You know you're at a Ugandan passover seder when...

-The four questions are read in English, 4 local languages, and then Hebrew
-The haroset is made with peanuts and mangos
-One of the leaders is wearing a gomez (traditional Ugandan dress with a wide belt and tall, pointy shoulders) made out of red and green sequins
-People named Isaac, Gershom, and Isreal have last names like Byaki, Sizomu, and Siriri
-During dinner people tell stories about gaining freedom that focus on gaining electricity and medical care
-There's kosher wine and matzah, but only because a Jewish tour group from the US brought it with them
-Pretty much every Jew in a 3000 mile radius is there, and there are about 50 people there that don't live in the village
-You're reading a Haggadah that was printed in Hoboken, New Jersey
-You recognize the words to the songs but the tunes often remind you of something from The Lion King
-One of the boys sitting behind you is wearing a tee shirt that says University of Texas Mom
-The first thing on the buffet of the seder meal is a giant pot of rice

All in all, fantastic time. Everyone was sosososo nice and the seder was super interesting but I could definitely use some matzah ball soup and a good round of who knows 1.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Happy Passover!

Right now I'm on a bus with one of my friends to go to Mbale (about 4 hours east of Kampala) to go to the Passover seder of the Abayudaya. The Abayudaya are a group of a little over 1000 Jews who are descendants of a group of Ugandans who converted from Christianity in the early 20th century. I can't wait to see what the similarities and differences are from seders in the US.

Today so far has been a pretty intense stage 2 day. During orientation to Uganda, they told us about the stages of culture shock. There is the initial euphoria, then there is frustration and anger, and finally there is acceptance and eventual assimilation. We all got to the acceptance step pretty quickly, but have occasional days where we revert back to frustration...

The thing about Uganda is that the concept of time and punctuality are non-existant. There are no schedules for anything, and when somebody tells you a time for a meeting or something, it is common for them to show up up to 2 hours late or call an hour late and cancel. This makes taking a bus when you have to be somewhere by sunset fairly difficult. The buses don't leave at a certain time, they leave when they are full, so it is impossible to plan ahead and I ended up waiting on a bus for 2 hours that I was told by the conductor would leave about 30 minutes after I got there. I woke up at 7am in order to get to a place 4 hours away by 6pm, and we are actually going to be cutting it close. I guess in a country with an unemployment rate this high, efficiency is not a priority.

In addition, there is no organization here of anything. Bus stops aren't marked, most streets do not have names that are actually known, marked, or used, and crosswalks and traffic lights don't exist. This all makes finding a place you have never been extremely difficult. Especially since when you ask someone for directions, instead of telling you that they don't know, they'll just completely guess.

Despite all of this though, I actually am getting much better at going with the flow and assuming things will work out when nothing is concrete. For example, as of this morning I had no idea where the bus left from, how much is cost, and how long it took to drive from kampala to mbale. I still don't know where we are sleeping tonight, exactly where the seder is (somewhere a few miles outside of town), how we are getting to the seder, really anything about the seder, how we are getting from the seder back to the hotel, and how we are getting back to kampala tomorrow. I've talked to this guy who runs a Jewish guest house (that's already all full for tonight) though a few times on the phone and he said if I call when I get there he'll give me the directions I need. So hopefully it'll all work out. I think it will. So far I've managed to literally elbow my way through the city center to find the right bus while shaking off people grabbing at me and keeping my backpack from being stolen.

