Monday, September 28, 2009
Today was the first day I felt like I had a rhythm. I woke up at dawn and went for a run with Maggie along Lake Victoria. It was surreal. All the children were on the side of the road walking to school. They think it’s very funny that mzungus run. As one of our students explained to me, “here exercise is a form of punishment.” As we ran along the road they pointed at us and shouted and laughed, “mzungu!” I still find it funny that everywhere we go and everything we do is an event here. Maybe it will become tiring soon, but for now I think its entertaining. Maggie didn’t seem quite so thrilled.
As I ran along the road I looked at the deeply bowing sun outlined against the distant islands on Lake Victoria. The sun looked different at that angle - riper, redder, and hotter - as if it had been refreshed passing over the verdant plains of Africa and the vast blueness of the Indian Ocean. I felt like I had been transported to a different universe and all the struggles I’d endured over the last couple of years faded and I found myself genuinely happy and content.
Afterwards I stretched and relaxed on our patio. The city was still quiet, the boda boda’s silent and the matatu’s idle. It was peaceful and copacetic.
Today all the mentors all came over for our Monday morning meeting. One of the mentors asked about the Educate! policy on dating staff members! I think she likes me – I’m scared – ha! I had to present to them on proper budgeting tactics for educational events Educate! is hosting. Yay.
Afterwards we had to go through all the “sensitizations” that our students submitted. Sensitizations are paraphernalia that highlight a social problem or solution for the masses. I was shocked and disturbed by what I saw:
- “School burning is at a high rate”
- “Stop corruption”
- A man monster with AIDS stamped across his face, “Do you want to be free from him? Abstain.”
- “This is happening in most places of the world today…yet it isn’t right…Lets stop child soldiers now for a brighter future!”
- “Beware of child sacrifice. It has become a menace to Uganda.”
- Pictures of actual children sacrifices cut up in a bag. A picture of a beheaded woman. These was hard to stomach.
- “The crusade against corruption in Africa.”
- “The blood of human sacrifice.”
- “Attention child sacrifice is rampant! Take care of your children.”
The pictures of disfigured people were horrible. They publish HARDCORE pictures of this stuff right in the newspapers…my god. The things these people have to worry about. Unreal. One of the girls submitted a child sacrifice sensitization – her sister’s child was kidnapped two weeks ago and no one has seen the child since. Just think about that for a second. Think about having to worry if your child was the victim of a ritual sacrifice.
Afterwards we reviewed the financials of Educate! The team spent 1,000,000 shillings on a magazine to be distributed to students. They wanted the sales to be high enough so we wouldn’t lose money. They’ve only sold 200,000 for an 800,000 loss. One of the exciting parts of a non-profit - money is always tight and of paramount concern.
Afterwards one of the women in the “teacher training” class I presented at came over and asked me to help her launch a promotional company. She’s from the UK and lives in Uganda now. She wants her promotional company to be “London Meets Kampala” themed. Some revenues will be donated towards Educate! We spoke for about an hour and came up with some good ideas…hopefully it’s successful. It was my first “real life” consulting work. Interesting.
Afterwards I had to meet with Maggie, Emily and Angelica for 2 hours. That brought me up to 5:00. I missed my break dancing class! :o(
I wouldn’t have been able to go anyways because I have to work on my NYU column today. I’m really struggling with it though…not sure if its because its been a long, mentally draining day or I am just struggling with trying to boil down all my experiences to 1,500 words. Sigh.
Tomorrow I travel 4 hours north to Hoima. It will be my first African experience outside of Kampala. Hoima is in the far west, on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. I am excited and nervous. Regardless, time marches forward.
Oh yeah, I FINALLY got my helmet today! Its pretty sweet…bright red with racing stripes on it! :o)
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Today was the slowest day yet…which was very welcomed. I feel like I’ve been moving non-stop since I got here. Woke up late and read and hung around the compound.
When I went to get my “yogurt in a bag” I finally got the “yogurt lady” to smile! She’s usually an ornery woman that scowls at everyone (especially mzungus). Today she smiled and even talked. Hey the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
On the way back from the yogurt lady there was a circle of boda boda drivers that invited me to play cards with them. I walked over to see what game they were playing but they couldn’t explain it to me. They only spoke Lugandan.
