Munymutya Family and Friends!

Our team here in Uganda has been keeping quite busy this past week (May 25-31) Here’s the run down!

Sunday –May 25 On Sunday we split into two groups with some of us going to church in Jinja and some to Mukono. Corbin, Jackie, Heidi, Ashley, Trent, Amber, and Tori went to Mukono and Jeff, Rylee, Les, Lauren, Dan, Natalie, David, Emily, Seren went to the Jinja branch. It poured and poured and poured in Mukono, but the Jinja people had a great time staying dry. The Mukono group had an adventure walking to the mayor’s house in the rain and muddy streets. In fact, our favorite part was when Corbin (aka Rueban as the locals call him) was stepping ever so carefully through the mud-trodden path and quite simply began sinking and could not get out. One thing we’ve all discovered is that we are ever so thankful for sidewalks back in the US of A. Also, Tori loved that the one day this entire time of being in Uganda she did not bring her rain jacket was the day we had to walk in the rain. We all looked pretty presentable as we showed up to the mayor’s house for dinner sopping wet. The food was good and the fruit was beyond amazing as well as the passion fruit juice of course. They have four byu girls living there doing research so we talked to them for a bit. It was a pretty fun evening. We got home and hung out as a team and then Dan the man was so kind and made us allllll banana scones. DELICIOUS. (sidenote: I’m sure we had some sort of team meeting that I can not remember at this point in time, but we have meetings every night with out fail, so no worries.) We then watched a movie and went to bed.
Monday-May 26 Monday was the first day of clinics. Jeff, Corbin, David, Les, Rylee, Seren, Natalie, Emily and Tori all traveled up to the hospital to meet the head nurse. She of course was not there even though we had set up an appointment so we all just had to wait for a little while. Unfortunately she never did show up, but luckily another nurse came and we toured the hospital with her. Most of the team had to leave for various appointments with local schools and adobe stove building, but Lessi, Jeff, Seren, and Tori decided to stay and volunteer. Seren mixed drugs and Jeff worked with the dentist. Les and Tor went to the maternity ward and talked with the nurses there about how to register people and how we could volunteer. Then a very funny and blunt nurse named Betty came up to us and said, “You come help me.” She showed us how they did aids testing which was very interesting. The rest of the team was busy all day working on research and doing different projects. Most of us strolled home in the later afternoon and we were sitting around working on project proposals when Dan and Corbin came running in. At their project that had been given lunch and on the matooke was gnut sauce which usually would be helpful as we have found that gnut sauce adds the much needed flavor to the locals beloved matooke. Unfortunately, in Dan’s case he is allergic to peanuts, beans, and anything of the sort so he had an allergic reaction. He went to a doctor in Jinja and stayed the night at one of our contacts home so everything worked out alright and later that night we tried to make chocolate chip cookies for FHE. They turned out, mmm okay. We didn’t have brown sugar or vanilla so we added banana for flavor and the oven would not cook them at all so we sort of had scrambled cookies. Haha, it was interesting and we gave some to the family that lives with us. I’m not sure what they thought because they were a little bit odd.

Tuesday-May 27th Dan came home and got straight to work doing construction and didn’t miss a beat with any of the projects he was doing. Seriously, this is why we call him, “Dan the MAN.” In other news, some people went to Kampala to get laminating done for their projects, many were on site working at their projects, some did project proposals (they are very detailed, long, and detailed, and take a lot of research…but awesome..), many worked on research for the different lessons plans that were due, and some felt a little stomach sickness. Tuesday afternoon a group of us working on the primary school project headed to Mukono to talk with the group from George Wythe College. They specialize in teacher training which is what a lot of our primary school project is doing so it was great to sit and discuss with them all the various methods. They were pretty inspiring and well worth our time. At night after a delicious dinner of cabbage, beans, rice, and pineapple we had our weekly team meeting. We discussed housing for the summer because when the second wave comes we will all have to adjust our living situation because this little house can not fit 8 more people. So most likely five of us here now will be moving to the new living quarters at the mayor’s house here in Lugazi with a few of the second wavers. It will be kind of hard because most of the volunteers will be in this house, but we will figure it out…if one thing we have learned here in Africa it is to be flexible, positive, and willing to adjust. Good thing our team has learned that well.
