Additions to things seen on a boda, as annotated by Kendra Holloway..

Two full sized bed frames
a stack of matresses 6 or 7 high
another boda on a boda
a couple bags of charcoal (this doesn't sound like a lot, but a bag of charcoal alone weighs a couple hundred pounds.)
a ten foot tall stack of sugar cane

more to come later....

A couple children must have been sacrificed yesterday because it was raining cats and dogs in afternoon while Kendra and I went to the agriculture fair (where I was adopted as the baby sister of a group of fabulous art students (who also gave me a necklace), pushed into the tedious sweatshop-like labor-intensive task of stringing those rolled paper beads for an hour or so while cramped with 30 ugandans under an 7 foot by 7 foot awning, and then forced to walk a mile in the storm back to Kendra's house while being splashed by tidal waves of mud as busses sped through the puddles in the road.) Despite the fact that it stopped raining by the time we got home, the clouds loomed ominously overhead and began to shed their vengence around 1 or 2 in the morning until the hour I awoke. My inability to sleep was only heightened by the thunder and lightning and the wind that screamed over the sounds of the Dido that I had bursting out through my headphones. I'm pretty sure a couple of albinos were slaughtered yesterday or the day before in order to warrant such a downpour.

A little more on the subject of baby killing and why I have mentioned it twice in the last paragraph. I have overheard many times since I arrived here that fateful wednesday so many weeks ago about a phenomenon that has been causing much uproar and fear in the sleepy villages of the Ugandan countryside. Recently, due to the draught (which I clearly have not recognized any sign of) there has been multiple incidents of kidnappings. It is said that these children are being stolen by none other than the ancient and powerful witchdoctors (or traditional medicinemen to be politically correct) and sacrificed to god (or the gods, i'm not sure which, either way they must be crazy... haha... if you get the movie reference), with albinos being the most powerful sacrifice for making dreams come true. I make light of situation as though it is only a rumor, but perhaps I should be more careful, for in fact, it is ridiculously real, and a very serious issue. Children are stolen everyday and sacrificed (usually by decapitation) for reasons spanning from a want of rain to a need for better business.

When mentioning to Kendra that I was writing this post (I've been staying at her humble abode in order to work a little bit on some business issues, partnerships, designs, etc) she turned pale and told me a story about her weekend night watchman. About a year ago, his wife was in line at the hospital and holding her recently born child when she had to rush to the restroom. She kindly asked the woman behind her to watch her child, passed the baby into her arms, and ran off. When she returned, the woman, and her child was gone. Not even a week later, the investigative officer returned to the watchman and his wife's home with what was thought to be their baby son... decapitated. For over a year this couple believed their last born child to be a victim of sacrifice (as decapitation was a clear sign of such an occurance) until one day only a few months ago, the officer returned to their home once again with their baby boy, alive but very sick with malaria, pneumonia, and other various diseases. The woman that had stolen the child had attempted to pass off the baby as her own to her husband, however, he recognized that it was a lie and threatened to kill her unless she told the truth. Despite the fact that the watchman and his wife got their child back, the question still remains... who's child was the mysterious, headless baby that had been thrust into their arms a year ago?

There are certain things that you can do to protect your baby against the sacrificial process, as according to the rules of witchdoctorhood ( p.c. traditional medicinemen) babies can't be sacrificed, or aren't as valuable if they have certain traits. I am not sure what all of these precautions are, but I have seen some things on the farm that have been done to the newborns as a precaution. Vero has put a colorful, plastic beaded belt around the waste of four month old Christina. I have seen other small children with ears that are pierced, or with sharp pieces of wood sticking through their earlobes, as it is said that these children can not be sacrificed. Those are only two that I am sure of, but I will continue to ask around to find out other things that can be done to keep from being cradle robbed.

Dear Adam... I love you and your pie...

