The Nile

This is picture of Tiffany and me just minutes after we'd woken up at the Adrift campgrounds. We woke up to a campsite covered in monkeys! That is the gorgeous Nile right behind us!

A Weekend On The Nile

Hello friends and family! I want you all to know that I am healthy and well! All of us survived the epidemic and we’re all strong and back to work. This past weekend we did probably one of the scariest most amazing things I’ve ever done. We white water rafted the Nile. We went up to Jinja the night before and stayed at the Adrift campground in dorm style rooms. Adrift is an Australian owned company with a plethora of attractive Australian white water rafting men (just a small perk to the fabulous weekend).  The rooms were fairly small with bunk beds that were four beds high! It was like sleeping in a jungle gym! We got up on Saturday morning and had breakfast at the campground bar that sits on a cliff overlooking the Nile. I had eggs and hash browns for a whopping $2.00. Then some people from our group bungee jumped over the Nile. We then loaded all of our gear, minus our sunscreen, onto the pick up bus and then got fitted in our life jackets and helmets. Our group had about 17 people and then there were a bunch of other Muzungus rafting that day as well. Nine of us loaded into our raft and after a small set of class one rapids our Ugandan, with an acquired Australian accent, (unfortunately not one of the Australian tour guys) instructed us on how to row and what to do if we were thrown out or if the raft tipped over. Before every rapid and during our instruction he kept saying whatever you do don’t panic, even if you get sucked under the rapids for minutes don’t panic, remain calm. Not comforting words. Our tour guide’s name was Owlo and despite his dirty mouth was an absolutely fabulous guide. He’d been a guide on the Nile for over a year and a half and had to do a year of training before he was a guide. So he’s basically a pro. We spent the morning going over class 3-5 rapids and we all successfully stayed in the boat except for when one of the class 4 rapids when we flipped (I’m pretty sure Owlo flipped it on purpose). I’m not going to lie; I was pretty scared after the first flip. I lost my helmet almost instantaneously and all I could think about as I was being tossed around in the water is that I hope I don’t hit my head on anything. I was fortunate and was fine helmetless. When I finally got out of the rapids one of the safety kayakers (there were about 15 of them that followed us to pluck people out of the water) picked me up and took me back to my raft. After a few more rapids we came to a class five rapid with a twenty-foot waterfall at the end. I was praying all the way down the rapids that if I fell out or if we flipped, that it would happen after we went over the waterfall. Fortunately, I got lucky and stayed in the boat for the rest of the morning. Going over the waterfall was crazy! I really can’t even describe the sheer terror and adrenaline. Ahhhh!! It was a good thing that you can’t really see the rapids or the waterfall before you’re into them or I would’ve yelled uncle before I ever went over any of those rapids. After a wild morning we stopped off at literally, a tropical island in the middle of the Nile where they fed us the most fabulous lunch. We had ham and salami sandwiches with a million different toppings, potato salad, pineapple, and watermelon. That may not sound very gourmet to you guys but it was like heaven to us. After lunch we hit some more serious rapids. One of the funny things that our guide did was that after we went down crazy rapids he’d give us a lollipop and we’d do a little cheer. The last rapid of the day was a class six, which rafts are no longer allowed to attempt. Our guide Owlo did it in a raft with a bunch of other guides and ended up in the hospital for a month afterward. So now the kayakers are the only ones allowed to go down the class six rapids. We parked the raft and walked around the class six area and would normally jump in where it’s a class five, but the water level was a little low and it would be super dangerous if we were to flip. So we went back in at the class four area and lo and behold we flipped. I’m convinced our guide flipped us on purpose again, but I guess we’ll have to watch the video to see if he did. The second flip wasn’t as bad, but there was one point after I had been twirling around in the water after what felt like forever when I finally came up and thought it was over, only to see one of the biggest waves I’ve ever seen right in front of me. So I screamed and down I went. Finally, me and my trusty life vest (which I had the guide tighten repeatedly throughout the day) popped up and I was retrieved way down the river by a kayaker. I was way far away from the raft and had to swim behind the kayak to the rest of the group. To say the least it was an absolutely wild day and I’m so glad I did it!
Today we went to church back in Jinja where I got to teach nursery to a bunch of munchkins who don’t speak English. English is the primary language here, but the children don’t learn it until they go to school. To say the least it was an interesting lesson. We then took a packed taxi van, which we shared with 33 chickens, to Mukono, where the branch president and his family fed us an amazing meal! We ate chicken, which I haven’t had since I’ve been here and it was so good. They also fed us chocolate cake for dessert! The branch president got his master and doctorate degrees at BYU and now teaches at the university in Kampala. One of his daughters will start at BYU this fall! They live in the nicest home I’ve seen since I’ve been here and for the first time in Africa I took my shoes off and walked around in their house barefoot. In our house, we all were our “house slippers” because it’s not quite clean enough to go barefoot.
A couple of weeks ago the branch president in our little Jinja Branch read a letter from the first Presidency. The church is funding measles vaccinations for all its members in Uganda. They’re doing it for three days in June and I signed up to volunteer all three days. I’m excited to be a part of such an amazing cause. Measles will be eradicated among the members in Uganda. What a miracle.
I received the blue prints at the end of last week for the hand washing stations and I have an appointment to meet up with Robert, one of the college students from Kampala, who we’re working with the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign. He’s such a great leader in the community here and has worked on hygiene and sanitation projects in the past. I’m excited to work with him and I hope that he’ll be able to continue the work we start this summer long after I leave. The blue prints we’re working off of were created by another BYU student and professor and implemented with great success in South Africa last summer. Tomorrow is research day, as I will pick Robert’s brain to see if he thinks these hand-washing stations in the local produce market will be successful. My team and I will also go around the market tomorrow and talk to the local sellers to see if they would be interested in having a hand washing station and if it would be used. If my results after tomorrow’s research look promising then I’ll write a project proposal and will submit it to the HELP Office for the necessary funds. If not, we’ll rework our ideas and blue prints. We’re also scheduling some school visits to teach HIV/AIDS prevention, hygiene and sanitation, as well as drug abuse.
I love love love you all and I love love love Uganda! I miss you guys! XOXO

