Greetings from Mukono, Uganda!
Elise and I made it back to House of Hope Sunday, after a tiring journey from Kampala. We ended up taking two different taxis (14 person buses that cram up to 27 people in them!) and a private car taxi (toyota corolla) which drove 11 people 60km!! Elise and I squished into the front seat next to a man who shared the driver's seat with the driver! A woman told me that in Ugandan transportation, no one is left behind...so they just keep cramming them into the cars/taxis/buses...you name it! Hhahaha...needless to say, it's unbelievable how rewarded you feel after getting out of a backseat laying down sideways with your nose in a strange man's chest, grasping your wallet after not feeling below your knees for the past hour. I am grateful the US does not do transportation the same way. But you sure do make friends easy here! And EVERYONE wants to be friends with a muzungu.
Ugandans have two breaks from school every year: two months for Christmas, and one month for Easter. They spend Easter with their extended families and have a large special meal. When we asked the kids how their Easter was, they replied "Not good...we had to eat posho." These 25 kids had no family, no home, no special meal to celebrate the holiday with. Until we brought out two kilos of cookies for them all! They started jumping up and down and clapping and smiling bigger than the moon. We were so grateful for the small opportunity to make their Easter a little more enjoyable.
We made origami elephants and paper airplanes the next day, after weeding in the garden. The kids had to keep a close eye on Elise and I in the garden as we pulled out weeds: "No auntie. That is irish potatoe. This is maize. Only these are weeds." they say with a knowing gentle smile. Yesterday, we went to Masaka upon Jennifer's request for money for more food for the kids at House of Hope. We got to go to a local lounge and watch the Manchester United Football (soccer) game against Germany. Manchester United won, and it was fun to cheer with the locals. Soccer is a huge part of the culture here. And the soap operas are either philipino or mexican...and outrageously dramatic.
Today we are heading to another project north of Mukono for a few days to see what the other volunteers are doing in Uganda. On the first taxi ride over, we were grateful for the spare 1/2 inch of leg room, but had to cover our noses from the reak of blood in the taxi. Source of blood: unknown. Could've been the live chicken flopping around in the trunk. On the second taxi ride, I noticed a large billboard of Libya's Gaddafhi dedicating a mosque. That is the fourth or fifth mention of Gaddafhi's contributions to Uganda; mosques, roads, arms. And Libya, Syria, and other Arab country news are updated on news stations several times daily. I'm impressed with the questions the kids are asking about US foreign policy and why Obama hasn't taken out Gaddafhi. They LOVE that the US has a black president, and one who's father is African! I believe we are going to be hanging out with more kids and weeding in the garden.
It rained for about an hour on the taxi ride over, but was pretty sunny yesterday. Ate a ripe mango, freshly cut and sliced by the order, and chipati for lunch. Navigating through the taxi parks is a bit difficult however, due to the large baggage we were carrying. Elise mentioned to me that she felt a man try to put his hands in her pocket while she walked by. Good think we had all our valuables in our hands and our zippers secured shut. We kept up our muzungu pace anyway until we sat down in another taxi. (Ugandans rarely if ever walk fast...they meander aimlessly it seems until they come to their destination).
We met Jennifer's two brothers and sister who were visiting for Easter break. Very sweet family. It is so common in Uganda to recieve help so willingly. People on the taxi, on the street, in restaurants, all just want to make sure you are finding your way and haven't lost anything. Extremely generous people.
Saturday, we will head to Jinja for some white water rafting in the Nile River. Whahoo!!
I will try to update again Friday before we head out. Hope all is well and the weather is warming up back home! Happy belated Easter and until next time...
Weraba mukwanos, (Goodbye friends)
Jillian
4.27.2011
4.22.2011
Week One
Oli Otya! Wasuze otya nnyo?
Hello all! How was your night? (A morning greeting in Lugandan).