So it's one in the morning here in Uganda, and I can't sleep. All I can think about is how badly I want a chipati pie from Adam the deity of deep fried deliciousness at this moment despite the fact that I will have to wait until morning to get one (or two). I'm seriously considering marrying the man just out of love for his chipati's stuffed with dodo, potato, onions, egg, and secret seasonings, and then deep fried until crispy on the outside... mmm. they are like a calzone, but much better because they don't taste like pizza.
Excuse me for the prolonged period of my absence since I last graced your computer screen (almost a week and a half), however, as I have probably said before, internet is hard to come by. A two mile walk to Namulesa, then a 30 minute cab drive into Jinja, and then a 20 minute walk to The Source Cafe, where I have to spend 2000 shillings for just one hour (that's worth two 1.5 liter bottles of water). I usually spend over 2000 though since the internet in Uganda is aweful. Remember dial-up? Well this is worse. Waaaaay worse. It takes sometimes 15 minutes for my gmail to load... in html format. To top it off, i can write a whole email, and when i hit send... it just goes to a network failure page.
As for the topic of public transportation, I've already mentioned the dangers of riding a boda, and the recklessness on the roadways of all vehicles, but let me delve a bit deeper into the horrors of all things on wheels (boda bodas, piki piki's, and mutatus).
First the Mutatu: oh dear mutatu... when I say i have a 30 minute cab drive to town. I mean a 30 minute ride in a mutatu, a twelve passenger van that is the refuse of some type of asian public transportation system (as noted by the extreme amounts of chinese writing on the sides of said vans, despite there being zero asians in Uganda.) There is no doubt why china got rid of these vehicles of mass destruction. The other day I saw a door fall off, and in one, a hole in the roof was boarded up with some pieces of rotting timber, that's not to mention the terrible condition that the engines are in. Let's just say riding a mutatu is not far from riding a bull at the fair, except one doesn't have to worry about falling off or out. One does not have to worry about this due to the sardine like state in which all passengers are kept. The other day, in said 12 PASSENGER van, there were 26 of us, all crammed in with our bags, 3 chickens under a seat, and a goat. (okay so the 3 chickens were actually 14 chickens, and the goat was only a goat... only they weren't in that particular mutatu, that was a separate adventure into town.) I think that's all for the mutatu... for now....
Now onto the Boda... dear boda boda (aka, shitty 1 or 2 person yamaha dirtbike)... what can't be held on the back of you? I know that besides a driver you can fit 5 adult Ugandans at one time, or 20 chicken crates filled with chickens. I also have overheard that you carry dead bodies on occasion that are wrapped in bark cloth and then somehow attached to a long board that is then attached to you. I have also seen you carry a large dead cow, a stack of wooden boards whose length extend the whole of road so that i must jump into a ditch filled with water up to my calves, a multiple large piles of matooke, 6 or 7 children screaming Mzungu, many men who want my "contacts" aka my phone number so that can "be my friend" and call me 9 times a day to say hello, and many men who don't believe my phone is dead, so they give me their contacts and then when i run into them again inquire as to why I haven't called them, and then I don't have the heart to say its because they creep me out with their incescent calling and that you cant just tell a mzungu that they are "your very best friend and it makes you sick that you haven't seen them and that a day without them is like tea without sugar and that you love them very much." Because that's just friggin creepy Sabo. (Sabo is "sir" in Ugandan)
As for the piki piki... they are just crappy old bicycles with no gears, and rusted pedals. See above for everything I have seen them and their riders with legs of brute strength carry...

Man vs. Wild, aka "Man Camp 7"

