sad follow up from the drc

one of the cover stories on cnn today:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/07/27/congo.gorillas/index.html

its a bit scary how ironic it is because the four murdered gorillas were found sunday night, and i tracked monday morning in virungas (the same natl park) and heard nothing about them at that time, but the news was rather recent at the time. we tracked a different family however. its quite sad that the gorillas are being used as instruments in the rebel violence. its just so eerie that this made headline news right now seeing as how i was just there~ looks like things in the DRC are spiralling downhill fast, and tourist gorilla tracking will likely cease to be an option again soon. i feel bad for those that run the park as its a real blast to their mission and hope of steady wage. how painfully ignorant these rebel groups are...

dr. livingstone, i presume?

this week was so eventful i'll have to cut it down to my TOP TOP stories or i'd go on forever.

basically, im going to make a ridiculously long story short and say, we went gorilla tracking in Uganda at Mgahinga last Sunday, but (just my kinda luck) the gorillas decided to sprint back across the border to Rwanda, so we tried to catch up (which meant practically running the trail about 10k STRAIGHT up this volcano jungle with a man with a machete cutting our way and getting bugs and twigs on us, ducking constantly. got it?) but the gorillas crossed the border. then our local guides go so stressed that the rwandan border officials would see us on radar we had to RUN back through uganda. judging from their faces i think the rwanda cops would not have been very nice... as i dont think the people hear fear much anymore after all theyve been through...

so mission failed, we came back after 20k hike that we went really fast most of the time, battered and bruised with no clothes but those dirty ones on our back. so discouraging as 95% of the time the trackers find the gorillas and we were those lucky 5%. then warren, who works for Edirisa and is a local here who organized our trip for free out of kindness to us (we tipped him though), felt so badly that he got us a full refund AND planned an alternate gorilla tracking trip for us on the fly, that would guarantee us to see the gorillas the next day. we were already in kisoro and his tracking option was nearby and had permits available and was cheap. normally permits to gorilla trek in Uganda take a year in advance reservation to do, (the only way we could at mgahinga is cuz the gorillas from rwanda had randomly come to uganda side for a week)... so you're thinking... how did we get to go the next day without a permit in advance and for cheap right... the catch was: we would be tracking in the DR Congo~

so after debating (and telling matt of course), meeting with the guy who organizes gorilla trips into his country, the DRC, he calls himself Danny Gorilla (thats a WHOLE different story in itself) ~ he was such a great guy and so keen on helping tourism in tattered DRC. we knew we could trust him and we knew warren would arrange everything. so the six of us decided, alright, we're going to the heart of darkness tommorrow.

so the next day we ran into loads of problems, mostly financial confusion, and waiting for our passports to be stamped at the uganda side of the border there was a crap bathroom nearby that has awarded itself The Crappiest most Disgusting Bathroom I've Ever Seen In My Entire Life... or Will See Everywhere. sorry hope you're not eating, but there was poop smeared on the walls! i mean come ooon! are you kidding me?! who does that!???

so the border is so funny, i got a picture. literally a janky fence of twigs. its so funny. espcially when you think about what San Ysidro border looks like. on the DR Congo side, it was just so casual. this dude at a table just talking about the day with our guide while he stamped our passports. again, so funny when compared to San Ysidro.

the few people we came across int he congo were our wonderful guides at the parc national des virungas, who were such nice and wonderful men with rather intimidating weapons. everyone we met was so kind, and people there NEVER see white people as no one is advised to go there... the kids chased our car and grabbed on the bumper while our driver hit the gas, they chased us for so long. i got crazy pictures of them running and grabbing the car. it was so unreal. i felt like Oprah or someone famous. weird. the most shocking thing was after the hike, many kids were waiting around to ask us for our empty water bottles. as we handed the first one to them, they swarmed over it and tried to steal it from each other. they won't sell the bottle (they dont have recycling obviously) they'll likely use it at home. it was the epitome of: one man's trash is another man's treasure. it was such a shocking level of poverty i couldnt bring myself to think about anything else for a long while after, and even now.

i hope the drc gets better so people can feel more comfortable travelling there. all i can tell you is that, my experience was nothing but perfect and never for an instant did i feel unsafe. you have to understand that 99% of people in a war torn country are regular people who are victimized by the few rebels. they want money and tourism in their country and appreciate their simple farming lives. people falsely presume places like the DRC are so dangerous from top to bottom ...i guess i had myself also after reading the news. they say that the first few visitors to a country after its war are the ones that pave the way for the rest, which in turn helps the country rebuild itself. i'm happy to have been part of that process, and happy to tell you anything you want to know about going there yourself ~ even just for a day to track. i hope for the sake of the people, it regains stability. the DRC is quite an untapped resource of jungle.

