Writing Contest Entries and Giraffes :)

I wanted to write a poem that was written by Apio Lynette Ogwang Aine. She attends St. Mary's College, Namagunga and is 16 years old. This is her poem entered in as the AIDS topic. She is one of the two winners from her school.

---------------------------

TONIGHT.

A woman cries tonight,
Her only son, dead,
Her only daughter cries,
She cannot sleep tonight.

A woman weeps tonight,
Odious acts committed by a depraved mind,
Upon her daughter,
Her only daughter defaced,
She cannot sleep tonight.

A woman wails tonight,
AIDS has sunk its teeth into her family,
Ebbed it away-one member after another,
And now they all lie in the shackles of the eternal sleep.
She cannot sleep tonight.

A woman moans tonight,
Cursing the life she did not ask for,
The only momento left of her loved ones
Is a few dreary graves.
She cannot sleep tonight.

A woman sobs tonight,
Repentant to her creator,
Psychologically disoriented by her guilt,
And looked upon with scorn
By those around her.
She cannot sleep tonight.

The woman is silent tonight,
She sheds no tear,
She weeps not,
Wails not.
In an inaudible whisper,
She fades away.
She sleeps tonight.

-----------------------------
That is just one example of the entries we've received for the writing contest. These kids aren't afraid to tell it how it is. I'd love to write some of the stories but they are longer so i'll have to do that when i get home.
Here is another poem written by Opio Denis. He attends Parents International College, which is a secondary school. He is in grade Secondary Six.

-------------------

THE RITUALISTIC CORRUPTION IN UGANDA

Corruption! Corruption! Corruption!
Why do you exist in our society
making the youths to suffer.
When I turn around and
look at each and every angle,
I just see life full of corruption
leaving the economy of Uganda
in a desperate moment.

The poor are taken advantage
by the rich class.
The dull are taken advantage
by the clever people.
The nonmaterialistic are taken
advantage by the materialistic people
making the Ugandans to
live a misery life.

Corruption,
You are found everywhere
at schools, homes, hospitals,
churches, places of work and
everywhere I don't know.

Neither lawyers nor members of parliament,
neither teachers nor doctors,
neither sheikhs nor pastors,
are corrupted people.
Making Uganda to be like
a desert-drought stricken
yet not a natural phenomenon.

If corruption can be
managed and combated,
then Uganda will
rise and shine from
Genesis to Revelation.

Yes, fellow Ugandans,
corruption is a combated issue
Therefore, my comrades
outside there,
let's get united, join our hands
together and combat
this social evil, corruption.

------------------------------

That boy is probably around 15 years old. Many of the stories we have received tell of personal experiences with disease, corruption, lies, teenage pregnancy, rape, etc. It's been almost shocking sometimes to sit in the office reading about these things. But of course, there are positive ones as well. Many students wrote about the things they love about Uganda. The range of entries we got was quite large. I'm so excited to meet the winners from each school! We're planning on writing up a bio of each winner and take their picture to put in our book of stories that we'll try and publish when we get home.

Well, my weekend was really awesome! We went on a SAFARI! After 6 hours of traveling to get to Murchison Falls, we made it! The waterfalls were incredible!! So much power and erupting water. Crazy cool. Early the next morning we got in a legit safari jeep with no roof and drove right through the grasslands! It was really cool to get to see a different landscape of Uganda. I've said that Lugazi and everywhere else I've been in Uganda is a lush, green tropical jungle. Well, the best way I can describe where we went on a safari was how it looks in LION KING with the cool trees and savanna land. So cool! I saw tons of giraffes, elephants, warthogs(aka pumbas), african cobs, antelope, baboons, fish eagles, water buffalo, crocodiles, hippos oh my! pretty much the ONLY african animal we didn't see were lions. But one of the other jeeps in our group did! their pictures and videos are so cool! jealous, but really glad they got to see them.

