Earthquakes suck

Sometimes when I walk to and from the Beading Program I get the urge to sit under this huge broken house. There are a few broken houses that I pass on my way. One is just so big. It hasn't been reduced to rubble. It is just sort of tilted and half crushed and looks like it is being held up by a palm tree. It is three houses away from where I work, right down the street from where I live, right up the hill from where most of my friends live. This house was the first big broken thing I saw when I got here a couple months ago. I saw tent cities from the air. And I saw a lot of crumbled walls on my tap tap from the airport. And then I saw this house and right away I had the urge to sit under it and wonder about HOW something like that could happen. But I resist that urge because I know its stupid to sit under something big and broken.

I took a moto around the city today to do some errands. As I was riding I thought about how weird Haiti looks as I pass it. I felt like Alice in Wonderland. Like there goes the staircase that is now leading to nowhere. There is the parking structure that is tilted 45 degrees. There is the tall condemned building with its walls that look like they are made of noodles and not of straight cement blocks. There are the wacky makeshift tents covering every available open space. And there are the formerly tall buildings that now look like stacks of pancakes. Its likes Dr. Suess but without the bright colors.

Its strange because Haiti does NOT look like the pictures on the news. I was looking through a few of those yesterday and I was marveling at how every photographer got a pic of the sky that makes it look like the apocalypse. They are all grey and red and dark. Haiti is a Caribbean island, the sky is basically always beautiful! It feels like they took that one moment when the clouds were getting ready to pour and they all took pictures of the burning bodies under the creepy sky. Do you know what I mean? It annoys me that Haiti is burned in people's brains as looking like that. THAT is not Haiti. But at the same time… seeing the big broken house in my neighborhood feels like something much bigger than any of those dramatic photographs captured. Something that I would never be able to wrap my brain around no matter how long I sat and looked. The earthquake broke things and broke people. It didn't end on Jan 12^th. The earth kept shaking for weeks and months. And now people are broken. Heck, I am broken and I wasn't even here for any of that!! Please pray for Haiti, for healing and for reconciliation.

"The ruins and rubble and brokenness don't go away by themselves. It's an interesting metaphor for the lives around me and for myself. It is excruciating work to clean up, clear off, pile up, and remove. Tears and sweat flow freely here." - Shelley

A month in Haiti...

... goes by extremely fast! People have been coming and going from the Apparent Project Guest house and the Clay family household every week for the past month. This past week we had an awesome team leave us. Thank you Sarah and Nate Woodward for being such great leaders!! The team brought down a ton of supplies including miles and miles of elastic and beading thread and bags of silver clasps. Much needed items. They also distributed tents and baby formula and built our first house! They were a huge blessing to our neighborhood.

I rode a motorcycle today for the first time in my life. It was great. I went downtown to see the destroyed palace and the fallen Iron Market. The downtown area had so much destruction. Its crazy. The saddest part is seeing the buildings that fell and the levels are sitting on top of each other like pancakes and you know that all the people are still in there dead. Its like there are giant tombs all over the city. But weirdly life goes on all around them. People have set up shop right next to these demolished places. I think the strangest thing is seeing a place where there used to be a building but now having just nothing there. Some rubble has been cleared. And its like some buildings never even existed. Its disorienting. Sometimes I can't tell where I am because my landmarks have disappeared. Or the landmark is now a tent city. There used to be this beautiful area right in front of the palace that is now covered in tents. We stopped next to one of these tents today and a man called out to me, "Excuse me can I talk to you for a minute?!" exactly like the man from this video... Hilarious. I asked him for his number, naturally.

Haitian culture is always confusing to me. Whenever I think I am starting to grasp something I am reminded of how much I do not understand. In Haiti people go to the doctor frequently. Or they would if they had the money. A couple days ago I had some dirt in my eye and it was a little red. A Haitian lady told me I needed to go to the doctor. I started to try to explain that I didn't. It was just irritated and would go away. And she replied, "Go to the doctor." All of that to say, it is confusing me about when someone legitimately needs to go to the doctor or hospital. One friend is pregnant and says she is bleeding and has pain and wants the doctor, but her boyfriend says she is just trying to kill the baby. One friend is talking about suicide because he is lonely in a tent all by himself. He has random intense pain where he can not walk and had just been very strange lately. One friend has an intense burn on her chest from when she was a kid that has started giving her a lot of pain recently, also has a baby who almost died yesterday from a freakishly high fever. One neighbor has a twelve year old who is literally the skinniest person I have ever seen, the mom just laughs when I talk to her about needing to feed her daughter more. One friend has back pain everyday, one has a headache every other day. I swear when you ask people 'How are you?' The acceptable responses are, 'good', 'not bad', and 'sick'. Mwen pa kompren.

Haiti Post Earthquake

First impressions...

I was in Haiti 3 times in 2009 and the last time was 3 weeks before the earthquake happened. This is the first time I have been to Haiti since the earthquake so I thought I would record some of my first impressions this time around. Honestly Haiti seems in many ways the same. A friend made a joke the other day that people new to Haiti come down here and point to a building and say look at what the earthquake did. But they are really just pointing to an unfinished building that looked that way for years before the earthquake.

This is not to minimize the impact of the earthquake. Everyone I know was effected. Everyone had a relative die. Literally every single day for the past two weeks I have learned of another friend whose mom or dad or child died on January 12th. Everyone is also displaced now. My first day back in Haiti I took a walk to the "slum" that I hung out in last summer. I knew that one house had fallen down, but I was totally unprepared to see the place practically leveled to the ground. Where there used to be a small cornfield is now a field of dirt covered in tents. Even people whose homes did not fall down are sleeping in tents for fear of another earthquake. Some missionaries are even still sleeping in tents out of fear of another big earthquake which is supposedly coming sometime.

I never want to be one of those people who only reports on the sadness or hopelessness of a place. So many stories from Haiti and Africa make the places sound like hell on earth. In truth there is TONS of joy here. Haitians are fun, goofy, and vibrant people. Sometimes I think only in Haiti could people make jokes or laugh about an event that caused them so much pain. Sometimes when a loud truck goes by or a fan vibrates against a door all the Haitians will run outside, fearful that another earthquake is happening. They get outside and realize that it wasn't an earthquake and immediately collapse in laughter and begin to mock each other for the way they ran from a fan. Its terror and then hysterical laughter right next to each other.

I am going to try to write about Haiti the way I experience it... which for the most part is joy filled days and once in a while almost crippling moments of sadness.

Funny story

This is an excerpt from a final for one of my classes. I would rewrite the story... but I am tired. An update from Haiti is coming soon.

