Our June here was spent in our little village of kisweera. We arrived back from Kampala (the football game in the previous blog) to lawrence coming up to us with 4 mangoes (he is a life saver at break times!) Its been a month of bore hole trips (i think ive permanantly bruised my bum bones from the rock hard bike seat) ive been lucky a couple of times where someone takes pity on me and pumps the water for me (the best) and usually its a pretty swift journey except once when mikey took our bike for a cruise around the bush and didnt come back untill dark he got a mouthful from sara! During mid June our bike broke sadly so it meant i could only take one jerry can instead of two and had to carry the one on my head. The trip is alot longer when your walking it with a heavy gerry can on your head instead of cycling it! My neck felt like jelly when i took it off!
There has been some news in the buganda region as at school I realized that all the kids were wearing bracelets and necklaces made out of banana fibres. At first i thought it was just some strange village fashion craze but after i asked Fred what it was all about he told me that it was actually because there was apparently a disease which started in Mubende (a town close to us) where the victim would get an itchy bit of skin, they would itch it and then a number would appear on their skin, that number determined how many days they had left to live..... but guys dont worry the witch doctors were on it and provided a prevention of wearing the banana fibre jewlerry to stop you catching the disease!
Some other small news is that suddenly the tree right outside our house is growing the tastiest gooseberry type things!! they are sooo good and the kids allways hit them down for us! its been a good break time snack for sure.
Our fellow baby class teacher Edith also finnally gave birth! She had a little girl called Rita. She came to the school and we ran up to her, unfortunatly she was breast feeding Rita at that certain time so we saw more boob than baby but it was good to see her again! Annette another baby class teacher is also now pregnant she will give birth after weve left sadly.
This month we also decided to initatie school house groups. We knew it would be quite a challenge but we were eager to get it started as especially no other volunteers are coming after us to do it. We decided to chose planets (the kids really dont have much knowledge about the solar system!) We have venus, jupiter and mercurcy. It took a hell of alot of organising but we managed to split all kids into each house and made posters for each classroom and the office ( so the teachers knew as well) We also created a point system for the houses. Although its a long shot were hoping to try and use the point system instead of beating. The point system so far looks like this
All awards are 5 points which include :
Doing Home work well
doing errands eg helping cook, fetching water
Answering questions in class
Getting full/god marks in tests
Good behaviour in class
Doing well in activities eg Debate
Deduct points
Fighting 5 points
Not doing home work 4 points
Speaking luganda 3 points
Arriving late 2 points
Loosing books/pens 1 point
So far its working really well, the kids are really getting into it and are kean to gain points. We even painted the water tank with the different house groups on them so they could visually see which house they were in. At the end of the month we will give out prizes to the house that wins. Although it would be better if other volunteers were coming to carry it on, we have faith in fred to carry it on! He is very good at keeping the point charts updated so fingers crossed it will be a success!
Some other small news, we decided to buy some milk from the guy that comes every morning with a jerry can on his bike full of milk. We thought if vivian buys it for tonny (her child) surely its not too bad! It was ridiculously cheap like 100 shillings for a humungous cup. Unfortunatly it curdled very quickly and we didnt actually know quite what to do with it so im not sure well be doing that again...
Ive also spent some days here helping Deo with errands such as going deep into the banana plantations to get food for the pigs. We were walking and my legs and feet were literally crawling with ants! I also helped cut up concrete and flour bags to cover childrens homework books. By the end of it my hands were all dusty from it! it made me think to when i was in primary and wanted the nicest wrapping paper for my books, when the kids here are delighted when you hand them back a book covered in an old flour bag...
Ashlav, a boda driver were friends with also popped out of nowhere at our house. It was good to see him after not seeing him for so long. He has got himself another job in Mubende working with the local council. He is very pleased and we were so happy for him! As i remember the boda rides he would speak about how he was literally at a dead end and didnt quite know what to do. He didnt want to be a boda driver for the rest of his life but didnt know how to get another job. But now he has one and its such good news!