For now I'll stick to living in the moment by watching rural uganda fly by the bus windows, while fending off vendors pushing sticks of meat at me through the windows whenever we stop and this guy walking up and down the aisle of the bus who just tried to sell me a lotion that I'm pretty sure he thinks will "fix" my freckles:-)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Rural homestay

Wow. So it’s been a really long time since I updated, and I apologize for that. There’s a lot to catch up on, and this and making guacamole for 10 people are pretty much the only things on my agenda today so this is gonna be long. Where to start…

My rural homestay was in a really small community (Bunyoyi) about 20 minutes outside of a really small town (Busia) on the border between Uganda and Kenya. I had sooo much fun. Rural Uganda is so much better than the dirty, loud city. There is virtually no recycling or trash collection here so people just dump all their garbage outside their houses and when the pile gets to big they burn it. Lemme tell ya, nothing quite like inhaling trash on your way the school every day. Rural Uganda is beautiful! I think I’ve uploaded some pictures, but if not I will soon. My rural homestay was with a family who all lived on a giant compound that was land they inherited from their grandparents. My partner, Will, and I had our own little one room mud hut where we slept and were served all of our meals. We tried to get them to let us help them cook and eat with the rest of the family, but they were not into the idea at all. We kind of resigned ourselves to being taken care of because it gave us a little private time to process, and we figured out that we were being served different food than everyone else. We were only there for 3 nights so it wasn’t worth insulting them by refusing to let them carry out their hospitality in a way that was culturally acceptable.

The rest of the compound was all mud huts as well and was absolutely beautifully landscaped. People don’t spend much time in their houses because it gets too stuffy, so the way the outside area of your land looks is much more important to people than their actually houses. The family owned maybe a dozen chickens and a handful of cows and goats. We also gave them a hen as a thank you gift. The family members were primarily farmers, though a few of them had other jobs as supplemental income such as a brick maker, a cook at a girls’ boarding school in Busia, and a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) driver. I got very good at telling the difference between the plants for sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, cassava, maize, beans, coffee, pumpkin, and cabbage. My family also had a few cannabis and opium plants that they pointed out to me. Trying to be subtle, I asked what they used those plants for and my host mom just shrugged and said that she doesn’t know how they are used, and that she just sells them because they bring in lots of money. I haven’t decided whether I believe her or not.

Two of my host cousins (I think? Maybe uncles or brothers? It’s impossible to figure out because nobody will give you a straight answer and they all call each other brother and sister.) were studying at universities but were home for the weekend. It was unclear as to whether they had come home to be with us or whether it was a coincidence that the two best English speakers in the family just happened to be back that weekend. Hanging out with them was really fun because they had grown up in the area and knew all of the people and places in the area very well. On the first day they took us on a tour around the village. We went to a fish pond, the water source, and a Waragi (local alcohol that is similar to, if not exactly, gin) distillery. We also went to the village trading center (literally 3 small dry goods stores) and were taught how to play games that I cannot pronounce but figured out how to play really quickly. Upon reflection, I realized that the reason I figured out the games to easily was because they were almost exactly the same rules as Mancala, Uno, and Trouble. Small world… We were accepted everywhere because my hosts seemed to know everyone we ran into. We stopped multiple times as houses to share bowls of passion fruit (eating a passion fruit is not easy, btw. They are this hard little pods that you have to gnaw through with your teeth and then kind of suck the insides out all while carrying on a conversation and trying not to look like a complete idiot) with whoever happened to be around. Also, at the water pump, one of my host cousins got a little kid to run into the brush around the area and come back with these reeds that if you stripped down a certain way turned into whistles.

While we were there, our assignment was to practice Rapid Rural Appraisal techniques by studying any topic of our choice. Will and I chose to study construction because it seemed like something that could be fun and really hands on. The local “hospital” (a one room clinic that I never saw open) was in the middle of constructing a small building to serve as housing for nurses. It was commissioned by the government and so they were using bricks and cement to build, instead of the much more common mud hut. They let us build for a while, though by “us” I mean mostly Will because it was made clear that I should not be helping as I was wearing a skirt (as all women do in the rural areas) and was female (I don’t know why I even expected to be able to participate. Women are barely accepted in construction in the USA. No way were Ugandan men going to be ok teaching me how to build. Ugh!). On the last day, we also helped build the frame for a small mud hut, but by then I was feeling pretty sick with malaria so I didn’t help out very much. It was a good topic though. I just wrote a 12-page paper about it though, so I’m not thinking I really need to talk about it much more on my blog.

