Sipi Falls

So Saturdays and Sundays are our days off. So we decided it would be grand to hike up to Sipi Falls! It was about an hour away. The owner of Chat n Chinos (our favorite American cafe) offered to drive us up there. I thought Uganda was beautiful before.... but WOW it was breathtaking! It was incredibly green, and we got soaking wet. Totally worth it.

St. Stephens School

Guess where I went yesterday?  Paradise  village.  Okay, so that's not the actual name of the village but with how green and luscious the area was, it might as well have been named Paradise village. We met with a man named Sale.  He's essentially Ugandan Don Cheadle.  He has a big kind smile and he raises his eyebrows a lot when he smiles which somehow makes you trust him and love him more.  He has a really big heart, and can't turn students away even when they cannot afford school and because of this his school is financially struggling. He's the principal of the school and is a really good man.  Tuition is SUPER cheap for the students and if they can't afford to pay in cash each semester, he allows them to pay during the semester--even if they have to pay in wood or chickens.  He just really values education and does whatever he can to help people obtain it.  I love that. We visited a couple of the classrooms and the children are sooo lovely.  They're happy and kind and so eager to learn.  It's beautiful.  After we toured the school and met the kids we took a walk to where we'd stay if we came up there to help him for a few days.  These are pictures of our walk to our sleeping quarters.  It was insanely beautiful.  So green.

Sala is the one in the suit in the middle. What a classy, great guy. 

We were waiting for Sale to talk to his aunt (her house was on the walk from our sleeping quarters back to the school) and I saw these cute little kids across the way.  So I went to pay them a visit.  Maybe I'm just a softy but their smiles melt my heart every time. We played hopscotch with them and they thought it was the funniest thing ever. 

Here's the rest of the fam.  Grandma and grandkids...I imagine.  They're such beautiful people.

I just try to give you a glimpse of the extraordinary people that I casually pass on my walking paths throughout my day.  These are common occurences.  Different people, but always extraordinary.

Sale wants us teaching math, physics, french, and leadership classes.  Ryan is a chemical engineer so he'll be teaching the math and physics classes.  Holly lived in France for 9 months so she'll be teaching french...though I'll possibly be able to help or take turns with her.  And I'm sooo excited about the leadership classes.  This is the village where they have a problem with girls getting pregnant at 12, 13 or 14 years old.  Sale said he thinks it's a matter of self-esteem. They don't actually believe that they can finish their education and do something.  So they marry someone for status and to be taken care of (at a sublimely young age).  He introduced us to the girls telling them that we graduated from college, what we studied and he introduced us as "professionals".  He said, "I don't want you kids to ever say, "I went to school for a brief time."  I want you to say, "I finished school and this is what I studied"."  I'm really excited to work with these girls and help them see value in themselves and realize their ability to finish their education and take care of themselves.

Sale said, "Do you know what "first things first" means?" He was addressing a class of about 12-14 year olds at this time.  He said, "It means that education comes first and sex comes after.  If you're not doing those things in that order then you're doing the last thing first.  It's not right. "  He told us later that in a school of 400 children that are 20 and younger, he believes about 70% of them are sexually active.  So...we'll definitely be teaching some sex ed classes because they don't know anything about it and therefore are having extremely young pregnancies that drop out of school.  I feel like we can really help out here and I'm so excited about it.

Picture Update

Busy Busy Busy!

We have been super busy setting up projects this last week! We have some really exciting things we are working on. The biggest one that I am involved in is the Ministry of Education Project. We had a big meeting with the District of Education this week to set it up. It was really well.  I'm so excited about this project.  We're working with this school district of...wait for it...104 schools!  Not just a handful.  The teachers in this area really struggle with curriculum and teaching skills.  It's rote memorization, no student participation, etc.  So we're going to evaluate lectures at a bunch of schools in the next two weeks and then we're going to hold 5 big teacher trainings--1 in each area of the school district so that the teachers don't have to travel as far.  The school district is HUGE.  7 schools from the district are on top of that mountain.  So going to five different locations and having the nearby schools each send 5 teachers for us to trains how to more effectively teach as well as expand programs like art, music, drama, math, etc. 

We met with a bunch of principals from the schools and they were very enthusiastic about the project.  We're so excited about developing this curriculum and training because there are a lot of places that have requested this type of help from us.  So once we help with this huge district we'll be able to implement it in small villages and stuff.  Bingo! 

