Happy Child

Sunday 17 June 2012

On this day, after church in Mukono, I went with the "Happy Child" group to visit a bunch of kids. Like I mentioned in previous posts, Happy Child in Mukono involves playing with a group of kids who are orphaned and/or who have gone through traumatic experiences in life. This group does not have money for school lunch so some of our volunteers go to play with them and distract them during lunch time.

On Sundays, after church in Mukono, some of us go and visit some of the kids. This was the last Sunday for several of our volunteers before they go back home. (Holly, Brianne)

Holly leading the kids in a song.

Brianne and the kids

Some of the Mukono Happy Child Team 

Wednesday 20 June 2012  

 "More Happy Child" 

Nomataba Village Orphanage

In a village about 15 minutes away from Lugazi, there is a concrete building which used to be a junior high but is now the location where a few saintly women run an orphanage for five children. The government does not aid orphanages in any way so if no one wants to make small orphanages, there is nowhere for the kids to go. A local man with a big heart helps fund this orphanage. 

This picture shows the profiles of four of the five children when they first arrived at the orphanage. 

Top Picture: This is Agessa. Before coming to the orphanage, he was severely beaten by his mother who had mental problems. In the picture, his face is bruised and his eyes are pretty much swollen shut. 

Left Picture: This is Dina. She did not have parental supervision (One of her parents died of HIV if I remember correctly and the other could not care for her) Dina wandered the streets of her neighborhood begging for food. People in the village were afraid she would be raped so they took her to this orphanage.

Bottom Picture: This is Ketra. Ketra was born prematurely and was neglected. You can see the flies and sores on her face in the picture.

Right Picture: This is Betty. She was abandoned in a stone quarry where a worker found her took her to authorities. 

Not Pictured above: Earnest was recently brought to the orphanage.

Chelsea holding Betty

Brianne holding Agessa (he really likes her) and Ketra in the white dress.

Earnest. he is the newest addition to the bunch

Betty in the black dress, Brianne holding Agessa. When we left, Agessa walked Brianne to the road and they both had a hard time saying goodbye.  This was Brianne/Holly's last stop before heading to the airport to fly home. The kids have grown to really like them. 

Brianne, Agessa, Ketra, Holly holding Dina

Julia in the background, Chelsea tickling Betty (According to the social worker, someone is currently working on papers to try and adopt Betty)

Holly and Dina having fun

Brianne, Agessa, Ketra

As a program evaluator, my job is to determine how well our programs are working and how we can improve them. Happy Child is going to be difficult in some ways because, if the mission of the program is to help distressed children find happiness and self-worth, it is difficult to find quantifiable measurements of those things. I am open to any suggestions if there are any social workers reading this. I asked the social worker who helps these kids if there was even any value in having us come and play with the kids. She said that that was exactly what they needed. She told me that the kids are very happy when our volunteers hold them and play with them.

I was very happy to see that these five kids are loved and cared for by so many people. Their "Mom" (a big lady who cares for them/ cooks for them) does not have much time to spend with them since cooking and cleaning here take pretty much all day.

Having spent some time in Russian orphanages, I see a pretty huge difference in the happiness level of these kids. I think there are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the personalized attention and physical contact that these kids receive. Just look at the before/after pictures and you can see a huge transformation in them. If only all orphans had people who love them.

Neighborhood Happenings

Mid June(ish)


Several of the neighborhood boys want to learn how to play guitar. If you can play guitar here, you can actually get a pretty good job fairly easily. It is a fairly rare instrument to play and most churches pay guitarists to play.

On this day, Stewart and I split the group in half. Stewart taught a lesson on solo improvisation to the more advanced boys while I worked on basic chords and strumming patterns with the beginners. They are learning very fast.

Stewart and Lane teaching blues progression with C, F, G chords

Pictured here, (clockwise from the top) Stewart, Eric, James, Lane, Joseph, Julius, and Isaac

A little guitar-harmonica blues jam session in Lugazi Uganda.

 Talent Show 
12 June 2012


We had a little talent show in our house on the night of 12 June 2012 before the first wave of volunteers began leaving. It was fun to see a different side of everyone.

