CHANGED.

Me. I am changed. I thought I knew stuff. I thought I understood the genocide from the hours and hours of research and the numerous papers and books I've read. I thought I got it. I thought I could handle it. I thought I knew. I was wrong. Please note that I will try desperately to express into words the things I saw this weekend (sorry, now two weekends ago...), but I nor any one I have spoken with will ever be able to relay into any written language the experience we had in Rwanda, Africa. As most of my readers know there was an atrocious genocide in the 1990s in Rwanda that killed almost 1 million Tutsis. Our small group of mzungus had the sacred opportunity to walk the grounds where thousands lay dead and to pay respects to their graves and to the Rwandan people. We left our little house in Lugazi around 4:40am Saturday June 8th and traveled to Kampala to get on the huge bus from the Jaguar Bus Company that would take us to Kagali, Rwanda in approximately nine hours. It was supposed to leave at 6am and left 20minutes later of course. Strangely our seats were sopping wet which was uncomfortable and awkward, but we were all so desperately tired we ignored that. I sat next to Jackie in the very front and the bus ride was fairly enjoyable with no complaints other than the massive pot holes in the road. Then to my complete surprise (though I should have known better) a couple hours into it we pulled over. People began hopping out and I was thoroughly confused because we were literally in the middle of no where until I realized this was our little potty break. The bus just pulls over and everyone gets out and lines up next to each other and does their business, quite literally, on the side of the road/bus. Well, a bunch of my mzungu friends got out as well and joined the peeing party. It was beyond hilarious. (SIDENOTE: I am the only one awake sitting here watching the ridiculously huge black cricket/cockroach jump or fly or crawl on the couch Ashley has fallen asleep on. It scares me every time it moves. AND I just saw a gecko scurry across the wall so I am hoping it will find the large black insect of sorts and eat it. EW. Also, all of this doesn’t phase me one bit and I am thinking of capturing the large black insect maybe…oh shoot it almost landed on Ashley. I really should get up and get it before it gets lost in her blanket… ALSO, I really have to go to the bathroom, but we have absolutely no water—which is an absolutely ridiculous story I will tell later, and it is too late and scary to go use the latrine, especially if these types of creepy animals are inside our house next to me I can’t even imagine what is out in the latrine waiting….so sorry, back to the important weekend.) So we had our potty break and then an hour or so more into the ride our bus pulls over again, but this time it is because uh the clutch broke. UGH, no big deal right? Who needs a clutch anyhow?! So we waited and waited. And it was so hot and stuffy and lame so a few of us got out and sat in the grass on the side of the road and played travel scategorries. We were on the side of the road for about two to three hoursssss. ALSO not a big deal, they fixed the clutch with grass. It took several hours on the side of the road, but that is what they used to fix it and it worked. We arrived in Rwanda much later than anticipated, but we arrived and were greeted by Richard, the contact Aunty Peggy told us about. Richard is the General Secretary of the National Town Council for all of Rwanda. . . and he was the nicest man we have ever met. We were all starving so we went to a bank ( which did not take our ATMS. It became quite the hassle the whole weekend) and then to a sit down restaurant. Several of us got pizza (very popular w/ our group when we go to any type of restaurant that looks legit). I got a chicken salad which had an odd dressing on it, but I actually liked it a lot. Rylee got a vegetarian pizza which was quite disgusting in fact. We tried once more to change our shillings into francs, but alas no success. We went back to our Chez Rose Guest House which was pretty nice set up. There were two of us to a room and I was with Rylee. There were two beds to a room and a nicer bathroom than what we are used to with a very tall shower with HOT WATER. Oh my gosh we were all in heaven! We had a great night sleep and the next day (Sunday) we woke up and had a complimentary breakfast of bread, omelet, bananas, and steamed milk. We went to the Kigali Memorial Centre which was an incredible place. We walked around the grounds and the several mass graves that surrounded us were filled with 250,000 bodies. It was very intense. We had the opportunity to place a large bouquet of flowers on the mass graves and had a minute of silence out of respect for those lost and the lives affected by the atrocity. We then entered the building and walked around the numerous rooms that explained the history of Rwanda and the genocide. Reading the very detailed explanation, movies from survivors, and very intense pictures became pretty emotionally draining. They had a room full of photographs of people who were murdered and another room of skeletons. There were also rooms explaining other genocides that have occurred throughout history and the whole experience was overwhelming, but necessary. Upstairs there was a room dedicated to the children. There were large portrait sized photos of individual children with a plaque underneath describing who they were. It would say their name, age, favorite song or food, best friend, and favorite activity. One little girl, Channel’s favorite song was, “This Country My God Chose for Me.” I will never forget staring at her picture and having a ridiculous, helpless, devastated feeling overwhelm me. Tears just started and continued pouring out. I’m sorry if this is sounding dramatic, but I guess it was a pretty dramatic experience that won’t be forgotten, ever. I walked outside and sat with Corbin and Heidi and we just had to talk through the process that we were experiencing. We had spent four hours learning about the genocide and being surrounded and educated about the horrendous inhumane events. We felt helpless and sad and that we didn’t deserve the lives were living and couldn’t understand how something so cruel could happen in our world. How can power corrupt people to harm one another, but not just to kill, but to kill with such force and in such a gruesome manner? What we saw and what we learned was absolutely unreal. . . . . .except that it was very real.
