Welaba

So this is my last night in Uganda. We're leaving tomorrow night so I guess this will be my last post. I'm not gonna bore you with a post when I get home cuz let's be honest that would be super lame. So thanks for reading all summer. Hope I didn't bore you too much.

• All summer the kids have been begging me to set up a match against one of the other primary schools in the next village. So after pressuring the headmaster for a while it finally happened the last week. It was hysterical. For some reason they had me be the coach to train them leading up to the game. And then at the game all the teachers at both schools were too lazy so they had me ref the match. Basically we crushed them, it was awesome. The final score was 3-1 because I felt bad for the other team and gave them a penalty kick they didn't deserve. I'll let you decide if my coaching abilities had anything to do with their victory. Oh and the best part of it is how they treat the kids like racehorses at half time. They feed them pure glucose powder and rub turpentine on their legs... Hey anything to win right?
• The goodbye celebration they had for me was pretty adorable. Each class rehearsed a song to sing for me and some kids made speeches. Girls were even crying while they were singing goodbye which was pretty sad. Apparently I was an alright teacher. I'm gonna miss those kids.
• For my last day we also had a faculty-student football game. which was hysterical. Have you ever playyed football with a nun still wearing her habit? Cuz it's awesome.
• On our last weekend David, Mick and I went to Queen Elizabeth national park to see some animals. We saw lions and hippos (which are awesome by the way) and all kinds of stuff but the best part was definitly one elephant that really wanted to show off. We were taking a boat cruise and as we pulled up to this guy pull out his schlong (for lack of a better word). He just whipped it out and started walking, swinging it back and forth. Since I'm still a five year old I clearly had to take a million pictures. So now my camera is loaded with pictures of elephant dicks... And then as we were pulling away he just pulled it back in. He really just wanted us to see what he was working with (to his credit he was working with a lot. It was impressive, he almost stepped on it a few times...)
• Today took the cake for the sadest thing I've seen in Africa. We were on a bus coming from the west back to Kampala (the capital). Part wya through a woman walks up the isle freaking out. after a bit the conductor let her off. None of this happened in English so we didn't know what was going on but all the other passengers were looking around curiously. Then we saw some guy carry off his ten year old son who was sleeping. Curiosity got the best of us so we asked the guy next to us what was going on. He didn't really speak englih so all we got was "dead... child, children." I guess the sleeping kid had died in the back of the bus and his dad had to carry him off. The worst part was that people here are so used to seeing this type of thing that two minutes after they got off the bus just drove away and left them with a crowd of people around them. Nobody spoke english well enough to tell us what happened but our guess is that he was sick and going to Kampala to see a doctor but he died before he could get there. I guess that's what real poverty is...
• Anyways tomorrow we're leaving at about 9:30 pm. If there's anything else you're curious about you'll have to ask me then. I've got plenty of other stories that I was just too lazy to write about. Sue me, I worked a lot. Thanks for reading, see you stateside.
  

My Car Broken

For those of you who read the news I would like to reassure you that I'm not dead. For those of you who are ignorant of current events in Uganda, terrorists set of three bombs in Kampala, which is about an hour away from me, at two clubs that were hosting World Cup viewing parties. So far it looks like around 80 people have died but it's not totally clear because as I've mentioned before, Ugandan news isn't that great. And now with that out of the way, back to my usual posting.

• On the way to and from school Little African children along the road usually shout something along the lines of "Mzungu bye bye." So the other day Terry and I were kinda freaked out when we heard them shouting "Mzungu ass-hole." We're not actually sure if it's asshole or if it's just something in Lusoga that sounds like asshole. But yeah it's distinctly possible that parents are teaching their kids to tell us we're assholes...
• On my way home from school the other day I found some kids standing under a tree waiting for berries to fall down. There were some other kids in the tree shaking the branches and throwing down berries. The berries tasted absolutely disgusting but the kids seemed to love them. So when they found out I didn't like them they convinced me to climb to the top of the tree and shake the branches the little kids couldn't reach in the tree. I guess it's really funny to watch a Mzungu climb a tree cuz they were laughing the whole time.
  
• I'm sure everyone will be shocked to learn that my best friend in the house (David excluded) is the cook. I help her make dinner/do chores and in return she cooks me extra Chapatis. It's a pretty sweet deal really.
  
