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.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. The internet/power has been a little unreliable lately and quite frankly I've just been lazy a lot of the time (big surprise right?). Anyway there's plenty to catch you all up on.

• They feed us like kings here. Each meal has at least five courses. (David and I actually have a huge problem with how much food they serve and just generally with what the money here gets spent on but that's a long rant which I don't feel like going in to right now) the problem is that the 5-7 courses are all the same. We've eaten the same meal twice a day for three weeks now. I've eaten the same meal pretty much 40 times in a row. I'm gonna go nuts if this continues for the next 5 weeks.
• I would commit murder to get my hands on a turkey sandwich. I can't explain why that's the one thing I want more than anything in the world but it is. And I can't understand why I can't have one. They have turkeys here. They have bread. Hell they even have mayo and bacon. Why can't anybody put those thigns together for me.
• If you remember from my last post Indians run things around here. No surprise then that to escape the food we went to an Indian restaurant. We got pizza... Not sure what kind of cheese it was, there wasn't really tomato sauce, and the dough was sort of just... there... but it was better than another round of mashed bananas for dinner... Yup, I said bananas.
• My P6 class was well behaved on Monday so as promised I had to rap for them. I dropped Eminem's til I collapse like it was hot. They loved it apparently. Of course then they wanted to compete so now I have a video of "DJ Kisame" rapping in Lusoga. Can't understand a word of it but it's hysterical.
• If you're picking football teams in Uganda, you want the kids wearing blue on your team. Don't ask me why but they seem to have color coded football talent here. The blue kids just run circles around everyone else.
• Last Sunday we played football against some guys from the village. My kids ran train on them. Well not really, we tied 1-1, but for us that's pretty good. Because these guys were MEN. like a couple of them were at least 30. One guy (high school age I think) showed up and then changed into cleats, high socks, nice shorts and a Fabregas football jersey. Alright bro let's chill out here, you're playing elementary school kids who are barefoot. Who are you Christiano Fucking Ronaldo. No surprise he played like a douche too, just sitting offside waiting for the glory ball. I kicked him in the face... Whoops.
  
• Apparently David and I are loaded. We get a $1,000 stipend for two months. The OLMs get $100 a month and they have to pay their own bills too, we don't. When Terry heard how much money we make he told us we should start "Jerkin off into fuckin Rubbahs." I guess that's one way to spend the money...
• Uganda has four seasons. Two rainy seasons and two dry seasons. Before we left everyone told us it would be rainy season. When we got here everyone told us it was dry season, that it would barely rain and everything would get really brown. It's poured rain three times a week and the whole country is still bright green. So we have no idea what season it is. We're pretty sure everyone we've spoken to has been talking out of their asses. We're calling it Gecko baby making season because our house is swarming with baby lizards.
• I have officially found my favorite thing about Uganda. Nothing beats this. In america summer is marked by ice cream trucks playing classic children's songs and kid's freaking out. They have ice cream Boda's here. Basically a cooler of ice cream strapped to the back of a motorcycle. The difference is that these guys don't play children's songs. They play My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion... I am not making this up.
  
• Butcher shops here are pretty unappealing. They don't really refrigerate the meat. In fact they don't really do anything. It just kind of sits there in the open, crawling with flies. Our favorite is "Highway Hygienic Butcher." It's basically a shack which has half a dead cow hanging outside in the sun next to the highway. Adds a nice diesel flavor to your steak...
• I'm going to make a mildly sexist cultural judgment in this bullet. In America girls don't go in for contact sports too much. Even at young ages when they're bigger than the boys, the boys usually have the edge in America. I brought a rugby ball to school to play with the little kids expecting this to be similar. The boys were literally terrified of the girls. None of them even wanted the ball because in three seconds a girl would put them on the ground. girls here are tough... I'm hoping to get a video of a girl here pancaking a boy with a rugby ball. It's a sight.
• Have you ever played a serious game of football while a herd of goats grazed on the same field?

That's all for now. I think I'll wait a day to tell you all about my experience clubbing in Uganda last night. that one deserves its own blog post.

