I'll start by answering the weather question: It's hot. Very, very hot. Thankfully, it is not humid, though, and when the clouds come in in the afternoon (which seems to be a regular occurrence though it does not rain every time) it cools down, but then the clouds come back and it's hot again. At night it gets very comfortable though, sometimes even chilly.
If anyone else has questions feel free to comment and I'll try to answer. Also, sorry this one's such a long post.
I wrote a post and have been waiting to send it so this ones from yesterday:
Our walk on Friday was really nice. We got some strange looks but then also some
very nice hellos, smiles, and waves. The
area we stayed in was really nice. I
wish I’d taken pictures of our hostel, it was beautiful. We had mosquito nets around our beds but the
way they were it made it feel like we were sleeping in princess beds, dream
come true.
I went to bed before Rebecca, one of the founders of 1000
Shillings who is staying with us for the month, got back from Mbale and before
Chanel, another fellow who I was sharing my room with, ‘s plane got in. I woke up around 3 am wondering what happened
to Chanel, and looked over and noticed she somehow snuck into the room. In the morning she asked if she woke me up
cuz apparently she was pretty noisy and kept turning on and off lights, but
somehow I was exhausted enough to sleep through it all.
Sadly we had to leave our beautiful guest house, which was owned
by 6 women, though we were all excited to get to our final destination.
The very kind driver, Joel, from the guest house drove us to
the airport. On the way we had to go
through a security check point and the security guard made all of us except for
Joel and Chanel, who was stuck in the back seat with all the luggage, get out
and go through a metal detector and then wait on the other side to get picked
up again. Anyway we picked up Jessica, another
fellow, and then Beka, who is Saleh, our host’s brother, came and picked us up
to drive us to Mbale. Supposedly it is a
4 hour drive without traffic, but considering that it took us 6 hours, with
some but not so much traffic, we don’t really believe that.
Despite it being such a long drive, during which I slept on
and off, it was a really great way to get to see Uganda. We obviously went by Lake Victoria along the
beginning of our trip. It’s apparently
the largest lake in the world, and goes through Uganda, Kenya and down into Tanzania It also apparently has the most types of fish
in one place. Rebecca told us it’s
dangerous to swim in for us, but great to go fishing in. She did once and saw hippos and zebras.
We began in Entebbe, and drove by the State House, and then
drove through Kampala, and we think the President drove by us there. Kampala is more of a big city with taller
buildings. I noticed along the way that
in bigger cities more women wear pants, and in smaller towns it is much less
common to see women in pants, though a few do seem to wear them.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this in my last blog or not, but
there are so many cool birds and flowers around. There’s also this huge bird (that Rebecca
says reminds her of a pterodactyl) that hangs out by garbage and apparently
stores food in its beak or can do like a squirrel and hide some in the ground
and come back and find it later.
We drove by tons of fields- corn, tea, sugar cane… and
through beautiful forests. We drove by Jinja, another city
that’s apparently cool to visit, and lots of small towns. All of the populated areas had speed bumps in
the road, though some were more like speed mountains and we practically stopped
on our way over them. There were also
people walking along the side almost everywhere we were, which was interesting
because sometimes there weren’t populated areas in site and I couldn’t figure
out where everyone was coming from.
There’s this interesting thing here where once it starts
getting dark it gets dark incredibly quickly.
There’s really no twilight. It
may also have been where we were but it seemed that there were more people out
walking once it got darker (it could also have been because it cools off in the
evenings). It's pretty impressive though, as there are no street lights and it is pitch black.
It also finally rained! Rebecca had told us during
orientation that it rains at 3 o’clock every day since it’s the rainy season,
but it didn’t rain at all in Entebbe despite looking threatening (Jack and Jani
said even when they were there before I came it hadn’t rained), but it rained
on our drive. It was funny since some
people were in huge winter jackets and others seemed totally unphased and just
kept doing their thing. It was also
funny to see along the way the taxis (which are more like sheruts in Israel,
like big vans that go from place to place but make a bunch of stops along the
way and these ones also pack people in), anyway these taxis would stop in some
places and we would drive by as tons of people went up to the windows selling
fruits and chicken on a stick to the passengers.
