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

Queen Elizabeth National Park: Elephants and Lions!!!!

This weekend I went on a Safari with my group. It was an amazing time! I really couldn’t have done it without all the girls. I ended up leading the trip. I started getting it all set up and planned it, but didn’t know that I would be the one to lead the whole thing. It was more work than I ever imagined but it was so worth it and all the girls were so great!

The trip was an estimated 7 hour trip, however, our bus driver, Charles, had never been there before so among stopping at least 5 times for directions, it took us 11.5 hours to get there! We got there at around 10. (The park closes at 7) In the process of trying to get to the main gate, there was a family of elephants: a mother, two or three babies and an enormous daddy elephant just standing in the road. It was AMAZING! I felt like I was inside the discovery channel! We waited for a while hoping they would eventually cross the road but that didn’t happen so we turned around. We found a police officer in town and asked him what we should do. He told us it could take hours for them to cross and if we tried to cross anyways, they could very easily charge us and kill us! We decided to pass on that option. We found another small gate but no one was there. Charles called for someone over and over again. While keeping out eyes peeled on the small hut waiting for the door to open, a man walks out of the bushes from the other side. This man coming from the bushes had a huge rifle. At 10:30 at night you can’t really tell if he’s wearing a uniform or not. Fortunately, he was a park ranger and directed us in the right direction. We finally made it to a camp site. Upon arriving at what we thought was a good camp site, we turned to our right only to see a large set up of tents with generators and lights hanging from them with large government trucks that said UN all over them. Um, yes they were a huge group from India working for the UN we were assuming. We set up camp down the road from them where there were small tents and tiny flashlights…our kind of people. J

Falling asleep that night to the sound of warthogs and Indian men talking around our camp, I didn’t really get the greatest sleep. We woke up at 530 to try and find a guide to take us on a game drive early because we didn’t get to plan that the night before. The information center didn’t open until 8am. In feeling responsible for the group, driving for 12 hours, not getting any sleep and still not having a game plan for the day, the last thing I wanted to do was get on the bus and tell them we had to wait another hour to set up a guide. I got on the bus and before I could speak someone said “That man looks important.” It was a man in a yellow polo. I got out to find that he was a guide. His name was Moses and he was there to take us! It was like an angel had flown down from heaven. On of the girls said, I could see your face glow.

We were off on our game drive by 8. We saw tons of the Ugandan cob, which is part of the deer/impala family, a deer looking thing with large horns. We saw more elephants and warthogs, buffalo, and waterbucks. It was awesome to see them so close and in the wild. In Queen Elizabeth National Park there are 66 species of mammals and 611 species of birds. We saw the Rwenzori Mountains, which border the Democratic Republic of Congo, so we saw the border of Congo from across one of the lakesJ

We came back and ate lunch. We had scheduled ahead of time a boat safari at 3pm. So in the mean time we hung around at the resort that was at the center of the park. It was a beautiful place. It was nicer than some of the resorts at national parks in the states. It was gorgeous. So we hung around there in sort of a delirium state, as none of us had gotten any sleep just relaxing and enjoying the beauty.

On our boat tour, we saw tons on hippos and buffalo and tons of birds. It was seriously just like the stuff you see on the discovery channel!

After our boat ride, we just hung around until dinner. I was journaling a little ways away from our camp site and I hear these shuffles in the dirt behind me. I slowly turned around to find 4 warthogs standing in a line starring at me. It was quite intimidating but it was so awesome! I just turned around and kept writing and they just walked around eating grass and stuff just chillin’ out by me…Only in AfricaJ It was such a great weekend!

We were lucky enough to have time to go out again on Sunday morning at 6:30. The early morning drives are usually more successful in seeing animals when it’s not so hot. (However I think during the hottest part of the day it was maybe 70 I spent the weekend in long sleeves and a hoodie most times. It was cold.) Anyways, we went out at 6:30 and we saw a lion….well I should say a lioness. She was by herself and had a wounded leg as we watched her hobble away from our bus. We also saw monkey’s sitting atop these really cool cactus trees. These trees were everywhere in the park. They have normal trunks but then the top part is like a huge cactus. These trees can live up to 500 years and none of the animals eat them except the elephant will use it’s trunk to break the branches and eat the blossoms that grow on the top of the tree.

The trip was such a success and even among all the troubles of getting there and not really knowing a plan, our driver, Charles, always had a smile on his face! He was the sweetest guy and with such patience he handled 23 girls for the weekend…what a guy.

I’ll post some pictures soon of the Safari. I have also posted other pictures from my trip on snapfish. If you haven’t seen them and would like to, send me your e-mail address. That is the only way I can share them. My e-mail address is liquidice076@yahoo.com

As I sat at read the news paper this afternoon, I came across two very interesting articles. The first one was about a bicycle motor charging cell phones. They released this contraption yesterday in Kampala for the first time. It's some kind of car battery thing that is placed on the back of a bicycle and gains power by peddling. Then the device is sort of like the car chargers we have. People who are living in the villages can use these to charge their phones. Most people don't even have cell phones, and those that do have to travel many miles to get to a place to charge them. So hopefully this invention will work for those people living in the villages with no electricity.

