Friday, September 25, 2009

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.