facing adversity

Well this week has definitely been an unexpected week of trials. First off, EVERYONE IS SICK! Sunday afternoon I started feeling not too hot and now there are about 10 of us in the house who are sick unfortunately. I guess you can’t expect to stay healthy when you live in a small room with 11 other people and some of those people are throwing up. But hey, its life, we are just hoping by tomorrow people will be feeling better so we can continue working! Our second trial of this week has been our Nabuti village project with Moses. We met with the village again and after a lottt of thought and heart ache decided that the village doesn’t have a clear idea of what they want to do to help themselves and therefore it is going to be hard for us to start a project that will be sustainable. With that all said we have scheduled a meeting with the community leaders to basically tell them that we really love their people and the village but until they decide what THEY want to do for their community and for themselves, and get started on it themselves, we can’t work with them anymore. Obviously it is bittersweet but two lessons I learned from this experience. One, you cant force a community to do something if they aren’t fully invested in helping themselves. Two, development work is FULL of disappointment. I have never done any sort of development work in the past so I had no idea how it went but with this project falling through I learned that doing a thorough needs assessment is a big success in itself and not all things will go in your favor but that is why we are here. If things were working perfectly and the community was doing well we would have no reason to be here! But with that all said, things will move on and now I am focusing on the Musana jewelry grand opening next Tuesday! We are really excited about the store opening and hoping all goes as planned for this project!

            Besides those two things all is well in Uganda! Its nuts that two weeks from Saturday I will be home but I am excited for that day to come too. I have learned SO much about myself already and learned that this experience is something I need to do. Whether I leave loving Uganda and wanting to come back or not, I have learned how to endure trials, how to live with no basic living necessities and how to deal with the circumstances you are placed in. I will forever be grateful for my time here but hope that things start speeding up just so we can enjoy the work before we have to leave!

            Hope all is well back home or wherever you all are. Love and miss you all!

where is time going!

This week has been a week of learning, eye-opening experiences, great service and amazing inspiring people. Just to give everyone an update on what I have been up to this week I will give you all a day-to-day run down on what has been going on.

To start off, Monday we had a meeting with Moses and the Nabuti village I am working with to talk about how we are going to execute our plans of improving their education systems and implementing business and women empowerment classes into their community. It went well so we are currently working on the curriculums for those classes and anxious to get those started hopefully next week! Tuesday I spent the day gathering materials and supplies for a project that I am heading up with a few others called Musana. Musana jewelry is a local jewelry company that a HELP volunteer started in 2009 that employs 7 of the most amazing women from Lugazi. We are making them a store and planning a grand opening where we will be inviting the town members and local leaders to stop by and see their work. We are reallllyyy excited about it! Wednesday we visited a local hospital and got the chance to spend some time with some HIV positive women who have joined together to stand as a united front comforting HIV positive people and counseling with them about their lives and situations. It was truly one of the most humbling inspiring things watching these women talk. When they talk it makes you realize that the things that seem like “big problems” to us are absolutely NOTHING. We also had the chance to walk around that hospital and see women who had just given birth, chat with them and hear their stories. (I will NEVER complain when I am in the hospital again after seeing this hospital and where these people give birth, have surgery and stay while they are sick.) After the hospital we had the chance to go to a beautiful village about an hour and a half away to do a public health out reach. Basically what that means is we go and with the help of our partners educate people on HIV, AIDS, sanitation, hand out condoms and do tons of other really necessary things. Thursday we went and observed schools in the Nabuti village to see where we can make improvements. Friday we had one of the most amazing health clinics I have ever been to in my life. We met with a group called the Naguru Teenage Center and we talked about African culture, puberty, sexually transmitted diseases, reproductive health and so much more. It was amazing and eye opening to hear about the crazy things these children go through and to see the strength these young children have. LASTLY, yesterday we went to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, and worked at a HELP sponsored dental and health camp. I was able to test people for HIV, literally prick them and wait for their results. It was super sad to see people test positive but also really neat seeing people getting tested and people interested in helping themselves.

