I don't know how many of you are still reading (I wouldn't blame anyone for giving up ... it's taken me awhile to get back in the swing of things and thus, my last post is untimely), but thought I'd give a last update about my experience.
It was definitely very hard to leave my host family. Really hard. Two nights before we left, our parents arranged a goodbye dinner with Ellen's and Katie's parents. They cooked all day long, preparing the biggest spread of food I've ever seen ... we had French Fries made from Irish potatoes, chicken, beef, fish, matooke, chipatis, watermelon, pineapple, pumpkin, spinach, g-nut sauce, spaghetti, and much, much more. While gathered around our parents' living room table, we laughed and reminisced about the summer while my dad's Celine Dion music video blasted in the background. At the end of the meal, they whipped out a surprise ginger cake, beautifully decorated with ribbons and silver candy balls that said, "Farewell dear." on the top, as well as Fanta and Mountain Dew (considered desserts there). While we were munching on our sugary delights, both my dad and Ellen's dad gave farewell speeches. My dad started his out by saying, "God has truly blessed me with this opportunity to have two beautiful and unfortunately temporary daughters..." His eloquence and sincerity were so sweet, and made me teary-eyed.
On our last day of work, we got to witness the Mushroom Project group hang their first batch of gardens. It was an exhilarating day. Henri had purchased his own water-misting can for the occasion (really taking to heart what Ronnie, our mushroom expert, told them about making sure the water is not dumped in "buckets," but rather, "like dew"). Ronnie showed the group how to hang the gardens from the rafters of the shed, attaching four bags, evenly spaced, to each string. He spun the string a little bit and sprayed water from the misting can, causing the four bags to look like merry-go-rounds in a rainstorm. He said this would ensure even water distribution. Everyone was awe-inspired by this nifty technique. They stared with wide eyes and smiles, and the men whispered, "Eh, eh," a vocalization habits of many Ugandan men I encountered. As we left, giving Jjaja our last hug and Henry our last handshake, all the Mushroom Project participants came to us to demonstrate heartfelt appreciation for our work. Even though they knew we didn't speak Luganda, they talked to us in their local tongue anyways, conferring their thanks in passionate gesticulations and earnest facial expressions. They told us, through a translator, to never forget them. I think that'd be impossible.
After spending Friday night at Hairly Lemon, an island "resort" (which basically meant free mosquito nets and a steady stock of candles to light the night), we headed to the Uganda airport Saturday morning. Boy, were we not expecting the troubles we'd have there. As we were in line waiting to go through security, a message flashed across the flight information screen informing us that our flight to Nairobi had been cancelled due to a strike on Kenya Airways. Not knowing when the strike would be over, and unable to provide us any alternative routes out of the country, the airline put us up in a hotel in Entebbe. Although I loved my time in Uganda, I was ready to leave, so this news was kind of disheartening. When we returned the next day, the airline wasn't being very forward about our options. Because we were a group of 20, they put us on the backburner on several occasions, not wanting to go through the hassle of arranging a flight for such a large group. We appointed several of the most argumentative people in our group to go to the head honcho behind the airline operations to negotiate ticket deals. After hours of heated arguments, they secured us a flight at 11:00 pm that night to Kenya. We heard reports from travelers who had just arrived from Kenya that the Nairobi airport was a madhouse ... hundreds of people stranded, fights breaking out, little organization or efficiency in rebooking flights, etc. So we prepared for the worst. These observations were unfounded, as we arrived in Nairobi with little trouble in what looked like a rather deserted airport. It wasn't until after we were able to book flights out the next afternoon that masses of people started arriving, forming lines that stretched from one end of the airport to another. Fights definitely did break out. We were all a tad delirious from lack of sleep (even though many of us brought home woven African mats, they didn't do much to provide comfort on the concrete airport floor), so we didn't pay much attention. So Sunday afternoon we flew to Amsterdam. We then had to go through the whole process again of securing tickets for such a large group. The Dutch were SOOOO hospitable to us ... giving us airtime to call our parents, frequent flier miles for future flights, food vouchers, a swanky hotel to stay in on Monday night, and the best continental breakfast I've ever had. We had to fly out Tuesday on five different flights ... mine left at three to go to Detroit. I then had to get a connection to Chicago at night. Then I woke up at 5 on Wednesday morning to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Nashville. What a whirlwind of a trip!