the gorillas were awesome, i'lll try to post my pictures of the gorillas at some point and some adorable videos. needless to say, its an experience so awesome and fascinating its a bit inexplicable to those who haven't done it. we were literally within 3 feet of the gorillas the entire time, it was a family of 10, the Mapoa family which means silverback in teh local language. you can imagine how incredible the experience was based purely on the fact it costs (in safe places like uganda and rwanda) like 500 dollars and requires a reservation a year in advance. you absolutely must do this. my friend georgie's mom has done all of africa overland (from top to johannesburg) and said that of all the safaris and thigns shes done, gorilla tracking was the most thrilling experience she had. there are only 300-600 of mountain gorillas left in the wild, and to see a few of them in tehir completely native state is indeed thrilling.

theres two more stories i must tell which transpired in Kisoro, the border town adjacent to the DRC. we had to stay the night in kisoro with a) no soap for a shower after our day of gnarly trekking in mgahinga b) no change of CLOTHES meaning our muddied sweaty clothes we had to sleep in and wear again c) a very delirious exhausted mind trying to grapple with the fact we had to do it all over again the next day in the same clothes, a la groundhog day.

so sarah (a volunteer my age from australia) came a week ago and still hasnt received her luggage, so she has worn the same two pairs of clothes everyday. on top of that, we only had the clothes on us that sunday night to sleep in. she woke up at 5am that morning and had to go to the bathroom, so walked to the bathroom and in her delirium (and the darkness) slipped and fell in what appeared to be a puddle. she quickly realized it was a puddle of poo and pee, to put it nicely. she had poo and pee ALL over the ONLY jeans she had to wear the entire day trekking. i mean could that get any more inconvenient? so she freaked out a bit, and ran over to the hotel's clothing line, and STOLE some other muzungu's pair of pants!!!!!!! HAHAHA. so she wakes me up at 5:20am really stressed and tells me everything that happened in the last 20 minutes, i'm in my muddy jeans myself and she THEN spilled a water bottle on her bed, i've never laughed so hard. i made her go take a shower (without soap since we didnt have it!!) and the entire time i laughed out loud to myself. i decided it was the best travelling nightmare i'd ever heard. and sucks for the muzungu who lost her pants, but what can you do. desparate times call for desparate measures. we left the crap pair of jeans there in the hotel and never looked back. HAHAHA....

story number 2.
also occured the 1 night between trekking trips that we stayed in kisoro with 1 pair of clothes. we needed money desparately so we walked a couple blocks frmo our hotel to the bank ATM to see if we could withdraw money, which failed. but on our way there, these three pygmies ran up to us with instruments and started seranading us and following us the entire time to the bank. freeze for a second: do you know who the pygmies are? they are that tribe of REALLY REALLY short men and women with that funny aged look on their faces? theyre like mini people? anyway, google a pic of a pygmy. they live in this area we were in. anyway so they follow us with this strange wooden log with stringed instrument singing "Muzungu in congo. Muzungu in congo. Muzungu in congo. Muzungu in congo." over and over. i was delirious already but laughed so hard i was crying cuz that essentially means: "White man in congo. White man in congo." SOOOOOOOO NOT PC. georgie and i laughed saying it would be funny if we cruised around in london with a guitar following a black man saying "black man in london. black man in london." i think those would be our final words. OKAY~ now~ SIMULTANEOUSLY to these men serenading is, this large police truck drives by (with sirens, trust me it was a police truck) with like 30 people in the back standing up and dancing, and the car was blasting music. a POLICE car on a joy ride. i really thought i was in the twilight zone, so many bizarre things at once!!! kisoro left a rather odd impression on me.

anyway, a couple answers to lovely emails ive gotten but cant respond to just yet. i LOVE hearing from you guys i wish my darn internet was faster so i could respond, it takes 20 minutes to load a page!!!!! i love you all so much though and miss you and love hearing from you.

