On the way back from Seya Orphanage it started pouring so hard that we had to park some random place and hide inside this school room. While waiting there these 2 little boys ran over and gave us plates of corn. It was so sweet of them! Their corn definately doesn't taste the same though. The other one is a picture taken right when we found the Mabira forest sign after walking for FOREVER. We were all REALLY happy to see it. One of the pictures is of the kids in our neighborhood running towards us after seeing us come out of our gate. Another picture is me showing some of the posters we drew for the teachers and then had to laminate.

The Multi Tasking Soap

On Tuesday Dan got back from Jinja. He’s feeling much better now and doesn’t have hives or a swollen face anymore.

A group of girls and I went to the internet, bank, market and supermarket. While standing in line for the ATM a man totally just walked right up and started using it, even though it was our turn. I’m getting used to that now because that happens a lot. Oh well, don’t mind us. We were only in line for twenty minutes. It doesn't matter where you are, expect to be butted in line.

When we got back Ry and I did our laundry. That is quite the African experience. We fill up three buckets; one for soaking, washing and rinsing. We use this soap that is super classy. It is used for washing dishes, clothes and your body. I bet you all had a multi tasking soap just like me! By the end of my laundry I start getting so lazy that I don’t even care if there are still dirt spots on it or the soap isn’t completely washed out of it. Drying the clothes also takes forever because of the humidity. It seems like once they are almost dry, it starts pouring outside and they get wet once again. The clothes also stretch out super big (girls-remember the undies?) and get holes on them from rubbing them so hard in order to get clean. All of this only makes me gain more respect for the African women who do this for their entire families.

Later that day we drove to Mukono to go to a teacher training meeting given by the George Wythe group (contacts of Help international). It’s gotten to the point where it’s almost weird to see other white people besides us. Every once in a while one of us will come back to the house and announce that they saw another white person in town. Weird. During the training one of the ladies that was talking was telling about a story that happened like one week ago where she was laying in bed and all of a sudden she thought to herself, “Oh my gosh. I am in Africa. WHAT AM I DOING HERE?” It’s funny because there have been many times in the past three weeks where I have been laying in bed and have thought to myself that exact thing. It gets difficult sometimes and it feels overwhelming. There are times when I feel like there is no way that I could ever make a difference to these people because there is so much to do. Often times I have wondered if I am the only one here who feels like that. It’s nice to know that other people do. Anyway, the meeting was really great and we all felt inspired after.

We arrived home to a wonderful dinner made by Irene. You’d be amazed at how fast that food gets devoured. After dinner a bunch of the girls went to lay in bed and talk about home. I always love doing that. Ty also called so that was nice to talk to him.

Garbage surprise

Ah! The boys went through our garbage and look what they found. They had no clue what they were, but they were using them as whistles. It's completely disgusting but it is kind of funny at the same time

Thursday I went to St. Edwards Primary School again to help the teachers make their posters. I know this sounds weird, but drawing and coloring the posters is actually really relaxing and fun for me. Some of the things they had us draw were kind of weird…..and by weird I mean probably unnecessary. I drew a picture of a girl with a sling on, and a boy with a splint on his leg. Yep, it was difficult. When we told them we were leaving they told us we had to wait so that they could make us lunch. Most of the places here do that for you and it is rude if you don’t wait. About an hour later we got our food and it was a huge bowl of my favorite African food-matoke. Oh man, I was struggling to eat it all. Each bite was forced down my throat. I was really happy that I had my crystal light handy though so that I could wash it all down. On the way home I stopped at the internet café and researched goal setting for Trent and Rylee’s projects. Les and I are assigned to teach those for both those groups.

Friday we took a long drive to Iganga to go check out the orphanage there. This was one of the contacts from the HELP group that was here last year. The drive was AMAZING. It was an hour and a half, and although it was very crowded, it was nice to just be able to sit there and relax and listen to my ipod. It was the most “alone” time I’ve had in quite a while. The man sitting next to me was asking me all about my ipod because he had never seen one before. Try explaining one of those to somebody who doesn’t have a clue what it is or what it does- it’s not as easy as you would think. I let him take a headphone and listen for a second. Once we got to the orphanage the children ran out to greet us. They took us on a short tour of the orphanage. This was one of the nicest ones here. It’s weird to call something like that nice because to our standards it would be considered a dump. Anyway, Heidi brought some sour skittles and decided to give them to the kids. They were attacking us! Heidi had to throw the bag at them before they would believe that they were really gone. Then for a few more hours we just sat and played with the kids. Some of the volunteers and kids made the paper bead necklaces, others danced. After this whole thing we all talked about the differences we saw in the kids that lived in the nicer orphanages and had more experiences with white people, and the kids who lived in the not so nice ones. There was actually a big difference. Once we were ready to leave, they told us we had to wait for the lunch that was “on the way”. Two hours later we got a nice meal of rice, cassava and beans. It was such a relief that we got to serve ourselves and that there wasn’t anything too nasty there. When walking back to the road to try and get a taxi back I almost got hit by a car. The people are all crazy drivers and I swear they have no laws for driving whatsoever. Anyway, all the people around us just started laughing. How is getting hit by a car funny? We also found a supermarket that had diet coke. Everyone bought like 20 cans because they don’t have that in Lugazi. The taxi ride home was crazy! Just picture this: a taxi the size of a mini van with 23 people shoved in it, luggage, a turkey, and a kid throwing up right in front of me. Oh Africa. That night Amber and Corbin presented their project proposal to the group. It was supposed to be 15 minutes and then turned into an hour. Right after that we all went to bed.