We decided we needed a break from learning about everything and went to lunch at a buffet because our last restaurant experience took us three hours to get food. Literally. The buffet was delicious and we were all rejuvenated and continued to try to process everything we had seen. We then had the incredible opportunity to go to The Hotel De Colline. As most of you have seen Hotel Rwanda this is the exact hotel where all of that took place. Richard had arranged for the hotel manager to show us around and we got a small tour. The hotel is completely different from the movie set up and looks nothing like it. It is a very large hotel in the middle of Kigali (pronounced CHigali). I thought the hotel was more protected like in the movie but on one side there are only bushes separating the hotel from the street. We also met a man ( I think his name was Andes or something like that) who was the technician at the hotel during the genocide. He told us his story which was amazing to hear. His wife actually had their baby in the hotel while all the chaos was occurring. Also, during the movie (HOTEL RWANDA) there is a part when Paul sends his wife and family in a UN truck to escape the hotel and then the truck gets ambushed and barely gets out of the hacking machetes and returns back to the hotel. This man’s wife was also on that truck and barely survived. He also said that they lived in the hotel for two months and their were 1,000 people living as refugees there as well. He said that out of those months he only saw the front of the hotel maybe two times and he kept repeating how dangerous everything was. I asked him specifically why the Hutus didn’t attack the hotel like they often attacked churches full of people and murdered everyone inside. He said that he wasn’t sure, but that he did know that they had a huge UN flag on the top of the building so maybe that kept the Hutus from attacking. No one died out of those 1,000 refugees staying in the hotel. It was so great to be there and to hear his story and especially after I have seen the movie I could place in my mind how it must have been. Amazing. We then went home early and hung out at the hotel and then went to bed. The next day Richard had his friend, Nadine, take us to other places we were planning on seeing. We got in a taxi and drove for about an hour until we reached a little store where the locals sell peace baskets and other carvings and crafts. After stopping for an hour we jumped back into the taxi for 2 ½ hours and traveled to a museum that told us the history of Rwanda and all of it’s culture which was pretty interesting. There was a huge life sized hut of a king and queen that we went into which also seemed like a pretty saweet set up . We then got back into the taxi van and headed into the mountains. We had no idea what to expect or where we were going. We knew we were headed to a memorial sight but we assumed it was going to be similar to the Kigali center we had been to the day before. We were wrong. We were up in the middle of no where in the gorgeous mountains when the taxi turned down a dirt road and took us to this huge beautiful landing. There were mountains all around and we were on the top of this hill that had nothing except a random building. So we got out and walked up to the building which i guess used to be a technology school of some sort. They began talking to us and explained what happened at this site. The government in the area had told all the tutsis to gather atthe top of this hill at the school so that they could be protected better. 50,000 tutsis were living here expecting to get some the promised help from the government during the genocide. The government came and counted all the people and told them they were doing so so that they might know how many supplies were needed. Instead they were planning a systematic attack of this group of Tutsis and needed to know the exact number of people. After a few weeks of living there the people began starving and getting very weak which was a part of the Hutus plan. Then on the night of April 20th the Hutus attacked with guns and other artillery weapons supplied by the French. The Tutsis were weak and only had bricks and stones to throw back at them. 48, 996 people were killed that night within two hours. A complete massacre. The French then came back and put the bodies in a massive hole to and covered up the evidence with a volley ball court. Only four people survived that night and we met two of them and heard their story. It was unreal. One was a women who was a Hutu but her husband was a Tutsi. She had her identification card which saved her, but she saw everyone around her slaughtered. She was holding her baby and they kept trying to go after her with a knife to kill her daughter. Miraculously, her daughter also survived and is now in secondary school. A hutu soldier actually helped her escape because he said, "I have killed enough. I do not want to kill anymore." The other survivor was a man and we could see where he had been shot in the head. He hid under all the dead bodies and then escaped after they all left and went into the mountains. It was so insane to hear their story and made it so real. We also toured the grounds and the took us into the different classrooms in the buildings. Each classroom was full of skeletons. There were at least 10 bed frames to a room and they were completey covered with skeletons. Everywhere. The stench was overwhelming. Some of the skeletons still had hair. A few still had a shirt on. One still had their wedding ring. In several of them you could see where the machete had killed them. You could see the position they had died and their facial expression. It was like a nightmare being in those rooms, but i couldn't get myself to leave. I felt helpless and weak and small. I could do nothing for the dead that surrounded me. All i could do was enter every single room and pay respect to them. One room was filled with smaller skeletons....children. A room full of dead children broke my heart. Les and I started crying. We were these children's ages when the genocide happened. Why did we get to live and they had to die? These kids would be our ages right now if they hadn't been hacked by a machete. It was the most frustrating experience and the most devastating. We could touch their skeletons if we had wanted. It all seemed so unfair and wrong and cruel. We also saw the room full of the people's clothes and saw the mass grave and talked more to the survivors. We couldn't believe what we had just seen. On the bus ride back to the hotel we had some serious conversations about life and what we were doing with ours and what those children would be doing with theirs if they had the opportunity. Again, why was i born in America instead of the rolling hills of Rwanda? I was sick to my stomach. It is experiences like that that make one wonder about the life we're living and motivates you to be better everyday. Well, to me at least it makes me wonder why have I been given this opportunity and this life that i could never have deserved, and what am i doing with it???

