Holiday is O-V-E-R

I am white, okay, maybe I am more brown now as Frank pointed out to me the other day, I am now more aware of that fact than I have ever been in my entire life and I also more popular than I have ever been or ever will be again. Sometimes it saddens me to think of how unpopular I will be when I return to the states after being so popular here. I am amazed by the amount of people that I hear yelling my name no matter if I am in my village or the next. I usually have no idea who they are, but they know me. Today as I was walking to get a taxi a large truck drives by with a couple of men with a microphone and large speakers on the bed of the truck. When I heard the truck coming I knew what I was in for. As the truck was inching by I thought I was in the clear, but at the last minute the man with the microphone caught a glimpse of me and says, “Oh! Muzungu!” He then went on for a good while saying things to or about me in Luganda, I could not figure out which, all on his microphone loud enough for the entire village to know that I was nearby How often do you find yourself being humiliated by a man on the bed of truck with a microphone? There are times when I think I am going to run out of things to tell you about, but then things like this happen and I realize that I will never run out of things to laugh about here.

Lately I have noticed that some of the kids around here are just downright naughty. I have chosen to use the word naughty because they are cute kids and they always make me laugh, despite their bad behavior. To me that is what naughty is, a humorous word used to describe a bad action. Last week I was painting my front room an obnoxious color orange. I was trying to mix Tibetan Yellow and Ruby Red; at first I got magenta, but with a little more Tibetan Yellow, I ended up with what Crayola calls red orange. It is a disaster. Anyway, I left the paint on the back porch and I walked out my back door to find that someone had stuck their little paws into the paint and smeared it all over my wall. Next, I bought a football (soccer ball) for the kids to play with and they will come ask for it whenever I am home. I always leave my doors open so people know I am home if they want to visit and I just like the openness of it. The other day the boys were outside my window asking for the ball and when I went to get it for them I saw them in my house getting it for themselves. Another day I gave it to some small children and soon saw them sitting on my porch without the ball. I then realized that some older kids had stolen it from them. As I mentioned before the borehole is broken and apparently it is because children had been playing on it. Because most of these things happened in about two days, I was annoyed. I told myself, “This would never happen in the States” and clearly this is not the case, but it is a bit different here than in the states. Things happen in the states, but we ask “Where were their parents?” Here, kids are on their own. Two year olds wander across the street to my house alone, seven year olds are taking care of infants. The other day I asked a teacher what she does with her four month old baby when she teaches and she told me she leaves her at home alone. I realized she was not joking when I heard the baby crying for a half hour while she was teaching. The lack of supervision and the amount of responsibility given to these children is, at most times, frightening.

Even though I just got done talking about how these children are naughty, let me tell you about why I love them so much and how it already saddens me to think about leaving them in two years. There is a family of four children, Ivan, Angel, Patrick, and Martin and they are probably the funniest kids I know and the ones responsible for painting my back porch. Today they came over as usual, Patrick wearing a skirt and Angel wearing pants. Clearly Angel store Patrick’s pants, but Patrick couldn't care less despite how much the other seven year olds made fun of him. Although Patrick was wearing a skirt and not wearing underwear, he did not want to be left out of doing handstands and again, couldn't care less when the kids were laughing at him exposing himself. He is a complete and total ham and will dance for anyone that asks. Today when I was showing them the fighting bats on my back porch ceiling Ivan went and got a stick and tried shooing them from my house; when he didn’t succeed he decided to free my house of wasps nest in stead. When I went to fetch water today and was carrying two twenty liter jerry cans many small children would try to help me in any way their little arms could. Yesterday one of the brightest thirteen olds I have ever known came over just to sing for me and offered to help me clean my lamp. They let me play soccer with them and never laugh at me when I make a food of myself, well unless I laugh first. All the kids in my village are wonderful and fabulous and I am so lucky to have them. I think the adults think I am crazy because I play with them so often and my house constantly looks like a day care, but I do not care. Hopefully I can inspire them to play with their children as well.

The holiday is over and students returned to class on Monday and while I was excited to begin work, I am sad that all of my friends are gone. All along I knew that Carol and Kennedy would be returning to boarding school, but I did not realize what school would do to those who are not boarding students. Before holiday, children were everywhere. In the mornings the village was quiet; everyone in their gardens digging. I would sometimes see the children on their way to fetch water and they would stop and talk. In the afternoons the children lived on my porch and I would have to beg them to go home when it was time for me to lock up for the night. Now that school has began I hardly see children and I live at a school. I will see a few of them while they are on break or taking their time walking to the latrine. While the educational part of the school day ends at 3:30, students are at the school until five and at five the students scurry on home to do their chores and homework. Before school children were at my house or playing football in front of it; now it is like a ghost town and I miss my friends.

While the man I am supposed to be working with has not yet showed up, I decided to meander on over to the school the other day to look through some educational materials I had been told the school had been given by an American organization. I was incredibly happy to see that many great things were donated such as educational bingo, flash cards, story books, and dvds. However, everything was still shoved in boxes and clearly not being used. Over the next few weeks I hope to organize the materials in the resource room as well as train teachers on how they can best use the resources. I just hope that everyone is excited about these materials as I am, but I am sure they are not considering that they have had some of them for over a year and they have not been touched.

Ugandan children do not have books. Part of it is that they are expensive and I think that part of it is just not in their culture to read books for leisure. While walking past the school the other morning I noticed that the P2 teacher had not yet shown up an hour after the school day began. The class of fifteen children were sitting patiently waiting and I decided to stop in and say hello. After a bit I decided to go grab a story book I had saw in the donated materials and read it to the class. The story was decent about some angry lady bug and the kids did not understand most of what I was reading, but they loved the fact that I was reading to them and they had beautiful pictures to look at. While they may not have understood exactly what I was saying, they were sure to shout out in English objects that they were seeing in the pictures. It was fabulous and I am really hoping to influence the teachers into reading at least one story to their class a day. However, for this to work the school needs more books. I have looked into another organization that donates books and I am in the process of contacting them to see if I can get some books. My main goal is to establish a library at the school which would allow children to access books whenever they would like. One of the issues that I am having a bit of trouble with is that the books I have come across here in the resource room are culturally irrelevant to children here. For example, there was a book talking about a school day, in America, and there were very few things that correlated with a classroom here in Uganda. For example, students were riding a school bus to school and not walking miles on foot, they were feeding their classroom pet, and they were being fed lunch which is a huge issue here right now because students are not fed at school. However, there are many books that show cultural differences and others such as Chicka Chicka Boom Boom that can be used in both cultures with no problem both of which would be great. While I love having English books to get children of all ages used to seeing English words, I would also love to be able to buy Luganda language books here in country. If anyone would like to contribute in any way please be sure to let me know!

Last weekend I had my first visitor from the states! Miss Sarah Matthews, who I met in Kenya last year while she was doing research, was back in Kenya doing some follow up research and was kind enough to fly into Entebbe to visit me for the weekend! We spent the night in Entebbe and the following day at the pool and then made our way to Kampala for dancing and good food. As always in Uganda, it was an interesting evening, filled with other Muzungus from all around the world. My favorite part of the night had to have been when I noticed a very intoxicated girl on the ground clearly searching for something. I watched her search and search in between pulling her pants up and falling over. I felt bad for her and decided to ask her friend what she was so desperately trying to find in case I could be of some help. He looked at me with one of the most disgusted looks I have ever seen and said, “You’re never going to believe me if I told you; she’s looking for her teeth.” Apparently she had fake teeth and they fell out at some point in the night. For the remainder of the night she could be found on her hands and knees searching for her teeth. Part of me hopes she never found them; it just seems like bad hygiene to be putting things in your mouth that you found on the floor of a bar.

And lastly, I finally have an address! It is P.O. Box 849 Masaka, Uganda. Some tips for sending packages. Be sure to write Air Mail on everything and usually if you write educational materials or something religious on the package (Sister Autumn Radtke); things are less likely to be tampered with. My mom has also informed me that the post office has prepaid envelopes that you can shove as much as you like in and that is probably the most inexpensive way to send things. I, in advance, thank all of you who have been wanting to send things and those who will in time send things! While I do not really need anything, except for photos and music, there are of course things that would make my day. Things I miss: trail mix, Taco Bell mild sauce packets, puzzles, decent razors, chocolate covered salty things, books, and smell good things for my house. In all honesty, I would love anything you sent!

There are also many things I wish I had for the kids. Children in my village do not have toys. They make their own balls out of plastic bags, today a kid made a toy gun out of who knows what, and they pull each other around in cut up jerry cans. While a part of me loves that these children are so creative, I want them to have more. My mom had sent me a package of things to give to the children in my home stay family, but it arrived too late and now my village kids are making use of them. They love chasing bubbles, looking at postcards, playing with an etch a sketch sort of contraption, and a deck of cards. I recently inherited a small map of the United States and the World, as well as a deck of cards showing famous landmarks on one side and giving a description on the other, from a volunteer that is returning to the states. Last night I brought them both out and I would show the picture of the landmark and they would find its location on the map; they were ecstatic about it and they were learning at the same time. Oh, and I am sure they would love puzzles just as much as I do. So if you would like to donate toys, both them and I would love it!


Anyway, thank you for taking the time out to read my ramblings!

Peace and love,

Autumn