"I didn’t come to Africa to help anyone, I thought I came to live in solidarity with people, maybe even people who in the past I would have thought of as people who needed help, but I had a very strong gut reaction to being placed in a situation that put me on the other side of the line. A couple weeks ago I had a funny experience of being on “the other side” of the line. My family is constantly out of water. At the beginning of the semester we had a water tank hooked up to our gutters so we almost never needed to go to the well to collect water. A month into my time here our water tank broke. I am not clear on the details, all I know is that since then we have had to go get our water from the well and sometimes from Tech Park. By “we” I really mean my younger siblings, and once in a while me. A few weeks ago I took a couple jerry cans to Tech Park. I was unsure exactly where the tap was. I was wandering around the residential part of Tech Park, trying to follow the directions one of my siblings gave me. I had my younger sister with me, who also did not know exactly which tap we were headed to. A Ugandan woman, I assume a UCU staff member or wife of a staff member, stopped me and asked me what I was doing. I explained that I was looking for water. She asked, “Drinking water?” and I replied, “No, just regular water”. She looked at me and my sister and then said, “You have no water at home?” I told her we didn’t. She asked again, “You have NO water?” The way she said it almost made me laugh, it just made me sound so pathetic. She told me where the tap was and then told me to come back to her door and she would give me water if I couldn’t get it at the tap. I really appreciated her generosity. I was mostly amused at the complete role reversal I have experienced here. I have lived in places where kids come to the door and ask me for water. In that moment I was the person who was going door to door for water. And I did not feel pathetic or even poor. It was humbling to have someone else see me as that. It was more humbling, in a good way, to have the line gone. I am not on the side that helps, the side that has, the side that gives. I guess in some ways I am now on the side that receives, but mostly I feel like there aren’t sides now. Sometimes I give and sometimes I receive, the line is blurred."

Easter and Finals and Hippos

• The internet has gone to crapsville lately, that is my excuse for the lack of blogs. No wait. I have a better excuse. Every night I bring my computer home and plan on writing a paper or a blog or doing some sort of homework. And every night one of my siblings takes my computer and plays Akon for 4 straight hours until the battery dies, or commits suicide due to Akon overexposure. That's a big problem among computers in Africa, Akon overexposure. Its tragic.
  
• I went on a safari last weekend and it was amazing! We camped in Murchison Falls national park. Hippos, warthogs and baboons were always wandering around our camp. We saw leopard tracks. We saw tons of giraffes and hippos and elephants. We had this van with a top that popped up and we could hang out the top while elephants walked right by us. SO COOL. It reminded me a lot of snorkeling. I could have gone back every weekend. We went on a game boat ride on afternoon down the Nile towards the falls. It was beautiful. The next morning we hiked around the top of the falls. It was exactly like when I was a kid and we used to hike around the national forest in New Hampshire, except this time we had an armed African following us around to keep away the hippos… We actually got in trouble with the guard because we ignored the signs and walked right up to the falls. Like sat on the edge and dangled our feet in the spray of the falls. Have I mentioned that I love Africa?
  
• Easter with my family was ridiculous and amusing. My host dad, who is never home, gave us a huge African guilt trip (African guilt is the WORST) about not being home on easter during the day. Well we got home for easter supper and we asked, do what did you do today? Nothing. Did you go to church? No, but we had soda! The big easter celebration that we missed was soda. Which admittedly is a big deal… but still. My mom had sent me a box filled with candy and easter eggs. I considered putting on an easter egg hunt for the neighbor kids, but then decided that an easter egg hunt in the dark for my teenage siblings would be a better use of resources, as in more candy for everyone. Hahaha. My siblings were hilarious searching for the eggs. 2 were hidden so well that they couldn't be found until the morning. The next day we died easter eggs, this was MUCH less popular than eggs full of candy. Who wants eggs full of eggs? Blech. The egg salad that I made was also NOT popular. As in looked at with disgust and not touched by anyone African.
  
• We had easter Monday off so I took the break to do a ton of chores that I have been needing to do. I was going to wash clothes, and bathe, and spend like an hour scrubbing all the dirt out of my feet. I ended up fetching a ton of water and helping Sarah do the entire family's laundry. We spent hours washing clothes (by hand) and chatting with each other. At one point she turned to me and asked, do you like talking like this? I was like ummm THIS is my favorite thing about living here! It was one of those perfectly mundane but yet perfectly wonderful days.
  
• This past weekend was spent studying for exams and hanging out with a good friend. Exams here are 3 hours long and people use the entire time! I finished first in my African Old Testament class. I used an hour and a half and then I stared out the window for a while. Then at like 2 hours I finally decided to be brave and stand up and turn my paper in. The professor smiled at me and said, "I knew you would be first." This morning I had a history of East Africa exam. It took an hour and twenty minutes and I wrote twelve pages! I have discovered that length and repeating yourself really bode well in African schooling.
  
• I have more to write but Suzan is stealing my computer. Will post again tomorrow.

I love the way you say good morning

I waited to write this post until I was not in the world's worst mood. And good thing I did because I woke up on the right side of the bed this morning and I feel like myself again. I thought I would be able to write about Rakai this week. We had an IMME trip there this past weekend. Fun Rakai facts… Rakai is in rural Uganda, 5 hours or more from the city. You can see Tanzania from it. It is thought to be the epicenter of the aids epidemic. HIV first appeared in the world in both Rakai and in somewhere in Zimbabwe at the same time in the 80's. The number of people infected with HIV in this area was over 30%. The infected rate is still higher than the rest of Uganda but it is now below 10% which is amazing. The point of our visit was to meet missionaries living in a rural community and see what their life was like and how they were responding to the needs of their community. I, unfortunately, spent the entire weekend sick in bed. So I didn't really see much of anything except the drive up and the drive back and the inside of the guesthouse bedroom. I had a fever and was incredibly dehydrated. I had to hold onto something while I walked because the world was spinning so much. So miserable. My contacts wouldn't stay in my eyes because I didn't have enough fluid in me. And my mouth dried up and stuck together. It sucked. Anyway if I had to get sick it was nice to do it in a place with a flush toilet and with all of my friends around. The weekend is a blur but I do remember one moment when a bunch of people were standing around my bed and saying things like "if you get better… I will download the next episode of Lost" or "If you die I will be very upset." Hahaha. Helpful!

As soon as we got back to Kampala we went to the doc and I am now getting better. Which is good because along with sickness I became extremely negative. Hating everything and everyone. On Monday my school had given me crackers and juice from Kampala because that was really all I could eat and I hadn't eaten anything all weekend. I told my siblings not to eat them because it was seriously all I could eat. I left the house for two hours on Monday and when I got home I found an empty juice container and a box with 3 crackers left. Too tired and much too defeated to confront anyone I went to lay down in my bed. I picked up my water bottle to take a sip and found that had been drunk as well. I sat on my bed and thought, "this is a low point." And then I wondered if my family was trying to kill me. Not ok. I hadn't been able to keep down any water since Friday and now I was finally ready to drink and there was not a drop of water in the house. It sounds ridiculous and funny now. My family is so strange I have to laugh. But I did NOT laugh at the time. The next day I got an incredibly well timed email of encouragement from Becky. I cried when I read the email which made my Ugandan friend very uncomfortable. Crying is not ok here unless someone dies. Becky thank you tons for the email, I needed it.

