Hope for Ugandan Girls

I'm back home in Kansas City, and there is no doubt that my time in Uganda has changed my life.  I'm no longer just a girl working in Kansas City--I now carry with me the stories, the pains, the worries, the hopes and the dreams of 10 Ugandan girls: Jackie, Asah, Flavia, Grace N, Gloria, Rehema, Esther, Grace M, Ngongu and Gloriosa.

The organization that took me to Uganda, American Jewish World Service, set me up with the local organization Private Education Development Network.  PEDN runs programs to teaches financial and business skills to Ugandan youth, including the new program I launched with group of girls, aged 18-25, mostly hard-working orphans trying to support themselves and their siblings. 

My trip changed my image of Africans and their culture.  Before I went, I based my image of Africa and its people on news reports about civil war in the Sudan, terrorist activities in Kenya, and even Somalian pirates, and National Geographic pictures of tribal rites and emaciated children.   

However, in the experience I had with everyday people in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, I found that Ugandans are caring, generous, quick to be helpful, and that they value community and friendships over everything. 

The girls I worked with had to worry everyday about having enough money to leave their homes, eat, and ensure their family members could attend school and have enough to eat as well.  They have so much less than we do materially, but in terms of character strengths and personal values, I learned so much from them.

They taught me about love and faith—they have so little, yet they don’t hoard their meager possessions.  They are ready with anyone they care about, family, friends, or even a visitor to their land, to give away what little they have.

I got from them an invaluable gift—hope.  And that’s what I want to give back to them.  That’s why we created HUGs, Hope for Ugandan Girls.  It’s a way for them to pool their efforts to make a product that will help them to earn a living and, if we can raise enough, send them to university. They are making shrugs and ties—products that hug.   I hope that Americans will purchase them and, in doing so, help these girls to help themselves achieve their dreams—of knowing where their next meal is coming from,  of being able to support themselves and their siblings, and of going to university. 

And in supporting them, Americans will get a HUG, literally and spiritually!  

This project is just being launched--the girls are coming to the PEDN office everyday to learn how use the knitting and sewing machines I bought while I was in Uganda.  They have made just six ties and eleven shrugs.  I will post pictures of them as soon as they come in the mail.  They still need money to launch their project and to pay for their travel to and from the office--and they also could use more supplies, including yarn, thread, needles, and the like.  Since they value hope more than anything, I'm sure any messages of encouragement will mean the world to them.  

On my last day, the girls sang to me, "We are the world, we are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day so let's start giving. There's a choice we're making. We're saving our own lives.  It's true, we'll make a better day, just you and I." Here's a video of their send-off:

The song they sang continues: 

There comes a time

when we need a certain call.

When the world must come together as one. 

There are people dying.

Oh it's time to lend a hand to life.

The greatest gift of all.

We can't go on,

pretending day by day,

that someone somwhere will soon make a change.

We are all part of,

God's great big family,

and the truth your love is all we need.

Well send them your heart,

so they know that someone cares.

And lives will be stronger and free.

As God has shown us, by turning stone to bread

and so we all must lend a helping hand

When you're down and out,

there seems no hope at all.

But if you just believe,

there's no way we can fall.

Well, well, well, well let us realize

oh that a change can only come,

when we stand together as one 

We are the World

We are the children 

We are the ones who make a brighter day

so let's start giving

Oh there's a choice we're making

We're saving our own lives

It's true, we'll make a better day

Just you and I.

Thank you for supporting these girls in whatever way you can.  Your gift, be it encouragement, yarn, or money, will provide the extra HOPE for these Ugandan girls, for Rehema and Esther, Gloria and Gloriosa, Grace N and Grace M, Jackie and Asah, and Ngongu and Flavia to make their dreams come true.

We're famous!

The wonderful staff at KSHB-TV, Kansas City's NBC Action News channel, covered the program we launched out of my office at PEDN in Uganda!  I am working on a post with some details about the program and how to help out.  For now, please check out the news report!

http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_kansas/overland_park/a-knit-and-a-stitch-for-a-brighter-future

Tomorrow morning I should be ready to upload the more detailed post.  Thank you for your support!!

