Sometimes I forget the color of my skin. I only look in the mirror once or twice a day with I’m brushing my teeth or my hair in the morning and then I don’t usually glance again until I go to sleep. The rest of the day I’m walking around with my mom and Angella or looking at the crowds of Ugandans going about their daily lives. I think in my mind I just assume that I look like everybody else. It turns out, I don’t! I’m clearly very white and most people are very black. I find myself wishing I could just blend in with them and become a normal citizen of the country. It’s taken two and a half weeks, but I think I’ve come to a point that I feel like I am one of the locals! I don’t really fit in that well, but I like to think I can navigate my way around the country. I’ve done it without Angella’s help and although I ALWAYS miss her when she’s not around, I know I could survive at least a little while without her constant guidance!
This morning we went to the craft market at the National Theatre. Although there are a few unique things, most of it is the same old stuff but the prices are higher and the people are not as friendly as they are at the market near Watoto church. It was pretty cool out today. Probably only got to around 70, but you would have thought it was 20 degrees! Everywhere we went, people were in winter coats and scarves. I was comfortable in a skirt and t-shirt. It was a perfect day to be walking around the markets because the temperature was not hot so you weren’t sweating and feeling the suffocating heat of a normal day.
After the market, we walked to Garden City to get lunch. Security has gotten TIGHT! There are not airport style metal detectors to walk through and security guards on every floor, pacing back and forth. I think that some of the added security has to do with the bombs, but even more because of the African Union summit that has been going on in Kampala all week. Any time that the presidents of these countries are in an area, the security gets more serious. Hopefully since it is ending tomorrow, things will go back to a somewhat normal state.
Despite looking at all of the other menus in the food court, we again settled on the Wok Chinese food. Luckily, our server was slightly more attentive this time. We actually got our drinks right away and he explained that our spring rolls would be a little later than our fried noodles. Nobody took away our sauces without asking. It must have just been the guy who served us the last time, who, by the way, was just sitting in his uniform at the table next to us almost the entire time!
My mom wanted to check out the gift shop in the shopping center. Banana Boat is nice, but most of the stuff is something I’ve seen before and usually at a higher, fixed price. I usually don’t mind it and in fact, every year I’ve purchased at least something there. Today I wanted to get out! There were Mzungus completely infiltrating the place! There must have been 30 people from the same group. They all had name tags on. Two Ugandan guys with matching shirts were their tour leaders. Most of them were wearing their backpacks in the front, which is great if you don’t want stuff stolen in the flea market, but seriously, in the mall? It’s probably the safest place you could go! I think I was just so used to not being around that many white people, that I was overwhelmed by it. It was like I was in the wrong place. I didn’t want to be in there, so I just walked out and sat on a bench to wait. It’s going to be totally weird when I end up back in the states in northern Minnesota surrounded my only Mzungus!
We ended up having to wait for Jozeph for nearly an hour because he was stuck in a jam and security does a really thorough check of the car, making every person get out to be checked and then looking in every compartment of the vehicle. At least we really didn’t have anything important to do! On the way home, Jozeph found some great ways to avoid the jam by taking side roads. I love that he knows his way around the area so well. There have been many times on previous trips that our drivers really have no clue where they are going. It’s been a blessing to have a caring cab driver who seems to like his job and does a really great job at it!
We decided to have a game night today, so Angella invited over Gloria and we told Susan and Gloria to come over. We had a bottle of wine, a bottle of Fanta, an assortment of chocolate, some cheese and crackers, and Doritoes! What a classy mix of treats! We spent a long time just chatting about life and how blessed we have been, especially on this trip. Angella has a really great core group of friends that have their hearts set on Jesus. It makes a huge difference when you can connect with people on such a deep level. I consider these people to all be my friends. They have helped me out so much on this trip and I enjoy their company immensely. The rest of the night was devoted to Uno, Phase 10, and a short-lived interest in spoons.
After everyone left, we watched a another crappy movie. We need to not let this get to be a pattern. This one was about a random group of travelers on a Greyhound that accidentally killed a biker gang member who was strung out on meth. Then the rest of the meth-addicted bikers chased them into a junkyard and they had to defend themselves against even more gangs guys that showed up. It was horrible acting, a unbelievable plot, and super violent. I can’t believe we even watched it, but I think I needed to stay awake and watch the end just so I could find out who was going to live at the end! No more of those movies for me. I will stick to happy ones!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Day 16 - July 21
Wow! A great day!
I like when I can say that and really truly mean it in every aspect! We started out a little slow, but we ended with a bang! I wanted to walk to town because we hadn’t walked a long distance in a while and I really like it when I can feel like I got a lot of exercise in for the day. It was much warmer than it was the last time we walked, so I think my mom didn’t really enjoy the walk. I pretty much expect that every walk will be hot and I will be sweating almost the whole time, but I think my mom hasn’t quite gotten to that acceptance yet! We stopped at the supermarket to buy some water and a soccer ball for the orphanage we were going to visit. Then we tried to get money from an ATM again. The one near the supermarket was broken so we had to walk a little further to a gas station. The one there was working, but both times I tried, it said the transaction was cancelled. I had called yesterday, and Wells Fargo said I was over my limit for a single day, which I didn’t think was true, but I waited 24 hours just in case. Since I had tried 3 different ATMs in 24 hours, I decided I better call again. The woman on the other line said that 3 minutes ago I had made two withdrawals for $300 each! Clearly I had not! All I had to show after putting in my card twice were two pieces of paper denying me any money! We went through the whole process of filing a claim and after 10 minutes, she said that the withdrawals were reversed and my money was back. Unfortunately, that still didn’t help me access any money. I was down to a mere $20US and I knew that wouldn’t last very long. I still had some cash back at home so I wasn’t too worried. The Wells Fargo lady suggested I pay with credit cards at the places I go. Clearly she’s never been to Africa! Sure you can use a credit card at the fancy places that Mzungu’s go. But I could probably count those on less than two hands and two feet! Besides, those places are way out of my price range! I explained that we shop at markets and street stores that accept only cold hard Ugandan cash! We decided to just wait and see if we could get money directly from a bank.
We kept walking to meet Angella for lunch at a local place that we went to last weekend. It’s nice to go to an easy place with decent food at a “local” price. I think we should frequent “Taste Budz” more often. Once we were full of food, we were already late to meet Godfrey. We decided to just walk to meet him rather than go to the bank first. On the way, Angella suggested I try one more ATM. Thank you Stanbic Bank! Your Automated Teller Machine liked my card and gave me my money! I will have to remember that for the future! Now we are for sure able to access the money we had set aside to buy stuff for the orphanages. I was only slightly worried, but it was still a huge relief to know we wouldn’t have to run around to all kinds of banks to figure out our cash situation!
The school that Godfrey teaches at is an international school that was completely funded for a new building two years ago by a wealthy Indian man. Mostly rich Ugandans and international families enroll their kids there. I know it’s for sure a nicer facility than my hometown school and probably has just as much to offer as any school would in Minnesota. It was good for my mom to see a school, but I almost wish we could have seen a local one without millions of dollars invested in it. While we were waiting in the library, I opened up the newspaper to find a picture of children at their school. They were sitting on long wooden benches with one long thin table in front of them. The schoolroom had dirt floors and the kids’ uniforms were dirty and some were torn. I’m sure they don’t have many books and probably don’t have a really great teaching staff. That is what I usually picture in my head as a Ugandan school. It just goes to show again what money can get you. There is always a big gap between the haves and the have-nots, not matter what country you live in.
We still had some time to kill even after the tour, so we walked back up to the main street in the area for a drink and so Godfrey could grab a bite to eat. We all ordered different drinks. Coke, Sprite, Fanta, and Stoney. It looked like a typical table when Angella eats with us. Stoney is a Coke product that I am not sad about not being able to get at home. When I was in high school we took a trip to the Coca-Cola factory in Atlanta. You can taste Coke products from all around the world. I am almost positive that Stoney was one of the choices and that I had to drink 5 glasses of regular Coke to get the taste out of my mouth! Stoney has a super strong ginger flavor. It’s just too overwhelming for my taste, but Angella loves it! I will let her drink it as much as she wants as long as it means I don’t have to!
