Engeye - Uganda

Posted Some More Pictures

2009-04-08T15:16:00.003-04:00

Today I left Ddegeya for the last time. I am currently in Backpackers Hostel for the next two days before I head back to the states. I am taking advantage of the fast internet and uploading some pictures and blogs. you should click on the link and check out some of my newer pictures. :).

3:00am Wake Up Call

2009-04-02T15:11:00.000-04:00

Last night we had a small visitor. A rat. Throughout our time here we have had several rat experiences. They all end the same way (except for this most current one). Steve and I get fed up staying awake at night waiting for it to climb over us in bed and John buys rat poison. A few day later a terrible smell is coming from one of our beds and we find a dead rat underneath.

Last night however, I woke up to go to the bath room at around one o’clock and heard another little visitor (I really shouldn’t say little Steve compares them to house cats). I went back to bed and woke up around three to hear Steve moving his bed, john’s bed, all of the suitcases underneath the beds, and tearing down the blinds trying to kill the rat with a banana fiber doll one of the kids made me.

After much debate (me saying we should go to bed and buy rat poison and Steve saying that he was going to kill that mother fucker). We found the rat once again on a window sill. Steve moved the last piece of untouched furniture (our shelving) and we created a tunnel out of a palm leaf matt, a tarp, and a sheet from where the rat was hiding to the door. I then went outside to scare the rat from its hiding place by banging another banana fiber doll against the window while Steve threw banana fiber dolls at the end of the tunnel to make sure the rat traveled in the right direction. Around 3:45 I hear Steve shout in triumph as the rat scurries out the door. We then spent the next half hour cleaning the mess we made. But we did sleep well for the last hour and a half of the night.
Since I’m not very funny, you should visit Steve’s Blog and read about this from there. There is a link to his blog on the right hand side at of this web page.

10 things I Have Learned While In Uganda

2009-04-01T15:08:00.002-04:00

During my time here I have learned many many things here is a list of some of them:

1. How to use a squatty potty like a pro.
2. Cook matooke, rice, posho, ground nuts, and beans all in a hand made banana leaf steamer on a charcoal stove.
3. Navigate the public taxi system.
4. Ride and drive a piki piki (motorcycle)
5. Identify and grow local produce such as cabbage, beans, corn, carrots, onions, green peppers, greens, cassava, pineapple, yams, and eggplant.
6. Fetch water from the boar whole.
7. How to kill, clean, and cook a whole chicken,
8. Wash my clothes, towel, and sheets by hand in under an hour.
9. Dig with a hoe.
10. Catch a rat in the middle of the night (refer to next blog).

Long Time No Blog

2009-03-20T15:06:00.001-04:00

Medical Mission

From February 2nd to February 15th a medical mission with four attendings, two residence, five medical students, a nurse, an architect, one of the women in charge of the scholars program and a photographer came. This was the first medical mission Steve and I were here for and it was supper intense and supper fun. I wish that I could give a shout out to everyone like Steve and make my blog funny and entertaining, but I can’t so I encourage anyone who is reading this to also visit Steve’s blog to get a more complete view of what the medical mission was like.

A typical day ran from 7 am to 11:00 pm. We would get up in the morning set up the pharmacy and clean the large clinic building. The first patients had arrived hours ago and were seated in the shade outside the clinic’s front door. By the time the doors actually opened 30 to 40 patients eagerly waited to be seen by a doctor. Throughout the day the doctors addressed many of the common heath problems here like back pain, stomach pain, malaria, etc. However, they also gave out donated glasses, did mini surgeries (such as removing keloids, small tumors, and cleaning out abscesses), and dealt with prolapsed uteruses. We also had many runs to Kinoni/Masaka to pick up much needed drugs, lab supplies, and food stuffs. Throughout the week we also go to visit the scholars and some schools they could potentially go to.

The two coolest medical things I saw was Stephanie cleaning out her first abscess and Dave removing two keliods. Clean the abscess was like popping a huge zit (it looked very satisfying – lots of pus!).

One of my favorite parts of the medical mission was socializing with everyone who came. Everyone was so cool and it was awesome to get to know them all. After seven months of monastic life it was so much fun, especially the night time parties.

Pieter

Some of the most cutting edge research on HIV is actually done in Rakai a large town about two hours south of Ddegeya. Studies have shown that that circumcising males reduces the risk of HIV transmission during sexual intercourse up to 50% of the time. So, a couple weeks after the medical mission I went to Kampala to pick up a middle aged doctor from Chicago named Pieter who was coming in to perform circumcisions. So while I was eagerly yelling “Pieter, Pieter Smit” to every middle aged man who walked out of the gate, a young man with a hiking backpack on came up to me and said “Are you Becky”. Pieter ended up being a first year surgical resident at the Staten Island Hospital.

Throughout the week Pieter preformed six circumcisions. The first and most notable was Peter’s (the boy who lives in the house next to the clinic). During his circumcision he yelled many things, but the funniest moment was when he yelled that the town’s malalu “crazy man” told him that if he hung around the clinic too often the white man would come and cut off his penis.

Anther funny moment concerning circumcisions happened a couple days ago when John asked Kazungu (one of the younger boys who was circumcised) how he was doing. Kazungu calmly replied by asking when his foreskin was going to grow back?

The R&B song "Obama, Obama, Obama ..."

2009-01-20T02:14:00.001-05:00

Today Obama will be inaugurated as Americas 44th president. All Ugandans are going nuts. In Kampala they are selling Obama t-shirts and they are selling quite fast. Everyone has changed their cell phone rings to an R&B song about Obama. It goes "Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama ..." And they are all trying to figure out when the inauguration will be played on the T.V.

I’m not going to lie, like them I am very excited. I was supposed to go back to Ddegeye today after a weekend in Kampala, but I am going to stay an extra day so that I can see the inauguration.

11:00 January 20, 2009 …

I just watched the inauguration at a small bar on Kampala Rd. called Slow Boat Pub and Restaurant. It was very inspiring. Everyone in the pub went wild every time Obama or his family came on the screen and everyone booed every time George Bush went on the screen. As I talked to several people around the pub, I was impressed with how well informed they were about the ceremony (many people knew that they had installed heaters underneath the main parties seats so to keep them warm). People also knew a lot about Hillary and Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden. At least half the people I saw were wearing Obama t-shirts. I thought Obama made a great speech. I was really inspired by his comment on helping the world around us (both domestic and foreign) and by comment about how if we work together we can overcome the obstacles we face today.

Random Stuff

2009-01-10T02:07:00.000-05:00

Nsua ne Nsenene

So I don’t know if I should make this public knowledge, but I ate live bugs. Just joking I ate cooked bugs. Late in October there is a season called nsua season. nsua are large white ants. They are everywhere, sort of like locusts attacking for about two weeks and then disappear again. Many of the kids eat them raw with the wings still attached. It was nsua season while the morning program was still going on and I was often completely grossed out when a kid would come up to me with wings sticking out of their mouth from eating the ants they found on the ground. Adults and older kids have the sense to wait until the ants are cooked. Their legs, wings, and antenna are pulled off then they are fried in a little bit of oil and salted once they cool.
Nsenene are a type of grasshopper. While nsenene do not swarm like nsua they only come for about a month every year. For about half of November and half of December every major town has large lights surrounded by iron sheets set up to catch the grasshoppers. The grasshoppers are attacked to the light and then fly into the iron sheet and then slide down the iron sheet into a large mettle basin. The nsenene have enough natural fats that they are just fried dry and then served plain. I really liked the nsenene and I would recommend that anyone who comes should try some.

Laying Bricks Construction

Engeye is currently expanding rapidly. The most recent addition is a building that has been under construction for quite some time, the laboratory. Since John has come back two men have been hard at work building this brick and concrete structure by hand. They don’t use any machines, not even to mix the concrete. The other day they let me try laying bricks. I was terrible, well actually not as bad as I thought I would be, it is just really hard to tell when the bricks are level even when using a plumb line. It is also really tiring. Concrete is really heavy. After about a ten foot section I was feeling it in my muscles, I can’t imagine being the person to mix the concrete.

Making American Food

A few weeks before Steve and I left for vacation we tried cooking pasta and tomato sauce for the clinic staff. First of all I thought it would go over really well. Considering most of the food eaten here consists of a large portion of a heavy starch with some sort of sauce poured on top I thought pasta would go over well. Steve, Hagar!, and I got together around 3 o’clock and started preparing. By eight o’clock we had a massive pot of pasta and tomato sauce that no one liked. I think the biggest problem with it was that it did not have any salt in it. Ugandans cook with tons of salt, I think it is because they have been told that the iodine in the salt is good for you because it stops goiters (which did used to be extremely prevalent). However, you only need a very small amount of iodine combat goiters. But once used to the taste of tons of salt, you like it. Susan we put the salt on the table just in case, I think they liked the salt more than the dish itself.

Learning to Ride a Piki Piki

After my parents left, I had a little trouble adjusting back to life alone in the village (steve was not back yet). So smart girl that I am, I decided to distract myself by having Francis teach me how to ride a Piki Piki (motor cycle). I have actually ridden a motorbike(a less powerful automatic version of motorcycles) before and therefore sort of knew what I was doing. I was doing pretty well until he started taking me up hills. And even after the hills I wasn’t doing to badly until I broke the gear changing peddle and we had to go putt putt all the way home in first gear. Woops. Luckily the Piki Piki was really easy to fix and the Piki Piki is not traumatized. I think Francis was a little embarrassed traveling by crowds of people at ten miles per hour with a while girl on the back of the bike.