Right now I am sitting in my house, in the dark, listening to the giant rain drops on the tin roof. I love the rain but it seems even better today than most days. It is amazing what waking up on the right side of the bed will do. Today started good and got better. Before I left the house this morning I was at the edge of our property and my 20 yr old brother said to me, "hey, thanks for choosing to come to Africa." So sweet. This may have been influenced by the fact that I cooked him eggs Ugandan style for breakfast, and that I had let him watch like 8 straight hours worth of Lost on my computer (PTL for the extra battery). But I am going to choose to believe that none of those influenced his comment. He is just a sweet guy. I mean when he is not tripping me or lying to me or threatening to kick me out of the house. So sweet. Then later in the day I found that my siblings had opened the Post It note application on my computer and had left a note for me. Tonight I cooked an American meal. I made pasta with butter and tomatoes and parm cheese that I just received in a package. I bought honey at the store here and we had rolls with butter and honey. I think it was the best thing I have eaten in 3 months. But not the point. After the meal Sam whispered in my ear "I need to find an American so we can always eat this food." Then I had to forcibly take the honey away from Kevin so she wouldn't drink it. I think if she could she would just inject the sugar. J

At the beginning of the semester the school told us (students who are doing home stays) that our primary involvement is to be with our family. The students who live on campus can get involved in clubs and on campus activities, but we are to be with our families. I remember thinking it would be so dull. I worried that I had only brought one book to read for fun. What will I do with this Ugandan family every day??? Well it is not dull, not ever. It is frustrating, fun, strange, and confusing. I think if I spent every minute of every day with my family I would still never totally understand them. But every day I learn a little more about them and a little more about myself, a little more about how strange we all are and a little more about how the same we all are. I love how people are essentially people everywhere. To me that is Imago Dei, that thing that is the same in me and you and my Ugandan family. I have not yet opened that book I brought.

Thank you for your prayers. I appreciated them more this week than in any other so far. Everyone sounds stressed with school and work right now in America. So I am praying for you. Leaving for Safari tonight. Will write again next week. Happy Easter!

Biebo

I have no cohesive thoughts in my head so we are returning to the bullet points.

• Today my sister, Kevin, told me that if I laugh too much I will go mad.
  
• What have I used for toilet paper this week? Magazine, newspaper (from a package I got from Juli), notebook paper, a leaf and a sock. There is plenty of toilet paper in Uganda. But it is never in the bathroom. And this week it was nowhere to be found in my house. FYI leaves are not absorbent.
  
• I went shopping this weekend to look for varnish that my family needs. I was unsuccessful but I did get to spend a lovely day in Kampala with Suzan, my favorite person in Uganda. We visited some craft markets then got a late lunch at 1000 Cups, a coffee shop that is popular with the Mzungu crowd. We got free coffee with our meal and it was delicious. I think I appreciate coffee more now that I have gone through the process of making it. Or maybe I just appreciate it because it is different from the milk tea that I drink every day.
  
• I cleaned my part of the room today. My part of the room consists of my bunk bed, top bunk for my things, bottom bunk for sleeping. Under my bunk is for storing wood and serves as a nice hiding place for the rats to run when I chase them off the top bunk. My sisters, both in goofy moods today, came in and out while I cleaned and commented on all of my things. "You never use this, give it to me." "This fabric is nice, you make a dress." "Ah you are good for cleaning." Kevin must have told me to give her 11 different things. Hahaha. Sarah was just please that I was cleaning. Yesterday she made me bathe and then show her my feet to see if I had gotten them clean. I had not. J They are permanently stained with orange dirt. The other day after I bathed my Toto commented "Ah Kelsey you are clean for once." Isn't this culture supposed to be indirect communicators?
  
• The other USP students and myself went to Ndere Cultural Center to watch some dancing on Wednesday evening. It was maybe the best show I have ever seen. The dancing was great, but the commentary in between the dancing was hilarious. Funnier than any stand up I have ever seen. We saw dances from all over Uganda, it was especially fun for our group because we have (badly) learned a few different tribal dances. I can sort of do the Acholi and I can attempt and horrible fail the Buganda. I just cannot shake my hips as if they are separate from the rest of me. Its amazing. At the end of the night we went on stage and danced. I don't want to brag but 3 different Ugandans told me that I am a good dancer. Hahaha. Oh and in the middle of the evening it started to rain so we all danced our way indoors.
  
• I am starting to get sad about leaving. A Ugandan friend told me that I am not leaving today so I cannot think about it. This culture is SO not future oriented. Its all about the past.
  
• Yesterday evening my brother scolded me for brushing my teeth in the wrong part of the yard. I had just asked my sister if it was ok to brush there and she had said its fine. He scolded me for like 3 solid minutes before I stomped away annoyed. It is difficult to tell which part of the dirt is ok for brushing teeth and bathing and which part is not. You know? But I was more annoyed because I had just bought a bunch of first aid supplies to clean and dress a wound on his foot. And I was sort of like cut me a freaking break. Anyway after I stomped inside I lay in my bed annoyed for a while until my sister crawled into my mosquito net and joked around until she got me to smile. I love my fam. I fixed Sam's foot later. No idea why but I am like designated nurse of the house. Probably because I brought like half of a pharmacy with me to Uganda!
  
• Kevin is with me at school right now. She just found a cooked egg in my locker that has got to be over a week old. She is breaking it open. Kevin is like a bottomless pit. Never full.
  
• I was walking home from a friend's house on Tuesday and I ran into my friend Nate who was playing with a monkey in bush. The monkey belongs to some street vendors and is named Angel. He was not very angelic, mostly hyper.
  
• I have been trying to upload photos for weeks. Internet has been horrible lately. I can get on for a few minutes and then I lose it. I have learned to type everything in word so I don't lose it!
  

Jinja!

I had a sort of crisis in my head this weekend. Rewind. Ok this past weekend I went to Jinja with the other mission's emphasis students. We visited with some missionaries and locals in missions. We also stayed in a beautiful place that had a pool and showers, but that is an exciting side note. So as part of our visits we heard from people who do prison ministry, youth ministry, church planting, development, pastor training, run a café… and so on. At one point we visited a maternity ward very briefly to pray for a woman who had just had a c section. I have a lot of opinions about the weekend. It is strange to visit missionaries when you are in the midst of studying missions. It makes you very critical... which is good and bad. Its like when you start exegeting the bible for yourself and then you suddenly become horribly critical of every sermon you hear. OR you start studying the whole concept of sermons and preaching and the organization of the church (Thank you KB) and you question the entire church service. Anyway its like that. But that was not the crisis in my head. That was just a struggle to remain non critical.

The crisis was that when I was hearing from the girl doing youth ministry here, I was bored. Incredibly bored. Something felt wrong about her talk, the way she described the youth ministry. But it was nothing I could pinpoint. Anyway then later we were in the maternity ward and I was thrilled to be there. I could have stayed all day and visited the moms and babies, heard their birth stories, listened to heart beats…. But later I was thinking about it and I was sort of disturbed that I was SO much more excited to be in the maternity ward than I was to learn about youth ministry (my major).

I feel like I have had a crash course in the culture here. Obviously it would take me a long time to really understand this worldview (or maybe I really never would) but without fully comprehending a culture how can you (I) interpret the bible in the context of the culture? I mean obviously there is a time and place for that. The gospel has to be spread and that will involve interpretation and contextualization from outsiders. But in Uganda that happened like over 100 years ago. God has always been in Africa. Why do westerners think that we need to bring God here? I just feel like the Christians here do not need any help from outsiders in terms of doctrine and theology and all that stuff. I do feel like America needs help from Uganda. I would love to see a shift in missions. Instead of Westerners coming to "spread the gospel" in Africa it should be reversed. I am not romanticizing Christianity here. There are a lot of beliefs that I do not agree with. Lots of prosperity gospel. Tons. But the way Christianity manifests itself in Africa isn't "better" or "worse" than in America. It is so different and incredibly beneficial to witness and participate in.

