These Streets

Ok, so I haven't written for a little while and I still have so much to write, but just to jump forward for a moment, something really creepy JUST happened that I need to report. I got home, told Laura about our adventure and then started writing in my journal so I could get the facts out before I started sensationalizing it. So here's what I wrote in my journal. Sorry its so poorly written. Just imagine me telling you this breathless, face to face: 

Alright. 

Thank heavens for best friends, cell phones, the police and a bag of gym clothes. 

Lottie and I just had the freakiest experience ever. I posted a status about being at the SWKT late that Lottie and my friend Rogelio started commenting on. Lottie said that she would come meet me at the bottom of the hill and Rogelio said to be careful of rape hill which I kind of made fun of him for. I didn’t even ask Lottie to come get me. She just felt like it. So we were talking on the cell phone as we walked towards each other (and she remarked that there was a police car around which was weird) and then we met up and just started walking. We got one block, to where the isles ends and I see this tall man dressed in drag coming towards us out of the dark. 

It was a tall guy, dressed in heels, wearing a blonde wig and a sheer black mask over his face. I pointed him out to Lottie and we both started walking a little closer to each other and were like ‘what’s going on?’ The guy just kept walking straight towards us so I was like “heyyy” because I was pretty sure that it was just a prank or something but it was still really scary cause he got to the point where he was only like 3 or less feet away. So we walked past him and he started following us. Lottie and I were holding hands by this point. 

Then, Lottie broke into a run, so I did too and the guy started running behind us. And I’m a really slow runner so I just turned around and hit him in the chest with my bag of gym clothes that I’ve had all day. I think I said something like “Seriously what are you doing?” and me and Lottie both screamed I think. The guy didn't say anything the whole time. Anyway, we made it to the other side of the street and just turned around to look at him. We weren't going to outrun him. 

So we just looked at him and Lottie was like “should I call the police?” and I was like “yeah.” So she did but hung up and the guy just kept staring at us. Then this girl on the other side of the street that we had just come from was like “Are you guys ok?” and I was like “yeah…there’s just a guy standing here.” And she was like “he’s been following me all night!” So I was like, “seriously Lottie, call the police.” So she did and she starts talking to them but it sounded pretty generic like she could possibly be bluffing so I called out to the guy who by this point was like 10 or 15 feet away but still staring at us. So I was like “She’s seriously calling the police.” And the girl on the other side of the street was like “ok, Austin stop now” or something. “Happy Halloween” (that last part to us). Which was like, what? And then she came over to our side of the street sort of hugged the guy, but forcefully to get him walking and was like “sorry, guys, come on Austin. Happy Halloween.”

And meanwhile Lottie (who can’t hear under the best circumstances) is talking to the police giving them our exact location. She told them that the girl and guy were walking off and the woman asked which way so we told her. Within about 1 minute we saw a police car going in that direction. Apparently they had gotten several calls about that guy tonight. Me and Lottie just walked the rest of the way home asking each other what the hell just happened?

 It was so not in good taste and it was so…inspired that Lottie decided to come meet me halfway and that we were together when that happened. I’m so glad I wasn't alone. And apparently I now know what I would do in a crisis. Run really badly, hit the person half-heartedly with a bag of clothes, scream and call the police.

Interesting. 

"The Prince of Egypt TWO"

Okay so I came up with what blogs I was going to write awhile ago and if this was closer to the actual event I think this post would make more sense. Because it wasn't actually that exciting. It was just a fun little event we went to.

So the story goes like this: One day Corrine and I were walking up from our house in the residential area to all the stores. At the top of this great big hill across from a restaurant called "I feel like Chicken Tonight"

We saw these fliers advertising The Prince of Egypt TWO

Entertainment being rather scarce around those parts Corrine and I were very interested. So we took pictures of the sign so we could remember it and then went along our merry way.

"Live Drama" What does that even mean in this context?

Ok so fast forward about a week. It's after church on Sunday. We've walked all the way home down an enormous hill and I'm tired and probably a bit cranky and don't feel like doing much of anything and we were debating whether it was worth it to go up and see the play seeing as we had NO idea what it was. We get a call from Corrine who had stayed at church to teach piano. She had gone straight to the play and she wanted to let us know that "It's awesome! They have a set and everything!" 

Well that settled it. They had a set. We got in a taxi-bus and headed up. When we got there it was in this HUGE church and they had an amazing sound system and they really did have a pretty impressive set. They proceeded to act out The Prince of Egypt but with lip sync during the songs. The scene when Moses chases the men from the well who are bothering the little sisters turned into a long-winded karate fight. I can't quite remember but I'm pretty sure that at one point they changed one of the songs, replaced it with a song from the Lion King and made the words religious. 