1) ang~ the women keep their hair short cuz they work the fields and its inconvenient because it grows so thick, so they typically wear wigs and weaves or wraps around their heads. it is tough at times to differenciate between the children's sexes but thankfully women only wear skirts or dresses here. which is why our nursery class says "good morning sir" instead of madam to me and georgie when we wear pants to class. :)
2) saf~ the medical system ive been meaning to say, is quite sad. 45% of babies born here die before the age of 5. i was holding a baby yesterday that was coughing so hard with snot everywhere, and that stat popped in my head again. the local teach inn coordinator came over yesterday late and told us "sorry, my cousin had twins and one of them died. i didnt mean to be late" we were like uhhh... who cares if youre late! but its quite normal. the head mistress at our second school, Joy, told us a week ago she has 5 girls but originally had 9 children, but all four boys died in their infancy. it usually happens at the hands of malaria. and no, women here dont get check ups, people dont even go to the hospital unless they're dying, and even then they cant get surgery unless they pay, which most people cant. our teach inn caretaker the incredible Noah, 20 years old, has probably the best job ni the village and gets paid 45,000 ugandan shillings a month. that's about 30 US dollars.... a month. the hospital visit and seeing sick people and hearing about health stats has been the most depressing part of my trip here. sometimes the women deliver babies and the doctors sell them to someone and bring back another dead baby and tell the mother her baby died. these things are commonplace. people also feign their death to collect the burial money.

by the way, if someone were to break in and steal from Teach Inn, the people in the village would chop his/her head off. martial law reigns in these parts. also, its perfectly fine if you catch your wife or husband cheating to walk in and chop his/her head off as well. makes you think twice before you err, doesnt it? its hard in kabaletown knowing if a local were to accidently hit me on his bike, people would go to his house and kill him for hitting a muzungu. they care so much about their reputation toe the western world its so sad. when women are beautiful here they say "you're pretty like a muzungu". it makes me want to throw up. its that colonial legacy in their minds, its so wrong for them to naturally think of themselves as somehow worth less or whatever. its so so so so hard for that reason being here and being white. we get chased everywhere, when we walk by kids run across fields just to greet the muzungu. i do truly hate it and dont think i could ever get used to it. i feel no more important than them and wish they didn't feel i was either.

teaching has gone well this week and i hate we will have to say by to the kids next week. i am dreading it so much. everytime they sing songs and clap around us i start crying already. you havent seen kids truly sing and dance until you've come here!

anyway, theres all my funny, sad, bizarre stories for the week!!!!!! hope you enjoyed reading this long one, i must go to dinner. i leave uganda for tanzania next thursday, i cant believe how fast it happened. i guess i'll have to post when i get to tanzania!

love,
suz

malaria and NEW PHONE NUMBER

i have it. just kidding~ i did not sleep a wink last night as i was achey, sick and had shivers. but fortunately, i think its a really bad cold and not malaria. i feel better today and i'm on medication. i probably got it from one of the kids seeing as how they dont use toilet paper or wash their hands, ever... we were going to track the gorillas today at mgahinga, but unfortunately we couldnt because the gorilla family is too close to the rwandan border, and if we hike out and they have crossed, we wont get to see them. so we are crossing our fingers that they will stay on the ugandan side so we can track them in mgahinga tomorrow. it would truly be an opportunity of a lifetime, as permits in other parks sell out almost a year in advance and typically cost upwards of 500 usd. This family of gorillas came back from Rwanda a few days ago so permits on the ugandan side were released, we just hope we can jump on this opportunity! it made the cover of Uganda's "New Vision" newspaper. they havent been on the ugandan side in a long long time.

anyway: very important.
i got a new phone number in uganda because i switched to another service provider, CelTel, because they have good reception at Teach Inn whereas MTN had none.
my new cell phone number is :
75 3427 662
(i think the country code is 0256 but dont quote me on that, look it up please...)

please call that number if you would like to get a hold of me! the old one is null and void!
love,
suz

a couple of quick photos of uganda so far!

the uploading time is horrendous so i had to shrink the files before posting them so i apologize if they are low quality!

1. at the equator
2. the view from the hill above our school
3. me with a couple of the children outside Teach Inn. the little one is named Adolescent and he is one of the teachers kids. he often wanders in and out of the classrooms. and yes his name is actually really 'Adolescent'!
4. jane, georgie, and i
5. some of the girls from the primary near Teach Inn. they are fascinated by my hair since none of them have any. :)

done with the first week of classes.

it literally took me a total of 30 minutes to load this page so i will write here instead of emailing anyone back.