We decided over drinks that we should bring some food down to the orphanage. I thought it would be cool to get a huge bunch of Matooke. It comes on a really big branch that is about two feet long and covered with bananas. The only problem was the logistics of getting it down the hill. We decided we could hire a boda to get it down the hill. Since we were already getting some matooke, we figured we could get some other things as well. For $75 we got 24 liters of milk, two bunches of matooke, 10 kilos of rice, 10 kilos of beans, 5 kilos of sugar, 25 cups, 25 plates, a bucket, stirring spoons, 2 small balls, and a soccer ball. Tell me a place you could do that back home and I’ll be really surprised! Godfrey, my mom and I had gone to get the rice and beans inside the main market area. My mom was fascinated by the market. There were people scaling fresh fish, butchers hanging entire goat carcasses, vegetables, fruit, and whatever you could possibly need to survive all in a little place. It’s a place full of a lot of energy. Luckily Godfrey was able to guide us through and to help get us fair prices because he knew a lot of the vendors. By the time we met up with Angell with all of the stuff, we realized that we needed a better way down the hill. A boda guy had already strapped the two bunches of matooke to his boda. The best thing we decided would be to each get a boda and carry a load. My poor mom! She had kept saying she didn’t want to ride one, but she no longer had a choice. Before she knew it, a boda was in front of her and she was instructed to hop on! I had made sure to tell the boda driver that she was a first-timer and I inspected to make sure she had one with two good foot rests. We became a line of 5 bodas – 4 with people and one with bunches of matooke and a bucket of dishes! We all made it safely to the orphanage with a huge load! My mom even enjoyed the ride! Who knows, she may decide bodas are the way to go!
We were greeted at the gate by tons of smiling faces! The mother, Hilda, was so happy to see us with all the food. She was jumping up and down. The kids were yelling and screaming in excitement. It’s truly amazing to see what joy they have! Once we were all safely inside and the bodas had been paid, we gave lots of hugs and got lots of thank-yous from everyone. There is an older woman who was also there who is a neighbor that comes to help out. We pulled out the soccer ball and immediately the kids ran around to play with it. We ended up playing a giant game of pig in the middle with a big circle and about 5 kids in the middle. Hilda even got in on the action! The kids were laughing and having a great time. Occasionally I saw the faces of neighbor kids climbing up a tree to look over the wall and see what all the commotion was about. The smaller kids were running around with the two smaller balls we bought. We eventually stopped the keep-away game and played some soccer. It’s not my sport, but I tried pretty hard. Unfortunately I probably kicked every one of the kids at least twice, but I was full of bruises myself! When it started to get dark, the kids lined up and sang us songs. It was a blast to be around all the kids and be able to laugh and have a wonderful night. At the very end of the soccer game, Angella kicked the ball and it landed on the spikes of the metal doors and popped it! I guess we’ll have to replace that when we go back with Pamela and Nick. At least they got one night of fun with it!
As we were getting ready to leave, we gathered in a group, and Hilda wanted to pray for us! It was wonderful! We were able to use what we had to bless them and in return they are blessing us with their prayers for safety and guidance from the Lord! I know that God put us in touch with this orphanage through his plan. Our goal is to provide medicine to them, but we can reach out and help them in small practical ways when we can!
It was dark when we left and we were clearly in the ghetto. Angella suggested we walk like we belong. She had quite a strut. When we turned around, we saw my mom had a strut of her own. Actually, it looked more like a dance. We all decided to do the “mama Margie strut” on and off the whole way home. We must have been quite a site, walking through town, dancing and laughing and having a good time. Along the way we stopped for some pineapple and bananas at a roadside stand. We got a local fruit for free. The man didn’t even have a name for it, but Godfrey assured us it was okay to eat. It looked like a red chili, but it peeled away to reveal insides kind of like a passion fruit. It was tasty, but unlike anything I’ve really tasted before. It was a combination of something sweet and something spicy all at once. It did leave an odd aftertaste, so I was glad when we stopped and got some fresh chapatti.
Angella and Godfrey gave us a “push”. I really love this tradition! People will generally walk people past their driveways or to a good stopping place. They will carry your load until you part ways. Thanks to Godfrey, I didn’t have to carry our big bag of fruit! We stopped at Quality supermarket and got some of the essentials and some treats! I haven’t had Nutella in ages and it makes Digestives taste so much better! It was worth the $4.50 for a whole jar! I think it was cheaper than the peanut butter! If you’ve never had this hazelnut-cocoa delight, you should really go pick some up! It’s a great way to get your chocolate fix! We also got some chocolate bars and cheese and crackers. Tomorrow night Angella and some friends are coming over for wine treats and games! These are some of my favorite things! (although usually wine is substituted for soda of some sort….it can be a rare treat!). Before bed we watched a Van-Dam movie called “In Hell”. It was awful, but we kept watching just to see the outcome. It’s a 2003 action movie about a guy who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Russia after he killed the man who brutally raped and murdered his wife. It was extremely disturbing to see the violence and corruption! I was happy for it to end. However, it was much more entertaining than the crazy Nigerian movies that Susan loves so dearly!
I like when I can say that and really truly mean it in every aspect! We started out a little slow, but we ended with a bang! I wanted to walk to town because we hadn’t walked a long distance in a while and I really like it when I can feel like I got a lot of exercise in for the day. It was much warmer than it was the last time we walked, so I think my mom didn’t really enjoy the walk. I pretty much expect that every walk will be hot and I will be sweating almost the whole time, but I think my mom hasn’t quite gotten to that acceptance yet! We stopped at the supermarket to buy some water and a soccer ball for the orphanage we were going to visit. Then we tried to get money from an ATM again. The one near the supermarket was broken so we had to walk a little further to a gas station. The one there was working, but both times I tried, it said the transaction was cancelled. I had called yesterday, and Wells Fargo said I was over my limit for a single day, which I didn’t think was true, but I waited 24 hours just in case. Since I had tried 3 different ATMs in 24 hours, I decided I better call again. The woman on the other line said that 3 minutes ago I had made two withdrawals for $300 each! Clearly I had not! All I had to show after putting in my card twice were two pieces of paper denying me any money! We went through the whole process of filing a claim and after 10 minutes, she said that the withdrawals were reversed and my money was back. Unfortunately, that still didn’t help me access any money. I was down to a mere $20US and I knew that wouldn’t last very long. I still had some cash back at home so I wasn’t too worried. The Wells Fargo lady suggested I pay with credit cards at the places I go. Clearly she’s never been to Africa! Sure you can use a credit card at the fancy places that Mzungu’s go. But I could probably count those on less than two hands and two feet! Besides, those places are way out of my price range! I explained that we shop at markets and street stores that accept only cold hard Ugandan cash! We decided to just wait and see if we could get money directly from a bank.
We kept walking to meet Angella for lunch at a local place that we went to last weekend. It’s nice to go to an easy place with decent food at a “local” price. I think we should frequent “Taste Budz” more often. Once we were full of food, we were already late to meet Godfrey. We decided to just walk to meet him rather than go to the bank first. On the way, Angella suggested I try one more ATM. Thank you Stanbic Bank! Your Automated Teller Machine liked my card and gave me my money! I will have to remember that for the future! Now we are for sure able to access the money we had set aside to buy stuff for the orphanages. I was only slightly worried, but it was still a huge relief to know we wouldn’t have to run around to all kinds of banks to figure out our cash situation!
The school that Godfrey teaches at is an international school that was completely funded for a new building two years ago by a wealthy Indian man. Mostly rich Ugandans and international families enroll their kids there. I know it’s for sure a nicer facility than my hometown school and probably has just as much to offer as any school would in Minnesota. It was good for my mom to see a school, but I almost wish we could have seen a local one without millions of dollars invested in it. While we were waiting in the library, I opened up the newspaper to find a picture of children at their school. They were sitting on long wooden benches with one long thin table in front of them. The schoolroom had dirt floors and the kids’ uniforms were dirty and some were torn. I’m sure they don’t have many books and probably don’t have a really great teaching staff. That is what I usually picture in my head as a Ugandan school. It just goes to show again what money can get you. There is always a big gap between the haves and the have-nots, not matter what country you live in.
We still had some time to kill even after the tour, so we walked back up to the main street in the area for a drink and so Godfrey could grab a bite to eat. We all ordered different drinks. Coke, Sprite, Fanta, and Stoney. It looked like a typical table when Angella eats with us. Stoney is a Coke product that I am not sad about not being able to get at home. When I was in high school we took a trip to the Coca-Cola factory in Atlanta. You can taste Coke products from all around the world. I am almost positive that Stoney was one of the choices and that I had to drink 5 glasses of regular Coke to get the taste out of my mouth! Stoney has a super strong ginger flavor. It’s just too overwhelming for my taste, but Angella loves it! I will let her drink it as much as she wants as long as it means I don’t have to!