Chicken Coops

Thanks to the money that the Union Campus has raised, we have started a chicken distribution program. So far we have given 10 chickens to 10 different children. We are giving the chickens to children for two reasons. First the goal of giving out the chickens is to increase the amount of protein in the child’s diet and second to teach the child ways they can generate income. Giving the chickens to the children and not the parent ensure that the parent won’t just kill the chicken and eat it for dinner, because the child will be upset and come tell us if their parent killed “their chicken”. In addition to receiving the chicken and being required to eat its eggs, each child must raise at least one chick to give to another child (maybe a friend or sibling) thus expanding the program. We also helped build the ten chicken coops the chickens will be living in (or so we thought). People are too scared that someone will come by and steel the chicken at night, so the chicken sleeps inside the house, and because they let the chickens’ free range during the day so there is really no point in having the coops. Some of the children have shown real interest in the program. I am hoping these children will not only be interested in raising the chicken so that they can eat the eggs, but use the chicken as an opportunity to learn how to generate income and increase assets (by not only choosing to raise one chicken to give away, but increase the number of chickens they have and thus increase the number of eggs they get). In the end we hope to double the number of chickens we have given out so far.

We have not checked on the chickens yet, this is something I plan to do this week. I am a little worried that some of them might have “disappeared” over the Christmas holiday. Here in Uganda the Christmas tradition is to cook a huge feast including whatever meat (beef, pork, chicken) you have for Christmas. I am a little worried some of our chickens have fallen victim.

Traveling Over Christmas Holiday

2009-01-06T02:03:00.000-05:00

I just took a two week holiday and traveled around Uganda with my parents. We spent the majority of our time seeing the landscape and looking at animals. This is a blog about all the animals and cool landscapes I saw on during my travels.

Lake Bunyoni

Lake Bunyoni is the one of the deepest and largest freshwater lakes in Uganda. It is about the size of one of the great lakes and is surrounded by high mountains on all sides and doted with little islands. Lake Bunyoni has one of Uganda’s largest bird populations and you can see a number or rare birds while staying there. While there I stayed on one of the Islands in the middle of the lake. This was the first time I had a chance to stay at a completely eco-friendly hotel. It was quiet interesting they had everything from eco-friendly toilets where all users had to sit to solar heated showers.

In addition to bird watching Lake Bunyoni is the only fresh water in Uganda that does not have bilharzia. Bilharzia is a type of snail that carries parasites that can be transited to humans through the skin. While easily treatable, I would not recommend swimming elsewhere in Uganda. Therefore, this was the first time I have been able to swim since I’ve been here.

Lake Bunyoni is also a three day weekend spot for Uganda’s wealthy citizens (all of whom reside in Kampala). It is about an eight hour drive from Kampala. You can also tell that many of the hotels cater to the very wealthy Indian population in Kampala because many of the menus boasted several Indian dishes.

Gorillas

After traveling to Lake Bunyoni we continued traveling southwest and crossed the Rwandan border. In Rwanda we went Gorilla tracking. In order to go tracking we had to bushwhack up Mt. Sabinyo (a dormant volcano). About an hour into a climb through bamboo forests and lush bushes, we reached the Gorillas. In all we spent about an hour with a family of thirteen gorillas, there was one dominant male silver back, six females, and six babies. One of the babies was only 3 months old and could not move on its own yet. In addition one of the females was six months pregnant, she was such a picky eater, she would lumber over to a patch of bamboo shoots, and then carefully pull one from the ground and peel it until she reached the sweet middle. Sometimes she would pick off small pieces that were not sweet enough. They were so human like, they would watch us and stair at us the way we were starring at them.

While we were in Rwanda I met the current local Peace Corps medical officer. The Peace Corps is restarting their program in Rwanda this year after having closed the program 14 years ago. As I talked to her about Rwanda I learned some interesting facts. Every month the government declares a public clean up day. The police walk around forcing everyone to clean up in front of their houses and stores. While this definitely over the top, Rwanda is not covered in trash the way Uganda is. In addition the roads are much better. However, I was in an area that receives tons of money from tourism.

Volcanoes

Next we traveled back over the border and spent the next two nights in Traveler’s Rest Hotel. This hotel was originally owned by the “father” of gorilla tourism, Walter Baumgartel. When the hotel was built the forest came right up to where the hotel grounds end. It was also the place where Dian Fossey stayed when she did her research on gorillas. This was such a great place to stay because of all the reading material they kept. They had every single national geographic with anything to do with Uganda in it, and shelves full of books on Ugandan wildlife, culture, and history.

While we stayed at the Traveler’s Rest Hotel we spent our days in Mgahinga National Park. While this park’s main attraction is gorilla and golden monkey tracking it also boast three large dormant volcanoes: Mt. Muhavura, Mt. Gahinga, and Mt. Sabinyo. The park shares these three volcanoes with the DRC and Rwanda. If you climb Sabinyo you can stand in all three without a visa. My father and I decided to climb Mt. Gahinga while my mother and brother went Golden Money Tracking. This was a really interesting hike. Mt. Gahinga has very different flora than I have every seen. The majority of the climb was spent in a virgin bamboo forest. While this was interesting, the most fascinating part was when we entered the alpine zone and there were no lichen covered rocks and small pine trees, but large trees covered in this moss called grandfather’s beard. The moss hung off the branches in long hairy strands. At the top we were able to walk around the swamp that had formed in the crater.

Game Park

We finished up our travel in Queen Elizabeth National Park. This is one of Uganda’s largest national parks covering almost 2000 square meters. The majority of the park is savannah and grassland, although, there are sections that have varied terrain. For example, the Kyambura gorge boasts a tropical rainforest that had a wide variety of animals including chimpanzees. Within the park is also the Kazinga Channel. This is the body of water linking Lake George and Lake Edward and is the home to thousands of hippos and pelicans.

Our time here was really fun. We got to see lions, hyenas, fighting buffalo, elephants, baboons, several types of antelope, hippos, pelicans, chimpanzees, and countless numbers of rare birds. I got to see my first owl; it was really cool it looked just like all the cartoon owls.

Kampala

We spent a day in Kampala buying souvenirs and various items. My favorite moment was at the souvenir market when my mom was bargaining with some woman and she kept saying “I just bought a set of these salad tongs over there for 5,000Ush that is the most I’ll pay” and I walked straight up and said “No mom, you bought those salad tongs for 6,000 Ush.” Another great moment was when my brother was trying to buy a wooden mask and he asked for a discount because it had a small crack in it and the woman replied “I’ll give it to you, but you know these antiques, they have been handled poorly in the past.”

Our fun ended with a night Kampala. There is a large Indian population here and we went to one of the best Indian restaurants in town, Hanndi. Not only did the place have creative dishes (definitely not the place to play it safe and get the chicken tikki marsala), but the atmosphere consisted of a nice mix of family restaurant and night on the town. I am definitely making Steve go there with me next time we are in Kampala.

My Thoughts on Dean McEvoy's Visit

2008-12-20T23:42:00.002-05:00

Dean McEvoy Visit

As you learned from the previous post we had a visit from Dean McEvoy. Dean McEvoy visited us from December 4th to December 9th. For us it was four days of luxury. First we got to go pick him up in Kampala which meant we got to eat mzungu food and to take showers. He even brought a bottle of South African wine, yum. I think that Dean McEvoy really liked it here. He handled everything we made him do, from fetching forty-five pounds of water to eating massive amounts of strange foods to riding in very dangerous vehicles such as boda bodas, really well.

We had a very full four days planned, but the best thing that Dean McEvoy got to do we didn’t plan. The day after he arrived John told us that one of his clan members (in Uganda everyone is part of a clan. John is part of the Engeye clan, hence the name of the clinic) had invited him and his American guests to an Id Day celebration.

Id is the Muslim holiday celebrating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. From what our host told us it is equivalent to Christmas or Chanukah. So everyone in the family from all over Uganda came to celebrate. True to tradition they sacrificed a goat and cow. I got to see them clean the skin of the cow and grill the goat meat on sticks. They also showed us tradition Muslim and Ugandan male attire which we had never seen before.

In accordance with Ugandan custom they way over feed their guests. For appetizers they brought out what any self respecting Italian would consider a large meal and made us eat almost the entire cow’s liver, an entire cabbage, and rice. Then about an hour later, the head female of the house brought out the largest package of matooke I had ever seen. Matooke is cooked by wrapping a bunch of banana leaves around pealed plantains and then putting the package of leaves/bananas into a big pot where it is boiled. Depending on the number of people you are feeding the package is bigger or smaller. They cooked a package of matooke about the size of a pillow (no joke, it took two people to carry it into the house). In addition they cooked the entire cow and the entire goat not to mention side dishes. I ate so much that afternoon that I could barely breath.

What really impressed me the most about Dean McEvoy was how well he adapted to the community culture of Uganda. He was a natural at sitting on the floor in a circle while talking and eating directly from a huge pile of yellow mashed stuff pilled six inches high on steamed banana leaves directly in the center of the circle.

On a side note I fixed the picture link on the side of my blog. Have a nice day.

Guest Speaker Dean McEvoy

2008-12-20T13:54:00.002-05:00

Steve and Becky have offered me space on their blog to report in on their doings. For family and friends who don't know me I am Tom McEvoy, who along with Professor Hal Fried, works with the Minerva Fellows.Our intuition in putting Steve and Becky in this particular spot was good.