A short update

Life in Uganda is incredible.  Everyday includes adventure, usually some triumph and some defeat, exchange sof currency, a new word or phrase in Luganda, and plenty of reddish colored dirt.  The last several weeks have left me feeling that Kampala is a new home, and Uganda is gorgeous and extremely complicated.  I'm reading a book that our upstairs neighbors for several weeks, Honey and Tony, generously left with us.  It's called, "The Teeth May Smile but the Heart Will Never Forget."  It details the complicated story of Ugandan history, particularly the Amin presidency chapters and their impact on an individual family and the psyche of the whole country.  I often feel like there are layers coating many of my conversations and interactions.  I can relate to the title of the book; it's hard to know what the smile is hiding, what the true motive is and what history and experiences are fueling it.  Everywhere I go I am verbally, audibly (sometimes via shouting) labeled "muzungu," white person.  What is attributed to my character, my people, and my pocket in that proclamation?  It is an un-American phenomenon, at least in my experience of America, to be publically described in such a way.  I can't imagine shouting, "Indian!  European!  African-American!" while pointing at the accused on a street in the states.  I have been told the label entails a degree of excitement (which usually connected to a hope for resources from my wealthy, American wallet).  I also wonder if there is some degree of resentment entertwined with the exuberance.  In addition to having my race acknowledged, I've also been solicted for relationships of all kinds, told how beautiful I am, and even had love professed to me.  I guess those three little words are more expendable then I would have thought.

Today Shira and I bought permits to do gorilla tracking in the southwestern corner of Uganda.  I'm thrilled.  It should be beautiful and incredibly unique; we'll get to see gorillas living in the wild!  Darker, hairer versions of ourselves living in families in the jungle.  I'm stoked.  Our other big adventure so far was to the eastern part of Uganda, to an area called Mbale where three groups of Ugandans, ranging from a community of 150 to one of 1000, converted, on their own instincts and judgment, to Judaism.  They live amongst the Muslim and Chrisitan communities also inhabiting the area, and their Judaism has a raw, convicted element to it. We met many other young visitors, most of whom were Israeli.  They recommended a good, cheap campsite, which allowed us to sleep with the sounds of rushing water as lullabyes and open our eyes onto the multiple waterfalls that comprise Sipi Falls.  If going west brings an iota of the raw, natural beauty we witnessed in and around Mbale, we are golden.  My pictures of that adventure are in a picasa web album: http://picasaweb.google.com/JoyFriedman/MbaleSipiFalls02#. The end of the album is a tribute to another Ugandan phenomenon: second hand clothes!  Markets are overflowing with them, every store sells them, and they bear the tags of stores from across the globe.  Most people here dress like the people they see on MTV and in soap operas, which is actually pretty familiar.  They use a lot of British vernacular here (makes sense, the Brits were their colonizers), and that includes their term for well-dressed, "smart."  I love it when Flavia, who went shopping with me and is in some of those final pictures, tells me I'm "looking smart."  She says it with great approval and admiration.  She is now accountable for the great boost of my Ugandan wardrobe...on which I've spent about $25 American dollars and includes 2 new pairs of jeans, 8 shirts, 5 skirts, and 3 dresses.  I don't know how I'll pack when I leave!  I didn't bring enough smart clothes here, thinking I'd need long, modest skirts and outdoor clothes, not super smart work clothing, so the armoire augment seemed warranted. 

I'll end with a few pearls of Ugandan gourmet information.  First, the special snack that many of my native friends enjoy:

From far away, it looks like a bunch of snow peas, right?  But take a look up close:

There are too many scales on those for them to be beans or peas!

As you can see, they are dead and dried GRASSHOPPERS.  Not what I consider food usually...but I am constantly informed, but the people hawking them and my friends, that they are very good and sweet.

Shira, my fabulous roommate, actually tried a grasshopper.  As you can see, they are usually so drenched in oil that she said they just tasted like fried anything.  I still can't bring myself to put one in my mouth...but if they are easy to store maybe I'll bring some home for my more adventurous friends to try.

A more foreign fruit that I've discovered and actually tasted is the jack fruit.  It comes in an enormous shell, almost like a watermelon with a bad case of acne.  Here I am with a jack fruit I bought for about 80 cents at the fresh food (and fresh chickens) market near my home.

