1st traffic violation

So I don't remember if I have told any stories about police officers pulling me over, but there are a few funny stories. This one however is not one of those. I was driving my friends Ashleigh back to the hospital from getting some things in town so she could get some test results. In the past two years, Uganda has begun to use traffic lights. However, they don't use them well and often have police directing traffic no matter what the traffic light says. On this day, I had a lot of things to do so I was rushing to get Ashleigh's results and return to school to work. I was following a taxi (van) when the light turned yellow and he decided to stop, but there was enough room for me to pass him and make my left turn so I did so only to see the traffic officer waving at me to pull over. If you didn't know the traffic officer or police officer doesn't have a car and chase you down like in the US, but instead they stand at the side of the road and just raise their hand and you're supposed to know to pull over. I can't tell you how many times I almost just drove by. Anyway, the traffic officer (not police officer) told me I ran a red light. I disagreed telling him it was still yellow when I crossed it. He disagreed. So I told him to just give me the ticket and I would pay it. Maybe he was looking for me to pay him off because he told me it was 40000 shilllngs (about $20). I said okay, just write the ticket. He told me he didn't have the tickets so we had to go to the police station. Remember he was just a traffic officer. After some haggling and attempts to direct me to the police station, he jumped in the van to show me where to go. As I pulled up to the police station, I just waited. A police officer greeted me and asked me what happened and I told him my story, that the light was yellow and not red. But I also told him that I wasn't here to argue and I was in a rush so just write the ticket so I could go. He told me he didn't want to write the ticket if I didn't agree. I told him I didn't care because I had somewhere to go. He asked where and I told him I was going to the hospital, and I didn't have time to argue with him. That's when he changed and said, "Okay, you go." And he didn't write me the ticket and I was off on my merry way.

See all you girls/women out there, there are better ways to get out of a traffic violation than just crying. Just kidding. I was lucky and very surprised that they let me go. I'm sure they were just looking to get a bribe from me, but when I just kept asking for the ticket, they knew I wasn't going to give them anything. Praise the Lord.

Sports

Last month included sports day for the students at God Cares Nursery and Primary School. What did that mean for this term: track & field. Well, at least they had track. The students trained for about 2 weeks in events such as 100 m, 200 m, long jump, discus, and many more. Finally, the day came...it was Friday the 13th. Unfortunately the host school was not well prepared for the event. They did not have any of the things needed for the field events. We were really disappointed as the studnets trained very hard for those events. Not all have the ability to run. As we competed in the track events, I found some shining starts in our school. We placed in many of the events, but the most exciting for me was to watch the 100 m and 200 m. Two of our boys shined in those events. Shafiq was amazing in the prelims for the 100m. He was so far ahead of the rest of the pack in his heat that they called a rerace maybe there was a false start or something, but as he ran again, he smoked the pack again this time coming from maybe two meters behind to pass everyone. Both him and Kalega shined as well in the 200 m both coming from behind in the stretch run to pass other competitors. Word has it that the host school had secondary members competing against our primary memebers. But could that stop us...no way. Our school finished on top of all the other schools in our region. A few of our students went on to the next few levels of competition, but none to the national level. Either way, it was fun to watch and root for our kids.

On another shining note if you hadn't already heard: the University of North Carolina Tar Heels are the mens National Champions for basketball. I think they just wanted to drive me crazy this year becuase I couldn't be there to watch all those games. However, I did get to watch a few via Skype through friends (thanks Trenton and the Kirchners) and listen to games through March Madness on demand. Only later to find out that all the games were broadcast on ESPN here in Uganda. So next year I have to get satellite TV so I can watch march madness!!!

Finally, I have also had the opportunity to play basketball over the last few months as well. It's not the competition that was present in the US, but it's still playing. Hopefully I'll get to the university soon to play against some other people.

African Idol or Karaoke?

At the end of February, we had a big kickoff event at the church to show the youth the new changes to the ministry and announce events for the upcoming year. We had planned to begin at 10:00 am so we told the people we were starting at 9:00 am. Wouldn't you know it that most people didn't show until almost 12. They knew that lunch was provided for free so they didn't want to miss that so as usual the planned schedule here does not work because of lack of an audience. I think next time we will start with lunch and if they come late, sorry Charlie.

Anyway, one of the things they do here is they love to sing. It doesn't matter if they can sing or not, but many have no self-esteem issues and will get in front of the crowd and belt away. I can't find myself enjoying any of this for many reasons. First of all, you usually can't tell if the person can sing anyway because they are singing over a track. What I mean is that they have a song on CD that already has someone singing and yet they play that and get up and sing over the CD vocals. Secondly, I'm embarassed for the people that get up there. The people that won't get up there and sing still think they can sing better (though it's not true for most) will just sit and laugh at them. If you've been to Uganda and you know some of the people, then you know the person I am talking about, but most likely you think that person is awesome so i won't mention names. Third, it's just painful to hear not only because of the fact that many cannot sing, but also because in Uganda, they have no clue how to mix a sound board. They turn the highs very high and the lows very low (or up if you know what I mean) and then pierce your ears with that. I don't think they've yet discovered what midrange is for. So in a nutshell, I didn't stay for the end of the event as all they were doing was singing. So I guess it's like African Idol, but only the first few days when they show the people who can't sing. It's not even like karaoke because they could just lip sync the whole song and some people might never know. I guess it's too bad that Milli Vanilli spoiled their opportunity to be successful in the world when they were outed as lip syncers not singers.

Computer crash!!!

Ok so I looked at the date of my last post and I've definitely slacked. Not that everything was my fault. I had some mishaps along the way that derailed me as well. First, I found my computer not working. Apparently there is some sort of faulty chip that Nvidia gave to Apple where the chip will go bad and therefore...nothing on the screen. The good news is that they will fix it for free. The better news is that somehow I was still able to retrieve critical files on my computer after that. The bad news, I have to send it back to the US to get it fixed. Lucky for me, Pastor Dongo leaves at the end of this month to go to the US and a few weeks later a team from Westmont will be coming to visit. So in the meantime, I am very thankful that my friend, Mark, gave me another computer to bring to Uganda when I was back in the States. So here I am on a much slower computer, but very thankful that I can still access the internet and connect with friends. There were a lot of things to write about over the past 6 weeks so I'll be trying to catch up on all those things over the course of the next week! Thanks for all your continued support.