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.