Saturday, March 15, 2008

Ain't no pizza parties in Uganda...we have goat slaughtering parties, woo, yee hawww. (credit to AK, my beautiful sister for this one)

Today is a beautiful day in Uganda and I just thought I would post another blog to follow up on the athletics competitions...
Yesterday there were inter-school competitions where the girls divided into different countries (teams) and raced each other. The team that won got a prize of a goat. The goat was black and lovely and when it came time to announce the winning team, I got to hand over the goat to the winning team. The kids were going crazy! People were yelling, hooting and hollering, smiling and laughing... it was so much fun! The goat I think knew it was on its death bed though... as I tried to pull him over with the rope he didn't seem to want to come so much. Once I finally handed him over to the winning team the kids went nuts! They started singing and they took the goat and started running all over the place with it chanting and singing their victory song. They didn't sing "we are the champions" by Queen, like my Mom likes to do sometimes, but they sang their own song... it was fun!

I am having a great day and I must say thanks to Mom and AK for sending me the Tao Te Ching... I am loving it and feeling the Tao already! woo hoo!

Also, thanks to AK and Erin, I got your packages, holy crap, Thanks sooo much! I love you!

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Women's Day is celebrated here in Uganda big time... I think because every other day women are usually so supressed that this is the one day of the year where it is ok for a man to cook for his wife, get his own water, women wear their nice clothes and things like this... but through stories I hear that the day can actually backfire and some men end up beating their wives. At our school we celebrated with an assembly and dancing and good food and speeches all about women and how important we are and everything.... it was a fun day but when it was time to eat all the male teachers sat down and the women served them all... I was like what the heck is going on.... ha, it really defeated the whole point...

We were out of power for about a week there... I heard it was because some people had cut the cables in the middle of the night to sell... I hear they can get a lot of money for them, so when you're poor, that's what you do... at least it's an option that's there... finally power came back a few nights ago and the whole school went crazy, cheering, yelling "umeme" (that's the name of the power company) and it was pretty exciting... it's normal to lose power here, but a week was a long time... basically every single day it does go out at some point for at least a few hours... so I usually think about how thankful I am for the power we have in the US. I told some of my neighbors that the power might go out once a year at home and they thought that was crazy! They couldn't believe it really...

My neighbor transferred schools a couple weeks ago which means he had to move out, pack up his things and travel to a new home some where else.... as he packed up his things in the afternoon I sat on my front porch to watch. For him to move out took no longer than 5 minutes... he packed up his metal frame twin bed, a chair, one bag and a few other small things and that was it... I really thought about the contrast between him moving and any time I have every moved at home... I always have so much stuff! This man had hardly anything, but that was him and that was what he had... he moved out and moved on in less than 5 minutes...

Athletics are running competitions the schools have and the competitions are coming up, so lately I have been going to the practices... girls run around sprinting and running in skirts and dresses and no shoes... I always think they will step on something and hurt their foot, but they seem fine for the most part...

2 days ago I was visiting a school and when asking what their challenges were, one challenge was that every evening someone comes in to one of the classrooms and defecates on the floor, so every morning they come in and have to clean up poo. I asked about locks, but they can't afford them and the windows are broken anyway, and I asked why and the probably reason is that within the entire town there is not one single latrine (no place to use the bathroom except maybe the bush). This was only one problem though... another problem was that there is no boar hole near by.... the closest one about 3km away so they get their water from an untreated spring... this is crazy! Sanitation level is awfully low and it's just insane. I was reviewing some of the lesson plans and most were not up to a high standard, incorrect facts or misspelled words, etc, but I was thinking that no wonder they can't focus on these things when problems of health and sanitation aren't met first...

I've been in Uganda for a year now! I guess it feels like it, but sometimes not... I still learn so much about everything everyday and although I've grasped a little bit of how life works here, I still have a long way to go...

My Mom just sent me the Tao Te Ching book with commentary by Wayne Dyer... if you're in to that kind of stuff, it's really great!
Here's a lovely quote from it: "When you realize you have all you need, the world belongs to you."