that work – like school to many youths – is the necessary evil for enjoyment. I’ve never been (nor do I ever care to be) a member of this rather bleak club. For many though it is, sadly, the norm that they exist within.

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June 7, 2014 · 8:56 am

Nature of Youth and Experience

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The approaching summer always inspires in me the nostalgia of my spring. The days when me and my oldest friend would wander across the fields of his father’s farm. Meandering around cow dung, past brambles and frog spawn in search of nothing and yet with the unfaltering  purpose which comes with youth. We were in one sense adventurers & explorers and in another lords or all that we surveyed. The countryside was ours for the taking. We cared little for the path that we undertook or for the world that lay before us. And if the world failed to satisfy that thirst for exploration then our ample imaginations would naturally fill the void.

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May 3, 2014 · 9:30 am

Basket-Making Gypsies of Northern Romania

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‘When you die you’ll leave that big house. When I die I’ll leave this [little one]. What’s the difference?’ he says as he puts out his cigarette on the stained carpet of his living room floor. The carpet itself, a mere buffer between their home and the soil beneath. ‘The difference being,’ he continued, ‘that I’ll have sang and danced, while you’ll have been chasing all those things.’

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March 14, 2014 · 7:59 pm

Art as Communal Chaos

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I went to ‘Carnaval’ in Santa Cruise De Tenerife recently and decided to conduct an artistic social experiment. Art by its very nature, traditionally, – like writing – is a deeply personal, isolated and meticulous process. An individual, or group, sets out to plan, draft and perfect something that is then brought to the public for critique. My intention was to turn this concept on its head with a simple question: can art be created without a plan, talent or indeed any direction? It was with this question in mind that I set about preparing my ‘costume’ for the Carnaval.

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January 21, 2014 · 9:45 pm

85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world

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We live in a time of the greatest expansion in technology, healthcare, education and innovation that the world has ever seen. We flap wildly like the fabled Icarus with Green-house gases threatening to melt the wax. However, we soldier on, we innovate, we adapt like we have always done before. It is our ability to adapt and unify in the face of common danger that has allowed us to adapt and regenerate ourselves as a race and a species. It is no accident that the human race is the one that has dominated society. However, though much greatness has been accomplished and evolution has led to advancement there has always been a primitive avaricious gloom to the species as well.

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January 8, 2014 · 8:00 pm

Istanbul: A City of Paradoxes

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I feel like a re-ignition of this blog has been long overdue and I’ve finally found the time and inspiration. I was in Istanbul for the New Year and found that the celebration in the main square there is devoid of a countdown. Instead the festivities consisted of one lone cheerer who caused a ripple effect across the crowd. This was followed approximately thirty seconds later by fireworks. It struck me as very usual how a festival which revolves around the celebration of time could be so badly, as it were, timed. However, I came to realise during my time in Istanbul that this was just one of many paradoxes that coloured the city’s streets.

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