• My P6 class did a terrible job with their homework last week so in class I told them we wouldn't have any fun. I just made them sit down and write me essays about growing up, their life at St. Jude's and their dreams for the future. I copied down my favorite three to share with you:
• Joshua wrote: I am a student at St. Jude Holy Cross Primary school and I like stay here. We alway have fun here. When mr. sam come in he teaches for 30 minutes and the remaining minutes he asks as that we want him to do for as he knows lapping (read: rapping) and some small games (hangman). When we go out for break, lunch and at 9:30 we play ragib (rubgy), football, and some girls play netball (kinda like basketball) and Rollay (no idea what that is but apparently I play it with them...) He is a good teacher and I like it Jude.
• This one takes some explanation. Terry once taught the kids French so they asked me to teach them some French. I told them I could teach them Spanish but after a while they just started shouting out World Cup countries and asking to learn those languages so we kinda did a little of everything. So Wambuzi Joseph wrote the following: I sometimes speak and learn some other languages like spanish, Germand, Korea. Here I am and when I speak I miz them so here I am. Quiero zapatos, quas juhng sheel ado de gayo, graci. a story in these languages

Mein Vagon Kaput

I visited my home and the said quiero zapatos. I said to them danke. They welcomed me saying prego. I said danke. Then my my father said buenas tardes Joseph. and then he said me encanta Joseph. I replied me encanta father.
He said mein swein, burro are lost. I said before morning Guten Morgen. He said Guten Tag.

• he may have butchered a few terms but overall he did a pretty damn good job.
  

• Abdul wrote" My mother produce me when I am old enough. When she produce me I was clying and she give me her brest and i feed on it for nine month and i grow up in six year and i go to school. but at school i very stubborn boy.
• The word stubborn here means pretty much whatever you want it to. You misbehave in class, you're stubborn. You're a bad dancer, you're stubborn. If you're late, sometimes you're stubborn. I've never heard it this way but I assume that if you are actually stubborn they would call you stubborn. But really who knows.

Anyways that's all for now. I only have three days of school left and that's it for St. Jude. So you can expect one or two more goodbye blogs and then I think that'll be all.

Pimpin Aint Easy

So now that I've been here for a while new and exciting experiences are slowing down. Everything's pretty routine. This means that I'm running out of things to put on this blog so I apologize if I start to bore anyone.

• People around here have a very noticeable accent when they speak. We all sort of slip into that Ugandan accent whenever we talk to locals so that it's easier for them to understand us. But I've started to have trouble slipping out of it. Sometimes I switch from talking to Ugandans to talking to Americans and I forget to go back to my normal accent. Or sometimes in the middle of conversation I'll just slip back into it without noticing. So there's a small chance that after three more weeks it might never go away...
• Ugandans, particularly kids, are obsessed with "mzungu hair." Specifically they think it's funny that we have arm hair and they really like playing with the hair on my head because it's straight. There hair isn't conducive to any sort of playing/styling. This means that every time I interact with little kids (AKA every day) four or five of them get together to give me a head massage. I could really get used to this sort of treatment.
• For the past week the road I take to school has been under construction. It's been a pretty expensive process to smooth and widen this road. I have absolutely no idea why they chose to spend the money to fix this road. It is almost entirely trafficked by pedestrians, isn't used to transport anything of economic significance and essentially drives straight into the bush. I can only assume somebody threw the word stimulus around.
  
• Workers here don't get paid by the hour so they don't have the same incentive to drag out a project that Americans do. In fact they try to go as fast as possible to maximize their free time. This leads to some unsafe construction practices. For example, Tuesday I saw my first ever dump truck drag race. Three people almost died when one truck passed the other but at least the road was finished faster.
• I've started baiting the monkeys to convince them to play with me. I can now confirm that monkeys really do love bananas. Too bad their still scared of me and won't play. The best I've gotten them to do so far is come up and grab the banana from me before running away. Hopefully I can teach them tricks before I leave.
• People around here often come up to Mzungus and ask us for things. Usually they want us to "assist them" with money. With kids it's usually "Bak sweetie," which I'm sure you can all figure out means "give me sweetie." Sometimes they get a little more... Creative. As a background I should mention that Ugandans all think Whitney and I are siblings even though we look nothing alike. So today while Whitney and I were walking home from school a man came up to me talking a mile a minute and pointing to her. We couldn't figure it out at first but after a few times we finally heard "You give me ten minutes for fuck." I would have been shocked and a little pissed but these sorts of things are fairly common. So instead I did what any good brother would do. I haggled for more money. His initial offer was only 10,000 shillings but after a quick back and forth we got up to 20,000 before the two of us burst out laughing and walked away. In my defense when people try to buy Whitney from Terry he usually only asks for a Chapati (kind of like a mix between pita and a crepe. Usually retails for about 10 cents).

