163 Pairs of Shoes

My first month here ended on August 29th. One week later, on September 5th, a friend of mine flew in to visit. In general I was a little scared about this, not because I did not want to see my friend, but because it took a while to acclimate to living with a group of life long friends (Hudson, Richard, John, Susan), who speak a different language then me. Basically, no matter how hard I tried I would never be in their circle, included in their personal conversations or share any inside jokes because not only do I have to break into their friendship circle (which is impossible to do with life long friends), but there is a huge language and cultural barrier. This meant getting used to lots of time by myself. I was worried that seeing a close friend would undue all the acclimating I had done. I was right, seeing such a close friend early on, did undo some of the adjustment I had work so hard to achieve, and I would recommend that next time people wait a little longer if someone is going to visit.

That said, with my friend’s arrival came my first weekend away from the village. We spent the weekend in Kampala and went back to Ddegeya for the week. I went to Kampala on the fifth expecting him to meet me at the hostel that night. Unfortunately, his bus from Nairobi got into an accident, about half way through Kenya one of those huge trucks transporting petrol side swiped the bus and took off the back. While the accident did cause severe damage to the bus, it valiantly continued on and while the passengers had a cold ride, they made it to Kampala at one in the morning on the 6th. This should be a warning to everyone who wants to travel in East Africa, your bus could be next.

While waiting for my friend I was able to spend some time walking around the busy streets of Kampala. I would like to say this was a nice experience and change from the empty pathways that naturally formed between neighbors land in Ddegeya, but the streets and side walks were so busy and packed that it felt like the mall the day after Thanksgiving. Kampala is more fun than the mall, however, because there are street vendors randomly sitting in the middle of the sidewalk that you can’t see because of the crowds. Therefore, every couple of blocks you get to trip over some poor old woman and her basket of peanuts, feel guilty, and buy a bunch of them. In addition, the number of pick pockets was insane. Every five minutes or so I would feel a tug on my bag and turn to find someone with their hand in the front pocket. Luckily I knew better than to keep anything in there. It got so bad that the following day I didn’t even bother zippering it when I went out. Through the sea of pickpockets, street vendors, and other crap I did see an oasis. I found an American bakery called Hot Loaf. YAY!!!

While I went to Kampala to pick up my friend I also had several important errands to do. One was to buy the teachers guides for Primary Five/Six English and Math. My friend and I met up with John (who was also in Kampala for the weekend) on Saturday. John showed us how to go shopping Uganda style. First you go to the area of the city where your item is sold. Everything is split into sections. For example all the book/stationary/office supply stores are in one section. All the street vendors aggregate in the areas where the actual stores sell the same things they do. Next you find the priciest store that carries the item you are looking for and record the price. This is followed by about two hours of going to every store/street vendor until you find the one with the lowest prices. Then you buy. After circling the same four city blocks for about two hours we found all the books we needed. Wheph! I was off to have a beer (or two or three …) while John was off doing his next errand.

The following week we returned to Ddegeya. It was actually quite busy. First, we had to fertilize the land we are going to use to grow our crops. We did this the “all natural” way, with cow dung. We walked the half mile to Mr. Kalule’s house with two shovels and three wheelbarrows. He keeps some cows and both he and the cows were nice enough to let us use their poop. Twelve wheelbarrows later we had enough to cover our little plot of land. The rest of our afternoons were spent spreading the poop neatly all over our little patch of land.

Now I should note, that most farmers here can not afford to buy fertilizer, or know someone who is well enough off to have enough cows to produce enough fertilizer to effect their harvest. This is one problem that the farmers here have, especially because most of them are subsistence farmers and can not afford to let their land lie fallow for a year. The largest problem that farmers here have, however, is lack of irrigation techniques. Because there is no running water any watering that is done is one done by hand and two gotten from the well which is often very far from the farm. Since, then we have planted the nursery beds and every morning and night we have to fetch water to water them and then water the beds. I can tell you right now that this is hard work and we have a very small patch of land that requires very little water and Engeye is relatively close to the well.

This week was also busy because school started up again!! YAY! I was able to teach a couple English classes the first week. The teacher’s guides we bought in Kampala were a huge help. I am a little embarrassed to admit that when I went over the math for this term I got very confused. I understood all the units except for the first one which is on clock math. Luckily Steve understands it and he can help me out. While we still have not set up a definite schedule the weekend after I bring my friend back to Kampala we should be given something more permanent.

The most exciting thing that happened during my friend’s visit was the handing out of 163 pairs of shoes to local children. A church in Latham, NY had teamed up with Engeye to bring quality shoes the children of Ddegeya. This is the third shipment of shoes John has received and distributed. The first only had 12 pairs and many children went away crying thinking it was their only chance to have shoes and they lost out.

Before I discus how the shoes were given out, I will provide a little information about shoes in East Africa. Many people here do not have shoes, especially children. Parents don’t want to spend the money on shoes because they are not necessary. If children are lucky enough to have shoes they only wear them when they go someplace nice or on special religious holidays. Parents do this to make the shoes last longer. I would like to say that this helps the shoes last, but it doesn’t. Many people have so many children that the shoes still get very worn down. I helped a three year old put back on his sneakers the other day and the insoles were so worn out that he was standing on the plastic skeleton of the shoe with no padding. The majority of kids and poor farmers who do wear shoes on a somewhat daily basis wear really cheap foam shoes shipped in from china. It is really important to wear shoes here. There are several skin eating parasites that live in the dust that disfigure many peoples feet. The most common parasite is called Jiggers. Jiggers are small skin eating parasites that attach to the skin between the toes, around the toe nails, and where the toe connects to the foot. The Jigger then eats the skin in these areas. Often jiggers are left unattended for so long that the child looses his/her toe nails. If the parents do get around to removing the Jigger it probably managed to get really deep and the parent had to cut really deep into the child’s foot to get the Jigger out. Then the child has to walk around with a large cut on the bottom of his foot without shoes. Needless to say shoes are a huge deal and considered major luxury.

John has kept a running list of every child who comes to the clinic asking for shoes. When he gets in a shipment of shoes he walks around the village and tells everyone when he is going to hand out shoes. This particular time he was supposed to start handing them out at 10:00am. However, by 8:00 the clinic’s veranda was covered in children. All these children waited with large expectant eyes as Steve and John arranged the shoes by size and style. By 9:00 John had to start. One by one he would call the kids names off the list and they would come up and pick their shoes. All of them had been scoping out the shoes for the past hour and knew exactly which shoes they wanted. Thus sometimes you would hear a groan from the crowd as a girl got a certain pair of patent leather Mary Janes. Often a young child would have his or her eyes on a nice pair of sneakers that were just way to big. It was a long day of helping children find the right shoes for their feet. Everyone wanted a quality pair of sneakers that they could wear to church or on special occasions, but there were not enough pairs of sneakers to go around. By the end of the day, however, we had handed out 163 pairs of shoes.

The next day I took my first trip to a Ugandan church. I went to the local Protestant Church. This is one of the poorest churches in the area and has a small congregation; however, Lawrence goes there and offered to take us. Everyone was very kind and the Pastor even tried to speak some of the sermon in English so we would understand. The most interesting thing happened was at the end of the service. At the end of the service everyone walked up the front of the church to give alms. Instead of bringing money each person brought a basket or package of banana leaves to the front of the church. Then there they auctioned off the goods to the congregation. Because the good were brought to the church for free and no one was looking for a profit all the good went for really cheap, but at the same time the church still made money. I thought this was a great idea, because this way some families who could not ordinarily afford to have variety in their diet could have tomatoes, greens and other vegetables for relatively cheap.