Every day is an adventure

It was extra dusty today! We traveled by boda to Miriam nursery school, which is about a fifteen minute ride. That is the school we painted cream on the first day here. Today we started planning out the murals we were going to paint on each wall. We started outlining in pencil. It was such a cool experience. The teachers watched as we began the transformation of their classrooms. The expressions on their faces gave away the excitement and appreciation they were feeling. What were once dirty, concrete walls, with no visual aids for the children are becoming something so much more! In each classroom we are painting letters and numbers. We are also painting words which the difficulty level reflects the age of children in the classroom. In one area a girl on our team drew an entire jungle scene with an elephant and leopard and crocodile and giraffe and more! It was amazing. I am sooooooooooooo excited to see what the project looks like when we are done. So far the place doesn’t even look the same. It is such a simple task, but it will make such a huge difference in the learning of these children.

We also went to the Namatala slum again today to meet with Phillip, one of the staff at Child Of Hope. We told him we would like to start teaching a class to the women of Namatala on Tuesday afternoons and asked him what he thought would be the most beneficial. According to him the biggest problems the face there in the slum are: HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and family planning. IT is not uncommon for men here to have multiple wives and be very abusive. IT is sad because there really are little resources for the women here to get help. When the women do leave their husbands they usually are very poor and live on less than 500 shillings a day, which is about 20 cents! In order to provide for their children they often will have sex with men who are passing through for money. Because of the lack of family planning, this often leads to more children being born. Many of the mothers in the slum are single mothers and the average number of children is six per family. Imagine trying to feed, cloth, and take care of six children by yourself with 20 cents per day! It is heartbreaking to hear, and being here seeing it is even more painful. Anyways, we have decided not to teach a class on domestic violence. The cultural differences are just too vast and there is not really anything that we could teach them that would be of help to them. They cannot just call the police, there are not shelters that can handle that many women and children, and confronting their husbands is likely to make the problem worse. As hard as it was to decline, we did not want to worsen a problem that is already so prevalent. However, we will be teaching a one day class on HIV/AIDS, one day about family planning, and a third day about a topic of the women in the community’s choice. I am very excited about this project! It is the first thing since I have been here that us new volunteers can really take ownership of and make a positive impact on the community.

After our long day most of the house went out to dinner together at a local Indian restaurant. My friend and I shared chicken fried rice, paneer tikki masala, and garlic naan. OMG it was delicious. We also had sodas and it only cost us about 6 dollars a person.

OUUUU and I got caught in my first Ugandan rain storm today! It was amazing, the streets flooded in a matter of minutes and thunder shook the buildings. We were soaked to the bone but I loved it. As we rode home in the dark, soaking wet, I began to shiver… I never thought I would be cold in Africa! When I finally got home I wiped off a film of dirt from my face and body. It was disgusting but its Africa and its perfect. :)

Every day is an adventure here and I cannot wait to experience more! I really miss my sister, my boyfriend, Tara, my parents, friends, family and my puppy!! Love You <3