I don't know if my future will involve youth ministry. I could see it involving facilitating some sort of learning experience for American youth to come to developing countires and learn from the people here. Like a short term mission trip but without the guise of going to "help or teach". Just going to learn and partner. What if rather than a "mission trip" youth went on "pilgrimages" like Muslims do to Mecca. Maybe I will start that.

As fun as it is to ponder my future… it is much more enjoyable to just live and be present here. Life is adventurous and challenging, high and low, rarely dull, often contemplative, BEAUTIFUL, new, and better every day. The past couple weeks have been that kind of happy that makes you want to skip through fields of flowers. I am about due for a wave of homesickness (or homesickness for Haiti… what do you call that?). To balance out all that happy… I am struggling with changing my views/attitudes/practices on community and sharing and sacrifice. So if you are a person that prays, pray for God to guide me in that struggle. But life is good. There will be more "Things I love about Ug" coming soon. I have discovered that sitting around naming the things you love about this country cures everyone's culture frustrations. J Chicaste Yesu!

Things I love…

• Groundnuts
  
• Sugary soda after a sweaty day
  
• Loud rain
  
• Obnoxious yellow color of M.E. quarters
  
• Mosquito nets that act as impenetrable barriers against all of creation
  
• Feeling completely safe and at home
  
• The sky, the grass, the dirt, the view from the hill
  
• Buying pineapples from the woman on the corner
  
• Feet stained with dirt
  
• Cold bucket shower after a long hot day
  
• My lying brothers
  
• Cockroach free shower room!
  
• Being in the dark at night, being wet in the rain, being hot in the sun. Nature.
  
• Long phone calls from home
  
• Being a part of a family and all that entails. Sharing, cooking, laughing, goofing off.
  
• Little kids waving and yelling "bye mzungu"
  
• The look on an African's face when I tell them any of the following; I live with no electricity, I wash my own clothes, an apartment in America costs 12 million shillings a year. All get the same shocked and unbelieving response.
  
• Carrying two jerry cans home (almost NEVER happens) and getting told "well done" by every Ugandan who passes.
  
• Even better, having two guy friends offer to carry your jerry cans home (almost ALWAYS happens).
  
• Skipping lunch in the dining hall in favor of fruit and bread or anything bought from the canteen. Even those hard stale strange donut things.
  
• Seeing a Ugandan wearing an ace bandage or a band-aid. Some products were made with white skin in mind.
  
• Sitting on the ground, near the trash, not carrying what crawls on you. If you can't see it then it doesn't exist.
  
• Feeding American friends some American treats that I can cook over the fire. Such joy.
  
• Seeing 3 moneys on my way to school
  
• Being made fun of by Ugandans for loving monkeys. Crazy white people and their love of monkeys.
  
• The freedom that comes with being a foreigner. Freedom to be as weird as you like and have people excuse it as mzungu behavior.
  
• The intense craving for vegetable I have developed. Or any food that is not drowning in oil.
  
• The guy on the street who sells sausages and nicknamed himself "candyshop". Yup. Sausage selling Candyshop…
  
• Stunning views from the hill
  
• Sunsets over the hills of kampala
  
• Giant puffy winter coats that the boda boda men wear when it is 70 degrees
  
• Being called "smart" for the way you dress
  
• Animals on the money
  
• Coffee that you roasted yourself. YUM.
  
• M.E. family!
  
• Never having enough power convertors!
  
• Plants and trees that look they came out of a Dr. Suess story
  
• The cool shape of the country
  
• WATERFALLS
  
• MILK biscuits for breakfast. Everyday!
  
• Holding hands. Or even better seeing two guy friends holding hands. OR even better having a Ugandan guy try to hold an American guy's hands. Love it.
  
• Staring out the window during class. Being distracted by birds flying in the classroom.
  
• Adeline's pearls of wisdom.
  
• Who wants to be a Shillionaire?!
  
• Halvsies
  
• Iki maki man!!!! (monkeys) (They need to be on here twice)(Once in my language)
  

To be continued

Oli Otya

• Greetings! I meant to write about this a while ago. Greeting people is very important in this country. How you do it obviously differs from tribe to tribe. When I was in the mountains the family I lives with spoke Kupsabim. The greeting there is so long that you normally only do half of it. You shake hands (in a different way than we do in America) and then you say "Takweno" and they say "Ego" and you say "Chamagae" and they say "Eeh". Basically you ask twice how they are and they answer ok/good. If you are going to complete the greeting there are two different ways that they then ask you how you are. But I didn't learn those. Its too long. Most people don't get to that part. On my last day with my family we had to walk down this huge hill (read mountain). We were lugging all of my stuff plus the many gifts they had given me (pounds of coffee, fabric, and passion fruit). But I had not greeted a few important people in the village yet. So with all of my things in tow we stopped and greeted MULTIPLE families. It was not an option. It was basically you do this or you will be considered incredibly rude. We had to hike up muddy hills and everything. It wasn't like we just ran into these families. In my house in Mukono greeting is not complicated, it is just necessary. Before I leave the house I acknowledge everyone's presence. When I return from school everyone acknowledges me. "Welcome Back". But no one says goodnight. One by one people just start to disappear to their beds. They have an amazing ability to sleep through loud conversations. Anyway if you call someone in Uganda and you don't first take the time to greet them before you ask your question, they will think you are incredibly rude.
  

  
   

• Yesterday was Women's Day in Uganda. I think it is like Labor Day in America. School is out but there are no real celebrations. We had a party at my house. It started as just a couple American and Ugandan students wanting to bake. But it quickly spread and we had a ton of students and neighbors over to share the food. I love cooking in Uganda. It is a huge challenge to figure out how to cook everything over the fire. But I can now make cupcakes, lemon bars, peanut butter chocolate bars, and chocolate chip cookies. Of course there are no chocolate chips in all of Uganda. So that can be a problem. I also love that there are tons of people to share the food with. The neighbor kids, the carpentry guys who set up shop in the front yard, my always hungry family and my starved for American food UCU friends. I love it. I am creating a cookbook for future students of this program.
  

  
   

  
   

• I miss Judson. I am incredibly annoyed with some policies that the school has. As well as some very bad advice I was given that is forcing me to stay in school longer. BUT I miss the people a lot. I know my practicum class has been praying for me and I appreciate that SO SO much. A couple weeks ago I was texting Sarah while she was in practicum. I told her that I couldn't sleep because the rats were being so loud. She and the class prayed for the rats in my room to be quiet. It is such a little thing that meant So much to me. Sometimes my friends here talk about how people at home don't really care about what is going on here. Many people are confused about why we are in Africa. And it is sort of like an out of sight out of mind thing. I guess as I am looking forward in my life and hoping to live overseas I am really thankful for relationships that I am able to maintain back home. And incredibly thankful for people who still care even though I am far away! Love you guys!
  

  
   

• My friends just told me a funny story about two people they just met named Mormon and Mommy. Seriously. Remind me of my friends in China named Do-Do, Pei-Pei, and Wee-wee. You cannot make this stuff up.

And then there was randomness

- I heart bullet points

- I have mounds and mounds upon hills and mountain of energy. But I am headed to a dinner to learn about HIV. Where sitting still will be required.

- At this dinner I am going to get a sandwich! A veggie sandwich! That means vegetables in between bread! VEGETABLES!!!! in between bread!!!!!!! I love sandwiches. Wait could this anticipation be where the energy is coming from? Hmmm.