The second article I came across was titled : Pope Issues New Sins List. Alright, so the pope issued a new list of the 7 deadly sins "that are more appropriate for the age of globalization" as the article stated. His list contained these 7 (new) Deadly Sins:

1. Thou shalt not pollute the environment.
2. Thou shalt not be obsenely rich.
3. Thou shalt not be a drug dealer ;)
4. Thou shalt not carry out abortion
5. Thou shalt not engage in social injustice.
6. Thou shalt not engineer genes.
7. Thou shalt not engage in cross-generational sex.


This is the world we are living in... I thought this was pretty amusing. Just a few interesting thoughts for a pretty low-keyed week.

liquidice076@yahoo.com

Soroti Village

This past week/2 weeks I spent in a village 7 hours north of Mukono. This was my rural home stay. I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed in my experience. First of all, as materialistic and shallow this sounds, I was disappointed that I didn’t get to stay in a grass hut. The home I stayed with had 3 huts but they were cement and one was nicely furnished. They also had two cement houses. One of them is where my roommate Lauren and I stayed. We ended up having the whole house to ourselves. My host mother and father stayed in the other house. Much of my time was spent sitting around. It was the dry season for them, so harvesting and planting were not being done. It was hotter than Hades there, probably about 95 degrees during the day and between 89-90 degrees at night. The sun was super hot and there was no place to cool down. They consider (HOT) tea time their time to cool down because it makes them sweat more…go figure!:) haha it was really a good time and I enjoyed my stay there I just was let down in the fact that I wasn’t allowed to engage in the culture as much as I had hoped for.

However, on a more positive side of things, I went to church with them on Sunday. That was quite and experience. We met in a school facility which looked more like a park pavilion. It lasted about 3 ½ hours and it was all in Ateso (the local language). My host father did a great job of translating just about everything that was said. He also gave Lauren and I an Ateso song book so we could sing along, although we weren’t very good at it. The lettering structure to their language is so crazy! This is the first few lines of ‘Jesus Loves Me’:

Yesu kamina eon,
Kotema kolo kwanin,
Ikedwe luciciki
Einakin areren

Yup, that’s what I saidJ Men sat on different sides than women and children. This is done more out of tradition than custom. Women/children gave offering in a separate basket than men. When the offering was taken, someone gave an egg because they didn’t have money to give, so in the middle of the service the egg was auctioned off. I thought that was pretty amusing.

All meals were eaten with our hands. Papa said from the very beginning “You people use forks and knives in America, but we believe that God gave us hands for a reason” So there we ate with our hands, rice and soup and chicken!

Most of the rest of my time was spent sitting and resting. IN the morning I would wake up and ask to help but everything seemed to be finished. “Come and eat your breakfast with tea” Toto (my host mother) would say. After breakfast, again I would ask if there was any thing I could help her with, “Oh go and rest” she would say. So Lauren and I would sit in the living room and talk for 2-3 hours until lunch was ready. “Come for your lunch” Toto would say. “Go and rest.” By this time that’s really all you want to do because it was so blazing hot, I sweat through my shirt just sitting at the table! So I would lay in my bed and fall asleep from heat exhaustion until about 5 pm. This was our most active time. Papa took us into his fields to show us where the crops usually are grown. He grows sweet potatoes, millet, cassava, sorghum, rice, corn, ground nuts (peanuts) and a few other things I’m probably forgetting. Another evening he drove us up to this hill that was by our house and we got to climb it and watch the sunset, which was beautiful.

Even though, I didn’t get the experience I thought I as going to get, my time spent there was great and I learned a lot just in a different way.

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On Thursday of that week after I had met up with the rest of my group, we joined with the Peace Promoters group who were part of the Mennonite Central Committee. I’m not sure the town that we went to, but it was a 2 hour drive north of Soroti Town. We passed many villages on the way, but in these particular villages, all the huts were very close together and the land looked desolate. When I asked one of the Peace Promoters, Simon, he told me that these were once used for refugee camps for people escaping from the Lord’s Resistance Army. When the people would flee to these villages the governments army would come and surround the area to protect them. There were still some people lingering around because they are afraid to go back to their own homes – the last time the LRA raided this area was in 2003. However, the LRA and been active for over 20 years and is still very active in the north.

I got to sit next to Simon on the way there and the way back and I learned so much from him. It was very surreal to be in this place and talks to people that have been affected first hand by these raids. I had read about it so much and jumped on the whole ‘Invisible Children’ campaign, but to actually be there and talk to people…I am still sorting my thoughts. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that these are real people and not just something/someone you read about. Please pray for them.

