A Week Gone by Already

A Week Gone by Already
6/5/11
Today we went to church with Mary and then had lunch afterwards. I have to say I’m all churched out. The service lasted for four hours with singing, dancing, and two sermons. I felt guilty after two and a half hours because I had to sit down for a while. Otherwise I enjoyed the service, and I could tell that Mary was pleased with our attendance.

Lunch was wonderful as usual, and we even managed to eat two whole plates of food between the three of us and ask for seconds. Her daughter Julian came with her new infant. He was really cute and happy. We all took turns passing him around. We didn’t get home till 6:30, which made for a long day. Amazingly, I’m the last one up. Nicole and Meagan have already gone to bed. It’s Meagan’s turn to not feel well. Tomorrow we’ll jump right back into the work week. The various stacks of tests are taunting us.

6/4/11
We went with Moses to watch his kids play football. He runs a nonprofit for children from the slums to play football (soccer). He does well with them, and often times they end up getting scholarships to go to school that they would not get otherwise. The name of their team is Sparta after the German team. Nicole stayed behind because she still wasn’t feeling good. It was a shame too because I think she would have liked it, but there is nothing worse than not feeling well and being stuck in a place. The team remembered us from last year, and they won.

There was also a Ugandan game, so we watched that. Uganda also won, so everyone was in high spirits

6/3/11
To day was a public holiday for Martyr’s Day. It gave us a chance to start tackling the stacks of tests that are now all over the table. Meagan and I had Nicole laughing. The dialogue went like this. Meagan, “What is this a stack of?” Ginger, “Things that stack well.” And that is how our analysis is beginning. Nicole was good enough to help us grade tests for three hours and we still only made a minimal dent. We also learned that we don’t have all the tests from all the districts, and Mary wants to administer the test to the new school that we visited on Wednesday. We are going to have to figure out a way to off load some of this burden. The only problem is that we can tell that the tests were not always administered correctly, so we are hesitant to also have people grading them on top. Surely there is a solution somewhere in there.

We went out to try and catch up with some of our friends for the evening, but it ended up being a short night. I wasn’t feel that great, and neither was Nicole, so we decided to come back early.

6/2/11
I had scrambled eggs with cheese this morning. Purchasing cheese while we were in Amsterdam was a great investment because the cheese here is just so bad.

We had another day at the Foundation. This time we met with Echiba. I always really like interacting with him because he always is enthusiastic about the Foundation. We went with him to a new school where they are trying to start the program. Did some more catching up and planning for the summer. I think things are pretty well established now that we have had roughly two days of catching up and planning.

Today we went to our pizza place. It was a lot of fun to go back, and we ate entirely too much food. We went home because it was coming to almost three in the afternoon, and everyone was getting tired. Even though we are jumping right back in, I forget how taxing it can be just to try and get one or two things done in a day. It was nice to come home and spend the rest of the afternoon reading and writing. I feel like I’m writing all the time, but it still isn’t enough. The electricity has been flickering more this year, which makes it more difficult.

6/1/11
Whew… our first real day of work. Everyone seemed excited and ready to get going. We stopped by Mary’s first. She was so happy to see us. It is funny how it is all coming back. Getting around and negotiating. It was nice to give her apricot preserves as a gift. I hope she likes them. The most exciting news is that mary has a new boyfriend and is planning to get remarried within the year. I would love to be able to attend, and admittedly the wheels are already turning on how this might be a possibility. I’ll just have to see.

Meagan and Nicole continued with Mary while I split off and met with Rev at SAS. It was good to catch up and make plans for the summer. A lot of things have happened since we’ve been gone. The good/bad news is that we had some tests that SAS was supposed to administer in Feb, and it was much more successful than we expected. Now we have over 1,000 tests to grade and enter into a database. Thank goodness we know that Moses will be able to help us like he did last year, and he already knows what he is doing.

After getting the test home, which are now stacked all around the living room, I rejoined Meagan, Nicole, and Mary at a school where the program is just getting started. It is a huge school by our standards. I sat in on the 3rd grade class, and there was roughly three hundred students in the room.

We walked all the way home so that we could talk about the day, and when we got home we had Ugandan gin and homemade juice and watched Seinfeld in celebration of a successful day.

5/31/11
Another slow day. Starting to get really restless. Our friend Pharouk dropped by to catch up. Some of his family lives in Britain so he has this really weird accent that is a mix of British and African English.

5/30/11
Today was a slow day and I’m anxious to be getting things done. I know that it takes time to get things moving. We walked to town, dropped by the post office, and then stopped at our favorite Indian restaurant. We shared one plate between the three of us and it was enough. I noticed that when we walked by city square, no one was sitting in the park except for police men. That was sad to me. Even for someone like me who has spent minimal amounts of time in Kampala, I have memories associated with that place, and now it is unusable.

Nicole took her first boda ride, which is always a big deal. At first she was a little nervous, but then I think she really enjoyed it.