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Published: June 23rd 2008
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hello, Sorry for the long delay, between power outage, then phone network outage and a computer issue of not excepting my format. I am good to go now.
My first day has been very emotional. Poor Cliff, Molly/Paul's second son, has been toting me around all day,and each new encounter I have started crying. Maybe its the jetlag.
He brought me to the school and showed me around. The play ground was something to see. In America children would be told to not play near it. I will have to take a picture next time I am there. When I first
arrived I met Christian, Molly/Paul's daughter. She was playing with a 18month old. The baby saw me with my white skin and light colored hair and started too cry. I found it a little funny.
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So, Cliff showed me around the school. I saw the washing area. He told me when he was a boy at the school that spot was a latrine hole. When it got full, they filled it in, now its the area where the
spicket is for getting water to wash clothes. Next to it is is fire wood/clothes line. Molly and Paul schools in Kampala
This is the outside sign for the school Next was the kitchen. I meet the cook. The kitchen was so hot, and he was in there with long sleeves and pants. I asked what he was cooking, he went over to the hot pot, cooking on fire wood on the ground. and lifted the cover right off with his bare hand. I was zompletely shocked that he didn't burn himself. It was potatoes & bean. Its a local potatoe called cassava. It is very dry,you eat it
and your mouth dries right out. Ä Next was the girls dormitories. The younger girls were 18-24 girl in a room. Bunk beds lined the walls.
It was amazing. The older kids tended to be less crowded. 12-18 people to a room. The nurse was in talking to the girls @ life, and what its like. They were anxious to strike a pose. One of the girls was in the choir, she was very excited @ me being from Maine. "I love Portland Maine." I got to see the burnt dormitory. Amazing. The dorms are side by side. haring a wall. So not only is the one room not useable, neither is the next dorm so
Christine, and my room at the school
She didn't want me to take a picture because the room was not finished about 30 girls were displaced.
I asked about the fires, and they believe that it is the opposition rebels who are torching the schools to show that the government is not doing anything. The current president has overstayed his presidency by 15yrs. So, he is a very corrupt man. He keeps taking money to buy peace from the LRA iin the north, then in reality the money is given
to the wrong person by "accident". The world bank gave the Ugandan government a million dollars for microfinacing, and the money has vanished.
Off to the classroom. The first classroom the children were doing half day because it was Saturday. The teacher greeted me and the students stood up and recited a welcome to me. I graciously said thank you and left the room to cry. We went to a middle school zlassroom were they were doing science. This time being greeted I didn't cry. The students didn't have any textbooks, they just had
notebooks to write everything they learned. Then I realized the teacher didn't even have a teacher's manual. He had a notebook with hand written leasons. I got to meet several of the
primary staff. The women looked so young.
The new headmaster of the school has put up some
wonderful signs. The children were just haming it
up for the camera. The choir had a concert at a nearby
boarding school. So, they loaded the bus up with
instruments and 22 people got in. The boarding school
gave the choir a room on the top story, 4-5flight building.
We had perfect vie of the mosque and prayer tower.
This thing goes off three times a day. You can hear it from
anywhere in the city. A new perspective on muslim propigation,
and religious indifference to other that are not muslim.
It wakes you at 5 in the morning. Christians would never
be allowed a prayer tower, heck for a christian natioon we
have to fight for the ten comma It went off during the
perfomance, which I found interesting/ intreging, the
muslim prayers were completely drowned out by the choir
for the audience by Christ being prasied inside.
The school loved the choir and asked to have them
back during the week when more students were at
the school.
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They asked me to speack to the crowd, Cliff
was not there to discourage them from such action,
of course, while talking to them I started to cry.
When Cliff came back, he said maybe he should get a
hanky for me. I promised him by the time I leave I will
not be so emotional.
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I do certainly have a new respect for immigrants and
refugees. To be in a land, even one you have dreampt
about, where you don't speak the language and that is
completely different than anything you have ever experienced,
is a little isolating. Molly & Paul are absolutely wonderful and graciousness abounds at the house and the school, but to be
here all alone, no one to share the experience with in itself feels isolating. Something that I was not prepared for. I considered
myself well rounded and ready for this experience, now I find
myself a little socially/globally short. I am humbled.
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