Anyways that's all for now. Only three more weeks before I head back. Still not sure how I feel about that.

Post Industrial Technology

• This weekend we went rafting on the Nile, which was one of the most fun things I've ever done. All of the ISSLP students in Uganda and two Kellogg interns came down to Jinja for the weekend and we rafted down twenty miles of the Nile. On our first big rapid (class 5) our boat flipped which was awesome but somewhere in the wash cycle that followed I dislocated my shoulder . Oops. It actually wasn't too bad until we flipped again on the last rapid which, I kid you not, is just called "The Bad Place."
  
• I learned a new adjective this week. There's good job and bad job but apparently here they also have HIV job. that seems mildly tasteless.
• Some of the prostitutes I teach have told me they want me to find them Mzungu husbands and wives. They decided they'd just start with pen pals though and then try to woo people over time. So if anyone's looking for a pen pal who's secretly trying to get you into bed let me know. As a side note there's also a teacher at my school looking for one too. She's 40 and married so I think that one's a little safer though maybe not as funny.
• It turns out that I was wrong in my last post and we actually do have tests. But the teachers don't make them, they buy them from some program and I don't think they have much control over the test questions. And I know I wasn't consulted about the material. The grades on the test are also irrelevant because the students don't get term grades. So yeah, they have tests here they're just pointless. But hey it gives the teachers a few days off to sit around and not teach anything. Why teach when you can test?
• Because of the exams this week I have no classes to teach. So they have me sit in the class and proctor the exams (while they read the newspaper outside). It's actually pretty fun catching cheaters. And these kids are terrible at cheating (probably because the teachers here don't really care if they cheat) so I don't really have to work too hard. Mostly I just read more books.
• Last night we had a going away party for one of the two priests who lives in the house. But they didn't really have anything planned except to eat and to serve a ton of beer and waragi (gin). So needless to say we all got drunk with the entire religious community of the parish of Bugembe. Have you ever seen 50 drunk nuns brothers and priests dancing to Abba? Because it is a sight to see. There's a video don't worry. And when I say drunk I mean really drunk. It's almost noon and one of the priests is still snoring next to me. The normal wake up time for priests around here is 6 A.M.
• I found another excellent example of Ugandan journalism in a review of Iron Man 2. Here's the description they gave: "The Iron Man is a science fiction story about the intersection of man and post industrial technology. The central character is an average Japanese office worker who is transformed after implanting pieces of scrap metal into his body. As he evolves into a strange hybrid of man and machine he also develops a connection with another of his kind: the metal fetishist, who has been undergoing a similar conversion. The two then engage in a violent, destructive battle through the streets of Tokyo." Does anyone know what a metal fetishist is?
  

Teaching

So after four weeks I realized that I've never actually written about the teaching I'm doing. That's probably important to mention right? I think I've mentioned some of these things before but I can't remember what I've told to whom so I guess some of you can just skip those parts.

• I teach two classes, P5 math and P6 English. P5 has about 50 kids and P6 has about thirty. Math is waaay easier because I've never been formally educated in the english language so it's hard for me to explain the rules. I just kind of know what's right and wrong (sometimes). For example how many of you actually know what the past participle is? Because I had no idea until last week when I had to teach kids how to use it.
• It's pretty evident doesn't really need me as a teacher. They kind of just tolerate me. I'm not even here for a full term and they already have teachers who could be teaching in my time slots. I'm basically just giving these teachers an excuse to read the newspaper. This is most likely why I only teach on academic class a day.
• I also teach PE a couple of times a day. Sometimes it's kind of tough because I only teach PE to the younger kids who can't really understand me. Luckily all I have to do is throw out a football and they know what to do. Although football can be tough when you're playing with 80 kids at a time. 40 on 40 first grade football is a sight to see. It's the world's largest scrum of children chasing a ball back and forth across the field.
• The Ugandan education system is one of the most ineffective systems I can imagine. The only grades the kids receive are on their state run final exams at the end of the year. They don't get marks on homework or tests or quizzes before that. This is probably my biggest frustration. It means that kids have no immediate incentive to try on their homework. So most of them sort of just wing it and as long as they've turned in something they're not too bothered. The only kids this system works with are diligent kids with enough foresight to realize the value of routine practice and studying who choose to work hard for their own sake instead of playing football. You've all met plenty of elementary school kids like that right? To give you an example, once I assigned two standard multiplication problems to my 50 P5 students. Only five of them got both problems correct.
  