more updates later.
please keep praying for us--we need it.

love,
tor

My African Life in Pictures

1). Jeff Looking like a doctor. Please note the sign.
2). The nicest church we've seen in Uganda. Part of the day with Deo.

3) Charts in the hospital. Look at the number of people coming in for malaria.



4) Our friend Patrick who is on the town council and headmaster/ teacher at St. Edwards. Giving the students directions.


On the left 5). An empty classroom at St. Edwards.

Fast Internet Equals Pictures to Share

African Adventures.

Finally, an African update for you

So, parts of my blog were permanently erased so on the days I lost I am just writing a quick summary:
Tuesday, May 20th
Town council meeting and we presented our projects—we were in charge of the meeting so it only lasted an hour instead of 3 ½.
Team meeting
Team Uganda meeting at seven

WED-May 21
Posters in the morning at St. Edwards.
Research
5pm st. Edwards activity with the kids was ridiculously fun and chaotic and kids were running around everywhere.

Thursday May 22-
Business Meeting:
We explained our plan for the summer and the different lessons we are teaching and how we need to have two separate times to meet a week. Well, they said that was no good so we had to re-evaluate our plan. We also told them we could only have 12 in a group because the group discussion would be beneficial with less people. We made sure every one was clear on what we expected and what they expected from us and we were feeling good about our meeting and pretty productive. I am in charge of advertising and marketing and though I don’t really know that much about it, basic common sense for business in America is not really known here so I should be okay. And by okay I mean if you have any ideas let me know! (FOR REAL—help me out.)
Seren and I had our first meeting with the Mamatoto Performance Choir on Thursday. We were not sure if Jefferson just wanted us to walk in and take over or what he was expecting so we had planned a quick lesson outline. We got there and he gave us complete control so we tried to teach them warm ups and one song, but that was a little hard because they were shy. So we pretty much improvised and taught them an arrangement of “Swing Lo.” They really liked that and got really into it and we definitely added random dance moves because they love dancing. Oh yes, I definitely busted out my saweet show choir moves. It was really fun, but we will definitely prepare for an hour lesson instead of about a half an hour for next time. We are super excited about it and seren and I sang “Beautiful Savior” with harmony and it blew their minds. They never sing with harmony so it was a new cool experience for them and we will be teaching them about it in the weeks to come. And of course we couldn’t go a night without having numerous team meetings so we did those and we were all very productive.
Friday-May 23
Friday Lessie, Jackie, Ashley, Lauren, Natalie, Rylee, Heidi, and me headed up to Iganga to the orphanage HELP volunteers worked with last year. It was about an hour and a half taxi drive and we somehow managed to get in a nicer taxi van/bus so it wasn’t too bad except that they had to stick a wooden stool underneath my seat so it wouldn’t plop over. We got there and Heidi wanted to see the kids reaction to sour skittles and needless to say there was total chaos and freaking out and begging and a ridiculous amount of children pushing and shoving for more. It was a little intense, but hilarious. We talked to Ruth and Richard who are in charge of the orphanage and we are planning on coming every Friday to be with the kids and teach the kids who are not in school. This orphanage is cool because it has taken kids off the street and the children are so freaking cute. This one little girl name priscilla was so adorable. She has the cutest smile ever and loved being held. We were there for a couple hours and towards the end she started not looking so well and then she threw up and had a really high fever. They told us she was getting over Malaria, but then we met this mzungu who works at the hospital and he sponsors her as well. He said that he didn’t think it was malaria because she had been given treatments and she wasn’t improving so it was probably typhoid fever. It was so sad and scary because she got all limp and was so weak. On a happier note we learned how to make paper beads for the necklaces that are so awesome and everyone has them around here. Often the various women’s groups make them and sell them for a living. I will definitely be bringing a lot of those home to show all of you. We were planning to leave by three and be home by five, but as we told them we needed to leave they said no no we are making you lunch. Uh, okay so we always get a little nervous when people prepare us food, but they always do so you can never leave once they start preparing. So we waited and then we waited and then we waited some more. In fact, we waited for two more hours. The food was rice and beans and cassava mixed with beans. We were all pleasantly surprised or really hungry. Either way we enjoyed the food, but I was dying