Some Things I Have Been Meaning To Write About

Taxis

Although I did discus the public versus private taxi system within Uganda, I did not discus how many people the taxi drivers stuff into each taxi. The sedan taxis ( the size of a Toyota corolla) fit about 10 to 11 people, and the van taxis fit about 23 people. The most interesting position I have been in was in the sedan taxi. I was in driver’s seat with the driver. Since all the cars here are standard he had to reach over my legs to get to shift gears. On the other side of me two women were sitting in the passenger seat. One of which, the one closer to me, was breast feeding her baby. I should mention breast feeding in public is very common here, however, that did not make it any more disconcerting.

Nursing School

A couple of Saturdays ago Steve and I started teaching English and Counseling at the nursing school Lawrence teaches at. The school was started by a Ugandan midwife. She started the school as an all female nursing school. She wanted to give Ugandan women the ability to make money so that they could gain some independence and provide for their families. Originally the school was private. Today the school needs government funding. One government requirement is that the school accepts both male and female students. While the school is now co-ed the male to female ratio is 1 to 10.

Teaching at the Nursing school is actually very hard. All of the students are my age or older which is very intimidating. In addition, I don’t know anything about medicine, healthcare, or first aid. Most of what I teach comes directly from a book I brought called Where There Is No Doctor. I just pick a topic I think is relevant to what they will see, such as TB or malnutrition, and teach pretty much directly out of the book. I am hoping to find a better way to learn what I need to teach. I watched Lawrence teach, just to get an idea of how he teaches, and I found that he teaches much more in-depth about his topics.

After teaching last week, he pulled Steve and I aside and asked us to talk to another one of the teachers, Mr. Jude. Mr. Jude is looking to apply for funding from USAID. He wishes to fund a traveling HIV/AIDS education and testing program. However, as a Ugandan with no American contacts he is having trouble finding an entry point into the application process. He has asked Steve and I to help. Steve and I don’t really know how to get involved with USAID, do any of you have any ideas?

Visiting the Head Mistress

On the last day of the previous term Head Mistress Mutauue Catherine asked Steve and I over for lunch. We were supposed to meet her on Monday August 25^th at 10:00am, but when the time came to arrive at her house we were hard at work digging and spreading dirt around the clinic compound. About an hour later Mr. George William came looking for us. So we quickly stopped what we were doing, showered, and got on a taxi to Masaka. We told George William that we could board the taxi ourselves, however, he apparently did not believe us because he hid behind a bunch of bushes and when we hailed the taxi jumped out and gave the taxi driver specific instructions on where to take us. After waiting for about a half an hour Mrs. Catherine arrived and took us to her house. Mrs. Catherine is by far the wealthiest person we know/have visited. Her husband is a business man who works in construction. He is currently building one of the largest hotels in Masaka. She lives in a nice neighborhood close to the center of Masaka. We even saw several Mnuzng’s driving into drive ways in this area. Her house is on a large piece of land which they utilize by growing several different types of fruit trees on it. Her house itself has running water, an indoor toilet, electricity (which powers a color T.V. and DVD player), lots of matching furniture (including a table and chairs). They have also built a complex around the house that houses over 10 pigs, a two room kitchen, three outdoor latrines, a chicken coop that holds about 200 chickens. In addition, she has a full time maid, sends all of her children to private school, plans to be able to send all of her children to secondary school, and has a car. It is really big deal that she can send her children to secondary school because it is very expensive.

We stayed for about four and a half hours. During this time we tried freshly squeezed passion fruit juice, freshly squeezed sweet banana juice (surprisingly really good), and we had beef with lunch. When you visit someone in Uganda you are supposed to finish all of the food they put on the table. However, they put out so much food and Steve and I just could not finish it. I felt so bad. After lunch we talked some more and she asked if we would stay the night. Both Steve and I did not know what to say and therefore awkwardly avoided answering. Once four hours passed we politely, or what we thought was politely, gave her a t-shirt that said USA and a bag of nice chocolate. In return she gave us 12 eggs, 5 avocadoes, 2 watermelons, and insisted on driving us around Masaka while we did our errands.

We arrived back at the clinic around 8:00 pm. When we walked back into the kitchen to say hello to Hudson he looked extremely surprised to see us. He asked why we were back so early and said he thought that we were going to take dinner with the head mistress as well. Apparently when invited to someone’s house you are supposed to stay for much longer than four hours. Usually a visit along the lines of what Steve and I were going to traditionally lasted all day or all day and a night. We felt terrible. Not only had we failed to finish the food she cooked, but we ditched her and did not accepter her invitation to stay over. This shed some light on why we spend so much time at Mr. Kalule’s every Sunday. Apparently dropping by someone’s house is about a four to six hour visit.

About an hour after Steve and I had finished dinner we hear a knock on the door. It was Mr. George William. He was stopping by because the headmistress had called him and was wondering if we were ok. We were supposed to have called her when we got back to Ddegeya. Once again, I felt terrible. Not only because we had once again been rude to Mrs. Catherine, but because Mr. George William had to walk all the way over to the clinic and get us for the second time. All in all we were very rude.

On a brighter note, I loved visiting the head mistress. She was so nice and talkative. I found the visit much more interesting and comfortable then the Mr. Kalule visits. In addition she had five beautiful sons. One of which was one and a half and looked exactly like her (surprisingly he was ridiculously cute).

I apologize for any typos, run-ons, misspellings, and confusing parts in my blog. We have very little power and I often rapidly type out a blog hoping to utilize as much of my computer battery as possible before the computer runs out of battery. I often do not have time to re-read what I type. Also thank you to everyone who sent me mail and posted comments on my blog. I really like hearing about what is going on in the USA and in all your lives.