Here is Your Hen!

Ogamba ki? Ki kati? What’s up?

Since I have reached the resource center at 6:45 AM, after having left for school at 5:55 and waking up at 5:15, I thought it would be a good time to catch up on my blog. For some reason, my little brother had to be at school at 6:30 AM and thus we had to leave very very early. The resource center wasn’t even open by the time we got here at 6:25. I don’t understand my family sometimes, especially when they wake me up at 5:30 and expect me to be ready to leave ASAP, so I’m starting to become REALLY excited about the prospect of living on my own by the start of next week.

But anyways, about our Eastern Excursion! The purpose of this excursion was to learn more about life in rural Uganda, and to spend 3 nights in a rural homestay in the county of Busia near the border of Kenya. Our first day of driving brought with it many interesting adventures, the first of which occurred as we crossed the bridge over the Nile river. We had been informed earlier in the semester to be careful when taking pictures of Ugandans and other government buildings and structures. HOWEVER we were definitely not informed that this bridge and the dam were part of the government structures that we weren’t supposed to take pictures of. So when a boy on the program named Eric pulled out his camera and took a picture from the window of our van, all three of our taxis were pulled over by an army official who proceeded to take Eric’s camera away from him and tell us that he would take us all to be locked up for the day! After A LOT of discussion (and hefty bribing by our Academic Directors), they finally deleted the picture and gave the camera back. When we were on our way again, Martha (one of the ADs) shared with us that bribing of government and army officials, as well as policemen, is such a way of life here that our ADs can write it off to the office in Vermont and be reimbursed!

After this crazy adventure, we finally reached Mbale, where we had the chance to go to the Child Restoration Outreach organization that rehabilitates and resettles street children in the Mbale area. It turned out to be a really cool program – the kids take classes at the organization, receive meals during the day and basically have a chance to just be kids while they are at the center. After learning about the organization, those of us who wanted to could stay with the kids until lunch time, which of course I did. Together we danced with whichever little child had latched onto us and declared us their favorite Mzungu (my little girl’s name was Sandra). We also took many pictures of them, but I forgot my camera so I’ll have to steal someone else’s once they put them up. I’m so happy I’ll be doing something with children for my practicum in less than a week!

Aside from that, the most exciting thing about the trip was our rural homestay! I was paired with a girl in our group named Lara, which worked out so well for me because she’s very easy going and hilarious, making our interactions with our family who didn’t speak any English much more interesting and enjoyable. It’s very hard to describe what the village that we stayed in was like – it was spread out over many kms, and each family’s compound had between 3 and 6 little huts/houses in it for different activities. Like most other members of the community, our dad was a peasant farmer who did mostly subsistence farming. Lara and I had a difficult time figuring out what our family’s income was like – while they living with mostly only basic necessities, they also owned a radio and a few guitars and could afford to send all of their children to school. Our mom did report though that poverty is a problem with sending kids to school, so they must still struggle. Oh! Basically none of the compounds had electricity or running water, so at night it was dark enough to see the Milky Way! It was the most gorgeous experience that I’ve had since being here and I wish I could have captured it on film.

There were many comical things about our experience in the rural homestay. In Uganda, when you are a guest in someone’s house, the way that they show you that they are happy to see you is by bringing you endless amounts of food and beverages. Luckily, we had a translator help us on our first night there to tell our family that neither Lara nor I ate meat. Over the course of our 3 days with the family, we were brought heaping bowls of: posho, rice, tomatoes, eggs, beans, greens, gnuts, biscuits, sesame balls, donuts, sweet bread, bananas, green oranges, and these weird grape things that made our lips go numb! That’s not even including all of the milk tea and soda that we were brought every few hours. Each night at dinner, Lara and I would take turns finishing different things so as not to be rude and insult our mom who had spent all day cooking these meals for us. There would be times when we thought we could manage the amount of food that we had been served and then 5 minutes later our mom would bring out 3 more heaping bowls of food! It was epically comical.

By far, however, I have to say that my favorite experience was organizing bicycle boda-bodas to take Lara and I illegally across the Kenyan border! We rode through the farms and the marsh for only about 2-3 kms before we reached the border of Kenya, which was marked only by a small stream cutting across the papyrus stalks. Of course there was no one guarding the border, and we passed many women walking to the market in Busia, Kenya, carrying foodstuffs and other goods on their heads (a skill I still want to learn!) to sell in the market. Lara and I even bought some of our own fabric in the market in Kenya using Ugandan shillings! It was the most surreal experience that I’ve had, and one of the ones that I will look back on and say, “That’s right, I really was in Africa.”

I also think that we met basically every single member of the community in Buyengo (the parish that we were staying in), including the born-again pastor who preaches to pretty much all of the families. He was an interesting character who had been doing seminary work since the age of 15 (he was 22). He asked us so many questions about the US, including many of the rumors that we heard throughout our stay. Apparently people in rural Uganda are under the impression that: if you have more than 2 children, the US will chase you out of the country; when couples get married they sign a contract for a 6 year marriage and when they have a certain number of kids then they get divorced…just many many misconceptions about the US. I have no idea who’s spreading these rumors, but even our family did not believe us when we told them that we had never ever heard of such things happening in the US! Another thing about this pastor: we were convinced multiple times that he was about to try to save us. On our last night together, he gathered us all in our family’s main house and said a prayer for everyone. The prayer started out quiet but fast, interjecting “oh my father” and “oh my lord” in between every 3 words. It started to get faster and faster, like you would imagine any born-again prayer sounding, except the way he was talking was so creepy in a hilarious way that I kept silently bursting into laughter and I kept forcing myself to think about slaughtering chickens because it was all that would come to mind that would make me sad enough to stop laughing! What an experience.

I think that covers just about everything from our excursion. As always, check out the pics (aka “snaps”) on facebook! I’m not sure when I’ll be posting next, because in about a week we’ll be starting our practicums, and I’ll be headed to Gulu to work with some organization and hopefully researching different traditional and alternative methods of psychological and psychosocial healing for former abductees/child soldiers. I’ve heard that internet in Gulu could be pretty unreliable, so don’t worry if I don’t respond to anything for awhile. Until the next time!

Siiba bulungi! Weeraba!