P.S. I don't need anybody more people telling me to pick two or three courses at each meal and then alternate to get some variety. We've already thought of that. We're not stupid.

Malaria: It's the New Strep Throat

• So last year the person in Jinja from my dorm never got sick once. Not even some indigestion from the new food. So of course I came into this summer hoping to have an "iron stomach" like him. Sadly this was not the case. I like to refer to this time in my life as the jejunum rebellion of 2010. I've had about a months worth of toilet visits in the past 4 days. My thighs are literally bruised and purple from the amount of time I've spent there.
  
• Anyways when the drugs I brought with me weren't cutting it so I decided to try out the doctors here. When you're a kid in America if you go to the doctor with pretty much any of the standard symptoms they check you for strep. Why not right? Well apparently they do that with malaria here. Headache? Malaria test. Upset stomach? Malaria test. Hell if you break your arm I wouldn't be surprised if they test you just to be sure. Anyways long story short they tested me too. But apparently the malaria prevention drugs I'm taking confuse the test so it's impossible to tell if i have malaria. So based on my symptoms and my fever apparently it's fully within the realm of possibility for me to have malaria right now... So regardless of the disease they gave me a big bag of drugs and sent me on my way. And hey I'm feeling better so I guess they know what they're doing.
  
• The government run hospital system is a disaster here. It basically a full day to get something done and that's if there's a doctor on staff that day. But the private clinics here run like clockwork. I walked in the door, saw the doctor, went to the lab and got tested, saw the doctor again, got my drugs at the pharmacy and got out of there in about twenty minutes. No joke twenty minutes. Whole process cost me $18.50. (I'd round to twenty but $1.50 buys two 16 oz. beers at a bar here so that's big money to round off around here). I'm not sure if all private clinics are like that or if it's just because we went to an Indian one.
  
• Little known fact: Indians freaking run this place. The government is nominally in charge but if you want something done right you find an Indian and everyone knows it. They have the only reliable grocery stores (aka clean, cheap, and food with an expiration date), they apparently have the only hospitals worth going to, if you need sandals that will last more than a month of African walking you find one of their stores. And most importantly, they are the only people in the entire country who will sell you a bacon cheeseburger. If that's not power I don't know what is. (Out of fairness to other races and cultures I should mention that an Australian runs the only restaurant I've heard of that will grill you a steak. So that guy probably has a lot of political clout too)
  
• The kids here are adorable. Every morning now the ones in nursery and P1 (preschool and kindergarten) run out shouting "mistah sam mistah sam!" The first two grab a hand and the stragglers kind of grab any free arm space they can find. Some kids don't mess around, they just go straight in for a hug. And then on the way home I usually
  
• I've often complained that Hitler's second greatest offense was that he forever made a great mustache style unwearable. (Crimes against humanity holding a clear and obvious first place for anyone living under a rock who couldn't figure that one out). So imagine my delight when I found out that the Hitler Stache is still going strong in Uganda. Even the priests wear them and most of them are western educated to some degree. I have a picture of a priest fully dressed for mass shaved like Adolf Hitler himself. Possibly my crowning life achievement to date.
  
• My P6 english class really wants me to rap for them. I told them if they behaved on Friday I'd give them they're choice between Jay-Z and Eminem. They also specifically requested that I sing Shakira for them so of course I did a quick rendition of Hips Don't Lie complete with a booty shake at the end. I would have sung She Wolf but I decided I couldn't justify shaking my ass for 35 fifth graders with that song...

**As a disclaimer to any overly concerned adults out there I should clarify that Malaria is easily treatable given the small possibility that I actually have it. I'll be fine**

A Week (tastefully) in Review

**It's come to my attention that many of the people reading this blog are adults and may not have the stomach for many of the quotes and stories that have happened here in Uganda. With that it mind I'm censoring myself. Anything particularly offensive will now be written in white lettering. The only way to read it will be to highlight that section. Things written in this way will likely be crass, offensive, and sexually inappropriate. Proceed at your own discretion.**

Ok with that out of the way here are a few cultural gems from the first week in Uganda. A few are significant and thought provoking topics, but most are just stupid.