That’s it folks!
Saturday, September 26th, 2009
Today Emily, Angelica and I decided to go to meet up with some friends at Aero Beach. It was our friend Maria’s birthday so we were all going there to celebrate. The beach was about a half hour from our house, right next to Entebbe International Airport. It’s on Lake Victoria – Africa’s biggest lake. The beach is called Aero Beach because an old “Ugandan Air” 707 crash-landed there a couple decades ago…and they just left it!
To get to the beach you have to drive down a long, windy dirt road. On either side there were goats and cows lazily grazing in the grass. We came to a huge gate surrounded by armed guards. By the way, guards with huge semi-automatic rifles are a common sight here – it doesn’t matter whether the venue is a play, a night club, super market…etc. I know NYC cops walk around with handguns, but the display of power with a semi automatic rifle is just discomforting.
When we got in we climbed onto the huge 707 and walked around inside and onto the wings. We walked all the way out onto the wing that lifted off the ground when one the guards (with a huge gun) sprinted over and started yelling at us in Lugandan. Jerry, our Ugandan friend, told us the man was yelling, “Don’t shake the wing! There is a killer bee hive in there!”
OKAY! We were off the wing in .5 seconds.
Afterwards we got some REALLY great pictures of the airplane and us all standing on the (non bee hive) wing. Then I took a picture with a group of Kenyans that wanted a picture with a mzungu!
Afterwards we walked to the beach and set our bags underneath a sprawling tree. We were there with quite a diverse crew…both career-wise and geographically:
- Angelica, Maggie, Juan Carlos, Me – American
- Emily – British
- Agnes – El Salvador
- Maria – Colombia
- Jerry (and some others that I don’t know their names) – Ugandan
- Johann – Swedish
That’s one of the things I greatly enjoy about Uganda – I am constantly exposed to other cultures, viewpoints and ways of life. I have always considered myself to be an open-minded person, and yet I find that much of my thinking was myopic and a result of essentially always living in the same place. I guess you are not aware of these things until you meet people from a broad spectrum. Just a further development in my psyche.
The beach was wonderful because it was full of indigenous Ugandans playing sports with mzungu’s from all over the globe. That’s the wonderful thing about sports – it doesn’t matter your background, your socio-economic situation, your religion, your sex, your language…etcetera…we are all able to enjoy playing sports because we all understand the rules of the game and the competitive nature inherent in human beings. It made me realize why the Olympics are so special.
Juan Carlos and I played beach volleyball with a crew of Ugandans that didn’t speak a lick of English and yet we all laughed, and patted each other on the back and slapped hands and had a great time.
Just another small, but interesting thing I noticed was that American’s are very selfish and interested in spiking the ball, scoring points and winning the game. The Ugandans were more interested in passing (they often passed 3 to 4 times before hitting it over the net), teamwork, and having fun. They didn’t even keep score. I never thought of myself as a “spike-it-in-your-face” “I-want-to-win-this-game-so-badly-I-can-taste-it” kind of guy – and in America I’m not…but relative to these kids I probably came off that way. I quickly altered my playing style and learned that passing was more important than scoring. One of life’s little lessons.
I also played Frisbee, soccer (wow the kids are so talented at soccer) and a few other sports. Lots of fun. There was a DJ on the beach and everyone danced and hung out all day.
Afterwards we got fried tilapia. Jerry (local Ugandan) told me it would be the freshest fish I ever tasted. He pointed out a boat a few hundred yards out with two men fishing on it. He said fish we were eating were swimming in Lake Victoria less than an hour ago. Pretty cool. We all sat around eating the fried fish with our hands. It was delicious.
I didn’t go swimming because of the risk of bilharzia – which is VERY considerable despite the size of Lake Victoria. The sand (which was imported) was littered with snail shells and bilharzia is transmitted via snail excrement. The locals made fun of me for not going in, but I wasn’t taking any chances. One of the girls who decided it was too hot to NOT go in told me that as a result of her swim she’d have to take vomit inducing bilharzia drugs for three days. Some of the people here are crazy.