I'm having a hard time conveying it in this post but the play was HILARIOUS. 

During the song that Jethro sings about looking at you life through heaven's eyes, there were some dancers going that were actually really good. But one of the dancers was SO flamboyant and cheesy that I literally had tears in my eyes watching the performance. He was just soo goofy. And then when they showed a market scene it was totally a Ugandan market where they were haggling tennis shoes and stuff. Very anachronistic.

But when the plague killing all the first born struck it was so chilling. The theater was totally silent and then women started walking on stage holding young children in their arms and just wailing. Wailing like I've never ever heard a person wail in real life. It was like they were emitting this pain from the bottom of their souls. It was the kind of thing that you never would have been able to get non-professional actors do in the United States.

And then everything paused and this white evangelist speaker came out and started preaching about Christ. For like 20 minutes. The whole stage was just frozen behind him and he was telling us to close our eyes and pledge ourselves to Jesus. I'm pretty sure he was the guy who owned the church and paid for everything. Finally he stopped his speech and the play finished up. 

It was just such a unique experience. If your Mormon then you are familiar with road shows. This was like that but on steroids and with much more soul. We met up with Corrine and the girls she was with from church (Josephine and Anette and Mary). We even stuck around to fill out a little survey about our experience thanking them for the show.

It was a pretty cool way to spend a Sunday afternoon and a fun look into Ugandan religious culture.

 And also a really good work out for my laughing abs. 

Football Hooligans

Ok, so as I promised, here is the start of my belated blogposts about Uganda! I can't promise how good these posts will be since I'm kind of overwhelmed by the sheer number of stories I need to tell. Its important for me to get them down before I forget them. And since this blog is mostly just for myself / my closes friends anyway, I hope you will forgive me.  This post will draw heavily from my journal entry written at 3 in the morning on Satuday June 9th aka the first full day I had in Uganda!

So around 11 me, Matt and Wayne headed out to get breakfast/a ticket to the game for Alfred our driver. We walked up the road and then started crossing this little bit of jungle-y part towards this area that looks like a slum but is really a thriving market. 

One of the entrances to the market as seen by my balcony

Outside the market is a stall where women will make you a “rolex”. This is a scrambled egg inside a sort of ciabatta rool type thing that they fry. It was so cool. Just like in a shaky outdoor hut with flies everywhere and minimal hygiene. We sat on a bench to wait while they cooked. It was pretty cool. They put the food in bags for us and we walked through the market to the other side to catch a taxi.

I just found this on the internet, but rolex stands are really common throughout the country. They are the go to (and perhaps only) fast food around besides samosas. Unlike McDonald's though, you have no one to blame but yourself when you get food poisoning--more on that later!

Did I say taxi? I meant one of the old white vans crawling throughout the city. They pick people up on the street and cram like 13 people in. When you want to get off you say “stage.” I’m so glad Peter and Wayne were around to lead everything because I had no idea what was going on. But the rolex was good! It was funny because as we were biting into it, Peter was like “well…it’s not an exact science but…let’s eat this and see if anyone gets sick. If not we are coming here everyday.” So I was a little nervous but it was way good. 

Another internet picture just for kicks.
It's pretty appropriate though complete with plastic bag and  tentative white hand.

After riding the taxi for a bit, we got to the nicer area where we bought the ticket for Alfred. I tried to get my money exchanged but my bills weren't big enough. Lame. We then walked into a nice store, bought ourselves soda in glass bottles, were given straws and drank them while riding the taxi home.  On the way back, traffic was getting pretty bad and a man passed on the street selling Uganda jerseys for the football match we were about to go to. So Peter yelled out the window for him to come over and we bought jerseys. (Peter was spotting me since I still don’t have any money). So I had a black jersey and immediately the conductor next to me (not the driver but the man who manages money) turned to me and was like “put on! Put on!” so I did he was like "yeaaaahhh!!" And then as we were walking back people kept giving us the peace signn and we were like ok? This is really odd. But then we realized it was because we were all in our jerseys and people were getting so psyched about the game.  So. Then Alfred picked everyone up from the apartments and we went to the match!

                                                                    

                                                               It. Was. Crazy. 

I think my pictures can do most of the talking. It was so crowded and everyone was going crazy. There were vuvuzelas everywhere and people were selling all sorts of stuff on the streets and guys had paint out to paint people’s faces.  So we did that (we got a Uganda flag painted on our cheeks) and we seriously think it was probably house paint. It smelled so bad. We made out way up into the stadium, getting totally squeezed by the crowd. I got so swept away by the human traffic that I was pretty much impaled by the cattle gate thing everyone went through.