because I hadn’t gone to the bathroom for two days because we had no water back at the house and I definitely didn’t want to go here at the orphanage latrine for um, various reasons. Well, we finally were able to leave and my stomach hurt so bad I could barely function. Luckily, we found a gas station that had coke light. I don’t really like diet coke/ coke light but I definitely needed it that day. We also found chocolate and eating chocolate that tasted like real chocolate made us all so happy. Les got some cereal called “Fruit Pops” but we so kindly dub them “Soapy Pops” because they literally taste like soap. The taxi ride home was so hilarious because we got in a normal taxi van and they of course shoved several more people in it than could fit. We had 23 people in the taxi as well as a HUGE turkey and a throwing up child. Please picture that experience as well as oncoming traffic and crazy pot holes and dodging cars. It was quite the adventure. We got back and had some dinner and we were all just exhausted. Corbin and amber decided to propose their project to all of us that took a long while, but it was worth it and we allocated funds as a team. I believe Friday was more of a chill night for everyone and trent, Ashley, and I ended up staying up til about 4:30am talking about various issues like politics, life, church.
Saturday- May 24- And then we knew we couldn’t save Africa.
On Saturday we woke up around 10am and decided to go to Mabira Forest to hike around and see monkeys and other animals you find in an African jungle. I wrote about this a little bit in my blog before so I won’t take too much time, but we got split into three different groups and got lost, but miraculously found our way back. We hiked for about three hours and went somewhere between three to five miles. (we have no way of knowing because we got lost and don’t know exactly which path we were going on). We then went to Jinja ( a city) and had a marvelous lunch with American tasting food. I had a bagel w/ avocado, tomato w/ basil, and some mustard sauce. I also had a chocolate milkshake and a fanta because I was so hot and my food was taking forever. We strolled around Jinja for a while bartering for better prices, but they are pretty set in jinja because it is more of a tourist town. We took a taxi home and walked into our village and of course all the kids came running at us yelling, “hiii muzungu! Victoria hi hi hi. Spackman how are you. Lesalee hi hi hi.” As we got out of the van we realized that a lot of them had new whistle toys we had never seen before. (WARNING-next part is a little gross) We then discovered (while they were holding our hands of course) what type of whistles they were. These newly invented whistles were actually tampon applicators that they were now blowing into. We all freaked out and asked them where they got them and they started laughing and said from the mzungu garbage. So, the kids went through our trash and found our used tampon applicators and created whistles out of them. They were actually pretty good whistles, but oh my gosh disgusting. We got into the house and had no electricity so we all just sat there in the dark grossed out by what we had just learned. Then Heidi said the best quote of the trip regarding the kids outside our window blowing into the tampons, “That’s when you know you can’t save Africa.” So yes, we all laughed for a long while, but man, that’s when we realized we really can’t save Africa…the truth hurts I guess. We then decided to play murder in the dark. It was so freaking scary because it was absolutely pitch black and we were all playing so there were people creepily every where. In fact it got so intense that there were a few accidents: peeing of pants, punch in the face, and a serious poking of someone’s eye. Again, our team is so cool.
Sunday –May 25
On Sunday we split into two groups with some of us going to church in Jinja and some to Mukono. I went to Mukono with Corbin, Jackie, Heidi, Trent, and Amber. The one day I did not bring my rain jacket it poured and poured and poured. We had to walk quite a ways to the internet café and the mayors house as well. We went to the mayor’s house for dinner because Jackie is really close to them because they were her host family five years ago. It was a pretty good meal and I had a little tiny piece of meat. The fruit was the best and the passion fruit juice as well. 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 and dan was so kind and made us allllll banana scones. DELICIOUS. 