Check out this behomouth fruit! I knew how sweet it would be, so I picked up a knife and started hacking.  What I discovered inside was a travesty--between me and each delectable bite of jack fruit were curtains of goey, sticky, tapestries of pulp.  

This puppy took me two hours to tear apart.  I had to stop twice and poor cooking oil all over my hands and arms to de-stickify myself long in order to continue hacking.

Case in point: here is just one tiny piece of fruit, hidden among strings of impenetrable stickiness. After working myself to the point of exhaustion, Flavia came by to check on me.  She laughed at my predicament, and told me that I was just like children at schools who get in trouble for eating jack fruit during recess.  You can never hide a jack fruit binge, she said, because you wear the remains.  This must be the first form of superglue found naturally.  She took ten minutes to expertly slice the remaining jack fruit so we could pluck the fruit right out.  Here is a look at what this monstrosity could produce:

I also discovered a more familiar fruit, but one I'd never seen in its raw form: coffee.  Coffee grows on bush-sized trees inside berries. 

They are plucked of the branch and put through a sieve-like machine that separates the bean from its berry shell. 

Then they lay the beans out to dry in the equatorial sun, and what you see at this point is much more akin to a coffee bean you'd find at home before it's been roasted. Our guide on our hike said eating these beans as they are will make you stay up all night long.  I took his word for it and left them alone. 

So that's a bit of flavor from Uganda.  I will do my best to write more.  There is so much to capture and share.  Just today I was riding in a taxi back from the very fancy Ugandan Wildlife Authority office and my driver put on his seat belt by pulling it down from above his right shoulder (remember, they drive like the British) and looping it over the emergency brake.  He then proceeded to drive so quickly and closely behind the car in front of us that when they stopped suddenly he had to throw the vehicle to the small shoulder alongside them to avoid crashing into their vehicle.  Needless to say, his looped seatbelt didn't stay on its precarious hook for long.  

I'm off to work, where we'll be meeting with eight women who received scholarships from an NGO to attend secondary school (high school, which is often too expensive for lower class Ugandans to attend).  Since them, many of them have been accepted into college but can't afford to pay (the goverment provides very few scholarships and loans are hard for orphaned young women to secure). They are each incredible in their own way--all have faced tragedies beyond my comprehension and yet they persevere.  Last week we invited them to the office and asked them to serve on the founding board of my NGO's nascent Girls Empowered to Empower effort.  All of them agreed, and many declared with passion and sincerity that such an effort was their lives' dream.  I am looking forward to another inspiring afternoon with them.

First week in Kampala

Each day that passes makes writing this blog post more and more challenging.  How to encapsulate all that the last week has included—it’s too large a task.  I must try to write more often than this, so that I’m not caught in this position again.

I was set to fly from Kenya to Uganda early last Friday morning, but I awoke at about 3am with a strong discomfort in my stomach.  Over the next several hours it developed into a piercing pain, and I found myself running to the bathroom, where I resided for the next several hours.  When the time for our departure to the airport arrived, I knew I could not make it.  As unnerving as the idea of missing my flight was, I was in too much pain and had too constant a need for the toilet to go anywhere.  My future roommate, Shira, encouraged me to call a healthcare consulting alliance to which AJWS offers membership for its volunteers.  I described my symptoms to the nurse who answered, and she insisted I go to the emergency room at Nairobi Hospital.  With the help of the hotel staff and one of the NGO partners staying at the hotel, I managed to get into a taxi and head to the hospital.  I spent nearly five hours in the hospital, having my temperature taking via my armpit, lying on a hospital gurney, and receiving shots for the pain and to settle my stomach in a part of my body that hasn’t been the recipient of an inoculation since I was a toddler.  I asked the doctor who suggested the shots if they used new needles.  She stopped what she was doing and glared at me, stating, “We only use new needles.  We don’t boil our needles.”  I felt embarrassed but still relieved to be so clearly assured that they would only stick me with uncontaminated needles.  Having slept the majority of time my there, I felt a bit faint and achy but pushed myself to return to the hotel, so I could take the final flight of the day with the Uganda-based AJWS representative.  None of the other volunteers, all of whom had eaten at the same restaurant I had the night before, fell sick—it must have been my initiation into the international travelers club in which the rest of the volunteers already have membership. 

