leaving nyakasiru.

i dont even know where to start because perhaps the last week was the most eventful week so far and the most emotional...i am in kampala at the moment, we drove here all the way from kabale (6 hrs) today, and i fly out at 2am for nairobi and then on to kilimanjaro international airport, so i will be in moshi tomorrow, late morning. sarah (from australia, another volunteer) is with me as she flies out today, and ladoki (another volunteer) travelled with us back but has left already. we were the first 3 of the 8 total volunteers to leave teach inn and its village nyakasiru as some are staying for 5 or 6 weeks and we all did 4. i have fast internet but the place is closing soon unfortunately...anyway. here i go.

i hope so far you have understood the following terms
nyakasiru: the tiny beautiful village we lived at for a month, very remote. where teach inn and the primary schools are. its half an hour drive from the town of Kabale where we went for internet on the weekends.
teach inn = the volunteer house where i stay which is right right adjacent to:
ryabirenge primary = the primary school teach inn was first built to help
bukoranyi primary = the one that my group has expanded our teaching to, being the first volunteers to go there, and its a 35 min walk from teach inn and the ryabirenge primary.
generation 4 = my group of 8 volunteers is Teach Inn's generation four, meaning the fourth group of volunteers to come to teach inn since it began in april. so as you can tell, this is a brand new operation. generation 1 was the founders...obviously... those who built teach inn.

my classes were the following, and i taught them all with georgie:
P1 - basically kindergarten but even younger at times, i taught at Ryabirenge (the only class i taught there)
P1 - taught this also at Bukoranyi, which also included the nursery babies. so cute. (preschool age)
p5 & P6 - like fifth and sixth grade i guess you could say, we taught these two at Bukoranyi also and our p5 and p6 were so smart and wonderful.

As generation four, we spent our month really trying to get to know the community after discovering that many of the parents and community members (though not the kids as they saw the volunteers regularly) were a little confused as to why we came and why they never see the volunteers. generations 1 thru 3 had the habit of teaching during the week but taking 3 day weekends to do tourist things in Uganda, which is fine, but it meant at the cost of appeasing the local community of Nyakasiru. but anyway, we walked around the community greeting people in their local language, getting to know families and the Head Master of our school and those on the Teach Inn committee from the village. noah, our caretaker, 20 yrs old, i grew so close with him i bawled when i left at the thought i might never see him again. and Hannington, our coordinator from the village, had the most amazing family. its crazy how he had the best job in the village but still no electricity for his family and was still soooo poor. and justus, our night guard. his daughter Active (four years old) was the cutest girl ive ever seen in my entire life hands down. i gave justus two backpacks for active and his son collins, who was in my p1 at Ryanbirenge. Justus was so happy and thankful he ran home in the dark and brought back his wife, and she ran back and hugged me thanking me over and over---then, she brought us a big thing of eggs the next morning and milk from their cows! they was so happy i couldnt believe it. just simple backpacks that weere 1$US were so unaffordable to them, 99% of the kids dont have them and use worn plastic bags for their books. forget the statistic that 2/3 of the world works for $1 or $2 a day. justus works for like 20 cents a day i bet...maybe less. lastly, Moses, the head of the committee, is the richest guy in the village (he even has a car). Warren, who works for Edirisa, the nonprofit in Kabale, supports NINE children through primary and secondary school, and he's very poor himself, but not as poor. So i gave him 9 backpacks. he said all the kids cried they were so happy! i never thought backpacks could be so exciting!

As a result of our efforts to get to know the community, we were rewarded. They embraced us so much. We reached out to Bukoranyi Primary to teach there, and got to know the staff there and be understood by them, and I even went to their PTA meeting last week and spoke some rukiga to them while they laughed at me! haha.

but we were so embraced as a group, community members would come to our teach inn and drop off eggs, cabbages, pineapples, potatoes, bananas, and fresh milk from their cows. we had a family with six kids over for dinner and cooked a feast for them, all 8 of them plus Noah, Hannington and Justus. the family said it was the best day of their life. Kenneth, the head master at Ryabirenge, had us for dinner, as did Moses. Moses has never invited a group of volunteers over until us, so that was a huge honor. And the church woman's group cooked us a feast as well. We had two dinners on wednesday night! (this is all in the past week by the way). We ate their local food with a smile on our face, no matter how different it was, and they appreciated it so much. They feel hurt when the past volunteers didnt even try the food or showed their distaste for it. Food is their culture! they are farmers! you have to love it. and plus, i thought it was good anyway, i'll tell you all about it later, and maybe cook you some chappati:)

but down to emotions here since that was the bottom line. the community had embraced us so much, they and we felt as friends. they cried as we left, noah said he cried for the third time in his entire life, and his first time since being caretaker at teach inn. hannington and kenneth, grown accomplished men, cried as well.

monday, when Kenneth had us over for dinner, his children (whom all attend Ryabirenge and we know all of them well) ate with us, as did Sarah, a girl i was very close with from my P5 class at Bukoranyi. I was curious why she stayed for dinner with their family, even though she was friends with the kids, i figured she'd be with her family for dinner. but she just sat near me as i guess its pretty exciting maybe to have dinner with one of your muzuungu teachers and she was my favorite student anyway~ shes so bright and beautiful and wonderful, she knows english so well, and she is 9 years old in p5 and all her girl friends in p5 are 13!! and im close with her friends to. those were definately my girls:) but especially sarah.