The only damper on the day was that Maggie’s camera was stolen. Because we were a largely mzungu faction our bags were a target. Consider this…a $400 camera costs 800,000 shillings and most of Uganda lives on less than 2,000 shillings a day. So yeah…that phone is basically the equivalent of a years worth of wages. That’s the type of poverty you are constantly surrounded by.
And we WERE very conscious that there were lurkers near our bags…but we always made sure someone was watching. The thiefs were good…they managed to take Maggie’s camera which was ATTACHED to my bag. I am SO thankful they didn’t take my bag. That would have been very bad. I owe Maggie a camera.
Afterwards we went to Café Roma to get pizza. At night we went out to Iguana’s and then a local club (my first non-mzungu nightspot). It was fun and we danced the night away with the Ugandan people. When we got back to our car there was an armed guard standing by it.
“Oli otya sebbo.” I said. (How are you sir?)
He looked at me deadpan, “Soda.”
I tilted my head.
“Soda.” He repeated again.
We got in the car. I looked at Emily. “What does he want?”
“He’s telling you he guarded our car and now he wants enough money to buy a soda.”
Even though we never asked him to guard our car, I gave him 500 shillings and we drove away.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Uggh, pulled a twelve hour day today. Exhausted and going to sleep as soon as I finish this blog. I’ve been EXHAUSTED every single morning since I got here. Is it possible to still be jetlagged? I am exhausted in the morning and wide awake at night…which is polar opposite to how I usually am. Hmm…
Last night Angelica asked me to be a “speech judge” for a new batch of mentors we’re training. The mentors are the ones that actually teach our curriculum to the students in our 24 partner schools. They range in age from low 20’s to mid 50’s. These mentors in training had to give a speech today on a “call to action” topic. Something that would compel the audience to take up the speaker’s cause with zeal! Just to highlight the difference between America and Uganda I jotted down some of the topics discussed:
- AIDS (the woman lost her Mom to AIDS in 2005)
- Fish farming
- Planting trees (two people discussed this)
- Starting a bee farm
- Taking children off the street and into your home
- Donating clothes to village people
- Small business selling eggs
- Child defilement prevention
- How to improve the roads to make driving safer
Afterwards I got lunch with Moshun (the guy that started the school in the worst slum in Kampala), Angelica, Emily, a British girl that worked in northern Uganda to help the community rebuild after the war between Uganda and Joseph Kony’s LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army).
(If you don’t know, Joseph Kony, a former Northern Ugandan started the LRA. He is quite possibly the most disgusting, atrocious guerilla war tactician alive right now. His LRA is the proponent of rape (both male and female) as a scare tactic He is also big on abducting children and inducting them into his army (which has RAVAGED Northern Uganda). If you’re wondering how a child soldier is made, allow me to explain. The LRA will bust into a village where they know there are some young men (figure 9 – 14?). After raping the mother, and maybe the father too, in front of the boy they then make the boy KILL his own parents. The young boy is officially alienated. Then they inject black tar heroin into the boy’s body…now he is alienated and addicted to a powerful narcotic. The LRA offers him companionship and more of that black tar heroin he’s addicted to. Child soldier made. They do other things that, quite honestly, are too horrible for me to write on this blog. Things that will shake you to your core. If you’re curious email me…
…anyways, yeah, this girl lives in the Gulu province and helps those communities restore themselves to normalcy…
Finally at the table with me was a fabulously interesting guy named Abramz Tekya, the founder and director of Breakdance Project Uganda, which is a Ugandan based non-profit that uses break dancing and other elements of hip hop to teach youths positive social change. I asked him why break dance and he said he wanted to use a medium that would attract youths to his venues.
Sounds weird but it has actually done incredible things for Uganda. Abramz was excited because this morning he found out that RedBull is sponsoring a big budget documentary on him and his non-profit.
Anyways, he teaches free break dancing classes every Monday and Wednesday in Kampala. We exchanged numbers and I promised him I’d come to a class on Monday. I told him to watch out because this mzungu has rhythm (he doesn’t believe me, ha).
He will actually be in NY this December / January and I promised him a tour of the big apple if I’m around.
In the restaurant we saw a black eyes peas music video and challenged Abramz to replicate the hardest dance move we saw, which he did. He’s really talented…the move required him to start from a position where he leaned his head back so far it touched the ground…chew on that. My spine would have splintered.
