Just call me NAMPIJJA

hello again! njagela uganda! i love uganda! so it has been a very emotionally draining, productive, and englightening week for me. i have learned so much about development in the last few days and the role that i play in it here.
*oh sidenote; my mom informed me that my blog has many spelling and grammatical errors haha. so my fellow readers, just so you know, i do know how to write better than this, but many keys dont work and the delete button sticks :)
well i will catch up on the beginning of the week first. we went to the uganda vs kenya football game!! it was so much fun. it was also kind of a weird day because we drove to the capital, kampala, to gte there, and stopped at dominoes pizza. i felt a little guilty because it was so easy and cheap for us to go and get normal food. i just thought about the people in our little neighborhood who don't have that ability. its hard to explain, but it was just an eye opening experience for me. but the game was really fun! we got there early so we sat on the front row! instead of cheerleaders, they had tribal dancers who did the coolest things like play huge drums on their heads and even kick it while on their heads! uganda even won the game! also, have i mentioned that i'm never goign to get used to the strangers that just walk up to us and take our pictures? they dont try to sneak it either. its a little uncomfortable sometimes hahaha.
me and suzanne visited about ten schools this week and we are doing our first teacher training later this afternoon! i am so excited. so on wednesday, we took a taxi out to the buikwe district to meet with many schools. we were escorted by a teacher in the area we have been in contact with. well, there was a miscommunication of sorts, because we were expecting a meeting and each school put on a presentation for us and gave us time to speak to the entire school. we have realy been gettingput on the spot here. my public speaking is definitely improving! whether i want the practice or not! it was hard because each school saw us as their saviors. the ones who could give them funds to fix all their problems. as an organization, we dont just hand out money. we work with different partners to create projects with them that will be sustainable. so we couldn't make any promises, especially without talking to the rest of our team first. it was a difficult situation. the schools in this area literally have nothing. no materials, not enough teachers, and one school didn't even have a structure. it was a stick roof and the children sat in the dirt underneath it. it was so draining to see so much need and know that we can't fix everything and help everyone. i wish we had enuogh resources, but the truth is that we don't. the more i'm learning about development, the more my mindset is changing. when i came here, i was so excited because i thought i was going to change so many lives and help so many people. and i will. but not in the way i expected. the only difference between the people here and myself is that i was born into a family and country that has education and resources. ugandans are not less capable, hard working, motivated, or intelligent than we are. they simply lack the knowledge of how to improve their circumstances, and dont have resources available to help them suceed. its very heartbreaking, and i was getting discouraged this week. but we are doing our best. i can't help everyone, but i can make a difference so someone every day. and since i have been trying to do that, i have felt more hopeful and optimistic.
well, off of that serious note- i rode my first boda boda this week! they are motorcycles for anyone that doesn't know, and they take you wherever you want to go! me and ally took one through the sugarcane fields to get to seya school. it was the most beautiful ride i have ever been on! just miles of rolling green fields as far as you can see. ahhh i was in heaven. just fyi, women ride bodas sitting sideways. however, us americans prefer the safer alternative! haha the other day i was getting on one again, and the drivre said to me- you have never sat like a woman before?? he was quite shocked, it was pretty funny!
oh and at seya school, one of the head teachers i met with gave me a ugandan name! yes! i've been so excited for someone to give me one! it is........ NAMPIJJA! haha i love it. i now belong to the cow clan! meaning i respect the cow clan. each clan respects an animal, and it means you cannot eat it. the woman that gave me the name also respects this clan so i asked her if she doesn't eat cow meat. she just smiled and said that they made a rule that they only don't eat cows without tails. when i asked why, she burst out laughing and said that there aren't many cows without tails so it is good because then they can eat cow meat! ah i love uganadans :) until next week! thanks family and friends for all the support and emails! its so fun to hear from everyone! mwelaba!! bye!

i bless the rains down in africa!

hello! today marks two weeks that i have been living in africa. i can't believe it! it feels like i have been here so much longer! it is great. first of all, i received several emails from family members in response to an email my dad sent. thank you so much!! it was so great to hear from you all and feel the support from everyone. i am so blessed to be here. every day i wake up and try to soak it all in. every day has been an adventure!
well, i'm sitting here at hope internet cafe, which is about a twenty minute walk from my house. i want to tell you a little more about lugazi. i already mentioned that every time we walk through the streets in our neighborhood it is a parade of children running and screaming after us and holding onto our arms. well, i am happy to report that this hasn't died down one bit! i am convinced they will sing bye mzungu bye mzungu and run after us all summer long. they are adorable. we've made many friends and know a lot of their names. there is a main road about ten minutes from our house called jinja highway. now, it is not really a highway, but i'd say its just about as dangerous as one! traffic here is insane! boda bodas, motorcycles, come flying out of nowhere all the time. and taxis are everywhere. pedestrians defnintely don't have the right of way in africa haha. so its an adventure crossing the streets. also, ugandans have a really cool handshake that they do when they meet you. i'll show you when i get home haha. and it can last for an uncomfortably long amount of time too! its so funny. also, women and little girls carry anything from huge gallons of water, to baskets of fruit on their head as they walk around. it is incredible!! i have no idea how they do it without dropping anything.