• There are almost no books here. For each subject I teach there is only one book and I have it. This basically means that I copy the notes down on the book for half the class. The rest of class I just go over examples with he kids and let them try some problems.
• The easiest way I can think of to improve education at this school would be to buy English books. Since everything is taught in English I feel like improving kids' understanding of English would help them understand the material better in every class. After asking around I found out that English textbooks cost around five bucks (10,000 shillings). With 400 kids, that means I could buy every student an English textbook for $2,000...
• Since I only have one academic class a day and a few PE classes, that means I'm only in class for at most two hours a day. But I usually try to stay until around 5 so I can play football with the kids after school. This adds up to a lot of time sitting around. at break and lunch I usually either play football or shoot the shit with the kids but when they're in class I can't really do that. And the teachers all talk to each other in Lusoga which I have no hope of understanding so I spend a lot of time sitting around and reading books. Like I mean a lot of time. So far I've read thirteen books.
  

I could spend pages and pages ranting about the issues with the Education system here but that would probably bore most of you. If any of you are curious feel free to ask me in person and I'll tell you all about it. Otherwise this should give you a slightly better picture of what I'm doing.

P.S. If there are any wealthy donors reading this who would like to save me the hassle of guilt tripping you into donating money, please feel free to just cut me a check and give some of these kids a shot at life beyond subsistence farming.

Priests and Miniskirts

So today officially marks the halfway point in my trip to Uganda. Sadly I don't have anything momentous planned for this post. You'll just have to deal with my usual ramblings.

• Doing laundry by hand sucks. It's not particularly difficult it just takes forever and your clothes don't even get that clean (luckily I don't really care). It takes forever to wash them and then it takes at least a day to dry depending on the weather. I wonder if they have laundromats around here?
• This weekend we had a Benedictine monastic priest stay with us for a few days. He had a lot to say but one piece of his wisdom seemed distinctly un-priestly so I thought I'd share: "A good speech is like a good skirt; short enough to arouse curiosity but long enough to cover the essentials." Last I checked monastic priests weren't supposed to be considering those sorts of essentials but hey, what do I know?
• The priests here really get a kick out of the whole David-Samuel biblical connection. So this week after mass they would just not shut up about it because there was a reading from the book of Samuel. It was the part where I yell at him for having Uriah offed so he and Bathsheba can go bump uglies. They spent the whole day trying to derive some significant parallels about our lives.
• Tuesday when I was teaching the prostitutes I found out that I had been very unclear when I explained to them that I was romantically unavailable. Apparently in Uganda the term girlfriend just refers to a friend who's a girl. Apparently the colloquial term they use here is "girl-lover," which has just a few too many connotations for my liking. Nonetheless I will now attempt to bring the term back to the United States because lets face it that's a hilarious thing to refer to someone as. I can just picture sixth grade boys all across the country: "Will you be my girl-lover?"
• I was offered my first wife this week. By a complete stranger no less. On my way to school some workers randomly asked me if I had kids. I told them I was too young. On the way home they asked me if I was married. I told them in the United States I'm too young for that too. But they said that here I was mature and could marry. Then one of them asked me if I wanted to marry his sister. At first I thought he was joking but then he started trying to negotiate a dowry. After the previous girl-lover confusion I just skipped that entirely and told him I was engaged...
• The nursery kids are now addicted to having my throw/spin them in the air. At first this was fine when only one or two of them knew about it. But now every time I arrive at school or walk near the nursery classroom I get gang tackled by twenty 4 year olds insisting I throw them in the air while five others use me as a human jungle gym and race to the top. In their defense though, they're still adorable.
• Apparently I'm losing weight. After four weeks Whitney claims she can already see it in my face. However I have no way to determine how much weight I've lost so far because there are no scales and the largest mirror in our house is 5 by 9 inches. So who knows. Maybe I'll come back all starved looking and emaciated. That'd be sexy right...
  

A Night at the Roxbury

So Friday night we hit the Club, Which was an experience all it's own. I honestly can't really do it justice, it's one of those thigns you really had to be there for. But I guess I'll try anyways.

• The OLMs invited us to join them for an evening of Ugandan Clubbing. The guest list included David and me, The Olms: Terry, Whitney, and Derrick, Whitney's parents who are visiting for two weeks, and Derrick's five german friends, affectionately (not really) known as Der Germans. This was probably the largest gathering of Muzungus (white people) the Ugandan social scene had witnessed in maybe a decade.
• One shocking revelation is that Derrick and Der Germans liked to spend a lot of time outside, smoking and chatting. We settled on describing it as very "European." I personally preferred a word starting with D and rhyming with Pouchey, but I kept that one to myself. Apparently Africa has given me some semblance of tact and restraint.
  
