July 30, 2011

Birthday Week in Uganda!

Last Saturday we went farming with the children from St. Jude's. They've recently purchased over 200 acres of land to provide crops for the orphanage. We saw fields of various crops including casava, corn, and sunflowers. We hoed and weeded rows and rows of of sunflowers, and boy was it hard work. It didn't help that it was scorching hot that day. By the end of our work day we were all exhausted but felt accomplished. The physical labor was a nice contrast from the work I've been doing at TASO.

On Sunday, CVAP had a soccer (or football) match with the staff from S.O.S Children's village. At the beginning of the game, pigs came out of nowhere and were running across the field. It's safe to say that we got creamed, but I'm proud of the team anyway. I didn't play because Jeevan and I were on dinner duty that night and we had to go searching for ground beef.

TASO

It has been an insanely busy week at TASO. On Monday we attended a quarterly performance review meeting, which was quite helpful for getting a full picture of what TASO's various departments have been working on. Our placements have been confirmed within the social support department, and we have started a project with one of TASO's youth and drama groups. The youth group is part of the OVC (orphanes and vulnerable children) program within TASO. Group members are selected based on vulnerability assessments. By using drama and dance as a type of therapy, these youth groups help children thrive and overcome barriers. They focus on mobilizing and sensitizing communities about different issues including HIV/AIDs and domestic abuse. We will be interacting with the youth and planning a project with them. Since we have less than a month of work left, our goal is to lay the foundation for future projects between the youth group, TASO, and CVAP.

We also spent time in the child centre and learned about how they perform child counselling. It was fun to play with the children, even though some were shy and didn't speak english. One child was mesmorized by skin tone - she really didn't understand why I was so pale.

My Birthday!

Thursday was my 22nd birthday! I had a great day at work, and night at BJz for quiz night. After work, my secret munu, Linda bought me a jackfruit! Jackfruits are these massive green prickly fruits that can be twice the size and weight of a large watermelon. The inside is yellow and contains individual pod things that each have giant seeds inside. The texture is kind of rubbery and it tastes like a combination between mango, melon, and bubblegum. Three of us carried this giant fruit for about 20 minutes from the market to the compound. We put it in a box and carried it like a baby, but judging by how many people stared and laughed at us, we knew that there was definetely a more efficient way to transport it. I asked Agnes how you're supposed to carry a jackfruit and she told me to just through it on my head...Preparing the jackfruit is a whole other process. You have to coat your hands and the knife in cooking oil because jackfruit releases a really sticky white sap when it's cut open. Then you have to wipe off all the sap with a plastic bag. Apparently it's the only thing that will work. Then you have to pull apart the fruit and unwrap the sections you eat from these finger-y looking things. It looked like an aliens.

The Ugandan frogs I blogged about earlier are showing up in people's laundry, the bathrooms, and our huts! We also learned that they are apparently poisonous and if you're bitten you might die. People also say that the snakes here are only poisonous if they have eaten one of these poisonous frogs.

We have been given Acholi names by the local volunteers, and mine is Laker (pronounced Lak-eh). It means that I am from a royal family. Some of the names mean things like stubborn, or I hate you, so I'm quite happy with mine.

Time has been flying by and I can't believe I'll be home in just over a month! I'll try to update more next week!

Love from Africa!!

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