When I arrived in Kampala, Flavia met me.  She is an administrator at my placement NGO.  She is one of the warmest, most hospitable, people I have ever met.  She lives next door and has done everything from cook for Shira and me to traipse all over Kampala helping us find clothing, our offices, several country clubs, open markets, cell phones, sim cards, and modems.  

Flavia giving a presentation at our orientation.  She and I are the same height!

The major mode of transportation in Kampala is the public taxi.  There are also plenty of people who walk to their destinations, and there are also the dangerous, quick and cheap boda bodas, which are motorcycles that are most often driven by men without helmets and can be found weaving in between cars and the wrong way down one-way streets.  Public taxis are 16-seater Toyota vans, and Shira and I believe they serve as a testament to the indestructibility of Toyota vehicles, despite the debacles they faced in America this year.  Each taxi boasts both a driver and a conductor.  They work in tandem, soliciting potential passengers at every conceivable moment.  The conductor shouts out the window in lightening speed, akin to an auctioneer’s monologue.  Each passenger pays according to the distance she travels, though most routes are a fixed price (fixed, that is, unless it rains or is exceptionally busy, which allows the conductor to charge much higher prices for his route than usual.  Most routes cost between 300 and 1500 shillings one way, or about $.25 to $1.40 American.  It often feels crammed and usually carries the pungent odor of too many individuals who were just contending with the equatorial sun. 

Trying to acclimate to a semi-normal Ugandan life has been challenging.  We have lost water and power several times, and everything feels simultaneously familiar and foreign.  We have cars; they have cars.  Except their cars travel on the other side of the road, they have no stop signs, lights, or other traffic accident abating mechanisms.  We have cows; they have cows.  Except their cows graze on the curb by my house, in the median of the road, in people's front and backyards... Every day I am so inundated with newness and challenges so that I feel like a week has passed by the time I come home.  There is poverty here I couldn't have fathomed, and there are stories of struggle that are beyond comprehending.  It is overwhelming.

Waiting in the car as the long-horn cattle meander across the road

More ambling cows

And a little brown heifer was winking at me...Oy what a beautiful day in Okla-I mean, Kampala!

I need to write so much more.  I want to describe my job here, as I experienced it last week during an entrepreneurship training for 20 women, ages 18-22 or so, who were all recipients of scholarships that allowed them to attend high school.  I also spent a day at the school the previous AJWS volunteer who worked with my NGO founded, and fell in love with the 60 or so students, ages 8 to 15, that I met there.  I want to share about the unique Ugandan fruits (and the fruits that are familiar but taste very different than their north American counterparts, like oranges and pineapples).  I want to describe the way people react to Shira and me, the “muzungus,” as they (unabashedly and often) call those of us with white skin.  That will all have to wait—after an exhausting day trolling shops in an open air market and buying three work skirts (I also have to describe the way people dress here!) for a total of about $8 and brushing past what must have been at least a third of Kampala’s 3 million person population, I need to get some rest.  Here of some pictures of my humble Ugandan abode.  More tomorrow!

My huge canopied bed, in all it's misquito-netted glory!

Our "compound"

Our unit, which is marked "blue."  The unit upstairs, which is currently inhabited by a lovely Canadian couple, is labeled "beige."  Interesting color selections!

