Wonderfully Rewarding Week!

This past week has been amazing. I feel like my whole trip here has been worth it now. I have been having a little bit of a hard time, feeling homesick, and wondering what I was doing here. But after this week, I think I am really going to miss Uganda.
This past week, we did an "empowerment" seminar for girls at a nearby secondary school (basically a mix of middle school and high school - there are 6 grades). I had been wanting to do something like this all summer, but just hadn't known where to start. I came up with 5 different aspects of empowerment: building self-esteem, learning a marketable skill, understanding our bodies/taking care of them, self-defense, and effective communication. Another girl in my group, Lindsey, had wanted to do a similar thing, but needed  ideas, and so we joined together and started to work on it. In the meantime, we got some of the boys in our group involved, and they developed some empowerment classes for teenage boys. We taught a 2-3 hour class each day to about 120 girls (broken up into 3 classes throughout the day) On Monday, we taught about self-esteem - it was a great lesson! I felt like we were teaching a lesson at girls' camp, because it was so fun. The girls really liked our object lessons and stories. I was so happy to start the week out on a good note. The next day, I had Richard come in and teach about looking for business opportunities. He did a great job, and the girls LOVED him! They laughed at all his jokes, and at the end, one of the teachers told me that they all thought he was a great teacher. After we ended the business class, we had an optional craft - and everyone stayed to learn it. I taught the girls how to make paper beads, and I think they had a really fun time. It was so chaotic trying to teach all those girls at the same time, but I hope they can use that skill in the future. The next day we taught about Maturation and menstruation - it was the first class I felt really comfortable with - I knew the material really well, and because I care about it a lot, I really enjoyed it. The next day was self-defense, and you know how passionate I am about that - it was such a fun day! I LOVED every second of it. I started out by teaching about safety, and setting personal standards for what is and isn't okay for boys to do, etc., and then after that, we moved all the desks to make a space in the room and started teaching some of the moves I learned in my self-defense class. It was great! The girls (and teachers) were so excited to learn, and they got a real "kick" (pun intendended) out of practicing everything. I had so much fun that day! The last day, we taught about communicating effectively in our relationships. It was a good lecture, not as fun as the day before, but still a good one. After we finished our lecture, we went to the auditorium and had a big ceremony with speeches and I even gave an impromptu speech (Africans LOVE speeches, so no matter what you say, they still think you're brilliant and give emphatic applause). Then, we gave out certificates (they also LOVE getting certificates) so that was fun too. THEN, we went to the home ec room and taught the africans how to make american pancakes - they LOVED that too! (Richard had talked about selling "Mzungu pancakes" on the street in the business class, so they wanted to try them).  The headmaster even suggested setting up a partnership with a school in the U.S. so that the students could get to know the students in America.  I thought that was a great idea! 

I feel like I just walked out of a perfect dream - I don't think things could have gone any better, or been more rewarding.  I LOVED this past week!!!

Pictures to come!

Safari Part 2: Craziness

I mentioned earlier how crazy transportation is here. Well, we tried doing public transport for our entire trip, and we really had no idea what we were doing. We were sooo incredibly lucky with the timing of everything - at first we were so annoyed because our taxi got 2 flat tires and what should have been an hour and a half trip took about three hours. We missed our bus to get to the next city, and had to take a different bus on a different route that happened to be leaving pretty quickly. We first thought we were really unlucky, because it was the most miserable ride any of us have ever had (there were 5 of us - me, Richard, my old roomie Jen, her cousin Meg, and our friend Remmick) The entire 5 hours we were on the bus, we were jostled and bumped and thrown around...it was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disney Land...for 5 hours. Richard was so sick after that...poor guy.

We met a guy named Eric who knew all about the area we were traveling through and to - he is a soldier who works there. I didn't realize it, but we were traveling through what was recently a very dangerous place to be- the Karamojo area. These people have been historically very hostile and agressive toward any outsider. Unfortunately, we found out thatwe were to stay over night in one of these Karamojong cities - called Kotido. Kotido was a very dangerous place to be about 2 or 3 years ago. We were scared, and we stayed in a shifty hotel that night (look at the pictures in our web album in the previous post), but we were safe, and it was ok! Eric helped us the next day, to find free transport to the next city, which was awesome - picture 16 people in the back of a tiny pickup truck, loadedwith all of our baggage, plus like 20 boxes of groceries. It was great - totally Ugandan-style. :) The rest of our trip there was fine, but on the way back, we had acrazy/scary time getting home. We took a really roundabout route toget home, because it was the only way we had a chance of getting home in the same day. I met a man (George Mark) on one of our busses who claimed to be a driver, and said he would take us all the way from Lira to Mbale.. When we got off the bus, we were swarmed by about 10 other taxi drivers who were also drunk, and they were saying all kinds of things to make us worry about driving with George. At that point,we had gotten in the car with him, and Richard was like "we are not going with them, let's get out." so we did, and George got so angryand started yelling. We were so scared! But it felt worse to get outof the car, and think of staying there, so eventually we got back in his car with him promising to take care of us and keep us safe. We were all just praying that we would be okay, and after awhile, werealize that we were in good hands. We got home at 5AM the next morning, and we were so exhausted! It was such an adventure.

