The Construction Worker Named Becky

Today I have been in Uganda for almost a full month. In addition to teaching, I have been working on Construction Projects around the clinic. Since school ended for summer holiday on August 15^th I have been only working on construction projects around the clinic. First, we finished stacking the bricks and estimate that there are about 8,000. In addition we have taken many of the broken bricks to the road in wheelbarrows to fill in all of the pot wholes. The road looks marvelous. Second we dug out the laboratory building that is currently under construction. This meant we had to dig up the dirt that had gathered over the past four months from around the building itself. In addition, we removed about four inches of dirt and broken bricks from each room inside the building. All of this dirt was wheelbarrowed all over the clinic’s compound and any broken rocks or bricks were separated out and taken to the road. The laboratory is now ready to have its concrete floors put in. Phew! That took a lot of work. It was very hard, but I think I held up beautifully, and I am able to take more and more dirt in my wheelbarrow every day. I don’t think, however, that I will ever be as strong as Hudson. We have nicknamed him the machine for good reason. The other day Fortunate (John’s sister who lives in Kampala but is on summer holiday and staying at her father’s house in what is commonly called “The Village”) helped us work. It was comforting to find out that I can take just as much dirt in my wheelbarrow as she can J.

I really like Fortunate. She is one of the interpreters hired when the medical missions come. Unlike Susan she is not shy and therefore talks to me a lot. It is nice to have some female company. In addition she is very independent. She lives in Kampala and works as a secretary.

I decided that I needed another skirt. I only brought two and although women in the cities wear pants, women in the villages only wear skirts. Therefore, my two are getting quite a lot of use. On Thursday the 21^st, Hudson, Francis, Fortunate, Steve, and I all went to the biweekly market about half a mile from Engeye to purchase a skirt. The market is held in a large field about the size of a soccer field. The vendors split themselves up by genre. For example, all of the dried fish vendors were in one section, which was surprisingly popular considering the smell. Francis, Fortunate, and I split off to go find a skirt. This was relatively easy. We found a plain black knee length skirt in no time. Then we bargained. Seeing me, the man asked for 20,000 USh. Francis looked aghast, remember 20,000 USh is 12 US dollars. We then walked away and the man brought his price down to 9,000 USh, much better. However, when we tried to pay with a 10,000 USh note he refused to give us change. This happens a lot. And I plan to go to Barkley’s Bank next time we are in Masaka and load up on 500 shilling coins. So I got the skirt for 10,000 USh or 6 US dollars. After buying the skirt we ran into Steve who was looking for an extra paraffin bag for Hudson. Hudson had decided to buy us some pork.

So we all went to find Hudson in the red meat section. We found him next to a shack made of bricks and aluminum roofing with wooden rafters placed along the ceiling. From the wooden rafters hung, hug pieces of very fatty pork and a scale. The vendor was cutting off large chunks of meet, weighing them and then throwing the pieces on the floor covered in banana leaves. He then chopped the pieces he threw on the floor against a log and unceremoniously popped them into a black paraffin bag provide by the customer. Hudson got two kilos of beef for 3000 USh and we headed home. Back at Engeye Fortunate prepared the pork. I’m not sure how she prepared it, but she managed to burn off most of the fat. Steve and I were given some to eat with our dinner. Although it was much fattier than we are used to I did not think it was bad at all.

Teaching

The first Monday at Engeye we went to the school to talk to the head master. The school is across the highway and about a quarter mile away from Engeye. When we got there students filled the windows to peer at us. The bolder little ones even ran after us like an entourage. We walked into the head mistress office at about nine o’clock in the morning. She is a slightly over weight woman in her forties. We explained that Steve would like to teach math and science and I wanted to teach English and Social Studies or SST(their form of history). She then asked if we wanted to start teaching that afternoon. We graciously said no, and asked to see the syllabus. We meet the teachers and they gave us the syllabuses to copy. Reading the SST syllabus I realized that it was actually environmental science not history. As you can guess, Steve took over the SST. I copied over some of the English syllabus and then we were on our way back to Engeye to plan our lessons.

