Lugazi Tidbits

A couple things about Lugazi... or Uganda in general.

Taxis are pretty insane. They are 14-seater vans that sit in a car lot, waiting for passengers. Until the taxi is PACKED, (sometimes 20-21 people), the taxi won't leave for its destination. So you could have to wait up to an hour for a taxi. My longest is 45 minutes. Taxi's cost set amounts, depending on where you're going. To Mukono, the place we go the most often, its 40 minutes, and costs 1500 shillings (about 75 cents). To Kampala, its 2,000 shillings ($1), and to Jinja, its 2,000 ($1). Boda Boda's are little motorcycles that will take you where you want to go... I don't know how much for, I have never ridden one yet. But they are EVERYWHERE. In church yesterday, we were talking about Work and Personal Responsibility, and we were on the topic of idleness, when one brother from the ward commented that he once talked to a boda boda, and the driver told him that they only work until they have the bare minimum to feed their family, and then they stop working. Kind of interesting... that the driver's are just ok with their families living in poverty like that. Go figure. Electricity and Water are one of those things that are never ever for certain. If someone on the block isn't paying their water/electricity bill, the owners can't figure out which exact switch to pull to shut it off for that one home, so they just shut off the whole block. We lose power probably every other day. And we haven't had water for about 48 hours. Se have 2 toilets, one inside, and a squatter one outside, so everyone has just been using the outside toilet for the past 2 days, unable to flush it. It's disgusting. And we haven't been able to shower or wash dishes, so the dishes are just piling up... We have a bunch of bottled water containers, but we don't want to waste it on dishes, so... we just have a bunch of dirty dishes. We can't brush our teeth with the water anyway, so we all can just use our water bottles. For breakfast, everyone has been eating this stuff called weetabix. It's like shredded wheat... In a little oval-shaped disc kinda thing. And we don't have a fridge, so we can't eat it with milk, so everyone has been buying mango juice to pour on it and eat. Not a huge fan of mango juice, so I got some orange juice & fruit punch kind of stuff. For lunch, most people eat chippattis. Its basically flour, salt, and water flattened and put in a frying pan with oil. So its kind of like a thick, fried burrito. Kind of. And then people put whatever they want in it- I like bananas, nutella, and peanut butter. SO good. They sell them just off the side of the road, which is kind of sketchy, because people aren't super clean while making the food... So its often germy. Another thing they make here are rolex's. I've never had one of these... but I'm told its like a breakfast burrito; has eggs in it. I don't really like eggs so we'll see i actually try this one. For dinner, we have a couple women from the village come and cook for us, which is really nice. I'm still trying to get used to the food, its a little strange. They usually consist of a lot of starchy foods. Rice, squash, potatoes, beans, pumpkin, plantains, avacado, etc. They usually make a little bit of meat, but both times I've eaten it, I've been chewing on bones, so I'll probably not eat that anymore. Also, the chickens around here are just roaming around free... They are literally walking around with their little chicks eating garbage. So chickens... are not super healthy to eat, judging by what they've been eating themselves. Goats kind of wander around too. The cows are leashed to stakes in the ground. Last night, though, I was walking home, and there were like 50 cows just walking down the road. Kind of random. The way cell phones work here, is you buy a phone, and you buy minutes as you go. You just go up to a stand and ask for how many minutes you want, and pay for it, enter it in on your phone. When your minutes are up, the phone automatically just shuts off. 40 minutes is like 10,000 shillings ($5). Everyone here uses small bills. If you go up to a stand for a chippatti or for some fruit, you have to use the small coins, because they really don't have enough money to give you change. When I went to the bank and exchanged currency, I got all 10,000 bills, which is almost like the equivalent with paying with a $100 here. They have 10,000, 5,000 ($2.50), 2,000 ($1), and 1,000 ($.50) bills. The coins are 500 ($.25), 200 ($.10) and 100 ($.05). They might even have a 50 coin, but I haven't ever had one, because usually prices are in denominations of 100.