I will be straightforward with anyone applying for a Minerva Fellowship that this is one tough, but hugely rewarding, site. If you can survive the taxi station in Kampala and the ride of your life to the Village, then you have passed the first test, which I think the word 'harrowing' was made to describe. I have never ridden in the same motor vehicle with a chicken, 18 or so people in a van built for half that, rolling down the highway (with no shoulder or lighting, and people biking and walking on the side) at about 90 mph. Shock absorbers and tire treads aren't on anyone's mind.

Arriving in the small village where Steve and Becky call home was a stark contrast. Tranquil, pastoral, relaxed, and welcoming all describe Becky and Steve's home for the last few months. This really is a special place. It is a place once you see, you will never forget. Even with no running water, electricity, and other comforts we také for granted, Becky and Steve are having the experience of their lives.

As this is our first year of running the Fellows program, we at Union did not have things nailed down to a degree that we would know what the day - to - day lives of the Fellows would entail at any of the NGO sites. Becky and Steve have created something special from nothing. I can imagine them thinking back in August: "so we are here, now what do we do? " Unlike the other Minerva Fellows sites, here there was NO structure, or boss (although John does a wonderful job guiding and supporting them.) Through their own determination, imagination, and sense of service, they have made something exist where it had not before. The garden they have planted with cabbage, onions and carrots is an apt metaphor for what they have done for the village and kids through their teaching. Lots of water, mulching, and everyday care. They know what they have to do, and they do it.

As I talked with Steve and Becky and watched them, I realized we really threw them into a pond and cried "swim." They have picked up a language they did not know, and that is no easy task. They both downplay that challenge, but to watch them talk with a villager or barter in the market is an example of what I believe is part of the Minerva Fellows mission: to allow talented new graduates a transformative learning experience that will not only enrich their souls, but also greatly increase their wordly confidence and - navigational skills as they move on with their lives.

My impressions and memories of this leg of my journey will always be remembered. What sticks with me most are the kids. They are devoted to and respect Steve and Becky. That respect has been earned-- is not because they happen to be a novelty in rural Africa. As we walked through the paths and roads of the village, soft smiles and voices, and shy or wide smiles -- "hi Becky, hi Steve." While school is out of session, and I could not see the students in a class, sitting in the fading light of Steve and Becky's one room abode, I was able to read neatly written letters back to pen pals in the United States at Saint Eugene's School in Yonkers, NY. The letters were so well formed and neat a few asked a question that would bring me close to a tear: "Are you parents alive?" There is a softness and reality here that is felt, but hard to put into words.
Steve and Becky know exactly where each student villager studies outside their own school program. "He's in P6; she's in S4." They were interested in, and knew, it seemed, each child's story.

I was lucky to meet Fred, Peter, Masa, John and Jeff. They were thrilled at the prospect of playing with a simple balloon for an hour. Things are simple for them: no x box 360s, no ipods, no cool clothes. Just a sense of happiness. They show respect and joy. They may never leave the village, drive a car, ski a slope, go to a movie theatre, sail a boat, ride a jetski, have a television, or see the ocean. But, they seem content.

So let's talk about food. When I was leaving for this trip my wife, Anne, said that I'd probably drop seven pounds and have a good time gaining them back over the holidays. Steve and Becky may be deprived of running water, but there is no shortage of food. Starchy food at that. I had a problem with a few things, but Steve and Becky somehow pack it in and still look great and fit. The food is extremely fresh, and there is little meat. Mangoes, pineapple, pumpkin, fried spaghetti, and cabbage were my favorites. Matooke, cassava, and yams (not the yams we know) are another matter.

For those of you who know Becky and Steve well, it's no surprise to you that I had two reliable guides. Becky led the charge through crowded, insane, Kampala and Steve insisted on carrying my heavy duffel bag for miles. These are two of our most solid graduates who have a determination I have the greatest respect for.

I have only scratched the surface here. There are other moments of long visits with village elders, a few beers in the hostel and catching up on Union, fetching water from the local hole, celebrating an Islamic holiday with the locals and all that went with that, to quiet times in their quarters just before bed, and talks of NGOs, America, economics, and a few good laughs. I will also remember Becky and Steve squabbling like my wife and me balancing our checkbooks, as they accounted for every penny of the money they were spending on food, taxi service, and other small items that our finance office will never see a receipt for, as those don't exist in place like a food market.

For those at Union and Saint Eugene's who have raised nearly $1300, you could not have your gifts in better hands. Rest assurred that these two are making the difference and we are lucky and blessed to have Steve and Becky on our team. So is Uganda.

Some More Catching Up

2008-12-19T23:37:00.000-05:00

Morphine

A few weeks ago a young boy, maybe four, came into the clinic with absolutely terrible second degree burns all over the top of his feet. He had run past a kettle of boiling water and knocked it over onto his feet. He was in incredible amounts of pain. You could hear his screams from across the road. The morning program kids were here and they all got really quite and you could tell they were really scared. In they end they had to first remove a large amount of brunt dead tissue and then use rubbing alcohol to clean the wounds. While they were able to inject some lidocane by they were done removing the dead skin it had worn off and they cleaned the burns without using any form of anesthetic.

For the next week the boy came in every day to have his bandages changed and burns cleaned without any pain killers. I was able to watch the second day they changed the bandages and after watching Richard and the boy’s teary eyed mother hold the screaming kid down for Joseph to take off the bandages I couldn’t watch the rest. It was unbelievable. It was a good reminder of what luxuries we have in the first world. No mother in America is asked to hold down her screaming child while his second degree burns are cleaned with rubbing alcohol.

Sometimes you forget the hardships that these people face. They are always so friendly and always seem so happy. No Uganda will every tell you that he or she is sick or uncomfortable or unhappy. People are always telling you that their life is good and are always smiling. But then something like this happens and I remember that these people lack so very much that should be available to them, everything from the obvious things like books and proper medical care to the not so obvious like balloons and pipe cleaners to play with in and make art project to bring

Peanut Patch

Our garden is doing relatively (~) well. A couple weeks ago we spent the week weeding the peanut patch. There are two ways to weed, the mzungu way and the Ugandan way. The mzungu way is pulling the individual weeds by hand. While this way is much more through it takes a lot longer. The Ugandan way is to use a hoe to dig up all the dirt and weeds around the peanut plant and then pick out all the weeds from the loose dirt around the plants. We started out weeding the mzungu way assuming that we could do a really through job once and then we wouldn’t have to weed again. People would stop and watch us weed. Many would even bring us a hoe and try to get us to weed the Ugandan way (including six year old children). But we held true to our roots and continued to weed the American way. However, half way through the peanut patch all the weeds from where we started had already grown back. We switched techniques. What is interesting is that Dean McEvoy was just here visiting and he instantly assumed that the hoe technique would work better. Without any instruction he just picked up the hoe and started weeding the Ugandan way. In addition, he was really good at it. I was very impressed.

The rest of our garden is doing pretty well. We transplanted our cabbage too early so it all died. However, someone heard our story from John (that we are trying to grow for the community and felt bad for us black thumbed mzungus) and donated some of his healthy cabbages. So we have transplanted all about 70 of his cabbages two weeks ago and they are looking great. We have also transplanted some of our onions. I was really skeptical because they were so little, but so far they are all standing upright. The carrots on the other hand are not doing well. They are supposed to be planted once and not in a nursery bed, so any that we tried to transplant died, I think that we are just going to have to thin the carrot plants in the nursery bed and hope for the best.

The beans are now being harvested. YAY! This is so cool because we get to eat the fresh beans that we grew for lunch and dinner every other night. Fresh beans taste amazing, although they still have the same effect on your digestive system ;). Hopefully the corn will be ready to harvest when my parents come in a week and a half.

Last Few Weeks of School

School has just let out for summer holiday (December 4, 2008 to February 2, 2009). Toward s the end of school I started to expand my teaching horizons and teach math duhnananaaa. At first I thought that this was going to be really hard. The p.5 math teacher gave me a list of topics like LCM, Finite Systems, Prime and Composite numbers, improper and proper fractions, and square numbers. Some of these topics I understood, but I definitely could not explain any of these concepts in words. However, after going through the pupils book, which I purchased in Kampala months ago and promptly put on my self and did not touch, I realized that most of it I knew and could figure out how to explain. The first topic I ended up teaching was Lowest Common Multiple (LCM). This was actually relatively easy, except for one thing, the students are not required to memorize their multiplication tables, instead they just look on the back of their blue books where a copy of the tables up to 12 is printed. Now I am the first social science major to raise her hand and argue against stringent math Gen. Ed. requirements and talk about how I never use that trigonometry I learned in tenth grade, but knowing your multiplication tables is key.

In the end I actually enjoyed teach math more than English. Math ended up being easier to teach than English for a couple of reasons. First, you can explain using examples and their aren’t very many if any at this level of math exceptions to rules. Second, I have no formal training in teaching English as a second language and there are so many irregulars. For example, I went over plurals and this was really hard because the plural of mouse is mice, but the plural of house is houses. Third, since the students aren’t taught grammar and are expected to memorize everything through repetition, it is really hard to explain new concepts.