Tuesday we returned to the school. I was to teach seventy eleven-year-olds English for an hour and twenty minutes. I was really nervous, but it actually went ok. Since it was the end of the term I only reviewed one of their units on games and because it was review they understood me pretty well. It is hard, because many of them have never actually heard a native english speaker and therefore do not understand my American accent. But when they don’t understand I try to enunciate which makes it worse, because most of their teachers mumble, so they don’t understand well enunciated words.

So far I have taught about five classes some of which have been three hours long. I have really enjoyed the teaching. At first it was hard to get them to volunteer, but after I started competitive games like Hang Man (to practice spelling) most of them got into it. Even some of the girls would volunteer. The girls here are very shy and do not like to get up in front of the class. I made one of them, one that I already knew from hanging out at the clinic, named Harriet volunteer, she was not so happy. I also tried to make the whole class, boys and girls, play a kicking game where they got in a circle and kicked the ball to one and other, each time you got the ball yelling a vocabulary word, and the girls would not play with the boys. Although, once I split the boys and girls up both groups liked the game.

Fruit, Steve’s Hair, Learning Luganda and More

Over the past few weeks I have seen lots of fruits and vegetables that I have never seen before. In addition, to showing us these new items Hudson and Francis always buy us one of them and then show us how to prepare it. I think that the most interesting fruit has been the Jackfruit. This watermelon sized spikey fruit grows on trees. Inside it is yellow and it tastes sort of like fake banana (aka not that good no one likes the yellow banana flavored candies). In addition to learning how to prepare fruits we don’t know, we have learned to slaughter, pluck, and dress a chicken!! So I was standing outside waiting to start stacking bricks and Hudson called me over to him. He was standing next to a tree that I had never go over to before. I got over there just in time to see Francis kill a chicken, let its blood drain and tie off its neck with a banana leaf. Then Hudson made me help him pluck the feathers off the body (it was still warm). Some of the feathers roots wouldn’t come out and I had to pull them out by hand it was sort of gross. After that he showed us how to dress the chicken and pointed out all of its parts. I was quite impressed. All I could think about was how different this was to those plastic Perdue packages of chicken you get at Price Chopper.

So Steve’s hair grows really fast and he asked me to cut it. Bad idea. I tired to cut it, but it’s really thick and the electric razor died after thirty minutes, so instead of having long hair Steve had to comb in the morning, he had some short patches and some long patches. I felt really bad, but I didn’t know how to cut it. So then he tried to cut it himself. That actually worked out really well. But he missed a couple patches and having OCD he just had to try and cut them. That is when things got messy. He forgot to set the razor to 5 mm and left it on 1 mm. He then preceded to shave off an entire patch on the back of his head J. He does this while I’m in my room reading, so when I leave the volunteer house I hear a quite and desperate “Becky, I need your help?” coming from behind the house. I could not stop laughing. In the end we went to the barber, who did a much better job then either of us could have done and cost less than a dollar.

Every Sunday we visit John’s father. John’s father is approaching 69. His house is about a half mile down the road that Engeye is on. Every week we go there and sends Francis out to buy Steve three beers and a small bottle of Star Gin (40% alcohol) and this great tasting cherry soda called Mirinda (product of the Pepsi Cola Co.) for me. Last week when we arrived, some of his extended family was there. They were discussing a family problem, so we had to go wait outside until they were done. This made me very happy because they put the one and a half year old baby outside to play in the road while they talked. She was getting fussy because they wouldn’t let her play with the table cloth. And yes they did just plop her right down in the middle of the road in front of the house all by herself. Then I got to go play with her!!

Learning Luganda has been quite a challenge. However, we made a huge break through the other day, we learned how to say and conjugate verbs in the present progressive. This has speed up our learning process. Although, I am hoping that when John gets back he will do nightly Luganda lessons with us. I also learn a lot from the kids themselves and from hanging out with the kids. Because they do not speak English I have to express myself in Luganda and therefore have to learn Luganda when I am around them.

