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