End of Orientation

I am crazy about my cohort of volunteers.  Tomorrow Shira and I depart for Kampala, another volunteer goes to Kisumu, Kenya, and the rest of the team scatters across Nairobi.  We have ventured out of our hotel for two group dinners sponsored by AJWS, a site visit to one of the local NGOs, and two visits to local malls for dinners on our own.  While I have been relieved, given how minimally I’ve traveled the world and my limited knowledge of foreign language, that one of the official languages of both Kenya and Uganda is English, I didn’t realize how diffuse the impact of colonialism would be.  Most visibly, Kenyan roads and cars are set up like their British counterparts—they drive on the left side of the vehicle and the road.  They don’t, however, have traffic lights, and the narrow roads we traversed on our way to YaYa mall seemed to be at full capacity and chaos, with cars careening so close to us as we trudged along the pavement that we often grabbed each other and gasped while or after a mutatu (public taxi/van) drove by, nearly sideswiping one or all of us.  The malls were both very similar to American versions, if not identical other than the people passing through them.  Shira and I split from the group, many of whom were seeking cell phones that she and I will wait to buy until we reach Kampala.  We went to a fruit market to purchase fruits with skins or peels, so we know they weren’t affected by water that would make us sick.  We bought passion fruit (which until now I had thought was the Dole equivalent of Mother’s day for Hallmark—a fabricated juice produced only for the opportunity to sell another product—I was mistaken), which is native to this area and came in small, round, squishy fruits.  We bought an avocado as large as my face.  As we were wondering out loud (though hopefully discretely) at fruits we hadn’t seen before, another patron approached us and explained what some of the unfamiliar varieties were.  He went on to answer all of our questions about the assortment of fruits in the store, even giving us cooking ideas for what looked like a  palm-sized lima bean (to slice it and serve it with cilantro and tomato as a salsa.)  We bought mangos, paw-paw (which we determined was akin to if not the same as papaya), and mini bananas.  We ate dinner all together at a restaurant in the mall that served quesadillas, burgers, and “chips”—which were actually French fries, to an American eye and tastebud, but labeled as the British would. 

The neighborhood surrounding our hotel could almost be in any American city.  It is covered in fancy gated apartment buildings, made of stucco and painted shades of pink and beige.  The elements distinct from the States are nuanced and subtle: scaffolding outside one of these upscale apartments in the midst of construction is made of trees rather than metal; alongside one of the gates sits a furniture shop made of scrap metal walls, and the vibrancy of the vegetation far exceeds the beauty of Kansas City’s untended gardens.  Once we veered off the road and into an NGO’s site, we also saw animals we weren’t used to seeing at our American workplaces—small monkeys!  One of them climbed over the roof as we sat in a circle, talking with the talented, passionate staff team who hosted us at the site of their program for refugee women. 

I need camera advice—I’m not adept at capturing what compels me in a rectangle that anyone else would want replicated.  Here are some of my less unfortunate attempts to document the things I just described:

Over the last few days we’ve been inundated with information.  Our trainers, two representatives from the New York AJWS office and country representatives from Kenya and Uganda, have led us in conversations and workshops across a large gambit of topics.  We’ve discussed how to explain certain tenets of Judaism, security and safety in East Africa, Ugandan politics/history/culture/economy, cultural dos and don’ts, responsible blogging, perspectives with which people volunteer, and many more.  It has been incredibly useful, although a bit philosophical, given that we’re sitting in a room at a hotel, discussing our volunteer placements or Ugandan street venders serving fried grasshoppers from quite a distance.  Yesterday, however, the content of our orientation began to have context: representatives of our NGOs arrived! 

The eight of us are each volunteering for unique organizations, each of which requested a volunteer with a particular set of skills. My organization is represented by two 25-year-old women, who presented on the state of the Ugandan education system and underwent their own inundation from AJWS on Judaism and what they can expect from me, their volunteer.  These two women are the youngest of the NGO partners, and each spoke to their passion for children and the work they do around and in Ugandan schools.  They were both exceptionally warm to and receptive of me, their volunteer.  I am a bit nervous that they see me as more talented than I truly am—but I hope we can find ways for me be supportive of the work the organization has already and continues to excel in accomplishing.  They both happen to be just about my height, which adds a slightly superficial sense that we were meant to work together.  The group of NGO partners and volunteers ate out together at an Ethiopian restaurant here in Nairobi.  I love Ethiopian food, and have eaten such at restaurants in Cambridge and Kansas City.  One of my counterparts at my NGO sat next to me and picked delicately at the platter five of us were sharing.  She hadn’t eaten much Ethiopian (if any at all) and wasn’t sure she liked it…   

The conversation turned political and a bit heated during the meal—one of the NGO partners is a fiery, articulate lawyer from Uganda who spoke sharply about her perspective on the Ugandan election, coming up this March.  I wonder how many such conversations will occur that I’ll be privy to? 

Signing off so I can get a moment of exercise before our final day of orientation begins…tomorrow, Kampala here we come!

