48 hours...

I thought I'd just put up a couple pictures of the 'mzungu house'.... just so you know what i've been living in the past 6 weeks. and mind you, this is a REALLY nice house for lugazi. i havent ever seen a nicer house, except for the politicians'.

This issssss... the boys room. Have to go through here to get to our lovely bathroom...

These are our 'couches'. Made out of bunkbeds. And these lovely people are Kirk, Kevin, and Haley. Obviously they've all just woken up.

This is the girls' room. 3 triple bunkbeds. When I got here, every bunk was used. Now, there are only 4 used. I'm on the top bunk of the one in the back of the room.

This is Eve. Being gangster.

And then this was at the Awards ceremony after the Happy Child International Training.

And this is my last picture with Francis :( Had to say goodbye to him tonight and it was hard!

Last few days

Monday and Tuesday I was in charge of setting up a training conference for all of the Happy Child International Volunteers. We got a couple of guest speakers, and a bunch of us from the help team spoke. We covered counseling, children's rights, report writing, child development, and a bunch of other stuff. I taught for about an hour and a half on child development. It was so cool! This is like my future profession, so I actually got to teach it in a real setting! It reminded me of how much I love development. The rest of it was... a little different than i had planned it to be. Not all the speakers decided to speak on what they were supposed to... and the police officer ended up making us pay her. (talk about government corruption).

Today we went out into Eastern Uganda to do some jigger outreach. Basically... jiggers are little fleas that burrow into people's skin. Out in Eastern Uganda, people are poor enough to only own one pair of ripped clothing, and no shoes, so a lot of people have jiggers in their feet. We didn't take this picture, but this is basically what they look like:

Basically what they did (we went to help them... but they didnt let us, which was a bummer) was to take a knife, scrape off all the outside skin off the feet, and then pull off the skin down to the raw flesh on the areas of the jiggers, and then spread on some medicine mixed in with vaseline. The jiggers are killed, and they eventually will come out as the new layers of skin grow in. kinda nasty, but really interesting stuff.

Tomorrow, two of our friends, Martin & Camera are getting married! We all got invited, and all the girls got dresses made for the occasion. They all look kinda weird, but it'll be fun!

5 more days :(

Playin with the kids at happy child

Me and Francis (The founder of happy child international) at church

Holding little Jessica... but mostly I call her "feisty" because... shes like 2 years old and beats up all the other kids haha.

Evidence of the mouse intruder

At Qaddafi's mosque in Kampala. We were required to rent muslim clothing in order for us to be allowed in.

Twins at the orphanage in Kampala

The boy who asked me the hard question

Haley, me and Kellie on a taxi to Kampala

Holding our next door neighbor little maggie. This is right before she peed on me.

Hardest Question

A couple weeks ago at Happy Child, there were some kids that showed up all in matching blue dresses. We found out, after meeting the man that they were with, that they were orphans whose parents had died of AIDS. The man was Pastor Christopher, and he houses and feeds about 40 orphans in Kampala. Every sunday, they travel to a different church to sing for the congregation, to raise funds for living expenses. And they just happened to be at the church where we hold Happy Child. Anyway, he invited us to go and visit the orphanage and just talk to the kids. All of our projects are winding down, and we've had a little freetime, so all the girls decided to go up to Kampala and visit them. I've only been to one other orphanage in Uganda, but all I have to say is that kids in orphanages are probably some of the most heart-melting children you will ever meet. They love any sort of human contact, they run up to you, hold your hand, hug you, want you to pick them up and hold them. Its rather heart-wrenching.