• Ugandan newspapers are out of this world when it comes to horrible journalism.
  A front page Headline of The New Vision reads: "What's hot in Rock n' Roll?" Open to the page it indicates and you'll find a full page story. Then answer: Avril Lavigne...
• My second favorite article was found in The Observer titled: "How to know if you're a rebound girlfriend."
• People hate gays here a lot. Some of you may be aware that the government here is working on legislation to make homosexuality illegal and the practice of it punishable by death. They just cut your head off, as simple as that. Looking for a scapegoat a lot of people have turned to Obama for some reason as the cause of the gay problem. Direct quote from a priest here (though not any of the ones we're affiliated with) "Obama brought Sodom and Gomorrah to Uganda."
• We get woken up every morning by monkeys playing on our roof which might be the coolest thing ever. Sadly the people of Uganda disagree with my evaluation. The staff here is in the process of poisoning them...
• David and I are pretty sure that our malaria medicine is giving us messed up dreams. Both of us have been vividly watching our friends and families die at night lately.
• speaking of death we killed a chicken for the first time. It twitched and convulsed for an uncomfortable amount of time one its head was gone. We also watched it's bodiless head open it's beak and then snap it shut. Creepy.
• I rode my first Boda Boda (motorcycle/scooter) taxi) the other day. The ISSLP program strongly recommends that we not do this as they have been deemed incredibly unsafe. Now I get it.
• Some people ehre don't seem to feel heat. I had one boy in PE wear a winter coat with the hood up for 45 minutes while playing soccer. Just to be sure I wouldn't be exaggerating when i posted this, i checked a thermometer later that day. It was 81 degrees in the shade.
• We went to our first African Bar last night. The owner was baked out of his mind. He walked up to us as we sat down, told us "dancing is my life," burst out laughing and danced away. The bar was called "bar suzie" and the sign was a giant picture of a cat facing a rooster. When I asked what the sign meant the OLMs told us to think of the name Ugandans use for cats and roosters. Cock and Pussy. I guess you don't win anything being subtle here.
• The term potatoes here refers to sweet potatoes. Being oh so culturally sensitive here they refer to regular potatoes as just "irish." ie. "Can you pass the irish please"
  
• We hung out with an Archbishop this morning. Apparently these types of people stop by the parish house occasionally. Probably the most politically significant human being I've ever struck up casual conversation with. So naturally we tried to get him drunk. Sadly he politely turned down our beer. Next time i think I'll offer Wanangi (pineapple flavored rum served in small plastic bags. Its like a freeze pop for alcoholics)

Anyway that's probably enough for now. Muzungu bye.

Hookers and Orphans

Yes I'm aware that the title of this post is fairly tasteless and offensive. But we learned pretty early that If you can't joke about some of the horrible things we've seen here it'll just beat you down. Here comes sarcasm to the rescue.

Anyways as I mentioned last time we've found some extra stuff to do while we're here. The more interesting of the two things I started this week was teaching english to girls who used to be prostitutes. I'm doing it with one of the OLMs down the street. Basically the girls are trying to get real jobs that don't involve turning tricks (apparently the term actually carries over here in Uganda. Weird). Anyways one of the best jobs they can get is working in hotel management and trying to get money from the muzungus that come to visit here. To do that they need to learn to speak some english but more importantly understand english the way white people, mostly americans, speak it. Here comes the whitest person in Africa to save the day. (seriously though I glow compared to the people here. I need a tan STAT) Anyways basically I just read newspaper articles to them and ask them questions about the readings. Maybe I'll show some american tv shows or play some music or something who knows. Whitney (the OLM) warned me that the first question they would ask me was "are you searching?" (AKA do you have a wife/gilrfriend) Wasn't really sure what the right answer was to that question when faced with a roomful of 15-25 year old ex-prostitutes...

Anyways that gig's pretty cool but not nearly as much fun as our other new activity. David and I have started going to Elshidai which is an orphanage about two blocks from our house. The cool thing is that there are no adults in charge of the place. The kids run ti themselves. The older ones (some of whom are actually older than me) take care of the younger kids. Prettyc ool place. We don't actually do anything constructive. Just hang out with the older people and give them something to do or play with the younger kids. My favorite's Fred. Mostly because he has a puppy but whatever don't judge me. He's "only feeding it supper so it will grow up to be tough." Funny but also a little depressing. It probably explains why his last three puppies died...

