On the Downhill!

To your comment Brian, I am definitely bringing the dowry back to America and I am worth at least 20 cows. Not the skinny ones either, they have to be nice and plump! Don’t worry though, no Ugandan man has won my heart over. The Ugandans find it really weird that we can go to the store and buy pre-plucked and cut chicken, so I think it would definitely be a rip off if the gift was already cut up! It is much more valuable for them to have a live chicken running around and when they decide they want chicken for dinner, they slaughter. Take my homestay family for instance, we have two chickens, one turkey, two dogs, and a cat. These are our ‘pets’, if you can even call them that. The pets here are nothing like in the US. They all have a purpose. The chickens and turkey are for eventually eating, the dogs are let out of their cages at night and are for protection and the cat is to kill rats and insects. Yeah, its strange....I really miss Madison :(

Some really exciting news is that I found out my future site and met my supervisor yesterday! Things are really coming together and a lot of my questions are being answered. It’s a non governmental organization (NGO) and called ‘Foundation for Needy Communities’. The town office is located in Mbale town, which is the largest city in the east. My supervisor is a young woman, and I haven’t met my counterpart yet, but he is a community health worker there who I will be working close with. It’s an US/UK funded organization that primarily works with women and children. The executive director is an American from San Francisco, which is really crazy. They have two schools, one is a vocational school with about 50 students ranging from 13-25 years old and they teach carpentry, tailoring, agriculture, computers and brick laying. The other school is just up and running and it’s a special needs school. Right now they only have 15 students and the disabilities vary. There are students with physical and developmental disabilities. Another part of the NGO is going out into the community and educating mostly women and children about different health issues like Malaria, HIV/AIDS, hygiene/sanitation, nutrition and others. I’m really excited to work with this NGO and apparently they are used to working with Americans because they get many volunteers from American. I guess 20 volunteers from Colorado just left. Next week I am going to Mbale to visit it. I will be there for 5 days and get to see where I will be living, the NGO/schools, and Easter Uganda, which I haven’t been to yet.

Last Saturday we went on a field trip to Jinja, another large touristy city in Uganda. Thus far, I have only been to Luweero and Kampala. Going to Jinja was AMAZING! We had such a fun time. We saw the source of the Nile at Lake Victoria, some forest that I’m not sure of the name and then a really cool waterfall called Ssezibwa falls. It was really beautiful and made me really excited to see the eastern part of the country because it is very mountainous and I heard very beautiful as well. Another wonderful part of Jinja was lunch. A bunch of us found this Mexican restaurant and ate there. I had quesadillas with a margarita!! A frozen drink in Uganda!?! So crazy! But it was awesome and such a nice break to relax!

Oh and I have a really funny story about my homestay mother. So I have a 9 month old little brother and there is a ‘walker’ for him that my mom puts him in but up until the other day she has always referred to it as ‘prison’ because when she put him in it he couldn’t go anywhere. Well, recently he is getting bigger and his feet are touching the floor. He started walking and moving the other day and I seriously saw the light bulb go off in her head and she said “OH MY GOD!! HE’S WALKING!! IS THAT WHY YOU CALL IT A WALKER??” haha, it was really funny to see the connection from ‘prison’ to ‘walker’. Anyways, I hope all is well and wish me luck in Mbale and on my future site visit next week!! =)