Okay team, so I know it's been a real long time since I last posted, and I keep saying that will change, but there has been a whole lot going on the past few weeks. And now I'm stuck at home, sick with "very much malaria" and some intestinal parasite, so I figured I had some time to sit down and write. Not to worry you, I'm fine, just feel real, real crappy and scared to stray too far from a toilet. But anyways, I really don't even know where to begin on everything that has happened, but I'll try to give a brief synopsis.
First and foremost, in early July, I lost one of the people I was closest to in Uganda. Her name was Joyce, and she was one of the kindest people I have ever met. She was the sister to Morris, one of the directors, and she would spend a lot of time at the house with her sister Julie. She was HIV+, and I would go and spend time with her a few times a week because she was too sick to go to school. We became very close in those few months, but she eventually became too sick to fight any longer. The executive director, Andrea, and I spent two weeks in Kampala with her at one of the best hospitals in Uganda in late August when she became sick to the point of comatose, but there was nothing they could do. Her immune system had become so weak from her no longer taking her antiviral drugs that her brain began to swell, and she couldn't fight against it. She passed away just 3 days after her 18th birthday, and her going has shaken my world. That was probably the roughest month I have faced in my entire life, and even though we all miss her whole heartedly, we've had to learn fast that life has to go on. The kids were all affected by it, and I've had to learn to bottle my feelings to stay strong for them. This whole period deserves a blog of its own, but I just can't do it. So just know that was a major reason why I haven't blogged and there's a whole lot more going on under the surface that I just don't choose to write about.
On a much lighter note, however, a few weeks ago, my mom and sister came to visit me! It was great to have a little dose of home come, and I absolutely loved having them here. We had a whole lot of fun, and I got to show them where I'm living and what I do every day, which was great. It was also pretty sweet to be able to do fun things that I can't afford to do on my own, like rafting and bungee jumping. That's right. Bungee jumping with my mom, sister, and another volunteer, Lindsay. It was at this place called Adrift, and luckily they had a bar at the bottom of the jump platform, so we all took a shot of Zappa, some terrible licorice alcohol, and climbed the stairs to our fate. I was the first to jump in our group, and I was a little scared. They tied my feet up and made me shimmy to the edge of the platform, which is directly across the water from the bar full of people watching. I just tried not to think about the fear and jumped as soon as he said go. It was basically like 1.5 seconds of pure exhilaration, and then you bounce back up and do it again. It was intense but also extremely fun, minus the end where you hang upside down forever and get a terrible headache. My mom went right after me, which everyone was shocked by, but she's just that cool. After her it was Kailey, then Lindsay, who was the most scared going in, but probably had the best jump. We finished up with some post jump beers and then went to town for some great Chinese food. The next day, we rafted the Nile, which was pretty flippin awesome, literally. I've been rafting in Colorado and in Yellowstone, and this made those trips seem like some little canoe rides. It was wild. We rode nothing but class 3, 4, and 5 rapids, which basically means intense. There are just giant amounts of matter going every which way, and sometimes it's enough to flip your boat and send everyone swimming. On the first real rapid of the day, our boat hit a wave wrong and flipped us, and I just remember coming out of the water dazed and confused, and when I finally grabbed the raft and my sister came up next to me, her entire face was covered in blood. I'll admit, I was scared. She was a bloody mess. Turns out my mom paddle slapped her in the face as we flipped, and it was just a bad bloody nose, made to look even worse by the gigantic amount of water hitting her in the face. She got cleaned up and we kept going, but it was a great start to the day. We flipped again on the biggest rapid of the day, and I accidentally let go of the boat and got washed away into the rapid, which washing machined me around and around in the water for a bit, but nothing too extreme. It was a long, awesome day though, and I think everyone had fun, minus the fact that my mom looked rather patriotic with her bright red sunburn, followed by pasty white arms, then dark blue bruises. She looked pretty beat up, but she had a good time.
Long story short, my mom and sister being here was a good time. If you want more details on what all we did, ask them, cause I really don't feel like writing it all here. I had fun with them, and I'm very glad they came, and I'm excited for my dad and uncle to come in October.
After they left, the kids went on holiday, which means that the 50 or so younger kids that live at Musana all went back to stay with their guardians. This leaves only the older kids, who are still in class all day, which makes for a very boring Musana. So what I decided to do was to go visit some of the younger kids in their village, and I have made it my goal that by the time I finally go home I will have visited every kid's home village. So Andrea and I went to a tiny little fishing village, Namuni, this last weekend to visit some of the younger kids, Damali and Peter. Namuni is deep into the country, at the very end of a peninsula in Lake Victoria. It is two and a half to three hours by taxi on a good day, but we were on one for nearly seven. It was probably the most ridiculous taxi ride I've had thus far, and I basically wanted to cry by the end of it. First of all, Andrea, Dorcus, Elijah, (Damali and Peter's older siblings) and I sat in the back of a taxi in the Iganga taxi park for almost 3 hours waiting for them to fix it and for it to fill up. By the time we finally left, there were seven people in our row, which is supposed to seat 3, and our taxi would die every time it idled for more than a second or two. At this point, there probably about 30 people in our taxi total, which it says very clearly on the side, is made for 14 passengers. That didn't stop the driver from picking up another family of six as we were leaving town though. So for most the ride there were 36 people in a pretty small little van, kids on pretty much everyone's laps, myself included. I don't know who this boy was, but we got were very close by the end of our six and a half hour journey. So this taxi drove us on all dirt roads, which were bumpy and windy and all around crappy, and at every stop the taxi would die, and you had to hope and pray that she might start up again. Right around hour 5 or so, when Elijah told us we were ten to fifteen minutes away, we got a flat tire and had to pull over. To try and fix it, the driver, the conductor, and two other men got out and first tried to lift it with their hands, with thirty some people still inside. When that obviously didn't work, they got a tiny little jack from under the car and again tried to lift it with everyone inside. This was like a go cart jack, trying to lift car with a couple thousand pounds of people weight alone. After nearly a half hour of this ridiculousness, they decided to empty out maybe half the people and try again. Eventually they figured it out, but not before I was far past the point of annoyed. After it died a few more times and was reborn a few more times, we finally reached the house we were trying to get to, and I couldn't have been happier.