We got to the orphanage, and met with Pastor Christopher in the house. He proceeded to tell us his story. How during the bush war, his parents dug their own graves and were killed in front of him and his brother. They became street children for 4 years, and one day upon visiting a church, were adopted by a man who had no wife or children. They both went to school, and he became a teacher and a pastor, and his brother became a journalist. He had made a promise to God, while he was a street child, that if he could get an education, he would serve children all his life. He opened up his orphanage, where he, his wife, his children, and 40 other orphans live in one compound. If I could pick only one of HELP International's local contacts, who represented the most devoted to community development, it would be Pastor Christopher. He really loves these kids. And he gives them his all. Its not like he goes and lives in a nice house while taking care of the orphanage... He LIVES at the orphanage with the kids. It's pretty incredible. And the kids are amazing. They love each other, and get along with each other... They have clearly been raised well. The kids came in and each stood up and said their name, their age, and what they wanted to be when they grew up (it sounded very recited and practiced haha). Then they sang a few songs for us... And we talked to them about self-confidence, and doing your best, and being kind to others. Then I thought it might be cool if we let them ask us questions. They loved that... Most questions were 'how old are you' or 'what are you studying' 'what games do you like' or 'can we be friends?' there were a couple weird ones... like 'do any of you have a child?' whoops. haha. But there was one boy who stood in the back. He was really quiet, and looked a little older than the other kids. Mostly he just kind of looked sad. He raised his hand, I gestured to him, and then he looked at me, his eyes still sad, and said, "Do you have your parents?"

Of all the hard things that I've had to do in Uganda this summer, answering that question was the most difficult. I honestly didn't know what to say. I'm not sure how long my pause was, as we just looked at each other, but it felt like hours. Eventually I cautiously said, "yes." He nodded and just bent his head, looking down at his feet. I then proceeded to un-tactfully bawl my eyes out. I felt guilty. I know that I didn't need to- it wasn't my fault that his parents were dead. And I don't know why he asked the question. All I really know is that I understand so much less than I think I do. Being here the last 6 weeks has taught me absolutely nothing in the grand sphere of all existing knowledge, yet it has taught me everything, compared to what I knew before. I feel like sometimes I'm just wandering aimlessly in the world with no purpose or passion, but coming here makes me want to fight for something, and I know what I want to fight for. I won't ever forget the way he looked at me when he asked me that question.

Of Mice and Men

Here's a 'tail' for you.

Preface: Last night, I had a headache, so I went to bed around 11pm. The other girls in the room were still up to stuff, so the light was on. Our country director, Ari was sitting in the bottom bunk, on her laptop, and suddenly starts screaming. A mouse had climbed up from the floor, onto her bed, and up her arm. Squeak? Obviously I woke up... and probably around 10 minutes later, Ari was opening her backpack and there was another scream. The mouse crawled out of her backpack, and ran under Haley's bed, where somehow I had left some of my cookies, which got thrown away immediately. I tucked in my mosquito net extra tight, with the new knowledge that mice could climb up beds...

Today: I was just getting ready to go wash my underwear (We have people that come to wash our clothes, but they won't wash our underwear; we have to do that ourselves), and pulled out a cliff bar out of my food suitcase. When I got outside I was about to open it, when I realized that there was a large uneven rip in the side, and a chunk of the bar was missing. So I went back into my room, looked in the suitcase, and realized the bag that was holding all the cliff bars had a big hole too, which looked like someone had been biting at it. Then I found granola bars, fruit roll-ups, and other such bars all with rips and bites and missing chunks. Crap. (Literally, because thats what i found next- poop). Poop on the duct tape, poop on my cracker box... Lots of tiny little poopies. I searched the whole suitcase, and luckily the mouse had left the scene of the crime, because I think I might have had a heart attack. I had to throw away a lot of my food... So hopefully I dont get some mouse disease.

You know what happens when you give a mouse a cookie. He wants your fruit rollups, and your granola bars, and your cliff bars, and your crackers and your-...

One more thing... ok maybe 2

So this first one is Haley. I hopped down from my bed one night and found her like this, and right before I took the picture, she all of a sudden just opened her eyes really big just staring at me, kinda freaky. She was praying, or so she says. The next one is me at the dress shop. While we were in Western Uganda, there was this lady who was wearing one of these dresses- they're called 'butterfly dresses' and they're so bomb. Its basically a giant tie-dyed table cloth with a hole in the middle, and sewed down the sides. It feels like wearing a tent, but its SOO comfortable. Me and haley found them the other day, and just had to buy them!

