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.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, February 01, 2010
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.
- 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.
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