we just finished our first full week of classes. let me explain how it all worked really quickly. "Teach Inn" is a dormitory that volunteers that teach english stay in for 10 dollars a night, and the money from each night is divided between the community (five to the community) and five to the maintenance of the dorm itself (the Teach Inn). there are 11 beds but it is rarely full of volunteers because its so remote and far from civilization and because it literally just started. it was started by some British businessmen who wanted to experiment parnering a nonprofit with a business so that it could help create jobs for the community and stimulate the local economy (e.g. we have a day caretaker and a night guard, who were given their jobs by the mere existence of teach inn). now, it was built adjacent to a primary school, where the volunteers were to teach. since there have been about 6 teachers at a time, they have taught at 2 or 3 to a classroom (so as to maximize the amount of classes everyone gets to teach in, and to help since most of us are teaching for the first time and don't know the local language). in our case, there are 8 volunteers, and if we were to all teach at that primary, we'd literally only have about 4 hours each of teaching per week, which is a waste of our capabilities and presence.

furthermore, channel four in Britain, one of the four non-cable channels taht everyone gets, is going a 4-show special on Teach Inn that it has already filmed in March and April, and will air hopefully thsi september. for obvious reasons, they expect the volunteers at teach in to be at capacity after the show airs. (we MUST somehow get a hold, a videotape or get it on pay per view, of this series, since it is right where i am right now!)

SO, there are 8 of us at the moment, and we thought it necessary to expand to a nearby primary school so that we can anticipate the influx of volunteers after september, and that teach new volunteer can be accomodated by a classroom when they get here. so Georgie (my teaching partner), me, Cliondha and Joe (the american joe that is identical to Wayne Rooney of manchester united, so all the kids call him ROONEY), have been the four going to the new primary school. we went on tuesday and met with the head mistress, Joy, who was so happy to hear we'd want to teach there. almost half her school has fled to teach inn's first primary school because of word spreading about our presence there! so it'll be nice to get her students back. she was very welcoming, but it does require a lot of politics to convince them we are coming to help them. (you see, being a teacher in uganda is a very undesirable job, and it is so incredibly weird to them that we want to teach there and not get paid). anyway, joy and the p1 teacher Annah gave us lunch and brought meat, and meat is only used on very special occasions here, so we knew that they felt happy we had come.

at the new school, we are the first white people that most of the kids (and even the teachers) have ever seen. earlier this week, we met a local 80 year old woman from the village we work in that had never seen a white person in her life. we were the first whites she had EVER SEEN. it is very very very very very weird to watch people's initial reactions to you when you know this. the kids swear we are a different species. and everyoen constantly asks us what we eat, i dont know if they think we eat cardboard or something but it is so fascinating to them.

the walk to the new primary school is absolutely unbelievable, and no words could do it justice. its the best walk to 'work' i'l ever have in my life! its about 45 minutes up and down rolling hills of banana trees and cows and goats and all sorts of different crops (a staple crop here is matooke, it is good, a bit bland however).

we've agreed to teach on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at the new school, as the four of us are teaching at the first primary school on Mondays and Fridays. So, Georgie and i are teaching p1 (which encompasses the nursery and preschool age babies), p5 (about 12-10 years old) and p6.
they have learned english horribly, because they just memorize entire phrases and have no idea what the individual words are or mean. for instance, we walk in and say "good morning how are you" and the kids will say "iamfinethankyoumadamhowareyou?" like its one monotone word. the FUNNIEST of everything is when the head mistress tells them "please sit down" they say "iamsittingdown". HAHA. is that really necessary?

anyway, teaching the p1 babies is cute, we literally can only draw with them and sing alphabet and other songs. they are just too young. then p5 and p6 are farther along, but still have much trouble constructing sentences. we tried to get them to write using different adjectives, and the assignment was to write things like "I am tall, I am smart" etc. People are all over the place with their levels within the class. some kids would write things like "I am in Ugandan" ~ totally wrong ~ and another wrote "Suzy is the tallest woman in the class. Suzy is the cleverest woman in the class" which is very advanced.

anyway, we are enjoying teaching and the kids just adore playing with us as we bring them soccer balls, etc. they dont have any toys and they use plastic pags tied together with rubber bands for their soccer balls. they are very poor and this can get frustrating when walking on the streets of kabale, when they say "Hi how are you, give me money." You just can't, because then they and their 50 friends will follow you everywhere.