Steve and I also got a chance to grade P.5 and P.6’s math and English exams. I take back what I said about red pen making you feel powerful. It is extremely frustrating to watch your students get something wrong that you taught, more than once. The average P.5 English exam was 30% and the average P.6 math exam wasn’t much better. There were several really funny wordos and mistakes. The best was the one asking the students to change the word wolf to plural. One student wrote “wife – domestic animal”.

End of Morning Program

With the end of school also came the end of the morning program. We decided to give the students the same summer break that the public school was getting. I think that both the kids and Steve, Hagar, and I needed the time away from each other. They were getting bored of the activities we planed for them and we were becoming a little to comfortable yelling at them and joking about corporal punishment. For example, we have to put Joan on the windowsill when she is bad (we would put her in the corner and make her stare at the wall like everyone else, but she is too young and doesn’t get that its punishment) and one day we forgot about her for about half an hour until we heard her yelling from around the corner asking to get down. Also our jokes about shutting them all in the chicken coops and letting them roast under the afternoon sun were just seeming a little to tempting.

Our last week was really fun and went really well. Steve and I made them chapattis (a local snack food steve and I have just learned to make) for snack time. They loved this because we made them extra large ones. This was the first snack time where kids weren’t crying and begging for food. We also made popsicle stick picture frames and printed picture of each of the kids. This was by far the most popular activity we have done. For many of these kids this was their first picture.

I want to thank everyone who has sent school supplies, children’s books, and arts and crafts supplies. As your packages came in we were able to make drastic improvements to the morning program. Without what you sent we never could have given these kids such a rewarding experience.

Now that I have had a week away from the children I can’t wait to start up the morning program again. The other day I was walking by the road and saw a bunch of the kids. I just wanted to sit and play with them. Separation definitely makes the heart grow fonder. It is going to be really hard to leave these kids.

More Pictures

2008-12-17T08:39:00.003-05:00

Hey everyone, I uploaded more pictures. To take a look click on the link I put on the side of my blog. I also added some links to good Ugandan/African News websites and to the other Minerva Fellows Blogs. You should take a look at the blogs they are very interesting.

Additions to the Engeye Family

2008-12-10T02:22:00.002-05:00

The “New” Volunteer Hagar!

About a month ago a new “muzungu” or white person entered our lives. Her name is Hagar!. Hagar! is originally from Israel, but immigrated to the United States when she was seven. Her immediate family now lives in northern California. She has a BA in Public Health and International Relations from Boston University. The kids and locals don’t believe us, but like Steve and I she is a twin and is 22 years old. Soon all the kids are going to think that all Americans are twins and are 22 years old. She is working for an organization called The Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD) based out of San Francisco, California. They have put her in touch with Engeye and she spends the majority of her time helping out at the clinic. She does two things. She helps us with the children in the morning, having her around drastically increased our effectiveness. Having 9 students per teacher instead of 15 makes a huge difference.

In addition to helping us with the morning program, Hagar! is taking a Health Needs Survey of Ddegeya. This is really great for several reasons. First, the clinic can now use the information she collects to help them write grants. Second, the clinic and Hagar! can use the information to great health classes geared toward addressing the particular problems in the community. For example, one really great thing she found out was that most people actually do boil their water, so there really isn’t a need to have a class or information session on why boiling water is important.

Hagar! plans to specialize in women’s health needs. I think this is awesome and really needed. In my first month here someone told me that women were born to work hard. Many of the women here work much harder than the men, they carry forty-five pounds of water on their heads while carrying a baby on their back, they dig for hours in their gardens, they are continually pregnant, they cook all of the meals for their families, they clean their houses, they clean all their families’ clothes, care for their loved ones when they get sick, pretty much the women here are expected to do and therefore are not appreciated for how much they do. Women here need as many advocates as possible especially in rural areas where traditional values keep women in their hardworking underappreciated roles.

Two New Members of the Engeye Family

We have two other new additions to the Engeye family, Joseph and Sophia. Joseph is the new Nurse. Unfortunately Lawrence had to leave, Joseph is his replacement. He is awesome. Patients love him. The kids love him. We all love him. He is intergrating into the Engeye community and Ddegeya community wonderfully. He plays football with a bunch of locals every night. The kids love to play with him before the morning program starts and during his lunch break. And the adults respect him. I often see people come by with gifts for him. The number of patients has increased as well. Where we used to see about 8 patients trickle in each day, there is now always a line in the clinic.

John has just hired a nurse’s aid who is originally from Ddegeya. Sophia actually went to the nursing school in Kyetume where Steve and I taught and had us as teachers. This seems totally insane to me because she is a way more competent health care provider than I am. All I can do is put a colorful bandage on a kid to make him or her stop cry while she knows how to do things like inject quinine. It is really great that John hired Sophia for two reasons. First many of the local women are scared to come to the clinic because there is a male nurse. Having a female member of the community present helps alleviate women’s fears. In addition Sophia was a great person to hire. She is very motivated to not only do her job (handing out medicine and interacting with female patients), but go above and beyond and start other programs. For example she wants to start holding nutrition classes for local women. She also wants to start women’s groups where women can come and discus different personal problems. I am so excited about this. She said I could help out which really excites me b/c I have wanted to hold things like these for a while. Sophia like Joseph has integrated into the Engeye community beautifully. She is always playing Ludo (a Ugandan board game similar to Sorry) with John, Richard, and Joseph. She has even gotten me to play with her and invited me to her house for supper.

I love having these new faces around. In addition, it is really nice to have some more female companionship. When I agreed to come to Uganda I was aware that the lack of female friends was going to be hard. I currently live with four boys. I have never been one to be friends with lots of boys and while I really enjoy hanging out with Susan while she cooks it is hard to create a friendship when she doesn’t speak very much English and I don’t speak much Luganda. However, Sophia speaks English really well and it’s so nice to talk to her. The other day she sat and kept me company while I did my laundry. I enjoyed it so much. Hagar! also provides a lot of female companionship which is really nice.

Some Quick Comments on Life

2008-11-30T02:15:00.000-05:00

Really long time since I wrote a blog so this blog of quick comments is going to be flowed by a bunch of blogs.

A couple quick comments before getting down to the Nitty Gritty:

1. For all of you out there reading my blog: 1) thank you it is awesome that you spend time out of your day learning about different cultures and different people’s experiences and 2) even if I don’t know you please comment on what you like and what you want to hear more about (this way I can write more about what you want to hear about/tailor my blogs so that you like them even more).

2. I have not commented on the Election yet, but I am really excited (along with the rest of Africa) that Barak Obama is going to be the next president of the United States of America. Steve and I woke up very early that morning and watched the sun rise while we listed to BBC give live updates. I really enjoyed his speech on Election Day when he gave a shout out to all of us in the far corners of the earth huddled around radios. Everyone here in East Africa is also really excited. The day after his election all of my students were taking about him. Whenever I say I’m American people praise me for electing him. This positive reaction is awesome after all the negative comments I would hear about Bush’s America, however, it also brings concerns. Many people here now expect that Obama is going to drastically increase US aid in East Africa and expect that everything in East Africa is going to change now that he is going to be president. I think that these people have really high expectations that probably will not be met.

3. GO PATS! We can make it! I know that many of you probably hate the Patriots, but I am not a fair weather fan. Also go Eli Manning and the Giants. Eli you have been playing superbly this season, despite the fact that it takes 5 minutes to download the weekly stats off of NFL.com, I still do and yours always make me smile.

4. Thanksgiving is a huge deal in my house. In the past all of my extended relatives from both sides of my family came, in addition to several families of close friends. I want to give a shout out to all those who were able to make it this year, I hear it was quite a crowd. Mark, thank you for supporting the local football team and making it to the Thanksgiving Day Game. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is called Pie Night and each kid, now anyone under 27, is required to bake at least one pie. I want to give a shout out to all the “kids”. I hear you were able to make 11 pies this year (I don’t know who made the Chocolate Pecan Pie, my specialty, but I’m sure it was amazing). I want to give a bigger shout out to my maternal grandparents, Abe and Phyllis Margolin, and my maternal aunt, Linda Fisher. Even though I wasn’t there I know you guys were sorely missed.

5. Right now I am in Kampala waiting for Dean McEvoy to arrive from the airport and I was able to check my email for the first time in two weeks. I just found out that Engeye has been adopted by MIT’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders!!! YAY!! This is so cool and such a big deal. .

Happy Thanksgiving :)

2008-11-27T00:30:00.000-05:00

Dear Union College and Greater Schenectady Community,

Over the past four months we have had the privilege of volunteering in a a rural African Village out of a small Uganda based health clinic. The village we are working in is called Ddegeya (Deh-gay-ya) and the NGO is Engeye Health, which was started by an Albany Medical School student three years ago. Uganda is an East African nation straddling the equator, bordering Lake Victoria, and is about the size of Oregon State. The village is typical of this region - no power, banana plantations on top of banana plantations, women strapping children to their back with a piece of fabric, villagers toiling in the fields, women carrying 45 pounds of water on their heads, and children in bright blue school uniforms fetching water at dawn and firewood at dusk before and after classes.

Within the picturesque village and behind the ever-present Ugandan smile is a country facing severe obstacles. AIDS has struck nearly all the families we are acquainted with; malaria pours through the village as easy as the October rains; malnutrition is typical as the families (70 percent of the people here are subsistence farmers) survive on the same unvaried staples everyday; climate change may convert 80 percent of Uganda to desert even though gasoline is $6 per gallon and very few people own cars; compounding these problems, families are large (typically six or more) and population is growing exponentially even though many struggle on the little land they have.