The waitress took Angelica and Emily’s order but didn’t take ours. Emily and Angelica didn’t notice she didn’t take our orders. The rest of us didn’t notice she’d taken Emily and Angelica’s order. Long story short is that Emily and Angelica had finished their “spaghetti Bolognese” 40 minutes before my food even came OUT. Yeah…I had to get it to go. The lady was unapologetic. Bad and rude service is something you just get used to here.
Afterwards I took a boda back to the compound to meet up with Sandra. We then travelled to Gayaza HS which is 2.5 hours from Buziga. Its funny...last week when we went to Gayaza I was TERRIFIED the entire time we passed through the slums with my eyes popping out of my head, and this week, it was like nothing. Could I already be numb after one week?
When we got there the girls of Gayaza presented me with a hair tie – ha! I had told them I was not going to cut my hair so long as I was in Africa so they knit me a hair tie for when it got long. It, umm, looks a little feminine so not sure about the actual prospects for me wearing it.
On the way home to matatu decided it wasn’t going to drive us to the taxi park, but instead dropped Sandra and I in the “slums of Kampala” (according to Sandra). There are no words to describe the chaos, pollution, smells and seediness of downtown Kampala at night. “Mzungu” was shouted from every dark alleyway…each crouched vendor on the street. Sheesh. It was a very unpleasant experience and I’ll be damned if I ever go there again.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Well that didn’t take long. No more coffee - today when I plugged in the coffee grinder it started smoking and then it broke. Sigh.
Today I visited Busiro SS with Constance, one of our mentors. Constance came over at 2:00 and we set off on our 3-hour journey. On the matatu towards Kampala Constance told me both her parents were dead. Having one or both parent’s dead seems commonplace here. Sad.
We got into Kampala and went to a restaurant in New Taxi Park (not to be confused with Old Taxi Park). I wasn’t hungry but ordered beans and rice so as not to offend Constance. That turned out to be a mistake…not long after I bit into my lovely rice and beans platter I bit onto something hard. I thought I broke my tooth, but fortunately I broke the ROCK that was in my rice!
What?!
Constance said, “Yeah, sometimes there are pebbles in the rice. They don’t sort it.”
Umm, okay.
The waitress walked over. Constance was already mad at her because she charged me mzungu prices on my dish (an extra 500 shillings), so she said to the waitress, “You have stones in your rice!” The waitress didn’t look too concerned…I didn’t finish my meal and we walked out.
The New Taxi Park is just as insane as the Old Taxi Park. Vans battled with each other, squirming, slithering and blowing exhaust and dust all over the place. People walked around selling everything from cell phone minutes to multi-colored blocks of soap. I felt bad for the poor walking vendors – constantly preying upon blank stares and deaf ears…and then going to the next van in the hopes that someone there will need a toothbrush or other knick-knack.
Outside the city we saw cows eating trash and monkeys (the first I’ve seen!) playing around on the side of the road. There were also men standing in stagnant water pools…which is a HUGE no no in Uganda. You can get bilharzia just by dipping your toe in stagnant water. It’s a horrible disease and I felt bad because all these men cleaning their boda’s in the water simply didn’t know any better.
What is bilharzia you ask?
Bilharzia is a human disease caused by parasitic worms called Schistosomes. Over one billion humans are at risk worldwide and approximately 300 millions are infected. Bilharzia is common in the tropics where ponds, streams and irrigation canals harbor bilharzia-transmitting snails. Parasite larvae develop in snails from which they infect humans, their definitive host, in which they mature and reproduce.
The matatu was PACKED. It can legally carry 14 people…there were 25 by my count at one point. Think about that for a second. 25 people in a van – seems impossible until people start sitting on the floor…and each other’s lap. I had to sit with a bale of hay on my lap (the woman next to me brought it on board).
We arrived in Busiro 2 hours later. It is the most rural place I think I have ever been. I cannot remember ever being further away from home than at that point. As we walked to the school we passed anthills that were probably 12 – 14 feet high. Constance told me the ants probably have been building that hill for years.
The classroom was simple with no windows and a steel roof. On the desks was a circa 1970’s book on entrepreneurship…cow’s moos, chickens cluckles goat’s baa’s wafted through the wooden shutters.
