What I now call home

Uganda is everything that I expected it to be and probably even more. After 40 hours of travel, with close to another 24 hours in layovers, I finally arrived/landed in Entebbe Thursday afternoon around 2 p.m. local time. From there, we took a taxi to my new home town of Lugazi, about a 2 hour drive because the traffic is like nothing you have ever experienced before. That will be a post for another time --- transportation in Africa. For now, this is just the catch you up facts. I don't think I have ever had a warmer welcome. The children from the entire village of Nakkazadde (the neighborhood if you will of Lugazi that we live in) chased our taxi bus down the road to our home, shouting Mzungu! Mzungu! (Losely interpretted -- light skin or white skin person) It is funny, we are all known as Mzungus around here. It is not offensive it is the best way for them to get our attnetion. Is it about the only word any of us know in Lugandan. Anyways, the remainder of this day included rest and dinner (beans and rice) and a little bit of orientations to some of the programs and people working within HELP. Friday was the first day of actions. After a delcious breakfast from some street vendors called chipotee (tortilla like pancakes that you can put just about anything on and are used for every meal) we went right to work in primary school building an adobe stove. At first I was kind of uninterested in this program because I thought time could be better spent elsewhere. But after seeing how much smoke and what horrible conditions the cooks of these schools work in, I am thouroughly convinced of just how important these stoves really are. At HELP, we are expected to work Monday - Friday, very much like a normal work week, but we are priveledged to have weekends off. This particular weekend, a group of had an incredible adventure. For $100, you can spend a full day white water rafting the Nile, the worlds best class 5 rapid river, three meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner,) and an overnight stay at their hotel. It was incredible. And let me just say, I spent the first part of my summer doing white water almost every day... The snake has nothing on the Nile. The rapids are HUGE! So fun! Anyways, when sunday rolled around, we took a boda boda (scooter/dirtbikes) to church in Jinga. A town not more than 15 minutes away. They have a wonderful branch of the LDS Church there and the members were very friendly and warm. That is one thing about Uganda. Everyone is so dang nice and they always look after the Mzungus. Granted they try to charge you more sometimes, but they will always make sure you get home at night. The rest of Sunday was spent relaxing and recovering. And that brings us to today, Monday. I spent the better part of the day walking around to different primary schools, talking to headmasters about adobe stoves and checking on some other adobe stoves previously built here in Lugazi. And I also participated in a womens group, teaching English. Today's lesson was geography and explaining to people where you are from and where you live and the surrounding areas. It went very well and the women caught on quickly. Tomorrow, I get started on my project. For those of you who do not know, I am working with secondary schools and orphanges to implement a big brother/ big sister program. I will post more about that next time, until then... email me! - james.uganda@gmail.com

I hope you are all well!

One last thing, I will not post pictures because apparently the computers here all have viruses and plugging my camera into the USB connections ruins it. I don't think so... Sorry, you will have to wait til next time.