10/10/10

It feels like every moment brings a new adventure here—I wonder what will feel momentous after I’ve adjusted to East Africa!  My flights were mostly uneventful, thought I certainly felt the toll of consecutive flights by the end of my 1.5, 9, and 7.5 hour legs.  (WARNING: I tried to upload the pictures I refer to in this blog but my connection is too slow.  I'll edit this post and add them as soon as I am able.)

After switching from a domestic to the international terminal in the Atlanta airport, I wrote myself this note on the back of a receipt, “Something about entering the international terminal—not just the Rosetta Stone booths of the “exotic” destinations (I saw  a flight to Bogata as I searched for my gate)—but the force of diversity.  It feels like a strong gust of anonymity, a recognition that there ARE billions of individuals on this planet, so I’m not only one of millions of Americans, but one of 6 billion residents of our planet.  Just as I embark on this momentous (for me) journey, I feel a remarkable sense of insignificance.  Welcome to the realm of world travel.  While in the terminal, I did my last step of preparation—called my cell phone company and placed my account on hold.  I haven’t been without cell phone service in years…it feels both liberation and lonely.  My mom whispered to me at the Kansas City airport that this may be my last solo journey.  I hope dropping the cell will help my solidify my sense of self.”  My neighbor on the first flight, from Atlanta to Amsterdam, was wearing a Stetson and kept that cowboy hat in his lap all nine hours.  He was headed to Germany to judge a horse show.  Here’s a picture of the first meal Delta/KLM served:

On my flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi I sat next to a German couple who spoke minimal English.  I had purchased a book and a New Yorker magazine in Atlanta, but the handle on bag the bookstore had given me stretched its maximum amount and snapped in my hand just as I settled into my seat.  The German woman immediately rummaged through her purse and produced a canvas bag, which she offered to me.  I was shocked—what generosity!  Here’s a picture of the bag:

I believe it’s promoting a library in Munich.  Later, I asked her if I could borrow a pen, which she didn’t understand.  I tried to squiggle my pinched fingers vigorously, demonstrating what could only be a desperate traveler penning an SOS letter.  I discovered that squiggling hand movement is not universal sign-language for writing utensil.  We worked it out eventually, and I ruled over a couple Sudoku quizzes before falling asleep.  I actually awoke with my left foot just 10 or so inches from my face—I’d kicked up my leg so that my calf rested on my tray table and fell asleep in that awkward position.  I awoke to the most beautiful site out the window: mountain peaks piercing through the clouds.  It’s not the smartest photography move to take a picture out an airplane window, but I tried:

Landing in Nairobi left my heart in my throat.  I wandered along with the crowd down hallway that was much narrower than any American or large European airport. It was lined with shops also much more crammed than spacious American airport stores.  The air was much warmer and thicker than the over-air-conditioned setting in the states.  After showing my passport to a guard and scanning all of my fingers into a small box with a glowing (and slightly ominous) green light, I headed down to baggage claim.  A woman stopped me on the way and asked me my name.  I wasn’t sure what to do or say, so I introduced myself—and it turned out she was also a participant in the American Jewish World Service volunteer corps.  It was pretty fortunate we found each other before leaving baggage claim—just outside were nearly 100 men, all pushed up around a short barrier with signs with the names of their patrons or the hotels for which they worked—but none of them held my name.  If I hadn’t met Ruth, I would have had a difficult time making it to our hotel.  Ruth and I went through the final customs stop together, and the man working the station, smiling a wide grin of braced-teeth, asked us if we knew Barack Obama, and then if we met him. We both mentioned our long-range connections to our president, and he beamed back at us.  Our taxi driver wasted no time asking us the same questions about Obama, and then regaling us with stories about his relationship to Kenya and their current president.  Apparently, the president was the minister of Finance when Obama’s father worked there, and helped get his father a good job.  The driver was certain Obama now holds the Kenyan president in high esteem because of his good treatment of “Obama senior.”    