The road leading up to the stadium

You see armed guards everywhere. 

Absolute chaos. It was right around here that I practically got impaled.
It was alarming.

Everyone w as dressed up in the Ugandan colors (red, yellow and black).
 I think this man's expression is cute.

Also, as we were walking up and the crowd was going crazy I GOT PICK POCKETED!!! Everyone was dancing and was super excited to see us muzungus (white people) so they were dancing up to us and this one guy in a memorable white shirt kept dancing next to me. And he was keeping really close. I started to get freaked out like, is this guy hitting on me or …what is he doing? So basically I noticed that he had targeted me. And it was so easy to get swallowed by the crowd so I jogged up to catch up with everyone and he would be jogging right behind me. Eventually I felt him slip his hand into my pocket and take my ticket. I was like “hey!” and reached out trying to get it from his hands but he wasn't giving it back. Then I stopped trying to fight him because I was like … is this a good idea? Confronting  a full grown African man? So I turned to my group and was like “he just took my ticket!” and immediately Brady ran after him into the crowd. 

I wasn't hopeful. But low and behold, Brady came back with the ticket in his hand! I was like “how did you get it????” and he was like “… I just got it.” All mysteriously. It turns out that he chased the guy long enough that eventually the thief turned and handed it back to Brady. I guess a bunch of Ugandan’s were running after Brady too. When I asked why the other spectator Ugandans were following the chase Brady figured that they were trying to get my ticket back too.  Isn't that awesome? 

The infamous ticket.
By the way a lot of these pictures are actually Wayne's so this is in fact his ticket.
 But you get the idea.

Read number Two. Just read it.
T.I.A.

Finally out of the thick of it and climbing the stairs to the actual stadium.

Ok so we got into the stadium about 2 hours before the match actually started. We sat around for awhile. Wayne read his lugana grammar book  (trying to learn the native language) and we all just screamed and were bombarded by a crazy amount of noise and vuvuzelas etc. 

Armed guards who didn't really seem to do anything

the gang...and this was before the match even started

Cheerleaders

check out the crowd!

his sign says "ask Nigeria, Ghana or Angola" which I guess means that Uganda beat them recently.

The hats! The hats! 

The Uganda Craines (the football team) has the motto "we go, we go."
The motto for Uganda is "For God and my country."
It's not uncommon to see things spelled wrong. So I really fit in in that country.

The girl I am hugging is the wonderful Corrine

see that crazy face in the middle there?
Truly alarming (its a mask)

Wayne being a  nerd / really smart person and studying his language book

I know this sounds really weird but I don't think I had ever seen this many black people in one place.
Just all black  people with hardly any whites. Africa was good to me that way. No shortage of black people.

It had a sort of Mardi Gras feel

She told me to look sad during halftime when we at 0:1

The match was cool. People got so into it but I didn't really know what was going on. At one point people started throwing their water bottles down to the field because they were so excited. Which explains why they weren't supposed to bring bottles in-they turn into missiles! There is so much more to tell but I just don’t even know how to put it into words. We ended up tying 1 - 1.  You would have thought we won the world cup or something the way everyone was freaking out. Afterwards we were dancing around and a bunch of Ugandans kept coming up wanting our picture. We were like celebrities. EVERYONE wanted a picture with the muzungos in their Uganda get-up at the game. It was really fun. 

Let the crazy dancing with total strangers begin!

Peter and this kid got into a vuvuzela-off

truly giddy now

and here is an example of how people just kept jumping in

Leaving the stadium the Senegal team was waiting in their bus. Everyone was booing at them and they had a police barrior and the team was just like “…” as they looked out all posh at everyone. I mean, we were celebrating a tie for heaven's sake. They also had police buses to keep people they arrested in. 

Just a random girl. Such was the spirit in the air that you just run up to people and take pictures with them and no one thinks anything of it!

police were really straining themselves

Later that night after Alfred drove us back home and after we had eaten dinner with some friends from the ward, we looked at people's pictures from the day. It was so funny because peter plugged his thumbdrive into the tv and it just started playing his Christmas playlist. We didn’t know how to turn it off so we just ended up looking at all these pictures of football hooligans with "Oh come Oh come Emmanual" in the background. Excellent.