- School elections are going on this Friday. The elections are shockingly corrupt. One of my profs, Gwen, observed that this generation has literally never experienced a fair election so it shouldn't even be surprising that buying votes or bribing people with beer is seen as acceptable. I had an argument with my host family about how those things (bring and such) are corrupt. My family disagreed and claimed those are the things that make a good leader. Whoever can buy enough or bribe enough votes will be the best leader. Um what?! How can educated people believe that! Worldview is so so different from my own!

- Related to the elections there are posters all over campus with big pictures of the candidates. None of them are smiling in their photos. They look like death announcements or something. One poster is scarier than all the others. And it is MUCH more prevalent than all the others. So I may have stolen one of the posters to hang on the wall of my room at home (despite laughing protests from host sisters who share room with me). This may have set off a rash of poster thefts by the American students. I have had 5 of this poster brought to me by american friends. Not including the one I ripped off the front wall of my Ugandan Bible class. The class thinks I am crazy anyway...

- In the last package I got valentines paraphernalia. Today in my Ugandan Bible class I handed out heart shaped temporary tattoos to my friends. Huge hit. Ugandans love the temporary tattoo. We spent half an hour pouring water on each others arms and applying the tattoos. Best class ever.

- Oh no wait. The best class ever was yesterday when we were supposed to have a test in the lecture. So I show up for the lecture and wait for 20 mins. I see some friends who are law students. Silver comes over to me and is like "Kelsey this is a law lecture. why are you here?" Um where is my class? Apparently it got moved to the dining hall. And while like every person in the class remembered to tell me that they had a test NO one had enough airtime to call me and tell me it was moved to the dining hall. Hilarious. I explained the situation to the prof who cracked up at the mzungu being so out of the loop. And then apologized. Ugandans love to apologize.

- Worlds greatest argument with my Ugandan friend Jonathan this past weekend. I remembered that I love to argue and miss people who will argue with me! Not really argue. Real conflict makes me cry. But debating is fun. Also pushing Becky's buttons and getting her to argue with you about anything is fantastic. hahaha.

- Remind me to blog about greetings. I keep forgetting. Also ask questions! I forget what is interesting. :)

What’s mine is yours

Ugandan culture is very communal. Have I written about this before? I can't remember. Well ownership and possession are viewed very differently here than they are in America. Actually this is sort of causing problems nationally. Land ownership is much disputed here. Traditionally every tribe does land possession differently often depending on whether they are agriculturalists or pastoralists. Anyway sometimes you see big signs or giant words spray painted on a house that say "This land is not for sale". Basically saying do not take this land, someone has claimed it. But that was a tangent.

In my Ug family it seems as though no one individual owns anything. Clothes would be the only exception to this although they are shared they seem to pretty much belong to individuals family members. Basically all other things are communal property. Communal shoes, communal food, communal hygiene products, communal treats. If one person in the family gets sweets they are distributed among everyone in the family. Sometimes I make a snack before dinner and I intend it to be for like me and my sisters but they will not let us not save some for my brothers. They will even take some of it and go put it on my brothers' bunk for when they get home. I have learned to never cook a small snack because regardless of intentions it will be split between 8 people.

Honestly I both admire and am very frustrated by this communal life. I wish it were something that was ingrained in me so that it was second nature. In general I like to share my things. But it still surprises to me to see one of my siblings visit me at school wearing my shoes. Or come home and find the syrup that I brought from Kampala for pancakes has been devoured. The other day I got home and went to go take Tums and found that an entire bottle of 300 Tums had been eaten like candy by my siblings. I gave a small lecture after that one about how these are medicine and not candy. I could not stop laughing so I am not sure how effective the lecture was. But I can just picture my sister Kevin eating the Tums all in one sitting, I wonder if that would give you a stomachache?

On a somewhat unrelated subject. I am winning (by a lot) for amount of packages received. Thank you!!!!!!!! And don't worry I will let you know when I get yours if you have sent one. They are taking a month to get here. Not bad. I got one today from my family and my American friends are starting to make requests for my friends and fam to send things hahaha. Semi sweet chocolate chips are being craved by all. Amanda would like sour patch kids and my brother, Sam, would like surfing magazines. J Anyway thank you tons mom and dad! Flashlight = awesome and the cookies were delicious and have already been devoured by the Americans. I am bringing home the valentine's stuff and candy to share with my family, will be eaten by tomorrow. But I am saving the dark chocolate for myself. Ugandans hate dark chocolate so I don't feel too entirely selfish doing that… Anyway thank you! Love you! Time to walk home so I make it before dark.

Home Sweet Home

Its raining today. And has been raining for the past 4 days straight. Rain is nice because it makes everything cool. But the trade off is the intense mud. I was actually surprised when I got here to see so many lawns. Lawn mowers aren't common but grass is kept short by cows grazing it or in lieu of that by men with machetes. Anyway while grass is prevalent many places, it is not anywhere around my house. We have dirt front and backyard. And we are on a hill. So when it rains and everything becomes a big mud pit it is extra slippery because it is on a slope. Anyway all the Ugandans are wearing rubber shoes or boots. I am protesting (Stephanie Wisbrock style) and wearing my Birkenstock sandals that I always wear.

I got home to Mukono yesterday from an amazing 11 days in Kapshorwa. I stayed with a family in the Sipi Falls area. Google it. Its so beautiful. I lived near the top falls and we hiked down a couple times to the bottoms falls. The house I stayed in was beautiful and my family was sweet and loud and fun. They were really excited to teach my things which was a welcome change from my Mukono family. I learned to make chipati, mandazi, posho, roasted g-nuts and coffee from the berry. We did a ton of hiking and visited swimming holes with little waterfalls. My host mom is a midwife at the local health center. I helped her give HIV tests to pregnant women and vaccines to kids. She taught me how to feel the belly to figure out the position of the baby. It was amazing to see her work. She went to university and is one of the only educated women in the area. Its fascinating to me that having lots of children is so highly valued in this culture and yet pregnant women are not at all valued. I talked with some of the women and made a fuss over their big belly or their newborn baby. They seemed to think I was strange but amusing. I was just happy to hold little babies!

My last night with my host family a women in labor showed up at our house. She was 25 and on her 4^th child. Throughout the night I learned that she did not want this baby and husband was the one who wanted it. My host mom had talked her out of getting an abortion in the beginning of her pregnancy but she had never gone for any checkups or anything. The woman, Alice, gave birth at 3:30 in the morning on a mat on our dirty kitchen floor. My mom caught the baby boy when he popped out and handed him to me. I cleaned the cord and cut it with a sterile razor blade. There was tons of blood from the birth. It ran in a stream down the floor and out into the hallway out the door. As soon as she delivered the placenta everyone started mopping up blood. I held the baby for hours because Alice was in too much pain to take him. Birth in Africa didn't seem like a beautiful miracle. It seemed painful and primitive and natural. No clean white hospital room. Just our dark kitchen with a charcoal stove warming tea in the corner. The baby was wrapped in an old shirt and a towel. He wasn't weighed or poked or prodded, he was just there. It seemed much more simple, good and bad, than in America. In the morning, after everyone had slept a couple hours it seemed more miraculous. Somewhere along the process I forgot that the end result would be a brand new person. They asked me if Kelsey was ever a boy's name and I said technically yes… So the baby boy is named Kelsey and he sort of looks like an alien. Before I left I got to see mom and baby bond. She had a look on her face like "maybe that was worth it…"

Anyway the trip was amazing. Its nice and somewhat frustrating to be home now. But that I will save for another post. Write me emails updating me on your lives! And Elizabeth if you are still reading I cannot find your blog.