anyway, we love the new school and are excited for the next two weeks. the kids are so cute, particularly because their names are SOOOO strange. i dont know if i'd told you this before, but the kids have both a rukiga name and an english name. but since their parents dont know english, they generally pick an english word that sounds cool but has a very strange meaning. here are some of the best LITERALLY real first names of children in my classes:
Evidence, Witness, King, Adolescent, Active, Desire, Obvious, Sunday Talent, Friday Witness, god there are so many more. I have yet to meat the child called 'Task Force' but apparently he exists. That one is by far the funniest. :)

must go to a meeting, but there's teach inn for ya! now you have an idea of what i'm up to at school!
love,
suz

absolutely livid

this is the first (AND hopefully the last) rant i will have in this blog. i am in rwanda for the night with five other volunteers/english teachers and we went to a local chain supermarket here in the capital, which by the way, is surprisingly wealthy compared to kampala. i notice in an aisle rather large silver cans marked USA, which immediately worried me. upon closer look, below USA it said US Aid, and there was the classic drawing of two hands held together. Somehow the bureaucracy has reached a point that the rich owners of supermarkets can usurp the vegetable oil that the US DONATES to IDP and refugee camps and SELL it for 3400 francs whilst the poor suffer as a result. i can honestly tell you for the past 10 minutes i have been so irate i am beside myself. i took pictures of the cans in the supermarket for you to see, i only wish i could post them here. I am absolutely outraged. I knew about the level of corruption of course, but that was like so in-your-face it was like laughing in the face of the US. i'd like to say maybe 30% of what the US donates actually reaches its intended recipients free of charge. the rest goes to effing rich supermarket moguls who conduct shady deals to sell it off themselves at an enormous - meaning 100% - profit.

enough. onto more important things

i went to the genocide memorial today which as you can assume, was absolutely devastating, draining, eye opening, educating, and all together worthwhile experience for every human. it was VERY well put together. there were mass graves right there on site for all those who died in the capital, kigale, alone. guess how many were in the mass graves i saw? 250,000 people. thats right. less than a quarter of those killed in total. the pictures, the skulls, the bones, the clothing were graphic, and horrific, but tolerable when you could grasp the humanity behind it. the two parts that hit me the most were first, there was a room full of clothing gathered from the slaughtered bodies and there was one article that struck me. DISCLAIMER: do NOT read the following sentence PLEASE if you don't want to hear about a rather graphic image. i'm serious. Ok, this article was a woman's skirt, and there was distinctly a ton of blood specifically in her crotch area~ this was demonstrative of the fact she was most likely raped and had her genitals mutilated before being killed. they were so dehumanized before dying it is unbelievable.

the other part that struck me, less graphic but graphic nonetheless, was an entire floor dedicated to the most innocent victims: the children. walls and walls of photos of these children, 8 years old, even tiny babies, newborns. the pictures were of them as they were alive, of course, but next to each one there was a plaque like so:

Name: Rebecca
Favorite food: Cassava
Last words: Run mommy!!
Age: 8
Cause of death: Chopped by machete

now i realize that is incredibly dark but the only purpose of me going to a memorial like this is to share it with you, share it with everyone, so thats what i'm doing. i wish you could have seen all these babies faces. they were babies, they were children, they were innocent, but they were tutsi, and for that killed, mutilated, even raped.

there was also sections about other genocides: that in the balkans by milosovic, khymer rouge in cambodia, and of course the armenian genocide in turkey.

the part i cried the hardest was when i read this quote, emblazoned in gigantic letters on the museum wall:

"when they said, 'never again', after the Holoucaust, was it meant for some people and not for others?" -Apollon Kabahizi

its true that the world stood back and watched. it happened in 1994, but the genocide massacres occured until 1997 in rwanda. that is exactly a decade.

all i have to say is: learn about darfur. if you think 'never again,' you can watch it unfold even today...

but if the same system that carelessly sells for a profit the charity food meant for jobless IDPs in refugee camps, you better believe thats the same system that fails to find out what is really happening in darfur and thus steps in time and time again once its too late. i can only hope that like obama and hillary have been saying, they are willing to use force in darfur. i just dont think we have until 2008 to wait for that to happen.

suz


p.s. update: will be teaching all next week with Georgie (we are paired together) and we will be running the classroom with an iron fist. just kidding but we might be teaching at anotehr school in the area, to tell you the truth i havnt gotten to teaching yet, but i definately will be this whole week. we just had a lot of learning and preparing to do at Teach Inn first. i cant wait to get back to my innocent village of nyakasiru where life is so simple (but sadly without phone or internet...well i guess thats why its simple). so hopefully i will have wonderful stories about the children next week! and by the way, they are fabulous children. i've been playing with them everyday. (i'm so sore right now from jumping rope with the little girls). much love~!

maybe somehow absolutely okay

I'm going to rwanda today!!! to kigale the capital. my bus leaves in literally half an hour and we should be there in 2.5 hours. so icant write much yet~

warren (of organize-your-face fame) walked by us this morning at Edirisa and goes "Ready for Genocide!?" the perkiest way you could imagine. people here have dark humor.

i dont know if i mentioned this before, but noah, our caretaker in Nyakasiru (the tiny farming village where Teach Inn is) was kidnapped by the LRA and escaped. He escaped with two other friends and they got recaptured. he is 20 years old and the smartest most incredible guy ever. i'll bring many stories of him soon.