I'm writing from a hostel in Kampala, Uganda's large capital city. This has been the first chance I've had to update you all because internet is not available to me in my volunteer placement. The closest internet cafe is 2 hours away by Mutatto (taxi), which does not leave for our destination until the van fills up its 17 spots. Interestingly enough, these Mutattos can fill up to as much as 27 people...literally hanging out the window and sitting 5 or 6 to a row meant for 3!! T.I.A...(a common phrase to explain such things. It means "this is Africa"...translation: "roll with it!"). We are here with 7 other volunteers at different placements around Uganda through GVN. We usually all meet up on the weekends to get a break from our projects and fuel up on things like internet, water, and food other than the same meals we recieve daily.
I am placed at House of Hope with an 18 year old girl named Elise. She is wonderful and a great confidant to have while we adapt to Africa. She came to Uganda from 3 months volunteering in Kenya...she's my hero! House of Hope is located in a VERY rural, mountainous area of southern Uganda. The sunsets are beautiful, and very quiet (after evening "prayer time" where the kids sing and dance and clap and pray after dinner). On a clear night, you can see a million stars. During the day, I can look across the hills and feel as if it would perfectly normal for a pack of elephants or gorillas to wander through!!
It is a wonderful sanctuary for around 200 children (50 of which live there full time), 1 dog "Canada", and 1 kitten "cat". They ran after our car when we arrived and swarmed around our barely opened doors! We couldn't even close the doors before greetings from 200 little ones giving hugs and saying "Wellll-Comm Auntie!". The House of Hope choir then sang 4 welcome songs for us while we sat in places of honor in chairs in the front row. Then the older girls (aged 15) danced a traditional Ugandan dance for us. The choir was accompanied by 3 or 4 drummers...these kids have Rhythm at like 8 years old! Our guesthouse is spacious for the two of us, with a private room each, and a small "shower room" for bucket showers. The toilets are squatties. Every morning, we eat sweet white bread with red plum jam and black tea. Lunch is posho (think tasteless mashed potatoes) with beans (close to refried beans). Dinner is white rice with tomatoes, avocados, a tasty cabbage, beans, and posho again. We buy our own bottled water to drink throughout the day and with meals. The food is good. The guesthouse staff ("Sarah") is very sweet. Although we noticed that the adults know less english than the older students. And the very young ones know little to no english at all.
The kids are adorable and curious about us "muzungus" (white people). They like to poke our skin and watch it turn white to regular pigment. They brush our arm hairs, and stroke our straight hair. They will take and run away with anything you have on you that's not secured (sunglasses, head bands, watch, rings, jewelry, etc) so I learned real quick to not wear much more than my clothing when I'm with the children! They love to play "cow cow goat" (equivalent to our "duck duck goose"), london bridge, jump rope, a hand clap game, soccer, "net ball" (basketball for girls), volleyball, or just sitting with muzungus and teaching us Lungandan. They are awesome. I will update videos and pictures this afternoon.
Jennifer, the founder of House of Hope, is extremely impressive. Her english is impeccible. She explains things to westerners that we might not otherwise understand about Ugandan culture. And she is running House of Hope with a non-caning ("caning" is when the teachers beat the children on the back of the legs with a cane for misbehaving) policy. She is runing a very unique project in a very rural village in desperate need of education for the children in Kyazanga and surrounding villages. She is basically the Mother Theresa of this whole area of Uganda. I am confident and happy to report that she operates on a completely honest budget and I admire her vision for future developments at House of Hope. Vision is not common for Africans. She is doing something amazing in Southern Uganda, and is doing it "right" - void of corruption.
We did some home visits last Sunday. We went to a village in another hillside above House of Hope to some elderly women who have taken in orphans. These saintly women have little to nothing and have from 5 to 8 children living with them, completely reliant on them, and not-related. The live in tiny one or two bedroom mud huts and work on the banana plantation they live on for rent. We gave t-shirts, kerosene for lamps, soap for laundry, and flour and salt to make posho (Uganda's staple food). They were ecstatic. It is unbelievably humbling to even remember how grateful they were to recieve such small items. They have next to nothing in this world. And yet they still gave Jennifer a live chicken as a thanks and showed us great hospitality as we sat and met each of their "adopted" children. It was funny hearing the chicken squaking in the back of the Land Rover as we drove away!! Ahhh...Africa. Next time you invite me over...maybe I'll bring you a live chicken! I hope these women feel the depths of gratitude I felt for their selflessness. I am so grateful to live the life that I have.