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 myself 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 sat around for a little while waiting for her. Then another nurse came and we toured the hospital with her. Lessi, Jeff, Seren, and I decided to stay and volunteer. Seren mixed drugs and Jeff worked with the dentist. Les and I went to the maternity ward and talked with the nurses there about how to register people and how we could volunteer. Then nurse betty came up to us and said you come help me. So we went with her and she was so hilarious. She took us into a room and showed us how to take blood samples from the mothers and then test their blood for aids. SO lessi and I were in charge of testing people for aids. WHAT? CRAZY, I know. We took their hand and cleaned them and then we poked them with a syringe and squeezed their blood out onto the tester strip and then waited for the results and charted everything. WE COULDN’T BELIEVE what we were doing. After doing that for a while we had to go home for other project meetings, but we seriously could not believe our lives. We told everyone when we got home and everyone could not believe it either. After talking with Jackie we realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to do that any more because we haven’t been trained in America how to do those medical things. So, we probably will never do it again, but it was super intense and very random that Betty just came up to us and pretty much made us do it. Haha, it was awesome though.
I need to get better at writing every night because I really don’t want to write anymore….. So quickly, I worked more on research and worked on projects on Monday. Oh, also poor dan came running home with corbin from their project because he had matooke with gnut sauce. Dan is allergic to peanuts and any type of nut or bean in general. So, he was having a very scary allergic reaction and we were giving him benedryl and then they had to take him to the hospital. There they gave him a steroid and he came back and was getting worse and worse. His face swelled up and he broke out in hives and his eyes swelled up and he couldn’t breathe. Ashley, Trent, Dan, and our cook and friend Irene took him to jinja to a doctor there. They told us later that in the car ride it got really scary and they hit him with the EPI pen. They got him to the doctor and gave him some more medicine and he ended up spending the night in Jinja at the district presidents house with trent. It was a very very scary time and we spent the afternoon praying for him and super worried. When we heard he was doing better we were all relieved and had a small sort of FHE trying to make chocolate chip cookies. 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.
Tuesday-May 27th
Dan is back and okay
George Wythe teacher training—we went and had teacher training from the George Wythe group that is here. It was pretty inspiring and well worth our time.
Some people went to kampala to get laminating done for their projects
Project proposal
Lessons plans due
Feeling sick
Discussed housing for the summer- 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 I will be moving to the new living quarters and one of the mayors houses with les, jeff, dan, david, nat, seren and maybe some new people. It will be kind of hard because most of the volunteers will be in this house, but we will figure it out.
Natalie was also not feeling great all of Tuesday but we all just thought it was normal sickness. However, I woke up to her weak on the floor asking if anyone was awake because she was so sick. We took her to the couch and then she threw up a lot. She was sick all night poor girl.
Wednesday May 28th—
Natalie still sick and weak, but we are taking care of her.
We are all busy today on various projects. At 5pm we have our ‘play date’ with St. Edwards and we were just informed that the whole school plus the orphans will be there. Um, no big deal, but that is 500 students plus the orphans. We are not sure how we are going to accommodate that….so, I’ll have to let you know how this all turns out.
(It’s Saturday now—May 31, 2008)
So I wrote a marvelous blog and updated on everything that has happened in the past week, and then the computer was being insane and lost it even though I saved it. It decided that even though I saved it, it was no longer compatible with the computer. I spent two hours writing my blog and I was uuuuuuuuuuuupset. K, done venting.
So update from WED—we called the headmaster at St. Edwards and said that we could not accommodate for 500 students and he said no no, we will have only 60- 100 so that was good. 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 were setting up “Shrek” on the projector for all the students to watch. It was really fun and the kids LOVED it. So we were stressed about the night, but it turned out great. We then came home and had dinner and some meetings. Wednesday night was kind of a weird one for all of us and I’m not quite sure why. A lot of us just felt a little down for whatever reasons. I was okay, but not feeling great about life, but overall just fine. But man, it was just kinda a hard night…. Then randomly David our guard asked us to turn on the porch light which was kind of strange request, but we did. 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. Seriously 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! 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 on green grasshoppers. . . Sidenote: Corbin, Dan, and Jeff caught tons and tons of grasshoppers the next day and put them all in a plastic ziplock and froze them and then added more throughout the day and then left them all night in the bag above the fridge and they were making loud noises trying to escape all night.