Anyway, as I said that was my first full day in Africa! I'd like to say oh, you know that kind of shinanigans never happened again, but actually...we wen't to another football match the next week! I don't have as many pictures from that game and it was mostly more of the same except that

1. My professor and his 12 year old daughter were there totally jet lagged

2. We won that match (against Congo) 4-0 and people were out. of. control.

3. The atmosphere in the stadium was such that men were climbing on the poles holding up the speakers throughout the game (so about 30 feet up).

4. After the match an announcement came on saying that people weren't allowed to get on the field. I thought this was a silly superfluous announcement. 

5. Within 10 minutes the field was flooded with fans running around, screaming, blowing their horns. To get them off, the authorities turned the super high power sprinklers on. This just provided a new outlet for play.

6. On the way home we say a boda with no less than 5 guys on it. That's one motorcycle with 5 people crammed onto it going down the highway. 

That kid wanted to blow the horn I had bought. So I let him. And I was being a bit of a germaphobe so I wasn't sure what to do after that. So I let him hang onto it. He proceeded to blow the horn into my ear for the next hour. I ended up just telling him he could keep it. Giddy, he ran off into the crowd. 

My "I can't believe this is happening but this is really fun and I love it and I'm not sure if a mob is going to  break out in
 the next 5 minutes and also this is really loud" face.

Ok friends! Thats it! My experience as a football hooligan! Props if you made it to here in this lengthy post! Next stop...Prince of Egypt TWO. Get excited.

p.s. sorry about the weird white highlight on the text. It happens whenever I copy and paste text and I don't know how to get rid of it.

Princess Jenny

I'M BACK!!! IN AMERICA!!!

And let me just say: I feel like a princess.

Life is so easy here. Well, maybe not easy. We all have problems wherever we are in the world, however rich we are. But convenient. It's so convenient here. I got off the plane, met up with my beautiful mom and waited for my dad to circle around and pick us up and take us home. No public transportation at all!

Then when I got home, I had all sorts of welcome's waiting for me: my favorite Schnucks cookie cake (usually consumed at children's birthday parties), a 'welcome home' balloon, even a bouquet of flowers next to my bed. My tabby cat, Bonnie, seemed to think that my homecoming was too good to be true. And then my older sister Emily showed up and I was reunited with one of my best friends! We sat at the kitchen table just talking and talking and talking about me, Me, ME!

Thus, I have come to the conclusion that I am a princess.

And then --I have to admit it-- one of the most magical moments was when I opened the closet door in my room and was reunited with all my clothes! Clean, cute, clothes. Expensive clothes. Colorful clothes. Coats from England and vintage dresses from Carolina, belts, headbands- all sorts of nonsensical clothes that you would only wear if you aren't planning on getting your hands dirty.

Ok, I know what you are thinking. You're thinking is in one of two camps. Either you are bracing yourself for a lengthy soapbox about poverty and white guilt or you are thinking that I'm playing up my economic position a little bit. Well, this ain't no guilt trip. Yes,  I just came from a place where many people live in poverty. And yes, there is totally unfair inequality in the world. And anyone reading this is on the lucky side of that inequality. But that doesn't mean  we have to feel guilty all the time. I just think we need to be aware of our riches.

Growing up I thought oh, I'm normal, I'm middle class, everyone has as much as I do. Not so. Even by American standards I would say that I am disgustingly spoiled. I just went to Uganda! I have way more of everything than I need.

And yet, we live in this entitlement culture. With everything available at the press of a button we sometimes forget how wonderful our lives are. We get bored. In the words of that famous comedian talking to Connan "Everything's Amazing and No one's happy." It's sad. Because even with all the money and luxury and technology that we have, we generally don't have a life style of happiness. Ugandan's are fond of putting religious mantra's on the back of their taxi vans. Things like "God is Good," or "God is with us all the time" or even "God's Plan 3" (what?). But one of the best mantras I ever saw on the back of a taxi was "The rich cry too."

So there they are in Uganda, totally poor, but with a gross national happiness value that I would hazard to guess is higher than ours, reminding themselves that even wealth cannot cure pain and sadness. We shouldn't be happy because we are wealthy. We should be happy because we are alive. And we should be grateful for everything.

I don't know, I just think its kind of amazing. I don't need to feel guilty about the inequality of the world- I didn't create the system- but I do need to do something about it. Even if its small. And I do need to be mindful of my blessings and my opportunities.

My sister directed my to a quote that I really like:

"If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for the Creator, there is no poverty." -Rilke


No poverty. No quota on happiness. No limited stockpile of joy. Its there for the taking. And in my world of bounty with food and clothes and technology, but most especially family and friends and love, I am a princess.

And I am a poet.

Teaser

Hey all.