Since being back, I've been pigging out on dairy products (my body went on system overload the first couple days), enjoying the luxury of toilet seats and water pressure, and getting re-used to caffeine, as my classes started last Wednesday. It's been kind of hard for me to get used to the excess of everything, and with Vanderbilt being home to many well-to-do kids, it makes the transition all the more shocking. I'm excited, though, to get to work seeing how I can transfer pieces of what I learned to my service at Vanderbilt. I've already entered talks with several kids from my scholarship program about how sustainable business solutions, like the Mushroom Project, could be used in Nashville ... outsourcing the t-shirt-making for clubs and organizations at Vandy to the men at the Dismas House (a skill-building organization that works with homeless men in the resume-building and job application process), or teaching Hispanic immigrants living in an apartment complex nearby how to collectively make and sell popsicles to local businesses. This summer provided me with such a different perspective of the terms "service" and "sustainability," and I am looking forward to seeing how those shifts in thinking play themselves out in my future endeavors.
Thanks to all who read my blog this summer. Your comments and support meant a WHOLE bunch to me. I hope everyone's summers ended well, and I am glad to be back and close to (or at least on the same continent as) those I know and love.
Abby
Monday, August 31, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Goodbye
This will probably be the last blog I post before departing on Saturday. I will make sure and post one or two follow-up blogs to let everyone know I got home safely and make some kind of closing
statements :).
I haven't responded until now because the evening after the last post. I got sick again with the same symptoms as last week minus the vomiting. The FSD doctor again ruled out malaria and said it was probably leftover from the bacterial infection of last week. She is currently analyzing my stool sample (which I'm sure you all love to know!) to make sure I don't have a parasite. I don't know how accurate her results will be, given that she had me deliver it in a dingy film cannister. I can't wait to be back in the American health care system again.
I learned on Wednesday evening that earlier on in the day, when our team had split up (Bryan, Frankie, Ellen, and Katie going to Buziika to watch Jjaja present and explain our 16-page comprehensive mushroom-growing guide to the Starter Set; Daisy and I went into town with our dad so he could help us bargain for gifts), the Buziika group witnessed something horrendous. A man from Buziika had stolen a motorcycle boda boda and was going to get away with it, had a large community mob not descended upon him in the road a couple doors down from Jjaja's to beat him to death. Katie said she had to keep from gagging when she saw his head smashed into the concrete and blood mingling with the dirt on the side of the road. The mob asked our team
(assuming we were medical personnel, since we are white and travel to Buziika in a St. Francis ambulance) if we could "dispose of the body." Obviously our team refused. When I told my dad about the event later that night, he didn't seem surprised. He said mob justice is inevitable when a country has a police force as corrupt as Uganda's.
Katie, Ellen, and I went running on Wednesday evening. To cool off before showering, I sat on the back porch and for some reason got in a very contemplative mood. The run had been gorgeous. The sun has begun setting earlier, so we ended up running back in fading purple light. The grassy hills, cornfields, and pineapple plantations surrounded us as we ran by skinny men on rusty bicycles hauling bundles of dark green plantains, firewood, and jerry cans of water. I remember thinking at the beginning of this trip that all of Uganda was covered in bright orange dirt. I don't know if it was the way the sun was hitting the ground, my imagination, or the true nature of the dust on our run, but I noted patches of red dirt, mixed with every shade of brown and gray under the sun. Jinja could have its own exclusively brown Crayola crayon box. As I sat on the porch, I thought about what I will miss from this trip: knowing the trick behind opening the back gate; my naked neighbor babies with rainbow beads around their bloated stomachs, their belly buttons looking like a fifth limb due to malnourishment; the hugs I get every morning from Junior, a neighborhood boy; the golden moon that twinkles through the holes in the tin roof of the shower room; the zebra butterflies that were now fluttering before my eyes, swimming in the pink and cloudy sky with the smoke from charcoal fire pits behind my house, probably preparing steamed matooke; waking up to the sound of Aljazeera on TV or traditional spiritual music on the radio; Jjaja's blue eyes and the times I'll catch her staring at me during a meeting (when she's caught, she gets a goofy grin on her face as she sticks out her bubble-gum-colored tongue at me); my mom's laugh; my dad's stories. I'm going to miss Uganda and its people dearly.