Our Neighbors!

Here's a picture of the little kids that live near us and run out to greet us every time we pass. This is also a little view of what Lugazi looks like just outside our house.

An Outbreak at the Muzungu House

Sunday night we had a small outbreak in our house. Nine of the 28 volunteers, I being one of them, got sick within hours of each other. We're still not quite sure what it was and had I not been one of the sick ones I would've busted out some of Epidemiological skills and tried to figure out the source. My best guess is that it was the dinner that we all ate Sunday night. Typically, the bacteria that cause food poisoning flourish in foods that contain high amounts of protein, mainly meat or dairy. We never eat meat or dairy here, so who knows. The sad thing is that our cook makes basically the same thing every night, which is what the nine of us spent the past few days throwing up. Dinner will probably never be the same again. Other than that, we're all doing much better and we're all out of bed now and we even walked all the way in to town today. I'm meeting with some some college students from Kampala to discuss HIV/AIDS lesson plans this afternoon for our youth outreach program. I'll let you know how that goes. Sorry I can't seem to get pictures up very easily. The one picture I have on here took an hour to upload, and not all of the computers have working USB drives. I'll keep trying though. Please please don't worry about me and the other sick interns, we're really doing much better and hopefully that will be the only outbreak among our little Muzungu clan. I love you all!

Bye Muzungu!