We decided over drinks that we should bring some food down to the orphanage. I thought it would be cool to get a huge bunch of Matooke. It comes on a really big branch that is about two feet long and covered with bananas. The only problem was the logistics of getting it down the hill. We decided we could hire a boda to get it down the hill. Since we were already getting some matooke, we figured we could get some other things as well. For $75 we got 24 liters of milk, two bunches of matooke, 10 kilos of rice, 10 kilos of beans, 5 kilos of sugar, 25 cups, 25 plates, a bucket, stirring spoons, 2 small balls, and a soccer ball. Tell me a place you could do that back home and I’ll be really surprised! Godfrey, my mom and I had gone to get the rice and beans inside the main market area. My mom was fascinated by the market. There were people scaling fresh fish, butchers hanging entire goat carcasses, vegetables, fruit, and whatever you could possibly need to survive all in a little place. It’s a place full of a lot of energy. Luckily Godfrey was able to guide us through and to help get us fair prices because he knew a lot of the vendors. By the time we met up with Angell with all of the stuff, we realized that we needed a better way down the hill. A boda guy had already strapped the two bunches of matooke to his boda. The best thing we decided would be to each get a boda and carry a load. My poor mom! She had kept saying she didn’t want to ride one, but she no longer had a choice. Before she knew it, a boda was in front of her and she was instructed to hop on! I had made sure to tell the boda driver that she was a first-timer and I inspected to make sure she had one with two good foot rests. We became a line of 5 bodas – 4 with people and one with bunches of matooke and a bucket of dishes! We all made it safely to the orphanage with a huge load! My mom even enjoyed the ride! Who knows, she may decide bodas are the way to go!
We were greeted at the gate by tons of smiling faces! The mother, Hilda, was so happy to see us with all the food. She was jumping up and down. The kids were yelling and screaming in excitement. It’s truly amazing to see what joy they have! Once we were all safely inside and the bodas had been paid, we gave lots of hugs and got lots of thank-yous from everyone. There is an older woman who was also there who is a neighbor that comes to help out. We pulled out the soccer ball and immediately the kids ran around to play with it. We ended up playing a giant game of pig in the middle with a big circle and about 5 kids in the middle. Hilda even got in on the action! The kids were laughing and having a great time. Occasionally I saw the faces of neighbor kids climbing up a tree to look over the wall and see what all the commotion was about. The smaller kids were running around with the two smaller balls we bought. We eventually stopped the keep-away game and played some soccer. It’s not my sport, but I tried pretty hard. Unfortunately I probably kicked every one of the kids at least twice, but I was full of bruises myself! When it started to get dark, the kids lined up and sang us songs. It was a blast to be around all the kids and be able to laugh and have a wonderful night. At the very end of the soccer game, Angella kicked the ball and it landed on the spikes of the metal doors and popped it! I guess we’ll have to replace that when we go back with Pamela and Nick. At least they got one night of fun with it!
As we were getting ready to leave, we gathered in a group, and Hilda wanted to pray for us! It was wonderful! We were able to use what we had to bless them and in return they are blessing us with their prayers for safety and guidance from the Lord! I know that God put us in touch with this orphanage through his plan. Our goal is to provide medicine to them, but we can reach out and help them in small practical ways when we can!
It was dark when we left and we were clearly in the ghetto. Angella suggested we walk like we belong. She had quite a strut. When we turned around, we saw my mom had a strut of her own. Actually, it looked more like a dance. We all decided to do the “mama Margie strut” on and off the whole way home. We must have been quite a site, walking through town, dancing and laughing and having a good time. Along the way we stopped for some pineapple and bananas at a roadside stand. We got a local fruit for free. The man didn’t even have a name for it, but Godfrey assured us it was okay to eat. It looked like a red chili, but it peeled away to reveal insides kind of like a passion fruit. It was tasty, but unlike anything I’ve really tasted before. It was a combination of something sweet and something spicy all at once. It did leave an odd aftertaste, so I was glad when we stopped and got some fresh chapatti.
Angella and Godfrey gave us a “push”. I really love this tradition! People will generally walk people past their driveways or to a good stopping place. They will carry your load until you part ways. Thanks to Godfrey, I didn’t have to carry our big bag of fruit! We stopped at Quality supermarket and got some of the essentials and some treats! I haven’t had Nutella in ages and it makes Digestives taste so much better! It was worth the $4.50 for a whole jar! I think it was cheaper than the peanut butter! If you’ve never had this hazelnut-cocoa delight, you should really go pick some up! It’s a great way to get your chocolate fix! We also got some chocolate bars and cheese and crackers. Tomorrow night Angella and some friends are coming over for wine treats and games! These are some of my favorite things! (although usually wine is substituted for soda of some sort….it can be a rare treat!). Before bed we watched a Van-Dam movie called “In Hell”. It was awful, but we kept watching just to see the outcome. It’s a 2003 action movie about a guy who was sentenced to life imprisonment in Russia after he killed the man who brutally raped and murdered his wife. It was extremely disturbing to see the violence and corruption! I was happy for it to end. However, it was much more entertaining than the crazy Nigerian movies that Susan loves so dearly!
Day 15 - July 20
I love the days that you can feel like you are more than a tourist or a person just visiting. Because we are staying with people in a home and Angella has pretty much been adopted as a sister and daughter to us, we get to have a glimpse of what it feels like to be a part of the community here.
In the morning, mom and I sat around and read, watched some T.V. and caught up on some work that we had to do. Last night I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I went to bed before midnight and slept until I got a text message from somebody in the states at 2:00 in the morning. It doesn’t usually bother me, but for some reason, I couldn’t fall back to sleep this time. If I haven’t said before, we are 8 hours ahead of Minnesota time. As I was trying to fall back to sleep I kept hearing mosquitoes buzzing around near my head. Then I wouldn’t hear anything for a while and just when I thought it was safe to fall back to sleep, one would show up again! On top of the mosquitoes, I occasionally heard rustling of plastic. I knew that we had a plastic garbage bag in the room and we had a few food wrappers and things that cockroaches might like. I kept picturing them crawling all over the floor and eventually making it up onto my mattress! Every once and a while I would turn on my headlamp to try to find the mosquito, but when I did, I heard the creature in the black bag scurry away from the light. It went on for over 2 hours before I finally drifted back to sleep. Despite the middle of the night sleeplessness, I still managed to be away at 7:30 and not able to stay in bed! At least I got to sit around most of the day. At one point, I tried to take a little nap, but it lasted a measly 5 minutes.
Angella decided not to meet up with us at all during the day, but would catch up with us when we went to her friend Susan’s house for dinner. My mom and I took a cab ride to Garden City to get some money from the ATM, eat lunch, and maybe walk to the craft market nearby. By the time we got to Garden City, we decided we wouldn’t have enough time to walk anywhere. I was craving a pizza from the place in the food court, but for no apparent reason, it was closed. We settled for Chinese food. The service is so bad sometimes! Our server just didn’t bring some things and never explained what he was doing. At one point, he set the sauces down in front of us and then 5 minutes later another server swooped in and took them from us and delivered them to another table. Then, when we were finished with all our food, our waiter came back with the sauces and asked if we needed them. We didn’t ask for them in the first place, they were taken from us without explanation, and then when we have no use for them, they were offered to us! Almost all the waiters ended up just sitting down at random tables by the time we left. Clearly it doesn’t matter to them if they look busy or not. They just wanted to sit down. TIA!
We were supposed to meet Max, the person who runs Little Angel in Rubaga at 5:00 at his house. We were going to leave at 4:30, but Jozeph assured us we needed to leave at 4:00 in order to avoid the jam. It still took nearly a half hour to get there. We had picked up some rice, beans, school books, juice, and treats at the supermarket on our way. The two mothers were very appreciative of what we had to bring them. The children were excited to see us again and showed us around the house. I really don’t know how this place is run. Max apparently used to have sponsors for the kids for school and people who helped out paying the bills. The mothers said the sponsors are now gone and Max pays for all the bills himself. He has barely paid the mothers anything lately. One of them said she has only gotten paid 100,000 since January. That’s only $50 in 7 months! She doesn’t want Max to know that she told us but she is stuck because she has a family she needs to support and they can’t have her just going away to a job that doesn’t pay any money. The focus of our trip is to provide medicine and we also have some donated money to buy a food, clothes, or maybe a couple games for some of the places. We need to find a way for these places to survive on a daily basis. We heard about a few social programs from the other orphanage that I think we will recommend. The problem is, Max never made it. He was stuck in a jam. You would think he would have planned better considering he come to Little Angel nearly every day and works downtown. Jozeph told us what time we had to leave and he rarely goes to Rubaga. Even though we waited for a really long time, we still had fun. The kids ended up singing and dancing around the living room. I think kids really enjoy singing. It’s especially wonderful when they sing songs about Jesus! It’s great to see their smiling facing praising the Lord! Even though they have very little, they are very thankful for everything that they do have. We decided that we should buy them shoes for school. They brought us out the shoes they do have. Some have so many holes in them, they look like sandals. One pair had the inside sole so worn down that all you could see is the plastic support at the bottom. We drew lines on a piece of paper to try to mark down their sizes. Hopefully we will be able to find inexpensive shoes in all the right sizes when we go to the flea market on Friday.
