Im now 24. I have only had a few ideas of where I would be at age 24, none of which included basically camping in Uganda building a boat without electric tools. Never thought I would be popular walking through a village. Or that I would be sitting on the shores of lake Victoria dreaming about a cheeseburger from any fastfood joint. How have I come to rely on the kinds of things I have always thought less of people for relying on? I want to walk down the street without being yelled mzungu at. I want hummus, sushi, Guinness, Hershey, and a steak. I have always wanted to travel, but honestly Africa wasn’t on the top of the list. Im so getting a cheeseburger when I get off the plane. I want a hot shower every day.
My birthday was last week. Actually, it wasn’t bad. Even tho the Ugandans don’t really celebrate birthdays. They wanted to give me an extra helping of posho and a spanking and toss water on me while I slept. None of which I opted for experiencing. In holding with more American traditions, I didn’t have to work at all. Bryce missed most of it, being in kampala and all, but he did bring back flowers and a little chocolate cake. It melted by the time it reached me, but chocolate still tastes like chocolate. And the best part was hearing from my family all within 24 hours of each other.
The rest of the week kinda sucked. No internet at all. frustrating work as usual. By the time Sunday came around, I was crawling emotionally. But the good news is that kampala has internet. I opened up my email and found dozens of birthday emails and a whole facebook page of happy birthday wishes. So awesome to receive that. Thankyou all for that.
also, i dont come back to the states till at least mid-september.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
learning
What I learned in Uganda so far; How to ride a boda boda with just holding on with my legs. And I learned how to wash my clothes by hand. I guess im doing an ok job considering the water turns a reddish brown color. But have you ever tried to get red dirt out of white socks? And don’t hang your clothes out the day your neighbors plan on burning the garbage. I have to wash most of those clothes again cuz they got smoked instead of dried. The soap is the same for dishes and clothes and floor. One soap cleans all. Also, geckos bite. Not hard or pinchy, but they do bite. I caught a medium size gecko who was crawling around my clothes while they dried. I wanted to wait till a bigger one since I was scared I would crush a little one just by picking it up. So I caught a decent size one, and it bit me. Wretch. i have learned how to understand ugandan accents. how to be ok with being the center of attention. how to ride a boda sidesaddle when wearing a skirt (not very often). how to spot someone planning to pick my pocket. how to bargain for a non-mzungu price. ill never be as good as john paul and bryce, but getting better. how to keep a straight face when something stuns me.
like the other night; we came home in the dark and everytime we walked under a light, there was a literal cloud of bugs. they were so thick that we could see the air currents inside the cloud. when i got to my room, i found that maureen had left the light on for me. therfore a cloud of bugs inhabited my room. i managed to clear my bed of most of the bugs, but getting all of them was impossible. the mosquitoes had a field day with my skin that night. the next day i asked maureen about it and asked that she turn off the light when she goes to sleep so it doesnt attract bugs. thats when she told me she didnt know the light attracted bugs at night. that revelation stunned me.
It isn’t paradise here. Being in Uganda is cool and all. its beautiful for sure. But not all goes well. Getting tools here is probably the hardest. If it isn’t cheap Chinese sub-standard equipment, its second hand and might not work. Also, the plug-ins might short. You can get good tools if you shop at the south African store and spend 2 or more times the price in America. The lumber here is another problem. Its hardwood which has been rough hewn to generally the right size, generally being the key word in that sentance. The sides might not be parallel or straight. And 2x4s aren’t really 2x4. They are bigger and heavier. One 2x4 here weighs as much as 5 or 6 2x4s in the states. Good luck drilling thru one by hand, or pounding a nail thru the wood.
All of us are seeing first hand how to accomplish logistics better. Do you have any idea how much food 10 construction workers can eat? Maureen is busy all day just cooking for us. Food, transportation, materials, power, tools, etc. any one of these things and a dozen others can go wrong and interrupt work. Also, we have to buy all our water for drinking. Sheesh, we could have one person permanently in charge of fixing issues that delay us. None of us want that job placed solely on our shoulders. So we all work at it, but there is no way to “fix” a day of storms or a power outage. Our site is fully uncovered, so any rain delays us. And sorry everyone, our internet was down again this week.
like the other night; we came home in the dark and everytime we walked under a light, there was a literal cloud of bugs. they were so thick that we could see the air currents inside the cloud. when i got to my room, i found that maureen had left the light on for me. therfore a cloud of bugs inhabited my room. i managed to clear my bed of most of the bugs, but getting all of them was impossible. the mosquitoes had a field day with my skin that night. the next day i asked maureen about it and asked that she turn off the light when she goes to sleep so it doesnt attract bugs. thats when she told me she didnt know the light attracted bugs at night. that revelation stunned me.