Our hotel is apparently in a posh neighborhood.  It has a pool and is teeming with guards in green uniforms.  They serve three meals a day and offer glass bottles of coca-cola without corn syrup, a much sweeter variety.  It’s the first hotel I’ve stayed in where my room was outfitted with twin beds, and offered complimentary mosquito nets:

Making my bed included encircling myself with the net:

I slept 12 hours and woke up a little dizzy, but relatively rested.  I took a quick swim at the hotel pool, which filled up over the hour with community residents.  Many of them were men with children, who they were teaching to swim.  Most children seemed to enjoy their lessons, but one young girl howled every time her father let her go.  We had our first orientation session this afternoon.  There are eight of us from the states: two couples traveling together, both spending the better part of this year traveling the world, volunteering and sight-seeing together; the rest of us are single (without travel partners, if not without partners at home) women.   We discovered that in the couples, the women were the instigators of their trips.  An interesting statement, perhaps, about who is drawn to travel…?  All the participants seem wonderful, and we each are so awed by our surroundings.  Can you believe it?  We’re in Kenya! We keep pronouncing to one another.  We walked down the road to a nearby restaurant for dinner.  We passed a group sitting on the side of the road with grills comparable, for me, only to the travel grills people bring when tailgating at Royals and Chiefs games.  They were cooking corn, crouching beside the grill on the ground.  Our meal was served under a tent with Michael Bolten crooning in the background, “How can we be lovers if we can’t be friends?” and covering Otis Reddings’ “Sitting on the dock of the bay.” 

Our group has dispersed for the evening.  I’m sitting on a car in a lounge area at the hotel, with a British group of tourists chatting away behind me. They’re discussing songs they can sing at, I’m presuming, a Methodist Church, since our hotel is Methodist affiliated.  They’re suggesting they do “Joyful, Joyful…” I sort of feel like they’re speaking to me.   I’m tempted to mimic their accents under my breath…

Looking forward to a good night’s sleep and remembering to take pictures tomorrow.  I hope I remember to use bottled water to brush my teeth!  My computer hasn’t switched time, so I know that it’s 1:30pm in Kansas, though it’s 9:30pm here.  Hope my American friends and family are enjoying their auspicious Sundays (it’s 10/10/10!)  Much love….

Getting Official

This voyage is about to move from an intention into a full-fledged plan: I have an itinerary!  I'll be leaving Kansas City at around noon on Friday, October 8th.  Then I hit Atlanta mid afternoon.  When I board my ATL plane at dinner time that evening, I leave the states for the rest of 2010!

The next place my soles will touch soil is in Amsterdam on Saturday, October 9th.  I'll have enough time for a quick airport breakfast, and then it's off to Nairobi!  For the following five days I'll be with my fellow AJWS volunteers, learning about the cultural, financial, political, and historical aspects of East Africa, and preparing for my volunteer assignment in Uganda.  Here's home for the final months of 2010:

I'll be working with a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) in Kampala, Uganda that supplements the traditional Ugandan educational system with entrepreneurial education.  My volunteer placement supervisor tells me that schools in Uganda are ineffective at preparing their students for real-world employment.  My supervisor, Irene, is a native Ugandan and says most classrooms are packed with students, nearly 100 per class, and aren't taught in an engaging manner.  The Minister of Education, Gerard Namirembe Bitamazire (I've just attempted to pronounce this name aloud as well.  Impossible.) has reportedly insisted that their educational priorities are: access, equity and quality.  In that order.  Unfortunately, that means many students are attending poor quality schools and entering the workforce ill-equipped.  I doubt I'll make a big impact on the system at large in the two months I'll be spending there, but my conversation with Irene gave me high hopes that I can have some effect by whatever I can do to strengthen and support her organization.

In our 40 minute conference call, Irene seemed used to discussing the inadequecies of the Ugandan educational system and passionate about her organization's effort to improve the system.  She was also quick to laugh, humble about the impressive organization she founded a few years ago, and expressed so much excitement about the support I will provide.  I hung up after this call thrilled that I'm doing this trip and going with AJWS, who set me up with Irene and is guiding me through this process. 

Irene's office is in Kampala, which is where I'll be doing most of my work, though Irene asked me if I'd help them broker rural partnerships with schools outside of the capital city, and she sighed with what I think was a combination of happiness and relief when I said I'd be glad to.

Hopefully, my housing and flights will be confirmed by the end of next week--so check back and I'll have more details about my adventure soon.  I've just downloaded an audio version of The Last King of Scotland, which I'll be listening to as I get ready to show my apartment to potential sublets, help my boyfriend Zack clean his new condo, and apply for my Kenyan and Ugandan visas.