Besanyia orphanage

Children at the orphanage with orthopaedic problems but just excited for a picture.

Just monkeying around

Monkeys on a morning walk. They were just chasing each other around the trees.

First Lady of Uganda visits Save the Mothers

March 1st, 2008 was the big day for Save the Mothers. The First Lady of Uganda agreed to come out to the Uganda Christian University for the Women's Day Celebration put on by Save the Mothers. Here in Uganda, Women's Day is a similar celebration to our Mother's Day. So, we wanted to celebrate mothers with the Save the Mothers program, so we invited the First Lady of Uganda to come out.
There was a lot of preparing that went into this. We held a press conference to notify the media, so we were on television yesterday and in the major newspapers today. We had to make all the security aware and when I woke up on Saturday, the big day, and walked out of my house, I saw 2 army men right outside my house and then every couple feet there were some more army men. They were all over the campus and they had to look through everything you owned and wave the metal detector over you.
On the day, the First Lady was to arrive at 10 am. Well, 10 am came and went without a trace of the First Lady, by 11 am I said to someone, even the First Lady arrives late to things. But they corrected me, the First Lady is never late, no one in parliament is late, they are only delayed. For entertainment to keep the guests occupied, we had children singing and doing skits. The one song had words that went, "What have you really done in this world here today, What have you really done for us to recall, remember today cause tomorrow, you may not be seen again..." I just thought it strange to be talking so bluntly about dying but because people die here at all ages and so commenting on dying is normal.
While we were waiting, I was getting concerned, I figured that the First Lady would show up sooner or later, probably later than sooner, but the problem is that the hall was not full. At home, if we had a function where someone in high standing was coming at 10am, people would be filling the hall between 8-9am but there weren't that many people in the hall. But when I told the Ugandans my worries, they said, No, no, people know that she will show up late so they will all show up when they hear that she has arrived. A little while later when she showed up the place was packed with people, they are all living on international time.
The First Lady set the cornerstone of our new Save the Mothers building (getting the construction site to look half decent for anyone to walk on was a job but to get it looking good enough for the First Lady was another job!)
We listened to speeches, we had booths for our students and other NGO's, we watched the children dance some more, and we ate lunch. It was a good time, there were some good people who had something to say about the program. The First Lady, although we had written parts of her speech seemed quite sincere about what she was talking about and sounded genuinely interested in the program, and she should be, it's a good program.

My time here is coming to an end, but this put an exciting touch on my last weeks here. I will see you all soon when we can share exciting stories with each other.

Baked goods hits Uganda

I never knew that a mixture of flour and water could be used for so much more than glue but if you fry it in oil you can make numerous different types of Ugandan food. When I brought some of my North American baked goods to some of the Ugandans they thought it was good but they did not know how I made it! So, I decided that I would teach the Ugandans how to bake some food. We decided to make brownies and banana oatmeal chocolate chip muffins, so everyone had a task and took it seriously. For us, baking and baked goods are something we like to have around but the concept is foreign here, for example, real chocolate chip cookies aren’t easily found in many supermarkets. The Ugandans asked me questions like, "Is this mixed enough?" "Are the bananas mashed enough?" "What type of pan do I put this in?" "Can I just put the dough in the pan?" "How do you know when the brownies are done?" I also taught them that the best part of baking is licking out the bowl. While the food was baking, the Ugandans taught me how to make chapattis which are similar to tortillas except they have more oil on and in them. But other than oil is was the right mixture of flour and water kneaded and rolled out into round chapattis which were fried in a frying pan. While we were enjoying eating our food, there was loud thunder and the rain just came down in a torrential downpour. As always, with the rain the power goes out. Since they couldn’t go out in the rain we decided to dance in the candlelight. They taught me how to dance with attitude and make chapattis while I taught them how to bake North American foods.

Baking with Ugandans

Ugandan Wedding

Monicah, the Ugandan who I work with in Save the Mothers, invited me to a wedding of her brother in her hometown in southwestern Uganda. The wedding was a two day event. The first day, Friday, was the introduction. This is a cultural event, where the brides' family gives the bride to the grooms' family. The groom has paid the brides' family for their loss probably in cows or something. One of the pictures is with the grooms' father taking the hand of the bride as the brides' family gives her away. The bride and groom have separate outfits for these days (as do all the guests). The bride wore a blue and white dress for the introduction which was matched by the blue and white cakes in the picture. The cake was in the shape of baskets that they serve food in sometimes. The cake brought along another tradition where they counted down and on zero people sprayed confetti and alcohol (from bottles that were shaken vigorously during the countdown). It was quite a scene as you can see the beginning of it in one of the pictures. It was good that it was all outside and could make a mess out there. After they handed out cake to everyone, the brides' family gave the grooms' family presents.