It isn’t paradise here. Being in Uganda is cool and all. its beautiful for sure. But not all goes well. Getting tools here is probably the hardest. If it isn’t cheap Chinese sub-standard equipment, its second hand and might not work. Also, the plug-ins might short. You can get good tools if you shop at the south African store and spend 2 or more times the price in America. The lumber here is another problem. Its hardwood which has been rough hewn to generally the right size, generally being the key word in that sentance. The sides might not be parallel or straight. And 2x4s aren’t really 2x4. They are bigger and heavier. One 2x4 here weighs as much as 5 or 6 2x4s in the states. Good luck drilling thru one by hand, or pounding a nail thru the wood.
All of us are seeing first hand how to accomplish logistics better. Do you have any idea how much food 10 construction workers can eat? Maureen is busy all day just cooking for us. Food, transportation, materials, power, tools, etc. any one of these things and a dozen others can go wrong and interrupt work. Also, we have to buy all our water for drinking. Sheesh, we could have one person permanently in charge of fixing issues that delay us. None of us want that job placed solely on our shoulders. So we all work at it, but there is no way to “fix” a day of storms or a power outage. Our site is fully uncovered, so any rain delays us. And sorry everyone, our internet was down again this week.
kids and wedding
I went for a walk today just to get out of the compound. The guys were gone in anthony’s truck getting lumber…for 3 hours (actually 8 by the time they came back). All along the road there are houses and gardens and villages. And in everyone of those, there are kids. Little kids just in shirts. Older kids carrying babies. Groups of kids in school uniforms. More kids in clothes of indeterminant color. Snotty-nose kids. Even one albino child led by an older sibling. But they all had one thing in common – “hi mzungu!” “bye bye mzungu!” I walked along feeling very popular. Just walk along, wave at the children, say hi, say bye. When I turned around to walk back home, a group of kids in school uniforms stood there watching me. So I walked over and shook there hands. That was just the coolest thing to these kids. They each shook my hand, doing a little curtsy, and then ran a few feet away to look at me with a big grin. So I walked away and became aware I had an entourage. 2 kids holding my hands, and 3 following closely; all grinning. Now all the kids we passed wore very envious looks instead of grins. One group of kids also started following, making the entourage more of a parade. At the village I called it off by turning down another road… to a school. There are a lot of kids around here.
I ask Maureen why the kids always yell mzungu. (btw, the plural of mzungu is wzungu). She told me its cuz these children know that mzungus love children more than black adults normally do, often more than their own mothers do. She said the adults often expect the kids to know what to do without first teaching them. That’s sad. Those children are looking for love when they yell to get my attention.
We went to a wedding last week and I can tell you that weddings are not quiet affairs here. This wedding looked and acted much like our American weddings. Well, mostly. The first clue of differences came in an ear-splitting screech; “aiyaiyaiyeeeee” or something like that. Those continued throughout the music. As the bride and groom walked down the aisle to the altar, several related women stepped out of the pews and proceeded to dance in front of the couple while screeching. I think the screeching is wishing good luck or something cuz the bride and groom seemed to welcome it. A worship team from the church supplied the music, standing upstage and dancing in their casual clothes. The wedding party was decked out, right down to the little ring-bearer practically pulling a little girl down the aisle. Most of the women wore traditional dresses with the spiky sleeves. I have to say, our patch of wzungu definitely stood out in our nice western clothes. After every step of the wedding process, the screeches would start up again. After the actual ceremony and the couple had hugged, not kissed, everyone went up and congratulated them and gave them money. and everyone danced and screeched. Not a quiet affair at all. we did dance with the others a bit. Not Kevin of course, he doesn’t dance.
We went to the reception, which started about 3 hours after the wedding ended. Ugandan food, lots of soda, excellent cake, and lots of Ugandan dancing. I learned that this was a cross-kingdom marriage with people from several parts of Uganda in attendance. They had cheesy American love songs playing while people waited. And 2 people playing MC who were hilarious, especially when they talked about the toilets – “the place of convenience so your bladders don’t have to burst”. All in all it was a fun experience. Different, yet not.