Wednesday May 28th—
Wednesday was a pretty busy day with everyone gone at stove building, construction, observing at different schools and then we all regrouped by four because we had our weekly “Play date” at St. Edwards at five pm. We decided that since last week had been beyond chaotic (but fun) with all the kids running around doing different activities that this week we wanted something a little different and perhaps more calm so we decided to bring our projector and figure out a way to watch “Shrek.” We got there and some of us went into the classroom of students who were still there and talked to all of them for a bit while the rest of our team was setting up “Shrek” on the projector. The kids in the classroom were around 13 years old and so funny. We were singing and dancing and laughing with them and they were having a great time as well. They taught us a few songs and we had a hilarious time as we waited for the movie. “Shrek” worked out surprisingly well and it was really fun because the kids LOVED it and were giggling so much. We then came home and had dinner and some meetings. It was a strange night and some of us felt a little stressed and overwhelmed about life which realistically is not that strange or weird considering our situation. But, most of us went to bed or took some quiet time to organize or lives and thoughts. A few people stayed awake out in the living room working on you guessed it, project proposals and updating our blogs when quite randomly David our guard asked us to turn on the porch light which is a request he has never made. Then at around midnight we heard the loudest sounds of crickets and/or grasshoppers invading the surrounding area of our house. We kind of ignored it, but it was so loud that we looked out the window finally and saw hundreds maybe thousands of grasshoppers and crickets swarming around and crawling on our house and coming in through the windows. They were EVERYWHERE. They were quite literally invading the house and flying around and the boys were trying to catch them. We looked and saw David our guard catching the larger green ones and putting them in a black plastic bag and then he would catch the smaller brown ones and eat it raw. WHAT?! So we had swarms of grasshoppers in our house, cockroaches on the floor, and mosquitos in our beds. How ridiculous are our lives!? (Don’t worry, we love it!) David said the people around here love the large green ones but he is from the east and they like the brown ones. So he got 2500 shillings for his bag of green grasshoppers. . . Sidenote: Corbin, Dan, and Jeff caught tons and tons of grasshoppers the next day and put them all in a plastic ziplock so they too could get money. Boys are so strange, often.

Thursday May 29, 2008
Thursdays are now probably our busiest days and perhaps our favorite day of the week. We started with a Persons With Disabilities meeting at 9am. I believe all the girls went to that one except Amber because she was in Mukono at the bakery with Trent. Most of the boys were at stove making, construction, or preparing for the business meeting. So we arrived at the church at 9am and no one came until about 9:15am. We basically didn’t start the meeting til about 10:15 am because people just did not show up. One of the mothers said, “We tell time from the sun and it is overcast today so we do not know. Sorry. So sorry.” Haha, true statement except that even when it is sunny we still don’t start meetings on time, ever. Les and Lauren taught the lesson on goal setting for the mothers and their children while the rest of us babysat and played with the children with disabilities. It got a little crazy, but it was really fun coloring with them and playing with the foam balls. One little boy named Sam was so cute and was teaching Rylee different Luganda words. He was six years old and had the cutest giggle. The meeting went incredibly well and the women of the group appreciated the lesson and the fact that we took care of their disabled children so they could learn from what was being taught. A few hours later the first business lesson occurred. At the business meeting again, no one came at the designated 11:30 time. We definitely made sure to say that being on time is a great business skill in our lesson. There were only four people there, but it actually turned out really well and we had a great lesson on business planning from Jeff and Ashley. Business training will be so sustainable here and the way we are going about teaching is awesome. We have trainings once a week on various topics and have great discussion with the business people. We give them goals and handouts and many things to think about throughout the week on how to change and improve their business. They are so willing to work hard for their business so they just need a little help on how to go about doing that. Our team will also visit the different business throughout the week and be a part of the normal business day to observe how the business interactions take place and if the owners take records of the business day, have good customer service, advertise etc. Then we will work one on one with them discussing the good and bad of what we have observed. We also have a very creative business simulation game that we will be doing with them that teaches business skills and is quite fun.
A few of us went to the market and also discovered the best chipati maker in town which is obviously very essential to our happiness (and stomachs) here. Only a few people made it home for lunch because a majority were out in the town working on their projects or at the women’s group meeting. At 5pm Seren, Emily, Les, Rylee, Lauren, Nat, and Tori went to the school to meet the choir Seren and Tor found to work with this summer. Unfortunately, it looks like most of the kids will be in school at that time so that is a small issue that still needs to be worked out. Luckily, kids started showing up, but definitely not all the same ones from last time so they had to adjust their teaching to the younger kids, but it turned out really, really well and everyone was very pleased with it. The plan for the summer is to teach different lessons on vocal health and warm ups, basic vocal skills, fundamental music theory, memorizing lyrics, various genres of music, choreography, and performance. The choir is a great project we have going on because all the kids here love music and love to sing, but have no idea the complexity of music or what they are capable of doing with it. It has been a blast teaching basic music skills to them like warming up, what a scale is and what the notes on the scale mean, harmony, and posture. The kids are so willing and excited to learn all of this new knowledge.
We got back around 6:30pm and a bunch of the girls sprawled across the beds together and reflected on our very productive and tiring day. It truly had been such an awesome day and we were all feeling really good and really happy. We are so grateful to be here and love our lives. It was great to have a day like Thursday especially after a somewhat ‘down’ Wednesday. It is obvious that when you serve others and are productive you are happier. We definitely saw that come true this week. Well, we all had a delicious dinner of cabbage, chipati, beans, pineapple and then a bunch of us went and saw the mayor’s house and the quarters where some of us will have to live when the new volunteers come. Friday May 30, 2008—Happy 21st Birthday AMBER!