It is a question of the ages, "What do you get when you throw four americans and a brit into the middle of the african rainforest with a couple of dull machetes, a box of matches, and a pot to boil water? For the most part, absolutely nothing, except a phone call 28 hours later asking for a ride back to "civilization."
A little bit about the expectations of man camp before going into actual experience of it...
Man camp is supposed to be a three night, four day adventure into the jungle in which each person in the group is supposed to clear a plot of land and build their own bed, house with two entrances, latrine/washroom (with a divider and walls so they have privacy from other man campers), outdoor kitchen, and dishrack. The ultimate goal of man camp is to last in the jungle the entire four days and to come out as clean as you went in with everything built and your home/plot tidy. The inventor of man camp is crazy because what actually happens in the jungle is actually just complete chaos.
Upon leaving Macro, the organization that uses man camp as a way of fundraising money, we found that our group of five only had three very dull machetes and a hoe between the five of us to make 5 sets of said items. We also found that said plots we were to clear were about an acre in size and covered in trees, vines, bushes, ant hills, and rotting logs. That said, we also found that the nearest water supply was 2 miles away and called Lake Victoria. Upon returning with water from said lake we realized that boiling it would only kill the germs, but not remove the brown/ yellow tint of the water, nor the dirt particles. We also realized that we couldn't get a fire started to boil said water...
Once fire was started (with the help of a villager who happened to be walking through the jungle), dusk began falling. i had constructed a shitty hammock due to blisters the size of Uganda forming on my hands because of my attempted clearing of my plot. Two other girls had constructed a bed out of trees that sat off the ground and was covered in leaves. The boys had constructed a shelter that fell over and a shelter with no walls, but with a bed covered in leaves. When dark fell we gathered around the low burning embers of our fire (we had forgotten to collect firewood) and after what felt like 4 hours of playing 10 fingers... (it was only 45 minutes) we decided to try sleep. I went to bed in the giant bed the girls made and the boys shared the tiny one andrew had made. As We were almost asleep the boys left their bed. One due to it being uncomfortable, and one due to being afraid of sleeping alone. After another 45 minutes around the campfire, us three girls and the british boy decided to try to fit on the girls bed. It held us up and was much more comfortable in our exhausted state. However, the other american boy (andrew from st. isaacs) was afraid of sleeping alone and came to try to fit on the bed with us. It could not hold five people however, and immediately collapsed. After 45 more minutes around our dying fire, we decided to try out andrew twin sized bed of sticks. we fit 5 people rather uncomfortably on it for about 45 minutes before it too broke. After that, we took turns sleeping on the hammock while the others sat about the fire... that is until the brit saw a wild pig, got scared/excited for the hunt and broke the hammock at 3 am... that is when we all decided to try to stay up the rest of the night. I ended up asleep on the ground next to the embers of the fire with my head on a log.
The next day we were determined to complete our tasks, but instead of individually, we would do it as a group. we almost had a bed to hold four and a canopy to hang above it completed by one (with help of previous villager), and all of the leaves to cover both the bed and canopy, when the rain, thunder, and lighting started tumbling down. The rain was so thick we could not see the rest of the forest, the villager (named samuel) stayed with us for the three hours the rain came down, and kept our fire burning. It was then, in our cold, soaked, dirty state, that we decided that Mzungus were not cut out for the jungle lifestyle, and walked back to Samuel's home to sun ourselves on his porch and eat a delicious lunch of posha, fresh fish, beans, and dodo (a plant, not the bird)...
I'm pretty stoked we held out for 28 hours, but I really wish we would have tried for longer... despite how much better that nile beer and fried chicken tasted last night than the ant infested rice we were eating in the jungle.....

Best Invention ever award

goes to.... the washing machine... This morning I spent three hours washing 7 items of clothing by hand... three of these items were underwear, two pairs of pants and a long sleeve shirt. After getting into a boda (motorcycle) crash in the mud after driving twenty minutes through the rain from Jinja on friday and toughing it out through two days in the jungle Bear Grylls style at "Man Camp" on saturday and sunday, my clothes had about 12 inches of mud on them.
So more on the weekend....
Friday Andrew and I left for Jinja from St. Isaacs at about 12:30 to pick up a giant sign he had made for the "St. Isaacs Training Center" After arriving in Jinja, we soon learned that the sign maker had misspelled a word on the sign during the morning, and we had to now wait until 4 for it to be delivered to Namulesa... We were a bit peeved as it took us 30 minutes to walk to Namulesa and 30 minutes on a taxi to get to Jinja only to find out that the sign wasn't done at the time the carpenter had promised (He had already extended the deadline 4 times)... It was beginning to thunder so we decided to jump on a boda so we could get home faster before the rain started. As soon as we hit the highway (if you can call it that) the rain started pounding down on us. I was in a tank top and flip flops as well as in pain, my glasses covered in water, and feet in mud as we drove through puddle after puddle of mud, rainwater, and potentially sewage. Upon arriving at the beginning of the 2 mile stretch of dirt rode to get to St. Isaacs, Andrew and I realized we were in a very precarious situation. Although no longer raining, there was much potential that the roads were flooded, or very slippery. We made it not even half a mile on the bike when the bike spun out going up the hill and flipped over landing on top of Andrew, Me, and the Boda driver. The driver seemed to be unscathed, but Andrew hurt a testicle (he's been complaining about it since Friday night) and my leg has a huge gash from getting caught on the kickstand. After paying off the boda driver (since we did not want to get hurt again) we began walking (actually more like slipping) up the hill, through the mud, and foot deep rivelets of water, with about 30 school children stalking behind us laughing at the dirty Mzungus (they had been walking a half a mile in the mud and had not one spot of it on their clothing...) Andrew's flipflop broke about 3 minutes into our hike and he was forced to walk the next mile and a half barefoot through the sludge.
When we got back to the house an hour later we were met with a troop of Ugandan volunteers that worked with the St. Isaacs program, and a bag containing a giant tent.
We quickly overcame our fears of contracting diseases such as jiggers, which supposedly turn your feet black and make them fall off in order to teach a bunch of Ugandan men how to build said tent. 30 minutes, a lot of language issues, and many mistakes and laughs later, we had the tent up and ready... what a frustrating, ridiculous day....