Thursday May 29, 2008
Natalie feeling better, but still can’t eat much.
Thursdays are now probably our busiest days. 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. 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. One little boy sam was so cute and was teaching rylee luganda. He was six years old and had the cutest giggle. Fiona ( the same girl from last week that latched onto me and wouldn’t let go) came and I was with her for a majority of the time. She wanted a piggy back and was choking me so bad. She is insanely strong! So I asked Heidi to come over and help me move her to my front and when we did that Fiona ripped heidi’s glasses off and was twisting them and we had to deal with that situation before she broke them. I can’t believe how speedy and strong she is! We then sat down and she was so cute and laying there and I was rubbing her back. We have a great time together, but then I had to go to the business meeting so I had to give her to Seren. Jackie and seren said that after I left Fiona went nutso and was in and out of the latrine and went to the bathroom all over herself and got it on them and wouldn’t cooperate and was wild and not fun or sweet at all. Sad.
Well 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. I learned a lot and the people there really did too. I think business training will be so sustainable here and the way we are going about doing it 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 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, etc. Then we will work one on one with them discussing the good and bad of what we have observed. I know nothing about business, but it is cool to be a part of it.
Jeff, Trent, Ashley, and I headed to the market after the meeting and I got a huge pineapple and a mango. We then went to the best chipati maker in town and it was heaven. I got two huge chipatis and ate one on the way home and saved the other one so I could make eggs and put them inside of it. DELICIOUS. After lunch I worked on my lesson plan for the choir that evening. I made a warm-up poster with DO RE MI FA SOL LA TI DO going up the scale because we were teaching the importance of warming up as well as what a scale is and what the different notes mean when they are higher or lower on a page. At 5pm Seren, Emily, Les, Rylee, Lauren, Nat, and I went to the school to meet the choir. Unfortunately, it looks like most of the kids will be in school at that time so we have to figure something out. We have a meeting with their director, Jefferson next Tuesday. Well, kids started showing up, but definitely not all the same ones from last time so we had to adjust our teaching to the younger kids, but it turned out really really well and I 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
Example of Lessons:
Lesson One: Goal- Introduce who we are. Get to know the kids. Discuss why warming up our vocal chords and instrument (our bodies) is essential. Teach one song. Share one song with harmony so kids can hear the difference.
Lesson Two: (May 29) Goal- In depth on warm up and body posture when singing. New warm-up songs, music theory: scale, notes increasing and decreasing in pitch, review Swing Lo, teach more complex song with various parts, introduce harmony. (Posters to help teach)
-We taught the song from Sound of Music, Do a Deer a female deer
-Fish and Chips and Matooke, Matooke, Matooke (they got a kick out of that one)
-Reviewed Swing Lo and they remembered it really really well and we put it into different parts. (OH ALSO, last week Jackie and trent said they were walking down the road and saw and heard these little kids singing “Swing lo, sweet chariot ” How awesome is that?!)
-Taught Yonder Come Day
-Taught what harmony was and sang Beautiful Savior for them again.