The kids are awesome. As most of you know I love little kids, no I love all kids and I gravitate toward them. Therefore I have completely enjoyed having an entourage of five kids under 10 years old come play with me for about an hour or two every morning or afternoon. They are all such good kids. There is Peter(6), Fiezo (6), Axom (Fiezo’s brother 3), Oliva (8), Wasua (7), and Shamirra (8, who is often has her four month old baby sister tied to her back with a piece of cloth). Shamirria is a little mom and she is awesome at taking care of babies. Axom is just out of it. He often stands to the side and eats his shirt or fingers while he vacantly watches the others play. He also has a consistent stream of snot coming out of his nose. They all love to help us work, especially when we use the wheelbarrows. They help us push the wheelbarrows, by leaning on them and moving forward. Then once we dump whatever we are wheeling they make us wheel them back to where we are doing the work. Axom loves this so much that when he gets a ride he holds onto the sides, sticks out his tongue like a dog, and spreads his legs and puts them in the air. Steve has taught the kids how to say “What’s up? … Not much?” and now whenever we see them the greet us with a friendly “What’s up?”.

Getting To Engeye and Some Facts About My Life in Africa

Hello! Here is a little about my first couple days.

Ddegeya Village is about two hours south west of Kampala. In order to get to Ddegeya we had to take the public taxi to the taxi park, a taxi from the taxi park to Masaka (the largest town close to Ddegeya) and then hire a special hire taxi from Masaka to Ddegeya. Along the way we had to pick up fresh water and propane in Masaka and groceries in a market village close to Engeye. So here is what we picked up:

1 Bunch of Onions

5 Yams (I have never eaten these before)

5 Carrots

3 Pineapples

1 Pumpkin

1 kg Eggplants (the eggplants here are about the size of a jalapeño pepper and green)

2 Kilos of crushed nuts

Lots of Tomatoes

3 Kilos Beans

2 Loaves of Bread

1 kg Salt

4kg White Rice

2kg Sugar

16 oz Butter (blueband brand)

50 Bags of Tea

Napkins

3 Rolls TP

4 Washing Soaps

3 Litters Cooking Oil

1 Bag Stain remover

Including the propane the groceries cost about 100 dollars and we hope that this will last us for two weeks.

The ride was pretty comfortable until we got to Masaka. In Masaka we had to changed to a private hire taxi rather than use the public taxi system. The hire was a small sedan and we had to fit all our bags and five people (the driver, Hudson, Richard, Steve, and I) as well as all the stuff we bought along the way. At first it wasn’t too bad because they just stopped shutting the trunk and tied the trunk door down instead. But after we go the water we could not do that any more. By the time we left the market everyone was completely covered in stuff and had something at their feet. Furthermore, about twenty yards from the clinic the car ran out of gas and the drive had to find a Boda Boda driver to go get him a jerry can full of gas. After we got the gas the car still wouldn’t work so we had to flag down another car to give us a jump. To be honest our driver was really weird and I think he was drunk, because when he first arrived Hudson and Richard started whispering and looking at him in a worried way. Anyways the car finally started and we made it safe and sound to the clinic with all of our stuff.

After we unpacked Steve took out his soccer ball and we played soccer with the kids. At first all of the children played together, but after a while the girls got over their excitement at seeing white people and became to shy to play with the boys. So I brought out another soccer ball and played with the girls and the really little boys. In addition to playing soccer, they taught me some hand clapping games similar to “Miss. Mary Mack”. They also play “bubble gum bubble gum in a dish how many pieces do you wish”, but they sing “cigarette, cigarette how many does your father take in one day”.

We have very little power and internet access. Thank you to everyone who has send me emails and commented on my blog, I am very sorry that I can not respond in a timely manner. One of the hardest things here has been not knowing what is going on back home with the people I love.