kanigoga

I basically live on a farm. for the past two days I have hoed weeds, dug holes, and torn apart chicken coops and goat pens. I live in a home with no electricity or running water, and my baths consist of pouring jerry cans of water over my body. The bathroom is a hole in the ground about 200 yards from my room. I cut the top off a water bottle in case i had to pee at night. The mosquitos are aweful and there was no where to tie up my mosquito net so i had to pull a mcguiver and tie a piece of dental floss between the door and the wall of my room to hang the net on.
To buy water or soda, charge my cell phone, or catch a taxi to jinja i have to walk 2 miles one way to the nearest town of namulesa on a rode full of tiny children whose parents do not have the money to pay school fees yelling, "Mzungu, how are you" Mzungu basically is their term for foreigners, specifically american or british foreigners.
There are a lot of children around all the time. the farm also has a small nursery school on it so i'm surrounded by 4-6 year old ugandan children asking me to play soccer, chase them, or give them biscuits. they are freakin adorable. isaac, my host families son is a little terror. I taught the children to play spoons the other night with a deck of cards made out of half titanic playing cards that we found on the ground covered in mud, and half made out of paper that i brought. Isaac didn't even play the game. he just waited, hovering over the pens we were using as spoons until someone grabbed one. However, he did start to draw on the cards i made to make them match his. he wrote titanic and drew little stick figures of kate and leo on the backs... it made me laugh.
Food is alright here. there are so many carbs that i really don't mind all the grunt work and walking. anyway... i have to go buy some tarp for planting and then head home. update more tomorrow.

Mzungo, How are you?

In an internet cafe in Jinga about an hour from Mukono, and three hours from Kampala. I just got here yesterday afternoon after a CRAZY weekend in Kampala. I rode a boda for the first time on Friday evening and it was the most exhilerating experience of my life. In Uganda, there are no lanes, only relative ideas of where lanes should be. Because it is very expensive to get a drivers liscence for a car, many men in uganda drive motorcycles called bodas. these bodas take passengers from place to place like a private taxi. In Kampala, it is a dangerous experience as drivers race eachother through streets, over potholes, and brush up against other cars, mutatos (taxis) bodas, and pedastrians... all with their passengers in tow. After getting to Backpacker's hostel on the outskirts of the city, I walked to a local market and bought chipati (a glorified/greasy/delicious tortilla) and an avocado the size of my head, and made myself dinner for around 50 cents. While eating I met a few travelers from the UK, concordia university in irvine, oceanside, and canada, all who have been traveling from between 5 weeks and 5 months. I have officially decided I will be backpacking the whole of africa in the near future.
A bunch of us decided to go out clubbing for the evening so we pregamed with packets of gin (alcohol come is 2 shot plastic packets for about 500 shillings apiece (25 cents) and went out dancing with a couple Ugandans who worked at the hostel and their friends , one of which had the name Marvlous... which is pretty freakin rad.
we got home at 4:30 in the morning, and then woke up saturday and went to the market again for breakfast. I got my usual staple food of chipati and avocado the size of a human skull and went back to the hostel to chill until the rest of the crew woke up. Once they were up we headed to the most amazing place yet. Oweno. this is the ugandan marketplace in kampala where ugandans can buy just about everything they need from salt fish, to curries, to machetes, to dresses. the sights, sounds and smells were incredible, good and bad, and because we were Mzungo's which basically means foreigner, we were hammered by salesmen. we even had one guy try to sell my friend spenser women's jeans for almost 20 minutes. This market place was HUGE and the walls were towering. it was a maze of humans and goods that I was definitely not wanting to get lost in. once we got out we took another crazy boda ride back to the hostel where we met up with some more americans and went together (with some candadians in stow) to a fourth of july celebration thrown by the embassy. We got hamburgers, hotdogs, potato salad, coleslaw, and coke, and then was serenaded by a ugandan woman singing/reading the national anthem, and a little ugandan children's choir singing God bless america. the finale was a fantastic fireworks show. but really, the best part of the night was that while waiting for our special hire to come pick us back up, we were kindly invited onto the porch of some ugandans for beers and chitchat. I think the thing i like most about uganda so far is the fact that relationships are far more valuable than business, and how are you is the first thing that must be said to any stranger.

The Night Dancer

So last night, as we gathered in the sitting room, Kelsey (another volunteer) told us that she met a night dancer in her village. upon hearing this I immediately thought prostitute, so I asked Esther the all powerful and knowledgeable house manager to explain for clarification. what i found out, however is that night dancing has nothing to do with prostitution... it is faaarrr worse.

Ugandans are full of superstition, and many still believe in witchcraft, sorcery and curses.
Along these lines falls the tales of night dancers, who oddly enough, aren't really tales at all, but real people.

Late at night, in the rural villages of uganda, people will awake to knocking at the door and howling in the streets. If one looks outside their windows, they will see a woman, running naked as though possessed through the streets. It is on a night, usually after a funeral that this woman will run to the cemetery and dig up the body. They will carry this body home, cook it, and consume it. According to esther night dancing is an inherited trait and can not be controlled. during the day these dancers walk among us as though normal citizens, but at night they become possessed by their desires for human flesh. It is said that these night dancers do not eat from the graves of their neighbors, but rather, will travel to neighboring villages and steal their dead.
According to ancient tradition and the laws of the night dancer, they must never offer the flesh of the dead to guests.
Thank goodness I don't have to worry about that...

Things I've discovered in Africa Part I..

So It's officially my second day here in Mukono (I'll be here til Sunday) and in the past 4 days since I left LAX, I've learned quite a few things about myself, traveling, uganda, and my future here as a volunteer. Here's the list...

Things I've discovered in transit:

• you never feel quite as alone as when you travel alone.
• never choose the scrambled eggs as your airline breakfast.
• always order white wine instead of the red on the plane... just in case you spill the entire bottle on your neighbor.
• never read The Time Traveler's wife and listen to Bon Iver or Sigur Ros at the same time on an airplane. Your excessive crying will both scare the fight attendant and disturb your neighbor. For that matter don't listen to or read anything on a plane that is either inherently sad or reminds you of your past lovers... because you never feel quite as alone as when you travel alone.
• trying to sleep in the dubai airport on a 13 hour layover is entirely pointless, although no one will steal your stuff, you will awake every ten minutes thinking one of your bags have gone missing, forgetting you only packed two.
• Budget at least $5 for a cup of tea in the Dubai airport. $15 if you want a pastry with it.
• Carrying on your luggage is the best idea. not only will you not have to wait two hours at LAX to get your boarding pass, but you don't have to worry about losing it, getting stuff stolen, or waiting for it to be offloaded. Plus, customs basically ignores you and the admiration received for packing everything you need for six weeks in africa in a backpack is almost worth it in itself.
• Fannypacks are by far the best invention ever for carrying passports, tissue, deodorant, wallet, plane ticket, chapstick, and brush. just make sure you use a stylish one.

Things I've discovered in the past 24 hours since arriving:

• The roads kill more people than aids
• It takes two hours to travel 18km on the main highway... which gives me a new appreciation for LA traffic.
• For the next six weeks I am going to be greeted as "eh, Obama!"
• Many ugandans thought they would get free US Visas w/ Obama's election since "he's ugandan"
• the female upper body is totally desexualized and i should have packed some tank tops. I will be coming home with an amazing farmers tan...
• fat girls get more positive attention from men than skinny ones since skinny is a reminder of aids and a fat wife earns a man respect since it looks like he has money to care for his woman.
• bodas are the best form of private transport. bodas are two person motorcycles.
• putting one's arms around a boda driver signals you want to marry him and he will parae you around to his friends rather than take you where you need to go.
• Ugandans are very good humored. life is so hard that they make jokes and laugh to pass the time and forget their troubles...
• i should have done some physical training before arriving. my thighs and ass are going to look amazing by the time I leave due to the extreme amount of peeing i have to do over squat toilets. Yoga would have probably helped a little too...
• There are cockroaches all over the middle squat toilet at the mukono guest house. it is a bad idea to shine your flashlight at anything but the door when you go in at night...
• bucket bathing is not so bad. in fact, i've never felt so clean...
• supposedly non-ugandans smell worse than dirty ugandans to ugandans. which is just plain weird, because i think even dirty dirty Americans smell like roses comparatively.
• if you speak to a ugandan in lugandan, you will gain their utmost respect. but expect them to try to carry on the conversation in lugandan and not believe you when you say you don't speak it.
• Esther is the Mukono house manager and cooks an g-nut sauce like a mofo. (g-nuts are peanuts)
• food in uganda is basically, cornmeal, white rice, mutoki (which is a type of banana), gnuts, and beans.
• a good beer is Nile, and it costs only a dollar for a 30 oz bottle... at a bar.
• an hour of internet is only 1800 shillings, which is less than a dollar
• three samosas cost only 50 cents
• a pack of cigarettes is 1.25

That is all I've learned for now...