Bananas seem to be very big here. We’ve had at every breakfast and for many
snacks. They also call potatoes Irish,
which is funny yet easy to remember so I appreciate it.
Anyway, after all that travel we arrived in Mbale. After seeing Kampala I was wondering if we’d
have tall buildings as well, but it’s not at all like that. There’s actually a trade show going on right
now which we haven’t been to but it was the first thing we saw when we entered
the city limits and hopefully we’ll go soon.
I don’t think I mentioned but we’re not allowed out after dark for
safety reasons. It was hard to see Mbale
since it was night but we got to the guest house we’re staying in, another hard
one to see since it was night.
It turns out we’re sleeping 4 to a room. It’s kind of like a nicer youth hostel. The room we’re currently in has 3 bunk beds
and a comfy chair. We’re thinking of
rearranging a bit so that it looks a bit more homey, but there’s nowhere for us
to unpack so we’re just going to use two of the beds we’re not sleeping on as
shelves (like I did with my roommate Becky in Israel). There’s also only one plug which is interesting
considering we’re all going to be working on our laptops (Jessica and Chanel
are doing journalism and I’ll of course need it for my photos) and I’ll also
obviously need my camera charged.
Thankfully I brought an extension cord so that’s at least a bit helpful. The bathroom is shared by everyone, and there
are other people living here though we haven’t met them. We do have hot water (well sometimes) and our
own shower which is nice as well as a normal toilet.
There’s a really nice roof, though it’s pretty dark so they
bring up a light for us, though it’s still a bit shadowy, which is where we’ve
had dinner. I checked it out again this
morning and the view is amazing!
Apparently behind the mountains is Kenya, which is supposedly a 4 hour
walk away? We’re not sure if we should
believe that. We also noticed that on
top of the wall surrounding our building (and all the other buildings around
us) is broken glass, which we’re assuming is for security so no one will climb
over. While it's a great idea, it's pretty eerie.
After a nice dinner (though very late—Ugandans tend to move
on their own time, so they didn’t start on dinner until we got here, which also
made sense since we weren’t quite sure when we’d arrive, but then the cooking
process is pretty slow so we didn’t end up eating till like 10), we watched
Mean Girls to fall asleep. While I know
that doesn’t matter, the point of saying this is that’s when we learned about
the power. Turns out the power sometimes
is on and sometimes is off. Midway
through the movie our light went out and we realized that nothing was charging
anymore. It didn’t really matter and was
kind of good timing then, we have learned since that it can get annoying at
points. Anyway sometime during the night
it must have gone back on because we woke up with the light back on.
Today (Sunday) we slept in a bit and had a pretty simple
breakfast. They have some really good
tea here, but the peanut butter (which they do have) was full of ants so we
avoided that. Jessica’s shower turned
off on her and she had to wait about 5 minutes until it turned back on, and the
power went out again so she lost hot water.
The power was pretty much out most of the morning, but must have come
back at some point because by the time we were back from a full day out
everything was fully charged.
Rebecca took us on a walking tour of Mbale today. Because we already stand out so much we’re
only wearing skirts so as to try to fit in as much as possible (they have to be
below the knee too). She pointed out the
banks where we can find ATMs which are two blocks from our guest house. Oh, I think I forgot to mention that we’re
right near the center of the town, which is great. Most Westerners stay further up the road, in the Senior Quarter, but
I’m glad we’re closer into the city.
Unlike most places we’re used to, they tend to have all of the same type
of things sold in one area. Sorry if
that sentence is confusing, I’ll explain.
All of the fruits are sold in one area of the city, hardware in another,
etc. It’s kind of funny and doesn’t
necessarily seem the most logical, though I guess it’s nice for consumers who can
easily see who has the best of whatever product they’re looking for.