I ask Maureen why the kids always yell mzungu. (btw, the plural of mzungu is wzungu). She told me its cuz these children know that mzungus love children more than black adults normally do, often more than their own mothers do. She said the adults often expect the kids to know what to do without first teaching them. That’s sad. Those children are looking for love when they yell to get my attention.
We went to a wedding last week and I can tell you that weddings are not quiet affairs here. This wedding looked and acted much like our American weddings. Well, mostly. The first clue of differences came in an ear-splitting screech; “aiyaiyaiyeeeee” or something like that. Those continued throughout the music. As the bride and groom walked down the aisle to the altar, several related women stepped out of the pews and proceeded to dance in front of the couple while screeching. I think the screeching is wishing good luck or something cuz the bride and groom seemed to welcome it. A worship team from the church supplied the music, standing upstage and dancing in their casual clothes. The wedding party was decked out, right down to the little ring-bearer practically pulling a little girl down the aisle. Most of the women wore traditional dresses with the spiky sleeves. I have to say, our patch of wzungu definitely stood out in our nice western clothes. After every step of the wedding process, the screeches would start up again. After the actual ceremony and the couple had hugged, not kissed, everyone went up and congratulated them and gave them money. and everyone danced and screeched. Not a quiet affair at all. we did dance with the others a bit. Not Kevin of course, he doesn’t dance.
We went to the reception, which started about 3 hours after the wedding ended. Ugandan food, lots of soda, excellent cake, and lots of Ugandan dancing. I learned that this was a cross-kingdom marriage with people from several parts of Uganda in attendance. They had cheesy American love songs playing while people waited. And 2 people playing MC who were hilarious, especially when they talked about the toilets – “the place of convenience so your bladders don’t have to burst”. All in all it was a fun experience. Different, yet not.
blog update
alrighty readers. i have uploaded more photos and actually captioned most of them. enjoy.
also, i fixed the settings so now you can all post more easily. sorry i didnt figure out that setting earlier. you still have to pass one security thing, pretty much checking if you are a real person and can read. but that should help you comment on my blog. now you have no excuse :P
also, i fixed the settings so now you can all post more easily. sorry i didnt figure out that setting earlier. you still have to pass one security thing, pretty much checking if you are a real person and can read. but that should help you comment on my blog. now you have no excuse :P
Sunday, June 6, 2010
weekend
This weekend focus hosted a group of Americans and Kenyans for the first leg of their short-term mission trip. All of the Thain team were excited to have so many Americans wandering around our area. I would wake up in the morning and walk outside before my coffee. Everywhere I looked would have at least one college student from intervarsity Christian fellowship praying or singing. I had a hard time deciding whether that was annoying or cool. But before my coffee it was definitely annoying. I would still be trying to wake up my foggy brain and several girls all greet me by name as they walked past. God’s fanclub in my yard. Growl. After my coffee and when the group didn’t have meetings, I would wander over and talk with various people just to hear Americans speak. They all got to know me pretty well, I can only remember about 5 names. All of them didn’t believe the story about the boat till they heard it from one of the team or saw it themselves. Its hard to miss 2 giant white hulls sitting on the beach. All of us got to take the group for a short nature walk along the shore. We all enjoyed being surrounded by 20+ Americans pestering us with questions and being awed by our answers about our being in Uganda. Tis a pity I didn’t get to take at least one on a boda ride, but I think that was against the rules like everything else fun. I did get to meet an American missionary in kampala from Michigan. I think I will get to see her again.
Oh, and the American group of girls had an interesting affect on Bryce and john paul; they started climbing trees and showing off in any way possible without actually going over and talking to the girls. They even had a conversation for 15 minutes where they impersonated each other. They know each other’s responses really well. Bob and I almost fell off our chairs laughing. Sadly, I didn’t get to record the convo.
Finally Sunday morning came. My day to not work. My day to go into town and get away from everyone I normally see. The day I get to go to my church and worship with dancing and singing people. So I got all ready, packed my bag for the day…and a storm began rolling in. A huge storm that darkened half the sky as it approached and turned falling leaves into bullets. God sure knows how to make an entrance on His day, doesn’t He? My plans to be on time for church seemed to be thwarted. I stared at the storm and mentally shook my fist at it and God. Then I heard in my heart God saying, “This is My day. It is My church. You get to go because you are Mine.” …oh. Right. Nervous laugh. After that little readjustment to my thinking, the storm slowed enough for me to try and beat the storm to kampala where it was heading. I did, and I even arrived at church early. A young girl fell asleep in my arms during church. I just sat there holding this kid, watching her troubled dreams, and knowing she needed some love. Btw, the storm never hit kampala that I could see. Oh, the irony.