At 6:30 we met up with Angella at her house. Luckily Jozeph is awesome and knows how to get around the city and avoid the major jams! He’s a great cab driver. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Jozeph is a hard working guy. He went to school until Primary 7, which is just about junior high. His family no longer had money to support him in school, so he got a job working for a company. After many years with the company, they changed their policies so that in order for him to continue, he would need more education. Since that was not possible, he invested in a boda and started driving around town. Eventually he saved up to buy more bodas and hire drivers for them. Then he decided to sell the bodas and buy a cab. Now he has his cab, a few bodas, he owns land in the country, a house in Kampala, and supports his wife and children along with his brothers and sisters. He’s really a hard working guy. He drives his cab seven days a week from morning until at least 9 or 10 at night. It goes to show that if you put your mind to it, you can make things happen in this country. Jozeph has said numerous times that the men in this country are lazy. They tend to have 5 wives and not work and then expect people to give them things. It’s sometimes nice to hear what people in the country thing about the people living here. It gives you a perspective that you might not otherwise have discovered.
Susan the woman in charge of the international students at Mulago. Ross met her on his first trip and we usually stop in to see her at least once or twice. She is pretty good friends with Angella so she wanted to host us for dinner. Her sister, Barbara cooked a lot of traditional food – Matooke, rice, beans, pork, vegetables, and chapatti. Susan is also a really short lady! I think she makes my mom look tall when she stands next to her! We took a picture together and Susan was still shorter than me when she stood on the couch! Susan’s favorite part of the night was watching my mom and her niece, Clarissa, interact. They had flashcards with animals on them. My mom was saying the words in English and Clarissa was saying them in Luganda. Neither really understood what the other was saying, but they were communicating the same thing. We are going to bring some crayons to Susan’s office for Clarissa in the next couple of days. It’s the least we can do! Hopefully when I apply to a program here as a 3rd or 4th year student, she will approve me to come! She apparently has all the power to accept or reject student applications!
In the morning, mom and I sat around and read, watched some T.V. and caught up on some work that we had to do. Last night I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I went to bed before midnight and slept until I got a text message from somebody in the states at 2:00 in the morning. It doesn’t usually bother me, but for some reason, I couldn’t fall back to sleep this time. If I haven’t said before, we are 8 hours ahead of Minnesota time. As I was trying to fall back to sleep I kept hearing mosquitoes buzzing around near my head. Then I wouldn’t hear anything for a while and just when I thought it was safe to fall back to sleep, one would show up again! On top of the mosquitoes, I occasionally heard rustling of plastic. I knew that we had a plastic garbage bag in the room and we had a few food wrappers and things that cockroaches might like. I kept picturing them crawling all over the floor and eventually making it up onto my mattress! Every once and a while I would turn on my headlamp to try to find the mosquito, but when I did, I heard the creature in the black bag scurry away from the light. It went on for over 2 hours before I finally drifted back to sleep. Despite the middle of the night sleeplessness, I still managed to be away at 7:30 and not able to stay in bed! At least I got to sit around most of the day. At one point, I tried to take a little nap, but it lasted a measly 5 minutes.
Angella decided not to meet up with us at all during the day, but would catch up with us when we went to her friend Susan’s house for dinner. My mom and I took a cab ride to Garden City to get some money from the ATM, eat lunch, and maybe walk to the craft market nearby. By the time we got to Garden City, we decided we wouldn’t have enough time to walk anywhere. I was craving a pizza from the place in the food court, but for no apparent reason, it was closed. We settled for Chinese food. The service is so bad sometimes! Our server just didn’t bring some things and never explained what he was doing. At one point, he set the sauces down in front of us and then 5 minutes later another server swooped in and took them from us and delivered them to another table. Then, when we were finished with all our food, our waiter came back with the sauces and asked if we needed them. We didn’t ask for them in the first place, they were taken from us without explanation, and then when we have no use for them, they were offered to us! Almost all the waiters ended up just sitting down at random tables by the time we left. Clearly it doesn’t matter to them if they look busy or not. They just wanted to sit down. TIA!
We were supposed to meet Max, the person who runs Little Angel in Rubaga at 5:00 at his house. We were going to leave at 4:30, but Jozeph assured us we needed to leave at 4:00 in order to avoid the jam. It still took nearly a half hour to get there. We had picked up some rice, beans, school books, juice, and treats at the supermarket on our way. The two mothers were very appreciative of what we had to bring them. The children were excited to see us again and showed us around the house. I really don’t know how this place is run. Max apparently used to have sponsors for the kids for school and people who helped out paying the bills. The mothers said the sponsors are now gone and Max pays for all the bills himself. He has barely paid the mothers anything lately. One of them said she has only gotten paid 100,000 since January. That’s only $50 in 7 months! She doesn’t want Max to know that she told us but she is stuck because she has a family she needs to support and they can’t have her just going away to a job that doesn’t pay any money. The focus of our trip is to provide medicine and we also have some donated money to buy a food, clothes, or maybe a couple games for some of the places. We need to find a way for these places to survive on a daily basis. We heard about a few social programs from the other orphanage that I think we will recommend. The problem is, Max never made it. He was stuck in a jam. You would think he would have planned better considering he come to Little Angel nearly every day and works downtown. Jozeph told us what time we had to leave and he rarely goes to Rubaga. Even though we waited for a really long time, we still had fun. The kids ended up singing and dancing around the living room. I think kids really enjoy singing. It’s especially wonderful when they sing songs about Jesus! It’s great to see their smiling facing praising the Lord! Even though they have very little, they are very thankful for everything that they do have. We decided that we should buy them shoes for school. They brought us out the shoes they do have. Some have so many holes in them, they look like sandals. One pair had the inside sole so worn down that all you could see is the plastic support at the bottom. We drew lines on a piece of paper to try to mark down their sizes. Hopefully we will be able to find inexpensive shoes in all the right sizes when we go to the flea market on Friday.
At 6:30 we met up with Angella at her house. Luckily Jozeph is awesome and knows how to get around the city and avoid the major jams! He’s a great cab driver. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Jozeph is a hard working guy. He went to school until Primary 7, which is just about junior high. His family no longer had money to support him in school, so he got a job working for a company. After many years with the company, they changed their policies so that in order for him to continue, he would need more education. Since that was not possible, he invested in a boda and started driving around town. Eventually he saved up to buy more bodas and hire drivers for them. Then he decided to sell the bodas and buy a cab. Now he has his cab, a few bodas, he owns land in the country, a house in Kampala, and supports his wife and children along with his brothers and sisters. He’s really a hard working guy. He drives his cab seven days a week from morning until at least 9 or 10 at night. It goes to show that if you put your mind to it, you can make things happen in this country. Jozeph has said numerous times that the men in this country are lazy. They tend to have 5 wives and not work and then expect people to give them things. It’s sometimes nice to hear what people in the country thing about the people living here. It gives you a perspective that you might not otherwise have discovered.
Susan the woman in charge of the international students at Mulago. Ross met her on his first trip and we usually stop in to see her at least once or twice. She is pretty good friends with Angella so she wanted to host us for dinner. Her sister, Barbara cooked a lot of traditional food – Matooke, rice, beans, pork, vegetables, and chapatti. Susan is also a really short lady! I think she makes my mom look tall when she stands next to her! We took a picture together and Susan was still shorter than me when she stood on the couch! Susan’s favorite part of the night was watching my mom and her niece, Clarissa, interact. They had flashcards with animals on them. My mom was saying the words in English and Clarissa was saying them in Luganda. Neither really understood what the other was saying, but they were communicating the same thing. We are going to bring some crayons to Susan’s office for Clarissa in the next couple of days. It’s the least we can do! Hopefully when I apply to a program here as a 3rd or 4th year student, she will approve me to come! She apparently has all the power to accept or reject student applications!
Day 14 - July 19
Sometimes its just nice to have a day that is not to stressful and a bit more laid back. Today was perfect for that! Angella and I set aside the day as our time to organize what we need for the medicine cabinets and get Yassin, the office messenger, to fetch them from all of the places where he knows he can get them at a good price. First off, let me just say how much I love the idea of an office messenger. In the states, we just order things online, call somebody to deliver, or go out and get what we need ourselves. With Yassin, anything is fair game. He sometimes goes to fetch something Angella forgot at her house. He goes to town to buy medicine for the clinic. He delivers paychecks. Anything you want, Yassin can get it. He knows all the best places to shop for clinic supplies. He must be one of the most valuable resources that the clinic has! Luckily, Angella can have him fetch our medicine too!