Anyways that's about it for now. I actually taught some classes for real today but I'm too lazy to tell you that story right now. Maybe tomorrow. Kaleh (For the record I feel like a tool for ending with this and being "that guy" who tries to seem all hip and cultured or whatever but hey Kaleh's African and it's my Africa blog. I'll end it however I want.)

Uganda Time

I'd like to apologize in advance because these post will be mostly me rambling. A lot of things have happened in two days and I don't really have a good way of organizing them. But hey I'm not forcing you to read this so get over it haha.

Anyways time runs a little differently over here. People talk a lot about how Americans are in much more of a rush than other places in the world and nowhere is that more true than in Uganda. If you set a time for something people could be hours late. If you set a date for something people could be days late (seriously). First example: school.

I started teaching yesterday. I use the word teaching loosely because I didn't teach anything. Nobody did. School started yesterday but like i said things start a few days late. Maybe a third of the kids were there. I was introduced to the kids but they were just, for lack of a better term, dicking around. See class officially started yesterday but most people haven't quite gotten around to it yet. So I met some people and that was about it. The academic head wasn't even there yet to make me a schedule.

Today I came back and got to actually sit in on a class with one of the OLMs named Terry. (I don't think I've told you about them yet. Holy cross sends four lay people to Uganda in year and a half stints to do pretty much the exact same thing I'm doing but for longer. So they've been showing us the ropes and whatnot. Very helpful.) But anyways I sat in on a P6 (primary six, same thing as 5th grade) math class for one period today. It was a lot of fun but the education system is a little backwards here. The only thing that matters are the state exams at the end of the year. If you pass you move on, If you don't you're held back. Comprehension is almost irrelevant so a lot of the time students are just memorizing information without actually learning it. I get the feeling this could be a very frustrating teaching experience.

But it's not all bad. These are pretty much the most adorable kids on the planet. All the way on the walk to school there are little toddlers running out of their houses half naked shouting muzungu BYEE at us. (muzungu means basicalyl means white person but apparently it's not derrogative) Anyways no matter how many times you wave and say bye in return the just keep waving and smiling until they can't see you. And the young kids at school can't understand anything I say because they abrely speak english but when I told them i brought footballs to play with them, every class exploded in cheers. I could get used to this kind of attention.

Anyways that's all for now. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the orphanage we go to that's run by the orphans and the new gig I found teaching english to girls who used to be prostitutes. Yeah, no big deal, we do some pretty cool stuff here. Kaleh (which I can't spell but sort of means goodbye and sort of means ok in lusoga which is sort of the language they speak here. Yeah I'm just as confused as you are)

Lessons from Uganda

So I've been here for just about a whole day now. We landed in Entebbe and Brother Leonard picked us up from the airport. We drove to Kampala (sitting in the back of the pickup on our bags) and spent the night at a Holy Cross house whose name escapes me right now. After a quick tour of Kampala we were picked up by Dominick and drove to Bugembe where we're staying for the rest of the summer. So far here's what I've learned

1. It's really hot. I'm gonna look like a lobster in maybe 2 days.
2. Apparently a lot of people in Uganda decided Guinness was to bitter for them so they mix it with Coke. Yeah it's weird I know. We haven't tried it yet but we'll definitely have to. I'll let you know how it goes.
3. The Ugandan postal service is more of an idea than an actual institution. The road our compound was on didn't even have a name so i can see why delivering mail would be hard. I guess if you want something delivered you find somebody going in the direction of your letter and give it to them. This means that nobody gets billed for anything, you always pay up front.
4. In Uganda people drive on the left side of the road. The list of exeptions to the rule are as follows.

• There are potholes in the road (they're everywhere)
  
• people are walking on the side of the road (always)
• A boda boda (motorcycle taxi) cuts you off
  
• there is a goat in the road. Or 6. People really need to tie these bad boys up.
  