My friend! (common ugandan expression)

Michelle has told me to blog more, so I am. I sort of can’t remember what I have blogged about and what I haven’t. So here is much randomness.

Family - This past weekend I got to spend a whole day in Kampala with my sister, Sarah. We got lunch and saw a movie at the Cineplex. It was glorious. The movie sort of looked like it had been produced in the 40s… it had scratches and pops on the soundtrack and lines running through the screen, but still, I had diet coke and sat in a comfortable chair, it was fantastic. Sarah is the member of the family who I am closest to. She is smart and fun and very hard working. It seriously amazes me how much she works. Cooking over a fire in a tiny smoke filled room is a huge pain. We have no fridge so there is no heating up the leftovers. Actually there is even no storing of food for meals. Before we cook one of us is sent out to the store to get produce and green plantains, or whatever else we need that we haven’t grown ourselves. Normal things are so much work here. Sarah does most of our cooking and a lot of the cleaning. Cleaning involves getting a rag and mopping all of the floors by bending over and pushing the rag around with your hands. This is done like twice a day. Kevin and Joshua are in school from like 7:30 – 5:00 so they are not tons of help. Sam is on a break from school, he spends a lot of time making bricks for us to sell or playing soccer with himself. So Sarah and Toto do most of the work.

Friends here – There is not much to tell. My Ugandan friends are goofy, a quality that I love. I have a friend here called Susan who reminds me constantly of my Haitian friend Sinese. Susan tells me all the things about Ugandan culture that I can’t ask my host family. I am closest with Susan, Monique, and Dilly and have managed to find a couple non creepy guys to hang out with.

Friends at home – I miss you all and SO appreciate the long emails about your lives. I got the world’s best care package from Sarah Mulder last week. It had an amazing mix cd and much embroidered goodness. I carry it around in my backpack with me. She wrote a prayer for me on a piece of cloth and I have it tied around my wrist as a bracelet. Love you Sar! Also I randomly got a computer battery from hong kong! Compliments of my father, but a total surprise for me. Best thing about an extra battery is that when my siblings drain mine watching Lost, I can still use my laptop. Yay! Living without electricity just got easier.

Future travel – I am going to be spending ten days in rural Uganda staying with a host family there. I leave this Friday. Will write more about that later.

Launguage Defeat

There are 52 different ethnic groups in Uganda. It feels like every 100 meters people speak a different language. The area I am in is ethnically Buganda (which is Francis’ group for those who know Francis). They are the largest tribe in Uganda and if I am remembering correctly they are one of three tribes who have kings. The Buganda tribe speaks Luganda. So all the locals in the area where I am speak Luganda. My family is from Soroti and they speak Ateso. Then people at my school speak a variety of languages. Mainly Luganda but I have met people from at least 6 other ethnic groups. Lucky for me, the one language that most people around here speak is English. In rural areas I am guessing English is spoken much less. I will be staying in a rural area in less than 2 weeks, so I will find out.
Anyway I have been resisting learning a local language for a couple reasons. I feel like I should learn Ateso because that is my family language, but I literally only know one other person who speaks that language. So I am torn between that and Luganda. But I also have a feeling that if I learn a local language I will forget the Creole I know… which is minimal but still it makes me feel connected to Haiti.

Last night I had a funny discussion with my siblings about language. My brother is the world’s biggest mumbler… maybe only to be beaten by a couple of teenagers I know in Haiti. I was teasing him last night about how his lips don’t move when he speaks and it freaks me out. He then tried to explain to me how the way he speaks is actually a more advanced form of speech than most people use. He claimed people in Uganda strive to speak without moving their lips. My brother is a liar. Last week he told me I should paint myself black so the mosquitoes wont see me, but the week before he told me mosquitoes fear mzungu so I don’t need to use bugspray.

One day

When my friends have studied abroad I am always curious about the regular parts of their life because they are just so different from the regular parts of my life. So I assume you are also fascinated with mundane details of life here… no? Well this is what a day looks like for me.

5:30 – Wake up to hear the rain pouring on the roof. It is so loud that if I wanted to talk to someone I would have to yell to be heard. I lay in bed and wonder what is going on for a minute, figure out its rain, and fall back asleep.

6:30 – Hear my sister (who shares our room with me and Mary) wake up and start making tea or doing dishes or something.

7:30 – I finally wake up for the day. Wishing I had gotten up earlier because I have already missed 30 mins of daylight. Crawl out of my mosquito net cave and start getting ready. Find an outfit that isn’t wrinkled (wrinkles are NOT ok here). Grab my water bottle and brush my teeth in the front yard. Take tea and bread and butter for breakfast. Greet everyone in the family. Then walk to school.

8:30 – Various classes on African traditional religions, East African history, and cool stuff like that.

1:00 – Lunch of rice and beans in the outdoor dining hall OR Chipatti in the canteen!

2:00 – Work on homework for the afternoon OR head to Mukono (the local town) or Kampala (the capital) on a “bus”. And by bus I mean a 14 passenger van that is the size of a minivan and regularly has 18 people stuffed into it. 18! Whatever happens in the afternoon it inevitably involves a Ugandan friend coming to find me or running into a Ugandan I barely know and becoming friends with them. Ugandans in general are very friendly and social. Yesterday I did a little social experiment to see how people would react if I walked around looking at the ground, not making eye contact or greeting anyone. I still got 5 greetings on my short walk home.

6:00 – Walk home. Stop at the store and look around… sometimes buy a cold drink, always buy airtime. Sit in the back alley behind my house and chat with my sisters as they cook. They usually give me an onion, green pepper, and a tomato to chop and that is my contribution to dinner. It starts to get dark in the house as the sun gets low outside.

7:00 – Mary plays the guitar and we sing worship songs. Sometimes we try to cook American snacks on the charcoal stove. We have mastered popcorn but not kettle corn. It starts to get dark and I go get my headlamp so I can see what I am doing.

8:00 – Hang out with family. Tease my brothers. Get teased by my Toto. Text friends from school and from America. Headlamp gets taken off my head by a family member who needs it more than I do. I sit and enjoy the dark. We hear cheers coming from the street and can tell that someone scored in the football game. Neighbor kids walk down the path and stop for a bit to stare at the mzungu sitting in the dirt (fyi my Toto hates that I sit in the dirt and always tries to bring me a chair or a mat). The neighbor kids stare more depending on what I am doing. If I am cutting cassava or cooking or cleaning they stare more.

8:45 – Dinner is served. Matoke and rice and beans and g-nut sauce. And oil.

9:30 – Get out my laptop that I charged at school and set it up so my family can watch episodes of Lost that I have on my hard drive. I head outside and try not to fall in the dark and the mud and go take a bucket bath in the shower room.

10:30 – Crawl into mosquito net cave and wonder how my sheets get so much dirt on them.

Week ?

- Chantell thinks it is week five. I think time passes differently in her world. Pretty sure it is week 3. But who knows. It feels like I just got here.