The meeting itself was...kind chaotic.  We were all sitting around this big rectangular table and I really felt like I was sitting in on a parliament session or something.  Everyone was talking at once, talking louder is the only way to make yourself heard, the woman in charge would frequently call everyone to order, when people wanted to speak to the group they'd get her attention and say, "Madame". haha Somehow, through all of the chaos, it worked.  Everything that we wanted to discuss and get hammered out, worked.  It was different than I was used to initially, but it worked like a charm.  I'm stoked to get this project underway.

Other projects:  We're SOO excited to go back to Child of Hope--the school in the Namatala slum.  The leaders of that organization are kind, trustworthy, genuinely good people.  I'm excited to go back to the slum and work on the water sanitation projects and women's group projects that we currently have in the works. This place has a lot of needs and we are excited about working with them. 

We also have a team going out to a village that was worked with last year.  Last year, the team helped build a school and since we've been gone (anyone else just sing that kelly clarkson song in their head?  No?  Just me?) they've added on to the school!  Only problem being that they don't have a roof for it.  So we're going to build a roof for them and see what else we can do to help them out. 

A pair of volunteers met with someone who has a soccer league here.  Last year the team helped advertise and work with this soccer league as an extracurricular activity for the kids.  Apparently some of the kids have even made it to the national team after playing in this league.  Cool eh?  They have things they'd like us to do and we have some volunteers in on that.

The village we went to on Thursday has a lot of potential project opportunities.  We have two medical peeps on the team that are going to be getting some clinical hours in at their clinic there.  And we have another volunteer that is going to be preparing leadership training classes for the high school students at that school.  Might good stuff.

Today (in about 10 minutes) I am leaving to another meeting with a village school. This is a little village in the mountains. I was lucky to get in on this, I just happened to be here with Mallory when Holly came back from meeting with him and we asked if we could be in on it. It sounds like an awesome opportunity. Essentially there are problems in this village with girls getting pregnant while they're really young and, therefore, is an abundance of AIDS...stuff like that. Girls get married young (12, 13, 14) because they think that is the only way to be provided for, but really if they stayed in school they could provide for themselves. So a project proposal is to teach classes teaching the girls about empowerment/self-esteem/and abstinence...or at least waiting past the age of 12 to get involved in that stuff.  

There's plenty to do here and plenty of need.  I think the trick is choosing what is a priority and trusting who you work with.  We've mostly worked with really wonderful people who want to partner with us for the improvement of fellow Ugandans. Let's do this!

A visit to the Namatala Slum

Monday we visited with one of our partners called Child of Hope in the Namatala Slums. You can only imagine what a "Slum" of a third world country is like. There is a school there that Help worked with last year called "Child of Hope." This school works with the local governments to find the poorest and most needy families to go. Child of Hope is an awesome organization that is based out of the UK that runs the school here. They are doing what they can, but the need in Namatala is obviously overwhelming. The average family size is 7, and they pick one child to go to school. They feed the child at school ( probably the only meal the child will get all day.) There are about 20,000 people living in these slums. It was an incredible experience to walk around this community. Very hard to describe. I asked a volunteer Ryan (extensive world traveler) if he had ever seen poorer people. He said no, because you can't survive on much less. I saw a family of 10 who lived in a hut smaller than the size of my room at home. The children had most likely never seen a white person before, so they would run out of the village yelling "Muzungu, Muzungu!" They were SO excited to see us. Most of the time we had 30 or more children following us. They wanted to hug us, and touch us, and they LOVED when we took pictures of them. They would want to see them as soon as we took them. They were facinated by the cameras, they had never seen them before. They would curtsey as they shook our hands, which our guide said was a sign of respect. I still don't understand where such love and admiration came from. We started curtseying to them. I didn't see a child with shoes on all day, and it was rare to see more than one piece of clothing on a child (underwear or shirt or pants). They were so beautiful and their eyes just melted your heart. When we came home from visiting the slums, there was almost a reverence that came over the volunteers. That experience did something to us. It was difficult to eat our dinner that night, knowing it was much more than those children would eat in a day. I said something like "If I ever complain about anything...ever.. please smack me. I have no right to complain about anything in my life." Coming back to our house was difficult to, knowing that our house by their standards would house 40 or so. I am excited to have the opportunity to work there.  There are a lot of projects that we can do we just need to develop them.  There are plenty of problems that have project possibilities:  water sanitation, prostitution, child abuse, abandonment by the fathers, etc.  I don't think there's one member of our team that doesn't want to return to Namatala and work to improve the conditions there.  The experience yesterday did something to all of us.  We sat in a circle at dinner last night pondering what we'd seen and feeling a reverence for these people. They are remarkable people and they deserve any help we can give.