So I realize that its been awhile since I wrote anything. There are a few reasons for that:


1.) My computer cord has broken and its hard to find one to borrow and so my computer dies very quickly


2.) I have been working 12 hour days with no breaks


3.) I am in a town in Northern Uganda


4.) I don't have the pictures uploaded yet


5.) There is not time to give these posts the attention they deserve


In light of this, I decided to just give all you adoring readers a little teaser. And a promise. 


I think about my blog all the time. And I've been keeping track of the posts that I want to write. As Emily would say I am pregnant with blog posts. So here you go. A list of all the blog posts you can expect in the near future:




Football Hooligans


The Prince of Egypt TWO


Outside In


Guiness Records


Every Day's Song


There's Room For Everybody


Silent Laughter


Sacriledge 


Neocolonialism


Torture Chamber


Jenocide


Mille Collines


Borders


Gulu Take 3: Going Native


Slumber Party 


L'amour Partout 




Alright, that's all for now. I promise I'm going to write these posts. In the meantime you can just make guesses what they are about. If you happen to care.


Much love,


Jenny

Colour Me Pineapple

Going to a Ugandan primary school = the most fun I may have ever had in my life. There are a couple of friends at church who work as teachers in this children's school in Kampala. It's pretty rundown and there are way too many kids there. I think this is one of the worst schools in Kampala because a nurse visiting to help give vaccinations was lamenting how poor the hygiene there was. 

In theory we were there to help administer the vaccines as well, but then there was a problem when they realized they weren't sure which children had already gotten it- kind of makes me miss American infrastructure! 

Well, I wasn't going to complain. Instead of holding kids down while they cried we got to play with them! We started off by helping with their exercise books. While about 50 kids (per class!) sat and talked (or picked fights!) a couple were called up at a time to colour. I think they did it this way because they had limited chalk. Anyway, they had these little books and Peter and I acted as human copy machines. We would open each student's book, turn to the first blank page and write: 

"Today is Friday, 15th June, 2012

Colour Me"

And then we drew a pineapple with varying degrees of success. At the bottom of the page we would write "pineapple." Looking through the other pages, sometimes the kids are asked to copy the drawing, sometimes they are asked to shade it. But this is their version of art class I suppose. It was mass pandemoniom. Josephine, the friend we know from church was one of the teachers there and she had to shout so much to get the kids attention. She seemed so competent though, I was shocked to hear that she is only 20! I want to be as cool as her. 

A final thing worth noting before we take a look at the pictures is that Ugandans often name their kids hilarious things in English. Here is a list of some of the names I have heard here. These are people's first names: Innocent, Surprise, Prince, Freedom, Paris, Friday etc. 

I love it.

Well, here are the pictures! It was so much fun and I just felt so much love while I was there with the children. We couldn't really communicate verbally but we just hugged and I picked them up and they pet my hair and stroked my skin and smiled their big lovely smiles.

I pulled that kid on my lap.
 He wasn't very demonstrative but I think he liked sitting there as I rubbed his back for about 20 minutes.
The girls behind me are playing with my hair.
They love white people hair.

Check out Mr. Batman!

Josephine and her typical "uh!" expression. She is so funny and so outgoing.

I'm in love!

model child. This girl is beautiful.

I'm in heaven

Beauty queen again. The girl in the background was super cute as well. Very shy though.
She would keep close to me, but duck her head when I tried to make eye contact. She would hold onto my arm though and good naturedly tug at my fingers, examining my bones and my skin.
Yep, little girl. I may be a different colour, but I'm human too.

One of the classrooms. They were all in a sort of pavilion separated by little walls. Mary is teaching this class. She is another friend from church. When we first met, I told her that I was from Missouri expecting her to have no idea where that was. Instead she said "oh yes, I know it from the hymnbook! 'Forget not the wrongs of Missouri'?"
I was totally blown away. Halfway around the world and a Ugandan girl knows my home state through an LDS hymn.
I love this world.

I don't know why she is wearing the scarf like that. Ugandans get cold more easily thean us Americans do though

check out these two kids pulling each other's cheeks in the foreground:
totally indicative of the general chaos in the school

beautiful picture of Corrine and one of her favorite little boys- she's been there before. 

it's just such unwarrented love and welcome that we recieved there. Mostly for being white, but I think also for taking an interest in them. But mostly for being white, lets be honest.

My little friend again holding onto my arm. She was my favorite. 

look, I have friends! Except I don't know the girl's name on my right. She is Mormon too though

they went crazy for the camera

A shout out to Peter for taking a lot of these pictures. And a shout out to the beautiful children: just that one morning with them made my whole trip worth it.