On Thursday, we brought in Ronnie, a mushroom marketing expert, to talk to Jjaja and the starter set about how they should harvest the mushrooms and prepare them for sale (dried, fresh, packaged, etc.), as well as how they should connect themselves to local markets. He was an incredible speaker, and it was so uplifting to see every participant get out pens and paper to take notes. Everyone was very inquisitive and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about doing everything possible to maximize profit. After the seminar, the Starter Set had an impromptu meeting in which they semi-restructured our suggestions for marketing strategy. This was probably one of my most favorite moments of the trip: REALLY seeing that these guys were taking ownership of the project. Even though all of the responsibilities for the trip have been turned over to Jjaja and the Starter Set now, they are all still extremely appreciative of the work we put in to buy them materials and get them started. I've received more hugs and handshakes in the past few weeks than I ever have in my life. Generosity is generally highly valued in Ugandan society, so they want to be sure we know they've recognized our effort.
On Friday, two of Aljazeera's top stories in the morning were about 1) 13 bodies being discovered in Juarez as a result of the still escalating drug-related violence and 2) riots in Honduras's capital of Tegucigalpa. I was in Juarez in March 2007, about a year before violence got bad, and I was in Tegucigalpa in February of this year. It's eerie to think how quickly stability can change. I couldn't help but wonder if something is on the verge of happening in Uganda. It was just announced that Uganda has run out of anti-retroviral medication, meaning Saint Francis and all other health clinics in the country can't provide sufficient medication for HIV/AIDS patients. My dad seems to have a very pessimistic view about the current state of affairs in his country, and probably rightfully so. We went to a lecture in Kampala on Saturday called "The Role of Foreign Aid in Developing Third World Countries," taught by a professor at Makerere University's Women and Gender Studies Department. He mentioned that Uganda is the third most corrupt country in the world (this was shocking to me, and I'd like to fact-check it when I get home), in which $250 million are lost to corruption annually. Case in point: Daisy and I were asking our dad to compare political stability and fairness amongst all the African nations. He went country by country (without a map, mind you) and made highly intelligent comments about the leadership in each country. When talking about his own country, he mentioned that although the government discovered bountiful oil reserves in the western region six years ago, that information wasn't released to the media until this year, giving the government plenty of time to siphon money off for their own luxurious expenditures. He accused the government of "perpetual deliberate robbery." He also mentioned that Uganda's Parliament would be a perfect case study in how a dictator can manipulate his law-making body to just rubber stamp anything and everything that comes across the table. I was not aware at how bad the political situation is here. Before we came over, Yoweri Museveni was painted in relatively positive light, especially since he has been internationally hailed for reducing HIV rates (which emerged in the late 1980s) from 29% to 6%. I know that those numbers are now on the rise because one of Uganda's biggest AIDS-related donors is PEPFAR (US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which specifies that funds can ONLY be used in abstinence-only prevention programs. And now with the shortage of ARVs, Ugandans are likely to suffer even more.
Sunday was a very good day. We went to our last Ugandan Mass. I smelled really good because my mom surprise-sprinkled powdered (and sparkly) perfume on me as I walked out the door. During the homily, the Congolese priest called out the muzungus in the crowd (namely, me, Daisy, Katie, and Ellen). He said he was glad to see us at Mass because "people in the Western nations don't make religion a priority like they should." As we were walking out of Mass with our parents, past vendors of jeweled rosaries and raspberry popsicles, my dad apologized for the priest's comment, saying that he thought there was just as much spiritual apathy in his country as there was in his. I spent the afternoon washing dishes and learning Luganda songs with my mom while Daisy and my dad watched the brand new Harry Potter movie (pirated, of course). I eventually was forced by my dad to abandon the dishes and go inside because he was afraid the sun would ruin my skin. Ever since my legs peeled terribly after rafting, and since I explained why white people's skin is so much more sensitive than dark-skinned people's, he's been protective of my pearly complexion. I ended the night finishing The Devil Came on Horseback, an eye-witness account of the genocide in Darfur. I forgot how fun reading for pleasure can be. Throughout the duration of this trip, I've plowed through Mountains Beyond Mountains (an account of the famous Paul Farmer, founder of the non-profit Partners in Health and influential doctor in Haiti's Central Plateau, Peru's shantytowns, and Russia's prisons), Blue Like Jazz (subtitle: "Non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality"), Purpose-Driven Life, Things Fall Apart, and Last King of Scotland. I'm about halfway through a book written by Paul Farmer himself called Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. All have been very enlightening :).