I walked in to Angella’s house around 11. I did a lot of walking today! I loved every step! The big hill is getting better. Because of the rain we got yesterday, I think some of the dust has settled. It’s still a killer steep hill that got me only slightly winded, but as soon as I slowed down, it was not a problem. I realize more and more why people walk slow. It’s hot and long, so if you take your time, every walk is a lot easier. I noticed that many of the same people are doing the same things every day. I am trying to figure out what everybody is doing at their jobs. There is a group of people digging out clay and forming it into pots. Every time I walk by, the yard is even more full of them drying in the sun. There is a man always sitting near a large pile of smoking stuff in his yard. I don’t know if he is cooking or making bricks or just burning garbage. At the “valley” of the hill I walk in is the place where all the garbage is burned. It smells and I try to hold my breath for those two minutes that I have to walk through the cloud of smoke. I’m sure that there is something bad that I’m breathing in that’s worse than the smell because they burn ALL of their garbage. At least it’s all in one place. There is actually a fine if you litter in this neighborhood. I’m more than slightly impressed by that law! Today, the man burning the garbage stared at me for a while. Finally I said hello. He smiled and waved and then said, “You walk a lot. Why do you walk so much?” I actually had something to say. Angella taught me a phrase for “I want to walk”. I said it and he just laughed. I probably didn’t say it right, but I think he got the picture. I learned the phrase so when the Boda-Boda drivers call out as I walk by I can tell them, “No, I want to walk”. It should come in handy quite often. I was surprised I even remembered it this morning!
It was hot by the time I reached Angella’s so I needed to sit on the floor and cool off. We talked about our plan for the day and then watched a collection of World Cup videos and commercials that her friend had put together for me. Those songs will always remind me of the trip because for my first week here they were all that I heard and saw on T.V. and radio. Thanks to Richard, I will hopefully get to see them for a very long time!
We decided to take a Mtatu to the nearest ATM and then walk the rest of the day. It’s nice to be able to just get money out of an ATM rather than carry everything in cash like I have in the past. It’s worth the $5 charge from Wells Fargo to do it! However, I always feel uncomfortable carrying around all that money once I’ve got it!
We walked to a place called UHMG (Uganda Health Marketing Group) where Gloria had told us to go and buy mosquito nets. At the gate, the guard asked us for ID. It’s the first time I’ve needed it, but I’m glad I had my passport with me. Angella didn’t have anything to prove who she was, but they let us in any way. At least now she can’t say that I never have a reason to carry my passport! We talked to a women in the reception area for a couple of minutes and she instructed us to go to their warehouse. At this point I was just hoping we wouldn’t get there and be told to go someplace else again or that they will cost just as much as they do in the grocery store. It happens a lot and when you have no clue if people are sending you to the right place or for the right thing. Luckily, she assured us they prices are low to allow more people to buy them and that the warehouse always has them in stock.
We walked to Garden City to grab some lunch before heading to the warehouse. While we were sitting in Javas, a guy walked in the door that was dressed like the guy in the music videos for one of the world cup songs. I pointed him out to Angella and told her what I thought. She casually said that it wasn’t him but the guy walking in is a famous singer in Uganda. Wouldn’t you know, he walked right up to where we were and asked me if he could use the extra chair at our table. He then sat down at the table next to ours. I kept glancing over trying to figure out what a famous person does at a restaurant. He was working on some photos with a guy who must have been his manager and listening to some music. At one point I asked Angella his named. She quietly said Maurice. I didn’t understand so I loudly repeated, “Maurice or Morris”? Of course Maurice heard me and responded by looking in our direction. The rest of our lunch, she said he kept looking at me. I probably wanted to know how I knew is name. If I were Allie Bentrud, I probably would have found a way to talk to him but I’m just not that good with celebrity sightings! Apparently in Uganda people really don’t make a mob scene when they see famous people unless they are huge international stars. At least I can say I kind of talked to a famous person and he used my chair!
We took Boda’s to get to the warehouse! Oh, how I miss riding bodas! I know they are probably the most dangerous of the three ways to travel, but if you find a good one and you’re not in a really crazy congested area, they are perfectly safe. They are slightly more expensive than a mtatu, but you get to places so much faster! You are darting in and around the stopped traffic and you constantly have the fresh (by fresh I mean smoggy) air blowing in your face. It’s better than an expensive, stuffy cab that has to get stuck in the jam with all the rest of the cars.
We got to the warehouse and the people were super helpful and we were able to buy the nets for about $5 each. Last year when somebody recommended a good place, we paid twice that price! We’ll have to remember it for the future! We ended up with 25 nets, which meant a big box and my back-pack full of them! We still decided to take Boda’s home. Angella took the box and we managed to get them all back to the house.
By the time we got in, Yassin called to tell us he was available. The bodas were already gone, so we walked all the way back to the clinic. It took us nearly an hour to look up the drugs and decide what he needed to buy, but we finally got it done! It’s going to cost just over $200 to get supplies for 18 medicine cabinet. I paid that much to get half of that amount of medicine for only 10 cabinets. Clearly it is better to buy medicine here than it is to bring it. We learned our lesson. This project is all about figuring out what works best and then going with it.
On the walk home, I felt Africa all around me. There were 5 cows with hug horns being chased down the road by a guy with a stick. The kids were coming home from school. Some girls in my favorite pink uniforms said hi! Maybe I should see if I can go with them to school some day! The garbage pile was full of people sorting and mixing the pile to make it burn better and salvage anything that is still useful. One of the guys at the clay pot place waved and said hello. Some children hollered out Mzungu over and over until I turned and waved at them. Halfway up the big hill, a overtook a man walking my direction. He said, “afternoon, madame”. I then started to talk with him since we were headed the same way. His name is Stephen and he works in Ntinda but lives on the other side of the hill with his wife and children. He walks most of the time. We parted at the top of the hill and he wished me a good night. As I passed the soccer field, there were tons of guys out playing with an old tattered ball. I could faintly hear beating drums and in the distance I saw a line of girls dancing to the beat.
By the time I got home, I was really tired and probably pretty dirty. I took a shower and decided to relax the rest of the night. My poor mom had been home all day just catching up on reading and cleaning. She didn’t want to go out anywhere, so we heated up some leftovers. Gloria came over because she was locked out of her place until Susan got home with the key. It was Gloria’s last day of work before the wedding! She’s getting so excited. I can’t wait to stop by and see what the weddings here are like on Saturday! Gloria is so full of energy and is hysterical to be around. She also let us use her internet connection to post some blogs and check some emails. I want to make sure I don’t miss too many messages while I’m here, just in case they are important!
Tomorrow we don’t have much planned, so I’m excited to finally have more than a couple hours to rest and relax. We are just going to meet up with Max at Little Angels. He’s the guy who runs the place and we want to know a bit more about it. Then we’re going to have dinner at another Susan’s house. It should be another good one!
I walked in to Angella’s house around 11. I did a lot of walking today! I loved every step! The big hill is getting better. Because of the rain we got yesterday, I think some of the dust has settled. It’s still a killer steep hill that got me only slightly winded, but as soon as I slowed down, it was not a problem. I realize more and more why people walk slow. It’s hot and long, so if you take your time, every walk is a lot easier. I noticed that many of the same people are doing the same things every day. I am trying to figure out what everybody is doing at their jobs. There is a group of people digging out clay and forming it into pots. Every time I walk by, the yard is even more full of them drying in the sun. There is a man always sitting near a large pile of smoking stuff in his yard. I don’t know if he is cooking or making bricks or just burning garbage. At the “valley” of the hill I walk in is the place where all the garbage is burned. It smells and I try to hold my breath for those two minutes that I have to walk through the cloud of smoke. I’m sure that there is something bad that I’m breathing in that’s worse than the smell because they burn ALL of their garbage. At least it’s all in one place. There is actually a fine if you litter in this neighborhood. I’m more than slightly impressed by that law! Today, the man burning the garbage stared at me for a while. Finally I said hello. He smiled and waved and then said, “You walk a lot. Why do you walk so much?” I actually had something to say. Angella taught me a phrase for “I want to walk”. I said it and he just laughed. I probably didn’t say it right, but I think he got the picture. I learned the phrase so when the Boda-Boda drivers call out as I walk by I can tell them, “No, I want to walk”. It should come in handy quite often. I was surprised I even remembered it this morning!