SAFARI

I think this one will be more interesting if I just do it in pictures. I will say one thing: IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!!!

More Pitchers

Pictures:

Ari, our country director. look no hands!

Kevin getting harnessed in. He's a little nervous.

Just chillin at Crow's Nest Hostel

I found this baby in a fabric shop... Probably going to get a dress made, but meanwhile this baby peed on my arm.

You would be surprised how often we find "Obama" in the community... at restaurants, on pens, pictures of him in grocery stores.... random

My African mother, Eve. She comes and cooks us dinners every night, teaches me how to cook, and occasionally gives me spankins.

Sipi (CP) Falling

This weekend, Haley, Kellie, Ari, Kevin, and I took a couple taxis up to Sipi Falls. We left Friday afternoon, and arrived Friday night at around 10 at the hostel called the "Crow's Nest". I thought a hostel would be a lot sketchier than it actually was. It was really fun! We got up to the main entrance, and there were all these foreign kids, kids from Wales, England, and a whole group of kids from the "American Jewish Society" (weird), yamikas and all. So the kids were all just hangin out, playin mancala, and sitting around talking. We sat down, ordered some french toast, and ate while watching this group of kids play this game. We started figuring it out, and its such a cool game! It's like human-musical-memory. Like the card game memory, each hand of each person has a different song associate with it; and there is a match with another person's hand. So there were 2 people in the middle, and they had to tap two people's hands, and they sang a little bit of their song; and then it was the next persons turn, and they basically just tried to find matches. It was fun; i hope we can play it sometime. So we went to our hostel room, and it was just a small room with 3 bunk-beds. We woke up in the morning around 6 to climb to the top of a little hill to watch the sunrise... But it was cloudy so we didn't seen anything. Right before heading up, i was standing in the doorway, and the door came in and slammed on my heel. It was a pretty big bleed... And wearing my chacos were hard because it was rubbing up right on the cut. So that was fun... After the hike, we went and had breakfast at the main room of the hostel. And then we set off for Sipi Falls! It was pretty crazy... We got to the top of the falls, and probably about 10 yards away from it, we started getting strapped in our harnesses. The people that were there didn't really tell us what we needed to do... it was hard to understand their english anyway. There was no form of consent, or release waiver... We just went repelling down Sipi Falls! At first, it was scary as heck... Especially because it was misty in the morning, so we really couldn't see our way down. Kevin went down, and then I went second. The weird thing about the whole thing was that we ran out of rock probably about... 1/8 of the way into it. After that we were just dangling, letting ourselves down little by little. But the view was pretty incredible. After you got out of the mist at the top, it was like being in a helicopter. (I think... I've never actually been in a helicopter). The rope was kind of twisted, so you were spenning around... Not really fast, but just slowly spinning around so you could see all the different views... I wish I had my camera to take some pictures, but the guys said it would get wet. Anyway, it was a total of 333 feet. Probably the scariest and the craziest thing I've ever done. But so worth it. We hiked back up to the top of the waterfall, up to the 2nd waterfall, had lunch, and then went back to the hostel. Packed up our stuff, and headed back to Mbale, then back to Jinja. At Jinja, we met up with kirk and Jesse... A note about Jesse. Jesse is our country director, and he has been lying for the past 3 months about his birthday and his age, so that no one would celebrate his birthday. He told Ari it was in April, he told me it was in October, and he frequently switches back between ages 26 & 27. The weird thing was, nobody really got suspicious, just confused. But one day, he asked Kirk to bring is passport up to Kampala where we were at, having just come back from Igara west. And Kirk looked in it and found out his birthday was July 31st, 1982. So, naturally... we had to celebrate his birthday! We went out to an Indian restaurant... and then decided to go out for dessert, and buy something and ask the waitress to just stick a candle in it. Well first, the place we were going to go to was closed, and so we decided just to buy some ice cream at home, but