My last adventure was that on the second day of my stay in Bunyoyi we decided to walk to Kenya and look around there for a while. My host cousins said that they had crossed to border before with no problem and no need for passports. In retrospect, not my smartest move, I believed him, using the justification that you don’t need a passport to go between countries in the EU (Is that even true or am I completely making that up?)so maybe Kenya and Uganda had worked out some type of deal. I was starting to feel a little sick (as I got diagnosed with malaria the next day) so I asked whether it might be better for us to take a boda boda. My host cousins said that Kenya was pretty close and it would be an easy walk. Stupidly I believed them. We walked 2 or 3 miles in the hot sun to a school where they were having the annual contest to see who would represent the district in the country wide school athletics competition. We sat in the shade for a while and watched the students race, long jump, javelin, etc. The girls were doing all of this in skirts and nobody was wearing shoes.

Then we walked for over 2 hours to get to the Kenya border, which would have been fine had I been feeling well, but was not so fun at the beginning stage of malaria. Anyways, so we walk up to the border control area, easily pass through the Uganda border into no man’s land, and get about 5 steps into Kenya before a border control agent chases us down and asks us to come into the border control office, where, for about half an hour, we were all individually questioned about why we were trying to go to Kenya and why we didn’t have passports with us (they were all in a safe back in Kampala). Apparently, you DO need a passport to get into Kenya and they have a habit of arresting people who go into the country illegally. Crazy! The office was pretty chaotic and I was a little concerned because they were threatening to arrest my host cousins on the charges of trafficking in humans, but I stayed pretty calm to whole time. The thing that is comforting for me but horribly unfair at the same time was that I knew there was virtually no chance of us actually getting arrested. Arresting a muzungu (white person) is a huge hassle and logistical nightmare (especially if the media finds out a muzungu got arrested) from which no punishment will happen anyways because pretty much the entire court system can be swayed if you have enough money for bribes and good lawyers (which almost all muzungus have), so going through the trouble of arresting us just didn’t make any sense. Worst case scenario we would have to bribe the officers with like $20, but we didn’t even have to do that. Sure enough, after they realized that we were, in fact, just idiot students who wanted to get a few pictures in Kenya, they let us go back to the Ugandan side of the border. My host cousins said we should just run through and they wouldn’t follow us, but Will and I decided that it probably wasn’t worth it, so we just went back home. I did get a few feet into Kenya though!

So that was like 10 days ago… good thing not much has happened since then. I had malaria, but I mostly already talked about that. It wasn’t too bad. My friend had a really hard time with it though and was put on quinine, which has been around for hundreds of years, I am pretty sure is not FDA approved in the US, and makes you hallucinate and have panic attacks. Her parents decided she needed a break from her homestay and paid for her to spend a few nights in the Sheraton, which is the one really fancy hotel in Kampala. I went to spend a night there with her so we could be sick together, and got a small taste of what reverse culture shock is going to be like when I get home. We literally walked in the door to the lobby and just fell against each other, in hysterical laughter. This is not Uganda! Marble floors? An indoor fountain? Piano music? Concierge? A majority of white people? Really?! Then, once we got ourselves to the room we spent the night in somewhat of a shock taking showers with water pressure and temperatures between ice and scalding, enjoying real air conditioning, marveling at the lack of mosquito nets, watching the UK version of MTV (Super Sweet 16 marathon and then Cribs), and ordering room service that even had real salad! Too much and completely overwhelming… A nice break from reality though I guess.

The rest of the week was spent writing papers and having fun with my homestay family. Last Friday I cooked on a coal pot stove and made guacamole, chapatti, and macaroni and cheese with peas, broccoli, and onions. It actually turned out pretty good except that the cheese here is really bad compared to anything we have in the US. Having no comparison though, my family enjoyed it a lot. I know I haven’t written much about my family at all so I will do that as soon as I have another block of time to write a long entry.