This week will be pretty uneventful, since our project is basically completed. I'll be sure and let everyone know how the goodbye ceremonies go!!
'Til I reach the States...
Abby
statements :).
I haven't responded until now because the evening after the last post. I got sick again with the same symptoms as last week minus the vomiting. The FSD doctor again ruled out malaria and said it was probably leftover from the bacterial infection of last week. She is currently analyzing my stool sample (which I'm sure you all love to know!) to make sure I don't have a parasite. I don't know how accurate her results will be, given that she had me deliver it in a dingy film cannister. I can't wait to be back in the American health care system again.
I learned on Wednesday evening that earlier on in the day, when our team had split up (Bryan, Frankie, Ellen, and Katie going to Buziika to watch Jjaja present and explain our 16-page comprehensive mushroom-growing guide to the Starter Set; Daisy and I went into town with our dad so he could help us bargain for gifts), the Buziika group witnessed something horrendous. A man from Buziika had stolen a motorcycle boda boda and was going to get away with it, had a large community mob not descended upon him in the road a couple doors down from Jjaja's to beat him to death. Katie said she had to keep from gagging when she saw his head smashed into the concrete and blood mingling with the dirt on the side of the road. The mob asked our team
(assuming we were medical personnel, since we are white and travel to Buziika in a St. Francis ambulance) if we could "dispose of the body." Obviously our team refused. When I told my dad about the event later that night, he didn't seem surprised. He said mob justice is inevitable when a country has a police force as corrupt as Uganda's.
Katie, Ellen, and I went running on Wednesday evening. To cool off before showering, I sat on the back porch and for some reason got in a very contemplative mood. The run had been gorgeous. The sun has begun setting earlier, so we ended up running back in fading purple light. The grassy hills, cornfields, and pineapple plantations surrounded us as we ran by skinny men on rusty bicycles hauling bundles of dark green plantains, firewood, and jerry cans of water. I remember thinking at the beginning of this trip that all of Uganda was covered in bright orange dirt. I don't know if it was the way the sun was hitting the ground, my imagination, or the true nature of the dust on our run, but I noted patches of red dirt, mixed with every shade of brown and gray under the sun. Jinja could have its own exclusively brown Crayola crayon box. As I sat on the porch, I thought about what I will miss from this trip: knowing the trick behind opening the back gate; my naked neighbor babies with rainbow beads around their bloated stomachs, their belly buttons looking like a fifth limb due to malnourishment; the hugs I get every morning from Junior, a neighborhood boy; the golden moon that twinkles through the holes in the tin roof of the shower room; the zebra butterflies that were now fluttering before my eyes, swimming in the pink and cloudy sky with the smoke from charcoal fire pits behind my house, probably preparing steamed matooke; waking up to the sound of Aljazeera on TV or traditional spiritual music on the radio; Jjaja's blue eyes and the times I'll catch her staring at me during a meeting (when she's caught, she gets a goofy grin on her face as she sticks out her bubble-gum-colored tongue at me); my mom's laugh; my dad's stories. I'm going to miss Uganda and its people dearly.
On Thursday, we brought in Ronnie, a mushroom marketing expert, to talk to Jjaja and the starter set about how they should harvest the mushrooms and prepare them for sale (dried, fresh, packaged, etc.), as well as how they should connect themselves to local markets. He was an incredible speaker, and it was so uplifting to see every participant get out pens and paper to take notes. Everyone was very inquisitive and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about doing everything possible to maximize profit. After the seminar, the Starter Set had an impromptu meeting in which they semi-restructured our suggestions for marketing strategy. This was probably one of my most favorite moments of the trip: REALLY seeing that these guys were taking ownership of the project. Even though all of the responsibilities for the trip have been turned over to Jjaja and the Starter Set now, they are all still extremely appreciative of the work we put in to buy them materials and get them started. I've received more hugs and handshakes in the past few weeks than I ever have in my life. Generosity is generally highly valued in Ugandan society, so they want to be sure we know they've recognized our effort.