Oh, and the American group of girls had an interesting affect on Bryce and john paul; they started climbing trees and showing off in any way possible without actually going over and talking to the girls. They even had a conversation for 15 minutes where they impersonated each other. They know each other’s responses really well. Bob and I almost fell off our chairs laughing. Sadly, I didn’t get to record the convo.
Finally Sunday morning came. My day to not work. My day to go into town and get away from everyone I normally see. The day I get to go to my church and worship with dancing and singing people. So I got all ready, packed my bag for the day…and a storm began rolling in. A huge storm that darkened half the sky as it approached and turned falling leaves into bullets. God sure knows how to make an entrance on His day, doesn’t He? My plans to be on time for church seemed to be thwarted. I stared at the storm and mentally shook my fist at it and God. Then I heard in my heart God saying, “This is My day. It is My church. You get to go because you are Mine.” …oh. Right. Nervous laugh. After that little readjustment to my thinking, the storm slowed enough for me to try and beat the storm to kampala where it was heading. I did, and I even arrived at church early. A young girl fell asleep in my arms during church. I just sat there holding this kid, watching her troubled dreams, and knowing she needed some love. Btw, the storm never hit kampala that I could see. Oh, the irony.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
new chapter
First of all, congrats to the Wisniews on having a healthy baby. Happy day of birth, Ronan.
Well, a whole new chapter of this trip has started since the team here moved to focus. Focus is a Ugandan Christian retreat center and sometimes has groups of Christians staying here. We get a dorm with 2 rooms, the round conference room, and access to all facilities. I was going to stay in the dorm with the guys, but since our cook Maureen is also a girl, they decided to put our beds in the kitchen room of our dorm. So we sleep in the kitchen. The guys got the hint after being kicked out several times and me asking for a curtain; they are building us girls a screen divider for the room. The guys all sleep in the other room. We each have our own bunk bed so we sleep on one level and store our stuff on the other. Yay for living out of a suitcase again.
Maureen is an awesome cook. She cooks good Ugandan food and is learning American food. We tell her every day we love her for cooking for us. Its quite the difference from what the house guys fed us in ntinda. This food has more than one kind of seasoning. Also, I don’t think any of us know how to cook for 12 people 3 times a day, and definitely not over coal stoves.
Maureen also prays out loud in lugandan every morning, starting at 5:30 or 6. I have slept in a room with no one else for several years now. Someone’s voice in my room wakes me up. But im slowly getting used to it. Other than both being females, we don’t have much in common. We speak mostly the same language in English. But I had never heard of “source pans” as she put on the list of needed kitchen utensils.
We are far out from town. If we are lucky, we can catch a boda or taxi to the main road. The locals in the villages have begun to recognize us crazy mzungus. This is basically the jungle; bob has seen monkeys. I see amazing birds every day in every color of the rainbow. Look up pictures of great blue turacos, that’s what I see playing around in our trees, those and hornbills. also we think the African fish eagle lives in one of our trees. You get used to the ants crawling on you – just brush them off. Same with the green and brown spiders, but I brush those off faster. If I turn on my computer at night, I get a swarm of tiny insects trying to get to the light even if its within my mosquito net. Kinda annoying.
We can watch the sun rise over lake Victoria in the morning, and the moon at night. During the day we watch the thunderstorms move across the bay and sometimes even come toward us. One recent night we had a terrific thunderstorm, terrific in the old sense of the word. The kind where each thunder shakes the walls, where the rain runs off the roof in literal sheets of water. Several times the thunder and lightning struck simultaneously, shaking everything. But other nights we can see both the southern cross and the big dipper. Orion is directly above us. The stars are spectacular.
We have internet …sorta. You have to fight for the signal constantly and it might just disappear for several hours. Oh, and if it is there, you can only receive it outside. It takes a lot of patience. Im not even going to try uploading pictures on that bandwidth. Fun times.
We hire some locals during the day to help with moving pieces of the boat. We have had to dredge up our knowledge of levers and basic wheels which we learned in gradeschool. Cuz that’s basically what we use to do work here. We actually moved the several ton hulls using levers – pretty cool actually.
The other day we received several Ugandan university students as workers. We had to figure out where to put them in the already cramped guys room. I didn’t know Uganda had nerds, but here they are. We will see if any of them can do any actual work.
