Monday, October 26th 2009

            Happy Birthday Maggie!  She’s now the ripe, old age of 24 J

 

            Today we had our beloved MMM (Monday Mentor Meeting).  I gave a presentation on a business questionnaire I created for the Educate! SEC (Social Entrepreneurship Clubs).  (I’ll attach it at the bottom of this email).

            Basically the questionnaire makes the students to think about the business models they want to implement (or have already implemented) and challenges them to think about their business in ways they might not previously have done.  I reviewed my 4-page questionnaire with the mentors and they all seemed to like it – so that was cool.   I printed out 24 copies and they need to give them the the students next week, collect them the week after and then I get to review 24 different businesses.  Yay!

            After the meeting wrapped up at 12:00 Emily walked in with a cake for Maggie’s bday.  The cake was MASSIVE (and delicious) and the Educate! staff and Mentors scarfed it down.  It was the best cake ive had since I’ve been in Uganda.  Not the best I’ve ever tasted, but good enough to satiate the chocolate craving.

            Then I met with Solomon to review the prior weeks lesson plan and discuss his plans for the following week.

            Then I did MORE microfinance research.  Blah – this stuff is going to start pouring out of my ears.

            Then Rachel arrived – yay!  Rachel is our newest volunteer and the assistant program director assisting Angelica.  She seems really wonderful and intelligent and accustomed to life in Africa.  She was a peace core volunteer in Kenya when they had their election and mini-civil war in 2007-2008.  They had to evacuate her by having Marine’s land a plane in a coffee field.  Pretty insane stuff.  The melee that ensued after the botched elections was insane – neighbors attacking each other, people cutting off other people’s arms with machetes, burning tires over each other’s heads…etcetera…a really bad situation.

            Anyways – peace core officially declared that no volunteers could work in Kenya so one year through her two-year stint Rachel was sent home.  But in that year in Kenya she learned a lot and I know she’ll be a tremendous resource on a personal level as I try to better understand the African culture AND on a professional level since she’s worked in a teacher-training capacity before.  I walked her around the compound and the area outside and showed her where to get food and yogurt and water and the such…but something tells me she would have figured it out on her own.  J  She knows a lot about living in Africa and what one should expect.  Quite different than myself when I landed here.

            That night to celebrate Maggie’s birthday Angelica, Maggie, Evan, Baati, Rachel and myself took a matatu (NOT a boda boda – now that a couple people saw the macabre scatterings and body parts of a boda boda driver on Ggaba Road they’re not so keen to get on them) to Kabalagala and then a special hire to an Indian Restaurant in Kampala called, “Hassan.” (I think J).

            Conversation was good.  Food was incredible.  Stomach was KO’ed by the time I got in the car to go home.  It would appear my entire house has stomach issues right now.  Nothing settles and we’re all constantly sick.  The Iron Fox has still not recovered from last week’s episode and now every single miniscule germ seems to upset it.  Yay.