Tomorrow we are heading up north to GULU! Its the war torn region of Uganda where the LRA were a couple years ago. There are tons of IDP camps for children that were abducted. Ever seen the documentary Invisible Children? Go to youtube and watch it if you haven't. That is where it took place, up in Gulu. The youth need a lot of counseling and we're going to do a lot of service up there until Monday. It'll be a 10 hour bumpy taxi ride but it will be worth it in the end! I just decided today that I'm going. Thats whats nice about Uganda. You can just up and go take sporadic trips to anywhere in the country without prior planning.

Talk to you all later! Bye!

"AIDS AIDS AIDS"

Good afternoon everyone! its been an excellent week here in uganda.
on monday i spent the day picking up all the entries for the writing contest!! i've been looking forward to this day since we started the idea back in the first week of may. we went to 13 schools and had our backpacks full of essays and poems galore. i was so excited. i just wanted to run home and read them all that night. but we gave them to wilson and he kept them in the office for us to start on tuesday.

we spent several hours on tuesday, thursday and today reading the entries and separating out winners from each school. we had to sift through many reports about aids information or how many trees are uganda... stuff like that. there were actually a TON OF ENTRIES that had the line "AIDS AIDS AIDS" in it so it became a little repetitive ;) but overall we have some AMAZING pieces that i can not wait to award. the topics were aids, or uganda. we got poems and personal stories about aids that were so moving it almost put all of us in tears as we read them together in the office. these kids are not afraid to express their emotions. the experiences and insight they have are just incredible, terrifying, and uplifting all at the same time. i can't wait to post some of the winning pieces on my blog. it will have to be in a few weeks... if i even get the chance while i'm here. i'll do my best! sorry i haven't posted pictures either... just wait! it will be worth it! :)

wednesday we woke up early and took boda bodas out to PAUL AND ROSE'S orphanage. twelve of us made the hour journey there on the dusty roads. i wish you could've seen our dirty faces when we got there!! we all had a nice "spray on tan" that consisted of orange dust caked to our face. always looking good here in africa! anyways, the kids were just incredible and it was one of my most favorite days spent here in africa. one of the first girls i met was 15 year old MAURINE. we were talking and i asked what she wants to be when she grows up. she wants to be an english teacher! just like me. so we instantly became friends and i spent a lot of the day talking to her. Paul and Rose picked her up four years ago when they were just starting the orphanage. she was 11 years old at the time and had been living on the streets for 2 years. her parents had died when she was just a baby and had been living with her grandma. but when her grandma died, maurine was 9 and had no where to go. i just imagined my little brother connor, who is 11, being on the streets alone. i can't imagine what these kids have gone through. it just amazes me that they regardless of their hardships, they are so full of love. holding our hands and hugging us and smiling all day. they are so happy. maurine asked if there were street children in america. it was hard to explain that while there are children who don't have parents, we don't have the same problem of thousands of children living on the streets. i'm really grateful i was able to meet all the kids. maurine is just one story, they all have experiences like that. paul and rose are so awesome for giving those kids a place to call their own. not to mention feeding them with the food they grow on the 10 acres of land the orphanage sits on.

well, thats all for now i suppose! i'm going to a meeting for the eye camp at kawolo hospital in half an hour so i need to head out! we're learning how to screen eyes! cool huh dad? i imagine it will be similar to what i did for your patients when i worked at your office. i'll let you know! oh and i'm happy to report that we have enough money for our eye camp now!! An organization called Sight Savers has agreed to sponsor the rest of the funds for the entire camp. yes! thanks to all who donated! have a great week! we leave for our SAFARI tonight! welaba!

p.s. last saturday a few of us went to the zoo with wilson and godfrey! and i RODE A CAMEL!! haha it was making this weird groaning noise the entire time so that was pretty hilarious! oh africa :)

African Twisty Twists!

Good morning friends and family! its a beautiful rainy day here in lugazi. i love the rain! yesterday a bunch of us were walking home from a project and realized we were locked out of our front gate. so we took off to find the person with the keys when it started to downpour! it just comes out of nowhere, that african rain. so we ran for shelter under our good friend Alex's chipatti stand. its a tiny open hut with a stick roof and a tarp over it. so while we were somewhat covered, we definitely all got wet under there! It was fun though because we got to talk to him and watch him cook random things. Anyway we ended up having to run all the way home through the rain because it wasn't stopping. By the time we got home we were wetter than if we'd jumped in a pool!