this week has been extremely successful as far as projects go for our team! everyone is making contacts and setting up things and its fantastic. me and suzanne have over twenty schools to work with through the summer for our teacher training and writing/art contest and workshops. i am so excited! its taken a lot of preparation to get things ready to go, but we've had a lot of help and enthusiasm that has made it a productive week. we will be using the iol, inside out learning, manual to do teacher training here in uganda. the other day, the director of iol called me from kenya and said she would be willing to come to uganda and hold a teacher training meeting with us because help international has been such a helpful partner in the past. it is so exciting! so many doors are being opened to help us get thigns going.
we were supposed to meet with the mayor again yesterday... but when we showed up at the town council he was in another city. haha oh uganda. we've learned very quickly that it is normal to not show up for meetings and not answer phone calls. yet, at the same time, people will drop whatever they are doing to meet with us or help us with something. its funny. the people here are so great! it is my favorite thing about uganda. more than the beautiful scenery, cheap prices, touristy excursions- it is the people that i meet that has made the biggest impact on me already. i've met people with the purest hearts and serve others so unselfishly. it is really inspiring. it makes us want to do our best by finding out their greatest needs and doing all we can to facilitate change. because they know much more than we do about what their community needs. the only difference between them and us is that we have the resources available to improve their situations.

it's friday! yesterday i was feeling pretty sick to my stomach, but today it has been better. i've just been living on a diet of bananas and rice for the last few days haha. at least half of our volunteers have sore throats and bad head colds as well. hopefully i don't pick that up too. we are planning on going to african paradise tonight! it is a local dance club within walking distance to our house. and tomorrow!! we are going to a soccer game between kenya and uganda!! i am soo excited. it is going to be sweet! on monday me and suzanne will start meeting with schools about the writing/art contest and continue setting up contacts and meeting with the headmasters of each school. i love being here! i miss you all but honestly i am nowhere near ready to come home :)

KATIE LIDDIARD! if you read this, i need to email you about project/packing information. but i don't have your email because i can't access my address book here. so email me at ashleyalder15@gmail.com okay? asap! can't wait for you to get here!

bye!!

Jinja!

hello all! it's been a very productive and fun weekend. we've had many many meetings with partners we are going to work with over the summer. suzanne and i have met with pastor frances to talk about educational needs and starting a writing contest while we have writing workshops in the schools. he is giving us some great ideas and we are very excited. today we met with chairman livingston, he is like the senator of uganda. its kind of awesome, we get to meet with all these people in high positions basically because help international has built such a respectable reputation in the country. he talked with us about developmental needs and specifically answered our questions. i am becoming more interested in developing a program in the schools for special needs students. the teachers dont know how to deal with them so they are essentially kicked out of school. we want to train teachers on how to adapt lesson plans for these students. we want to pick five schools and do teacher trainings in the evenings each day for a couple hours. in the mornings we are setting up workshops to do directly with students. another commitee is focusing on public health, and we are going to combine with them to teach hiv/aids awareness and sanitation in the classrooms. i love all of the projects our team is doing! our five main areas are
1.education/schools(that me and suzanne are leading-teacher training, writing workshops, high school service clubs, teaching creativity and life skills)
2.public health(hiv/aids, hand washing, basic health, nutrition)
3.construction(adove stoves, mushroom houses, square foot gardening)
4.business(training, savings and loans groups, womens group)
5.volunteering(orphanages, elderly, soccer with street kids, hospital help)
yep! our projects are coming along! i'm excited to work witht all of the groups at some point througout the summer.
so on saturday we went to jinja to spend the day being tourists! it was so fun to go around to all the souvenier shops and see all the handmade crafts. i loved it! and it was crazy because everything is ridiculously cheap. i bought a really nice drum for about 7 bucks it is so sweet. our guard morris was jamming out on it with me the other day haha. after we went around to some shops, we went swimming at the triangle resort. it was sweet! it felt sooo nice to swim in a cold pool when it has been so hot and sticky. we had a blast. have i mentioned how many indian people live in uganda? i was very surprised! we felt like we were in india at the resort haha. but ya life here is sweet! i have to tell you about the drive thru's here! our taxi's pull off teh side of the road and i kid you not, at least 20 ugandans run up to the windows and nearly get run over. they stick poles with chicken, samosas, water bottles, fried bananas, etc INTO the car and ask you to buy them. it is chaos! very fun though. well i'm off! i hope all is well in the states! what is this i hear about the volcanoe erupting like crazy in iceland? am i going to be stuck in africa forever? at this point, it sounds pretty sweet to me! bye!