Today is my one week anniversary of being in the Nemengo District of Lugazi. It feels like I’ve been here so much longer than that. The weather here is always always gorgeous. Sometimes we get a bit of rain, but it only lasts for a half hour or so, then stops. We’ve had a few thunderstorms at night, but none yet during the day. It’s been a week and the little neighborhood kids still run out to greet us absolutely everywhere we go with a, “Bye Muzungu,” or “Oleoteya,” (how are you). We then reply with Balunji or Jendi (good or fine). Almost everyone here speaks English, except for the very old and the very young, but they just love it when you speak Lugandan to them. I’m trying to add a new Lugandan phrase to my vocabulary daily to better immerse myself in their culture. Today I had a short conversation with a local woman in Lugandan and she couldn’t believe that I could say even a few words. She was so surprised she just smiled and laughed. They tend to do that a lot here. They laugh at everything, even when it may seem to be a little rude. They never hold back their loud laughter. One time we were walking back home and this little kid ran out to us and yelled, “goodbye muzungu!’” Just as he started the goodbye he slipped in some mud and fell. All of the Ugandans surrounding him that saw, threw their heads back and laughed at him very loudly. It was pretty funny.
They don’t really have dirt here, it’s more of reddish clay substance that dies your skin brownish orange. Everyone here looks like they tried to fake and bake their feet. I usually wash my hair in the well pump with a bucket below me, but the other day I didn’t use a bucket and the red clay that is on the slab of cement kind of got in my hair and now I have orange and red streaks. I’m hoping it’ll come out when I wash it tonight. The running water got turned on a few days ago and the girls and I like to say that our “squatting” days are over, which we’re pretty happy about.
I can’t even begin to describe how happy the people are here. They have almost nothing and yet they’re always smiling and are so friendly and helpful. For example, our cook Mary, is one of the kindest people I’ve every met. She’s a beautiful tall and extra dark Sudanese woman who has quite the tragic past and is so kind to all of us. She spends hours a day cooking for us and shows us how to make some of her poor mans food into a culinary masterpiece. Ugandans are also very relationship focused. I met with two college students from Kampala who work with a youth outreach program here in Lugazi when they don’t have class. I talked with them about teaching HIV/AIDS and other health classes. After having known them for maybe ten minutes they invited us to one day meet their families and eat with them. I was so humbled and touched by their immediate desire to build a friendship as opposed to just working the American way, in a more business like manner.
The average education level of the people here continually surprises me. The orphans and the people I’ve met so far can all read and write and know more about development then I expected. One of the men we’re working with, Kiza, who as aided us in building adobe stoves and mushroom farms is a very visionary man. He understands the need for development and has a lot of great ideas on how to improve his life and the lives of those around him. Mushrooms are kind of a delicacy here and are harder to come by. Currently, there aren’t many people growing and selling the crop. Kiza has a mushroom farm of his own and has had great financial success with the crop. He has already organized a group of sixteen women who are interested in mushroom farming to supplement their income. We will be working with them in the coming weeks to build them a mushroom farm, along with teaching them how to maintain it and use basic business skills.
One of the girls on my team, Dani, is an education major and is going to be working with local teachers to improve their teaching methods. It is common here for teachers to teach by memorization and not through creativity. We will be working together in the coming weeks, as she will pull teachers away from their classes for an hour a day to train them, while I give the unoccupied children a lesson on public health. I’m hoping that their fascination with muzungus (white people) will aid us in our projects and that the mere color of our skin will keep their attention.
In Uganda they annunciate all their words and don’t use words such as “they’re” or “it’s.” They always say “they are” and ”it is.” If we don’t speak English the way they speak it, they are unable to understand us. Sorry if this blog sounds a little funny in that way. Most of us can’t help but annunciate the way they do all the time now.
Tomorrow we decided to go into Jinja (about 20 mins away) to get some American food. Jinja is more of a tourist area and rumor is that they have American food there. The food here is pretty good, just different. For breakfast I generally have a granola bar and banana, well until my granola bars run out. We’re normally in town for lunch so I’ll typically eat a rolex, simosa, or chippati. A rolex is basically an egg and tomato, sometimes pepper, cooked together and rolled up in a greasier thicker version of a tortilla and costs about $0.75. A chippati is just the greasy tortilla plain and the simosa is a fried bread with beans or rice inside at about $0.10. All the greasy foods for lunch are sometimes a bit too much for me and I just bring pack a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I then always get a piece of fruit with my lunch; pineapple, mango, or passion fruit. Their fruit here is out of this world. I’ve eaten pineapple almost everyday here and I never get sick of it. Their bananas here are sweeter and taste a little different than in The States. I just tried passion fruit a few days ago and it is amazing. It’s a circular fruit that’s hard on the outside and is about the size of a golf ball. Inside it is filled with seeds and kind of a slimy filling. The texture is kind of creepy but the flavor is incredible. For dinner our amazing cook prepares almost the same thing every night, potatoes, rice, noodles, green beans, beans, pineapple, avocado, chipatti, and my personal favorite a mixture of cabbage and carrots that has incredible flavor. So the food is great but we don’t get meat, which I haven’t missed as much as I thought I would. Maybe this trip will turn me into a vegetarian.
One of the other things that I just love here is how well I sleep. We all sleep on these semi-thin foam mattresses in bunk beds, but the cool night air and the lift in the humidity is heavenly. I know Ked, Mitch, and BJ would just love it. It’s like sleeping under the sheets with the fan on in the middle of the summer but only a thousand times better. The room I’m in has a balcony where two of the boys sleep so when the sun rises our room is filled with its glorious rays and we never need an alarm clock. If that doesn’t wake us up the rooster next door does, and if that fails our night guard David will yell at us to get up. Just over the hill from our house is the gorgeous look out spot that we recently discovered. You can see all of village as well as the sugar cane and cornfields for miles lying across the rolling hills. It’s so breathtaking it doesn’t look real. I’ve stopped looking at the pictures I’ve taken because they don’t do the beauty of Lugazi justice. It’s so green and the vegetation so thick that the green and the blue of the sky seem to literally touch.