We have tried to address some of these problems, little by little: we planted a vegetable garden and a field of peanuts to alleviate kwashiokor, a type of malnutrition; we teach and review with students at a local primary school; we work with kids who are too young or cannot afford school fees so that they get positive, educational interaction in their formative years (reading, writing, singing, arts and creative activities, and basic solving problem skills); we tutor kids on an individual basis; we help repair the road; we do various tasks around the clinic (fetching water, inventory, statistics, etc.); and we try to convey what we observe, experience, and think to all of you back home, which helps link two disparate communities. We are about to embark on our next project - distributing protein and income generating chickens to local families who will then pass on chickens to two more families (who will then pass on chickens to two more families and so on, ideally making the project sustainable). [This idea was suggested by Union's own Megan Sesil and independently by Stephen's mother].

We feel extraordinarily lucky to be able to help on such a local level, to be able to see before our very eyes the impact of our work. But we realize that, in many ways, we are messengers from home. We take the books you send and help a child to read, we take the physics experiments and help a curious mind understand the world around them, we use the vitamins to help kids grow big and strong, we use the funds to innovate and create projects that assess village needs and help the village grow sustainably, we hear your encouragement and read your ideas and enthusiastically incorporate it into the seeds we sow, the students we teach, and the community we interact with.

For all this we thank you. We signed up to work here - it is our job, our "nine to five," our passion, our obsession. You all work - and work hard - at Union as students up until the "light show" in Schaffer, as faculty, administration, and staff catering to these inquisitive students, and in Schenectady as everyday people making up the fabric of an extraordinary city. But then you work more to help a people you've never met. Many of you we do not know (but would like to meet) as you've dutifully sat at tables in Reamer, discussed our blogs in Preceptorial classes or over coffee in Minervas, attended benefit concerts or benefit (organic) dinners, donated a book, a dollar, or an idea - your dollar, interest, and encouragement goes so far in a country lacking so much. We can guarantee you that.

Some at Union deserve special note. Megan Sesil and Professor Pease have selflessly donated their time and effort to this cause, our (collective) cause, raising awareness, sending ideas and updates, raising money, collecting donations, and packaging and sending much needed supplies. Megan has worked with Wells House, Ozone House, and WRUC (among others) to bring awareness to Ddegeya, Uganda and Engeye Health. Professor Pease has incorporated insights from Ddegeya into her preceptorial class, blending intellect with service and action. Catherine Davis, Devin Harrison, and WRUC worked with and brought six incredible, local bands to the stage in a Uganda benefit concert. Our interview with her reminded us that people here, buried in hills and tucked between banana plants and mud walls, are not alone. We are not alone. Catholic Student Association and Schaffer Library made helpful donations of money and supplies. Both our families have sent kind and timely donations for children. Teresa Sesil worked with Megan to set up a pen pal program that educated students in Yonkers, New York and Ddegeya, Uganda about varying cultures first hand (kids in both schools have really enjoyed corresponding). Lastly, our boss, John Kalule, makes everything we do possible, Dean McEvoy and Professor Fried dreamed of, pursued, and achieved a challenging fellowship program that is helping so many (in Cambodia, India, Malawi, South Africa, and Uganda), and Stephanie Van Dyke had the determination to see through the Engeye vision - without these people, we would simply not be here.

In short, we thank you all for letting us be the couriers of your goodwill. We couldn't possibly list all the people helping us address educational inequality, malnutrition, and health problems, but please know that we think about you everyday and appreciate your contributions.

Peace,

Becky Broadwin and Stephen Po-Chedley

Primary Leaving Examinations

2008-11-10T08:36:00.001-05:00

In Uganda, in order to leave primary school and enter secondary school you have to pass a standardized test called a Primary Leaving Examination. This examination takes two days. It covers English, Social Studies, Math, and Science. I have not been able to see a copy of the Social Studies or Science sections, but I have been able to look at both an English and Math section.

The English section consists of two parts. The first has fifty questions and is worth fifty points. The questions address topics like alphabetizing, finding the correct form of words such as funny, ordering of words in sentences, abbreviations, and singular versus plural of irregulars (for example wolf vs. wolves). The second section is reading comprehension and consists of five different passages, some stories others invitations to parties others government notices followed by one question with about five parts.

Similarly the Math section is split into two sections. The first consisting of short answer straight forward questions including simple arithmetic, percentages/fractions, simple geometry, modal math, and roman numerals. The second section consisting of multiple part longer questions covering more complex concepts like creating accurate angles with out a protractor (something I never learned how to do and still don’t understand).

It is extremely difficult for students that attend bad public schools in poor areas like St. Timothy’s Bunyere to pass for several reasons. First, the test is given in English. While the students are supposed to be taught completely in English starting in P.4 they are not. Many teachers revert to teaching in Luganda in order to make sure their students fully understand the topic. Therefore, while it is assumed by the government that these students can at least speak english, they cannot. Therefore, the students often can’t read the test. Second, when studying for the english part of the exam students are not taught about parts of a sentence (nouns/verbs …) but taught how to answer questions by memorization. For example, there are a number of questions asking the student to rearrange the words. For example, they are given two sentences and asked to combine them using the words as well as. Third it is hard for these students to pass the English section of the examination because many questions on the exam itself are grammatically incorrect. Forth, it is hard for the Bunyere students to do well because their teachers often teach them incorrectly. For example, Steve and I started helping correct their weekly practice exams. While going through the math test we found that the teacher did worse on his answer key than three of his students did when taking the test. If we counted the questions he did not do as wrong he scored in the 70%, if we did not count the questions he did not complete he got just above 80% the grade required to pass. Fifth, the student’s parents have to pay extra school fees for practice tests and a test fee as well. This is a huge burden on many of the families and they often can’t afford to buy all the practice tests or pay the test fee more than once. So if their child isn’t lucky enough to pass the first time they probably won’t get another chance.

The Primary Leaving Exam was given on November 4th and 5th. The P.7 Bunyere students are now waiting for their results which will come in early feburary. The exams are sent to Kampala and graded there.

Fighting For Food

2008-11-10T08:34:00.000-05:00

Steve and I have started a morning program. Monday through Friday from 9:00am to 1:00pm about thirty children from the ages of 2 to 7 come to the clinic and we practice numbers, letters, and writing. All of these children do not attend school because their families cannot afford to pay the small fee required by public schools. We have asked their parents to pack them something to eat during the time they are with us. Some children bring little plastic pails filled/half full/almost empty with steamed cassava (a root tuber similar to potatoes), potatoes, matooke (steamed and then mashed plantains); some are lucky enough to bring these foods with a little sauce made from mashed beans or tomatoes put on top, many, however, do not bring anything. When it is snack time everyone, whether or not they have food, goes out to the picnic tables. Those who have food try to eat as much of it as possible while those who didn’t bring any try to steal/beg as much as possible from them. There is a continual lull of children’s voices saying “mpa …mpa” – “give me … give me.” Often I will catch one of the children with his hands in another child’s pail. Siblings often share one pail. One day a group of siblings did not finish their meal at snack time. When all of the kids realized there was food left chaos and pandemonium broke out. The oldest girl (not the one who owned the pail) tried to take it and equally distribute the food between everyone, however, one boy wanted more than she was willing to give and tried to steal all the food. The day ended with every child running furiously after one boy who tried to steel the food because he was hungry, eventually the oldest girl Nabuuma body slammed him to the ground and distributed what little was left to her siblings. On average those kids who don’t bring food get enough mouthfuls from their friends and manage to stay active during the second half of the program. Some end up eating the chucks of food that fall off the tables on the porch. All of the children pick up the unripe mangos that have fallen off the mango trees and eat those to fill their bellies. Often I find the younger kids crying because they are hungry. It is unbelievably hard to watch.
These children go hungry because their parents are unable to feed them more than once a day. Often not only are the parents unable to feed the children more than once a day, but they are unable to provide a nutritious well balanced meal. This means that all of these children and the majority of their peers in the village are malnourished. The majority of what these children and their families eat consist of staple foods like cassava, posho (mash potato like substance made from corn flower), matooke, potatoes, or rice with a small amount of sauce on top usually consisting of dried fish, beans, or ground peanuts. Having only one meal a day is particularly problematic for children because they have small stomachs and cannot eat enough to stustain themselves in one meal. It is recommended to feed small children five or six well balanced meals a day. A well balanced meal includes a staple food as well as a protien rich food and vitamin/mineral rich food. Obviously these children are barely receiving enough starch to sustain them through twenty-four hours let alone the extra vitamins and minerals they need to grow and develop properly. Most of the children show signs of Kwashiokor (a specific type of malnutrition associated with children who receive enough calories to get them through the day but lack the essential helper foods that contain protein and vitamins). All of these children and their peers show signs of kwashiorkor they have light colored patchy hair or don’t have hair at all, swollen bellies that look a lot like those of overweight middle aged American men, sores and peeling skin, and swollen cheeks, hands, and feet. Even if the children do not show signs of kwashiorkor show signs of general malnutrition. They are small for their age, weak, get tired often, have bacterial infections growing on their scalps and faces (a sign of a weak immune system), have bad teeth, and have sores on their faces and body. While it is rare to see the type of malnutrition known as Marasmus it does occur. Marasmus is when a child does not receive enough of any type of food even staple foods. Overall being malnourished means that these children get sick more often and more severely, are more likely to develop slowly, have slower brain function, have poor vision, bruise easily, are likely to have bleeding gums, nosebleeds, and diarrhea.
These families can not afford to feed their children properly for many reasons. Two of the most prevalent reasons are lack of education, money, and land. Lack of education about and understanding of the family planning options available, as well as lack of funds to buy these options, leads to extremely large families. From the information we have gathered from our primary school students the average family has six children. Country wide the population is growing by 6% a year. The majority of Ugandans are subsistence farmers. This means that they produce all of what they need on their own land, many of the farmers in Ddegeya don’t even touch money on a regular basis. If you think of a plot of land owned by one person that then is cut in two as the population doubles and then is divided into four as the population doubles again and then is cut into eight as the population doubles again you soon realize that Uganda can not support such rapid population growth. Now think of the average farmer. Many farmers own small plots of land and when they keep having more and more children what that land produces is divided into smaller and smaller portions. By the time the farmer has four children there is not enough produced for each person to have three full meals a day. Let alone worrying about having three well balanced meals a day. The second reason why many children do not have well balanced meals is because their families do not grow foods rich in vitamins and minerals like carrots, leafy greens, and tomatoes. These are not common crops because they require constant watering (which is hard because that means you have to carry the water from the well to you land which is potentially more then a mile away and then water every day) and pesticides which are expensive.
Steve and I have come up with several ways to combat the malnutrition that the morning program kids are experiencing. First, we have planted a field about half the size of a soccer field of peanuts. Hopeful we will harvest over 30 kilos of peanuts and be able to feed each of these kids enough peanut butter to fulfill their protein requirement everyday. We are also growing beans, corn, cabbage, tomatoes, green peppers, leafy greens, onions, and eggplant. All of this produce will be given to the children to bring home; hopefully, this will increase variety in their diets. In addition, we have several people sending us children’s chewable multi-vitamins which we plan to give to each child in the morning program everyday.