Later in the day a few of us took off to Hope Orphanage and did some activities with the orphans there. I love those kids so much. Its really fun now because we actually know the kids and have become good friends with them. We brought bubbles that the boys just loved, and fingernail polish to paint the girls nails. They had so much fun! We even showed them how to do it and they painted each others. I brought picture books and we read them to the younger kids as well. We helped them read after a while and I was very impressed with their English for their young age.

There is one girl named Resty that is my best little buddy there. we hang out pretty much the whole time and talk about her life and what she likes and doesn't like. She is the happiest girl and is always smiliing. These kids make you feel like you can change the world and do anything you want. In america we have sooo many opportunities that these children just don't have. and it breaks my heart to listen to them talk about their plans for the future and know that they only see it as a dream. When i graduate from college and eventually become a teacher, that is one thing i will always be telling my students. You can be anything you want to be. Follow your dreams! There are so many opportunities in the world just waiting for you. Never let anyone tell you that you can't do something. You can. There will always be someone that will support you and help you achieve your dreams. Well that's all of my little -follow your dreams- tangent for now..

SOOO I have officially gotten an AFRICAN MAKEOVER. On wednesday afternoon I up and decided I wanted to get my hair plaited! Cecilly, a girl on my team, did it a couple weeks ago and it looked pretty sweet. So Molly went with me to walk around town finding an open salon to do it. Everyone was busy and we weren't having any luck... when we ran into Wilson and Godfrey!! YES! haha so i had them take me somewhere to get it done. So the lady, Sophie, doesn't really speak English I'm told. So wilson negotiates a price and takes off! I literally sat down and they just went to town. I didn't even know what they were goign to do. I ended up getting AFrican Twisty Twists!!! hahahaha. Oh my gosh. What they do, is take all this fake hair and twist it into tiny strands of my own hair. It took 5 hours!! oh my gosh. i have too much hair for these kinds of things. oh and i almost forgot, it is almost to my waist! soooo long! they did this cool curly thing to the ends of it... i'll have to put pictures on my blog of all of this when i get home. its hard to describe! just know that i look like an african now :) love it!

sorry i have been neglecting our projects lately. its been crazy with second wavers here this week. but good of course! we're transitioning to new schools for teacher training, and suz ally and i got the writing contest proposal passed yesterday!! we didn't even have to use any team funds because suzanne's amazing in-laws-to-be donated 200 dollars to the contest! they are so awesome. did i mention suzanne is engaged?? yep! she got engaged the DAY before she flew here! haha crazy girl. i love her though, we pretty much spend all day every day together doing education projects!
we are going to collect all the writing contest entries on monday and i can not wait any longer!! :)

***********We're also working really hard as a team to fundraise through home to get more money for the eye camp. we just need 1,000 more dollars and we'll be able to HELP TWICE AS MANY PEOPLE! so if anyone is reading this and would be willing to donate just a little more money to the camp, we would be so grateful.
To make sure the money gets to our team, you have to send it to HELP INTERNATIONAL and make it specifically towards the LUGAZI EYE CAMP. thank you so much to anyone who donates! our tipping bucket fundraiser worked so well and we just wish we could have anticipated the extra funds before so we could have gotten it earlier.

well i have to go, but i hope everyone at home is doing great! i love you all! so mom, should i leave my african hair in until we meet you in paris?? ;)
HAPPY FATHERS DAY ON SUNDAY DAD!!! I LOVE YOU!