            So with that all said, this week has been busy but AMAZING! The people here are so intelligent, hard working and beautiful. I love how they have nothing but rise above all odds and become these strong people, full of life and love. I have yet to meet someone who is not interested in hearing about my life and talking to me about theirs when we are sitting next to each other on a taxi or meet at the market or at a project. I am LOVING my time here and cannot believe how fast it is going by. Less than three weeks from today I will be home and it is starting to make me sad but I am sooo grateful for the time I have had here. These people are definitely changing me so my hope is that I can give a little bit back to them, and help them a little bit more over the next two and a half weeks before my time is up here!

            Hope all is well in America though. Love and miss everyone! 

now this is called living

holy crap has this weekend been a blast! saturday morning we woke up super early and got picked up to go to jinja for...bungee jumping and white water rafting on the nile river! i'll be honest when we got there i had decided i wasn't going to jump but when i saw it i knewwww i was doing it. we got suited up, climbed up to the top and after a 2 minute instruction i found myself jumping off a ledge, free falling over the nile river 125 feet in the air. it was absolutely NUTS. truly one of the most exhilarating, funnest things i have ever done in my entire life though. like let's be honest...how many people can say they have bungee jumped over the nile, not many. after bungee jumping we loaded onto a bus and went white water rafting on the nile. we were on the river for 16 miles and went through some of the craziest class 5 rapids i have ever seen in my life. we didn't see any crocs LUCKILY but our guide saw a 15 foot one last week which was a bit unsettling. alssso, lucky for us we were on the "team extreme" raft with just 6 people versus the usual 8-10 person raft soo basically team x had quite the ride. we flipped in our first rapid, the most dangerous one, and then managed to stay on board the rest of the day but it was the best. one of the best days of my life for sure! after a weekend like that i am ready to hit the road running this week and ready to serve a lot, work hard and then have another great weekend next weekend butttt all is well here in uganda. still missin america but soo grateful for my experiences i am having here and excited to be here! here are some pictures for everyone of this weekend. love and miss everyonee.

before bungee and rafting

rafting

view of where we stayed after our day...sooo beautiful

annnd here i go

10 things i have learned so far in africa

1. ugandans do NOT run for exercise or exercise at all for that matter. running here is simply a reason for them to laugh at you
2. never count on a ugandan being on time. they will be at least 45 minutes late to everything..sometimes more
3. ugandans LOVE jboog and american music which they call "country music"
4. ugandans have noooo idea what the phrase "how old are you" means. instead you have to say, "what is your age"
5. uganda has the BEST fruit in the world. pineapple is what we are currently living off of, no joke
6. ugandans love musungu's or white people because they think we are all this friendly (meaning saying hi to them and waving to every single person on the street..literally) when in all reality if they came to america that is not the case at all hah sadly
7. having power in uganda is a BIG maybe. we finally got our power back today for the first time since Friday night
8. africa NEEDS a target really really bad
9. kids here think that they can rub the white off our skin haha but once they figure out they can't, just love to hug you until you pull them off you
10. the word "good" is not in the people's vocabulary here. instead everyone says fine. if you ask someone how they are they say "hi i'm fine" or if you say hi to someone they will just say "fine" back instead of saying hi all together haha

BUT, with that all said. things are still great. here are some more new pictures for everyone!

our room with the mosquito nets covering our beds

one of the schools here in lugazi where we live

a little fruit stand here in town

the nasty meat they sell here that we refuse to eat...for obvious reasons

and the projects begin

well, uganda is still great and today was the start of all of the projects! after a four hour meeting with our team we decided on what exactly we want to be working on this summer and how we are going to help the people here. the outcome of the meeting was basically that i am going to be leading a project called naboti village. Moses, one of our amazing contacts here who is EXTREMELY smart and involved in development work, and myself along with the committee of other volunteers who want to help with this project are going to be working with that village to do some sort of work involving education. last night we went to a HUGE needs assessment meeting with the whole community and several government officials to watch the people decide what issues they want to work on in their community. it was one of the neatest things i have ever seen in my life. tomorrow we have a meeting with Moses to decide what exactly we are going to do with the village and what project we are going to start on. i am going to attach a picture of Moses leading the needs assessment meeting we went to last night so everyone can see him and the people of naboti. buttt things are great here! it is hot as always but i am still loving my time here. it seems like i have been here a year but it is great. olivia karli and i decided that if they had a target next door and we couldn't get sick we would move here in a heart beat! but anyways, until next time here are some pictures of our village (the view of the green jungley looking hills), some kids and moses and the naboti village. thanks for reading! miss and love everyone back home!

