happy july!

Well, it’s been a while. Sorry about the delay in writing I’ve had a crazy past couple of weeks. I know that’s surprising considering all that has happened in the past. Two weeks ago I was going to the hospital and waking up twice a night with one of our volunteers Jake who had Bill Harsy (sp?), a parasite that is found in lake Victoria. I was really worried about him because the parasite caused his heart to slow down and then he would pass out. To top it off, jake is the type of guy that whenever I ask how he is doing, he responds “good.” I’ve never studied someone as much as I had to study that kid. We also had a member of the HELP board come and visit for about 10 days so we were running around trying to coordinate that. Mindy was really fun to have (I’m not just saying that because I’m nervous about her reading this). We have had our fair share of visitors so far this summer. Anyway, while mindy was here and jake was starting to get better, mindy took Melissa and I out to dinner. We were enjoying the night and relaxing when I got a call from a random Ugandan number. It was will, and he said, “hey I did something impulsive, I’m in Kampala.” I had to sit down when he said that. He had two tickets on Tuesday, one to Pakistan if his visa went through and another to Uganda. When the visa didn’t go through, Will came to UGANDA to visit and left two days ago in time to catch another plane to Pakistan. It was so much fun to spend time with him as well and to show him a piece of life here. All of the volunteers were loving it as well. We ate some good traditional food, went to some projects, went four wheeling right by the nile through villages and sugarcane fields, went to a graduation party, church, played some chess, went on a hike through the rainforest, and on an all day outreach to a village and sadly then our time was up and he had to go back.

I want to talk a little bit about the outreach. We went to this village named barara, it’s a fishing village on the coast of lake Victoria for community teaching day with a partner organization called CCWA. We went and they took us out on a leaky boat, originally to catch fish for lunch, but as the water covered our feet and they discovered that we were going to probably end up swimming with the fish, we rowed back into the shore. We then had an opening ceremony with speeches and singing of both of our national anthems. they served us ‘breakfast’ at noon and then ‘lunch’ at 2pm, both were big portions of food, breakfast is porridge and corn-nut esk corn on the cob, lunch was fried fish, matoke (plantains), rice, cassava (tapioca root), and pineapple. We went to tour a neighboring school which was very simple, breezy, and cheaply built but the kids are adorable. On our way back to eat and listen to speeches, we caught word that there was a child suffering from malaria who was waiting for transport to the hospital. When we were sitting there, word spread that the two year old had died. We went to pay respects and walked to a mud hut where the mother was wailing inside. They wanted us to go inside and I was really conflicted on if that was what I should do culturally or if they were just saying that, I also wasn’t sure at the time what the child died from. I went in and sat down, since there was not much room, I was almost touching the child, the mother uncovered the dead childs face, we said a prayer, and I left to make way for everyone else. It was pretty surreal and also made me angry. This should not happen. Malaria is cureable and that child should not have died. We paid for the childs transport back to the place where they wanted to bury him and after a moment of silence we had to move on with the plan to teach the village.

Teaching was funny at this village because they were honest and asked some tough questions. During the HIV training: “what if my husband is positive and I’m not, but we want to have children?”

When she talked about nutrition and taking care of yourself including not drinking or smoking, when you do have HIV, a woman said, “But I love alcohol, it’s so sweet.”

During the business training about saving: “my husband takes the money I put aside for my child’s education and buys alcohol, what should I do?”

During the sanitation training it came up that they really need a latrine because everyone just goes in the lake, does washing, and drinks from the same source.

It was fun.

Anyway, it was another emotional rollercoaster day with the highs of the adorable school children dancing and singing about wanting a better life, and the low of another child dying from malaria. It was obvious that their reality has a much more harsh light than I can understand.

We are going to build them a pit latrine and help their school.