Monday we taught Enlgish for 1.5 hours to the oldest classes (P6 and P7). The director's father came to our breakfast and announced that "The children in P6 and P7 are ready for your lesson. They are waiting in their class for you." We stared wide-eyed before running to fetch some english lessons I had made before coming. Elise too P6 with their teacher Daniel, while I took P7 alone! It was a fun hour of learning the english words "creative" and "inspired" before I just showed them pictures of home and my family, which they LOVED! They said my brother Graham looked like a professional soccer player in England, and they were scared of my black dog Ella, until I told them she loves children, just like Canada.
The mosquitos are nasty here, and I am adamant about my deet spray after recieving about 10 bites on my arms and neck! It has rained here for the past 4 days, but only in the morning, and usually ends around 9am. However, the roads are VERY muddy and slippery. Yesterday, our mutatto drove through a flooded street...up to a grown man's knees!!!
The Ugandans are all impressed with my Lugandan, and it inspires me to keep practicing and learning more! They appreciate when a muzungu knows their language! And it keeps the taxi prices down!
Today is Saturday morning, before Easter - a big holiday in Uganda where people go to church and then spend the day with their families eating and drinking. I think we will go to a cafe today for some coffee and hang out while we try to avoid the rain! I must go as there is a line of travelers waiting to use the internet, but I will attempt to upload videos and photos later today.
Weraba Mukwanos! (Farewell Friends!)
Jillian
Hello all! How was your night? (A morning greeting in Lugandan).
I'm writing from a hostel in Kampala, Uganda's large capital city. This has been the first chance I've had to update you all because internet is not available to me in my volunteer placement. The closest internet cafe is 2 hours away by Mutatto (taxi), which does not leave for our destination until the van fills up its 17 spots. Interestingly enough, these Mutattos can fill up to as much as 27 people...literally hanging out the window and sitting 5 or 6 to a row meant for 3!! T.I.A...(a common phrase to explain such things. It means "this is Africa"...translation: "roll with it!"). We are here with 7 other volunteers at different placements around Uganda through GVN. We usually all meet up on the weekends to get a break from our projects and fuel up on things like internet, water, and food other than the same meals we recieve daily.
I am placed at House of Hope with an 18 year old girl named Elise. She is wonderful and a great confidant to have while we adapt to Africa. She came to Uganda from 3 months volunteering in Kenya...she's my hero! House of Hope is located in a VERY rural, mountainous area of southern Uganda. The sunsets are beautiful, and very quiet (after evening "prayer time" where the kids sing and dance and clap and pray after dinner). On a clear night, you can see a million stars. During the day, I can look across the hills and feel as if it would perfectly normal for a pack of elephants or gorillas to wander through!!
It is a wonderful sanctuary for around 200 children (50 of which live there full time), 1 dog "Canada", and 1 kitten "cat". They ran after our car when we arrived and swarmed around our barely opened doors! We couldn't even close the doors before greetings from 200 little ones giving hugs and saying "Wellll-Comm Auntie!". The House of Hope choir then sang 4 welcome songs for us while we sat in places of honor in chairs in the front row. Then the older girls (aged 15) danced a traditional Ugandan dance for us. The choir was accompanied by 3 or 4 drummers...these kids have Rhythm at like 8 years old! Our guesthouse is spacious for the two of us, with a private room each, and a small "shower room" for bucket showers. The toilets are squatties. Every morning, we eat sweet white bread with red plum jam and black tea. Lunch is posho (think tasteless mashed potatoes) with beans (close to refried beans). Dinner is white rice with tomatoes, avocados, a tasty cabbage, beans, and posho again. We buy our own bottled water to drink throughout the day and with meals. The food is good. The guesthouse staff ("Sarah") is very sweet. Although we noticed that the adults know less english than the older students. And the very young ones know little to no english at all.