White Water Rafting on the Nile and a Uganda Cranes Game

2008-10-27T10:15:00.000-04:00

Two weekends ago Steve and I took our first weekend away from the clinic. I spent Friday night and Saturday day in Jinja. Jinja is located where the Nile comes out of Lake Victoria. This entire region is littered with sugar cane and tea leaf plantations. The drive coming in was unbelievably beautiful and picturesque. Since the town itself was relatively unaffected by the Amin years and the wars with Tanzania it is still littered with mansions on lush landscaped compounds and does not have the dilapidated look that many larger towns in Uganda, like Masaka, have. On Friday night I was able to visit the mouth of the Nile, while quite unimpressive it was nice to see. The Bell Beer company sponcers the national park and therefore the park is littered with Bell Beer signs and much of it is painted red and yellow the companies colors. There are about a dozen stalls full of “authentic” Ugandan crafts. While I was there a group of school children arrived on a field trip. They all crowed around the ice-cream vendor and afterward the boys crowed in one area and threw small sticks at the girls while they drifted toward the other side of the manicured lawn. It was nice to see that at least rich Ugandan teenagers are much like the teenagers you find at my local high school.

That night I had a few beers and wrote blogs in the hostel’s bar. I decided to go to bed early because the next day I was going rafting on the Nile. The next morning is when the fun started. At 9:00 the seven rafts of people I went rafting with meet in the lobby of the hostel. We all went into the back for the complementary breakfast and safety talk. For some reason I had missed the video of the rafting trip playing on replay in the bar, this is a good thing because if I had seen the footage of the rafts going over the two meter vertical water fall the night before I may not have gone. However, I did not and therefore, unaware of what I was getting myself into I climbed happily into my raft with six other people (four Australians on term abroad, and two English dudes). We ended up having a blast. All in all we rafted 12 rapids 4 of which were class five and one of which included a two meter high vertical water fall. Our raft guide was a local with a great sense of humor. He new just how to handle seven 22 year olds. At the end of the tip there was a complementary BBQ next to Bunjagali Falls (the most famous set of waterfalls we rafted down) that included two free Nile Beers. Yes, they do have a brand of beer here called Nile Beer which is actually brewed in Jinja right next to the Nile. Their slogan is “The true reward. From the Source!” I got to watch the sun set over the Nile while having a nice cold beer. Then it was off to Kampala to join Steve, because the next day we went to the Uganda Cranes Game (national soccer team).

The Uganda Cranes Game was at the National Stadium in Nambole about twenty minutes east of Kampala. The stadium can hold about forty thousand people. I would estimate that the stadium was about half full for the game. Cheep tickets cost 10,000 Ush (6 USD) and expensive seats cost 20,000 Ush (12 USD). Outside the stadium women sat on palm leaf mats and sold the Uganda verson of pop corn and hot dogs, Mandas (fried dough) and grilled goat meat skewers. We got the more expensive seats and ended up in what Steve has termed the Mzungu Section. We ended up sitting with all the other white people at the game. What we paid for was not actually better seats, but shade. The game itself was really interesting. First came out the riot police with complete riot gear including guns. These police stationed themselves around the field at regular intervals. After the police came the Ugandan version of cheerleaders came out. They were a bunch of men dressed in tan colored robes lead by a guy in white robes. These men had drums and maracas and widely encouraged the crowd to cheer. After the Ugandan Cheer leaders came out the Ugandan version of crazy drunken shirtless paint covered college boys. We had seen one of them earlier running around Kampala announcing the game. There was a group of about fifteen shirtless men in their twenties that had painted themselves red yellow and black (the Cranes colors). These men were let onto the field to rile the crowd even more. Now I don’t really know much about soccer, so I was really impressed with all of the players and their skills and ability. The game was good and moved quickly so even for a soccer novice like myself it wasn’t boring. In the end the Cranes won!! This was awesome. However, they had needed to win by four goals to continue in the World Cup and the African Cup of Nations. Unfortunately they only one by one goal and therefore will not continue in the competitions.

After the game we were latterly shoved into moving taxies as they drove by the stadium and raced back to Kampala. I think that they tried to go so fast so that they could go back for a second trip.

Thankyou for the Packages

2008-10-17T10:29:00.001-04:00

Thank you to everyone who has sent me a package! Everything has been so helpful and useful. Both Steve and I have posted “wish lists” for our morning program. If anyone else who wants to send a package could hold off for a bit so we can figure out what we have and what we still need that would be awesome. If you absolutely can’t wait to send a package we definitely children’s books (age 2-5) for the morning program and children’s books we can read with the primary school students (things like Rohald Dohl, Boxcar Children, etc).

I have just created a Webshots account and have tried to upload pictures. The internet is really slow and over the past hour I have only been able to upload six out of the forty-eight photos I tried to upload. I guess over the next couple weeks I will get them all up there. Here is the link to the album http://good-times.webshots.com/album/568150940uLXzZB .

Also there is another phone number that you can reach me at. It is 0751556015. To reach this number from the United States you dial 011-256-0751556015. I hope all is well over in the States.

Recap of the Past Week

2008-10-14T10:27:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: I have had very little time over the past week to write, so this blog is very poorly written, please do not judge me or stop being my friend.

The Public School Education System

Over the past week or so we have tried to follow the schedule we have created, working with the kids in the morning, working at the school Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and filling the rest of our time working on projects around the clinic (planting, blogs, and letters). The first week this worked relatively well. While the school did not follow the schedule we gave them the classes we were supposed to teach never had a teacher in them. In addition, we had to finish planting our peanuts, and transplanting the cabbage from the nursery beds to the garden. We started working 10 hour days. YAY!

The next week was not as successful. This is mostly due to the poor management of the school. While we arrive at the scheduled times the teachers do not follow the schedule, in fact they do not follow any schedule. When the teachers actually make it into school, which is not always often, they just walk into classrooms that are empty and teach for a while and then leave. This means many of the classes are left unattended for long periods of time. The teachers often do not come into school, this includes the head mistress. I estimate that the head mistress makes it into school twice a week for a half day. The teachers vary a little more, some like Mr. Mugerwa make it in every day, others may only come three or four times a week. The lack of dedication is due to the lack money.

The government is supposed to pay public school teacher’s salaries. However, since the government is really corrupt all that money disappears long before it makes it out to the rural villages to pay the teachers. John’s sister, Rose, is a teacher outside of Masaka. Rose has not received her salary for over 3 months. This means she has been teaching without receiving any money for months now. Rose is a really dedicated teacher. While she was on holiday she stayed at the clinic, and every night she would spend a couple hours planning her lessons. However, not everyone is a dedicated as Rose, and certainly not everyone is as dedicated as Rose is when they are not receiving their salary for months at a time. The way the public schools keep pay their teachers enough to live is to charge all of the students a “building maintenance fee” of 5000 to 10,000 Ush (3 to 6 USd). This fee ends up covering the school supplies the teachers use, lunch for the teachers everyday, and maybe a little for each of the teachers to take home. Now this is a problem because many student’s families can not afford to pay even this small fee. And this means that children do not go to school. Or if they do go to school, they do not have books, pens, or food to bring with them.

In 2000 the United Nations created fifteen millennium goals. The were things like to end extreme poverty, create access to clean water for everyone, reverse HIV/AIDS prevalence etc. One of the goals was to bring free primary school education to every child. Uganda has recently been able to start its free primary school education system due to UN money and people donated to create the program. However, the money does not end up going to the public schools because Yoweri Museveni’s corrupt government soaks all the money up before it can make it to the teachers in the rural areas. What makes it even worse is that many people here think that Yoweri Museveni started the public primary school system and don’t really understand why the teachers do not receive their salaries. They don’t understand that it is Museveni’s corrupt government soaking up the cash, but think that it Museveni and his government just doesn’t have the money. So while Museveni and his cronies are getting rich and living the high life, many children are not even receiving a primary school education.