I am just so amazed at how everything worked out - it really can't have been by chance that we made all the friends that we did, and had a successful (yet frustrating) trip. I hope you all are doing well! We love you lots and miss you all! I will write more next time about our projects we have been doing.

Our first Safari!

A couple weeks ago, we went on a safari!!! It was exciting, interesting, and stressful. Trying to plan anything, especially vacations, in Uganda isveeeeerrrrry different than planning in the US. You never get astraight answer from people when you ask them questions, or you get conflicting answers, or you getpeople telling you what they think you want to hear...its veryfrustrating. And then with transportation - whenever people tell youit will take a certain amount of time, its always safe to add on acouple extra hours, so you don't get frustrated.

We went up to northeastern Uganda to do our safari - it wasone of the coolest experiences ever, and it was everything I hoped itwould be! It was just like being on the real-life scene of the LionKing. I loved it! We got to see all the animals we wanted to see,both from a distance, and up close! The very first night, when wearrived at our 'bandas' (little circular huts) we saw a whole herd ofzebras in the field across the road! We were so excited! They are socool looking! That night, we also saw a warthog, and a waterbuck.

The next morning, we woke up to seeing an elephant walkingthrough our campground - apparently, it had been 2 months since he hadlast been there - we were lucky to see him! We also heard later onthat there had been a couple of lions walking through the site earlierthat morning...ahh!!!

When we finally left on our morning safari, we were so excited! Theweather was perfect, and we had already seen a great variety ofanimals! We took it as a very good sign, and it was! We started outby driving through a herd of over 1,000 water buffalo, which wascrazy! We were completely surrounded! They are kind of funny-lookinganimals, and they are very jumpy - they would run away anytime wemoved too quickly. We also saw some giraffes and elephants in thedistance, and of course we wanted to see them up close, so we took offin our truck to catch them. We finally got close to the giraffes -they were right next to our truck, and we got some awesome pictures ofthem! Giraffes look so funny when they walk or run. But they arereally beautiful, I loved seeing them! Then, we looked to the otherside of the road, and saw a big herd of elephants! Unfortunately, wecouldn't get very close to them, but we were hopeful that we would seesome later on. We saw all kinds of beautiful birds there - big andsmall, and all sorts of colors. My favorites were bright red, yellowand bright metallic blue. Beautiful! Oh, we also saw a littlecrocodile - maybe 3 feet long - on the side of a water hole.

On our afternoon safari, we really lucked out! Almost immediately, we saw 2 lions on a rock a few hundred yards from the road -they were just laying there, relaxing. It was so exciting to seethem! Pretty soon after that, we drove up to a herd of elephants.Did you know that elephants are among the most dangerous animals to beclose to? Its true, especially if they have babies they areprotecting. Well, we were lucky enough to get within 50 yards of amomma elephant and her two babies! When she noticed we were closethough, she started charging at us...I never knew how fast an elephant couldrun! It was so intense! Richard luckily got it all on video, I can'twait to post it here (it'll probably have to be after we get home, since internet is so slow here) After that, it started pouring, and wehad to cut our safari short. We went back and it rained for the restof the night.

The next morning, we had to leave to go home, but on our drive out ofthe park, we saw some monkeys on the road and in a tree close to theroad! THEN, we saw a lion in the distance, tracked it down, andeventually, it came onto the road right in front of us, and 'escorted'us for awhile - it just walked down the road in front of us. We wereso excited, although we were a little disappointed we didn't get agood picture of him. But to our delight, just ahead, we saw two morelions just sitting on the side of the road, looking so relaxed. Oneof them was literally right next to our car. After awhile, he got up,crossed the road right in front of us, and got his buddy to get up andgo with him. It was great! We were sooo happy we got to see that! Ifeel like we were given these little tender mercies, all throughoutour trip - even though seeing animals up close isn't really all thatimportant, it meant a lot to all of us to be able to see them that closely.

A little update

Hello Friends and family!

We apologize for not updating in a while! As you can probably imagine, things have been very busy. It’s crazy to think that we are more than halfway through our time here. 2^nd wave ended basically right when we got back from safari, so we are now in the 3^rd and final wave. July was the only full month we would be here in Uganda and it’s already over! We have been so blessed to have this amazing opportunity and we look forward to what the last three weeks will bring.