It was hot by the time I reached Angella’s so I needed to sit on the floor and cool off. We talked about our plan for the day and then watched a collection of World Cup videos and commercials that her friend had put together for me. Those songs will always remind me of the trip because for my first week here they were all that I heard and saw on T.V. and radio. Thanks to Richard, I will hopefully get to see them for a very long time!
We decided to take a Mtatu to the nearest ATM and then walk the rest of the day. It’s nice to be able to just get money out of an ATM rather than carry everything in cash like I have in the past. It’s worth the $5 charge from Wells Fargo to do it! However, I always feel uncomfortable carrying around all that money once I’ve got it!
We walked to a place called UHMG (Uganda Health Marketing Group) where Gloria had told us to go and buy mosquito nets. At the gate, the guard asked us for ID. It’s the first time I’ve needed it, but I’m glad I had my passport with me. Angella didn’t have anything to prove who she was, but they let us in any way. At least now she can’t say that I never have a reason to carry my passport! We talked to a women in the reception area for a couple of minutes and she instructed us to go to their warehouse. At this point I was just hoping we wouldn’t get there and be told to go someplace else again or that they will cost just as much as they do in the grocery store. It happens a lot and when you have no clue if people are sending you to the right place or for the right thing. Luckily, she assured us they prices are low to allow more people to buy them and that the warehouse always has them in stock.
We walked to Garden City to grab some lunch before heading to the warehouse. While we were sitting in Javas, a guy walked in the door that was dressed like the guy in the music videos for one of the world cup songs. I pointed him out to Angella and told her what I thought. She casually said that it wasn’t him but the guy walking in is a famous singer in Uganda. Wouldn’t you know, he walked right up to where we were and asked me if he could use the extra chair at our table. He then sat down at the table next to ours. I kept glancing over trying to figure out what a famous person does at a restaurant. He was working on some photos with a guy who must have been his manager and listening to some music. At one point I asked Angella his named. She quietly said Maurice. I didn’t understand so I loudly repeated, “Maurice or Morris”? Of course Maurice heard me and responded by looking in our direction. The rest of our lunch, she said he kept looking at me. I probably wanted to know how I knew is name. If I were Allie Bentrud, I probably would have found a way to talk to him but I’m just not that good with celebrity sightings! Apparently in Uganda people really don’t make a mob scene when they see famous people unless they are huge international stars. At least I can say I kind of talked to a famous person and he used my chair!
We took Boda’s to get to the warehouse! Oh, how I miss riding bodas! I know they are probably the most dangerous of the three ways to travel, but if you find a good one and you’re not in a really crazy congested area, they are perfectly safe. They are slightly more expensive than a mtatu, but you get to places so much faster! You are darting in and around the stopped traffic and you constantly have the fresh (by fresh I mean smoggy) air blowing in your face. It’s better than an expensive, stuffy cab that has to get stuck in the jam with all the rest of the cars.
We got to the warehouse and the people were super helpful and we were able to buy the nets for about $5 each. Last year when somebody recommended a good place, we paid twice that price! We’ll have to remember it for the future! We ended up with 25 nets, which meant a big box and my back-pack full of them! We still decided to take Boda’s home. Angella took the box and we managed to get them all back to the house.
By the time we got in, Yassin called to tell us he was available. The bodas were already gone, so we walked all the way back to the clinic. It took us nearly an hour to look up the drugs and decide what he needed to buy, but we finally got it done! It’s going to cost just over $200 to get supplies for 18 medicine cabinet. I paid that much to get half of that amount of medicine for only 10 cabinets. Clearly it is better to buy medicine here than it is to bring it. We learned our lesson. This project is all about figuring out what works best and then going with it.
On the walk home, I felt Africa all around me. There were 5 cows with hug horns being chased down the road by a guy with a stick. The kids were coming home from school. Some girls in my favorite pink uniforms said hi! Maybe I should see if I can go with them to school some day! The garbage pile was full of people sorting and mixing the pile to make it burn better and salvage anything that is still useful. One of the guys at the clay pot place waved and said hello. Some children hollered out Mzungu over and over until I turned and waved at them. Halfway up the big hill, a overtook a man walking my direction. He said, “afternoon, madame”. I then started to talk with him since we were headed the same way. His name is Stephen and he works in Ntinda but lives on the other side of the hill with his wife and children. He walks most of the time. We parted at the top of the hill and he wished me a good night. As I passed the soccer field, there were tons of guys out playing with an old tattered ball. I could faintly hear beating drums and in the distance I saw a line of girls dancing to the beat.
By the time I got home, I was really tired and probably pretty dirty. I took a shower and decided to relax the rest of the night. My poor mom had been home all day just catching up on reading and cleaning. She didn’t want to go out anywhere, so we heated up some leftovers. Gloria came over because she was locked out of her place until Susan got home with the key. It was Gloria’s last day of work before the wedding! She’s getting so excited. I can’t wait to stop by and see what the weddings here are like on Saturday! Gloria is so full of energy and is hysterical to be around. She also let us use her internet connection to post some blogs and check some emails. I want to make sure I don’t miss too many messages while I’m here, just in case they are important!
Tomorrow we don’t have much planned, so I’m excited to finally have more than a couple hours to rest and relax. We are just going to meet up with Max at Little Angels. He’s the guy who runs the place and we want to know a bit more about it. Then we’re going to have dinner at another Susan’s house. It should be another good one!
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Day 13 - July 18
Sundays always seem to give me a new outlook here. It’s almost always started out by going to church, but then there usually seems to be some other bonus that lets us know that we are moving forward. Both of the other times we’ve been here, we’ve seen God helping us along the way and guiding us where we need to go. This trip especially has been that way. Whenever we get discouraged, he places something right in front of us to help us out and give us new hope. Last night we prayed together about what to do with the village and about where we could use our resources most wisely. Today during worship, the pastor had people break up into groups of three to pray for each other’s needs. I prayed with Emmie and Grace. It was wonderful to be able to lift up requests for each other, even though we had never met. That’s a beautiful thing about the body of Christ. It’s not limited to one geographical location or one particular group of people. We are all citizens of the same earth and we can come together with the bond that is Christ.
The message today was about the church as a family. Pastor Chris talked about how our families can be frustrating sometimes but when it comes down to it, they are the people that impact us the most. They are able to guide us when we are lost or confused. They give us advice when we are unsure of what to do. They make us laugh and bring us joy. They comfort us when we are sad. Just because we are not related by blood doesn’t mean that we can’t have the same relationship with our church family around the world. We can rely on people in the church to help us in our walk with the Lord. When you think about the family of the church in a global context, it gets to be really overwhelming. To think that there are people in every corner of the great big earth that are praying to the same God that loves all of us, despite our shortcomings, is simply amazing! I have a hard enough time sometimes just loving my close family or friends that are near. Can you imagine how much love there is to cover the entire world?
During church, a heavy rain came down and you could immediately feel a coolness in the air. It’s the first real rain since we got here and I know we needed it. Hopefully the dust will settle for at least a day or two. After the service, we met up with Angella’s sister, Kate, for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant (which also serves local, Indian, and Asian food). I don’t think I’ve been to many restaurants that stick to just one food influence except for the Indian restaurants! It is fun to see the interaction between Angella and her younger sister. They laugh and joke with each other and make fun of each other for crazy things, but you still know that they really love each other. Family here is much more important than it seems to be at home. When somebody needs money, an aunt or uncle will provide it. There is no expectation that anybody will ever pay you back for it. If Kate comes to town, Angella pays for her food, transportation, and anything else that she wants. We do that to some extent back home, but I don’t think it is as widely accepted across families. In the states we have this weird mentality that is so focused on self preservation, that we often overlook ways to be really supporting each other.
After lunch we met Angella’s friend Godfrey, who had told Angella about an orphanage we should visit earlier in the month. He offered to take us there for an impromptu visit. It turns out there was an old woman who kept taking in orphans off the street. She ended up with over 20 children living in a very tiny home, which Godfrey pointed out along the way. She passed away about a year and a half ago, but the community didn’t want to abandon the children. People worked with the local church and found a home for them to rent and a woman to step in and take care of them. There is a social program that provides a month of food and rent at a time. The church supplies some clothes, beds, and toys for the children. Another program allows the kids to all go to school up to a certain age. Some local sponsors are going to help the children attend the older children when they need to attend school.