On Friday, two of Aljazeera's top stories in the morning were about 1) 13 bodies being discovered in Juarez as a result of the still escalating drug-related violence and 2) riots in Honduras's capital of Tegucigalpa. I was in Juarez in March 2007, about a year before violence got bad, and I was in Tegucigalpa in February of this year. It's eerie to think how quickly stability can change. I couldn't help but wonder if something is on the verge of happening in Uganda. It was just announced that Uganda has run out of anti-retroviral medication, meaning Saint Francis and all other health clinics in the country can't provide sufficient medication for HIV/AIDS patients. My dad seems to have a very pessimistic view about the current state of affairs in his country, and probably rightfully so. We went to a lecture in Kampala on Saturday called "The Role of Foreign Aid in Developing Third World Countries," taught by a professor at Makerere University's Women and Gender Studies Department. He mentioned that Uganda is the third most corrupt country in the world (this was shocking to me, and I'd like to fact-check it when I get home), in which $250 million are lost to corruption annually. Case in point: Daisy and I were asking our dad to compare political stability and fairness amongst all the African nations. He went country by country (without a map, mind you) and made highly intelligent comments about the leadership in each country. When talking about his own country, he mentioned that although the government discovered bountiful oil reserves in the western region six years ago, that information wasn't released to the media until this year, giving the government plenty of time to siphon money off for their own luxurious expenditures. He accused the government of "perpetual deliberate robbery." He also mentioned that Uganda's Parliament would be a perfect case study in how a dictator can manipulate his law-making body to just rubber stamp anything and everything that comes across the table. I was not aware at how bad the political situation is here. Before we came over, Yoweri Museveni was painted in relatively positive light, especially since he has been internationally hailed for reducing HIV rates (which emerged in the late 1980s) from 29% to 6%. I know that those numbers are now on the rise because one of Uganda's biggest AIDS-related donors is PEPFAR (US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which specifies that funds can ONLY be used in abstinence-only prevention programs. And now with the shortage of ARVs, Ugandans are likely to suffer even more.
Sunday was a very good day. We went to our last Ugandan Mass. I smelled really good because my mom surprise-sprinkled powdered (and sparkly) perfume on me as I walked out the door. During the homily, the Congolese priest called out the muzungus in the crowd (namely, me, Daisy, Katie, and Ellen). He said he was glad to see us at Mass because "people in the Western nations don't make religion a priority like they should." As we were walking out of Mass with our parents, past vendors of jeweled rosaries and raspberry popsicles, my dad apologized for the priest's comment, saying that he thought there was just as much spiritual apathy in his country as there was in his. I spent the afternoon washing dishes and learning Luganda songs with my mom while Daisy and my dad watched the brand new Harry Potter movie (pirated, of course). I eventually was forced by my dad to abandon the dishes and go inside because he was afraid the sun would ruin my skin. Ever since my legs peeled terribly after rafting, and since I explained why white people's skin is so much more sensitive than dark-skinned people's, he's been protective of my pearly complexion. I ended the night finishing The Devil Came on Horseback, an eye-witness account of the genocide in Darfur. I forgot how fun reading for pleasure can be. Throughout the duration of this trip, I've plowed through Mountains Beyond Mountains (an account of the famous Paul Farmer, founder of the non-profit Partners in Health and influential doctor in Haiti's Central Plateau, Peru's shantytowns, and Russia's prisons), Blue Like Jazz (subtitle: "Non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality"), Purpose-Driven Life, Things Fall Apart, and Last King of Scotland. I'm about halfway through a book written by Paul Farmer himself called Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. All have been very enlightening :).
This week will be pretty uneventful, since our project is basically completed. I'll be sure and let everyone know how the goodbye ceremonies go!!
'Til I reach the States...