I left my homestay family on Saturday and am now living in a giant house that 9 people staying in Kampala rented for the practicum period. It’s been a lot of fun having giant family dinners, watching movies together (you can get any movie or TV season for $1), and playing. We were going to go to a poker tournament last night at the casino, but decided instead to just have one among ourselves tonight. Most of the time, trying to go out here and just have fun and relax is impossible because we draw so much attention everywhere we go. I’m starting to feel a little isolated from Uganda though, now that I am not having daily interactions with Ugandans. This week I’ve been sleeping in, cooking lots of food for people who already have internships/ research meetings during the day, and doing a little bit of research for my practicum, which I can’t start until after Easter. My advisor does not seem to be concerned about the fact that I will now only have a 3-week internship though, so I am not worrying about it. Right now, I am just trying to figure out whether it makes more sense to live in a hotel in Gulu for 4 weeks or whether it makes sense to rent an unfurnished house (which we would have to minimally furnish) and pay for 5 weeks even though I will only be there for 4 weeks (we would all split rent and other people are in Gulu for 5 weeks). I also just realized that Passover is next week so I am trying to figure out what to do for that. There is one other girl here who is Jewish, and about 2 hours east of here there is a area of Jewish communities totaling around 1100 people, so we’re working on finding a way to get in contact with them and be able to go celebrate Passover with them. I really hope it works out. Somebody told me that while they have many of the same prayers, the tunes have mostly been changed to be much more African sounding. So fun!

Alright. Done with this essay. If you made it through it you get like 10 gold stars:-) Will try to switch back to smaller, more frequent posts.

Give a welcome to spring for me. So sad I’m missing all the trees and flowers blooming!

Well that's not something that happens every day...

While the past few days in my life have been completely uneventful for a change (we're finalizing practicum plans and wrapping up some papers), the city of Kampala has had lots of news.

Disclaimer: I am no expert on any of this. Pretty much all the info I have is through word of mouth.

Background info (though I may have some of the details a little off): elections are held every 5 years in Uganda. The next one is in spring 2011 and people are already pretty restless. The current president, Yoweri Museveni, was a key player in overthrowing Idi Amin and came to power in 1986. He originally did a lot of good helping the country set up a infrastructure that had recently been completely destroyed. He's also credited with leading Uganda in one of the best responses to the HIV crisis among developing countries all over the world. He did a lot of other good stuff too but in the interest of time I'm going to skip ahead to the 2006 elections when he got rid of the presidential term limit and was accused by many people of rigging the elections. Right now, he still has many supporters but has been coming under increasing pressure for the ridiculously high levels of corruption in the government. So people are already bracing themselves for an extremely intense and violent election period next year.

Yesterday, there were riots at Makerere University, which is the big public university in Uganda, and 3 people got shot. It's time for student body elections, and here, candidates are affiliated, endorsed, and backed by national political parties. It would be like if people in the US ran for student government on Democrat and Republican party tickets. They're not even having this study abroad program here next spring during the national elections because of the anticipated violence, so you can imagine how intense university elections must be. The rioting spilled out of the university gates and into the street but didn't make it very far before being contained by the police.

Then, last night somebody burned the Kasubi Tombs to the ground, which is not difficult because they are basically a little wood and a lot of dried grass. However, it is a HUGE deal because it is the heritage site for the Baganda Kingdom and is where the past 4 kings are buried. I won't go into a lot of detail, but basically the Baganda kingdom is one of the main kingdoms that was turned into Uganda by the colonial powers, and ever since independence there has been tension between the Baganda kingdom and the government, much of which has to do with authority to rule over the people. Kampala is where the ancient Baganda kingdom was, so most people in this region are Baganda. So, though as far as I know there is no evidence, many people are blaming the burning on the government trying to remove any legitimacy of authority from the Baganda king before next year's election. President Museveni (who is not Baganda) came to the tombs today to show his grief, but was met with resistance from many Baganda who were at the site. In the scuffle, Museveni's guards shot a few people.

Then, today there was more rioting at Makerere University, which spread farther outside the gates and down to one of the main city markets, where part of a police station was burned down.

