Updates on my 9-5 life in Mbale

Here is what has gone down from 9-5 this past week:

These pictures for some reason are being stubborn, but should go down with the Babies Home update under #3.

Amulamu and I and then Paul and I - the ones who should be twins! By looks and personality! I was constantly chasing these two around and just happened to hold them down for the two above photos and I absolutely love them. Amulamu sticking his tongue out (typical) and Paul smiling and laughing trying to get away (also typical).

Anthony is seriously the CUTEST! I will miss this kid! He was the perfect mix of fun and rebellion - he went a little crazy sometimes but always obeyed me and just has the cutest smirk!

Jen and I with our cute little students

1. Craft update: Rem, Jen, Linds, and I went to learn the art of basketweaving on Sunday so it was indeed not a day of rest to our dismay. We learned how incredibly time intensive basketweaving is... but we also learned that it is not that complicated. You just take the dried banana fibers and loop hay around them ... 3 loops, 1 stitch with the needle, 3 loops, 1 stitch, 3 loops.... you get my drift. The hardest part is that you run out of hay so quickly and the hay gets SO tangled and messed up and breaks a lot and.. lets just say then I am not a happy camper. In fact, after we learned the technique we continued to work on our baskets at home during the week and one day I got frustrated and said "this is the worst hay ever" and everyone around just started laughing at the fact that I am frustrated about hay! Who even ever talks about hay? Only in Uganda!

Anywho, the determination to finish got Rem, Linds, and I through, but Jen decided it was not for her and stopped at an earring. We liked that because now we can show our teacher, Mama Miriem (the Mother of Miriem - she has a daughter named Miriem), how cool we are in that we made an earring instead with her wisdom. The creativity is flowing! We were supposed to meet with Mama Miriem to learn how to curve the basket (we just worked on the base) on Thursday but we failed to give a reminder call so she forgot :( so now we have to finish tomorrow, Sunday, again. Since this craft is so time intensive we also set up an appointment to learn how to make paper jewelry at CURE hospital. They make it there and when they sell it it goes towards curing all the babies with hydrocephalis (enlarged heads). In fact, we are thinking about helping the workers at CURE set up an Etsy account so that even those in America can purchase this jewelry. It is REALLY fun and cute! Here is a pic:

It doesn't look like paper huh? I was shocked when I saw it - definitely not what I was picturing. They look like shells to me! Anyway, it is a lot easier to make and can be done cheaply. If any of you are interested in buying a necklace/bracelet/earrings to go towards the babies with hydrocephalis let me know and we can work it out. You will be saving children! We will also be working with the unskilled women in the villages to teach them this skill so they can sell them for profit.

2. Sanitation outreach: Whitney used to be the project lead for Sanitation, but she left after the first wave so the baton was handed to me! I am now project lead for this and Rem is my sidesick - it is fun! Side note: This trip is divided into 3 waves, 6 weeks each. Each wave some volunteers leave and some new ones come - we just lost 2 and gained 11 so lets just say it is a full house now! I moved up to the Sebo (sir or man) shack with Jen - this used to be inhabited by all the boys but with the new volunteers coming we got kicked out. This house is more ghetto but all our beds are pushed together so it like a huge slumbie (girls in one room, boys in other rooms - no worries). Side note finished. On Tuesday we finished the Sanitation outreach with Impact and taught P5-P7. They enjoyed it! They understand us better than the youngest ones so they didn't answer every question we asked with "soap" like the young ones hahaha. I decided the kids needed some more visual aids so we made handwashing posters with pictures for all the classrooms and will continue to do this at the rest of the schools we do outreach with. They loved them! Sadly we evaluated the tippy taps and they weren't in the best condition - kids stole the soap so they could use it with their family (this breaks my heart) and the cans are pretty much empty every time we go. They did invest in thicker rope for the pedal so the kids don't ruin it which does mean they care. We talked with them about the soap dilemma and they said they would switch over to powdered soap to mix in with the water in the can. It seems to be the only plausible alternative, even though it is still not the best. We will most likely be implementing this at all future schools too. We are going to be doing the outreach at two more schools this next week - should be fun!

3. Goodbye Babies Home: so we were working with the orphanage at Sister Mary's in the preschool like I have talked about, but sadly we are about to make our exit. We felt we were needed in the beginning to help set up structure for the children and facilitate the hiring process for the new teachers. We succeeded in pushing Sister Mary along to hire new teachers sooner rather than later and after working with them to help set up their classroom and help with the discipline we feel it is time to let them take over. They will be great teachers and this past week we made a surprise visit to the preschool and the kids were doing so well! We are happy with the work we did there, but sad to leave the kids even if they are crazy. We are probably going to start volunteering with the babies at the Home now though b/c they hardly ever get any loving and social stimulation is very important for babies. I love babies so this is awesome for me!