I never would have done that in America...

Hello family and friends! time for a little update on how the week has been! it's only thursday and so much has happened! we have spent time this week meeting with parter organizations and influential people that will help us with projects and make them productive. tuesday was quite the adventurous day for me. so we went with kizza, pronounced like chizza, and saw a mushroom house. about 15 people share them and provides a great income for the families because the market is so high for them right now. BUT! i have to tell you. the mushroom house wasn't in use because it's not in season right now, so they were dark and full of cobwebs!! it was seriously a spider shack. i never never never would have gone inside in america. but i was brave! and went inside! there wasn't much to see but kizza showed us how to grow them and build it. next we went to a woman's group that runs a business called Musana Jewelry. they are awesome. the local women make beads and necklaces out of paper and wood and all sorts of random things. they make beautiful things, its really cool. anyways, it is a great way for them to make money and we want to start more projects like that.
well, we got our first rolex's today! they are literally, rolled eggs, but the way ugandans talk it sounds like rolex. they are delicious! just eggs, tomatoes, onions all rolled up in a chipatti. they are 900 shillings so like 45 cents in us dollars. everything is so cheap here. its crazy!
after lunch nicole, our country director (cd) needed someone to go with her to meet with robert about buying a fridge. i went with her and it was quite the experience! i had been to roberts house before, his aunties are so funny and loud. well we were meeting in their living room discussing the cost and one of the aunts brought out a huge plate of..... GRASSHOPPERS!! yes my friends, i ate multiple grasshoppers. my eyes went wide because i knew i could not refuse them. we looked at each other, and dug right in! we had to pull off the legs first. they really weren't that bad! i was surprised. you could not pay me enough to do that in america. i feel like i keep saying that, but its true! we had a good time laughing about it and brought home the extras for the other volunteers to try.
I had yet another first that day, i hand washed all my clothes. let me tell you, that is not an easy task! especially when they are stained red from all the muddy clay all over everything. they still aren't dry, and the colors leaked so i have blue spots on all my shirts haha. oh well!
by the way, our water was off from saturday until tuesday! amazing how much you can't do without water. we didn't have any reserve yet either so we all got pretty smelly in those four days! we had the hugest thunderstorm ever that night too! the power went out for a while whch was kind of fun. oh uganda!
yesterday we built adove stove number 2 for a family. it turned out great! we're getting good at building them. they take about 4 hours to build.
then we went to Kowola hospital and met sister josephine. she is incredible. she's decidated her life to promoting public health and has worked at the hospital for 39 years. she took us around to every part of it and introduced us to all the main doctors and head workers. this was one of the nicer hospitals in uganda. that is so scary to me. dad, you wouldn't believe how unsanitary it is. oh my. we all felt like we were going to get a disease in the few hours we were there. the worst was when they took us to the mens unit and we went into a room of sick patients. as we stood in the middle, the nurse pointed out that the area to our left was the tuberculosis section. there was no distinction from the other areas and we all instantly held our breathe. it was a little scary. it makes me appreciate healthcare in america so much though. i can't imagine having to go to a hospital like that wehn you are sick. it was very sad. we visited the maternity ward too and that was fun. we got ot talk to the mtohers with their newborn babies. they were just beautiful. so much hair and they were just perfect.
today we went to ssanyu school and met with pastor francis. he told us all about the problems that the teachers and locals in general deal with. we are getting so many ideas for projects that will help these people. we are all so excited. me and suzanne, another volunteer, have been brainstorming about a teacher training project we can do. we are both english majors so it's something we are really interested in and the teachers are eager for training. we also want to sponsor a writing contest to get the students interested in writing. it will also help improve their english skills. we want to capture their stories about their culture, because none of it is written down. we were thinking we could find a way to publish a book out of it and create an income for them to buy more books. we have a lot of planning to do and need to meet with more of the teachers to make sure we can create a sustainable project for them. that is what i have learned the most since coming here. we need to start or refine projects that the people want and need. we saw how a few projects from last year fell through after the volunteers left and we don't want that to happen again. its been really cool to go aruond meeting people and thinking of projects to do.
well everyone, thats it for now! i don't know if anyone besides my family is reading this haha. if so, feel free to leave me a little comment! sharon, i would like to thank you for your fantastic email the other day! it was great to hear from ya! guess what, cows and goats and chickens run wild here and it reminds me of you. a cow circled us today... it may or may not have totally freaked me out! oh, and i caught a chicken! ya! i took pictures, don't worry.
katie liddiard- will you call my parents and pick up the books i didn't have room to bring over? we are definitely going to want them! actually we have a list of a million things we want you to bring so get ready for that haha.
mom and dad- it was great talking to you on sunday! so fun, i look forward to talking to you again next week! i love you all, goodbye!