Tad Poles

Speaking of millennium goals I should discuses the worsening water situation. The entire village gets its water from a bore hole. The people used to use a well with a pump, but it broke. This water had been tested by a past volunteer and this water was safe to drink. Now everyone uses the bore hole filled with algae, frogs, cow poop that the rain has washed down the hill to get water. Lately, the sun has been so strong that by the end of the day the entire hole is covered with algae. This has caused the tad pole/ fog population to increase drastically over the past month. I think that I have seen every stage of frog development. In addition, someone scoped up a little tadpole into one of our jerry cans when he or she was getting us water, and now we have a resident tadpole growing in the 12 gallon bucket of cooking water we keep in the kitchen. We boil all of our water and everything is cooked well, so I am not concerned about my health, however, I can only imagine if we have a resident tad pole in our cooking water and I am at a clinic how bad the water situation must be in people’s houses.

Running

John came back he asked if I had been running. Apparently when he met my parents they told him that I liked to run and that he should run with me everyday. I had not been running because I hadn’t seen any other girls exercise and I did not want to make a scene. However, with John back and running with me I figured it was ok to try. I definitely turned many heads, but everything went smoothly.

Because I have now been able to run by myself and with John every morning I have decided to start training for a half marathon. I get up at 6:00 every morning and go. When John is not in Kampala he comes with me. I have started to really enjoy these runs. First, I get to watch the sun rise over absolutely beautiful farm land every morning. Second, many of the boys and sometimes girls like to race me on their way to school. I always get a great work out.

One of the sad parts of running is passing two of the morning program students Tye and Boy. Tye and Boy were not originally asked to join the morning program. However, the first day their mother brought them by. She said she understood that they could not be added to the list, but asked if she could leave them at the clinic for just that day because she had to walk to Kinoni (a town 2 miles away) and they were too small to walk. The next day she brought them back saying they had so much fun that she had to try. We felt so bad we had to add them. However, they live about half a mile past where I run every morning. This means that they walk two and a half miles every morning to get to the clinic. In addition, they are dropped off by their sister who needs to get to school by 8:00 instead of 9:00 which is when they are supposed to arrive at the clinic. So they wake up at 6:00 every morning and start walking to the clinic to get there in time for their sister to walk to school. I often see them on my run. They always greet me with friendly faces and try to run along with me. However, later in the day they often get tried and grumpy. The other day Tye fell asleep sitting up and fell of the bench onto the concrete porch. In addition, while someone is supposed to pick them up at 1:00 and take them home, they often wait at the clinic until their sister gets out of school at 4:00. If they do happen to disappear it is only because their sister has taken them to the school and hid them there until she is done at four. Also during this time they have nothing to eat, John or I often rummage around the clinic for bananas, or fried cassava for them to snack on.

Wish List and Contact Information

2008-10-13T08:47:00.000-04:00

Many of you have asked if you can send me a package. Of course you can. Here is a wish list consisting of things that would be really useful while teaching at the primary school or teaching the morning program Steve and I have started. For the morning program Steve and I have decided to invite about thirty local children to come to the clinic from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm. The children are between 2 and 7 and none of them attend school. During these hours we work on writing, numbers, and letters. We also plan to give out multi-vitamins and peanut butter(that we make from peanuts we plant!!!) in order to combat malnutrition.

Wish List:

Children's Chewable Multi-Vitamins(We can not get these in Uganda)
Arts and Crafts Supplies (pipe cleaners, string, construction paper, etc.)
World Map
Puzzles (very simple)
Children's Books
Flash Cards with the Letter and Numbers on Them
Cream of Tartar (to make play dough)
Dodge Balls
Dollar Tree Stuff
Educational Coloring Books

Personal Wish List:

ReaLemon that fake lemon juice they sell in supermarkets. I love to put it on Avocados. Avocados are really cheap here and I eat them all the time, but I really miss being able to put ReaLemon on them.

Steve and I have purchased a Ugandan sim card and put it in John's old phone. It is free for us if you call us and it's only 15 cents a minute if you use skype. We leave the phone on every night from 8:00am to 3:00pm Eastern Standard Time. The phone number is 011-256-779-175-450.

The Pen Pal Program

2008-10-03T10:08:00.001-04:00

Over the past few weeks I have been working on a Pen Pal program with my P.5 class. I knew it would be a huge challenge to get fifty seven 11 year olds to write appropriate well written letters. It took over four hours of class time, but in the end I got 42 somewhat well written letters to American students. I started the first class by explaining what we were doing, writing letters. Then I went through the letter format I wanted, who it should be directed to (Dear American Student), and what you put in a letter. For example, I said they needed to write three sentences about themselves (aka My name is … or I am from …), three sentences about their life (I have three brothers and two sisters, I have a mother and a father, I like my grandfather), three sentences about what they like, and three questions asking about either their pen pal or the United States (I gave examples of these as well). This explanation took about an hour. For the second hour I helped kids write.

At first I was really impressed. I walked up to one girl and she had written “Dear American Student, My name is Ratifah. Next Saturday is my birthday. I am having a party. I would like you to come. All of my brothers and sisters will be there. They are looking forward to meeting you”. When I read this I though wow that is so sweet Ratifah is inviting her American pen pal to her birthday party. And while Ratifah didn’t follow the directions it was creative and nice, plus she didn’t understand when I tried to explain to her that the American Student couldn’t come to the party anyways. However, I soon found out why Ratifah didn’t understand me. I went to the next student and it was also her birthday next Saturday. My first thought was “OMG what a coincidence!” But then after the third birthday invitation I realized that they were all just copying a sample letter out of their text books. They have already had a unit on letters and just decided to copy the sample letter out of their text book instead of write what I said. In addition to the birthday invitation there was also a reply to a post card that I apparently sent them. It went like this “Dear Becky, thank you so much for the postcard with the picture of New York City. What are those yellow followers next to the city wall called?...” I then spent the next hour trying to explain that they were not supposed to write any letter but a letter to a person in America. By the end of the first class I had 55 first drafts. Many started out as birthday invitations and then ended as actual letters. However, they were good enough that I could go through and correct them and try for a second better draft.

One thing that happened that I did not like while I was doing the first draft was the head mistress came in. The first thing she did was to yell at all the kids for not coming into school. This made me angry, because she only comes into school one or two days a week when she is supposed to be there five days a week eight hours a day. The second thing that annoyed me was that she wanted to tell the kids what to put in the letters. She kept telling them to put depressing bad things about their lives, for example if their parents were dead or if they were poor. She also told them to tell the American students things they wanted but did not have. I thought that this was completely inappropriate. These are two young children getting to know each other and there is no reason that the Ugandan students should feel that they are supposed to talk about what they lack.

Correcting the letters was a riot. They were so funny. I got countless responses to post cards I never sent and invitations to fake birthday parties. Something that was nice was I got lots of letters telling me they liked me as a teacher. What suck ups! To bad I don’t grade their tests on a regular basis ;).

Doing the second draft was easier. I decided to cave and have John come in with me. He helped translate everything I wanted to convey and the second draft went much more smoothly. In the end I got 43 second drafts. I only got 43 because not all the students who wrote first drafts were at school that day. All of the drafts were addressed to “Dear American Student” or something close to that and what followed at least resembled an original letter trying to introduce ones self to a new person.

These letters will be going to a school in Yonkers, NY where Megan Sesil’s mom works. So shout out to Megan and her mom for helping us out with this. All in all we sent just under 100 letters and I cost 11,000 USh (7 USD) to send. I am really hoping that we can get a response to the students before the term ends in November. It would mean so much to them.

The Morning Program

2008-09-30T10:07:00.001-04:00

There are two pressing problems that Steve and I feel we can combat at this moment in Ddegeya, lack of education and malnutrition. We have created a two pronged morning program to combat both of these problems. We have thirty local children between the ages of 2 and 7 who do not go to school come to the clinic.

The first aspect combats lack of education. During the hours that the children are at the clinic we practice letters, numbers, and writing. In order to practice these things we have purchased each of these kids a little blue book in which we write exercises every night. Their abilities vary. Some of the older kids can write their names while some of the younger kids have trouble holding a pencil. We alternate our time between writing, chanting/singing letters and numbers, and playing with the few soccer balls and other toys we have.

The second aspect of the morning program combats malnutrition. When I first came here I asked Steve if he would be interested in growing some of our own food. We didn’t really have a lot to do and I thought it would help fill our time. Now my idea of a small garden has grown into a soccer field sized garden, full of 150 cabbages, over 200 maize plans, 200 bean plants, 200 peanut plants, carrots, greens, green peppers, onions, and tomatoes. Now we plan to do several things with this food. The first, which applies most directly to the morning program is make peanut butter out of the peanuts we grow and feed it to the children who attend the morning program. This should hopefully combat kwashiorkor. We also plan to give them chewable children’s multivitamins. Now there are several things we plan to do with the rest of the food. First, we plan to give a bunch to the kids who attend the morning program to increase verity in their families and their diets. We also hope to give some to malnourished patients. This was a really good idea Steve had. We will give foods rich in vitamins that patients need to help cure their illnesses. For example, a patient coming in with eye problems will be given carrots to increase their vitamin A intake. The last thing, but also the hardest thing, we hope to do with the food is barter with poorer local families for our staple foods. For example, we would give families who have plenty of cassava, carrots in exchange for their excess cassava. This would allow the family to add variety and nutritious food to their diets with little extra cost.