When we arrived at the house, you could tell it had a fell a lot like Need for All, only it was much better kept and when we learned about the programs involved in caring for the children, we realized it is much better than Need for All ever was. The only thing they are missing is health care! PERFECT! When Ross wrote the grant, this was exactly the description that we were looking for. The mother, Hilda, was wonderfully welcoming to us, even though we came on such a short notice. Only a handful of the 22 children were there because the rest were at church. They were super polite and you could tell they care about each other. When we handed out some cookies, they all shared with each other, which is unlike a lot of little kids we see. We are going to come back next week to meet with all of the children and discuss the study with them some more. We walked away feeling so good about the day! This place is within walking distance of Angella’s house, so it will be a great location. God really has a way of connecting us to where we need to go and at the right time. Angella’s friend Godfrey is a teacher at an international school with the same age kids as my mom. I think it was great for my mom to e able to meet and talk with him. He’s going to take us to see his school on Wednesday before we go back to the orphanage to meet all the kids.
We got back to Angella’s apartment and made a spreadsheet and some pages of information for Deo to fill out about the children at Good Hope Initiative. It is not that hard of a list, it just needs to be a list of 100 children who are actually orphans with no living mother and father. Although Deo has claimed that the children are orphans, we don’t really know for sure. In order for the study to be valid we need to make sure that we are working with an orphanage rather than just a program to get the village kids together. It’s really hard for me to say that we can’t help all of the children with the benefits of the medicine in the study, but in the long run, we won’t be able to help anybody if we don’t have a valid set of data. We have other money and projects that we are planning to do with the village so we won’t be leaving all of the kids out. There just needs to be some organization or else we will never get any work done when we go there.
It was nice to come home feeling like we accomplished a lot today. It’s weird how just one little visit can change your whole outlook.
On another note, food is getting to be a challenge. You find that everything has the same texture and not the same kinds of flavors as at home. Fruit is always delicious. It’s the main courses that get monotonous. Everything has the rice and beans type of texture. I find myself craving something, but I never know what it is. Today was the first day I didn’t have a Cliff bar for breakfast, but Digestives with really weird peanut butter really didn’t do the trick either. Maybe tomorrow I will find something more appetizing than the usual stuff we’ve been cramming into our stomachs! The thing I miss most is salad! It’s not like I eat it super often at home, but at least a couple of times a week it’s in my diet. It’s not really safe to eat it over here because it’s generally washed in the water. In the interest of not risking getting sick, I avoid it. I still have a few weeks to go so I better try not to think about salads too much until then!
The message today was about the church as a family. Pastor Chris talked about how our families can be frustrating sometimes but when it comes down to it, they are the people that impact us the most. They are able to guide us when we are lost or confused. They give us advice when we are unsure of what to do. They make us laugh and bring us joy. They comfort us when we are sad. Just because we are not related by blood doesn’t mean that we can’t have the same relationship with our church family around the world. We can rely on people in the church to help us in our walk with the Lord. When you think about the family of the church in a global context, it gets to be really overwhelming. To think that there are people in every corner of the great big earth that are praying to the same God that loves all of us, despite our shortcomings, is simply amazing! I have a hard enough time sometimes just loving my close family or friends that are near. Can you imagine how much love there is to cover the entire world?
During church, a heavy rain came down and you could immediately feel a coolness in the air. It’s the first real rain since we got here and I know we needed it. Hopefully the dust will settle for at least a day or two. After the service, we met up with Angella’s sister, Kate, for lunch at a Lebanese restaurant (which also serves local, Indian, and Asian food). I don’t think I’ve been to many restaurants that stick to just one food influence except for the Indian restaurants! It is fun to see the interaction between Angella and her younger sister. They laugh and joke with each other and make fun of each other for crazy things, but you still know that they really love each other. Family here is much more important than it seems to be at home. When somebody needs money, an aunt or uncle will provide it. There is no expectation that anybody will ever pay you back for it. If Kate comes to town, Angella pays for her food, transportation, and anything else that she wants. We do that to some extent back home, but I don’t think it is as widely accepted across families. In the states we have this weird mentality that is so focused on self preservation, that we often overlook ways to be really supporting each other.
After lunch we met Angella’s friend Godfrey, who had told Angella about an orphanage we should visit earlier in the month. He offered to take us there for an impromptu visit. It turns out there was an old woman who kept taking in orphans off the street. She ended up with over 20 children living in a very tiny home, which Godfrey pointed out along the way. She passed away about a year and a half ago, but the community didn’t want to abandon the children. People worked with the local church and found a home for them to rent and a woman to step in and take care of them. There is a social program that provides a month of food and rent at a time. The church supplies some clothes, beds, and toys for the children. Another program allows the kids to all go to school up to a certain age. Some local sponsors are going to help the children attend the older children when they need to attend school.
When we arrived at the house, you could tell it had a fell a lot like Need for All, only it was much better kept and when we learned about the programs involved in caring for the children, we realized it is much better than Need for All ever was. The only thing they are missing is health care! PERFECT! When Ross wrote the grant, this was exactly the description that we were looking for. The mother, Hilda, was wonderfully welcoming to us, even though we came on such a short notice. Only a handful of the 22 children were there because the rest were at church. They were super polite and you could tell they care about each other. When we handed out some cookies, they all shared with each other, which is unlike a lot of little kids we see. We are going to come back next week to meet with all of the children and discuss the study with them some more. We walked away feeling so good about the day! This place is within walking distance of Angella’s house, so it will be a great location. God really has a way of connecting us to where we need to go and at the right time. Angella’s friend Godfrey is a teacher at an international school with the same age kids as my mom. I think it was great for my mom to e able to meet and talk with him. He’s going to take us to see his school on Wednesday before we go back to the orphanage to meet all the kids.
We got back to Angella’s apartment and made a spreadsheet and some pages of information for Deo to fill out about the children at Good Hope Initiative. It is not that hard of a list, it just needs to be a list of 100 children who are actually orphans with no living mother and father. Although Deo has claimed that the children are orphans, we don’t really know for sure. In order for the study to be valid we need to make sure that we are working with an orphanage rather than just a program to get the village kids together. It’s really hard for me to say that we can’t help all of the children with the benefits of the medicine in the study, but in the long run, we won’t be able to help anybody if we don’t have a valid set of data. We have other money and projects that we are planning to do with the village so we won’t be leaving all of the kids out. There just needs to be some organization or else we will never get any work done when we go there.
It was nice to come home feeling like we accomplished a lot today. It’s weird how just one little visit can change your whole outlook.
On another note, food is getting to be a challenge. You find that everything has the same texture and not the same kinds of flavors as at home. Fruit is always delicious. It’s the main courses that get monotonous. Everything has the rice and beans type of texture. I find myself craving something, but I never know what it is. Today was the first day I didn’t have a Cliff bar for breakfast, but Digestives with really weird peanut butter really didn’t do the trick either. Maybe tomorrow I will find something more appetizing than the usual stuff we’ve been cramming into our stomachs! The thing I miss most is salad! It’s not like I eat it super often at home, but at least a couple of times a week it’s in my diet. It’s not really safe to eat it over here because it’s generally washed in the water. In the interest of not risking getting sick, I avoid it. I still have a few weeks to go so I better try not to think about salads too much until then!
Day 12 - July 17
Today was another one of those rough days. Not because we couldn’t get anything done, but because we saw some of the “real Africa”. There is a village in a place called Mbende where a man we met, Deo, has started a project called Good Hope Initiative. He grew up in the village and many people have donated land and buildings for him to use as a center for the orphaned children of the village. He now has two different buildings in two different village areas where the children come, mostly on Saturdays, to do their homework and do some singing together. He also has placed orphans in homes with guardians that take care of them after their parents have died. Some of the other children in the program are simply disadvantaged because the parents are even more poor than the average villager. They may have less land, or poor growing areas, or are not able to work on their land. The truth is, I don’t think any of the kids in this village really have an “advantage”. There is little access to health care with only a small clinic building. Even when the doctor prescribes a medicine, it is usually unavailable or too expensive. Angella reminds me often that people here don’t die because of misdiagnosis or not knowing what to do – they die because they can’t pay to treat it. She sometimes feels like when people come to her, she ends up telling her what is going to kill them. If she says they have malaria, they know what drugs to buy, but they can’t afford them. If she finds they have cancer, chances are they won’t be able to pay for chemo drugs. It’s a sad, sad story but is a story shared by the majority of the population, so few people have time or money to mourn each other’s situations or help their neighbors pay for their health care. When you get immersed in this place, you are overwhelmed at the reality of the needs. The statistics are staggering. When I hear about how many people die from treatable diseases, how many women die in childbirth, and how many children don’t make it to age 5, it doesn’t hit me. When I see people dying from treatable diseases, children without mothers, and babies wasting away, I don’t know where to put all of my thoughts and emotions because there are too many to contain.