We found where the bodas park so we can take them (they’re
motorcycle taxi things) and the old market where some people still sell fruit, the taxi pickup place (for
the taxis that go far like I described earlier), and the bus stop (which is
right by the taxi place. The advantage
of buses is they don’t stop as many places as the taxis), Rebecca’s favorite
restaurants (there’s a large Indian population here, I forget why, so there are
some good Indian places), and there was also a really cute market that I’d love
to explore later. Rebecca also told us
that there’s one street where at night they cut open and sell these jack fruit,
which are huge fruits which taste sort of like Fruit Loops. Hopefully we’ll head out there some evening
soon to try.
Then we headed to a cute place for Ugandan lunch. We had chapati with beans which is basically
like a flatbread and a bowl of bean and we just sort of cut up pieces of the
bread and dipped them. Jack was a bit more adventurous and got matoke which
is mushed up banana type things (more starchy though, I’m not sure how to
describe them though I have had something that tastes similar before, also with
beans. Our meals were each 2800
shillings, which is about 50 cents.
We then took a boda ride! I’m glad we all did it together
cuz I would’ve been nervous otherwise.
We sat 2 on a boda with a driver and it’s not quite as scary or hard to
balance as I expected. We took them to
where the Westerners stay because we got a deal on the pool there so we spent
the afternoon by the pool since we were boiling. (6000 shillings each time, not
bad) At the pool we met Freddy, who
Rebecca has worked with before. He’s a
Ugandan who works at the radio station here, and he put us in touch with the
newspaper as well, so we’ll go meet them tomorrow and see if we can maybe work
with the media here. Who knows, I may
get a photo into the Mbale newspaper!
We also met Francisco and Ethan, two guys who are staying with Freddy. Ethan goes to Texas A&M and is here to teach English, and Francesco is Italian and is here working at a school that helps get kids off the streets.
We also met Francisco and Ethan, two guys who are staying with Freddy. Ethan goes to Texas A&M and is here to teach English, and Francesco is Italian and is here working at a school that helps get kids off the streets.
Francesco was saying that we shouldn't get our hopes up about saving Africa, but to be honest I never though I was saving a whole country. I'll be happy enough if I change even ONE of the ladies' lives or even teach one non-Ugandan about Uganda.
Jessica also met a Ugandan guy who was there for the Uganda bombing at
the World Cup. He answered a lot of the
questions she had as she was reading the paper, including telling about how
public universities aren’t so common here (it’s kind of cool though, the
newspaper lists who was accepted to what university and for what specialty). We also learned that there’s a Big Brother
Africa (as in the TV show, only this is for the whole continent) and that I
think two of the housemates are from Uganda.
On a different note, the money here is really
interesting. The bills start at 1000 shillings,
and the more the bill is worth, the bigger it is. The smaller bills also seem to be older and
more worn. They also have coins, I
believe just 100, 200, and 500 but I could be mistaken.
Oh I forgot to say it really does rain here every day. While we were at the pool it got pretty
cloudy and cooler (not cold but no longer hot) and suddenly rained for a bit
and then just as quickly the sun came back out and it was hot again. Then later in the night it poured a few times
and apparently the trade show ended up flooded with a foot of water.
We walked back to our guest house, which turned out not to
be as far as well all expected and they gave us Ugandan foods for dinner. We had pocho, a mix of flour and water which
you eat with other sauces, which none of us really liked. Rebecca said it’s good for when you don’t
have utensils since you can use it to scoop up other foods, but for our
purposes we’ve decided not to have them make it for us again. We also had greens, peanut paste with some greens. Earlier in the day James, one of the guys who
works here, had shown us the greens for us to see what he’d be using, and told
us if you cooked it with the salt that is native to here (which apparently
turns black in boiled water) the greens look green, and if not they look
brownish. We also had matoke, the banana
like things, and beans. The beans here
are amazing. We all agreed we wouldn’t
mind having them pretty often (plus it’s good for me because then there’s no
meat). It was cool being introduced to
so many Ugandan foods.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned yet, but there’s this dog in the house next door to ours that comes to the window and all we can see is it’s snout and it just stands with its mouth in the open window and barks incredibly loudly and it echoes and the sound comes straight into our room. How fun.