I LOVE LUGAZI!

Hello all! africa is so awesome!! i have so much to tell you about. we moved to lugazi saturday morning after the rest of our team arrived. it is so beautiful. uganda is seriously the greenest place i've ever seen. it rains every day here but we love it because it cools everything down and cleans us off a little. so we live in the city lugazi and our little town is nacazade. we live right in the heart of an african neighborhood. i love it. it's less busy than mukono, definitely. so saturday we spent the majority of the day scrubbing down the entire house so we could move in. the construction workers were supposed to have it done, but didn't. it was hard work, we made it look so much better! my favorite part was having to guide a river of nasty water through the hallways and out our back door! so funny. the house has a fence and our guard has a large gun. his name is morris and he is a stud. he takes really good care of us. our cook's name is rose and she is fantastic! we had our first ugandan feast, literally a feast, and we loved it. haha, she even killed our pet chickens for dinner. yum yum! i actually felt a little sad for them. luckily i didn't see them killed. so we had matoke, wish is basically the ugandan staple food eaten with every meal. not too bad! kind of like thick mashed potatoes. posho is strange, it's the consistency of play doh and has absolutely no flavor. rose also made us beans, peas, g-nut sauce which is like peanut butter, and delicious fruit! ugandans only eat dinner so that has been taking some getting used to. we just have fruit and a granola bar for breakfast and then come back at night for dinner.
the power has gone off multiple times already, as well as the water supply. haha it's been adventurous. me megan and kyle had to use a bucket last night to 'relieve ourselves' if you will. it was awesome. very african!
yesterday we went to church in jinja and it was amazing!! so cool. we'll be going to that branch which is about 30 minutes driving away. me and a few girls went to the young womans class and we talked about family history. unlike any lesson i've ever had before! we talked about the importance of knowing what clan you are in and your exact birthdate so you can keep a record. also, so whne you start dating someone, you can make sure they aren't your brother! a little different than here in the states. we're going to be teaching that class for the rest of the summer though! i'm so excited!
today we went and learned how to build adobe stoves and even made one ourselves! we got really messy! you have to stomp the clay and it is really thick and pasty. then you layer bricks over mortar and use a banana stalk to carve out a place for the smoke to go out. it was awesome talking to the various people about the stoves they already had from last year. it helps them so much! they don't breathe in the smoke, so it is way healthier for the women. it saves them hours and hours of food preparation as well. they can spend this saved time in their garden or working at their businesses. so this provides additional income. it's awesome!
so everytime we walk down the streets it is a parade of screaming children. they sing muzungu mzungu and it is the cutest thing ever. ah!
i am so happy to be here. i don't think i've ever been so happy. the people are welcoming and loving. i want to do so much for them, and it is ahrd to see the poverty they live in. they have so little, yet they smile and have so much joy. it's amazing. i can't wait to tell you more about my adventures but for now, goodbye!

Mzungu Mzungu!

I'm in Africa!!! It is so amazing. I LOVE IT! I have so much to say I don't even know where to start. The plane rides here were long but surprisingly not too bad. We had a 14 hour layover in London so Me, Megan, Katelynn, Cecily and Kyle went out into the city for the day. By that point, we hadn't slept in a LONG time and we were starting to get a little loopy you could say. But we used the tube and got to all the places we wanted to see! (no thanks to my navigational skills of course). We even had a nice little nap on the grass in front of Westminster Abbey. It was great! We then flew on to Kenya and I slept great for the majority of the way there. We got off the plane and it was warm and bugs were all over the ground! Haha huge moths just flopping around. Awesome. Unfortunately I needed to take my malaria pill but hadn't eaten any food or water for a while. This resulted in a bout of nausea that remained for the duration of my flight to Uganda. But all is well, nothing embarrassing happened luckily! Our country director Nicole picked us up at the airport. UGANDA IS BEAUTIFUL. It is so green and I feel like I'm on a tropical island. We had a two hour drive from Entebbe to Mukono. We'll be living in Lugazi with our team but our house isn't done being renovated yet. The Mukono team's flight was canceled yesterday to Uganda so we had the house to ourselves. I don't know what I was expecting but the house is quite primitive. But cool! The floors are dark red cement and we took a bucket shower outside :) Fun stuff! We were dilerious from lack of sleep and just walked around town since it was afternoon. Everyone stares at us and all the children wave and run up and hold our hands as we walk down the street. The internet cafe I'm in is open air and has five computers. It goes VERY slow. Yesterday I met a man named Elijah and he told me about how God has a plan for us all and he knows God meant for him to meet us that day. He was awesome! Gotta go I'll write more later! Mzungu means white person and everyone yells that at us as we walk by! Love you all!