Abby
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Winding down some more
I apologize that the length of time between blog posts has been so long recently. I've been less motivated to travel into Jinja after work and have instead been opting to spend more time with my host family as my internship comes to a close (in a week!).
On Saturday, our dad took us to his home village, located about 45 minutes west of Mbikko toward Kampala. We got to see the primary school he attended, the house his dad (also a tailor) built for he and his 13 siblings, the gravestones of his parents and probably 20 of his clan members (he belongs to the clan of "Mamba," a type of fish), and the plot of gardening land his dad left him when he died. We also met two of his cousins, one of which is the headmaster of a two-room schoolhouse made of mud and sticks. The village children who attend this school need only to pay the equivalent of $10 a year to attend, yet some of them can't even cover that and try to trade crops for tuition fees whenever possible. If they can't, they just drop out. We met some of the children who attend the school, and before we left, they gave us two pineapples (one for me and one for Daisy) because they felt so honored that a white person would visit their school. It was heartbreaking accepting the gift, but it just goes to show how important generosity is to the Ugandan people.
Also on Saturday, three episodes of The Bachelorette arrived in the mail, kindly provided by my USA mom. Katie and Ellen are also huge fans, so we had been anxiously anticipating its arrival. My Uganda dad was also eager to watch, due to how much I had been talking about the show. So on Saturday evening, Katie and Ellen brought over some dark chocolate and hibiscus wine they had purchased at an Mbikko winery and we all gathered around my family's TV to watch. My Uganda dad was hilarious. Like I mentioned in my last blog post, he likes to clarify everything. So with each commercial break, he would get his gossipy groove on and say things like, "OK, so Wes is the one we don't like right? He's a snake. And Reid ... now I think Reid and Jillian are very natural together. The conversation does not seem to come as easily for Jill and Kiptyn." For all those who care, he DID NOT approve of Ed's return. He thought it was insincere, and that he shouldn't have left in the first place if he was so crazy about her. It was odd seeing American commercials again. I never realized how many food commercials we have (which, needless to say, intensified my cravings for familiar food to a painful level). My group has been so American-food-hungry for the past week that we've started making lists of the food we're going to eat upon returning. On my list is Cap'n Crunch cereal, mozzarella sticks and a cherry limeade from Sonic, graham crackers and Funfetti frosting, and frozen grapes, to name a few. Apart from the food commercials, I was also taken aback by my reactions to some of the product advertisements. There was one in particular at which I cringed for fear of what my Uganda dad was thinking while watching: it was for a laundry sheet. This woman was saying the these new-and-improved laundry sheets made her life SO much easier because it cleaned her drying machine while de-fuzzing her clothes at the same time. She said the only thing it didn't do was fold her clothes. I couldn't help but think that, at that moment, my Uganda mom was probably out back scrubbing her clothes with a scentless bar of soap, wringing the clothes by hand, hanging them on the clothesline (thus putting them at risk for mango maggot infestation ... the little critters like to hatch in moist clothing), and then ironing them to kill the maggots. My dad didn't have a visible reaction, but it made me realize how cynical I'm becoming about where Americans (myself included) place their priorities.
Sunday I went bungee jumping over the Nile. My parents tagged along to "offer protection in case I got scared." My dad brought his camera and videoed the whole thing: my preparation, the jump, the post-jump interview. The jump itself was crazy. The company we went through was very legitimate and well-run, but I got a little nervous when all they did to strap me in was tie a towel around my ankles and attach a caribeaner (spelling?) to a braided elastic rope. Then as I'm edging myself to the end of the platform (all the time trying to avoid looking down), the professional guy points to my right and says, "Oh! Lucky you! You get to jump toward that crocodile!" Yep, camouflaged in the bushes at the base of a cliff was a crocodile. I didn't have a choice, because they counted down from 3 then pushed me. I screamed the loudest I've ever screamed, flapped my arms in all directions, and tried to catch my bearings as I bounced around while also trying to ignore the pounding headache I was getting due to blood rushing to my head. According to my dad, though, "My execution was pristine, in the way I jumped so gracefully off the platform." It was a fun fun day. It was amusing to see my parents so into it.