I am telling you all this for 2 reasons. Mostly so that you know what is going on here, as I think it may end up affecting my experience. Also though, I can't quite tell what (if anything) you are all hearing about this in the US and so I wanted to give a general idea of what is going on and let everyone know I am ok. A few students today got really worried calls from home so I thought I'd go ahead and preempt all of that. SIT has really great procedures in place for tense/ riot-filled times like these. They have connections all over the city to alert them of dangerous areas, they have designated safe havens both in and outside the city (including one right by the airport), our transportation coordinator (this crazy, old man) may in fact be magic in his ability to find and quickly get to people no matter where they are, and we all have cell phones. If anything happens of interest, I will most definitely put it on my blog. So whatever you hear about happening in Uganda, don't worry about me and know that if I see a large, angry crowd of people I have the common sense to go in the other direction.

It would be interesting to know what news you are getting over there though. I find it actually pretty amusing that what of Ugandan news is of interest to Ugandans, is not usually the same as what is of interest to the international community. Very rarely do any of the top stories in my google news Uganda section on my blackberry match up to any of the front page stories of any of the major Ugandan newspapers. For example, all this oil business and homosexuality bill are really widely covered on cnn, bbc, al jazeera, etc. Uganda's main papers (the New Vision and The Monitor) tend to focus more on things like local events, minor legislation, personal lives of celebrities and politicians, speculation about next year's election, and bizarre and gruesome crimes. I've actually started collecting clippings of newspaper headlines, as some of them are actually just beyond acceptable for any legitimate newspaper, especially one of th top ones in the whole country.

Anyways, can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

PICTURES!!!!!

Due to some unforseen luck, the internet at SIT today was usually fast, so I was able to upload all of the pictures I've taken so far. This album will be a lot more complete after we all get home and exchange pictures. We kind of trade off taking pictures so that we don't all have to walk around with cameras all the time, so there are a lot of days that I don't have any pictures of on my camera. Without further ado:

Click here to see all of my pictures so far!

Malariaaaaa!

Is not so fun, but not as bad as most Americans imagine it to be. Here, it is kind of similar to how we view the flu. Maybe a little worse, but people here get it all the time and slowly build up resistances. Its way too expensive for people to stay on antimalarials their entire lives, so they just wait til they get it and then go try to get some medicine and sleep til they feel better. They know how to treat it, so if you have decent access to medical care (which I do) then it's not really life threatening at all.

I went to the "hospital" on Saturday, but since we had just finished our rural homestay, we were in a pretty rural area, so the best medical facility they had was a clinic with no ac or fans, pit latrine toilets, an approximately 20 person capacity, and chickens running around the courtyard. Oh, and I got my meds in a small, unlabled, paper bag. We got the only private room because we were white, which is nice but also makes me feel super guilty. Of course, there were 2 of us sharing a single bed as we sweated out our fevers, so it was toooo nice. Haha. On the plus side, the lab work, doctors consultation, day staying in the hospital bed, and prescription drugs came to a grand total of about $10. The whole experience though, gives me a whole new level of appreciation for the accountability and sterility of the medical care system in the US, which is a nice change since all I read about lately in the news is how much US health care sucks.

The first 2 days were pretty rough with a fever and nausea that came and went in cycles. So frustrating because my fever would almost completely go away and then 2 hours later be well above 100. Now I'm feeling pretty fine, just completely exhausted. As in, for every 2 hours or so that I nap, I get about 30 minutes of awake time before I crash. This is a little bit of a problem because my practicum proposal is due on wednesday and I still have no idea what I'm doing. I'm not too worried though because there are 7 other people right now in the group who have malaria, who are all also getting behind in their planning.

We're not really sure why so many people got it at the same time, but since we've been traveling, people have been staying outside later in the night, which is when malaria mosquitos come out, so I guess it makes sense. Everyone has been really good about taking their malaria prophylaxis, but it turns out the malaria parasites are becoming resistant to all these meds, so that's fun.