- The catchphrase bird continues to haunt me. New goal in life is to figure out exactly which bird is making that noise... so I can kill it. haha kidding... I feel like I am always surrounded by strange new noises. Rain on a big tin roof was the most frightening... Anything hitting our metal door still makes me jump. I feel like I am in an episode of Lost. I often have no idea what I am looking at or hearing. My family uses flashlights for light. We have one oil lantern but we only use it during dinner. And even still it doesn't really illuminate the room. We don't have ceilings in our house so light isn't really contained... Anyway my point is that things look very different in the dark.

- I woke up this morning with like 35 new bug bites and a huge new bruise on my leg. What did I do last night?

- This past weekend I went to Luweero with the other Americans who are in the Missions Emphasis program. We visited different locals in ministry. An Anglican bishop, Catholic priest and the Compassion program. Every place we went we all had to stand up and introduce ourselves to the crowd. The Compassion kids were a riot. I have a compassion kid in Thailand so I kind of knew the program but it was amazing to see it locally. One of the women who runs it was formerly a sponsored child. She seemed to LOVE her job. The place Luweero wasn't hugely exciting... it is where Museveni started his gorilla war in the 1980s. It also has a higher percentage of people who are HIV+. I didn't bring my phone with me this weekend and when I got back to campus I had a text from my host sis telling me that the house was too quiet and I needed to come home. So sweet. :)

- My classes are SO good. I have a class called Faith and Action and it is basically a continuation of a class I took last year called Intercultural Ministry Studies. It is lots of discussion and questioning. We are reading a book called The Primal Vision. I am loving it.

- Yesterday my youngest sister, Kevin, had a meltdown. She is 14 and I have never seen her get upset over anything. I guess she was missing a coin and she thought that maybe Sam had taken it or she was just upset that it was lost... she came out to the side of the house where we were cutting cassava and she was all worked up. She had her bottom lip stuck out and her voice was high and whiny. She went back inside and our sister Sarah came out and said that Kevin was crying because she couldn't find her coin. I was like how much was this coin worth??? 500 shillings. That is a quarter in US money. She cried for like ten minutes and then got over it. I was a bad big sis and couldn't help thinking how cute she was all worked up.

Big Samz Pizza

Conversation between me and an American friend after class..

American friend: Are you coming for free pizza?
Me: Free pizza? in Uganda?
Friend: Yeah Big Sam is taking us.
Me: what? Who?
Friend: Big Sam has a restaurant and he is giving us free pizza.
Me: why?
Friend: I have no idea.
Me: So some guy has offered to give us free pizza if we all follow him off campus? DO we have to like get into his white van?
Friend: I don't know. FREE PIZZA!
Me: ok. that sounds legit.

We did follow him off campus and we were given free pizza. And I use the word pizza VERY loosely.

Host Family

It is a little bit strange how normal it feels to live with a family that is not my own, as if they were my own. In my program we had multiple days of orientation. We were told things like don't ride the dangerous boda-bodas, don't walk by yourself in the dark, there was even a little squatty potty talk. There wasn't really any talk about the whole host family aspect. I have had friends go on study abroads before and heard them refer to their "mom" or "dad" and I have always thought it sounded a little bit contrived to call these people mom and dad... like I always thought it seemed like they were pretending or playing a little bit. But now I live with a family and I have two brothers and two sisters, a papa and a toto (the word for mom). It doesn't feel like I am pretending or like they are. They are my Ugandan family. I know it will probably take all semester before I really get to know them well. But they feel like family now.

Right now toto and papa have malaria. Which sucks, but not as bad as it sounds like it does. I asked toto how many times she has had malaria and she answered "this year?" I said "No, ever, in your whole life." She kind of laughed and said, "Kelsey an African can not count how many times they have had malaria!" I do not know the reason but malaria is worse for foreigners. Maybe because Africans have like thousands of years of resistance built up towards it... maybe because we are babies...

Speaking of being a baby. I need to get used to cockroaches. That is one of my goals for this semester. I no longer yell or scream when one crawls towards me... there is just a sharp intake of breath hahaha. Last night I went outside to take a bucket bath. We bathe in this little room in between the house and the road (so awkward to bathe with people like talking right outside the wall. There is no roof on the room so you feel like you are bathing outside. I was pouring water from a jerrycan into a bucket and there was a cockroach crawling on the wall right next to my face. I stood up and watched it for 2 minutes thinking about how badly I did not want to get undressed and bathe in a room with cockroaches in it and I quietly whined for Kevin to come kill it. Kevin is my 14 year old little sister... She picks up these giant cockroaches with her hands and throws them away from me. Heart her. But she was not in ear shot. I ended up kicking it and it fell and scurried away. This is like a daily occurrence and it would make me feel much more like a 24 year old if I could man up and not be so grossed out by these little giant bugs.

I am sitting with other Americans and everyone is discussing their strategies for going to the latrine during the least cockroach infested times of the day. I think I will save that for another blog post. Someone just passed around a cold pancake and we like devoured it. American food! hahaha I love it here.

Haiti update

My friends in Haiti posted an update and I want to pass it along. Corrigan writes...

"Clerville( the poor area near our house) is STARVING and fighting over food (just a little bit of fighting,nothing out of control). We fed about 80 families so I’m down to bare bonesat home again. The boys are liking being little ambassadors of hope toeverybody. The ladies are taking stuff to their villages too, but with some
of them, I fear that they are hording the stuff for themselves. I told them
to not be scared, to share, and to trust God to provide for us all. They
have almost all returned to make jewelry again.

Rodney, Leo, Richard, Big Richard, and Carlin have been doing Recon for me
about who needs homes built. There are LOTS of people sleeping in the
streets. I will send you the list of needs as I get it put together. Piti
Mi, a village up the street towards Lopital Espoir also has a lot of
displaced people. I’m trying to see if we can coordinate a rebuilding
effort with Quisqueya chapel, the Mannaserros, etc.

Tremmors are less frequent, but I find myself getting more and more
psychological tremmors (I think it’s shaking, but it isn’t). The crack in
our bedroom under the water tank makes me nervous. The crack in the wall
makes me nervous too, after measuring things and figuring out where things
are stressed and cracked, I just don’t like that side of the house much
right now. I’m trying to see if somebody smart can come look at it.

I am still working on Hainet and banking, and finding food. I’m going to
Big Star market now."

Clerrville is the area where I spent most of my time this summer. My profile picture on facebook is taken there. Please consider giving money to www.apparentproject.org They have access to a bank and a grocery store and are feeding this village of people I love.

My view

Its so interesting how previous experience colors your view of everything. I sort of thought Africa would be a lot like Haiti... I guess because it is sort of poor and tropical and black? When I am in America, Haiti is usually on my mind so I guess it should be expected that that would not change just because I have left America. Well Uganda is a lot like Haiti. I keep seeing the faces of my Haitian friends in the new people I am meeting here. Twice yesterday I thought I saw Rosleau, once Mirlande, and my friend Susan is exactly like Sinese. There are water and power and internet issues here just like in Haiti. There is animism here like the voodoo in Haiti. But overall Uganda is better off than Haiti. People here are not going hungry, the ground is extremely fertile. I was telling my host mom about the living conditions of my friends in Haiti and she just shook her head sadly. Of course there are slums here, there are poor and orphans. But its not like Haiti. There is a middle class here which is sadly lacking from Haiti.

