Uganda Time

Thoughts from the past week:

Over the past few weeks, I have been learning what it means to be on Uganda time. People in Uganda don't really keep time. I had heard about Island time before, but was not aware that it reached Africa as well. For example, we are told to be at work at 8:30, but there have been multiple occasions that myself, Rida, and Marta have showed up at 8:30 and the building has still been locked. Rida and I have now started walking from our houses at 8:30 so we arrive around 8:45, when there is usually at least one other employee there. We were told that if you want to have a meeting with villagers at noon, they will probably start to arrive at 1:00 or later. Although this can be frustrating, I'm actually beginning to enjoy it. Life is not rushed, and I'm not constantly looking at the clock. I could get used to this...

Events from the past week:

The beginning of my week at work was a little frustrating. We were supposed to go into the village on Tuesday and Wednesday to visit the school we are working with, but on Tuesday there was not enough room for us in the vehicles that were going out to the field, and on Wednesday the Land Rover was broken down. Rida, Marta, and I went to internet cafes instead to do research on sanitation information and the curriculum we are making. On Wednesday night, we went to Marta's house with about 10 of the other students from Northwestern to celebrate the 4th of July. We cooked burgers and potatoes like true Americans. On Thursday we finally made it to the village to visit the school that we are working with. It is the same private school we saw in the village last week. It is a boarding school primarily for orphans. The school has grades P1-P6 with 150 students, and many different subjects and clubs, but it extremely understaffed. The sanitation is also extremely poor. There is 1 latrine for females, and 1 latrine for males. The latrines are a little bit of a walk from where the students sleep, which got me thinking...do they really go out to the latrines in the middle of the night if they need to go to the bathroom? Probably night, not only is that scary for kids, but it is also unsafe. So, where do they go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? The answer: either in a bucket, or behind the building where they sleep. Open defecation is not only a huge issue in school, but also in many villages. There is also no bath shelter present at the school, so all the boarders have to shower out in the open under a tree which provides no privacy for the students in a mixed school with both girls and boys. There is no handwashing station for the children to wash their hands after they use the latrine, or before and after they eat.

The 2 latrines at the boarding school with little privacy as a result of the torn cloth.

We are going back to the school on Tuesday to further discuss our plan for our project with the headmaster and teachers.

On Friday, we continued to work on developing our curriculum and also completed our workplan for the remaining 5 weeks. After work, we went home and Jaja randomly asked Marion and I if we wanted to see her business, and led us to a room in the house that we never knew existed. All of a sudden Marion and I were staring at 200 little baby chicks. We knew that Jaja had a chicken coop in the backyard, but had no idea that there were 200 chicks living in the house with us!

Baby chicks!!

We also had a little photoshoot with my family, and we took a bunch of nice pictures together:

Fiona, Jaja, Trevor, Me, and Fred

Yesterday, on Saturday, 4 other girls and I went to Mabira Forest to go hiking. The rainforest was absolutely beautiful, and we had so much fun. We took a matatu (taxi) that conveniently dropped us off one town further than the entrance to Mabira Forest, so we had a nice little 30 minute pre-hike to the previous town. We hiked for about two and half hours in a loop around the forest. By listening to the sounds of the birds, monkeys, and other animals, we could truly tell that we were in the jungle. The sounds were like the "Rainforest Sounds" from CDs that people listen to when they fall asleep. Marta and Emily even tried to climb one of the ginormous trees. 

Emily in the huge tree!

We unfortunately didn't see any cool animals while we were hiking, except for some wildly uncomfortable fire ants. Oh, and a monkey that was dying in the middle of the road after being hit by a car that we saw on our 30 minute pre-hike; it was truly disturbing. But, all in all, it was a great day spent with some great people...

That's all for now!