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?