Views from our roof (though obviously not at night. Maybe I'll take some of those later.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned yet, but there’s this dog in the house next door to ours that comes to the window and all we can see is it’s snout and it just stands with its mouth in the open window and barks incredibly loudly and it echoes and the sound comes straight into our room. How fun.
The power went out again in the evening but this time much
earlier, leaving it pitch black so we set up a flashlight as our light in the
room. We’re still working on getting
wifi, though with the number of times the power goes out, even if we have wifi
it will be quite spotty. Thankfully
there are internet cafes around, but since we’re not allowed out after dark
it’s only so helpful.
When the power was finally back Jessica and I helped Rebecca
cut string for making some of the necklaces.
She has lots of supplies for necklaces, ornaments, bracelets, bow
ties. It looks like it’s going to be a
lot of fun working with the ladies to make the products.
Alright now for today:
We got our job descriptions this morning, so I now know more about what we'll be doing here. In addition to photographing the ladies and specific aspects of their lives, we need to turn in a bunch of other photo essays about other parts of Uganda. I'll have to decide what I want to do.
We met with the head of the Daily Monitor, whose English name is David but prefers Mafabi. I believe it's the biggest and most honest newspaper in Uganda. It actually was recently shut down for 11 days for publishing a controversial letter that the government said was a security risk.
They are now back up and running and told us they'd be happy to have us submit articles and photos. For this week they actually want a piece about who we are and what we do. They also asked about getting our profiles of the ladies, so we'll have to check if any of the ladies are comfortable with that. It was awesome meeting him and having him so excited to have us work with them. It was also interesting learning how meetings go. Instead of how I'm used to just jumping into business, we started just chatting about everything. It's a much slower pace.
We then headed to the internet cafe to check emails and they have great smoothies there. There wasn't enough room so we ended up sitting at a table with a British woman who told us about what she's doing but it sounded like she was trying to sell us the jewelry that the ladies she works with make. Sorry ma'am we're good to go.
Then we walked out to the trade show, which was a fairly long walk (though not bad) and we stopped by the market on the way and saw where Namatala is. The trade show was a pretty typical thing, with stands with clothes, food, music. There were a bunch of Kenyans there also to sell things. There were two rides, one of which was the swings, my favorite, though it looked a bit sketchy so they forbade me from riding (though to be honest it made even me nervous so I wouldn't have anyway). Everyone has been really friendly, smiling and waving. They all say "Hello, How are YOU?" (emphasis on you) and "I'm Fine".
We realized on the way home that a lot of what we weren't understanding was people asking us to take their pictures. While at first we were nervous and didn't want to bother everyone, we realized most people like having their pictures taken and looking at them (particularly the men). They find it quite fun and it attracts a lot of people. Looks like we'll become popular walking around with cameras. No need to worry anymore.
Chanel with the guys
Another weird thing I just want to mention is trash. It's not something you notice at home, but here littering isn't an issue, everyone does it (we are uncomfortable and don't). Anyway they just gather all their trash and burn it, so there is often an unpleasant smell from that.
Another interesting fact is that they don't really have workers for everything. For example, to set up the internet or fix the water the guys who own this place do it, they're not plumbers or electricians they just have to do it. Apparently in Kampala they do have plumbers and all that, as we learned from the guy at the pool who was telling us how Kampala has so many different types of jobs and how odd that is, and we had no idea what he meant.
Anyway I think that'll be all for now. Tomorrow we head into the Namatala slum to meet the ladies we'll be working with!
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