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.