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The next day was Friday and my group traveled to a place called Sipi Falls. It was up in the mountains. It was beautiful and green and our campsite was straight across from the biggest of the 3 waterfalls. It was the most amazing relaxing time. We got to hike around the hills and the valleys of this place. Our campsite was in Kapchorwa town, but I don’t know what the hills/mountains were called. Our campsite was on the side of the top of this one hill. You could climb about 2-3 minutes along a small footpath to reach the top of the hill which was a flat area. The first night a few of us went up and watched the stars. The sky has never seemed so enormous, it was beautiful! Earlier that evening we watched the sunset and about 12 kids came up and we couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, but we ended up playing all kinds of games with them. Some they were showing us and others we showed them, like hand clap games and London Bridge and a few others. It was so much fun. The second night I was there a few of us girls, Erin, Holly, and myself, brought our sleeping bags to the top and slept under the stars! It was so beautiful! I told them I wished I could sleep with my eyes open to watch the stars all night longJ Then in the morning we woke up to see the sun rise. It was gorgeous! The whole weekend was so relaxing and enjoyable.

I know this has gotten a little long, but there is so much more that I want to share with you, like conversations I had with people, learning their outlook on life and their world views and perspective of things. Its so amazing to learn the difference between people.

Now, I am back in school, back to the routine of normal school work, and I can’t get into it!!!! I hope all of you have had a good week/weeks and like always I would love to hear from you!



P.S. Did I mention how grateful I will be to use a washing machine! It just took me over an hour and 45 minutes to wash 12 pieces of clothing, 5 of which were underwear and socks!!!! God Bless the washing the machine!!!!

liquidice076@yahoo.com

Bats...

So, I am about to leave for Soroti, a fairly remote village that I will be staying in for the next week. I leave this morning. Its about a 7 hour drive. Tomorrow morning I will be dropped off at my host families house. I have an idea that the houses we are going to stay in are more like mud thatched huts; however, I am not really sure. There no electricity and no running water, and possible rodents and all kinds of bugs. I am reallly excited for this trip, Im just really praying that I dont have a rat in my room.:) We'll hope for the best.


Speaking of rodents, last night I was on the phone with my mom and I was standing on the steps leading up to my dorm room. I was standing in the middle of two trees so I was watching numerous bats fly by. They were fairly close and at times I could hear their bodies being carried in the wind. I didn't think much about them, cuz I see bats fairly often at home. I did have one fleeting thought... I hope none of these bats get close enough to skim the top of my head.

Much to my surprise, two minutes later, a bat flies right into the side of my face!!! I felt its whole rubbery body smack against my cheeck and ear. I screamed so loud and danced around pulling my hair, trying to get rid of this sick feeling of bat body on my face! It was so disgusting, i think I would have preferred to have a bat skim the top of my head :) So, my hopes for not seeing rodents on my homestay went down a little bit. If I can handle a bat ON my face, Im sure I can handle other things.

This weekend after I am picked up from homestay, I am going to spend the weekend with my group at Sipi Falls, which is a waterfall an hour from Soroti. I'm excited to spend that time relaxing. We are also going to go hiking somewhere around the falls. I have seen pictures and it looks beautiful!

I won't have internet or any kind of electrical access, so I will let you all know how the home stay went in a few weeks! Please pray for me this week if you think of me for good friendships and connections to be made with my host family, for a sense of peace as things like this can be overwhelming and safety and strength. Pray that I get good night's sleep, in case there are rodents that try to keep me up all night. I konw this may sound petty, but I am more afraid of seeing annimals in my bed and my room than I am of the overall experience. However, this is goign to be a challenging experience and I know I will grow because of it. Thanks for all of your prayers. I can't wait to let you know how it all turns out.

Whitewater Rafting...

...In the Nile River!

This weekend my group and I were able to make last minute reservations to raft down the Nile River! It was probably one of the most thrilling experiences of my life. There were time that I thought I would never come up from the rapids, but it was so great!

I also bungee jumped from 145 feet. That was really amazing too! When I jumped, I was the only one who fell far enough down to touch the water.

After rafting, we spent the night camping in tents on the camp ground at the rafting place. It was so much fun!

Rafting down the Nile was so gorgeous! It was hard to believe that I was really in the Nile River. And it was even crazier to think that a tiny baby was placed in a basket and left in the river. The river's beauty and power was so amazing. I have never seen anything like it before.

This next week I will be at my rural homestay. We are traveling 7 hours from campus into a district north east of Mukono. I will be staying with a family for 5 days and spending the next 4 days after at Sipi Falls. I dont really know much about it except it's a really pretty waterfall and that is where we will be debriefing our homestay trip.