  

JINJA

hii muzuku's! that means white people, that is what everyone here calls us. so today was another great day. we got up and went to jinja which is the source of the nile river! the drive there was beautiful! about 35 minutes away. we just shopped, there are so many cool shops there, and ate AMERICAN food. we got to jinja on a taxi which is actually a van looking thing here in uganda which they pack up to 20 people in at once. it gets...crowded to say the least. then when we got to jinja we road boda bodas around and saw the nile river and everything. it was a great day. the people continue to surprise me at how friendly and nice they are. when we walk around we talk to EVERYONE just because that is what you do here. the lifestyle in uganda is another shocking thing coming from the US. everyone here is so CHILL .you just wake up everyday,go buy food for your family, try and sell things, relax, talk to people and yaa. it is amazing to me. last night was an adventure though. around 11 we started to get a MONSOON which continued until about 8 am. it was nuts!! i have never seen or heard rain this crazy or loud in my life. our house flooded a little bit but it was alright after the sun came out. we all woke up and showered outside in the rain which was fun, just in our swim suits in our courtyard. but today has been amazing. i feel so grateful to be here with these people. i love it and will write again soon!

i made it!

welll....i made it to africa!! i only have 7 minutes left on this computer here but i just wanted to let everyone know that i made it to africa safe and sound. things are great. beautiful, exciting and different obviously but it is amazing. today we arrived and came here to lugazi on a two hour bus ride and then we headed right to work. we worked at a school today preparing for the kids first day of school by building a bridge over to their school and by putting gravel on their floors and a few other things. of course we were joined by 518656165 kids and like i told my parents, that is NO exaggeration. the kids here are everywhere and just love us ha. they are so full of life and even though they literally have nothing, including clothes in a lot of cases, they are excited and as we discovered today love watches and cameras. they are truly great though. the village we are in is beautiful. red dirt roads, beautiful countryside and a ton of super loving, humble people. i am about to get kicked off, i promise to write more soon but for now this is it. love you all and laterrrr from africa!!

and so the adventure begins

it's the wierdest feeling waking up and realizing that tomorrow i am going to be getting on a plane to travel the world and to check my number one bucket list item off--go to africa! it has been a dream of mine as long as i can remember, my parents say since i was eight, to go to africa and to help people and i am finally making it happen. it's funny you would think that as time has gotten closer i would slowly start to feel my nerves kick in and for a bit of anxiety to hit but it hasn't...AT ALL. i am truly excited for the journey i am about to embark on and cannot wait for it all to begin!!

to update everyone reading this on my exact plans and what exactly i will be doing in uganda here is the agenda. i leave tomorrow afternoon and fly and meet up with my roommates, olivia and karli, and then we fly to london tomorrow night where we will be all day wednesday, traveling and touring around. then we hop on another flight wednesday night to kenya where we land in the morning followed by our final flight to uganda. once we land in uganda it's all work...and of course some play. we are going with an organization called help international. help's purpose is to create sustainable development programs within the communities we are working in. now, what the h does that mean? that means that we will be going around communities and first of all, assessing the people's needs and finding out exactly what they want in their community and then deciding what exactly we can do for them. we will be using our resources and partners in and out of the country to make those wants and needs happen. we will also be continuing some past projects such as an eye camp where people can come and recieve glasses and vision tests from doctors for free, the i'm proud to be a girl project where we go in schools and educate young girls on things they simply don't know about and so many others. when i get there i will be able to update everyone more on the specific projects i am working on but that is a general overview of what this trip is all about.

wellll. that is about all for now! i cannot believe tomorrow is the day! it feels like i am going on a big camping trip/mini-mission/idk what. it's not exactly like packing for a fun vacation to the beach but it is going to be amazing. i feel like it's perfect timing with things going on in my life and it will be a GREAT break from school, working and just the normal stuff. make sure to keep reading if you are interested. i am going to try and update the blog as much as posssible with pictures and posts! thanks for all the support i have gotten!