The idea is to have Sunday in town and work the rest of the days. We will see how that works out since we don’t have a car dedicated to us presently. We have to borrow someone’s car from kampala (an hour and half away) or take public transportation.
Oh, and the “facilities” are pit toilets which were built 10 years ago. Not fun times. It gets better with the showers which are a row of cement rooms with a metal roof. You have to bring your own water if you want that. The guys decided to shower in their swim trunks using the hose.
Don’t get the wrong impression, this place might be a natural paradise with lots of insects, but living here is hard. Working is even harder. And the team here has none of the “familiar” to make it that much easier. Welcome to Africa. We all seem to be showing a little more barbarian as time goes on here. America, do you really want us back?
Well, a whole new chapter of this trip has started since the team here moved to focus. Focus is a Ugandan Christian retreat center and sometimes has groups of Christians staying here. We get a dorm with 2 rooms, the round conference room, and access to all facilities. I was going to stay in the dorm with the guys, but since our cook Maureen is also a girl, they decided to put our beds in the kitchen room of our dorm. So we sleep in the kitchen. The guys got the hint after being kicked out several times and me asking for a curtain; they are building us girls a screen divider for the room. The guys all sleep in the other room. We each have our own bunk bed so we sleep on one level and store our stuff on the other. Yay for living out of a suitcase again.
Maureen is an awesome cook. She cooks good Ugandan food and is learning American food. We tell her every day we love her for cooking for us. Its quite the difference from what the house guys fed us in ntinda. This food has more than one kind of seasoning. Also, I don’t think any of us know how to cook for 12 people 3 times a day, and definitely not over coal stoves.
Maureen also prays out loud in lugandan every morning, starting at 5:30 or 6. I have slept in a room with no one else for several years now. Someone’s voice in my room wakes me up. But im slowly getting used to it. Other than both being females, we don’t have much in common. We speak mostly the same language in English. But I had never heard of “source pans” as she put on the list of needed kitchen utensils.
We are far out from town. If we are lucky, we can catch a boda or taxi to the main road. The locals in the villages have begun to recognize us crazy mzungus. This is basically the jungle; bob has seen monkeys. I see amazing birds every day in every color of the rainbow. Look up pictures of great blue turacos, that’s what I see playing around in our trees, those and hornbills. also we think the African fish eagle lives in one of our trees. You get used to the ants crawling on you – just brush them off. Same with the green and brown spiders, but I brush those off faster. If I turn on my computer at night, I get a swarm of tiny insects trying to get to the light even if its within my mosquito net. Kinda annoying.
We can watch the sun rise over lake Victoria in the morning, and the moon at night. During the day we watch the thunderstorms move across the bay and sometimes even come toward us. One recent night we had a terrific thunderstorm, terrific in the old sense of the word. The kind where each thunder shakes the walls, where the rain runs off the roof in literal sheets of water. Several times the thunder and lightning struck simultaneously, shaking everything. But other nights we can see both the southern cross and the big dipper. Orion is directly above us. The stars are spectacular.
We have internet …sorta. You have to fight for the signal constantly and it might just disappear for several hours. Oh, and if it is there, you can only receive it outside. It takes a lot of patience. Im not even going to try uploading pictures on that bandwidth. Fun times.
We hire some locals during the day to help with moving pieces of the boat. We have had to dredge up our knowledge of levers and basic wheels which we learned in gradeschool. Cuz that’s basically what we use to do work here. We actually moved the several ton hulls using levers – pretty cool actually.
The other day we received several Ugandan university students as workers. We had to figure out where to put them in the already cramped guys room. I didn’t know Uganda had nerds, but here they are. We will see if any of them can do any actual work.
The idea is to have Sunday in town and work the rest of the days. We will see how that works out since we don’t have a car dedicated to us presently. We have to borrow someone’s car from kampala (an hour and half away) or take public transportation.
Oh, and the “facilities” are pit toilets which were built 10 years ago. Not fun times. It gets better with the showers which are a row of cement rooms with a metal roof. You have to bring your own water if you want that. The guys decided to shower in their swim trunks using the hose.
Don’t get the wrong impression, this place might be a natural paradise with lots of insects, but living here is hard. Working is even harder. And the team here has none of the “familiar” to make it that much easier. Welcome to Africa. We all seem to be showing a little more barbarian as time goes on here. America, do you really want us back?
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