5/10

Our volunteers are here!! Well, all but 5 who are coming in tonight. 18 of them arrived, a little frazzled, after over 24 hours of travel. We had to rent 3 mini busses to get everyone back and naturally, in my car, there was a spontaneous combustion of about 10 minutes of lion king songs. I am sure it was all the condensed oxygen in the airplane.

Everyone is excited to be here and Melissa and I have laughed at ourselves wondering if we are going to chill out at all this summer. Probably not. We are quite a conspicuous group walking around Lugazi. Before our group arrived, Melissa and I were the only muzungu’s around. Now we move in an overwhelming pack that looks like a colorfully dressed ghost parade to all those we pass. We are naturally quite entertaining to the cute little kids around town who pause to get up enough courage to yell, “muzungu!” at us.

Speaking of people yelling muzungu (white person) at us, I was talking to our compadre Ivan who was laughing about the inverse and was sure that if he were to go to America how everyone would yell “BLACK PERSON!” at him. I tried to explain that most likely, that would never happen in America.

The 18 volunteers got in Friday night to no running water (they might turn it back on Tuesday or Wednesday) and we’ve been using a lot of well water to do everything. Saturday we woke up and the newbies went on a scavenger hunt throughout the town to the bank, buy fruit from the market, buy water from the grocery store, and email home. We then met for lunch and went back to the house to get ready to ride to jinja, the source of the nile. We road a boat across lake Victoria to where the nile river begins. It has a 400ft deep spring that mixes with the lake water to start the river. I never really thought about how rivers begin so it was really interesting. Some of the group went back to swim in a swimming pool at a hotel and the rest of us stayed out and swam in the lake. There are some areas of the lake with alligators, but luckily considering how huge lake Victoria is, there are plenty of swimmable areas as well. I wouldn’t have gone swimming if there was any chance of an alligator sighting.

We got back, ate dinner, and then went to African Paradise, which lived up to its name in rhythm and groove. Just kidding. It’s a small-town dance club that was a lot of fun. Auntie Peggy’s daughter Barbara came with us and we spent the night jumping around and laughing. We have one volunteer in particular who dances like no one I have ever seen. It’s pretty amazing and I’ll keep trying to learn moves from him to bring home. He’s able to move but somehow stay really stiff at the same time. When we walked in, they played this regae song about obama, and then continued to replay it about 8 times. The lyrics include “hero,hero, hero, obama is our hero. Hero, hero hero, an African warrior…”

Our group is already bonding a lot. It’s a pretty eclectic group of people but no one with a sand paper type personality. Everyone is leaning on people they knew before but also willing to have fun together and get to know other group members. It’s going to be fun. Melissa and I scheduled a lot of activities for this week and hopefully people can use them as a spring board for next week.

I was talking to our cook Mary last night for a while. She’s from southern sudan and saw a lot of fighting in the war before she left with her three children. She left her husband in Sudan to work and sees him about every three months. We were talking about Al Bashir and how evil he has become and I asked what she thinks needs to be done. She said simply, “he needs to be stopped.” I continued to ask if she thinks that there should be international help and she said yes. She’s just waiting for him to die or imprisoned so she can go home. It is so ironic that I went to a couple of darfur rallies, a convention, and read a book last year in DC but I will never really understand what the conflict has been to people on the ground.

Well, I have five minutes to get ready for the day. Happy mothers day to all you mothers that read!