Jan 30

It’s morning, almost 8:30 and I’m sitting at our little table having tea and breakfast. We love the tea. They add fresh ginger to it which makes it taste so wonderful and refreshing too. It’s quiet now, relatively. You can hear crickets all the time…all through the day and all through the night. Sometimes birds. The ones chirping now sound quite familiar. Am I getting used to them or do they really sound similar to ours at home? Some birds have quite loud, exotic squawks. One day we thought we were at the bird pavilion at the zoo. Kristine wondered whether their zoos would have cardinals and chickadees in them.

The others went to Jinja today to visit Sam at his farm. Sam is a family connection to this centre, the son of the woman who founded it. He spends half of his time in Uganda and the other half in Canada. Kristine, Steve and Anne thought it would be nice to go and visit his farm in Jinja. You must pass over the Nile to get there. It’s source is in Uganda. I could have gone too but I decided to stay here and work with the children who had started writing letters and drawing pictures to send to students in Canada. Suzanne Kapur’s class had put together a Canada book with information, pictures and letters for the children here. It’s a big hit and they’re putting a lot of work into their letters and pictures using the limited resources that they have.

In the meantime it’s afternoon. The power went out this morning and my computer’s battery was low so I couldn’t continue then. I had also shown Barbara, Doreen and Vennie some pictures that I had on my computer from home plus the ones I’ve taken here. They were particularly amused at seeing themselves on my computer screen. Somehow I’ll have to figure out how to get pictures to them later.

There are a number of seniors students studying in the hall. There’s a goat hanging around on the road but I haven’t seen or heard the rooster in a while. He often comes and hangs out in our compound though he belongs to the neighbour. The neighbour also has a number of pigs which sometimes roam about freely. Other times they’re tied up or put into their pen which they don’t like very much so they scream. That is the most unpleasant sound I’ve heard here so far. At times they sound quite distressed and it’s difficult to sleep when that happens late at night or too early in the morning. I think I’ve gotten used to the roosters calling at 5 in the morning though the dogs yelping and howling somewhere in the distance still wakes me up sometimes. The cockroaches I will not get used to. They are so huge! They’re about 3 inches long and at least an inch wide, if not more. We had another one in our sleeping area last night which caused much commotion. Steve had to come and rescue us. At least it wasn’t in my bed this time.

The primary students have gone home. Some of them were here for almost 5 hours working on the things to send to students in Canada. Vennie, their tutor/teacher was helping a lot today. She was getting them to draw maps and flags and coats of arms with written explanations. Some of the students were singing the songs I’ve taught them. They particularly like the Boom diddy adda refrain of Land of the Silver Birch and they often come back to Andrew’s Masooli-Kitetikka song which I taught them last week. Yesterday they suggested we sing it and a small group of girls exclaimed, “But we need Steve” (to do the bass line). When I told them that Steve wasn’t here they decided, “Then we’ll be Steve!” and launched into a very good rendition of the bass line. I’d also done that name game exercise with them where you have to find an adjective that starts with the same letter as your name. Last night I was helping with the dishes in the little kitchen lean-to. Doreen began singing “Land of the Silver Birch”. It was fun to sing with them. And then she began giving the adults adjective names; beautiful Barbara, big Betty, strong Steve, careful Christine (Kristine), amazing Anne, vivacious Vennie. This morning she was walking around calling everyone by their new names.

I’ve finished lunch. Today I had a light lunch of mango, watermelon, avocado and 2 eggs. The egg yolk here is almost white in colour. Very interesting coming from Germany where the yolk is orange and Canadian yolk being yellow. We’ve been eating way too much here. They seem to have a preconception that we eat a lot which is proving hard to break. Everyone who insisted I would lose weight in Africa is mistaken. The lunch I had today is not typical. They’ve been making us two main meals a day despite our protestations. But we’re eating locally and with our fingers as they do here. Matoke, posha, irish or sweet potatoes are staple carbohydrates. Often a number of them are served at the same meal. Sauces typically include bean sauces with other vegetables added or groundnut (peanut) sauce. Greens are on the side. For us they also make the occasional meat sauce. Yesterday we had fish that was quite good. We keep inviting them to eat with us and share our meals but they don’t seem to be catching on. It’s like they keep a boundary drawn between the white people and themselves in that respect. We eat dinners in the kitchen lean-to area but they still don’t eat with us. Vennie’s had a little something once in awhile just to humour us I think. The bananas here are much better than at home, sweeter. And the mangoes are my favourite I think. Jackfruit is also very interesting. Taste wise I think it seems to be a cross between pineapple and banana. Yesterday we saw a pineapple patch when we went walking down to Ann’s garden. I’ve never seen pineapples grow before!

It’s nice to have some quiet time this afternoon. Vennie occasionally comes in to ask whether I’m bored. Their lives are so communal and most families are quite large that I don’t think she can imagine that alone time can be very good.