• the guy in front of you is slow

at one point i honestly thought we were playing chicken with a Mack truck. I'm still not sure why either of us was driving down the middle of the road but at any rate we missed each other by about 6 inches. Dominick didn't even blink.
5. It's really hot.
6. They speak something like ten languages here, one for each tribe in the country. Collectively I know two words...
7. Ensenenne (which i can't spell) is really delicious. Ensenenne is fried grasshopper. You read that correctly. They actually fed us grasshopper on our first day.
8. One of the guard dogs at the compound is so lazy they didn't even bother naming it. Literally. Nobody even addresses it anymore, they just yell at it. We call him Frank.
9. Did I mention how hot it is?

Airline Adventures

So travel got a little bit more complicated on Wednesday. I got to the airport and upon checking in a found out teat Delta had rescheduled my flight for the night before. For whatever reason nobody decided to tell me about this and so obviously I missed that. The same thing had happened to David but luckily they were able to book him on the flight we were supposed to be on that day. But when I tried to do that it turned out He had taken the last seat on the plane from Amsterdam to Entebbe. After about half an hour the woman finally got me a crazy route to Entebbe: Detroit to Atlanta to Amsterdam to Nairobi to Entebbe, lasting 46 hours from start to finish... Sick.

Luckily Nicole from ISSLP at Notre Dame worked some kind of magic and called me in Atlanta to tell me that she'd gotten me on the flight from Amsterdam to Entebbe. The only problem was that I didn't have time to switch my bags from the route through Nairobi to the route I was no on. Needless to say my bags got lost.

But luckily I'm here so that's good. I have three shirts, all of which smell bad but oh well, I guess I could still be in Nairobi so I can't complain.

Africa on Hold, Krakatoa Style

So mount Eyjafjallajökull, or whatever, started exploding again in Iceland. So two and a half hours into our flight the captain comes on and tells us to we’re turning around because Amsterdam airspace is now closed due to the smoke from the volcano. So we headed back and once we got back we called customer service. After being on hold for half an hour they booked us on the next available flight once they think Amsterdam will open back up again which is the 19th. So now I’m trapped in scenic Detroit for two days. Joy. There goes David and my one day vacation in Amsterdam.

*** Sidenote. I don’t think I mentioned David before. David’s my site partner this summer. He’ll be staying in the same parish house with me in Bugembe but working at a different school. He’s teaching computer class at Lakeview Secondary school which is about a half hour walk from the house, in the opposite direction from my school.***

Anyways until further notice I’m trapped in Detroit. Luckily my friend Ryan (cue the snickering from my friends at Notre Dame) lives in Detroit and had a place for me to sleep so I’m not in a hotel. Anyways I’ll keep you guys updated.

Ready To Go (Sorta)

Welcome to my Blog

I decided this was the best way to keep everyone up to date about what I'm doing this summer. That way those of you who don't care don't have to get annoying emails from me, and you can keep track whenever you feel like it. Hopefully I'll be able to add pictures and videos here but my internet will be pretty slow so who knows. This could be a daily thing or weekly or just whenever something cool happens, I'm not really sure.

For those of you who don't know, I'll be spending my summer in Uganda. Every year my dorm, Sorin College, sends one person to teach at St. Jude's primary school, located outside Jinja, Uganda. Sorin and Notre Dame's ISSLP program combine to pay for all of my living and travel expenses. I also get a $1,000 stipend that I can spend on whatever I want. There's a bunch of academic requirements that I have to fulfill, like classes and paper but those are boring and none of you care.

As for what I'm actually doing, I'll most likely be teaching english and math to middle school age kids. The school is in Bukewela which is about a twenty minute walk from where I'm staying in the Moreau House in Bugembe with several Holy Cross Priests. Do I know anything about teaching? No. Am I in any way prepared to act like a mature and responsible adult in front of 60 kids? Nope. Is my skin ready for equatorial sun? Definitely not. This should be interesting... Anyways thanks for reading, thanks for praying, and hopefully future posts are less boring than this one. See you guys in 2 months.

p.s. If anyone else tells me that this is going to be a great experience for me I'm going to freak out. Of course it's going to be a great experience, why do you think I'm doing it?