Other projects in the works: we visited a school that our Branch President George works at (yes, Mbale just became a branch! I thought it was a branch before but I was wrong - we just barely grew enough in size to be a branch as of a couple weeks ago! Soooo cool) and the children there are required to bring food from home for lunch. Sadly, many of them have no food at home so they go hungry during the day. I think it would be good to possibly teach about agricultural and plant them a square foot garden. Also, a few of us went on an outreach to visit with some families in different communities with children with disabilities. They all had cerebral palsy and learning about their stories broke my heart. Disability is feared here and the people treat those with disabilities as outcasts. The father always leaves and people in the community blame the mother and the child for the disability. Mothers lose their jobs and since the children are feared so much they basically become vegetables and sit around all day everyday. Schools will not take them in and they receive no education whatsoever. It is disheartening and we are hoping to set up some workshops with the families and the communities to battle this stigmatization. Stay tuned!

Photoshoot

Here is a fun photoshoot I had with some kids at Impact. They kept saying "mzungu, mzungu!" and so I went over and had some fun with them...

Smiling

GangstaBlowing a kiss

Making me laugh

Fishy face

Sticking tongue outAngry - hideous!I asked what they wanted to do this time - strike a pose!

Love these kids!

Sipi Falls and Futbol Game

For the weekends here in Uganda, we often get away and do fun things to take advantage of the fact we are here in Africa. A couple weekends ago we hiked up Sipi Falls and it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL! Some of the prettiest lush greenery I have ever seen and the waterfalls were breathtaking too. The hike was harder than we anticipated and it started raining a lot so it got WAY muddy. My supposed amazing keens were not so amazing and I was slipping EVERYWHERE! I biffed it a few times and that's when these 10 year old fierce Ugandan boys started holding my hand and helping me up and down the mountain. They are so incredibly tough, I couldn't believe it! I would have biffed it 100 more times if it weren't for them haha. We also saw a cool cave with bats and scaled some rocks at the base of the waterfall. It was intense and we were all covered in mud completely by the end of the day! It was a lot of fun!! My camera died so here are just two pics:
Aubrey, Remmik, and I in front of one of the falls. Love these girls!!

In front of one of the smaller caves. Some of us volunteers, as well as Janet who is a board member for HELP.

The next weekend The Twisted Sisters (the four of us that got braids) went with Suz and the boys to a futbol game in Kampala. It was seriously INSANE. We drove up with some people who won VIP tickets through MTN to see the game (which was supposed to be us btw - it was a mess getting our tickets to say the least - lots of broken promises and heated words). Even though we didn't get the VIP tickets we still got a bunch of the food that they were handing out to all of them so that was awesome. It took about 3 hours to get to Kampala and the WHOLE way these men were blowing on these obnoxious horns and chanting "We go, we go, Uganda Cranes we go!" while us twisted sisters just wanted to sleep. :( I understand team spirit and getting into games, but can't we just contain it to DURING the game?!? It was crazy. The game itself was pretty tight although I nearly got trampled by a stampede trying to get into the gates. It was seriously a free for all, fight to your death to get in those gates. You'd think you were getting into the world cup for a million dollars by the way these people were fighting to get in!! But nope, it was a 7 dollar game and just a game! NUTS! I almost lost my arm, but don't worry, it's still here with us. The Cranes won the game 2-0 which was AWESOME and I have never seen so much spirit during a game! It was seriously so fun - the guy sitting next to me was drunk off of booze and he picked me up like a baby when they scored the second time! YIKES! Too bad I didn't get a photo. And you are probably wondering if during the 3 hours back home everyone blew in their horns and chanted because of the victory? The answer to that would have to be a yes. I'm pretty sure I heard horns in my sleep that night...... ask me if I'm happy about it. Here are some pics:
The Twisted Sisters with Mike, a previous player of the Uganda Cranes. Whit (the one next to him on the right, one of our country directors) has a secret crush on him! Ok I guess it's not secret since I know!
The Stadium! Huge and so much red, yellow, and black!!
Me, Rem, and Jen. Excited for the game to start!
The drunk dude next to me gave me this horn. Fun fun.
After the first goal. We love the Uganda Cranes! So much spirit!
On our way home - triggers to our heads because of the stupid horns haha

Here's to fun weekends in Uganda! The best part: Whitney and Paul were featured in the newspaper after the game!! :)

Projects 101 cont.