I have been warned that chicken gizzard will be served to me as an honored guest. So pray for me that I don't gag while I eat it :) I wouldn't want to be disrespectful :)

I wont have any internet access or phone access for the two weeks so I just wanted to update quickly before I left again:)

I wasn't allowed to bring a camera with me on the boat, so I dont have pictures to post but if you have a chance the website of the place is www.adrift.ug There is a photo album that you can look at of both bungee jumping and rafting. I didn't see any for camping but there may be some:)

It's been far too long since I've been able to update. Power here goes out so often and that means no wireless. I have just given up on trying to get internet time.

This past weekend I was able to go and see Andrea! It was sooo great!!! It was so refreshing to be with a familiar face and have a chance to relax and just talk about things together. Comparing stories and lifestyles, even while here in the same country. It was good just to spend time cooking dinner, sitting around talking, seeing the village that she lives in and everything.

The luxuries she enjoys that she was so willing to share with me was a washing machine, a hot shower, a blow dryer, constant internet access, and power (for the most part). I almost forgot how nice a warm shower is; it was so great!

I met Andrea in Kampala. I was fortunate enough to get a taxi with some girls from campus. On the way home on Sunday I was by myself. Let me just say that the taxi procedure is quite overwhelming. I was dropped off at this parking lot type area full of taxi vans. Being the only white soul on the property, I felt like everyone was yelling at my trying to take me somewhere, but none of the taxis were going to Mukono. I finally found one that would stop in Mukono on their way somewhere else. So I got on this taxi. I was one of five sitting in a three seated bench. We're very squished, but I was glad to know that I was on my way. We got about half way there and the taxi pulled over as if to let another passenger on. However, the driver got out and started arguing with another guy. They were arguing for a few minutes and then everyone on the taxi got off. We got off and on the taxi about 3 or 4 different times all while this argument is getting heated as the mimnutes pass. The other passengers start raising their voices and yelling at the driver. All of this is in Luganda, so I have no idea what is going on. I finally asked a girl, but her explanation wasn't informative. Finally, we got on the taxi for the fourth time and the driver got in and drove until I needed to get off. This was only a matter of 10 or 15 minutes but it seemed like an hour and I had no idea if I was going to be left on the side of the road to find my own way home. It was quite an experience, but it was fun. And now I have a story to tell.

This week is kind of hectic with school work, but every other Tuesday and few girls and I got into Kampala to get lunch and chill out from the stress of the week and to get a little bit of good food. This week we went in and had lunch at a place called the New York Kitchen. It had so much good american food it was amazing! We found the African market which was great. There are so many good souveniers.

On the way home, it was about 6pm and everyone was trying to get a taxi to go home. This time there are 4 of us that need to get on one taxi. We eventually found one heading to Mukono. It had been the first one in about 20 minutes. So as soon as we found out it was going to Mukono, a mob of people rushed the side of the van. We pushed our way through to the front, thinking this was our only chance to get home. As soon as the door opened, we were trampled and only 2 of us made it on. So, a few minutes later we found another one headed to Mukono and got on that with no problem. It was traffic hour so we knew it was going to take us over an hour to get home. (its only 15 miles:). Yet again, half way home the taxi starts to stall out time and time again. All the lights on the dashboard were flashing and beeping. We made it up one hill and down the other side but couldn't make it up the next hill. The driver turned off the car and the guy who sits in the back to collect the money jumped out and ran all the way up the hill until we couldn't see him anymore. We all just sat there wondering what was going on. Finally, the collector came back with a watering can full of gasoline.

A girl I was with answered a phone call while we were all sitting in silence waiting.

~ Hi Olivia.

~ Yeah we are on our way home.

~ Our taxi broke down and our conductor ran away.

Everyone in the taxi started to laugh. It was so funny! Not only are we the only white people on the taxi, we are the only ones talking, and then this comment was made. We all lost it and were laughing so hard. It's these cultural differences that make life so much fun here. And apparently, I don't have any good luck with the taxis:)

This weekend one of the classes is taking a field trip to see a circumcision. We got it approved so that our whole USP group could attend. This is a huge cultual event. I have heard that the men that the ceremony is for are aroudn the ages of 15 and 25. 25 seems a bit old to me, but this event is a ceremony that welcomes a boy into manhood. A member of the boys family performs the task. All of the family, which is all extended family, memebers of the families clan and even at times memebers of the families tribe. It's a huge event and they take a lot of pride in this. I am so excited to see this cultural ceremony.

Things are going so good here. I am learning to love it. The first month was kind of difficult and at times the days are so unpredictable, and I feel like Im on the biggest emotional rollercoaster, but its so worth it and I am learning so much. I really wish that I could get on and write more often but it just can't happen.

I have included my e-mail address at the bottom for those of you who have been unable to comment. I hope this helps and would love to hear from any of you who are reading. Hearing from home is very comforting. :) love you all.

liquidice076@yahoo.com