Post #2

During my first full day in Lugazi we went up to Jinja where the supposed source of the Nile is. Apparently the source of the Nile is debatable. We climbed over some rocks in lake Victoria and climbed the previous monument built to mark the source of the Nile. The current day understanding of the source of the Nile is about twenty feet from the monument.

On Monday we took some bota botas (aka cheaper slower versions of motorcycles) up to the top of the sugar plantation. The large sugar plantation is owned by an Indian who hires Ugandans to work the plantation and allows them and their families to live on his land. So far, I think it’s the prettiest place in all of Uganda. We went up there to meet with a local women’s to discuss what types of projects would be of most use to them.

Here’s a picture of the neighborhood kids who never tire of running out to greet us with a loud Munzungu Munzungu (which means white person).

One of the many projects that HELP International has had a lot of success with in the past is the adobe stoves. These stoves are built with materials found locally to reduce the cost of fuel used for cooking. These stoves also decrease the amount of smoke circulating in the home to reduce respiratory illnesses and catarcts among the women and children. We went around some of the more rural parts of Lugazi and evaluated the stoves that were built last year to make repairs and to decide if we needed to make any changes to the ones we will building this summer.

We also volunteered at an orphanage. This is Leslie and I playing the drums as the kids danced to imitation drum music.

I made it!

It's Saturday at 11 am here and I'm sitting in an internet cafe. We arrived in Lugazi at 11 pm last night after thirty some odd hours of travel. The house we're staying in is amazing with five bedrooms and multiple balconies! We currently don't have running water so we've been using the outhouse (aka a small room with nothing but a whole in the ground). So that's been fun. Behind the house there's this huge basin that collects the rain water and I used it last night to take a shower, in my swimsuit, under the moon light. The water wasn't half bad and it felt soo good after the long two days of travel. One of my suitcases didn't make it last night and I'm really hoping it comes today so I can sleep on some sheets with a pillow tonight, but if not oh well!
I woke up this morning around seven when the sun cam through our balcony windows. We had PB & J's and a fruit similar to a banana only a thousand times better. After meeting up this morning we were sent on a scavenger hunt to learn where the essentials are in town. We went to the bank, the open air market, and now the internet cafe. I guess you could say we cheated because we met one of the locals named Ivan and he's been showing us around.
The weather here is perfect. In the evenings it cools down to about 65 and today is feels likes its probably in the upper 70s. The sun was shinning until about five minutes ago when it started pouring rain. Well my times almost up and we're meeting up at 12 at a place called African Paradise to eat our very first Rolex for lunch. I love you all! XOXO