The Married Couple, Liz and Nate Gardner performing a funny aerobics routine. With the help of Whitney's (I think) and Stewart's legs. 

On the last night before she left, Olivia broke out the bubbles and jump rope to  use with the neighborhood children. This is right outside our front gate. See if you can spot my favorite little neighborhood boy. More often than not, we see him either naked on his front porch or close to naked. Other times, we find him wearing a dress or whatever clothing his mom puts him in that day. When he yells at us as we walk by, his little grin gets so big it looks like it will rip his mouth open. ( in this picture he is wearing blue underwear...and that's all)

Fun with bubbles

Here is Trevor, there will probably be many more pictures of him by the end of the summer. It is hard not to laugh as I walk past his house every day. Whether he is dressed like a girl or a boy or not at all, it is hilarious to see his reaction as soon as he spots one of us. He goes completely crazy jumping and waving and smiling calling out with his super high voice "bye Muzungu"

Our guards

Early-Mid June


We have two guards, Sam and Joseph. Each one takes an 12 hour shift sitting by our gate, letting us in the gate and watching to make sure all is well in our little compound. We have become good friends with them. Even though Sam is a lot older than most of us, he knows how to break it down when the girls here play their hip hop music. It is funny to watch him dance. Sam and Joseph switch off night shift/day shift every other week. 

Here is Sam showing me his archery skills. "It is important not to get nervous when you shoot" he says, and "bad people are more afraid of the bow and arrow than the gun because they cannot hear the arrows" Good old Sam.

Also appearing in the picture is my/our (the guys) room. The garage door pictured in the background is where I sleep. 

Right now, I'd be asking myself one question, do I feel lucky, well.... do ya... punk?

Sam showing me how it's done.

Sam and Joseph posing for a picture. This must have been when one of them was getting ready to leave having finished his shift. 

June Early-Mid

Nagalama

We teach business classes in several villages. In Nagalama, we are working with a group of women in the village to start up a business making/selling reusable female hygiene pads. (Not sure what else to call them, this isn't really my area of expertise. It's been an interesting summer as far as learning more about girl stuff than I knew previously)

We went to Nagalama on this day to learn/teach how to make the products.

I took this picture while riding on the back of a boda boda (motorcycle taxi). Pictured here are Stewart and Rebecca and their boda boda driver. It is a pretty long motorcycle ride to Nagalama. This part isn't very pretty but much of the ride is unbelievably beautiful. 

Yours truly putting my skills to the test. The ladies were all laughing when they saw me trying to sew. No one was laughing when the saw how good I did.... Boo yeah... I knew learning to sew in 8th grade arts and crafts  class would come in handy someday. 

Hip Hip Hooray for Feminine Hygene

07-10 June 2012

The Safari (weekends here are awesome)

It all started when Nathan Gardner ( one of the volunteers on our teem who helps teach business classes) started doing some volunteer consulting for a local guy (Thomas) who has a furniture building business. After helping him with his record keeping, Thomas told Nate about another side business he has taking people out on Safaris. Since we have a big group and since Nathan was doing consulting for him, Thomas decided to give us a pretty killer deal on a weekend Safari.

And so it began.....

The beginning of the 8 hour trip to Murchison Falls National Park in North-Western Uganda

We eventually had to stop and get a ferry to cross a river. Olivia and Julia posing with a mamma warthog.

Me posing with the warthogs. Waiting for the ferry. 

More warthogs. Timon was nowhere to be found. For most of us whose only experience with African wildlife came from Disney movies, it was cool to see them in real life. 

This was truly a unique specimen. Furry and a bit crazy, it runs in a most weird fashion and tends to scare away small children. Oh yeah,, and the monkey on the right is pretty cool too.  Stewart Tribe hamming it up for the camera. 

Hippos by the river where we ferried across to get to the hostels where we would stay. Later that night at 3am, the girls in one of the rooms said a hippos walked right by their window. 

Troy talking with our cooks. And this is what we ate for dinner. Pineapple and chickens. I have to admit, it was difficult eating dinner after hearing Stewart and Troy's account of how they were killed. But I got over it... Mmmm mmm  Original Recipe for me please. 