I have to go to dinner now...I will try and return either later tonight or sometime within the next couple days to finish this post and get everyone up-to-date!
Abby
On Saturday, our dad took us to his home village, located about 45 minutes west of Mbikko toward Kampala. We got to see the primary school he attended, the house his dad (also a tailor) built for he and his 13 siblings, the gravestones of his parents and probably 20 of his clan members (he belongs to the clan of "Mamba," a type of fish), and the plot of gardening land his dad left him when he died. We also met two of his cousins, one of which is the headmaster of a two-room schoolhouse made of mud and sticks. The village children who attend this school need only to pay the equivalent of $10 a year to attend, yet some of them can't even cover that and try to trade crops for tuition fees whenever possible. If they can't, they just drop out. We met some of the children who attend the school, and before we left, they gave us two pineapples (one for me and one for Daisy) because they felt so honored that a white person would visit their school. It was heartbreaking accepting the gift, but it just goes to show how important generosity is to the Ugandan people.
Also on Saturday, three episodes of The Bachelorette arrived in the mail, kindly provided by my USA mom. Katie and Ellen are also huge fans, so we had been anxiously anticipating its arrival. My Uganda dad was also eager to watch, due to how much I had been talking about the show. So on Saturday evening, Katie and Ellen brought over some dark chocolate and hibiscus wine they had purchased at an Mbikko winery and we all gathered around my family's TV to watch. My Uganda dad was hilarious. Like I mentioned in my last blog post, he likes to clarify everything. So with each commercial break, he would get his gossipy groove on and say things like, "OK, so Wes is the one we don't like right? He's a snake. And Reid ... now I think Reid and Jillian are very natural together. The conversation does not seem to come as easily for Jill and Kiptyn." For all those who care, he DID NOT approve of Ed's return. He thought it was insincere, and that he shouldn't have left in the first place if he was so crazy about her. It was odd seeing American commercials again. I never realized how many food commercials we have (which, needless to say, intensified my cravings for familiar food to a painful level). My group has been so American-food-hungry for the past week that we've started making lists of the food we're going to eat upon returning. On my list is Cap'n Crunch cereal, mozzarella sticks and a cherry limeade from Sonic, graham crackers and Funfetti frosting, and frozen grapes, to name a few. Apart from the food commercials, I was also taken aback by my reactions to some of the product advertisements. There was one in particular at which I cringed for fear of what my Uganda dad was thinking while watching: it was for a laundry sheet. This woman was saying the these new-and-improved laundry sheets made her life SO much easier because it cleaned her drying machine while de-fuzzing her clothes at the same time. She said the only thing it didn't do was fold her clothes. I couldn't help but think that, at that moment, my Uganda mom was probably out back scrubbing her clothes with a scentless bar of soap, wringing the clothes by hand, hanging them on the clothesline (thus putting them at risk for mango maggot infestation ... the little critters like to hatch in moist clothing), and then ironing them to kill the maggots. My dad didn't have a visible reaction, but it made me realize how cynical I'm becoming about where Americans (myself included) place their priorities.
Sunday I went bungee jumping over the Nile. My parents tagged along to "offer protection in case I got scared." My dad brought his camera and videoed the whole thing: my preparation, the jump, the post-jump interview. The jump itself was crazy. The company we went through was very legitimate and well-run, but I got a little nervous when all they did to strap me in was tie a towel around my ankles and attach a caribeaner (spelling?) to a braided elastic rope. Then as I'm edging myself to the end of the platform (all the time trying to avoid looking down), the professional guy points to my right and says, "Oh! Lucky you! You get to jump toward that crocodile!" Yep, camouflaged in the bushes at the base of a cliff was a crocodile. I didn't have a choice, because they counted down from 3 then pushed me. I screamed the loudest I've ever screamed, flapped my arms in all directions, and tried to catch my bearings as I bounced around while also trying to ignore the pounding headache I was getting due to blood rushing to my head. According to my dad, though, "My execution was pristine, in the way I jumped so gracefully off the platform." It was a fun fun day. It was amusing to see my parents so into it.
I have to go to dinner now...I will try and return either later tonight or sometime within the next couple days to finish this post and get everyone up-to-date!
Abby
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