The only thing that is still really bothering me now is the food. Steamed, mashed plantain with greasy beans is not easy to force yourself to eat when you have no appetite. I would love some vegetable broth right now. And maybe some gummy worms:-)

Anyways, just wanted to post a quick update to let everyone know I am alive and doing pretty well. I'm happily resting under my mosquito net with some books and my ipod. Really not too bad. I know I'll be fine and there's not much I can do about it, so I'm just kinda waiting it out and trying to enjoy the sleep. When I get a chance I'll write about my adventures on my rural homestay. For now: Nap time!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Eastern Uganda!

Hmm. Where to start? It's been a while since my last update. Nothing too crazy has happened since last week.

We finished up our gender in-depth study last Thursday in a day that was pretty manageable. We talked to a bunch of Congolese refugees about their challenges building a new life. It was pretty sad to hear their stories, but it was also a nice change to see people who really had some hope for their own futures.
Today we did our group presentation, which is about 90 minutes of telling the group what we learned. We had a challenge figuring out how to structure it because all of the other in-depth study groups had much more academic experiences than us (grassroots, entreprenourship, etc) but we settled on each telling the story of the person we met that stood out to us, which turned out to be really effective. I talked about the 19-year-old girl with a 3-year-old baby, not even a mattress in her rented room, and a UTI that her husband had refused to give her the money to get treated for the past 2 weeks.

Friday and Saturday were mostly just relaxing and doing some logistical stuff for my practicum. Then, sunday we left for our Eastern excursion. We stayed sunday and monday night in this gorgeous hotel overlooking one of the Sipi Falls waterfalls. It was possibly the only 5-star hotel in the world that has pit latrines, but by this point that doesn't bother me at all. If you follow the news, you may have heard about the incredibly deadly mudslides recently in that region from the heavy rains. We were assured though that we had nothing to worry about because the land near where we were staying had been better planned for farming that wouldn't make the soil as succeptible to landslides. Sunday night we went on a hike to the bottom of the waterfall and had a great time sliding around in all the mud left over from the rains. Then, monday morning we split up into small groups and I ended up visiting a rural women's merry-go-round/ community aid group. It was a nice change to meet women who really were empowered to support their families and contribute to their community, while keeping the support of their husbands. Later in the day we went on an incredible hike to another one of the Sipi Falls waterfalls, which was HUGE. When we got there, our crazy transportation coordinator (the same one who told us that if we got malaria, we should just shower and we'd be fine) led all brave enough students down the slippery rocks to the bottom of the waterfall, which was tall enough that if you got directly under the fall, the water pressure would probably kill you. It was completely worth it though, because the view from behind the waterfall looking up was one of the most awesome things I've ever seen. Finally, on our way back from the waterfall, we detoured by a coffee farm and got to participate in making coffee. Lots of fun.

Right now, I'm on my way to our rural homestay, where I will be for 3 days. I am bringing a hen as a gift cuz I figure how many times in my life will it be appropriate to give livestock as a present. Some people are really nervous but both my partner and I are ready to dive in head first. So excited!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Hazard #828 that is not an issue in the US, but should be actively avoided in Uganda:

Getting your earring caught in your mosquito net as you climb into bed. Lemme tell ya, NOT an easy situation to get out of.

This week has been incredible but it wore me out completely, which is why I am currently on track to be asleep by 9pm tonight. So instead of a Uganda post, I will do a quick plug for a cause that is very important to me in the US:

I am on the steering committee for Relay for Life of Washington University, which raises money for the American Cancer Society. Though I am not there this semester, I am trying to stay as involved as I can because the fight against cancer is too important for me to miss out on just because I'm a few time zones away. Right now we are in the middle of a challenge to raise $48k in 48 hours. So, as this blog has shown, there are infinite causes in the world where donating money can change lives, but if this is something that you can spare some of your money for, I would really appreciate it. Also, I think you would be hard pressed to find a person whose life hasn't somehow been touched by cancer, so this is a great way to make a difference in everyone's lives, now and in the future.

If you want to donate money, read more about Relay, or read my specific reasons for relaying, just go to relay.wustl.edu and search for me. Thanks so much!

