Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Adventures of Living in Uganda - October Update


The last month was jam packed with good times. I lost track of time in between work, birthday celebrations, trips for fun, trips for work, training, and a surprisingly full social life. At first I struggled with adapting to the slow pace of life in Uganda and it felt like time was going slowly. Now time is flying and I don’t feel like I have enough of it. Funny how those things go. The fact there isn’t a real change of season here (apparently the dry and hot season is coming in Dec-Feb) makes it hard to keep track of time. I didn’t realize how much the changing of the seasons marked the passing of time until I came to Uganda. It’s November but it is still warm and sunny everyday just like it was in June when I arrived. Even though I sometimes don’t realize it a whole month has passed and it is time for some updates.

Work
I am increasingly more comfortable in my role at work and I am really enjoying my work. I am a little worried about becoming too attached to the kids. The other day I teared up when one of our girls, Viola, came home after finished her primary leaving exams. It was like she was my own child. The primary leaving exam is the national test every student must take at the end of primary school. If you don’t pass the exam you can’t go to secondary school. Students study very hard for their exams so it was a big accomplishment and a huge relief when Viola (and all of the other kids) finished the exam.  

A few of the girls in Mengo home. From the left we have Sumaya, Charlotte, Kevin, and Praise


Besides spending time with the kids in each of our five homes I take care of various other tasks. I am responsible for monthly updates on each home.  I address any specific issues that happen in the homes; those issues might be general home operations or a problem with one of the kids. For example, in one of the boy’s homes the boys were not eating breakfast because they could not manage to wake up early enough to make themselves breakfast. They would argue about who should wake up early to make breakfast and at the end no one would do it. I believe breakfast is the most important meal of the day so I wasn’t happy about them not eating. I decided to deal with the issue by having a meeting with all the kids and as a group deciding what was the best solution. The kids all agreed on who should cook and on what day and from there I made a time table and we hung it on the wall of the living room. The kids are now eating breakfast on a daily basis.

Makerere Boys - Ferdinand and Connia


Timetables! 

 I also facilitate art projects in each home. I am currently working on gathering materials for the art projects I want to do with the kids before the end of the year. I will take some of these projects home with me in December so the HALO branches can have art from the homes they support and use them during events and auctions.

We made collages of things we love. One of the boys cut out letters to form the phrase 'stories with wonderful endings'. It made me really happy.


Henry and Ferdinand working on their collages!


All of the boys working on collages


Ali focused on his collage.

Another big project that has consumed a lot of my time and patience is the scholarships the children are eligible to apply for in order to attend vocational school or in some cases college. There were numerous obstacles I faced during this process but I don’t want to bore you with the details. In general it was a struggle to get the children to fill out the applications and fill them out adequately. Once the kids do their part it is up to the mentors to fill out all the financial information. Ugandans tend to do lots of things by word of mouth so the mentors simply asked other people how much tuition at the various institution is and used those numbers on the applications. When I followed up on the information presented in the applications I discovered the numbers on almost all of the applications were wrong. I was and still am pretty disappointed and frustrated. I don’t understand why this process was not taken seriously and why they used information they did not know was %100 accurate. I am now working on finding the correct information.
We are also working on establishing budgets for each of the homes for 2013. This has not been easy either. Although work has been busy I love keeping busy and I still manage to get out and have some fun.

Jinja

     A few weeks ago I desperately needed to get out of this chaotic city and relax so I went to Jinja with two of my roommates. Jinja is about two hours to the east of Kampala by public transportation. Jinja is a small quiet, beautiful town on the banks of the Nile River. It is actually the source of the river which is super cool considering the Nile is the longest river in the world and it is the most unique, in my opinion, because it flows north. The Nile is also a major source of water for the ten African countries it flows through and ancient Egypt depended on the river. We spent Friday night at our friend’s house and had a wonderful dinner prepared for us by our friends. We chatted the night away and went to bed at a somewhat decent hour. 

Sarah and Jess

Me and Ale


Group shot

Our camp site - not a bad view, eh?

     We woke up early Saturday to head to a small island in the Nile called Hairy Lemon. Hairy Lemon is really small but really cool. The island is owned and operated by a man from South Africa. The island has cottages and dorm style rooms but we opted for camping. We set up our tents on the edge of the island so we could hear the river roaring. 