Fluffy bunny. Or in other words... THE BAD PLACE

GOOD MORNING1 i can't for the life of me figure out how to use exclamation points on this keyboard... so thats why you will see a lot of ones in this post haha. okay okay okay i am so excited to write about my weekend11 i wasn't planning on going river rafting this weekend, but my whole team was going practically so i decided the night before that i would go for it1 ahhhh. i know i thought that repelling down the waterfall was adventurous and life threatening... but thats got nothing on white water rafting down the NILE. oh myyy.

we got picked up in a costa, which is like a huge bus, and drove to jinja to begin the day. oh! i just figured out how to use the exclamation sign! haha okay sorry i'll keep going. our river guides were just hilarious, which made the experience all the more enjoyable. one was from new zealand, Sonny. what a character. we had three raft fulls of us going down the river. my guide was Steph, he's from canada and is here with his wife adopting a little boy. very funny guy. he kept making fun of me because i was so scared and asked a lot of questions. most of them pertained to whether i was going to die on the next rapid, and if he would save me if i was drowning haha. well i don't know how to describe rafting down the nile, other than to say i'm glad to still be alive. the different classes of rapids are rated, and the highest you can raft on and still have a chance of living is class 5. want to guess what class the rapids were that we went on all day?? yep. CLASS 5. we went on about 8 rapids during the seven hours we were going down the nile. the first 7 were terrifying/exhiliarating/awful/fun/crazy and insane!! but we made it through without our rafting flipping. including the one waterfall we went down, but before we went down we got stuck on a rock at the very edge. i may or may not have shed a tear of terror as we sat up there with our river guide screaming orders at us so we wouldn't tip off the edge and get sucked under the falls... its even more embarrassing because we bought a cd of pictures from the day! haha oh boy. neevvvveerrr again. never. but this doesn't even compare to the last rapid. we were doing just fine on the long stretch of flat water as we approached the last one. then steph started to tell us about it. he said he's never been through it without everyone flipping out of the raft and essentially being destroyed by the waves. so we asked how many times he's been down it. don't worry, he'd only done it TWICE!! AHH. then he proceeded to tell us that it is called THE BAD PLACE. he said we can choose to go down that way or take the easy way out. i asked how many people go down the bad place. he said probably less than half. WELL NO WONDER. who wouldn't want to go down a rapid called THE BAD PLACE??! of course we picked to go down it because we are all hardcore like that. well, everyone besides me and katelynn i suppose ;) steph, being the considerate river guide he is, told me i could call it the fluffy bunny to make me less scared. he said all you'll see going into it is white rapid spray so its fitting. thanks. well down we went and all i saw was a ENORMOUS wall of water in front of our raft. we instantly were launched out and people went in all directions. i was tossed under the water for a good 9 or 10 seconds and finally got up for a breath only to be thrown under again by a wave. this time, while i was under, my helmet was ripped off my head somehow! it nearly choked me haha oh it was so confusing down there. awful. just awful. and would you believe that my experience was one of the better ones? mike was caught under a boil for 40 seconds (i'm not exaggerating fyi) and our river guide thought he was going to drown. he finally curled into a ball and shot out though. oh my. people do this for fun?? i think i'm done risking my life for a little while ;)
so yep! that was my weekend! we are all little fried lobsters from being in the sun all day on the nile. oh! and i'm proud to say i have swallowed HALF THE NILE. yay for parasites :)

on sunday i went with katelynn to mass at the local catholic church. we needed to announce information about our disability choir we're starting, so the.. head church leader invited us to attend the meeting. i've been to mass in salt lake and some of it was different than i remembered. i loved the music! they had a full on choir with drums, clapping, and awesome singing. so cool. we're running into a lot of barriers with the choir but i'm confident it will work out. we really want to make it a sustainable project after we leave this summer. so we're working on finding someone that can help keep it going.

yesterday me and suzanne and chelsea did another assembly to promote the writing contest. last school! now we're just preparing to judge next week. i'm so excited! its going to be so good! oh did i mention that second wavers arrived on sunday????? whoo! our house now has 24 people in it hahaha. oh gosh. it is so crazy. i really love it. katie is here too! sadly both her bags were lost but we just found out that they arrived in entebbe yesterday so she'll get them soon. lucky duck!

hmm we also did another teacher training at seya school yesterday. i love all of our teachers that we work with. they are so awesome. we have so much fun. then we went to hope orphanage and played with the kids there until dinner time. those kids are incredible. they have so much ambition, when nothing about their life has given them hope that things will get better. i love encouraging them. and i want to take them all home. ahhh.