The kids are adorable and curious about us "muzungus" (white people). They like to poke our skin and watch it turn white to regular pigment. They brush our arm hairs, and stroke our straight hair. They will take and run away with anything you have on you that's not secured (sunglasses, head bands, watch, rings, jewelry, etc) so I learned real quick to not wear much more than my clothing when I'm with the children! They love to play "cow cow goat" (equivalent to our "duck duck goose"), london bridge, jump rope, a hand clap game, soccer, "net ball" (basketball for girls), volleyball, or just sitting with muzungus and teaching us Lungandan. They are awesome. I will update videos and pictures this afternoon.
Jennifer, the founder of House of Hope, is extremely impressive. Her english is impeccible. She explains things to westerners that we might not otherwise understand about Ugandan culture. And she is running House of Hope with a non-caning ("caning" is when the teachers beat the children on the back of the legs with a cane for misbehaving) policy. She is runing a very unique project in a very rural village in desperate need of education for the children in Kyazanga and surrounding villages. She is basically the Mother Theresa of this whole area of Uganda. I am confident and happy to report that she operates on a completely honest budget and I admire her vision for future developments at House of Hope. Vision is not common for Africans. She is doing something amazing in Southern Uganda, and is doing it "right" - void of corruption.
We did some home visits last Sunday. We went to a village in another hillside above House of Hope to some elderly women who have taken in orphans. These saintly women have little to nothing and have from 5 to 8 children living with them, completely reliant on them, and not-related. The live in tiny one or two bedroom mud huts and work on the banana plantation they live on for rent. We gave t-shirts, kerosene for lamps, soap for laundry, and flour and salt to make posho (Uganda's staple food). They were ecstatic. It is unbelievably humbling to even remember how grateful they were to recieve such small items. They have next to nothing in this world. And yet they still gave Jennifer a live chicken as a thanks and showed us great hospitality as we sat and met each of their "adopted" children. It was funny hearing the chicken squaking in the back of the Land Rover as we drove away!! Ahhh...Africa. Next time you invite me over...maybe I'll bring you a live chicken! I hope these women feel the depths of gratitude I felt for their selflessness. I am so grateful to live the life that I have.
Monday we taught Enlgish for 1.5 hours to the oldest classes (P6 and P7). The director's father came to our breakfast and announced that "The children in P6 and P7 are ready for your lesson. They are waiting in their class for you." We stared wide-eyed before running to fetch some english lessons I had made before coming. Elise too P6 with their teacher Daniel, while I took P7 alone! It was a fun hour of learning the english words "creative" and "inspired" before I just showed them pictures of home and my family, which they LOVED! They said my brother Graham looked like a professional soccer player in England, and they were scared of my black dog Ella, until I told them she loves children, just like Canada.
The mosquitos are nasty here, and I am adamant about my deet spray after recieving about 10 bites on my arms and neck! It has rained here for the past 4 days, but only in the morning, and usually ends around 9am. However, the roads are VERY muddy and slippery. Yesterday, our mutatto drove through a flooded street...up to a grown man's knees!!!
The Ugandans are all impressed with my Lugandan, and it inspires me to keep practicing and learning more! They appreciate when a muzungu knows their language! And it keeps the taxi prices down!
Today is Saturday morning, before Easter - a big holiday in Uganda where people go to church and then spend the day with their families eating and drinking. I think we will go to a cafe today for some coffee and hang out while we try to avoid the rain! I must go as there is a line of travelers waiting to use the internet, but I will attempt to upload videos and photos later today.
Weraba Mukwanos! (Farewell Friends!)
Jillian
4.15.2011
Arrival
Greetings from Uganda!
I must make this posting brief as it took me 10 minutes to load up to this point, and i have only 10 minutes left to write to you all!
Uganda is beautiful. It is very humid and very warm here. My underarms are not happy and my fingers will be plump for days, I fear! I have just arrived in Mukono this morning after a brief night's stay in an Entebbe hostel after my 31+ hours of traveling to Uganda. Everything has been smooth and easy. The people are very polite (most of the time) and curious whenever we "muzungus" (white people) walk by. Everything I've talked to or come in contact with thus far have been very friendly and helpful. It is a grand start to my journey.