       We spent the day sun bathing, swimming, wandering the small island, and watching monkeys play in the trees. It was an amazing day that ended with dinner by lantern light and socializing with the other island dwellers. The area of the Nile that we were near is one of the best spots in the world to kayak so there was a group of 15 professional kayakers staying on the island. The best kayaker in the world spends a few months out of the year training on The Nile in Uganda. See article for more information - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/14/sports/on-the-nile-in-uganda-the-source-of-kayakers-biggest-thrills.html?_r=2&hpw&

A calmer area of the river where you can swim






The raging Nile River!

We drifted off to sleep soothed by the sounds of the river flowing nearby. We left Hairy Lemon early the next morning to head back to Jinja. We spent the morning walking around the town and checking out the various coffee and craft shops. After lunch we reluctantly packed up and hopped on a bus back to Kampala. The weekend was exactly what I needed to reinvigorate myself for city life.


Birthdays

     Normally birthdays wouldn’t warrant an entire sub-headline in my blog but these birthdays are an exception. Two of my good friends in Uganda had birthdays close to each other in October. First was Maggie’s birthday. Maggie’s birthday happened to fall on a public holiday so we had an all day birthday bash organized by Maggie’s awesome boyfriend (and one of my housemates) Aaron. We had a pot luck style lunch during which I ate too much because everything was too good to resist. After lunch was game time. We competed in various events like a human wheelbarrow race, water balloon toss, and water limbo. We also played musical chairs and ended the day with a friendly game of volleyball. 

My group won this game



Trampoline fun!


Maggie's present - a juicer!


Musical chairs  

Volleyball


Water balloon toss



     I personally believe no birthday party is complete without a delicious chocolate cake to indulge in so I took it upon myself to bake a cake for Maggie’s party. Baking a cake might seem like a simple task but leave it up to Uganda to make simple things exciting. I don’t have an oven in my house so I had to mix the batter at home where all my ingredients are and then transport the batter to a place with an oven. I decided to just go to the guest house at the Cornerstone office and use that oven so I could kill two birds with one stone and bake the cake while working. Here is the sequence of events that followed:

-        *    Mixed bake batter – easy.
-        *    Hailed a motorcycle taxi (boda) and explained that I had a bowl filled with liquid in the shopping bag so I needed him to drive slowly and carefully. He understood and we set off – still pretty easy.
-        *    Drove to Cornerstone which is roughly 20 minutes. The first half is dirt roads filled with rocks, pot holes, and speed bumps. The second half is major roads on which bodas are always bobbing and weaving through cars and other bodas. Nothing about driving on a boda is calm and the ride is never smooth. Trying to hold the bowl so the batter didn’t spill during the ride – not easy.
-       *    Went to meeting - easy
-       *    Slipped out of meeting to start preheating oven - easy
-        *    Put cake in oven when meeting was over - easy
-        *    Did some work in the office - easy
-        *    Checked on cake and realized we lost power - problem
-        *    Waited patiently (for about 5 minutes) for power to come back on – somewhat easy
-        *    Asked a friend if I could go to her house to bake the cake. During my rant about why things can’t just be       easy in Uganda the power comes back on. I shut up and go back to work – easier said than done
-        *   Cake is done and smelled delicious! – Success!
      *   Too impatient to wait for the cake to cool I attempted to figure out how I can hold the cake that just came out of the oven and drive home on a boda. Told the boda driver the thing I was carrying was very hot so he needed to be careful. Boda driver gives me an are you crazy look but agrees to take me anyway.
-      *    Boda driver and I fight the traffic home. Traffic in Kampala is impossible to predict but you are guaranteed to run into a massive traffic jam on Friday afternoons, whenever it looks like it is going to rain, and after it rains. I was driving home with my fresh from the oven cake on a Friday afternoon with some seriously ominous clouds approaching the city. Traffic was horrendous. Nevertheless the boda driver weaved his way through the gridlocked cars and got me home safely – even though the driver did all the hard work this part wasn’t so easy.

     The cake was delicious and everyone at the party appreciated a good chocolate cake. Cake in Uganda is typically terrible so a good piece of cake is a real treat.



     The next birthday was the Monday after the last party. This celebration was less exciting but equally fun. We had a quiet dinner at home with our good friends. I again decided to make a cake and did that whole long process describe above one more time. Life in Uganda is full of unexpected adventures!

     Too much happened in October I can’t even fit it all into one blog. I don’t want to overwhelm you guys! Look for another blog post in the next week or so. I’ll be telling you about my training and the trip to Gulu. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy my stories! Feel free to mention anything you are interested in hearing about. I love input!

And here are some more pictures of the kids!

Emmanuel 

Little monkeys named Abdul and Witness


Karim flipping


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