then another cafe was mentioned, so we went there. We ordered at the counter, gave the waitress some candles, telling her that it was for our friend's birthday. When she comes out with it, she places it in front of me, with no candles, and is just like, "he'll be so excited!" Wanji??? So all of us are cracking up, just because this is kind of awkward, so I run back behind the counter, grab some matches, and pull some extra candles out of my backpack and quickly light them & stick them in the dessert (pancakes and ice cream- it was actually really good!), and we just all started singing happy birthday. It was the best. face. ever. His mouth was just wide open, clearly confused, and I kept asking, "who has my camera? who has my camera?" But Jesse was holding it, and was kind of frozen, so i didnt get a picture of it. Anyway, it was a good schnike, he didn't even see it coming. We headed back home... And... that was pretty much it for the trip. Sunday, we went to church, and... ok this was weird. At the end of church, we were supposed to head down to the Mt. Lebanon church for the Happy Child meeting. Before we could get out of the church, there were 2 men who just came up to introduce themselves, and were asking if they could help in our Humanitarian Aid, so I invited them to Happy Child, because they seemed nice enough. One of the guys I had met earlier, his name was Mathais, and he inherited like... 100 acres from his grandfather, and wants to build some kind of community center, like a hospital or a university on it. So I thought it would be cool if he could talk to Francis from Happy Child, because Francis is looking for a place to build his recreation center. The other guy's name was Benny. Oh Benny... he is probably the weirdest person I have ever met. He had conducted the music in the combined 3rd hour, and we were singing "Master the Tempest is Raging" And on all the fermatas, he would hold them out SUPER long, with ridiculous vibrato... long after everyone else had stopped. So weird. So we all set off towards Mt. Lebanon, and Mathais is kind of a spoiled man, and is like, "let's take a boda boda" Because we were going to walk for like a whole 20 MINUTES. THE HORROR. Benny... is asking all these questions to me, finds out i'm from texas, and starts naming off all these things about texas that he knows (none of which were true), and comes to "Carrie Underwood!" All of a sudden, we hear, "She was driving last night on her way to cinncinati on a snow white christmas eve..." Oh no. It only got louder, especially during the chorus: "JESUS TAKE THE WHEE-EEEEEEEEEEL!" He's belting Jesus take the wheel in the middle of the street... people are staring, Haley is laughing so hard she can't see and is triping over every rock in sight, I just look incredulous. Wanji?! So he finally finishes, and we get to the church, and Mathais wants to run to get some lunch, and never comes back. Benny is introducing himself left and right, trying to convince Francis to let him sing for the kids, asking me to marry him, asking Haley to marry him, asking me on a date this weekend when i said no, giving hard candy to kids left and right (He tried to give one to like a 2 year old... had to stop him there). And then he's all obnoxious towards Ari for not going to church... I swear, I've never met a psycho at church before, but that streak was broken today. When we start the happy child program, Francis starts introducing everyone to the kids, but then Benny jumps in and tries to take over, so i have to pull him aside and tell him to knock it off. And then he wanted to sing, and Francis said ok, just to shut him up. So I convince him to do "Do as I'm doing" instead of "My heart will go on" from titanic. Happy Child was fine, and it was fun, we taught the kids about bathing and other tips on being clean in the home. Then we split into groups again, and I taught them how to play "duck duck goose" and they played a couple of other fun games that I had never heard of. Afterwards we said BYE to Benny, and had a little meeting with the leaders of Happy Child. We decided to set up a training conference for all of the volunteers for happy child, teaching them different skills like, counseling, different topics for teaching lessons, talking to kids, childrens rights... etc. So that's going to pretty cool. Ari had the idea to create a manual, so we are going to do that, and try to set up the whole thing in 2 weeks.

Pictures:

Myself, repelling

Jesse glaring at Kirk for telling everyone when his birthday was, while Kevin eats his birthday pancakes and ice cream

@Happy child, doing 'head shoulders knees and toes' with the kiddos