Our first meal and food in general…Our first dinner was served around eight o’clock. Dinner consisted of and usually consists of a lot. First and most importantly there is Matooke. This is Uganda’s staple food. It is steamed and mashed plantains. As Susan our cook has been teaching me to cook Ugandan food I have learned that Matooke is prepared by pealing the plantains then wrapping them in banana leaves then placed in a large pot with water where the package is boiled for about one hour. This is also how they steam pumpkin and yams. Second is peanut sauce. This is purple colored sauce made out of crushed peanuts boiled in water with onions, salt and tomatoes. This sauce is put on top of matooke and rice. It is pretty good. Third is rice. This is prepared by putting onions and a lot of salt in water, once it boils they put in the rice and wait till the water is absorbed. We also have potatoes, eggplant, greens, cabage, and tea. I have learned how to prepare all of these things. I can also cut them all without a cutting board. For the first couple days there was so much food.. Ugandans eat like Italians on steroids. They eat so much and in addition they eat mostly carbohydrates. Anyways for the first couple days they feed us a lot. After a while we got through to them though and now there is just the right amount. Currently Steve and I cook about every sixth meal. Learning to cook has sortof sucked. They treat me like I am a baby and have never cooked before. Which is really annoying and degrading, but has gotten better as I have proven that I know what I am doing. Susan and Francis often tell me I an doing something incorrectly, I have started telling them I do things the “American” way just to get them off my back.

We go to bed here around nine o’clock. Hudson and everyone else can make it to eleven or twelve, but I get to tired. I sleep/live in a room adjacent to the boys room. We live in one of the volunteer houses. The large rectangular building has been sperated into three spaces. The first is right as you walk in and is the boys room, this is where Steve, Hudson, and Richard sleep. Then you turn left and there is a curtain over an entry way into a second room. This is where I sleep. There is another door in my room that leads to a hall way. At the end of the hall way is a small room for showering. I will explain showering next. Anyways, it gets really dark here. I have never seen so many stars it is really beautiful.

So showering. We have these plastic bags called solar showers. They have a hose with a shower nozzle attached to the end of it on the bottom and a place to hang it on the top. You put the bag in the sun and the sun heats the water. Then at the end of the day you hang the bag in the shower facility (I can’t do this because the bags are too heavy with water in them) from a thick metal wire. Then you shower. It is really easy and the water gets really hot.

The first work that we have been give is to stack about 15,000 five pound bricks. They are going to be used to finish building the laboratory. This is our first project and I am very excited about getting to work. Moving bricks is quite the workout and I hope that I am ripped by the time they are all moved. So far we have moved about 7 to 8 thousand.

Our First Wednesday at Engeye Hudson taught us how to hand wash our clothes. Now I thought that we were just going to rinse our clothes and then beat them against rocks. I know this sounds insane, but this is how they did it in Vietnam. This is not how we did it. First, we put all of our clothes in a large plastic bin and filled it with water and detergent. Then we let them sit overnight. In the morning we took the buckets out back and rubbed soap (the same soap that we use to wash our dished, the floor, and they use to wash their bodies) all over each item. Then we scrubbed each item with itself by putting the fabric between our hands and rubbing our hands together. This gets the clothes pretty clean but stretches the cotton ones out a bit. After completely lathered the clothes are put in a second plastic bin full of clean water to be risined. Then they are hung to dry. By the end my knuckles were bleeding, but my clothes were pretty well cleaned. Francis got the clothes so clean. My socks are cleaner then when I bought them, but they are now about twice the size.

People in my life. Right now there are very few people in my life that I have regular contact with that speak English and are older than eight. First there is Hudson. Hudson has been hired to be our teacher, life guide, and friend until John gets back. He is a god. Hudson is great. HE understands that we want to work and help out, which for the first couple days no one else got. He also is from the city and a little more relaxed and social than everyone else. Next there is Francis. Francis is John’s 19 year old brother. He is the youngest of 14 children and it shows a little. He is a nice addition to most of our conversations. Now Richard. Richard does not really speak to us that much. He is the clinic’s care taker. He is nice, but rather shy because he is from the country side. Then there is Susan. Susan is the girl we have hired to cook for us. She is also Richard’s girlfriend (we did not know this until a little while ago). She is so nice and a great cooking teacher, but really shy and still will not speak to us. Lastly there is Lawrence. He is the nurse in charge of the clinic. He is really nice and very soft spoken.