Alright peeps. Here's some more project talk:

3. Sanitation Outreach. This project included building tippy taps at both St. Kizito's Babies Home and Impact Ministries (with a trial run in our yard first) and then doing a sanitation lesson for 4 of the classes at Impact. We covered what germs are, why they are bad, showed them some hands on demos of how germs spread (covered tomatoes in flour and then passed them around - flour gets all over everyone's hands), and then discussed the steps to handwashing and then when you should wash your hands. I covered the when part with Jen and it went well. We taught Primary 1 - Primary 4 this past week and will be teaching P5-7 this next week. The kids loved it, but the younger ones didn't respond as much or get as into it, but it was cute taking them out to the tippy tap and helping them wash their hands. The kids at Impact just LOVE visitors, and they always sing these chants when we arrive and I love it! It is a lot of fun. They always say "Visitors, you are most welcome" along with pretty much everyone else here too. We hear that on a regular basis. Here are some pics:
Trial run of building the tippy tap in our yard. David our guard, Whit, and I. David was the branch splitter and Whit and I were the pro branch finders.
Building 2 of the tippy taps at Impact. The locals were involved a lot so that was good! They were a lot better at digging the holes than we were that's for sure. The kids learning how to use the first 2 tippy taps we built. There were SO many of them and they kept leaving class to watch us build them haha.
Tying off the twine to bind the branches together. Hard work!

Jen and I posing in front! All the hacking at the wood and tying off the twine produces the lovely tippy tap - a can hanging on a cross bar that is tied to two branches that are planted into the ground. Then you cut a hole in the can and then tie twine around the bottle of the can and to a smaller stick near the ground. That is the stick you step on and when you step on it the water comes running out! We tied soap onto the cross bar as well and voila! You have a handwashing station!
The kids in P4 showing off their clean hands to us after we showed them how to use the tippy tap! We gave them a handwashing certificate to put on their wall. :)
Teaching the kids in P1 how to wash their hands - wet hands, use soap, scrub, wet hands again, and air dry!

4. Using crafts as an Income Generator. We have just done research for this project so far, but tomorrow is the big day that we learn how to make the crafts! The thought behind this project is that many women in the slums around here are unskilled and have no way of making any income. From what we have heard, some sell alcohol for a living and then there is a problem of alcoholism and abuse. To tackle this, we thought we would learn how to make crafts and then teach these women in different villages the crafts and teach them how to sell them so that they can get on their feet. We figure this is a good skill to have not only so they can make money, but also so they can make these useful things for themselves. We are going to some basketweaving techniques so that we can make baskets, tablemats, and change purses. We will possibly learn some beadwork as well. I am so excited because I love crafty things!! Stay tuned for what happens with this one.

5. Another project in the works is Science Teacher training. We are planning a few big seminars for teachers in the district and municipality here in Mbale. We are coming up with practical experiments to show the teachers so that they can implement them in their schools and keep kids interested in science. With the rote learning that often happens here, kids become disinterested in science and often don't seek out science related careers. We are hoping with this things will change. In August, some of the volunteers will run a science fair with different Primary classes as a competition so that the kids have a chance to create their own experiments as classes. I am excited for this one too, it should be good! Stay tuned!

K, that's pretty much everything that is up and running at this point. I will keep everyone updated! Love you all and thanks for the support!

Projects 101

Hey everyone! Things are getting pretty busy here in Uganda, but here are two of the projects that have been going on as of late:

1. We painted the classrooms at Impact Ministries. They were bare and dirty walls to start with and here are some of the finished products! It was fun and took a couple days to do.



2. Implementing classroom management at a preschool at St. Kizito's Babies Home. This is an orphanage and we are helping run the preschool on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9-12 am. The kids are absolutely nuts - one minute they are laughing, the next they are crying and often it is because they are hitting one another, stealing each other's clothes, sick, or getting toys stolen away from them. They pee everywhere and run absolutely wild unless we sing Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. For some reason, they stare at us in awe when we sing. Things aren't only crazy though, slowly but surely they are getting better and we are getting more of a structure going and now it's only chaos sometimes. I love them! Here are some pictures:

Me and Paul. This kid is seriously crazy, one of the ones I always have to chase around, as well as his nearly exact lookalike friend Amulamu!

On Martyr's Day, June 3, we didn't have preschool, but instead went to this catholic church for prayers - we rode there in this truck. It was an interesting cultural experience to say the least!

Andrew, the head teacher trying to herd them in! This man goes off on the craziest tangents I have ever heard - we think that he should be a philosophy teacher instead. We love him and he loves the kids, but it has been a challenge to work with him!

This is a testimony that things are getting better - they are actually sitting in their seats!

We taught them how to form a line by getting them to do a choo-choo train! They actually are getting the hang of it!

I don't have enough time to finish up, but stay tuned for more about projects in a few days! Life is hard and totageya (crazy) here at times, but I love it!