Saturday was a great day! We woke up to the rain once again. Can I just add real quick that I have never seen rain come down so hard and so much all at once. When they say rainy season, they mean RAINY SEASON. We waited for it to end before we left to go to Mabira forest for our hike. Our group started out hiking together, and accidentally ended up in 3 different groups going 3 completely different ways. We hiked for quite a while before we decided that we had no idea where we were, or if we were even headed the right direction. We ended up on some random road, and that’s where we really became unsure. We tried asking some little girls walking by us but they had no idea what we were talking about. Luckily about ten minutes later the road lead to the sign for Mabira forest. It was a beautiful sight. When my group was finished we waited for Emily and Trent to show up. Then, we had our driver take us to the American restaurant in Jinja. Oh my word that food is amazing. I got the best smoothie I’ve ever had, plus a basil, tomato, cheese and avocado bagel. Some people stayed after to shop in the stores. They all pretty much have the same things in every store, so it’s basically a contest to find out who can get the lowest prices on the things in there. When we got home we found the pleasant surprise of the electricity off. Ashley and Jackie told us it had been off all day and wasn’t supposed to come back on until Monday. We took advantage of the dark by playing murder in the dark. It was really fun. For everyone who wants to know, Corbin is a liar and deceiver.

Sunday we woke up early to drive back to Jinja for church. We left an hour early but had to wait in the taxi yard for a while so that the taxi could get completely filled up. Because we had to wait so long we were late for church. The church here is seriously amazing though. The people are so strong and when I am around them my testimony gets strengthened so much. They invited us to stay after church for two baptisms too. That was a great experience. After church Les, Ry and I went to the American restaurant. I’ll probably be talking about it a lot so from now on it will be referred to by its name, Ginger. Once again it was amazing. This time I got pancakes that tasted like crepes. On them they put this lemon sauce and sprinkled sugar. I have been craving it every day since then. When we were finished we tried to get on the computers. After 15 minutes of nothing showing up on the screen we all sort of gave up. Trying to find a taxi after was a nightmare. Rylee and I found ourselves arguing with the driver over 500 shillings (yeah, like 30 cents). My family will tell you I’ve always been a tightwad, but now I will finally admit to it. Anyway, Leslie proved to be the voice of reason. We gave up the 500 shillings for a ride home.

Monday we all went to the hospitals. We waited for an hour for the lady we had our appointment with, to show up. She never did, but another lady came to give us a tour around the hospital. The whole thing made me really sad. I don’t see how you could leave that hospital without a disease. The children’s ward smelled of the strongest urine smell I’ve ever smelled before. Most of the people were there for malaria or aids. It made me really glad that in America we don’t face those problems like Africa does. The sad thing about it is that most people don’t know how to take care of it or prevent it either. Monday night was an exciting experience. Dan, who is allergic to peanuts, accidentally ate peanuts in a sauce covering his matoke. They rushed him to the Jinja hospital as soon as they could. By the way, Jinja is 45 minutes away. Once again I found something that I take for granted. The hospitals in America are amazing. I never realized how safe they make me feel, and how much I trust them. It’s nice to know that if I go to the hospital it will be clean, and the people will actually know what they are doing.

Before I end this super long blog I want to add a few more things. Our power came back on late Sunday afternoon-just as the water went out. It is back on now though, so I won’t complain.

picture explanations

Jambo everybody! I hope you are all doing great (and by all I mean the 3 of you that actually read this blog). So, after many attempts to post pictures I finally got them up today! I can't even tell you how happy that makes me! It took 45 minutes today so I hope you enjoy. I just wanted to write a little something about the pictures real quick. The one with the kids peeking through the wood crack is probably one of my most favorites! That day we went to Sanyu primary school to talk to the headmaster. The kids weren't in school then, but the neighborhood kids were all around. When we went through the school rooms the kids followed us to the rooms, and then sat in the doorways and peeked through the holes in the walls just to be able to see us. I thought it was really cute. Then there's a picture of me drawing with a billion kids circling me. That one is when we were at Hope Orphanage in Seya. It started raining really hard so I went inside to play with the kids till the rain stopped. I pulled out a notebook and was only going to draw one picture for one of the kids but then they circled me and all wanted pictures. I am absolutely terrible and drawing, so you can imagine what my pictures looked like. But I seriously loved it. For my favorite little boy (Mathius) I wrote down the words to I am a child of god. We went back to that orphanage about 4 days later and right as we got there he grabbed my arm and out of his pocket he pulled out the paper that i had given him. It made me super excited! The last picture is me at the orphanage playing on the keyboard. Some of those kids were actually way good. The one to the right of me is Mathius (he's in the red) and then his cute cross eyed little brother ronnie is next to him. I don't have any more time to write about this week but when I get a chance i'll give another update!

Quick week at a glance

This week has been going by really fast. Sunday we were able to attend an LDS meeting in Jinja. I always love going to church in other places besides Utah because I love to see how it is the same everywhere you go! The people were all awesome there. They even had fans on the inside of the building.

After church some of us stayed to go eat at this amazing restaurant. Jinja has a lot of tourists so the food was very Americanized. It was awesome and we all decided that it’s a good thing we don’t have that restaurant close by us or else we’d be spending all of our money there.

Monday we had our first meeting with the children with disabilities group and their mothers. The range of disabilities was large. The children were all so cute and I wanted to spend the whole day with them. When we told the parents that we would be having meetings with them once a week and that during the meetings there would be volunteers there to play with their children, they all clapped. As we left, one of the mothers there gave us two avocados and a mango. Rylee Scott is the project lead for this group, and she’s freakin awesome.

Tuesday I went to the Hope orphanage in Seya with Corbo and Les. The point of going there was to do manual labor with the chicken coops, pig pen and school, but they didn’t have enough people there to help, so we weren’t needed. While trying to find things to do instead, Les and I opened beans from their pods. It took us fifteen minutes to get enough for one dinner serving size. I can’t even imagine having to do that for a whole orphanage of children. I know it sounds weird, but it made me grateful that I don’t have to do that in order to get my food.

That night we had the awesome experience of eating half our dinner in the dark. The power went out for about 20 minutes, and the water went off for about four hours. Sometimes they just go off randomly.

Wednesday I went to St. Edwards Primary School. A group of us went up to help the teachers with their lesson plans, and to make posters for their “classrooms”. The children are now on their “Holy Break” which means the end of the term and a month of no school. They start back up next week, so the teachers really needed our help.

So, Michelle made it clear to me that I’m doing a terrible job of updating my blog. I have some time now so I figured, why not?

I feel like I could write pages and pages of things that have happened and stuff that I have noticed, but I’ll try to keep this short.

We live in a village called Lugazi down here in Uganda. It’s one of the poorer villages here. The people are very friendly and they love the “mzungus”. If the children see that you are walking passed them or their house they will run as fast as they can to catch up to you and say “hi” or hold your hand. Sometimes they even fight over who gets to hold it or who gets to walk next to you. In school they are taught how to start a conversation with us, and so they always say “how are you? I am fine”. A lot of times they’ll say that even when you don’t give any response or ask them how they are doing.

Many of the children here can’t afford to go to school, so the ones that can, really appreciate and love school. The clothes they wear are all secondhand clothes. Most have holes and tears all over them.

The house that we’re staying in is one of the nicest houses here in Lugazi. I’d say that it is in the top five. It is one of the few with a gate surrounding it. It has an actual toilet that flushes (sometimes) and a shower (that has terrible water pressure). There are cockroaches every once in a while. We all sleep under mosquito nets. In my room there are seven girls. There is also a boy room with five boys and two girl rooms with two girls in each. As you can imagine, the house is very crowded. At night we have a guard with an AK47.

For dinner we have a hired cook. She makes good food, but it’s basically the same thing every night; rice, beans, cabbage, passion fruit juice, chipate and some other random dish. The people here eat a lot of what is called matoke. It’s plantains that are steamed and have the same texture as mashed potatoes. They are gross! When people offer you food here it is rude to not accept, and even more rude to not eat all the food that they give you. When the cook brings all the food out it is best to start filling your plate as soon as possible before it’s all gone. Somehow we are all starving by the time we eat.

Everything is super cheap! There are 1,600 shillings to one American dollar. To give you an idea, you can get a pineapple for 1,000 shillings or about 13 large bananas for about 500 shillings.

This last weekend we went and rafted the Nile, and then slept in the dormitories. The Nile has the largest commercially run hole, and is said to be the best rafting in the world. I was really scared to go, but ended up having a great time (until the last rapid where I almost died). While on the Nile we saw a black cobra. It was pretty awesome and really scary at the same time. I bought the video of the rapids so when I get back you can all check that out. I know that’s what you all want to do J.

The projects are all starting to take off. I was a project leader for orphanages and then it didn’t work out and I decided I’d rather work on other projects so I gave the lead to Heidi. I have started going to the meetings for the children with disabilities and also i've been helping with the elementary school stuff.


sorry guys.....ran out of time but i'll update again as soon as i can.