Getting tired now…will finish up quickly.
During the lesson the teacher listed the local problems facing the communities of Busiro. I jotted a few of them down:
- Child sacrifice (WHAT?!)
- Water scarcity (this particular school didn’t have access to clean water)
- School burning
(Mom…show that you your 6th grade kids. Remind them they don’t have to worry about CHILD SACRIFICE and SCHOOL BURNING…life ain’t that bad)
Each day we read a speech to the class. Here is the speech from today:
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.' We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
- Marianne Williamson
Wednesday, September 24th 2009
This morning I was in the kitchen “making coffee” when Emily walked in. We got to talking about the students we are trying to turn into entrepreneurs.
“What happens if we fail? What happens if we cant turn them into small business owners?”
“5% of them will go to a higher education institution. The rest will enter the workforce with the rest of the Ugandans.” She said. “They’ll become boda drivers. Subsistence farmers. Day laborers.”
I was astonished. “Well at least we can use that to scare them into becoming entrepreneurs.”
“Wrong. It’s actually very easy to drop out of school. To not give a sh*t. Ugandans are different than Americans. Even some of the poorest own land. The students know they can always not work, or become farmers on their parents land AND its culturally acceptable.”
I gulped.
“For many of them.” She said. “We are their last chance.”
How’s that to start your morning?
I spent the rest of the morning researching and then Sandra (one of the mentors) came over because I was to shadow her at Gayaza High school that afternoon. Sandra covers both Gayaza Cambridge and Gayaza High school. They are both in Gayaza – but couldn’t be further apart in terms of prestige and quality of education. Gayaza High school was one of the top girls schools in the country (and our most prestigious partner schools) and Gayaza Cambridge notoriously bad.
When Sandra got to the house was we walked across the street to the local restaurant (the one with a strip of ants an inch wide crawling up the wall – and yes – the ants were still crawling). I told Sandra I liked (liked being a relative term here) the beans and rice and she yelled at the lady to give me “many beans.”
It was the first time Sandra and I had really had the opportunity to talk and I was struck with how much she knew about American culture…and how little I knew about Ugandan (and African culture in general). She told me she woke up to hear Barack Obama’s inauguration speech. Her favorite college football team is the Virginia Tech “Hokies.” It was just mind boggling to me that she could talk about Virginia Tech football with me. The world is becoming so much smaller. We talked about this and that. She told me she’d never left Uganda (a trait that’s very common here, people don’t have money to travel) and that her father was polygamous (yet again, very common here).
After lunch we took a matatu to Kampala and then another matatu to Gayaza. Along the way Sandra pointed out Yoweri Museveni’s house. We passed Idi Amin’s former compound…
When we got to the school I introduced myself to the girls… my background, my skills, what I was doing at Educate…One of the girls raised her hand and asked me the question that lots of children here ask me, “Why are you here to help us?”
Its very interesting…but the people here are very cynical and doubtful of everything you say. They assume there is a hook in your promise somewhere.
There was no boda to take us back to town so we walked through the fields and along the way we saw children pounding the dirt and HUGE insects flying out of he ground. They were the infamous white flying ants of Uganda! And let me tell you…they are a lot bigger in person. Wow.
Finally we found a matatu and Sandra and I spoke the whole way back to Kampala. Two interesting / funny things about the trip.
One – Sandra told me she liked the rainy season because that’s when grasshoppers come out.
I was confused. “Why do you like grasshoppers? The sounds they make?” (I like the sound of cicada’s on summer mornings).
“No!” She exclaimed. “What are you talking about sound? I like to eat them!”
She made me promise that I eat my first grasshopper with her. GULP. She said they are as thick as a man’s thumb,
Second interesting thing – the matatu conductor (who is actually not the driver, but the man handling the door of the van. He is the one who remembers when everybody got on (and thus, how much to charge them). Also, when you come to your “stop” you need to yell, “coonducta…stage!” Its weird, but they understand mzungu’s better if you speak with a Jamaican accent…don’t ask me how these things happen, but they understand “coonducta” much better than “conductor.” Anyways, the conductor for my matatu was wearing a “Notre Dame Big East Tipoff Classic” t shirt. That is a very common, and very ironic thing that you see often in Kampala – some of the poorest people wearing clothes donated from the US, but they’re incongruous articles like, “Harvard Rugby” or “Princeton Crew.” Hmm…God must have a sense of humor.
