It’s Saturday morning and I know that some of you are probably wondering where I have been. This is probably the fourth post you have read today because I haven’t been able to connect to the internet that could read my flashdrive. Well, everything is going well here. I am constantly bombarded with inquiries about whether or not I know someone from the states. Those of you who have visited recently or in the past, these kids love you and miss you. I am returning home in about a week and will be transporting many letters back to the states.
Much of last week the students at the primary school were taking exams. Did you know that they have national exams out here. In order to pass P-7 (the equivalent to our 7th grade) and move on to high school, they must pass a national exam. I’m not really clear on the minimum score to pass, but I’ve seen an example of a P-6 exam and I think that my students back home would have a very difficult time passing by our standards in the states.
Because the primary school was taking exams, I spent much of my time at the high school. Those kids are a lot of fun. Finally, I know many of their names and can communicate with them. They taught me many different words in Luganda. I think that I have already developed strong relationships with many of them. They yearn to see me when I am not there. Thursday I walked home with them again. That is some of my favorite time with them because they share with me about Uganda and teach me about how things are here. I am going to miss them so much. Next week they are in exams, I think, so I won’t be able to spend much time with them.
Yesterday, I spent my morning working on interviewing Pastor Dongo and his wife Florence. I hope I’ve gotten their story clear for my video. I need to start working on capturing all the video onto my computer. Later in the morning, we went to the high school for chapel where three of us spoke to the students there. They also led some relay races for them and I’ve never seen high school students get so excited about winning a game….well, even just playing the game for that matter.
After lunch, it was time for an adventure. The Georgia team as I have been calling them wanted to go shopping in town. I knew that I didn’t want to eat alone that evening so I went along. Ann who is the social worker went with us so that we knew our way around. However, she had a hair appointment at 6 and it didn’t look like we were going to be finished in time for her to get back. So we told her to give us the information that we needed to get home and sent her on her way. First we took a taxi to a pizza place. Now if you have never been to Uganda, you might not understand what a taxi is. They are like minivans that they pack with people. They usually drive along a route picking people up and dropping them off down the road. Sometimes in order to make room for more people, they will sit on the laps of the people already on the taxi. That was the case for us as a few of the girls were squished in the taxi. We made it safely to the pizza place and had a great meal there. Note that the pizza in Uganda does not have pizza sauce but it was very good nonetheless. Here comes the adventure part. We needed to find an empty taxi to rent to get back to Kansanga, the area where we were staying. Finding an empty taxi was not as easy as we thought it might be. Finally, we asked a man where we could find an empty taxi. He gave us directions (note: not really any street signs so we weren’t sure where we were going) and we began hurrying to the location of the taxi depot. It was beginning to get dark and supposedly it’s not good to be out at dark. As we walked we tried flagging down an empty taxi, but two passed without stopping for us. Finally, a taxi stopped that had 2 or 3 people in it. We told him where we wanted to go and he asked for 30000 shillings. Ann told us that we should offer 15000, but give no more than 20000. He agreed to 15000 and I guess kicked everyone off the taxi for us. Apparently one of the people that had to leave muttered something in Luganda about mzungu (the word for white people in Luganda). It seemed like we were in good shape, but they tried to get more money out of us. I agreed to 20000 and described exactly where we were going. I figured they decided to take a short cut around the traffic of the evening because I didn’t recognize some of the parts they were driving in. I started to worry when the conductor asked someone a question and I heard him utter the word Kansanga. Everyone thought we were lost, but then I realized where we were and felt a peace. They delivered us right to the school. An adventure, but one that I treasure in my heart because it made me feel like a Ugandan.
Time to take a shower…a few students are mopping my room…that is hand mopping it right now. I love them so much!
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