The next day was the ceremony that was held in the church. We didn't end up going to this part because there was no gas (this is during the Kenya crisis and Uganda didn't have gas or if you could get gas it was around $6/litre or $24/gallon - I wouldn't want to pay that and Ugandans really don't have that type of money). Instead, we got set up for the reception. There were people making piles of food, so I figured lots of people were coming to the reception. Suddenly, when it was lunch time there were people on long lines to get food because the whole village decided to come for the food. Anyone who decided that they didn't have enough to eat or didn't want to make a meal brought their family over for the wedding and went through the line once or twice! The whole village came to the reception as well and we all sat under tents. The bridal procession was brought in with a band and people dancing. There was great entertainment with people singing and dancing even though I couldn't understand the words of the song. Then they had more cakes that matched their white and maroon dresses and there was the same spraying of confetti and alcohol all over the place! There were also the typical speeches given at the wedding and they were still long but I didn't understand a word of it, so I had a reason as to why I was daydreaming! It was quite interesting to watch and I thought that it was great that it was outside and it was so beautiful there, but then it started to pour rain! Thankfully, we were under tents so that was a bit better! But the party continued into the night and all the young people in the village danced until all hours of the evening.

Enjoy the pictures!

Wedding pictures

Orphanage

This is one of the boys at the orphanage / rehabilitation centre. I work with the orthopaedic surgeon at the orphanage.

Public transportation

Anyone want a ride?

Kenya Christmas

Kenya was my Christmas destination. Andrea, my Dordt roommate, was working in Kenya so Jena, another Dordt roommate who is teaching in Bahrain, and I decided to have a roommate reunion in Africa while spending Christmas together.

We went to spend some time in the village in the western part of Kenya where Andrea was working. (If you want to check out a map we were in a village between Kakamega and Kisumu). It was a beautiful village in the green hills of western Kenya. We decided to spend Christmas there and since the elections were on the 27th we thought it would be safest to leave after the election hype had gone down because travelling around elections wasn't recommended.

While watching the news on the 27th we realized that perhaps tallying the polls would be rather cumbersome. There was someone who held up each vote and called out who that vote was for while they were showing the ballot to everyone in the room. By the 29th when the president had not been elected there were riots in the streets because the tallying was taking too slowly. Because of the riots they decided to stop counting the votes until the rioting stopped, I'm not sure about the logic behind that. People were getting rather excited in western Kenya as it was appearing that Raila Odinga would become the next president as he was leading by one million votes. But an hour later, Kibaki was announced as president and sworn in an hour later (which is really fast since he was supposed to wait for representatives from Uganda and Tanzania). Obviously, this would cause an uproar because Kibaki obviously rigged the elections. Since Kibaki is Kikuyu and Raila is Luo, the Luo tribe started to kill people of the Kikuyu tribe. The biggest problems were in Luo areas where Kikuyus have moved in. Kikuyu houses, markets, and shops were looted or burnt. Bonfires started on the roads, riots, and shootings were starting all over these areas.

Because the excitement wasn't in our house, we decided to get some fun of our own. We went to flush the toilet and wash our hands and the toilet didn't flush and the facet didn't pour out water as usual, we had run out of water. We learned that the pump of the well wasn't working anymore and we couldn't get anyone to fix it because no one was moving because of election problems, the roads were blocked, and there was no gas available because it could not be transported across the blocked roads - but who wants gas if things are being set on fire?! A couple days later, while we were keeping tabs on the situation around us on the television, the electricity went off. We went 6 days without water and 3 days without electricity because no one could come fix the electrical wires or the well pump.

We weren't in danger unless you consider going crazy after being in one house reading books, entertaining each other while cooking and eating strange things as a danger. Our diet started to change to eating fried brownie dough batter, cookie dough (there was no gas oven to cook them in!), fried green bananas, popcorn, and biscuits. We did get out to walk to the market and buy a few vegetables as well as the popular sodas and people watch. We also went to visit a few homes which were one room mud huts but it was interesting to speak to the people living there.

Anyways, while we were minding ourselves in the village there was quite a chaos down the street from us - which I'm sure you could hear on the news. On January 1st, 6 days after the election, we get a phone call late at night while we are in bed and we are told that we are told that we need to have our bags packed because we are leaving tomorrow in a Cessna, a 6 seater plane. We all laughed, because this is Africa and nothing ever happens when they say it will happen. So, we woke up the next morning unsure if we should pack because we had been told to pack before and ended up unpacking everything because we weren't leaving. Finally, someone tells us that the police escort is coming very soon and we need to be ready. So, although very soon is very vague in Africa, we scramble to get all of our stuff into bags. Soon enough there is a huge Toyota truck with army officers with guns at our place who take our stuff and fit us into the truck. On our way to the Kakamega airstrip we see the stones which were used as roadblocks and buildings that are burnt. But the strangest thing is that no one was around, and this is Africa there are always people walking on the sides of the streets but the place was empty. We arrived at the airstrip in time to see the little plane land. We piled in through small doors and held on tight for an hour long turbulent roller coaster ride without tracks. We landed in Nairobi and were picked up by people working with Andrea's organization. We quickly made it across Nairobi as the only people on the streets were army officers. The next day I left on a flight for Entebbe, Uganda and I made it safely home from there. The only issue now is that there is hardly any gas so it costs $4-6/litre or $16-24/gallon.

Kenya Pictures

This is how we felt.

We played football/soccer with the children and everyone who passed looked on with envy.

We sat on the hill and children came to read books with us. They just love to read and they do not have any books - some don't even have books in their school.