((also, dad, warren is asking me every 10 minutes about if he could study abroad in america and meet an american professor by e-mail or something. he is VERY smart and fluent in english (hence why he knows words like 'umbilical cord') but i was wondering if you could put him in touch with some professor in business or international students forum or something at UCSD or even if i can put him in touch with you. he says every time he e-mails US universities or professors they think he is a scam or a junk email. please get back to me soon on this. ive never met someone so eager to learn in my life))

Nyakasiru is unbelievably beautiful. I mean its truly not fair for you all. I wish I could post pictures. Oh I believe there's a picture of my group at edirisa. (www.edirisa.org). Check the Teach Inn blog there, as miha posts things and pictures from time to time of Nyakasiru, where teach in is located.

Where we are staying... the Teach Inn... is really really nice. i mean we even have a few lightbulbs that run on a solar panel. we have pit toilets, no sinks and have to boil all our water. but cpompared to the villagers, we are millionaires. it is kind of frustrating for me because iwould just assume live like them, but i understand many volunteers (with the exception of my wonderful group of volunteers) need 'nicer' accomodations. anyway, the kids will stare at us for sooo long while we are jkust sitting on our porch. there will be like 50 of them (picture a class about to take a class picture, fcing the camera) but facing us as we do things like wash our clothes. they are FASCINATED. i feel like an animal in a zoo. they look at us like we are absolutely not humans, or at least not the same species as them. one of the girls walks up to me and goes "WHITE SKIN (pointing to me) BLACK SKIN! (pointing to herself)" and then she giggled. its so funny how not-PC peopel are here. i like it that way, but its weird getting used to.

last thing, and the best story i have to deliver as of yet.....

at Teach Inn, because people know the muzungus live there (white people), and our village (most villages) runs basically on Martial Law, we have a night guard. Our night guard has two spears, i mean real spears, and a machete, and stands in front of Teach Inn every night. Here's the best part.... his name, his actual birth name, is JUSTICE. HAHAHA!!! So we have a night guard named Justice who bears two spears and a machete guarding us every night.

write more later! off to rwanda to see the genocide memorial. this is going to be reaaaaally sad. i might see the hotel de milles collins as well (aka. hotel rwanda, itself). im going with five other volunteers. i organized the trip myself with warrens help:)

oh yes, i went jogging with a woman named Joan from the secondary school yesterday (around 17 yrs old). she was so good at english and as i was running (we get so made fun of for running) she just joined me. its really funny cuz the women here dont wear bras and only wear skirts, so she wore a skirt and a t-shirt and barefoot as we were running. haha!!!!

love,
suz
p.s. andrew, i have yet to discover what they have 'too many of' here, but i will get back to you shortly on that, as we know that EVERY place in the world goes overboard on SOMETHING

organize your face

so ugandans speak english so funny. its like they were taught more advance words than simple words. warren - of the bukinga tribe of which im learning part of the language because its what they speak here - says "ORGANIZE YOUR FACE!" instead of "smile!" when taking a picture. HAHA!!!! oh and he also said "ladies should be sure not to wear shirts so short that reveal your umbilical cord." HAHAHAHA

anyway, the internet is slow, sporadic and only on the weekends. havnt gotten to the school yet but we are in kabale, half an hour away. we will go there today. so much has happened so il'l just give you a couple quick stories of all of them.

the markets here are huge, so many fruits and vegetables (and smoked tilapia for mom and dad). everyone here's SO HEALTHY . i feel im eating the healthiest i ever have. fresh fruits huge avocados, jack fruits, passion fruits, bananas and pygmy bananas (haha they're mini bananas!). but yeah, much healthier.

and yes madeleine, the african sunsets are stunning:)

my team is 2 brit girls, 2 brit boys, 2 irish girls, and joe and i, the token americans that get made fun of 24/7. they keep askign us to wear our Bush t-shirts. i just cant seem t find mine. juuust kidding~ on that note i saw a ugandan in Kampala wearing a john kerry campaign t-shirt! hahaha. none of us knew each other before, which i think is much better. its a fun group, lots and lots and lots of laughter.