When I got in Kampala I hitched a boda to Krur Thai Restaurant to meet up with the rest of the Educate staff. It was good, another mzungu hangout though.
Afterwards we went to Bubbles O’Leary, the Irish bar that was imported from Ireland. It was all mzungu’s – which led me to two conclusions:
One – while all the volunteers like to immerse themselves in the Ugandan culture. There ain’t no place like home and we all like to extricate ourselves from our newfound world occasionally to be back with the familiar.
Two – There are a lot of lost souls in Africa.
On the way home there was a random police checkpoint set up. Neither Angelica nor Emily had ever seen one before. Things seem to be getting a little odd around here lately.
We pulled over. A female officer walked over to the driver’s side and shined the light in Emily’s face. “Drivers license and registration?”
Emily looked in the glove compartment. She didn’t have either.
“I’m sorry Nyebo.” Emily said. “I took out my driver’s license and insurance when I travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
The lady stared at Emily. Another guard walked to the other side of the car. He shined a light at us on the back seat.
The lady shined the light in Emily’s eyes, “Have you taken anything tonight?”
(Emily was our designated driver and hadn’t drank at all.”
“No madame. I’ve had nothing.”
We all held our breath. We didn’t know what was going to happen.
“Are you sure you’ve taken nothing?”
“Yes madam, I’m sure.”
The lady shined the light at us again.
“What are we going to do about this?” The police officer was looking for a bribe.
“I am sorry madame. It wont happen again.”
“Be on your way.”
The entire car exhaled at once and we drove into the night.
Police corruption is rampant here. Bribes are commonplace. The episode reminded me of a Latin quote:
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
“Who will guard the guards?”
Monday, September 21, 2009
Last night I couldn’t sleep because of the heat – it felt like the mosquito net was trapping all the hot air coming off my body. This morning I woke up and it was actually cold out. Hmm…go figure.
Today was my first MMM (Monday morning meeting) whereby all the mentors and Educate! staff strategize…discuss lesson plans…talk about stuff. The meeting went well and I was able to speak to the three mentors I’ll be working with. (I’ve attached notes from my meeting with Solomon…I’m not sure anyone will want to read them – but there are a few interesting social projects). I also ate my first “rolex.” It’s probably the favorite breakfast food for Ugandans. Its eggs and tomato wrapped in a chapatti (a crepe-textured wrap with green onions). They’re AMAZING. You can literally get them outside our compound for less than a dollar.
Afterwards I did some microfinance research and some reading (and working on this VERY time consuming blog!). Then Emily offered to take me into town to return my cell phone. What ensued is CLASSIC Ugandan behavior.
We went back to the store that sold me a busted cell phone…one woman sat in the back. The other woman was asleep…resting her head on her hands.
Emily (who’s a pugnacious bugger) asked me which woman sold the cell phone. I nodded at the one who was awake.
“Hi – you sold him this cell phone –“
“Yes – I remember.” The woman replied.
“Yeah, well, its broken. It wont charge or turn on.”
“Well – that doesn’t matter right now.” The woman smugly responded. “The power is out. I cannot test your phone one way or another. Come back some other time.”
We both exhaled out loud. It took us 40 minutes on a matatu and a boda boda to get there.
“What is your name?” Emily asked.
“My name is not important. What’s important is that you come back when I have power.”
We walked out. This is the type of thing you just have to get used to in Uganda.
Emily and I decided to get dinner. We took a boda boda to “Rocks and Roses.”
We picked up menu’s.
A woman from behind the counter approached. “Sorry we’re closed.”
“But its only 5:03?” Emily said confused. “What time do you close?”
“5:00.”
We both looked at the food laid out behind the counter.
“Can we just grab one of those?” Emily asked.
“Sorry we’re closed.”
“By three minutes!” Emily said. “Cant we just grab something?”
“It doesn’t matter how far past 5:00. What matters is that it’s past 5:00.” We sighed. Another defeat.