Steve and I have decided to speak Spanish when we need to share something private. What a great idea. And its really nice, because they speak about us in Luanda while we are present all the time.

sorry i have not posted

I am sorry I have not posted. I have all my blogs written and then when we got to Masaka today I realized I had forgoten my flash drive ! Woopies! We are in Masaka doing some grocery shoping and I am getting another skirt(becuase women in rural areas only wear skirts and I only braught 2). In genral I am doing very well. School has end for summer holiday so I am just working on construction projects around the clinic until school starts up again. Although, next saturday Steve and I will be going to the nursing school where he teaches to teach english and counciling. I have learned how to cook about 70 percent of the local dishes and they taste great! I hope everyone is well and I miss you all!

A Day In Kampala

The hostel we are staying at is the typical hippy filled backpackers hostel. There are tons of British and Australian backpackers in their late twenties early thirties wearing cargo pants, t-shirts that say peace, and bandanas. The bartenders are very trendy. There is a very metro Australian and a really beautiful Ugandan girl. The hostel itself is well designed it consists of a complex of buildings containing dormitory style rooms and personal rooms with bathrooms attached. We are sleeping in a dormitory style room and there was a snorer last night, it was the loudest I had ever heard (yes Mom much louder than Dad).

On Thursday we woke up and decided to register at the embassy. The cheapest and fastest way for tourist to travel around Kampala is on the back of motorbikes called Boda Bodas. The Boda Boda drivers gather in groups of about eight to ten on street corners. About every three blocks or so you see a group. They also gather in front of larger hotels and hostels. Steve and I each hopped on the back of a Boda Boda that was waiting outside our hostel and for about two dollars go a ride way better than any roller coaster at Sixflags.

Once we made it to the embassy and through embassy security we sat in a waiting room for about an hour. When we finally got inside the room where you register, the embassy’s emergency alarm system went off! Luckily the threat was not inside the building and we were allowed to continue with our paperwork. In about five minutes we had finished our paper work and went across the street to lunch.

We walked into a restaurant that was about fifty feet long by forty feet wide. It had retro looking pleather chairs, a pool table, cracked mirrors on the walls and a somewhat fully stocked bar in the back. At first I couldn’t tell if it was a night club or a restaurant. Eventually a waiter found us and offered us a menu. I ordered Uganda’s traditional food called Mattoke (steamed and then mashed plantains). We also ordered a vegetable stew to go on the side. The mattoke is very dry, filling, and flavorless so you need the stew or some sort of sauce to put on it. Overall the meal was very good. The vegetable stew complimented the mattoke perfectly. It was like the African version of chili on rice.

After lunch we went to the gas station to buy towels and calling cards. We got ripped off when buying the towels. We paid about ten dollars, ouch. But I guess it had to happen with something. Then we took another thrilling boda boda ride back to the hostel. However, this boda boda ride was even more eventful than the first, because these drivers said they understood where our hostel was when they really didn’t. So before we could make it back to the hostel we had to get lost in Kampala, stop ask other boda boda drivers for directions, and fill up on gas.

Once we made it back to the hostel we meet Hudson. Hudson has been hired as a substitute John until John can get back from the states. Hudson is great. He is really nice and knowledgeable. Once we met him we determined that we needed to do some errands. He took me to the MTN (Cell Phone) Store. We went to see if I could buy minutes for my phone or use a calling card from my phone so it will be cheaper. With a lot of effort and many test phone calls we determined that I can neither add minutes to my phone from Uganda nor use a calling card with the phone to make it cheaper. Next we went to the Bank to exchange money. We went to Barkley’s (a prominent bank in Africa that also has a branch in Masaka). They charge a ten percent fee for exchanging money and a 25 dollar fee for taking money out from a debit account at the counter. However, if you go to the ATM its only 10,000 USH about six dollars. After this we returned to spend the night in the hostel.

With Hudson we were able to use the taxi system instead of the boda bodas. The taxis are really like buses that don’t have a set route, but region that they drive around in. So we hopped on a taxi that drove by our hostel. The taxi itself was the size of a minivan and they fit four people in a row. We then took it to the Taxi Park, a large undeveloped piece of dirt in the center of the city where all the taxis go, sort of Grand Central Station of Kampala. From there we got out and walked to the places we needed to go. At the end of our errands we went back to the taxi park, walked through a huge maze or taxis and found one that went to our region. We then got on and went back to the