Edirisa.org is the nonprofit we work with here. it means window. its run by a white man miha the slovenian, whoe married to an ugandan bukinga woman here, a beautiful interracial couple. they have two kids who will grow up spaeking slovenian, bukinga, kiswahili and english. We are staying at their hostel on the weekends because we'll be in town so we cn get internet (our school is half an hour from here and remote remote remote). tehir hostel is 2 bucks a night uSD. pretty dece

it is absolutely beautiful here. the birds are huge and beautiful. it is rolling lush green hills this really is 'the pearl of africa' and 'the new zealand of uganda.' they call whitepeople 'muzungus' . its ilke gringo or haole. hah. anyway might go gorilla tracking in a couple weeks, migtht go to rwanda this weekend to see the genoicide memorial (its an hour away from kabaletown where i am). definately will go to Lake Bunyoni with my group to canoe and trek. giotta be cautious when taking pictures so as not to be disrespectful. tourists often treat the locals like animals or like a peculiar phenomenon in that way. its sad but they just walk right up and snap pictures of them. so i will take sporadic pictures of them but just the ones i come to know. and of course, the kids when i meet them:)

i never want to leave.im sorry but its true, ugandans are so much happier than americans. i mean HAPPY and content if you were to try to explain depression to them they wouldn't even get the concept. i think its because they live in such community with each other. six kids for each wife (haha and six wives for each man.... just kidding, but seriously sometimes). kids everywheer people everywheere. just happy and co0ntent. i never want to come back but i have a fiance at home:) by the way happy five year anniversery today matty!i love you!!!!!!

moral of the story is: its getting better and better here by the day, even though i cant imagine it getting much better...and it just does. i want so badly, actually im a bit desparate, for all you to come here and spend some time with ugandans, work with them and live with them if you can. it sucks cuz you cant possibly conceive or visualize what it is youre missing out on by not coming here and not knowing these friends here in uganda and their simple joy. we debate coming to africa because of money, time, and other restraints. ugaandans just dont operate that way here, and once you get here you will never look back at your life the same way....people always say it about africa its almost cliche. but its true and they're right and you should listen to them! <3

i leave you with..... some bukinga language from the rukinga tribe
aghandi = how are you?
nige = i'm fine
hehe

begin teacher training tommorrow and teaching friday. will update on that next week. much love

Love,
the suz

backpacks.

i have like two seconds ot write this at the internet cafe. this mite be the last time i write for a week since we are going 8 hours overland to kabale and our destination town, nyakasiru. you wont find it on a map. we met up with a couple volunteers from teach inn last night, american girls, who raved about everything (except the bed bugs). i guess the children are incredible. i hadnt gotten them any gifts yet so i decided i wanted to get them backpacks. i went to a store nearby and found them for 5,000 shillings (2.5 bucks) so i got 15 backpacks. the cashier guy thought i was crazy. its not nearly enough for all the children but at least itll help a few.

we met up with an irish girl cliodnha (pronounced cliona) ~ she's older, about 36, between careers. and then this adorable english girl in her mid twenties Georgie that could seriously be a runway model shes so pretty. everyone has different reasons for coming here which is great. makes for a dynamic group.

the best thing i found out from the american girls is that we won't need an alarm clock there. want to know why? because every morning, about an hour before school, the kids all go to the school and sing songs together. so we will be woken up everyday by the little african singers! isn't that just the best thing you've heard all day!??

we also met up with the i-to-i rep- miha. he's from slovenia and such a hippy i loved him right away. so hilarious. (something about these balkans area guys like my fiance. haha). cliona accidently called him a croat and he got really pissed. reminded me of you and russ matty

its raining right now and thus ridiculously muggy. my last hot shower tommorrow morning so aprovechare. off to have a dinner with the newly arrived members of the group. they are clearly intimidated by how native i am to uganda already HAHA. tommorrow the 8 hour drive to our destination which will be brutal because we will be packed like sardines and the roads and cars are pretty nasty so pray for us or at least do a little rain dance so it wont rain tommorrw!
xoxo

much love,
suz

taxis smog and jet lag.

good things and bad things.