Peace:-)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Have you ever...

Been yelled out by about a dozen sex workers in a brothel and then thought you were being shot at with a machine gun? Because as of today, I have.

This week of gender intensive study has already has been one of the most intense weeks of my life, but today really topped it off.

In the morning we went to a slum, talked to a few women and children who were being neglected by their husbands/fathers (women pretty much totally depend on men here because it is next to impossible for a woman to make enough money support a family), including a 19-year-old with a 3-year-old baby whose husband wouldn't give her money to go to a clinic and get medicine for a UTI she'd had for 2 weeks. While we were talking to her, our guide from the Slum Aid Project straight up asked her what she had done to make her husband neglect her because obviously he wasn't doing it for no reason... With that question, I got an image in my head of the whole Wash U gender studies department chasing after our guide, throwing books at her... We also got to see the slum's large gin distillery where some women worked to support their families making 120-140 proof gin out of molasses. They offered to let us taste it, but I declined since the smell was so strong I am gagging a little bit just thinking about it. Then, before we left we distributed another 150ish pounds of condoms.

Then, in the afternoon we went to by far the smelliest place I have ever been in my entire life. It was one of those places where you spend the whole time debating which is the lesser of the evils: breathing through your nose, breathing through your mouth, or just not breathing for as long as possible. We ended up down an alley, back into a little courtyard with many-doored halls coming off of it. Will, the only guy in our 6 person group, just leaned over to me and said "are we where I think we are?" To which I just replied "uhh... Yep..." We had been told that the sex workers knew we were coming, had talked to students before, and would be happy to see us. However, as soon as we sat down, the sex workers in the courtyard started yelling at us and our guide in Luganda, though it didn't take a genius to figure out what they were saying. We (muzungus) come in to talk to them, take time away from their clients, and then don't end up helping them at all. For about 15 minutes the tiny (I'm a horrible judge, but I'm guessing around 10x10ish) courtyard was complete pandemonium with about a dozen sex workers shouting insults at us, our SIT teacher translating for the one person who would tell us her story, our Slum Aid Project guide trying to get the women to calm down, and us trying to get the point across to our guide that we definitely wanted to get out of there if we were not wanted. One woman, in English, demanded that if we wanted to talk to them we should each pay one of them and go to their rooms to talk. We pretty much ignored the comments like that, though I noticed at some point Annie and I had protectively grabbed onto Will's arms by instinct, as he, for obvious reasons, was the target of some particular comments that made him even more so uncomfortable than the rest of us. Then, about 15 minutes into our visit we heard loud explosions from very nearby that sounded like gunshots. The sex workers started screaming and running for shelter while us students jumped on top of each other in confusion. At some point it occurred to me that though the noise continued, I didn't see any bullets or people being hurt, but everyone was panicking and I didn't know what was going on so this revelation wasn't much consolation. When the noise stopped, somebody realized that it had been from the transformer on a power line right above the courtyard. By this point, all of us had pretty shot nerves and one of the students started crying, prompting teasing from the emerging sex workers. After that, we pretty much demanded to get out of there immediately, and at first the sex workers blocked our way but then let us out when our guide promised to stay behind and talk with them. I realize by this point I have portrayed the sex workers as pretty mean, and they were to us, but I think it was kind of deserved. They are almost all mothers trying to make enough money to support their children and pay school fees. All of them were forced into this work when their husbands left them with no money and no business or technical skills. I don't blame them at all for wanting money from us, and honestly, after the fact, am ok with how they treated us because it gave them some power and dignity over us, which we can take and move on from and probably gave them a feeling of empowerment. To cap it all off, on our way out, we passed a man walking down the alley wearing a shirt that said "women are not for life, just pleasure" Whyyyyy would anyone ever make a shirt that said that!?