• Anyways I'll start from the beginning. The club is called Sombrero. The Mexican connection is unclear, because we didn't see any Mexican cultural influence or Mexicans. But apparently there wasno other place two muzungus would be expected late on a Friday night, because without even hailing one, a boda driver pulled up next to us saying "Sombrero?"
• The place is actually pretty big and the disco lights were in full effect for oldies night. But in Uganda Oldies means 80's and 90's. There were maybe two songs from the 70's. Reflecting later I realized mainstream music probably hadn't reached Uganda in the 50's and 60's.
  
• When we walked into to this rather large club what did we find? Maybe 30 dudes... that was it. There weren't really any girls there, we counted three the whole night. We had stumbled on a good old fashioned sausage fest. The guys were seemingly just there to dance with each other. And these weren't good dancers either, they just kind of awkwardly swayed to the beat. It was like Hitch (Will Smith) had taught twenty guys to dance and they all hit the club together.
  
• Terry introduced David and me to Ugandan Wine coolers, called Redd's. They don't have Mike's Hard Lemondade, instead it's like alcoholic ginger ale meets sparkling cider. Talk about our new guilty pleasure. So armed with several of these in our stomachs, and to finish off my Hitch reference, we made like Kevin James and hit the dance floor. For anyone who hasn't seen maybe the greatest guy film masquerading as a chick flick ever, this means we danced like white idiots with no rhythm.
• We were just dominating the dance floor. All the Ugandans were now pushed to the outskirts to watch the embarrassing spectacle that is white people on a dance floor. The disco songs were particularly bad with shopping carts, lawnmowers, and sprinklers all over the place. It was just 12 Muzungus looking like fools out there (or at least so we thought).
• Along the night somehow I managed to pick up two dudes. Twice during the night somebody sauntered up to me and just started dancing with me. Homosexuality is a capital crime here so I don't I was being hit on, I really think guys just like dancing together here. Although to be blunt, one guy introduced himself to me and then pulled out his vocational ID card to me proving that he had a trade and could provide for me... So yeah that one I can't really rationalize away. I think I may have been hit on there. But the other guy said nothing, he just sort of copied whatever I was doing and we danced the night away. (Five minutes later I felt weird and ran away to get another drink. What can I say, after Joab proved to me that he could bring home the bacon I was a little uncomfortable with the whole thing)
  
• Later we found out why I was so successfully picking up dudes. Whitney herself managed to snag herself one of the three girls in the place. This girl, later introduced as Christina, just walked up behind her and they started doing a little Bump n' Grind. Christina later said to Whitney, "these ones (pointing to all of us), they are not so good, but this one (I kid you not she pointed to yours truly), he is a very good dancer." Apparently my truly appalling, imitations 70's dance moves rate as good dancing in Uganda. Wow. I guess that's why these guys were getting all hot n' bothered.
• Finally I should mention the decor of the place. It was neither Mexican or Ugandan influenced. On the wall there was a delightful fresco, depicting a battle scene between an army of robots and The Predator. Like straight out of The Predator movie. You cannot make this stuff up, that was the decor they chose for their club...
  
• Later David and I raced Whitney and Terry's home on Bodas. We won by the way, our driver hugged the rail on a turn to shoot past them and got himself 500 extra shillings for getting us home first. We actually never asked him to race but it was fun it wasn't That unsafe. I mean everyone was wearing their helmets after all... To clarify for those of you that have apparently never heard me speak and couldn't pick up on this one, that was sarcasm. I don't even think they sell motorcycle helmets here.
  
• Even though we told everyone to leave the front door open since we were going out, of course nobody here was listening to us and the house was locked down when we got back. This was where we fully realized that every single opening to this place has bars on it. Well except one. After calling everyone inside several times to no avail and several exploratory laps around the house we finally found a barless window, shimmied it open and climbed in. Of course the second we were inside somebody got up to open the front door and see if we were outside. There's the Ugandan sense of urgency for you...

Anyways that all I'd care to say about the evening for you. Ask me in person and I may have a few more stories that I've saved. Guess you'll just have to wait an see. Also this weekend Father Pascal wants to take us to a club with some of his friends. That's right next time we're clubbing with holy men. That experience should defy description.