good thing: I exchanged my money - $144 USD - to Ugandan shillings the night I got here, and I never counted what they gave me. I realized I had a ton of money in my wallet later yesterday, so I counted out and determined they had originally given me around 360,000 Ugandan shillings for my 144 dollars. That was a very bad mistake on their part. I basically made the equivalent of almost $200 US dollars by accident! Isnt that awesome?!!???

bad thing: the smog here is horrendous. you can chew the air. the traffic is worse than the smog. the drivers IN the traffic are the worst of all. i have to close my eyes in the taxis because i could literally breathe on the car next to mine its so close. only a few taxis have seatbelts and there is a thick coat of dirt on the seats since the windows are always open.

good thing: had an amazing Indian dinner last night (thanks to Lonely Planet) with my friend Joe (who is the next good thing). Had a masala dosa and naan, he had a curry and we both had a couple "Nile Special" beers which are lagers. They're decent. The entire meal cost about 17,000 shillings. That's about 9 US dollars TOTAL. isn't that awesome?!

good thing: Joe!!! My american friend from wisconsin who is on my program and also arrived early. I've been going every where with him and he is my body guard. We get along great and its SO great having a guy around. It's just not wise for a western girl to walk around here alone. .. its been such a blessing.

good thing: Joe and I went to a janky bar Al's Bar last night and played foosball and pool and had cheap beer - the Nile Special and Bell Lager. The bell lager kinda tastes like lager that someone threw a bunch of coins into i cant explain it, it was metallic tasting...but we had fun and killed time.

bad thing: At Al's Bar, besides a few other expats, I was the only female non-prostitute there. that is to say... every single african woman there was a prostitute. Culturally, ugandan women don't go to bars... unless they are prostitutes. its really sad to observe. some of the girls look fourteen, but i imagine theyve been working that job since twelve. there were so many prostitutes and so little demand for them. much like most things here: tons of taxi drivers but not enough demand for them. everyone is desperate to work. :(

good thing: Joe and I looked like a couple being two westerners, boy and girl. it worked in our favor because a) joe doesnt get hit on by the pushy prostitutes and b) i dont get hit on by the ugandan men. so everyone's happy... especially matt! :-)

guess thats it for now:) i'm really nervous to teach english next week so im going to go do some preparation. im really excited to get out of the city. they call the region where i'm going the "new zealand of uganda" (matt will appreciate that). i guess its absolutely beautiful. love and miss you all.
Love,
Suz

almost forgot:

i got a ugandan SIM card for my US phone. it was only 2 bucks. here is the number though i dont know how to use it yet. i believe if i receive calls from the US it is much cheaper but i cant be sure.
you might want to ask cingular (mom), and it at least makes local calls cheap for me here.

the telephone # is: 077 331 2316

greetings from kampala

Hi everyone!
First things first, to everyone who wrote letters for the journal matt made for me, i cannot possibly express how much it means to me. i cried my eyes out before i even read the letters because a) i am engaged to the most incredible guy in the world and b) just seeing all your names at the end of each letter made me so happy. i saved reading them for the plane ride which was a good idea although i cried a ton when i read them on the plane. but good happy tears. thanks for the encouragement and support i needed to get here. i truly couldn't do it without you all and after i read that journal and im sitting on the plane to kampala, i thought to myself for the first time ever: i am truly 100% happy with my life and truly content and at peace. i have matt, i have my friends and family, and im on a plane to africa to live out my dream.

done with the cheese:)

kampala is a cool city. its much like tijuana in some ways of course not as hilly. but the smells remind me of TJ - the smog, the trash. the people are very charming most of them speak swahili and english as their second language. their english (with their swahili accents) can be hard to understand, as is mine for them. this guy from i-to-i, the nonprofit program we are with, Joe, also arrived on my flight three days early so i have a bodyguard to roam the city with for the next couple days. which makes a big difference as i am so new here and a girl. we went to the craft market today - tons of stalls with african crafts just like you'd picture them. i got a skirt and sandals and a head scarf. when in rome you know. you can still see repairs and revitalization of the city taking place as it was shelled out from the war with tanzania in the 80s. Kampala is uganda's capital, and the parliament building is literally across the street from our hotel. security is tight, lots of guys with AK 47s. I feel like a millionaire here because there are 1800 ugandan shillings per US dollar. Joe and i were laughing because I just pulled 400,000 shillings out of the bank. This morning we went to a restaurant and had our choice of the local food: "beef boil, goat boil." ew. i dont even want to see that. there is in fact fine print in my "when in rome" philosophy.

much love from kampala~
suz