Church in Mbale

Went to Church in Mbale today! It was incredible. I loved it. We took Bodas (motorcycles) into town. That was an experience. Ha. There are two of you that hop on the back of this motorcycle ( no helmets or buckles of any kind mind you) and also it is impolite to hold onto your driver. So I just held onto Carlee ( who sat behind me) and hoped that I wouldn't fall off from all of the potholes. Ha. A little scary but fun.  All of the people at church were so kind and loving. All of them came and shook our hands and were so excited we were there. Most of them had to walk 5 miles or more to get to church. And one of them brought 5 friends to church. I was amazed at how many of the young men had been baptized within the last year and were already starting mission papers. The children were so adorable and so intrigued by us. I held a baby during sacrament meeting, and a 3 year old during Relief Society. I loved it. These people have so little, but they are some of the happiest people I have ever met. I LOVE the fact that the church is the same everywhere we go. Here there are a lot of really new members and investigators, so the lessons were pretty simple. I loved the feeling of being reminded of the basics of the gospel. The church is true, that is just it. Wether in a smelly hot room in Africa, or a nice air conditioned church-house worth millions of dollars in Utah.

P.S Everyone is on the internet right now so I can't upload pictures at the moment, but they are coming soon.

P.P.S Happy Mother's Day! Love you Mom

Muzungus and Chipoti

The Good

• The house in Uganda is AWESOME. It is much better than I expected. It is two stories with 5 bedrooms for 15 people. It has a beautiful view of the jungle in the backyard and it has an incredible view of a giant waterfall on the other side 
• My team is awesome. I really love everyone here :) 
• The kids are so cute! We were in town today and there were like 5 kids following us around, they would just giggle every time we looked at them
• We have an awesome cook at the house who makes us dinner. He makes African food, American food, Chinese Food and its sooo good! 
• The African food is amazing. My favorite is Chipoti ( I think that is how you spell it...) which are basically Cafe Rio tortillas 
• From the Airport in Entebbe to our house in Mbale was about a 4 hour drive. We got to see lots of Uganda. It was so incredibly beautiful. I just stared out the window the whole time. 
•  The cute kids call us Muzungus (which basically means White Person)
• Our country directors are really funny and awesome
• The money here is shillings, which 5,000 shillings is about 2 dollars. So it makes me feel rich when I drop 10,000 for lunch. No big deal.
• We ran into the LDS missionaries at the phone store today! Woot Woot! We will be working with them on some of our projects this sumer

The Bad 

• There are no driving rules in Uganda. There are lanes, but they really mean nothing. You change as many lanes as you want, drive whatever direction you want, pass people, and hope there are not cars coming at you. It's quite scary. 
• We are doing our laundry by hand. I haven't done it yet... but it should be.. fun? 
• We only get two showers a week, one of them being with hot water. 
• It is crazy humid here! 
• We are definitely the only white people in town. So we get stared at a lot....

The Ugly 

• We have some cockroach friends in our house. 
• ME (after travelling for like 36 hours) 
• The skirts I brought to wear here. I'm stylin for sure. 

Having fun in Uganda! Major picture upload coming soon. 

Getting there is half the fun!

Plane rides.
Many plane rides.
Super fun.
I love planes and I love travel.
All of the flights were way more luxurious than I thought.
And they kept FEEDING us.

Okay let's cut to the chase and talk about LONDON! It was amazing. Incredible. Everything I ever wanted to do in London, I got to do. In like 8 hours too. We rode the subway to downtown. We did a lot of walking, and I was really tired because I didn't sleep that much on the plane. But I didn't even care. It was incredible. 

We saw Big Ben, The Eye, Buckingham Palace, a lot of other fancy historical buildings that I didn't know the names of, and did some shopping. Oh ya.. and we saw the queen. Just riding around in her carriage. No big deal. 

Ya the queen. NBD. 

Many more pictures to come, they don't do it justice though. It was incredible. 

Here we GO!

I CANNOT believe it.. the time is actually here. I leave for Uganda TOMORROW! This week has been pretty crazy. Amidst the frantic final preparations, I have made some amazing memories with family and friends. Memories so amazing, they will carry me through the summer I will spend so far away from home.

To be honest, it's kind of hard to explain how I am feeling.

Every emotion you can name? YES.

Part of me feels so sad to be leaving friends and family I love SO much.... part of me feels terrified about the unknown, but an even bigger part of me feels so excited for the adventure I am about to have. I have been wanting to do something like this my whole life. Now, my moment is here. It is time. This is real. This is IT. :)

Stay safe, be happy, and live life! Never forget things that matter most. Make each moment count, time is so precious and it passes by so fast.

I love you all and have an awesome summer! My next update will be from Uganda :) I am not sure how reliable the internet will be there, but I will try and update this blog as much as I can.