He also told us all about this club in Mityana called audio discoteque. He told us it was amazing, his reasonig was because when you drop your class it doesnt break because of carpet! Well take your word for it ashlav.
We also went over to the mzungu family we know in Mityana for the weekend. That weekend they were having a big cook out (bbq) so we met all the white people that live in mityana. We did not realize just how many they were! It was so interesting to hear why they were here and just chat with them about it all. We also had an amazing food which included burgers with cheese on top! We met people from canada, australia, tazmania and other places we however were the only scots! Chatting to them all we also found out some interesting things such as Lake Wamala that we live close to was thought to have been formed when a woman gave birth the after birth formed the lake.. so we live beside an afterbirth lake! We also learnt more about the witch doctors here, its all kept quite underaps from us so we dont know too much about it but we found out that people go to them with sacrafices like chickens (or even children, the mentioned child sacrafice in exams here which i got pretty confused about!) apparently albino children are more valuable. Also When someone has twins they sacrafice something to the witch doctor so that one of the twins wont turn into a snake. Also alot of children have their ears pierced here as children with their ears pierced are seen as less valuable to the witch doctors. We also see alot of toddelers/babies with a string of beads around their waste. Weve asked before and we dont tend to get a straight answer, but we found out that it is infact to ward of evil spirits.
At that bbq we learnt alot of interesting things about the culture that usually doesnt get told to white people, but it did make sense and made things alot more clearer!
During our weekend at their house we learn alot of american dishes and traditions while also telling them about the scottish foods such as haggis (we decided against telling them what was in it)
Back to village news humungous colourful catterpillers were dropping from the tree outside our long drop, they are poisinous so had to make a detour to the toilet, the inconveninces!
This month was also our last time at the health centre. It was a very busy day and we even saw brian getting his medication ( he has a problem in his stomach, deo said it was stones? but anyway i found out that he is actually 14 although he only looks about 8!) After a busy day at the health centre it was time to say goodbye to the staff there. We gave mercyline and phiona a big hug and thanked them for welcoming us in to their health centre! Slowly easing our way into goodbyes..
June has also been the month of mid term exams. I helped teachers mark their exams and again i came across some funny ones like "my father gave birth to kittens" and Q"state something that pupils do in class that would annoy god/allah" A"Killing" and Q"how is death useful for a good christian" the answer was supposed to be as they get to go to heaven but they answered "it fertilizes soil" fair enough!
The school also got struck by the flu, every single one of us were ill, when it got to Jess and I they were all like nooo your going to die! someone has bewitched you! they can be drama queens sometimes i tell you!
It was also our friend ediths birthday this month. She wanted to get some new clothes we took her into mityana to shop! She got a dress, clip on earings and a handkercheif. We also treated her to a lunch at our favourite place to eat in mityana. It was a nice day as she seemed to really enjoy it!
At the end of the month we ended up being skint as the bank in mityana didnt have any money as literally the bank manager told us "we forgot we had to pay our staffs salaries so we had to use the money in the bank for that"..... so we have been living off plain rice for a good week, luckily though our neighbours came to our rescue! I think a pig died or something as suddenly there was meat everywhere! Even at school there was meat for lunch!! It was such a novelty! Then one evening maria came round with matoke and meat for us, literally saved us out of starvation. Then Edith came round with rice, meat, and home made passion juice that alice had made for us! I love the people here they are so generous! The kids also saved us during the days with mangoes, avacados etc. But thankfully know were out of those days as the banks are now back on track!
Weve also been getting to know the people that own the supermarket in Mityana. Their originally from India and come here to work. It was quite sad talking to her though (palel) as her kids are in India so she misses them but she likes it here as she is allowed to work here unlike in India so the days go quicker unlike when shes in India when she just stays in the kitchen. It was pretty sad to hear her talking like she was just wishing her life away. They go back to india sometime soon for a bit then will come back to uganda again.
So that has been June here! Just little bits and pieces have been happening. When we go to places like Kampala we realize just how laid back, slow paced village life can be. We tend to get pretty stressed out in the cities and like to come back to rewind in the village although crazy weird things happen its all at a nice slow pace!
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