Thomas and his brother Monday... Interdigitating.... I just had to get a picture of it. The building in front of them is the kind where we stayed. We were in the one ahead and to the right of them. Other people also stayed there. Mostly students studying zoology or something. 

Our first animal citing... I forgot what it was called... For the sake of naming it something... Let's call it the rare African Gazelle Thingie...

This is our guide. Taban. He was really fun and personable and he carried an AK-47. I knew I liked him from the start. 

Giraffes necking... or... according to Taban, fighting. 

Deer or something

Giraffes

Running away from our bus

Taban stopped the bus several times when he saw all the animals looking in one direction. Apparently that's a sure sign that a predator is in the direction of their gaze. Here he is looking for a lion for us. Since that is what we really wanted to see. We only saw one though.   

Lane... lookin for lions

We stopped to take a look at an African ant/termite mound. Not many people know this about me, but I happen to be fascinated by ants. Having watched documentaries and read the entire wikipedia page about ants and seen the ant exhibit in the Smithsonian, I guess that makes me somewhat of an expert. Or not... If I had time, I'd list all of the reasons ants are fascinating. Pull me aside sometime and I'll tell you all about them. ( or just read the wikipedia page)

Taban smashed a hole in the top and pulled out a soldier termite which bit his finger and drew blood. He then ate it. We dared him to eat another one so he did. I was about to eat one and then I imagined it doing to my tongue or tonsils what it did to Taban's finger. Maybe next time I do an African safari. (So... never basically)

Taban getting ready to smash open the termite mound.

African buffalo.

Warthogs, monkeys, Giraffes

Elephants relaxing under a tree

Hippos keeping cool in the nile river.

Just a cool picture of some cliffs on our boat ride up the Nile to Murchison Falls

A Hippo

Little crocodile, big buffalo, bird, other wildlife on the bank of the Nile.

Pretty greenery

Crocodiles coming toward the boat.

Murchison Falls in the distance.

Magnificent specimen of natural beauty and power... and Murchison Falls

Some of the Help volunteers on the boat. Left to right: Troy, Stewart, Kari, Rebecca, Liz, Karly, Brianne, Taylor, Whitney, Elaine, Olivia, Lane

Murchison Falls

Me and nature

Kristen, Marissa, Jessica, and the Nile

Crocodile. I can't figure out how to make my camera take pictures right when I press the button. The crocodile was standing on the banks with its mouth open posing for a really good shot when I pushed the button.

McCall, Rebecca, Whitney, Kerri

The night after our safari, we went to a village where a local drum/dance troop performed for us. After a song or two, half of the town showed up and danced/partied with us. People here are so welcoming/inviting. And the kids love us. It will be tough going back to Provo where no one really notices you when you walk down the street.  (Suggestion, If you have the desire to feel loved hugged by thousands random little kids, come to Uganda)

First song of the evening

Second Song

Drum and Dance Troop

They were so much fun. When it got darker, they started pulling us up with them do dance with them. It turned into a huge village dance party. We were all sweating like crazy.

We spent that night in these thatch roof cottage things. It was really interesting. It reminded me of the Wigwam Motels back in my home town (Shout out to Holbrook, AZ) The sunrise the next morning was amazing. I should have taken pictures. (Someday I'll figure out how to be a good photographer

The ride home started getting boring. Whitney, who was seated behind me, had some washable markers. She asked me for my arm to make a tattoo. I told her she had my permission ONLY if she made the tattoo super hard core and manly... Nothing weak-sauce... After 5 minutes of drawing, I was surprised by a pink and purple skull with crossed bones and the "super hard core" message... "Prepare 2 Live"... Not exactly what I had imagined but still pretty hard core... or something.  

Whitney decided she wanted one too. I asked Thomas (the guy who runs the safari business) what hard core tattoo I should give her. He said "A Bird" (which isn't very hard core) but I did it anyway... and I gave the bird a gun and a super hard core message "Never Say Die Sucka". 

We got home seven hours later, our weekend safari experience was over...back to the grind.