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.