catch up...

So it has been quite a long time since I blogged. My apologies. I have been super busy and the internet connection by my dorm has been shut off….meaning I am too lazy to walk all the way across campus to get on the internet.

This past weekend was really fun and so relaxing. Ashley, Melody and I went into Kampala hoping to spend the night. We were eating lunch and looking through a tour guide book. (I felt embarrassed, I don’t feel like tourist). So we found this camping/hotel site. So we asked the taxi driver if he could take us to this place, and showed him the map. We pulled up to this really cute site. There were a few single/double rooms (which we were hoping to get) and a pretty large camping site for tenting. We went to the reception desk and asked if there were any open rooms. He said all he had were some beds in the hostel, but they didn’t have sheets because they weren’t expecting us. Um, OK, for $6 a night, why not. So we followed him to this room. There were about ten bunk beds and a small couch. Each bed had a blanket but no sheets and we were fortunate enough to get a mosquito net. So we put our stuff down on a bed and went out to the lobby.

This place was kind of far from the rest of the city so we decided to stay there for the night. We made friends with the bar tender, Frankie, who was from London. He lives in a tent out back from the reception area. He was so cool. There were also a group of people hanging out in the lobby. We started talking to them. They were from the Peace Core, and it turned out that they recognized us from Luewero last weekend. They have been staying there since mid February for training. So we sat and talked with them all night. I was really cool.

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Last week/weekend was our HIV/AIDS awareness week. It started on Tuesday (18th) when we went to the Mild May Hospital. It is one of two HIV/AIDS hospitals in the world. The other one is in the UK, but Uganda’s is larger. It was really interesting to hear all about it. The facility is beautiful! People are allowed to go and get tested for free. They find out right on the spot whether they are negative or positive. Then all drugs and medication including the ARV’s are given to the patients for free based on donation. For any non-Ugandan resident the fee for treatment is about $95/day.

President Museveni personally asked UK workers to come and visit Uganda and spread awareness about the spreading of HIV/AIDS. Uganda is one of very few countries that has a steadily declining prevalence rate. Most of this is attributed to Museveni’s concern and being open about this disease.

That weekend we went to Luewero, which is a district about 2 hours from Mukono to a resource house for HIV/AIDS families. It was kind of confusing at first, because we get on the bus and get out when they tell us to and pretty much have to figure things out on our own. However, we can’t blame our directors because most of the time they aren’t even sure about all the details. SO we get to this house and there are kids everywhere! We were told just to go out and play with them. There was a huge parachute on the front lawn and then groups of kids everywhere, ranging from 2-17 years old. We played with them for a long time, playing nursery games, duck duck goose, London bridge is falling down…we played everything we could think of!

Eventually we sat and talked with the director of the home. He and his wife have been working with these families for a long time (I think over 10 years). They have this house which is just like 2 empty rooms and then they have their own houses next door. The village we were in is comprised of many families living with HIV/AIDS. There are quite a few families who have no parents; the oldest takes care of 3-6 children alone, depending on the family. Others are single parented homes, usually with just a mother. (The father usually leaves when he finds out that his wife has HIV/AIDS or dies because AIDS himself) One family, there were two girls and a mother. The one girl was born with no shoulder bones so her arms are pretty much useless. Her father thought that she was a curse to the family and left the family because the mother would not get rid of her/kill her. The father would put the girl in the middle of the road in hopes that a truck would come and run her over and kill her. The older sister would stand close enough to hear the trucks coming and run out and pull her away. Both girls survived and are living in this neighborhood. I got to meet both of them. The girl with no shoulder bones jusr recently started school and learned to write her name with her feet. She eats with her feet, along with everything else. We were playing with play-dough and she was using her feet. It was really amazing to watch her. This whole week was really and incredible experience!

Sometime last week I got a jigger in my foot. I thought that it was a wart, then in started itching really bad. I went to one of the directors and asked them to look at it. I told them that it was itching and they were like oh it’s a jigger. Um, OK. What is a jigger? It’s a small insect that burrows itself under the skin. Over the course of 2 weeks it can grow and lay eggs inside your skin, then the eggs will eventually pop out of the skin. Mine was only a few days old so there were no eggs, but Adeline, the USP worker who got it out for me, just scratched open the skin and squeezed it out. It was kind of gross. So now, I just have a hole in the bottom of my foot that is still healing. Usually these little bugs like dusty places so I’m assuming it came from the Safari.

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Last Thursday, I had a barbeque with my Missions class. One of the directors’ parents came to visit and brought s’mores stuff. We asked if we could go all out and bring out own meat to grill. So we had hamburgers and s’mores. My friend Erin and I had talked about putting peanut butter and bananas on the s’more. It was so delicious. Then my missions professor told us about grilled bananas. You slice the banana (peel and all) down the center and then put Hershey’s chocolate squares in the middle then let it grill over the fire until the chocolate is all melted in the middle. I ate myself sick that night, but it was so worth it!! :)

This weekend Jess and Andrea are coming to visit me and I am so excited!!! Classes are coming to an end. This is my last week of loads of work. Then I just have two weeks here on campus finishing up one other class and then I’m off to Rwanda! Its coming to an end so quickly! But until then, I will hopefully write again soon.

liquidice076@yahoo.com