Tomorrow, we leave for Masaka and I will begin to see the areas I will be teaching in. I had my first meal in Uganda this afternoon: posho (think mashed potatoes) with a very nice purple-colored peanut sauce and some greens. Very delicious. I am happy and content to be here and having met my contacts. I haven't met all the other volunteers, and I don't think I will be able to until next weekend as I'm off again tomorrow!
I am staying at our GVN guesthouse tonight until my contact picks me up tomorrow. All is well. I will "perk up" after I get some more sleep (I think i've gotten around 10 hours in the past 3 days). I'm excited to be here!
Until next time...affectionately yours,
Jillian
I must make this posting brief as it took me 10 minutes to load up to this point, and i have only 10 minutes left to write to you all!
Uganda is beautiful. It is very humid and very warm here. My underarms are not happy and my fingers will be plump for days, I fear! I have just arrived in Mukono this morning after a brief night's stay in an Entebbe hostel after my 31+ hours of traveling to Uganda. Everything has been smooth and easy. The people are very polite (most of the time) and curious whenever we "muzungus" (white people) walk by. Everything I've talked to or come in contact with thus far have been very friendly and helpful. It is a grand start to my journey.
Tomorrow, we leave for Masaka and I will begin to see the areas I will be teaching in. I had my first meal in Uganda this afternoon: posho (think mashed potatoes) with a very nice purple-colored peanut sauce and some greens. Very delicious. I am happy and content to be here and having met my contacts. I haven't met all the other volunteers, and I don't think I will be able to until next weekend as I'm off again tomorrow!
I am staying at our GVN guesthouse tonight until my contact picks me up tomorrow. All is well. I will "perk up" after I get some more sleep (I think i've gotten around 10 hours in the past 3 days). I'm excited to be here!
Until next time...affectionately yours,
Jillian
4.06.2011
Packing
Have you ever spent more than two days packing? And don't anticipate finishing for another four days? It's mentally exhausting!! "Will I really need this? Yes, I think so. No, on second thought...no. I will never need this over there. Well...but what if...?" I remind myself that this insignificant tribulation will be outweighed by the trials I am about to see in Uganda...The Pearl of Africa.
I feel a sense of calm before the storm. Like all the days and weeks of preparation have been a fun game. Is it real? Is it true: I'm really going to Uganda for 34 days? But I don't want the game to end. And when I settle in reality for a moment, I realize, the opening song hasn't even begun yet! And that makes me smile. Oh just a few more nights and I'll be on my merry way.
It has been very helpful to have Nick in Uganda these past few days. He's given me some great advice, and a hidden insight to what my life may be like for the next month. It sounds exciting, new, friendly, and very free.
I've continued to receive donations daily. It still brings me to tears how you all have rallied to support me and the kids at House of Hope. I am honored to be the face of your donations to these deserving kids. I'll do my best to capture their response and thanks. I'm constantly reminded of how much love is surrounding me as I journey to another end of the world. Thanks to you all.
Thanks to you all for your unconditional support and encouragement.
Jillian
I feel a sense of calm before the storm. Like all the days and weeks of preparation have been a fun game. Is it real? Is it true: I'm really going to Uganda for 34 days? But I don't want the game to end. And when I settle in reality for a moment, I realize, the opening song hasn't even begun yet! And that makes me smile. Oh just a few more nights and I'll be on my merry way.
It has been very helpful to have Nick in Uganda these past few days. He's given me some great advice, and a hidden insight to what my life may be like for the next month. It sounds exciting, new, friendly, and very free.
I've continued to receive donations daily. It still brings me to tears how you all have rallied to support me and the kids at House of Hope. I am honored to be the face of your donations to these deserving kids. I'll do my best to capture their response and thanks. I'm constantly reminded of how much love is surrounding me as I journey to another end of the world. Thanks to you all.
Thanks to you all for your unconditional support and encouragement.
Jillian
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