Family - I think the family I live with is middle class. My host dad teaches mechanical engineering at a trade school in Gulu, which is in northern Uganda. He comes home like once a week right now but he says that sometimes he will be gone for a month at a time. My Toto just works around the house and in the families fields. THe other day my whole fam came back from the fields and told me a story about how Toto had seen a huge snake (supposedly as wide as a dinner plate) and had screamed. Her children proceeded to tease her about this for an hour. If it were me I probably would have screamed and then cried. :) I love that my family is respectful of each other but also very goofy with each other. Like they can tease Toto about being scared of a snake but they will also do WHATEVER she tells them. When my dad is home my siblings will serve him his food and they will kneel down to hand it to him.

My family is starting to get more comfortable teasing me. When I got home from school yesterday my sister Sarah said, welcome home! And my brother Sam loudly mumbeled something about foreignors over running his home. So I dumped my water on him, a precious commodity as I have to carry it from school! Totally worth it.

Food - This weekend while I was in Kampala I also picked up a bag of popping corn so last night my sister Kevin and I cooked a huge pot of it. It was glorious!! We melted some butter over the fire. Sooooo goood. The food here is not bad, it is just a lot of the same. It is also very oily! Everything is fried. So much grease. And we rarely eat meat. Most nights its rice a beans. Which I actually prefer because the meat is chewey overcooked unidentifiable chunks... mmmmm. But even the rice is like FULL of oil. I am craving a cold sandwhich. If only subway could find their way to Kampala. Tonight a bunch of Americans and Ugandans are coming over to my house for smores. SO looking foward to it. Still looking for more recipes I can cook over the fire... I mean I have pots so anything you can cook on a stove that doesnt take too much temp control I can make... maybe.

Stuff I wish I brought - So I was worried about overpacking... which in some ways I did. It seems like I have a TON of clothes compared to everyone else in my family. Also some of the electronics I brought seem stupid and useless... since I dont have electricity at home. Anyway there are some things that I should have brought... So here is my wishlist if you feel like sending me anything. :)

- downey wrinkle release
- Flashlights or batterey powered lanterns or those batterey lights that you like push them and they go on... I miss light... and I can get batteries here.
- pics of you!
- small bottle of hand sanitizer (no one washes their hands...)
- small bottle of fabreeze
- sweets!
- anything from home
- yourselves... i bet you would totally make it through customs

Things take anywhere from one week to two months to get here. So keep that in mind. Dont send a gallon of milk. :)

Thank you for your comments! Its so nice to hear from you guys! I love you lots.

Week one

I have been here for over a week and it is slowly starting to feel like home. I haven't been blogging because my mind has not been on Uganda. I can't stop thinking about Haiti and wishing I were there. Realistically I know that I would only be a burden if I were there now... but still.

School - I started classes last week and they are going well. I have most classes with other American student but taught by Ugandan profs. One of my professors attended Yale! Crazy. I often think about Kim Budd when I am in class. She hates having distractions and always closes the blinds during class. Here we have two huge windows on either side of the classroom. The first day 3 little Ugandan kids sat on the slope outside one window and waved at the classroom full of Mzungus (white people). Frequently we are visited by birds flying in, yesterday a dog followed some Americans to class and just stayed in our room during classtime. Funny story... That dog also ended up following me after class to the cafeteria, which is really like a big outdoor pavillion type thing. I have never been stared at so much in my life.

One of my classes is just a regular UCU class and I am the ONLY mzungu. I have yet to actually have that class yet as the prof seems to think he does not need to show up the first week. I sat for an hour waiting for him and he never came. I finally left but the whole class stayed and waited another hour. Crazy.

Family - There is lots to say about my family. First they are extremely hospitable. Almost too much so. My mother is called Toto in their language. The woman will NOT let me skip a meal. Sunday I skipped church and stayed in bed because my stomach hurt... but even so she guilted me into eating breakfast lunch and dinner that day. When I do eat she is always on my case about it not being enough. My family has some land that they farm to grow food for us to eat and some to sell. Sometimes I help with various food related chores like cutting the cassava so we can dry it and turn it into flour.

I share a room with one american and my ugandan sister. We have no electricity and no running water. It is sort of like camping. We bathe and wash our clothes in buckets. We use flashlights for light at night. My toto thinks we will burn the house down if we use candles inside. I expected life to be hard without electricity but it is actually sort of nice. I mainly miss having light. But it is refreshing to not have tv! We spend a lot of time singing and talking and playing games.

Culture - Mostly I am loving fitting into a new culture... and sometimes it is frustrating. It is so humbling to be like a child in this culture. The other day my host sister was watching me put in my contacts. She started guessing at what they were for. She wondered if they turned my eyes colors or if maybe they protected my eyes from the heat. She is 18 but she seemed like a baby when confronted with something from my culture. I must seem like that all the time here. I have no idea when I should pay the matatu driver, or how much money is reasonable to pay for tomatoes, or how to use a coal iron.

Food - Lots of rice and beans and matoke and posho. Yesterday my family killed one of our chickens for dinner. It was nice to have chicken... and the former vegetarian in me tried very hard to not think about where it came from. One of the chickens lives in the house with us because it is hatching some eggs. Francis' amazing sisters took me to 3 different grocerey stores in Kampala and we found all the ingrediants for smores!!! My family was crazy excited. I want to make some American food for my fam. I am going to make kebabs with whatever meat I can find. I am hoping to score some BBQ sauce. We cook everything over a fire or over charcoal. If anyone has any good camping recipes send them to me!!!

I am on the internet!

Praise the Lord for internet in Uganda. I have many first impressions but the strangest one is definitely the catchphrase bird. You know the beeping noise that the catchphrase game makes? It like slowly speeds up as you pass it around. you know? Everywhere I go I hear that beeping noise in the same pitch as the catchphrase game. It is so strange. I thought maybe it was people's cell phones or something. Last night I finally figured out that it is a freaking bird. It drives me crazy and I am the only person who even notices it. How American am I that a bird hooting reminds me of an electronic game!

UGANDA!

I am officially Uganda bound. I leave in one hour for the airport to go to D.C. I am spending the night there with my amazing friend Juli who I met in Mexico a couple summers ago and who I wish would accompany me everywhere I go. I have been putting off blogging about Uganda for a few reasons... I sort of still can't believe I am going. It was like craptons of paperwork to make this happen. Also much finagling classes and being flexible occured by my awesome professors. Thank you tons Budd, Krispin, and Sanders!!! It also required many shots to make this happen. I got 5 shots yesterday immunizing me from like 7 diseases. Joy! I have my skirts packed and my flashlight and watterbottle, my textbooks and like 9 nice pens. I really like nice pens. The big question now is, do I have enough stuff or do I have too much? Or maybe the bigger question is should I bring more deoderant?

I will be staying in a town near Kampala called mukono and I will for sure post my address where you can send me lots of letters and care packages...hint hint. I can pick up mail either at my school or in the nearby town. I will be living with a host family who I know nothing about yet. Yikes. Right now I am just excited and tired. Mostly tired because they shot me full of typhoid and yellow fever and all that good stuff yesterday.

My address:

‘Kelsey Little’ Uganda Studies Programme
Uganda Christian University
P.O. Box 4
Mukono, UGANDA