It was a great time and I think the kids really enjoyed it too. I am concerned that it might not work out though because the kids school schedule is so intense and a lot of them can only rehearse on Sundays and we cannot. That would be super depressing if we can’t work with these group of kids…hopefully we will be able to figure something out.
We got back around 6:30pm and a bunch of us girls just 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. 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. It will be different. But we will figure it out. Deo (the mayor) gave us Red Bulls (“it ees good, ake them” he said) so we did. We got back to our house and I had half of one because I really just wanted something cold and I only got through half of the little can and made jeff finish it. Ashley drank two cans and Jackie had half of one. Well, we tried to watch We Are Marshall but the computer kept freezing so Trent, Seren, Ashley, Jackie and I just ended up talking for a little while. Then the electricity completely died so we were all sitting in the dark chatting. Of course the grasshoppers came back from the previous night before but this time we couldn’t see where they were but we could just hear them flying around us. So again, we had cockroaches on the floor, grasshoppers (large ones!) flying around, and mosquitos buzzing in our ears as we talked the night away. In fact, we literally talked all through the night. Well, Seren , Jackie, Ashley, Trent and I talked for a while and then trent went to bed, but then came back to tell us how many cockroaches he had seen in the hallway. Then he sat with us for a bit longer until he couldn’t handle the grasshoppers attacking him in the dark. Seren went to bed around 3:30 and then Jack, Ash, and I were talking. Ash fell asleep, but often would wake up and pretend she was still part of the conversation with her ridiculous mumbling. We also decorated the kitchen area because Friday was amber’s 21st birthday. We planned to make her breakfast in bed as well, but that didn’t work out well because the electricity was out and continued to stay out for hours and hours and hours and well into the morning. Jack and I stayed up all night and Jeff came in randomly around 5:30 because he couldn’t sleep. We ended up talking til morning and we got 5 phone calls at seven am from various parents. The group was up by 8 but still no power so les and I strolled down the road for breakfast. We got chipati with egg inside and it was dddddddddeeelicious. We then got home and the electricity went on and Dan then made his amazing banana scones for Amber’s birthday. It was a pretty fun morning and a group of people went off to work on stoves, a group of girls went off to Iganga orphanage, and a couple of us worked on our project proposals. Friday night we had a delicious dinner and some of us went to African Paradise for some dancing.
Saturday May 31 –
Some of our group went to Kampala for shoes and errands, some went to Mukono for a member’s “Introduction” because she is getting married soon. The rest of us got on a taxi around 1pm and headed to the Futbol Match-Uganda vs. Nigeria. Our group met up with one another at the stadium and it was crazy! People were everywhere and it was like a crazy 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. Les had a side pocket on her backpack and some man next to her opened it and pulled her camera out and she slapped him and screamed at him and got her camera okay. But then he just stood there like nothing happened. 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. The security guards couldn’t control the different fighting that was going on so they were shoving people down the stairs. 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 though 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 jeff and I got orange juice thinking it would be about 1000, but instead they were 3000 each. UGH. Seriously though, the pizza was delicious. We were all very happy with the food despite the very long wait. Saturday night we all relaxed when we got home and a group of us ended up, again, staying up pretty late. All night in fact.
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 me all went with Deo (the mayor), Peggy, Steven, Zaka, and randomly the driver’s girl friend. So I’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. I was in one of the ‘add-on’ seats and it was the most uncomfortable time of my life. . .As I was thinking how uncomfortable and ridiculous this was I just started laughing so much and I couldn’t 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—didn’t eat it really b/c of meat), and steamed milk. The milk was my favorite because it reminded me of home (aw…). My dad always warms up milk and puts sugar in it and that’s what we all did. 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. I actually started enjoying the taxi ride because I just imagined I was at Disneyland on the Indiana Jones ride for three hours. It literally was crazy and jerky and beyond bumpy and our heads were hitting the ceiling and we were getting whiplashed around continuously. 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.”
Also, Deo’s burping non-stop was gross/ hilarious.
Trent: In fact, 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 very very 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.
Also, the beer the driver drank before we left.
Ashley: Felt up by Peggy, mm numerous times.
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.
“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.
Monday we all went our separate ways to various projects and Ashley and Heidi went to kampala for a contact to work up north. Some of us went to Jinja for YSA FHE.