The first day was a complete disaster. John had to help us the entire time and the kids were terrible. Many would pick up brooms and beat the other kids with them, others would run into our neighbors gardens and dig up sweet potatoes to eat, and others would horde all the balls and hide them in the chicken coop. It was terrible. In addition, none of them would listen to us instead they would just come up to us and hit us. John had to send several of the kids home.

The next day the kids were better. While still bad they started to listen to us. Now the third day is when a change started to happen. One of our really troublesome kids, Kassim, was sent home. He lives right across from the clinic. When he arrived home early his dad knew that it was because of his behavior. His dad then beat him really hard in front of his house, which also happened to be in full view of all the kids we were teaching. Now all I have to say to a kid is “Oyagala ogenda waka?” – “You want to go home?” and they shut up stop what they are doing wrong and act properly. Now there are some kids that are just to small to understand. For example, one of my favorites, Joan age 2.5 just doesn’t understand. In addition, she loves attention which she gets whenever she is bad so she keeps being bad. We have had to resort to putting her on top of one of the picnic tables whenever we have free time. She is too little to get down by herself, so whenever she gets bored you hear her little voice yelling “Oyagala viao!” –“I want away!” It is so cute! In addition, when she is good she acts just like a thirty year old. She crosses her legs when she sits down and has long involved conversations with me. It is soooo cute.

One of my other favorites, Maze age 2.5, is an example of a success story. Maze is Peter and Nabuuma’s younger sister. Until we started the morning program she was unbelievable shy. For example, while she would tell her mother that she was friends with John, she would be too scared to come within fifty feet of him and whenever he came near her she would pretend to do something else instead of look at him. In addition, while she would shout my name and wave at me from far away, when I came close she would run away and hide. However, after a couple days at the morning program she has started leaving Peter’s side (something she never used to do) and make friends her own age. The other day she even got up in front of everyone and counted to ten. She is learning really rapidly and now holds my hand and has conversations with me. It is so amazing to see what a great effect we have had on her.

One of the things that shocked me most about the whole program was at the end of the day all of the kids walk home by themselves, even those that are two years old and live over half a mile away. Even Joan, who is a niece of Susan our cook, can walk home all by herself. Sometimes she doesn’t want to leave and Susan has to walk outside and point her finger at Joan. Then Joan gets the hint and waddles home. She is one of the kids with the worst kwashiorkor and I really hope our peanut butter helps her get better. She has the littlest limbs and the biggest belly. It is really sad to see.

Overall I have really enjoyed the morning program. It has been both the most challenging and the most rewarding. Sometimes I want to hit some of the kids they are so bad, but at the end of the day when I am writing new exercises in their books I think about how much good I am doing and I really believe that if more Minerva Fellows came and continued this program it would have an effect on the population.

School Starts Up Again

2008-09-23T10:05:00.001-04:00

When I returned from Kampala Steve and I were supposed to start a regular and intensive teaching schedule at the primary school. However, the schedule the head mistress created had us teaching PAPE (Performing Arts and Physical Education) to Primary 1 through 4 for two hours every day and one hour of English or Math a week. This schedule was far from the eight hours of English or Math we were hoping to teach a week. In addition we felt as if we were being used. It seemed as if the head mistress wanted us to teach these subjects because she thought we could buy the supplies for them. In the end we came to a compromise. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we teach two periods of Phys. Ed. and then one period of English or Math to P.5 and P.6. Between 4:30 to 5:00 we do Primary Leave Exam (PLE) review with the P.7 Students.

This schedule has actually worked really well. At first I thought I would be a terrible gym teacher, but I have actually really enjoyed my time teaching gym. Gym classes are fun because I work with the female half of the class while Steve works with the male half of the class. This is good for two reasons, one while boys here play soccer girls here play net ball (sort of like basketball) this means that all those throwing exercises I learned while trying to play rugby are paying off. Two, it means I don’t have to try and control a bunch of teenage boys showing off with a soccer ball. Steve doesn’t seem to enjoy the gym classes half as much as I do. Now I must give a shout out to my friend Lindsey Koonz who has just graduated with her degree in Physical Education!!

I also enjoy teaching English and Math on a more regular schedule. For the past couple of weeks I have been working on writing letters to American students with my P.5 class. I will go into this more in depth later. It was a really good experience and I think the kids really enjoyed it. I have yet to teach a math class, however, I did get to help correct math quizzes with Mr. Mugerwa. This was really cool, red pen makes you feel really powerful!! Kathleen, I am envious!!! It made me feel very adult to be correcting someone else’s work. In addition, I finally felt like I was doing something productive at the school. It was productive because the teachers do not teach if they have stuff to grade. Unlike in the US where teachers have to bring home their papers, here they just don’t teach the class if they haven’t finished grading the work from that class. For example, until those math quizzes are graded Mr. Mugerwa will not teach another math class to P.5.

A Night Out In Kampala

2008-09-22T10:04:00.002-04:00

Because my friend can not speak any Luganda I decided to escort him back to Kampala where he would catch his bus to Nairobi. We went a day early so that I could see what local Kampala night life was all about. We stayed in a Hostel filled with only locals directly next to the taxi park. Lets just say this is not the “nice” area of town. On the top floor of the hostel was a bar filled with all locals. We spent the night talking to people in the bar and sitting on the balcony watching the traffic going in and out of the taxi park.

First, I should comment on the taxi park. The taxi park consists of three different levels. The ground level or the area where the taxis drive has two groups of people the taxi drivers and their conductors avidly searching and grabbing people to take in their taxis and vendors walking around selling things to people in the taxis. The first group is quite aggressive and can be very pushy. There was a huge fight over whose taxi my friend and I were going to go in when we left Kampala the first time. I got really scared because I didn’t know what was going on, but apparently what happened was one guy was trying to lead us to his taxi and another taxi driver poached us. The second group, the vendors sell everything from a complete dinner that they have on plates stacked on top of each other on their heads to watches to ice cream to soda to newspapers to skewers of freshly grilled goat meat. Needless to say it’s quite interesting just to sit in a taxi and watch all these vendors go by.

Directly surrounding the area where the taxi park is a market selling everything you can think of. Littering this ridiculously busy market are male pedicurists who you have to be careful not to bump into. In addition, make shift restaurants litter this area selling everything from a cheap bowl of Kotogo (matooke in some sort of broth of beans, chicken, tomatoes, or ground nuts) to chapattis (a tortilla like bread). This was by far the coolest and most interesting place to grab a meal in the middle of my night at the local bar.

On the street directly across from the taxi park are shops selling goods from china. These shops are owned by someone rich who rents out the room to a vendor. The landlord sets the rent so high that ten or so vendors have to squeeze into a shop and share the rent. That means each small shop is divided into three or four different shops selling completely unrelated items. These people then rent out the side walk space outside of the store to street vendors who practically cover the pavement with their goods. These vendors then promise to save their space for a friend for a small fee. Basically it is one person renting from another over and over again.
So the Bar itself was called the Park Side and had balconies over looking this chaotic mess of a market/taxi park. Inside the bar was a wide variety of people. Most seemed to somewhat well off by Ugandan standards. For most people here a beer is a huge luxury. The first interesting thing happened when I asked for a cup of coffee. The bar tender looked at me confused and then held up little plastic bags of coffee flavored liquor. Eww!! After a little investigation I realized that all the hard liquor they sold came in little bags about the size of a Kens Salad Dressing. You can get everything from a Beckham Gin or a B-52 Vodka. After having my fair share of cheap alcohol on my term abroad in Vietnam I stuck to the beers. In addition to ingesting alcohol I meet several people around the bar. They were all very nice and wanted to buy us beers, alcohol, and whatever else we wanted. I never know how to react to such hospitality. In America and some western European countries when someone offers you something it is not always the polite thing to accept. For example, in America it is considered a little rude to take the last piece of cake without offering it to every one else first, and if someone offers to buy you a beer in a bar you better buy the next round. However, here people keep buying things for me and won’t let me buy the next round so to speak. So I can’t tell if it would be rude to buy the next round or I should be. Either way I meet some really cool people.

I met one man who was a civil engineer. He got his degree in India. He is currently working on a building for USAID. His brother has a BA in electrical engineering and has moved to America. His brother has moved to America because the American dollar goes so much further in Uganda that he plans to work really hard and save about 40,000 dollars and then move back to Uganda and retire. The problem, however, is that he does not have a green card. He wouldn’t be able get an electrical engineering job with a BA from Uganda anyways. So instead he works as a bouncer and a window washer. He makes 700 to 800 dollars a week and of that is able to save about 100 to 200 dollars. Now I’m not sure how much of this story is true. It was hard to tell b/c while the man I met had a good idea of how much things cost in America he was drunk and it all seemed sort of unbelievable. In addition, he was with a woman who was supposedly his wife. But, she was very quite and removed from the conversation. Now this could be Ugandan culture and this is very probable considering how patriarchal Ugandan society is, but the guide books said that this area of town had a lot of prostitutes in the bars and I am still wondering if she was a prostitute and he made the whole story up.

163 Pairs of Shoes

2008-09-18T10:01:00.001-04:00

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.