well thats all for now! i'm going to an eye camp meeting later, working on square foot gardens, teacher training, choir meetings, etc. i love being here. tomorrow i only have 5 more weeks in africa. i might cry. i don't want to go home! i love you all! goodbye!

oli otya! its been a very good week here in lugazi, uganda. let me tell you about it! by the way this keyboard doesn't have a button to capitalize letters... ? haha

so i spent all day tuesday and thursday out with ally, suzanne, and wilson of the outreach mission. we went to probably thirteen schools and promoted the writing contest. oh my it is so much work! i had no idea. just all the little details take so much time and meetings to figure it out. it's crazy! and i always think how much easier it would be to start something like this in america where there are emails and communication is so fast. but then again, it always surprises me how easy it is to just walk into a school and explain the contest, and the headmasters always accept and give us time to speak in an assembly. is it because the contest is such a good idea? or is it because we are giving out prizes? or is it simply because we are white and people always listen to what the mzungus have to say? unfortunately it is probably a combination including the latter. but, we just have to remember to put our white skin to good use, as unfair as it is that we have credibility from it. i'm never going to get used to that or like it while i'm here. on the one hand, its fun to have the little kids yell to us and run up and give us "bongas", which is like pounding fists. but on the other hand, sometimes i wonder what certain peoples intentions are for working with us. do they even like us, or are they just playing nice because they know we have money? its a very conflicting situation, one that i still don't feel comfortable with. but i'm learning a lot by living it, that is for sure. we have a lot to do with the contest. there are over 100 schools in the buikwe district competing.... which is going to be absolutely i n s a n e to try and judge entries! i'm already stressed out. oh man! and in the mukono district, we have a much more doable number of 15 schools because we limited the number. we are going to have a winning boy and girl from each school. and the two grand prize winners are going to get to read their piece at the annual aids extravaganza festival at norah's complex on july 10th. it is an aids awareness festival where students and people in the community entertain through music dance and drama. it was a great success last year and i'm excited to be a part of it again.

on wednesday i spent the day giving an aids lesson at a school. we taught with the youth outreach mission guys. they are all our age, going to a university, and volunteering a lot of time helping their community. we taught about sexuality, hiv prevention, and just general information on hiv contraction and symptoms. there is such a lack of knowledge about it here!! it frightens me. we were teaching a secondary school so the kids were ages 13 and up. at the end of the lesson we had them write questions on papers and give them back and we'd answer them. oh my goodness. the questions we got! you wouldn't believe it. they ranged from weird, to completely obvious. the misconceptions are still there. many still think you can get hiv from kissing. many think if you have sex and then abstain for a few years, that you can become a virgin again. it was very interesting and unlike annnyyyy health lesson you would hear in america! the kids learned a lot though. very productive day!

so next! i am soooo excited about this! i am going to help katelynn and ally start a choir for disabled children here in lugazi! yaa! i am so pumped. the writing contest has been very draining and i'm excited to have this to focus on as well. we went with sandra today, who is awesome! i love her! she is my age, going to the university and studying child development. she is so smart and so motivated! we went to several different churches to spread news about it. many expressed interest, we just have to work out a lot of the logistics to get it organized. we are also planning on starting one in provo when we move back in the fall! we're calling it the kids ability choir. and we're going to name the one in provo the same thing! can't wait.

well thats the update for now... i tripped on a rock today walking up the street in my flip flops and cut my big toe open. ouch! thats what i get for not wearing my chaco shoes that are invincible! my right foot is just having issues in general haha. have i mentioned that ever since the plane ride from kenya to uganda, my right pinky toe has been completely numb??? i have no idea why, and it is the joke of the team because its the weirdest thing ever! my clumsiness never ceases to amaze.

okay thats it folks! its friday and i have no idea what were doing tomorrow! maybe going into jinja, visiting bujagali falls, splurging and getting a cold milkshake... who knows! later friends!
-ashley/nampijja

African Paradise and SIPI FALLS> (AKA HEAVEN)

Hola family and friends! I have so much to write about that I am having trouble even knowing where to begin. Here goes!

Wednesday June 2:I went to volunteer at Kawolo Hospital for the morning. I initially brought children's books to read but all the children in the ward had parents there so that didn't work out. Some girls went to observe a surgery or examination of an expecting mother, but that wasn't quite up my ally haha. In Africa, by the way, the hospitals are run a little differently. There are no restricted areas. You can perform any kind of medical thing you want. Well, if you are mzungus like us i guess. Of course we didn't though. It's just crazy how we could go anywhere we wanted in the hospital. I ended up going to the premature babies and held a little boy while the mother rested. It was soooo tiny. Honestly the most precious thing I have ever seen. It probably weighed three pounds at most. He had a headful of dark black hair and was just perfect. Ah I just loved him so much. If he was an orphan I would take him home with me. Such a special experience. That's about all we did there.

Thursday June 3: Martyrs day!! National holiday! Awesome awesome day. So, here's a little history of Uganda for ya. On June 3, 1886, King Mwanga ordered the killing of 26 of his pages, 13 Anglicans and 12 Roman Catholics. 25 of these Christian converts were killed after a week long torture at Namugongo. The 26th martyr was killed at a later time. They were burned for rejecting the executioner's persuasion to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ. Now, people walk from all over the country to commemorate the sacrifice and strong faith of the martyrs. People even come from Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda! People literally walk for days in advance to make it to Namugongo. We woke up at 6 am and had our trusted driver Godfrey take us! It was so cool, people were EVERYWHERE! I've never seen so many people lining the streets and in this huge open field area. Church choirs were singing, people selling religious things, etc. We went to the site and had a great history tour. It was so fun to celebrate with the Ugandans at a place that was so sacred to their religion.

Friday June 4: Hmm what did I do this day. Oh! I had a meeting with Wilson and we worked out all the kinks of the Annual Help Writing Contest we are sponsoring! Wilson is THE MAN. Have I written about him?? We all love him. Seriously, too much. He's 22 and started his own non profit organization called The Youth Outreach Mission(TYOM). It's been going for three years and he does SO MUCH for this community. He doesn't get money for doing it either. I spent all day with him but I'll write about it later. The meeting went great, then we did another teacher training at Skyway Primary School. Oh it was so cramped!! It was raining and so there wasn't an extra room for us to go with all the teachers. We squished into this tiny little dark room with about ten teachers and i wrote on the chalkboard. It was fun though! They skyway teachers need you to be a little overenthusiastic about everything, which was kind of fun for me in all honesty. Every group of teachers is different, and they just needed a little more encouragement to participate haha. They love it though. Our cultures are just different!
Oh yes!~! Friday night we went dancing at AFRICAN PARADISE!!! Hahaha it is a local dance club right by our house. We had Wilson, who I previously mentioned, as well as Godfrey, (not our driver, he's one of Wilson's friends who helps us alot and we love) and some of their other friends escorted us there! Actually, in Uganda they don't say escort. They say "PUSH". As in, "We are here to push you to the club." hahaha. Anyways it was quite the experience. We had a strategic circle of our African friends surrounding us the entire time we danced. When the other men at the club tried to dance with us, our "bodyguards" if you will, would talk to them and they'd back off. We had the best time! NOthing like an outdoor dance club/hut in Africa with a sweet DJ. Awesome night.

Saturday June 5: SIPI FALLS!!!!!!!!!! Okay, I cannot even begin to describe the amazingness of this place. WOWOWOWOW! So we left around 6 am saturday morning to catch a taxi to Sipi. It's about 4 hours away from Lugazi, my town. The best way I can describe it is HEAVEN ON EARTH. I'm completely convinced there is no place more beautiful on this earth. I thought Lugazi was green and tropical?? Sipi falls is up in the mountains, which was so awesome to be in! More like a plateau of jungle, but still a mountain nonetheless. Driving up this windy jungle road it overlooked a huge cliff. On this cliff we could see three GINOURMOUS waterfalls and it was honestly the coolest thing ever. I can't wait to put pictures on this blog when i get home and show you. ahhhh! it gets better. We drive up to our campsite and picture this: it is on the cliff's edge, trees everywhere, waterfalls within sight, the main lodge is a bamboo hut with a thatched stick roof with a huge deck to look out over the valley. Then they showed us our sleeping corridors and guess what they were? Our OWN tiny little bamboo stick/mud/thatched roof huts!!! We were dying. SOOOO AWESOME!!! I am feeling giddy with joy just remembering it. Did I mention there were monkeys just wandering around the campground? Yep. Tons. So mom and dad, I think I found my future place of residence=Moses's Campground?? haha coolest thing i've ever done! We proceeded to eat some beans for lunch, then head out with our trusty tour/weekend planner man Fred!! He was soo nice to us. He totally could have tried to rip us off but he was so helpful. He arranged all the meals, walked us around at night to make sure we were safe, took us on hikes, set up repelling, and just did it all. Love him! People are so friendly in Uganda. Honestly, they are the best people I know. Most of the help he did for us wasn't because he was getting paid. However, he did propose to Katelynn so there could have been underlying motivations there hahahaha. The hike was so beautiful (that word doesn't do it justice one bit) and we took tons of pictures and saw three huge awesome waterfalls. After hours of hiking up and down and all around cliffs and waterfalls, Fred took us to another huge hut lodge with a deck and we ate a candlelit dinner outside watching the sun go down. The day could not have been more perfect. It was delicious too, not 100% African which was a nice change. After dinner Fred walked us home in the dark, and the guys running Moses' campsite had started a bonfire for us on the edge of the cliff by the lodge. Moses is one of the guys uncle and they all were working there. They were so fun! All our age and we had a blast. We told stories, laughed, and the boys even sang songs for us. Don't worry that they were all sappy love songs they wrote themselves.. hahaha. It was great. We even talked to a girl from Italy who was volunteering in Gulu. Sweet!

Sunday June 6: I accomplished something that I never thought I would have the guts to do. Ready? I repelled down a 300 FOOT WATERFALL. IN AFRICA!! Yep, I did! I promise! I have pictures to prove it. Now, I will admit I have never been so scared in my life. My entire life! At the top I was panicking and the other 7 girls were just laughing away at me. I couldn't believe how high up we were, just on the edge of this straight down cliff with the waterfall crashing over the edge 30 feet away. But after watching Carrie go over the edge first, I knew I better go now or I'd chicken out! So off I went! I walked backwards over the edge of the tallest cliff ever with just some rope saving me from death! Haha it was so scary. Oh man. But once that initial over the edge moment happened, it was awesome! Looking down and seeing my little rope dangling with no one at the bottom, looking to my left and seeing this massive waterfall cascading next to me and hitting the mossy boulders below was the sweetest moment of my life and one that I'll not soon forget!! We had a blast and it was completely worth the 50 bucks I spent risking my life to do it. YES!
So that was my incredible weekend in Sipi. We got home at 8 sunday night, had a team meeting, and welcomed Mike from HELP in America! He is staying with us this week to see how things are going. We pretty much love him because he brought us a bag of chocolate. Yep. Good good weekend.

Monday.. Today! Me suzanne and ally spent all day with Wilson (lucky us) going around to schools and promoting our writing contest. Students are so excited about it! Which makes me so happy! I can't wait to read all the entries!! Ah! We're going to turn the winning pieces into a book and publish it back at home because Suzanne has connections. It's gonna rock. Wilson is such a good person. His heart is so big! He goes goes goes all day long to help his community and doesn't take breaks or do anything for himself! I made him stop and eat my crackers and had to buy him water because he didn't have any money. Oh wilson. We love you! We couldn't do it without him.

This week's gonna be a good one! Oh and I've hit my one month mark of living in Africa!! Here are some things you should know :)
-It smells like burning trash multiple times a day
-People wear puffy winter coats if it gets below 75 degrees. sooo funny!
-there are huge storks/cranes/freaky pteradactyl birds that sit on buildings and freak me out
-ugandans say "mmm" instead of "uh huh". we all do it now
-"please" is tacked onto random phrases like "thank you please". or "yes please" when asked if they like something
-pedestrians do NOT have the right of way! cars/bodas speed up and honk at you!
-for every five people, three are named godfrey
-women should sit sideways on bodas. we dont, therefore boda drivers think we are crazy
-the water and power go out all the time. as in, almost every day hahaha
-Ugandns laugh at you when you walk out in the rain
-cows, chickens and goats roam freely in streets and yards. ugandans are scared of cows and i know why! when they are charging at you it is terrifying!

Thats all for now! I love my life! It is honestly too good to be true. Welaba!

Hello friends! It has been quite the weekend for me! Seriously only minutes after i was writing my blog entry on friday, i started to feel lightheaded and nauseated. this happens fairly often in the mornings after i take my malaria medication so i didn't think much of it. wellll it wasn't from the medication. i proceeded to have a headache, fever, nausea, throwing up and body aches for the rest of the day until about 9 pm. it was pretty miserable and i haven't felt that sick in.... a long time if ever. at one point i was sure i had malaria and was dying a slow and painful death! another volunteer, alex, was violently ill as well that night. it was a rough day for our team! well no worries,i don't have malaria and as of yesterday i am back to normal! i am pretty sure i had some sort of heat exhaustion/dehydration because i had all the symptoms and had spent all of the previous few days in the intense sun. so yep, i've been guzzling the water like a camel the last few days and will make sure that never happens again! my team went out to jinja on saturday but i wasn't able to go. i spent a lot of time sleeping on a little dirty foam mattress in the corner of our kitchen. oh i am so grateful for my health after that!! and the comforts of america when you are sick! it made me sympathize a lot more with all the sick patients in the hospitals, were comforts are few and far between.

So! yesterday i went and did my first teacher training! i missed the actual first one on friday, but heard it went fantastically! yesterday we went to Seya primary school to teach and it was so great. we taught about the different learning styles students have and how teachers can adapt lesson plans to be more creative and teach in a variety of ways. for instance, we can teach to the musical, verbal, logical, visual, interpersonal and intrapersonal learning styles all in one lesson! they had great feedback for us and it was very successful.

This morning i went to do an HIV screening at Lugazi University. I finally got to meet Emmanuel, who i have been hearing about forever! And he is THE BEST! Seriously the funniest, coolest guy. He is 24 years old and a clinition at the university. He wants to get his masters degree at a school in america. He's So smart. So me, Molly, Becca, Alex, and Cecilly took boda bodas over to the university early this morning. can i just say how much i love bodas?? yes, its true that often i think i might die from a head on collision, but mostly they are just so fun! we were laughing the other day about how normal it is for us to just walk up to a group of africans on motorcycles and ask them to take us somewhere. only in africa! anyways, we got there and he showed us how to do the testing, and told us how to give the pre and post interviews with the people being tested. At first we helped with sanitizing peoples fingers, giving Emmanuel the needles, recording names and such. Then, I went in and listened to him give a few of the results. He called the person into a little room and had him sit on a chair in front of us. He proceeded to essentially grill the person about their sexual behaviors, when they were last tested, if they knew the status of their partner, how many partners they have, etc. It was very intense. He asked what they would do with their life if they found out if they were negative and what they'd do if they were positive as well. Emmanuel told us that when it was our turn to interview, we have to be very careful to gage the person and if they give any answers that seem suicidal, to not tell them their status yet. The point of all the intense questioning is to really make people aware of how their unsafe behaviors could affect the rest of their life. Everyone in the clinic today tested negative, and i can tell that many people are going to change their behavior after seeing how scared and nervous they were before finding out they were negative. It was a very interesting experience to say the least.

Well then! We were done testing people for a bit and Emmanuel asked if we knew our status. So we all decided to get tested! I am proud to say that I am HIV negative! Whoooo! Haha oh man. *Don't worry dad, we used a new needle for each of us and it was all very safe. I promise :)Emmanuel even conducted an interview with each of us about any risky behaviors and what we will do now that we know we are HIV negative. It was pretty great. He is seriously my favorite. We had a lot of fun with him today, too much probably!

So ya thats a little update on my weekend! It wasn't the most eventful one but I'm just grateful to be up and able to work! Bye!