We finally decided upon a hotel to grab dinner. I had a club sandwich. She had a filet. It was a good time.
On the boda ride home my flip-flop felt very warm. I kept telling Emily but she said it was my imagination. When we got home I realized why it was so warm…it had been resting on the exhaust and now I have two deep holes burned into the bottom of my flip-flops! Oh well…at least it wasn’t my foot.
General notes:
· SEC (Social Entrepreneurial Club) is completely student run – it should be the student’s initiative – the mentors will provide ad hoc advice.
· Each SEC has an executive committee (positions vary based upon school)
· Anyone can join the SEC club (don’t have to be an Educate! scholar).
· Educate! works with students through S5 and S6.
· Educate! has personal contacts at each school that link Educate! with the administration of the school.
· Hoima students are not good in English…I must work on speaking slowly and carefully enunciating my words.
· If they are quiet it might be because they don’t understand my English.
· Solomon’s uncle is the head of Economic Policy & Planning at Makere University.
Duhaga (Tuesday @ 4:40 PM)
· Biggest school with over 1,000 students
· Government aided
· Physically the biggest school
· 17 scholars in leadership class (3 left class)
· SEC projects:
o Goat rearing project – Have 2 goats that they are going to cross-breed with local goats to improve the breed.
§ Goats cost around 60,000 each
§ They were able to raise 140,000 shillings through fundraising (guest speaker + parent donations)
o Poultry Project – Students are going to raise chickens in an old, unused chicken-raising building that the school owns (and has dedicated for free).
§ Sell chickens and their eggs
§ Raise money by staging a play
Sirtito Winyi SS (Secondary School) (Wednesday @ 3:20 PM)
· Third biggest with 500 – 600 students
· Government aided
· 15 scholars (but 3 might be dropping the course – some are changing schools)
· No SEC project yet.
· Plan on starting vegetable growing project.
· Fundraising with individual contributions from the club members (in course 2,500 ; for members not in class 1,000). Also accept contributions in kind (i.e. seeds instead of money).
· School has given them a plot and they are going to design flowers and beautify the place – it’s going to be the social entrepreneurship section of the school.
Kitara SS (Thursday @ 3:20 PM)
· Second biggest school with over 1,000 students
· Two shifts to accommodate all the students
· Government aided
· 15 scholars
· Haven’t implemented a project yet but have done projects to improve the school:
o Last year renovated the girl’s urinals in school.
o Also did some community work cleaning.
o Plan to start a poultry project and a tree planting. Poultry is a business but the tree-planting project is just a way to give back to the community.
· Have raised 30,000 from their own contributions and fundraising from Mentors and other figures. Plan to hold a fundraiser where they reach out to all the students of the school to get contributions from them.
Morningstar (Friday @ 11:00 AM)
· Smallest with around 200 students
· Privately funded
· 13 scholars
· Implemented a tomato-growing project. Tomatoes are growing right now. Should be harvesting around 200,000 worth of tomatoes. Want to use this money to start other projects and help needy persons in the community.
· Club executive covered the costs of the seeds (5,000)
· School provided the land.
Sunday, September 20th, 2009
“Wake up!” Maggie yelled. “We have to climb Buziga hill with the students!”
Sh*t. I forgot. To raise funds the Educate! team in the US had climbed a mountain in Colorado. We were supposed to climb a “mountain” in Kampala to show that although our circumstances are different (i.e. different mountains) our tribulations are the same (i.e. we both had to hike up mountains) and that anything is possible through hard work (or arduous hiking). It was very symbolic, really. Anyways, we were supposed to climb Mount Buziga with 50 students coming to our compound for the day. I didn’t even have time to shower…guess that’s what happens when you sleep late.
When I finally got out of my room the students were milling about the house. I tried making small talk with them, but it was VERY hard. For starters I don’t usually interact with 17 – 19 year old, furthermore they can barely understand my English (I have a “weird accent”) also I apparently talk too fast AND finally…they are usually a little intimidated by a mzungu.
Anyways – after awkwardly trying for a half hour it was time for every Educate! staff give an introductory speech. I thought mine was witty and funny but nobody understood it L. Then we divided all the kids into groups of 5 and challenged each group to be the first to ascend “Mount Buziga.”