When we arrived, we were greeted by the father of the family, who was a little surprised to see us. We hadn't actually told them we were coming, but we also hadn't planned on getting there after dark. It was almost seven when we got there, and they had already had dinner, but Ugandans being as welcoming as they are, they still went right to preparing food for us. Damali and Peter were very excited we were there, as were Elijah and Dorcus to be home, since they hadn't been there since Christmas. We helped them prepare dinner, my favorite part being when cute little 4 year old Damali got so into cutting the head off this chicken. She made my chicken slaying look like some amateur work. I helped them de-feather it, and they made us tea and g-nuts while we waited for it to cook. By the time we finally had dinner, it was almost 10 o clock, and they gave the entire chicken for just Andrea and I, plus a giant plate of matoke, which is cooked bananas. We ate till we thought we'd burst, and they still laughed at how much was left. I pretty much immediately crashed after dinner, and I was excited to sleep on the floor of a mud hut for the first time. I slept better than I have in a long time.
In the morning, we went and toured around their property and the village. They have land that backs right up to Lake Victoria, so we went and played in the water while the kids swam for a while, which was a great time. I had just barely waded into the water when a little naked Damali ran past me and dove right in. One of their cousins came and told us that there were some white people in the village catching crocodiles, so we decided to go check it out. The actual town part of the village is as far down the peninsula as you can get, and it is surrounded by beautiful water and islands. We walked around and tried to find someone who had caught a giant fish, because supposedly there are some monster perch there, but there was nothing too sizable. We found the white people, who turned out to be from National geographic filming some show called Dangerous Encounters or something like that. They said they had caught a fifteen foot crocodile the day before that had been killing villagers, but they had already relocated it, so we didn't get to see it. I was disappointed, but it was cool to talk to them. So we walked back to the house to get ready to go home, but they told us we couldn't leave till we had lunch. So while they prepared it, Andrea and I went and chased village kids around, scaring the begeezus out of them. Most of these kids had either never seen a white person before, or very very few of them, so it was fun to make them think all white people are scary. They had a good time running up and touching us and running away squealing, so we decided to chase after them and pick them up and throw them around a little. I may have made one or two cry, but it was all in good fun. Lunch was finally ready, and they had made us two fresh fish and another humungous plate of matoke. We ate what we could, and took the rest home with us for the dog. Did I mention we got a dog? We did. Her name is Bamboo and she is a hellion. But that's beside the point. Anyway, we caught a boda leaving from Namuni, and left Elijah and Dorcus to spend another day with the fam. We made it maybe a mile out of town before our boda got a flat, and we had to stop for another half hour or so waiting for them to fix it. That gave me time to do more kid scaring though, which I've learned to sincerely enjoy. We ended up having to get a different bike, because our guy couldn't fix his, and took that to a bigger town to get a taxi. We decided to go boda all the way to Iganga instead, which ended up being 5 hours faster than our trip had been before. All in all it was a pretty awesome trip minus transport, and I'm excited to see everyone's villages.
Just a couple days ago I went to a much much closer village to visit some other kids, but that was just a short little day trip. It was Andrea and I again, and we went to visit Fred, Bisha, and Bella, some of my favorite little ones. They were very happy to see us, and their family gave us a giant papaya and some g-nuts for coming. This time I brought bubbles, which is the quickest and easiest way to attract every single kid in a village. Those little guys just love them bubbles. We visited for a while, and then went to see some of our other kids in Bwongo, Ananeia, Faith, and Joseph. They all have the same father, but Joseph has a different mother than the other two. They live in different houses in the same village, and it was fun to see where they all came from. Fred came with us for the journey, which was great, because he's probably the most entertaining kid I've ever met. He loves to ride a pretend motorcycle, which is basically him running as fast as he can and making motorcycle noises. Severely entertaining. It was good to have a dose of little ones, because Musana has been pretty dull without them. They all come back in the beginning of September though, so I don't have long to wait.
Anyway, that's basically all I got thus far, minus the uber amounts of drama that I can't write about. You'll hear it someday. Things are pretty wild over here right now, but it makes life interesting if nothing else. I'll be home in December, and I love you all. I'll try to write sooner, but as always, I probably won't. Sorry. I love you all, and have a grand day.