The drive out is much worse than it was last year. The roads are under construction in most places. If you thought construction season in Minnesota is bad, try dealing with construction here. I’m pretty sure it is a 5 year plan. There is over 60 miles of construction area, and in the whole distance, I only saw 10 men working and two different machines to do the work. Things are probably not going to go very fast when 5 guys with shovels are moving dirt from a huge pile onto the road. When I was with Gloria, I thought the dust was bad. THIS was BAD! There is constantly dust in the air. Every tree, building, and probably person on the side of the road is a shade of red from their coating with dust. You have to drive with the windows open or else you will suffocate from the heat. When you roll them down, you suffocate from the dust. It’s times like these that I thank God that he put hair in my nose to filter out the air! For more than two hours there and back, we were on bumpy roads with clouds of dust. There were times when big trucks would go by, and we would have to quickly roll up the windows and stop the car because there was so much dust coming in and the cloud was so thick that you couldn’t see anything in front of you. When we got home, Angella finally got a glimpse of herself and saw that she had brown hair instead of black and that her cream colored shirt was nearly brown! When I took a shower, my hair kept rinsing out reddish brown water. Usually my feet are the problem, but this time, it was my entire body! I’m sure when I was my clothes, there will be a bucket full of red water!
We are trying to check out Mbende to see if it will work for the orphanage project medicine cabinets. I have been there once last year, and I wanted Angella’s opinion on how it might be able to work. Our problem is that we are not quite sure exactly what Deo’s project is and how it works. He seems like he really cares about the village and the children, but he doesn’t really understand what we are trying to do. We need to be able to provide medicine cabinets to homes with only orphans and caregivers that will be using the medicine so we can track how much medicine is used. I think Deo’s understanding is that we are supplying the whole village with medicine and that we are somehow going to save the day! We just don’t have the resources to do that yet. When we discussed the trip earlier this week, Deo said there are 130 orphans, so we planned accordingly with candy, crayons, and a couple of coloring books. When we started to line the kids up to hand things out, children just started coming out of the woods. In the village, word spreads fast and when people here there are Mzungu’s giving things out, they all want to see. We counted nearly 200 children plus numerous guardians. As we asked Deo more questions, we realized that many of the children are not actually orphans and that a lot of them live in a home with mostly non-orphaned children. In order for the study to work, which I hope it will, we need to have proper accounts of which children are orphans and which are “disadvantaged” and distribute them properly. While we ate dinner later that night, Angella and I decided that we need to give Deo a “homework” assignment of listing the children who are orphans, their guardian, and what their relationship is. Hopefully he will be able to complete the assignment so that we can move forward with project. If not, we will still return to the village this time with people and some things that they need, but we won’t be able to enroll them in the study the way we were hoping.
The second center we went to was the main center where the children come and where some of the orphans actually live. The people of the village brought chairs for us to sit in and the children all lined up to sing songs. There is one that they sang called “We are the children of Uganda” that has been stuck in my head all day. It’s really repetitive and has a catchy tune. Seeing all of those children lined up singing about how they are the children of today shining brightly really makes you wonder. They are standing in torn, dirty clothes. They go to village schools where they often have no school materials to learn with. Most of them won’t have money to attend higher grade levels or university. If they are the future of this country, what will the future of the country be like? I really hope that there are ways to get them more help than we can give them. Our focus is on bringing medicine, but there is always so much more that can be done. Even if we just provided medicine, our small organization is not able to sustain any sort of project this big yet. Hopefully someday it will be different and we will be able to provide much more.
Today we brought some candy, a single coloring crayon, and ripped out pages of a coloring book for each kid. I felt like such a cheap person bringing so little to them (however, we knew beforehand that we were going to bring more later once we assessed the situation). The kids were so happy with just one piece of candy. The truth is, that one piece of candy is probably something they only get when there are visitors to the village. I just wish there were a way to control the madness. We prepare for a certain number, but I know that number will always be much higher because the children of the village will continue to arrive. How do you turn away a little kid who shows up wanting your help? I really don’t know the answer. I just know that we can only be faithful with the things we have been given and we can distribute what we have the best ways we know how.
After we got home tonight, I felt like we had two days of harsh situations. Yesterday was just a lot of little things. Today was physically exhausting from the dusty, bumpy ride and emotionally exhausting from the realization of the poverty in the villages. We need to come up with a plan for Mbende and how we can help. We need to figure it out in the next couple days so that we will have a good plan before Pamela and Nick arrive.
The drive out is much worse than it was last year. The roads are under construction in most places. If you thought construction season in Minnesota is bad, try dealing with construction here. I’m pretty sure it is a 5 year plan. There is over 60 miles of construction area, and in the whole distance, I only saw 10 men working and two different machines to do the work. Things are probably not going to go very fast when 5 guys with shovels are moving dirt from a huge pile onto the road. When I was with Gloria, I thought the dust was bad. THIS was BAD! There is constantly dust in the air. Every tree, building, and probably person on the side of the road is a shade of red from their coating with dust. You have to drive with the windows open or else you will suffocate from the heat. When you roll them down, you suffocate from the dust. It’s times like these that I thank God that he put hair in my nose to filter out the air! For more than two hours there and back, we were on bumpy roads with clouds of dust. There were times when big trucks would go by, and we would have to quickly roll up the windows and stop the car because there was so much dust coming in and the cloud was so thick that you couldn’t see anything in front of you. When we got home, Angella finally got a glimpse of herself and saw that she had brown hair instead of black and that her cream colored shirt was nearly brown! When I took a shower, my hair kept rinsing out reddish brown water. Usually my feet are the problem, but this time, it was my entire body! I’m sure when I was my clothes, there will be a bucket full of red water!
We are trying to check out Mbende to see if it will work for the orphanage project medicine cabinets. I have been there once last year, and I wanted Angella’s opinion on how it might be able to work. Our problem is that we are not quite sure exactly what Deo’s project is and how it works. He seems like he really cares about the village and the children, but he doesn’t really understand what we are trying to do. We need to be able to provide medicine cabinets to homes with only orphans and caregivers that will be using the medicine so we can track how much medicine is used. I think Deo’s understanding is that we are supplying the whole village with medicine and that we are somehow going to save the day! We just don’t have the resources to do that yet. When we discussed the trip earlier this week, Deo said there are 130 orphans, so we planned accordingly with candy, crayons, and a couple of coloring books. When we started to line the kids up to hand things out, children just started coming out of the woods. In the village, word spreads fast and when people here there are Mzungu’s giving things out, they all want to see. We counted nearly 200 children plus numerous guardians. As we asked Deo more questions, we realized that many of the children are not actually orphans and that a lot of them live in a home with mostly non-orphaned children. In order for the study to work, which I hope it will, we need to have proper accounts of which children are orphans and which are “disadvantaged” and distribute them properly. While we ate dinner later that night, Angella and I decided that we need to give Deo a “homework” assignment of listing the children who are orphans, their guardian, and what their relationship is. Hopefully he will be able to complete the assignment so that we can move forward with project. If not, we will still return to the village this time with people and some things that they need, but we won’t be able to enroll them in the study the way we were hoping.
The second center we went to was the main center where the children come and where some of the orphans actually live. The people of the village brought chairs for us to sit in and the children all lined up to sing songs. There is one that they sang called “We are the children of Uganda” that has been stuck in my head all day. It’s really repetitive and has a catchy tune. Seeing all of those children lined up singing about how they are the children of today shining brightly really makes you wonder. They are standing in torn, dirty clothes. They go to village schools where they often have no school materials to learn with. Most of them won’t have money to attend higher grade levels or university. If they are the future of this country, what will the future of the country be like? I really hope that there are ways to get them more help than we can give them. Our focus is on bringing medicine, but there is always so much more that can be done. Even if we just provided medicine, our small organization is not able to sustain any sort of project this big yet. Hopefully someday it will be different and we will be able to provide much more.
Today we brought some candy, a single coloring crayon, and ripped out pages of a coloring book for each kid. I felt like such a cheap person bringing so little to them (however, we knew beforehand that we were going to bring more later once we assessed the situation). The kids were so happy with just one piece of candy. The truth is, that one piece of candy is probably something they only get when there are visitors to the village. I just wish there were a way to control the madness. We prepare for a certain number, but I know that number will always be much higher because the children of the village will continue to arrive. How do you turn away a little kid who shows up wanting your help? I really don’t know the answer. I just know that we can only be faithful with the things we have been given and we can distribute what we have the best ways we know how.
After we got home tonight, I felt like we had two days of harsh situations. Yesterday was just a lot of little things. Today was physically exhausting from the dusty, bumpy ride and emotionally exhausting from the realization of the poverty in the villages. We need to come up with a plan for Mbende and how we can help. We need to figure it out in the next couple days so that we will have a good plan before Pamela and Nick arrive.
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