Friday was Amber’s birthday. Some of us had decorated in the middle of the night for it and we had planned on making her breakfast in bed, but the electricity had been out all night and even after 8am when people started waking up. Finally, it went on and we made her some delicious banana scones and had enough for everyone else as well. It was a pretty fun morning and then we all went our different directions for the day. A group of people went off to work on stoves, a group of girls went to the Iganga orphanage, and a couple of us worked on our project proposals (yes, still working on them….). Friday night we had a delicious dinner and even a very cute cake from the Mukono bakery for Amber’s birthday, and some of us went to African Paradise for some dancing.
Saturday May 31 –
Saturday was quite fun for our team. A few of us went into Kampala for shoes and errands, some went to Mukono for a friend’s “Introduction” because she is getting married soon and the rest of us got on a taxi around 1pm and headed to the Futbol Match-Uganda vs. Niger. Our group met up with one another at the stadium and it was crazy! People were everywhere and it was very similar to a hilariously fun tailgating party. The funniest was when there were about 30 people completely painted in the Uganda colors and we all got pictures with them. Then they started painting us. HILARIOUS. We felt like great supportive fans. We then walked around the stadium a lot and bought t-shirts and other little trinkets to support the Uganda players. We all were super paranoid about pick pocketing and it was a good thing we were extra cautious because there were pick pocketing everywhere. The game was awesome though and so fun. Uganda won scoring 1-0. It was a great time and we had really nice seats in the shade. Jeff, Dan, and Jackie met us there about halfway into the game and were coming down the stairs and there was a random mob of people shoving each other and going crazy. Anyways, in all that chaos Jeff got his pocket unzipped and his wallet stolen. Luckily, he had no credit card or anything important in there b/c he had just bought that wallet earlier that day so he lost about 30,000 shillings. Overall it was a really fun day and the match was exciting. We then went to dinner at the Colline Hotel. It literally took 2 hours for us to get our food. TWO HOURS. Most of us got pizza which was VERY delicious, Jeff got a fish which was of course a complete fish on his plate including eyeballs, and a few of us found out that orange juice did not cost the assumed price of 1000 shillings, but instead 3000 shillings each. We were all very happy with the food despite the very long wait. Saturday night we all relaxed when we got home and most went to bed pretty early.
Sunday June 1—
At 6:45 am Deo’s driver came to pick up the group of us that was traveling with him to his home village. Ashley, Trent, Dan, Jeff, Les, Rylee, Seren, Heidi, and Tori all went with Deo (the mayor), Peggy, Steven, Zaka, and randomly the driver’s girl friend. So we’ve been on several taxi drives and they have been very adventurous and stressful and basically a rollercoaster ride. This one was in fact ONE MILLION times worse. As a few of us were thinking how uncomfortable and ridiculous this was Tori just started laughing so much and could not stop. We had no idea what to expect from the day and didn’t know what we had gotten our selves into. We just went because Deo invited us and we felt like we should go. The taxi stopped at random places and we had breakfast at this one little café. Hard boiled eggs, samosa (fried dough w/ meat inside), and steamed milk which became the favorite. We then got back into the taxi and traveled THREE HOURS LIKE THAT. They told us it would take two, but no no no, it took three hours. We just laughed our little hearts out as we made fun of our ridiculous lives. Tori actually started enjoying the taxi ride because she just imagined that we were all at Disneyland on the Indiana Jones ride for three hours. Fun times had by all. We went to Deo’s house where he grew up and met his dad and then went to various churches and visited lots of people. It was a really funny day. High lights of the day included:
“Lessi, what is your favorite food?”
“ mMMmm Matooke.”
(sidenote: if you ask any Ugandan their favorite food every SINGLE one will say, “MmmmmmMMm, Matooke.”
Trent: Watching Deo eat in general….and by that I mean scooping and shoving it in his mouth. GrOsS.
Dan’s favorite part,
Dan: “Smile for me darling.”
Baby Girl, “AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” –bawling. Absolutely bawling, actually screaming.
Rylee: Latrines.
Seren: Beautiful scenery. Also, being hit on by Deo at breakfast. (Ew.)
Tori: Hating my life slash the fact that my ipod died and our African friends were very LOUD and then deciding to laugh and accept my life for what it was in the moment. Everything was quite hilarious.
• The Matooke was literally ½ or ¾ of our plates.
Lessi: Steamed milk. Aka she hated everything b/c she hadn’t slept all night.
Heidi: My favorite part was when Deo belched the loudest belch and pretended that no one heard him. AND he continued to do so on the bus.
quote of the day, “Him (Deo) and peggy both were written and then created.” (written as in from a comic book).
Jeff: The meal. So much meat (allll the girls gave him our meat).
Overall, the day was good, stressful, strange, enjoyable, beautiful, scary, and great.
Those back here cleaned the house! How kind is that?!?! We ate dinner and watched the Count of Monte Cristo.
Well that was our week! Thank you , come again.
Sincerely,
VicTORIa –(yes, like the Lake)