Happy Easter

So, I may be a little behind on wishing you all a very Happy Easter, but I am in Uganda and am getting very ‘used’ to running on ‘African’ time. Also, we have been soooo busy here. By here, I mean Kampala. I am still living at Kiwanga helping out in the head office for COU. This will probably be until mid May when I will head back to Rakai. Perks of this is electricity and……..INTERNET! We have internet in our offices so I now have access to intermittent (and very slow) internet. At least it is internet. I’m sure not complaining! So yes, this means you can all send me tons of e-mails with lots of details on your lives (hint, hint) until May when I shall return to Rakai and the land of no internet.

Easter flew by but I did take time to stop and dye some Easter eggs with the residence of Philip’s House which was a blast. Philip’s Home is a part of the COU program which provides children who have physical and learning disabilities with shelter, food, care and education. Many thanks to my Grandma Norma who sent some Easter Egg Dye! Side note: thanks so much to everyone for all the packages and letters. I am still astonished by the love I see from everyone and can’t mention it enough. I have never stopped to think about the yearly ritual of dropping eggs into colored dye, but after trying to explain it to the kids here I realized how silly it seems to someone from an non-easter-egg-dying-culture. None the less, I still love this tradition and the kids all had a great time.

This past weekend COU got the opportunity to participate in the first “Festival of Hope,” an event held at the Sheraton hotel in Kampala. The office staff has been very busy in preparation for this but it paid off as we were able to make very many useful contacts. The dance troupe got a chance to perform and they did so well! I am still constantly amazed by their ability to always pull of stunning performances. I, on the other hand, am still trying to learn how to shake my body. My teacher (the children) are great, but my coordination, I am afraid will never allow me to become a professional bakasimba-er.

That’s alllllllllllllll for now folks! Have a super day!

A few old I thought I should post

Kids at Sabina

Becca Marsh and crew came in January to help with the construction of our library.

Sweet home, Ssanje village

To anyone who is still checking the blog, my apologies for the very long delay in updating. We have been so very busy in the head office of CoU that I have hardly had time to think about things other than schools, children, paying salaries and databases. As I mentioned in the last blog, I have temporally relocated to Seeta (15 km east of Kampala) living and working in Kiwanga, CoU’s other home. The Children of Uganda’s head office is now located there and I am helping out in this time of transition. Things are going well and I am very optimistic about the changes this organization is undergoing. Once the changes are complete, I know that it will create a better environment and better learning opportunities for the children. Not that things were bad before, but as time moves forward, so is required of every organization. I’m doing many activities to try to help CoU some of these include: organizing letters to sponsors, updating our database of children’s histories, finding schools for secondary students to attend, running around Kampala looking for a number of things, today it was papers to apply for tax exemption.

Like I mentioned before, I am missing my village, but really, really, really enjoying the intermittent electricity. I will be staying in Kiwanga until mid May and then back to the Rakai home to finish out my service, which is done in November. I’m planning a trip with a couple of other PCVs to see some of the seven wonders of the world before I arrive home but we hope to back state side by December 23^rd, just in time for Christmas! I have no doubt that I will have plenty of things to keep my very busy until then. Opening the library will take a lot of work, but will be very much worth it. I am so excited for it to be complete. Then I have a visit in August from the amazing Becca Evans, so I’m sure time will fly.

Last week, I got the fantastic opportunity to travel to Rakai to stay at my home for 4 whole days! We are preparing for a visit from a team of doctors from Baylor and so I had to go organize the files for every child in our program at the home in Rakai. While this is not the most exciting work, I enjoyed every minute of my time. I was a bit nervous that the people in my village would have forgotten about me and would have reverted to calling me a muzungu again. I have been away for a month and co-workers at Sabina home have told me that the people in the community thought I had gone back to the states. I was so relieved when I was greeted by the people and small children with shouts of, ‘aunti salah’ (that’s how they pronounce my name), ngo buzze, kudi kayo! (you have been lost, welcome back). Even all the taxi drivers in Kyotera, a town 30 km away from my village, remembered who I was and where I stay. When I arrived at Sabina home, I was dog-piled by 50 very excited children who all tried to jump into my arms at the same time. As painful as this was, I didn’t feel the bruises until hours later as I was so happy to be ‘home.’ The children all send their greetings and love to everyone in America.

I hope you are all well and enjoying what I hope will soon be spring. Its still consistently, amazingly warm here. I guess that’s what you get for living on the equator.

Love and peace!

Sarah :-)