I was selected as the cameraman (since I have a nice camera). I was told to be a “Japanese tourist” all day. We started hiking up this hill behind our compound…and a bunch of the kids were wearing skirts and nun’ish leather shoes so I thought it would be a leisurely pace (which was good because I, as the camera man, had to keep up with the first group to ascend the hill). To my great dismay one of the kids took off running. I breathlessly gave chase. We came to a fork in the path and James, one of the mentors, advised me and Usain Bolt to go down a dirt path. We took off and after running a few hundred yards one of the students told us we were going the wrong way. So…yeah…The poor kid didn’t finish first after all his hard work and I wasted a lot of energy AND missed the money shot of the first kid crossing the finishing line. Hurray!
At views from the top of the hill were absolutely stunning. Views of Lake Victoria (Africa’s largest lake) stretched as far as the eye could see. There was a verdant island a few hundred meters out and I joked with the kids that the island was actually America. I can’t be certain, but I think a few of them fell for it for a few seconds. Some of them had never seen a view like that. It was breathtaking.
At the top Angelica and Emily led “networking” seminars that forced the kids (all from different social classes, regions and schools) to talk with one another. They’re both immensely talented women and I’m lucky to witness their skills firsthand. I hope I’ll be as good with the students one day – but I’m not holding my breath.
After we walked down the hill we ate a traditional Ugandan meal of matoke (green plantains mashed into a tasteless batter), “Irish” (potatoes), “G nut sauce” (a peanut sauce type thing usually spread on matoke to give it flavor) and finally a beef stew (unfortunately for me all the students ate the meat so I just had stew). I spoke with two of the mentors – Joel and Alex. Alex was older, but Joel was only 21 and wise beyond his years. We talked about the recent riots…the likelihood of Uganda falling into civil war in the 2011 election…the different ancient kingdoms of Uganda and their respective kings or “kabakas”…the cost of my MBA degree in Ugandan Shillings (200,000,000 shillings). I was most interested in his comments on Uganda falling into a civil war in the 2011 elections (like Kenya). He told me that Kenyans were always the more aggressive people (20 Kenyan’s could kill 100 Ugandan’s according to him) and Ugandan’s would probably stop after a few days of fighting because they like peace too much.
This is where he impressed me with his precociousness.
“What if they don’t stop fighting after a few days? How can you be sure it wont last?” I asked him.
“I guess I can’t be sure…because my generation has never lived through a war. So they don’t know what its like. The older people – they know and they will do anything and everything to avoid that situation again. The young are ignorant and might drag us into a civil war.” (FYI 50% of Uganda’s population is below 18 years old).
I was saddened to hear his response. When I asked him what he’d do if Uganda fell into civil war…”What can I do? I don’t have enough money to leave. I pray that doesn’t happen.” I told him that that sort of resignation was something I never had to deal with. We were two people dealt two very different hands in the poker game of life. And mine was infinitely better…and for that I feel almost guilty.
The day was exhausting so Maggie, Gael (French photographer), Emily and I decided to go to Café Roma. It’s a mzungu hangout that dishes out (surprisingly) good pizza’s – mine was topped with parma ham and green peppers. Yum.
Afterwards we FINALLY went food shopping – so I should gain back some of the 5 pounds I lost in my first week.
Some funny gaffes on my part:
- Our maid Emma (it’s a guy, despite the girly sounding name) does our laundry for us. I asked Maggie how I should go about giving him my dirty clothes. She told me to put it in a bag and give it to him…but that it was considered rude to ask him to wash your underwear.
“Well, if I have to wash my underwear I might as well do all my laundry.”
Maggie looked at me confused. “Why?”
“I’ll just do it all in one load.”
“What do you mean one load?”
“Like one load in the washing machine.”
She laughed. “Joe, there are no washing machines in Uganda. Emma cleans them by hand.”
Ha…I never even considered that.
- Second gaffe…I finally bought coffee beans last night because Emily told me she had a coffee grinder. So I bought the beans and Emily showed me the grinder.
Today I was like, “So I found the grinder, but not the coffee machine.”
She looked at me confused. “What do you mean a coffee machine? What is that?”
Apparently you just put the grinds in a cup and let them steep in hot water. I have a lot to learn! :o(