After these past few days, my group revolted and pretty much refused to go through a whole other day of this tomorrow. We are all exhausted and emotionally completely spent, so hopefully tomorrow will just be a lot of processing. This was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime string of experiences, but I'm about ready for a break. Luckily, next week is the Eastern excursion, which means passing lots of time in the vans, hiking, and some other nice things. More on that later. For now, some much needed rest.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

What did you do today?

I talked to a bunch of sex workers in the slums who had been abandoned by their babies' fathers and didn't know of any organizations that could help them (and until we got super upset, the organization we were with wasn't planning on leaving them with any information). This included a woman whose husband had died 3 weeks ago and was already doing sex work to feed her 2 teenage children who didn't know how she got the money.

Then, I was given good luck from a spirit speaking through a witch doctor, whose medical herbs I'm pretty sure contained some illegal substances. And finallly, I helped distribute about 150 pounds of condoms. Definitely the most intense/ bizarre day since the prison in Rwanda.

Yesterday I spent all day walking around a different slum talking to victims of domestic abuse, most of whom had been counciled by the Slum Aid Project (the organization we were with) to stay with their husbands because they had no real hope of economic independence.

Side note: also yesterday when I got home my 22-year-old host brother, Jack, was hanging around the house. I then found out that despite having just made a family tree for school (with info from my host parents), he was only actually my half brother. Turns out, of the 8 siblings, 2 are adopted from an uncle who died, and 2 are from 2 separate mothers before my host dad met my host mom. Random...

I also decided for the millionth time in my life that having money sucks. It doesn't suck as much as not having money. However, the responsibility of meeting so many people I could help individually but not being able to help all of them is utterly overwhelming. Also, knowing that the first (and sometimes only) things people see when they look at you are money and visas depressing. It makes it impossible to ever trust that someone is not just talking to you because they expect something from you, which makes it pretty much impossible to really just make a human connection.

And its definitely not something I have blown out of proportion in my mind. This was what my host dad and I discussed at dinner tonight, and not only did he confirm my frustrations, but he added that people in this community keep asking him to let them speak to the muzungu in hopes that I will give them money.

This is the first time in my life where I've ever really felt like a complete outsider because of my race. It's definitely an experience I need to have, but at the moment that isn't much consolation.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Luganda ease and grilled cheese

This is gonna be pretty short because I am exhaaaaausted but I am getting pretty behind in my blogging and if I don't start catching up, I will never find time to write a long update on everything.

Last thursday, friday, and saturday were pretty boring. Why? Because on saturday we had our ACTFL test in Luganda, and spent the entire 2 days before that cramming. Theoretically, in 3 weeks I learned about 150 words and 5 tenses in a language that is spoken in approximately 15 square miles of the entire earth. I would put the actual stats slightly lower, but I do know enough to barely get by/ win people over because at least I am trying.

Sunday, my biggest accomplishment was finally making grilled cheese for my family. I want to make sure they like cheese before I go to the trouble of making a whole meal. There had a been a lot of confusion over the past few days, as my family is not really familiar with the concept of sandwiches or food that cannot be an entire meal. I ended up describing it as an alternative to a roll when taking tea. I taught my host mom how to make one using the chapatti pan over coals and she loved it. Then she took over and made the rest-- side note: women here are very protective over their kitchen as their domain, mostly because they have so little power everywhere else-- anyways, I bought real butter. (as opposed to Blue Band fat spread that does not need refrigeration) for this endeavor, and used a slightly above average amount on the first one because I wanted to make sure they would like it, so on the rest my mom ending up using a ridiculous amount of butter. Anyways, 5 sandwiches, 10 slices of cheese, and a stick and a half of butter later we had some pretty awesome grilled cheese. It was a nice little bonding thing.

Oh, and also yesterday was my dad's birthday (happy birthday dad!! MLL) and so I put my host dad on the phone with him for a while, which my host dad got a huge kick out of. Pretty much any of my friends are invited to come visit and stay with them, by the way. Also, if I decide to stay here they will give me a little land on which to build a house upcountry. So tempting:-) maybe I just won't come home... I really am starting to really find my stride here and feel more and more connected with Uganda every day.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry