Oh Did You Want the Generator to Produce Electricity?

My computer may very well die at any given moment, but oh well. I haven’t been very diligent in writing these last few days because of how crazy its been, but I’ll give you the most concise rundown that I possibly can. We didn’t actually end up leaving Kampala until Saturday. Lets not talk about it. But what we should talk about is the drive from Kampala to Kaberamaido. Did you know it was 10 hours? Did you know that there are no paved roads? Did you know that the van is not air-conditioned? Well folks, I didn’t. If it is possible (and it is possible), I witnessed potholes the size of what should have been a road. Do you know what happens when you hit a pothole going 80 miles per hour? It’s a simple 5-step process.

Step 1: Swerve left.
Step 2: Swerve right.
Step 3: Honk at any human or car within 10 miles. (Just because you honk does not make going 80 towards a girl on a bike okay, just saying…)
Step 4: Try to recall what they taught you on the school bus in elementary school (Arms crossed or uncrossed? Should I jump out of the exit door now? What did they say about my feet? Why are there no seatbelts on buses or this Scooby-doo van?).
Step 5: Go faster.

I would say it was scary, but that would be an understatement. I felt like a salsa-bound tomato in the blender on the pulse setting. Mmmmm, tomatoes --not the time. The only thing I can think to even compare it to is being thrown into the back of Paco’s bus with all of your luggage on very hard leopard print seats and hauling ace down the speed bump road--minus the pavement-- with no regrets. Geez, give me a helmet at least. It was so hot and sticky that your poor little legs would get stuck to the seats (because to preserve the life of the leopard print, cheap plastic covers are a must) so when you were ejected into the air, it wasn’t so much the hitting your head on the ceiling of the van that hurt, it was more a mixture of your sticky legs ripping off of the plastic underneath you and the occasional punch from the flailing limbs beside you. But I will say, when I was not completely scared for my life or wishing I had chosen to jump out of the plane with a parachute (an option which would have been definitely faster and most likely safer), the scenery was beautiful. We went through the jungles of Africa, we saw the Nile, we got pulled over 4 times with cops wondering why there were 3 white girls in the van. It was all very exciting. Okay funny side note about the cops. We get pulled over (it’s a cardigan, but thanks for asking), and the cops searched the car inside and out—literally—to find something wrong with it, when they figure out that the car is a foreign made (Ford) car, they decide to give us a ticket. Sound a bit like home? Anyways, they are giving us a ticket, but kindly give us an option… You either pay the ticket, or give us some water… Oooh this is a tough one. Tic-Tac sir??
There is a small tarantula on the wall. This is upsetting Eden enough to bring her to tears. JUDITH!!!!!!! Judith is the house cook. She and Winnie, the housekeeper (yes Mom and Denae , I have been tempted to say Winnnnneeeeeee—like The Other Sister—strange eh?), make up what we consider the ghost busters of bug control. They just killed the bee we nicknamed “Bee-Fly” too. I bet they make fun of us in their room at night, because nearly every time we see a creature we are in our underwear (you would be too if it was 85 degrees at night with no breeze). We really didn’t see or hear much of Judith the first day, but then we made an everlasting bond of friendship when every time we would say something loud (which is often) she would come peering around the corner and say, “Did you call for me girls?” She says this in a very thick accent. Very thick. Unbeknownst to us, she would be of great help. Not only does she cook delicious food—see paragraph 9, but turns out she is handy with the broom. Not to sweep, but to swat. She reminds me of Helga from Raising Helen, but instead of the bat she flies into the room waving the broom around yelling, “Where is it??” She of course is referring to the spiders that are flocking to our room like the women of Capistrano. Judith has a promising career with Orkin. On the subject of bugs, we should probably tell you that we have three bug nets around our bed right now… It doesn’t exactly leave a lot of room for circulation so we swelter in our beds at night. Like I don’t mean to be overly graphic, but I mean it’s my blog so I’ll do what I please, but our sheets and our hair are soaked through by the morning. Yuck.
And now for an early shout out, this next paragraph is dedicated to all of you that told me and Eden we couldn’t survive without electricity. Or any of you that said I wouldn’t go to Africa (yes, I know who you are…). There is a voodoo doll with your name on it in some far off African village. Anyways, we haven’t had electricity since we’ve been here. What happened to the generator you may ask? Well the first night it worked fine. However night two, the boy who is to fetch the gasoline from the village down the road hopped on his bike to do his rightful duty only to have his it break down on the way home. His bike broke, we ate in darkness. Third night comes (Tuesday) and we eagerly sit at the kitchen table waiting for the generator to start (and our rice to be served), and Jane walks in and says the pull cable snapped. Cable snapped, we ate in darkness. You don’t have to be good at math to realize that Eden and I haven’t showered for 4 days now. Double yuck. Not to mention we are living in complete and utter darkness. We can’t wash our hands, our faces, our feet, our bums… But the good news is that it turned on yesterday so we finally got to shower. And let us be clear, there is only a short amount of time and water useable to take a shower, so Eden and I have gone to hardly knowing each other to well, the word team shower comes to mind-- only African style. The faucet drizzles, so you just lap water on you and hope that you get damp before you scrub like you were Cinderella scrubbing the floors and begging to go to the ball. So Eden and I walk into the bathroom with all of our toiletries and Eden closes the door behind us and drops everything in her hands and doesn’t even get half of my name out before I’m screaming profanities as loud as my lungs will allow. Eden can’t handle bugs, but I cannot handle lizards. So I fly back out of the bathroom and not 5 seconds later Judith comes truckin’ it around the corner with straw broom head in hand and swats the bugger out of the bathroom. Nice save Judith. So we go into the bathroom and begin showering and in the middle of what would have had to be the most wonderful head lather I’ve ever experienced (I’m sure Eden would agree) I look over to the wall and see the biggest grossest blackest spider just chillin’ on the wall. All I have to say is, “Eden…” and she is out of the shower screaming. Once more Judith comes plowing through the door (I could have sworn she was waiting by it, or the woman must have held every Presidential Fitness Award they ever offered), and sees that we are butt naked in the shower and as fast as she came in she ran out with her hands over her eyes. I thought we were done for, but Eden just screams, “JUDITH! I GIVE YOU PERMISSION TO COME IN HERE RIGHT NOW!!!!!!” So, now I guess Judith is forever more invited to team showers? No secrets here.
We started teaching school on Monday. Started teaching is a loose interpretation. We had to first watch a class, learn to scheme, and meet the kids and teachers. So technically our first day of teaching was yesterday (Wednesday). Eden teaches P4 A&B English and I teach P5 & P6 mathematics. The only problem is Eden’s kids don’t speak English. Have you ever tried to teach someone English? Try to teach your dog what an opposite is, I dare you. I went into Eden’s class while she was grading her papers & she looked about ready to move into the school’s nasty public bathrooms (which is as close to suicide as any human could get without actually dying, although death would be imminent..). She looked at me and said, “You want to try to teach them what an opposite is?” Ten minutes later after I had jumped up and down to demonstrate tall and short, smiled and frowned like a drugged up clown, and sucked in and pushed out my belly to explain fat and skinny, the kids were still just staring. Literally staring. Here I am gallivanting like a fool across the room and they still can’t even say the word opposite. O-P-P-O-S-I-T-E. This is why I stick to math, although I had a tough time adding today. It was strange. School is probably one of the most interesting phenomenon. First you walk about two miles up a dirt path (the very same one that nearly killed us in the shagg-n-wagon on the way here and which somehow seems uphill both ways). Then off to the left you see a building that is literally crumbling before your eyes. No windows, no doors, no grass. You walk into a classroom and there are 20 tables that somehow fit over 100 students into every class. Kids are on top of each other. The blackboard is gouged and rough and the chalk breaks when you look at it. The kids use a piece of paper to wipe it clean. Every student—boy or girl—is required to have their head shaved and their nails clean before coming to school or they get whipped in the front yard. Whipped. Children are getting whipped for having dirty nails when Eden and I haven’t showered in 4 days. Their clothes are in rags just hanging on their bodies and only about 30 kids out of 600 have shoes to wear. Teachers rarely come to class and when they do they are about 20 minutes late, so when 3 white girls come down the pathway saying they want to volunteer as teachers, we suddenly get bowed down to. Literally, the children bow down to you before they talk to you. For example, the three of us happen to be waiting for a meeting to start when the kids were let out for recess and they didn’t even go run and play. They just stared. So Eden and I tried to entertain 600 children as best as we could, but little by little the circle that surrounded us got smaller and smaller until we were in a very large African children mosh pit. If any of them had a clue what a mosh pit was, we would have been as good as gone. Eden somehow escapes and leaves me to teach the hokey-pokey (epic failure). So when I can finally part the sea of children and get to Eden and Mackie underneath a tree, I wander over with my posse in tow who again surrounds all of us. So there we are just chatting and Mackie whips out these scones wrapped up in a palm leaf and tells me to eat one and that it is quote, unquote, “Good”. So I take a small bite (lesson learned), and just as I’m chewing it, Eden blurts out, “Mackie’s had half an ant in it”. I immediately want to hurl, but I cant move out of fear and due to the fact that around 400 kids stand as obstacles in my way to the trash can. So I helplessly look around and finally just settle on loosing my cookies—or in this case, scone—on the ground in the middle of this sea of children who are staring. In an attempt to alleviate my fears about having just masticated an insect, we rip open my remaining scone and find what Eden claims as poop, but from what Mackie deducts, is a bug. I instantly lean over and gag myself more to ensure that not one part of that scone remains in me, while Mackie tries to give the bug-infested confection to one of the kids! Oh sick. Even writing it makes me feel queasy. I mimic Goldie Hawn when she helplessly says, “I just, ate a bug”. Poor Goldie.
Other than the horrific scone incident, the food here has been surprisingly good. Probably due to the fact that everything is cooked in a vat of oil. My body is definitely having a problem adjusting. I just keep telling myself that as long as I don’t know how it is made I don’t need to freak out. Ya right, tell me that when my pants won’t fit… Judith is just great though, she cooks us anything we can think of eating, and it is delicious. She even made Eden try fish, which I think she would have liked if she could have a) seen what she was eating and b) didn’t have to pull out the bones, or fearfully look for the eyeball on her plate. I have found a new love, and that love is called jackfruit. I will now and forever be in love with it. The only thing I can compare it to is the most delicious starburst you have ever tasted, but in fruit form. It is delicious. I think due to the fact that I’m not in control of what I eat, my panic attacks about food are coming more frequently now. During one of these episodes today, we were all sitting at the kitchen table talking and I couldn’t think of anything to contribute to the conversation except for one solid statement. I just threw my head back, thrust my arms open and said, “I’m funny because I’m fat!” Now, normally this statement wouldn’t have been that funny, but good ol’ Jane just says, “ You are not so fat Kylee”. Eden started laughing so hard she feel straight off her chair on the other side of the table. Thanks Jane. It seems as though the dinner table and dinnertime in general bring out the worst in Eden and I. Our inappropriate orphan jokes seem to be a visitor at every meal. Mine are not so much jokes, but I don’t think I’m supposed to sing Annie at every meal. It’s a hard-knock life for us. No one cares for you a smidge when you’re in an orphanage. Like these things are probably left unsaid… But what really took the gold was when Eden and I were trying to figure out if Judith was done using our lamp in the kitchen (during one of the many pitch black nights). We poked our heads in through the doorway and out of the corner of my eye I saw one of my favorite orphans helping in the corner and waved, and later on when I was talking about Annette (the orphan) Eden goes, “Annette? When did you see her?” And I said, “She was in the kitchen helping Judith with the dishes against the back, didn’t you see her?” All Eden says is, “Haha no.. But you could see how I would be confused…”. Oh Eden, there is a special place in Hell for people like us.
I think I saved talking about the actual orphans for last because this could easily be the longest section of the blog yet. Anyways, when we got here on Saturday night it was around 9:30 and we pulled into the compound and the kids were all waiting outside for us. So we jumped out of the car & I felt like a celebrity being attacked by the paparazzi. It was unreal. People were screaming and crying and just wanting us to touch their hand or say hello. I’m like fine, touch my hand if you must… And they all greet you by saying “You are welcome!” And I’m thinking well isn’t that a bit forward, I just met you and you’re already assuming I’m thankful.. And then others greet you by saying, “Sank you” (Thank you African style). Sank you? I wasn’t aware we were playing battleship… I’m instantly tempted to grab two children and say, “Sank you meet you’re welcome”. What a lovely pair. We got up on Sunday to go play with the kids and we got up to where they stay and they were all waiting for us to show us their performance. They danced and sang the cutest songs about how happy they were to have volunteers and friends come help them. Ah!!! We filmed the whole thing! It was the cutest thing ever. Then once they were done, they all just crowded around us and stared. Waiting for us to entertain them. I’m like looking from the kids to Eden and back to the kids, “How bout some J. Bieber?” This could be the one and only time I will ever say this, but for the time being I am grateful for girls camp songs that I cannot ever forget. We sat surrounded in a circle and started by teaching them the Macarena. The Macarena? They want to have Americans teach them something American and we bust out the Macarena. That’s not even American. Whoops? But then we taught them head, shoulders, knees and toes in English and then they taught us it in Kumam. We thought that would more than suffice, but whenever we stop moving or talking they would just shuffle in closer and stare. So for my sanity and my newfound problem with claustrophobia, we would start riddling off another insane children’s song. The Hokey Pokey, Little Sally Walker, and in complete desperation, The Boot Scootin’ Boogie. Let us all take a moment to visualize this.

>>>One Mississippi
>>>Two Mississippi

Alright moment over. If at first it doesn’t appear that funny let me tell you something that will. I dig through the bag my mom packed for me to find something to entertain them and what to I find? A football. Lets talk about my football knowledge.

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Good talk. So, I find myself in my running shoes staring at this football and back at the kids. Okay you take this football--no don’t kick it. And you, you crouch down like this and hike it through your legs. Eden come here, I need a defensive lineman. Okay so Michael you try to tackle Eden—yes she is a girl, but don’t think of her as one right now. And I’ll be the receiver, so Agrid (or Hagrid as we like to call him) you are the quarterback and you catch the ball—look left, look right—find me, and then throw it to me. Got it? Okay so down…Set…Hike… And just like that, the game of football was born. An hour later after the teams had expanded and I was now being pursued by fast black children and Eden, we are covered in dirt and manure (Hagrid banked left which led me into the manure swamp, tricky tricky Hagrid). Needless to say we give the Packers a run for their money.
I think Gabby belongs in Africa—for the obvious reasons, but also because none of the children wear clothes here. Like I’m desensitized to all the nakedness (both adult and child) that I’ve seen here. Eden gets so frustrated because every time I see someone naked I always laugh as she whips around the try and see it. Every time I see a naked human, 4 mosquitoes bite Eden. She now has around 40 bites, clearly winning the race to malaria. They aren’t just bites on her though, they are more like welts all over her body. Like how does one get a mosquito bite on your butt? Beats me. I think we are becoming the entertainment of the guesthouse though, every night as we sit in the darkness wondering if tonight will be the night that the generator works, we sing a collection of our favorite songs--at the tops of our lungs. T. Swift, Spice Girls, Bieb, Mariah. You name it, we sing it. If we don’t know the words, we make them up. We got up after the night of our first concert and Mackie goes, “Do you guys have a karaoke machine in your room that you’re using?” Eden and I just sit and laugh.
We are getting fat. It’s the plain and simple truth. But what’s a girl to do when the only thing you can eat is fried? By some twist of fate I brought my yoga mat and Mackie has her mat here as well so everyday after school we suit up and bend away. Eden fortunately has never done yoga so needless to say I have to stand behind her so she can’t see me laugh. On Tuesday we were in child’s pose. Child’s pose, easy enough right. Well Eden, being the over achiever that she is, looks up in between her hands to correct her arms and misjudges just how far away from the ground her head actually is, and smacks it against the cement ground. And hard. Like the shot heard around the world loud sounding. Then without skipping a beat pops into downward dog and acts like nothing happened. Mackie and I couldn’t stop laughing that we had to start the whole session over again like 20 minutes later after we had a while to cope. Mackie probably thinks that we are two idiots that somehow landed ourselves in Africa as a joke. We sing, we dance, we steal things. Okay, I stole that from Jason Mraz. But who can take two girls seriously when we open our suitcase and the first things that come out of our bags are two giant posters of Justin Bieber… Sorry?
We again almost died on our way to Soroti. Mackie says that while we are here we are allowed to be a ‘cupcake’ about a few things. Call me crazy, but the only thing I’m a cupcake about so far is paved roads. And showers. And bugs. And bug nets. And food. And air conditioning.

Okay, so I’ve only been here for a week. Sue me.