Projects and things have been very good. I don’t know if I have mentioned much about the Namatala Slum Ultimate Club that I started with a team member. Well, the Ultimate thing just REALLY was not working. The kids were catching on well, and enjoying it, but it was too difficult to keep control and the language barrier is a serious issue. (Yes, the official language is English, and yes, most people “speak English”, but that doesn’t mean that real communication actually takes place.) So, my team member and I decided to switch to Soccer instead of Ultimate, and things have been much better ever since. We’re starting to get a consistent group of youth and we now have two volunteer coaches who have started to conduct practices (which is good news for us because we don’t know jack about Soccer). In addition to those good things, the municipality is interested in our project and is wanting to help fund it which is very good news. So things are going well with that. Namatala is a very large slum right outside of Mbale, and it is full of problems. Our sports club is designed to fight idleness which is a big problem, and to get kids off the streets and doing something worthwhile. We are especially trying to get youth who are not attending school to come.

Business projects have also been going well. Last Saturday I was invited somewhat last minute to a business convention held by business leaders in Mbale and surrounding areas. I guess Jonathan from Step radio had told some people about what we were doing, and they were intrigued and insisted that we come to this meeting of about 100 business persons. I was naturally pretty excited for this opportunity to network. So the invitation said to be at Mt. Elgon Hotel at 2pm prompt so we were there at 1:55pm. We were among the first 5 people there, and they weren’t even finished setting up yet. They didn’t actually start the meeting until 3pm. I knew about “African time”, but I thought that things would be a little bit different with this being an important business meeting and what not. I was also informed that I would be giving a speech and they asked me how much time I needed. I told them I wasn’t prepared so maybe five minutes or so, so they told me I had twenty. Thanks….. I had about two minutes to prepare, but I think that things went pretty well. The meeting itself was one of the more boring I have attended. Unfortunately, the majority of it was not in English. And, we thought that the meeting would last two or three hours, but it lasted six. The main highlight was this crazy guy we met at the beginning who kept telling us he was the mayor and who wrote for us a whole page of contact information. Anyway, at random intervals in the meeting when it would be quiet, he would stand up and yell “sank you vedy much!” holding two thumbs ups and then mutter a bunch of other unintelligible stuff and sit down. Also, at the end of the meeting there was a dinner. That was also an experience. I think I literally almost got trampled in the mad dash to the food line. Then when I got in line, about 23 people cut in front of me until this lady who worked at the hotel recognized me and for some reason thought I was important so she grabbed my arm and pulled me to the almost front of the line in front of everyone else. Once there, the struggle was not over. First of all, I was packed in there like a sardine, so it’s not like there was much opportunity for somebody to cut in front of me, but it still happened! There were six or seven large Ugandan ladies who managed one by one to wedge their booties between me and the person in front of me and booty me right out of the way! Don’t worry, I did eventually get my food, but it was pretty cutthroat!

While kind of on the subject, here are some funny/interesting cultural things about Uganda

- Organized lines rarely exist. If you are waiting in line at the grocery store, you will be waiting for a very VERY long time. It’s basically whoever gets there first

- African time is something we deal with every day. We regularly wait for people for a half hour or hour sometimes

- We eat basically the same food every day. It’s actually pretty darn good food, but it does get a little repetitive sometimes. The main foods are as follows: matoke (mashed up plantain bananas. Has a taste and consistency similar to mashed potatos. I think it’s pretty tasty), posho (boiled cornmeal stuff with a consistency of play-dough. Very tasteless, but good if it has a good sauce), beans (yum), rice (yum), Irish (Irish potatos), and chippati (yummy bread fried in a lot of oil). We also eat a lot of pineapple, avocado, mangoes, cabbage, and bananas.

- English here is funny. You can say “well done” when you are greeting a person. When you are saying that you’re basically assuming that the person has done something good that day. When you and another person are parting you can say “nice time” which I think is just funny. They also say “please” after everything. “Thank you please” and “okay please” are both totally appropriate and encouraged. Also instead of saying “kinda” you say “somehow.” There are many others, but those are the only ones I can think of right now.

- Trash cans don’t really exist a lot here. Funny example: we were waiting in front of a hotel near our house for a taxi to come get us and Megan, one of our friends, had just finished eating a banana. We were talking to one of the hotel employees and she asked if he could direct her to a trash to throw away the peel, but he was kind enough to take the peel for her. After she thanked him for his kindness, he took about four steps forward and chucked the peel into the bushes/road. We had a good laugh from that.

There are many more funny anecdotes, but so little time! We will write more, I promise! We love you all and are glad to hear from you whenever you have time to update us!

Love,

Richard and Marissa