all the kids walked us home in the dark from kenneths that night and sarah and i were holding hands. kenneth turned around and said to me (referring to sarah) "did you know that her parents are dead?" ...i said no of course, and asked if it was disease. "they died of AIDS. she has no siblings either. shes all alone. she just lives with her poor grandparents." i felt like crying right then but she was holding my hand and i just could tell why she was so attached to me and i felt so attached to her. she walked me home and we talked lots and laughed and when i let go of her hand and said bye for the night i cried so much, cried so hard the volunteers had to comfort me so intensely. i just hated it, my brightest student with no chance of paying for secondary school (high school) even though she's smart enough to get in. this beautiful girl with not a single family member but elderly grandparents, no siblings while every child in the village usually has 8 siblings. it costs 30$ US a year for secondary school, which is nothing to us, but millions to them you see.

wednesday, at our primary out at Bukoranyi and my last day teaching there, Joy, the head mistress there, had all the kids gather and do traditional dances to say goodbye to me. it was so beautiful and impromptu as i kind of told her last minute i was leaving. then i had tea with all of the teachers which was so sweet of them. i did feel so loved but so blessed also.

yesterday, thursday, that fateful day that the first of us had to actually leave (Ladoki, Sarah and I). it may have been one of the most emotional days of my life. first of all, Sarah from P5 (the one whos story i just told) came by Teach Inn while i was eating breakfast all dressed up and not in her school clothes, and i asked her why she wasnt at her school Bukoronyi and she started crying saying that i was leaving. i gave her the gift i had for her- the backpack - and we put a couple other things in there for her too. she was crying and we gave her breakfast and she wouldnt have ever left, but i had Kenneth write her a note so she could go to class late at Bukoronyi and not get whacked for it. so i sent her off so i could pack. Kenneth and the community threw us a HUGE goodbye celebration at Ryabirenge. Justus our night guard and his family put on their sunday best and everyone dressed so nicely i actually started crying when i saw Active walk down in her little dress. (Justus also demanded i take many pictures with him, his wife and their kids because i gave them backpacks- i still couldnt believe how happy they were about the backpacks) They even invited the superintendent of the area who spoke to us. Kenneth, Hannington and Moses gave speeches that were so complimentary i couldnt believe it, i felt so humbled even because i felt so undeserving. Moses even said that though we were technically the fourth generation, to Nyakasiru we were the first generation - the first time they really really really were to miss volunteers and felt as friends with us, and felt they understood us. The children dressed up and danced for us the best of their traditional dances (i got some on video), while we sat there and cried so hard. they asked one of us to speak and the volunteers all pushed me up so i stood up, thanked hannington, noah and moses and said "but thanks mostly to the kids whove changed us forever" and started crying so hard i had to sit back down and end my speech. it was just so emotional for all of us. so then they gave us gifts, these woven baskets by the community women. so beautiful. and the ceremony ended. but every single child stayed and crowded around teach inn to wait for us to leave. the aforementioned Sarah from P5 at the other school - showed up to say goodbye to me, all dressed up again. She was crying still and holding my hand. so i hugged her and the taxis came and we hugged the other volunteers goodbye and got into the taxi as all the kids gathered around. we drove off and the kids chased our taxi for so long screaming our names and crying and waving. i got such amazing pictures of them around our taxi running in their school uniforms. i felt like we were literally being ripped away from them.

then i screwed up the whole thing by forgetting my purse so we had to go back (so anti-climactic we were crying and laughing at the same time) and i ran up to teach inn and grabbed my purse while the left-behind volunteers and noah laughed at me, but georgie told me to look over at the lawn, and there sarah from p5 was sitting by herself, bawling her eyes out. i walked over to her and held her and kissed her and said it would be okay but she couldnt even look up. i left then for good. as i ran back to the taxi, the other volunteers yelled : goodbye suzy marinkovich!!!! haha. and by the way, i talked to hannington and i will be paying for Sarah's secondary school, though she doesnt know that yet. its so hard to get money out to them as they are so remote, and she wont be at secondary school for two years, but i'll probably start paying her primary fees now. shes so smart i dont want her to lose the chance of going to high school. you cant save every child, but i knew if i walked away from sarah without making that promise to her than i would be the most heartless person in the world - and i wouldve learned nothing from her. im sure she thought the backpack was more than she'd ever received in her life, but i love the most to think about how happy she will be to go to high school. more than that, i love that though she was sad, she felt loved by me, so loved she was so destroyed when i left, and even though she was sad, i was glad to have loved her for the time i did because i know she will always think of me. i dont think you could ever understand the depths of an orphan's loneliness and feelings of being unloved until you get to know one like sarah, and watch them as you leave. i promised a lot of people i would come back to uganda to see them at nyakasiru, but i didnt believe myself until i said it to her. i have to go back, i owe it to her. we owe orphans so much love they never got and i was lucky to love one of them. i have to change the subject now because ive started crying again...

needless to say, i think i'll always cry when i think of all the kids, but especially sarah. i feel like shes my daughter in a way, and i'd never say that but no one calls her their daughter anyway so why not. i know i love her like one and parts of me think i will always, always cry when i think of her. im so destroyed to leave here. but, i just have to lean on knowing i will come back, even if years from now, i will.

suz

this is justus's wife, the baby and the one and only ACTIVE!


us volunteers after the ceremony with our plaques (i forgot to mention we planted trees)


the men in our life: from left: kenneth, justus, noah, hannington


this is my famous sarah:


i took this picture from the backseat of the taxi as we drove away: