Around Town

I spent about three hours on Tuesday afternoon wandering around the town of Namalu with my students Mary and Kipsy Wright. Namalu is less than half an hour from our mission (if the roads are somehow ok) and we buy most of our produce and cooking staples (flour, oil, sugar, milk, etc) from the tiny grocery store and street side vendors. It's nice to just spend a couple hours wandering around with my two adopted little sisters. The Wright family moved to Uganda when Kipsy was only one year old, so these girls have grown up here. They speak ngaKarimojong, know how to bargain with sellers, and know this little town inside out.

We went to a stall where a man was selling necklaces and earrings. While the girls were picking out beads to make into necklaces, a very drunk man wandered up to us demanding money. We ignored him and told him no several times and he eventually staggered away. A crowd gradually grew around us. They didn't recognize me so they asked for my name, which is Nakiru Emily. Over the course of the afternoon my name spread around town and several people shouted it at me. Thanks for yelling at me; yes, I do know that's my name; no, I'm not going to marry you, drink beer with you or give you money!

We bought some tomatoes and twenty mandazi, which are like bite-size fried dough. Delicious. We walked over to the Noah's Ark Hotel, a brightly colored building with a covered veranda, and sat down to eat and talk.  I had a great chat with the girls about how much they're looking forward to going to boarding school next year, and lots of other things. They are such sweet girls and really encouraged me that as much as they can't wait to go away to a "real" school in Kenya, they're glad I'm here and that I'm part of the "family" while their two big sisters are away at school. We determined to make the most out of this year and have tons of fun together while we can.

We had been there for about half an hour when a large, older, respectable looking man came up to the veranda. A group of warrior-age young men had been hovering near the door of the hotel watching us and talking about us; we ignored them the whole time. This man walked up to the crowd of men and demanded to know why they had not given us chairs to sit in. "This is a disgrace! These are visitors!" We tried to explain to him that we were not patrons of the hotel. The men explained that we are not visitors, we are those of Nakaale. Mary and Kipsy told him that we are not visitors, we live here, and we chose to sit on the ground. Don't blame these men. He was smiling while he said it, but he was sincere -- you are our visitors, you are shaming us when you sit on the ground, you make us look like bad hosts, and you boys -- where are your manners? Get chairs for these ladies! Kipsy then blurted out, "We have buttocks for sitting!" which caused roars of laughter. Chuckling and shaking his head, the man walked away. No one brought us chairs. The young men greeted us, and one asked Mary to go to an edonga (dance) with him. He said that the next day he would come to Nakaale and that Bob, Mary's dad, should have a dance in his yard. Um, no thanks. We walked away. 

As we were heading back to meet Martha and Pastor Dave, an old man on a bicycle stopped to greet us. He was very nice. Just then the local crazy lady (sorry... not sure how else to put it) walked up to us shouting and demanding money. He said "her head is broken" and quickly rode away on his bike. We ignored her and kept walking; she's been known to snatch at purses.

The mzungu show is interesting when you're a short term visitor. It's exciting to have everyone waving and staring at you. It's kind of fun to be the center of attention. But those feelings are fleeting, and now I usually find it to be a nuisance. It's awkward to have people stalking you, pointing, yelling at you, constantly begging from you just because you're white. Young women have a particularly bad time of it -- we are constantly whistled at, offered cows for marriage, and receive many other unwelcome advances. But we stick together and we're perfectly safe. It's just uncomfortable. I've gotten fairly good at firmly saying "emam jik" (absolutely not) and walking away straight-faced when yelled at by men. 

Yet, despite the hassle, I love hanging out with my "little sisters" in the bustling metropolis of Namalu :)

Namatala

Today Martha and I went to visit JENGA, a Christian NGO here in Mbale. There we met a woman named Rose who took us to visit Namatala, an Mbale slum where at least a thousand (probably more?) Karimojong  live. It was a fascinating, eye-opening trip.

Many Karimojong go to the cities looking for work. Often married couples will split up, with one staying in Karamoja and one moving to Mbale; other times they'll send their kids away to the cities, and these Karimojong kids make up most of the street kid population in Mbale and Kampala. These transplanted people move into the slum of Namatala.

Truth is, although Namatala is one of the poorest areas in the city of Mbale, the people there are living much more comfortably than their families up north. Most have stone or brick homes or huts, rather than mud huts; the homes are pretty well spaced out, and they keep their living areas fairly neat. Of course, city life presents plenty of its own challenges, but from a basic quality of life standpoint they seem slightly better off. Still, it's a slum. Not an easy place to thrive... it would be very hard for any family in that slum to become prosperous enough to move into a better situation. Hard, but not impossible.

We met lots of lovely people who were thrilled when we greeted in ngaKarimojong and Martha struck up conversations. The kids literally PLASTERED themselves to me, which was sweet. I felt bad because one little girl was clearly sick and covered in sores. She was following me around, wouldn't let go of me, and when we sat down to talk to some women she just put her head face down in my lap for a long time and was breathing really hard. Her back and head were extremely hot; we told the ladies there, but no one seemed too eager to help her. I'm such a softy mzungu; my heart just melts over these kids. I didn't care that they were sneezing, licking, and rubbing their sore-infested faces all over my arms... I loved having them follow me around! But at one point Rose had to drive them all away because Namatala is so big, she was fearing that some of the children would become lost, and the parents would blame it on "those of Bob"!

We prayed with a few women, and then Rose took us to visit the Child of Hope school in the slum. The school is run by a man named Moses who has a wonderful vision for pulling these people out of poverty through education and small business grants in the slum. The school was absolutely beautiful! He took us to each of the four grades (Primary 1 - P4) and as we entered each classroom the children stood to welcome us:

"We wel-o-come you, visitors. This is Child of Hope Primary School. This class is Primary 4 and our teacher is Teacher Mike. We love learning and have hope." Then they would do a clapping routine before sitting down.

 Moses and Martha did introductions (I mostly waved and smiled). The children looked clean and happy, the classes were organized, with very nice paintings and alphabet/number charts on the walls, and the teachers seemed professional. Martha and I came away hopping with ideas and dreaming of all the possibilities for a Christian school in Nakaale....

Rose, who was showing us around, lives in Namatala. As Tiff, another JENGA worker, said, Rose is a hero. Her first husband was shot and killed by rebels in 1994. She moved away from the area where the rebels were (I'm assuming she was referring to the LRA) to Mbale and remarried. Her second husband at the time of their marriage could only see out of one eye. One day, their son was hit by a boda boda (motorcycle taxi) and knocked unconscious. Her husband demanded that the driver take the boy to the hospital and pay for him to be looked at, but the driver refused. Some time during the heated discussion her husband was hit in his good eye and it was destroyed; the doctors had to completely remove the eye. Now he is blind and can't work, although he can walk around and go to the market on his own. Rose works for JENGA and is the primary breadwinner. She has six children of her own, and has adopted 4 Karimojong kids and 5 other children into her family -- so she is living with and supporting a family of 17. She is very involved in the church located there in Namatala and kids all over the slum call her Auntie. What an example to all of us.

Erae ayong akitataman!

I'm a teacher!

So I figured I'd share the "rough draft" of my schedule with you - subject to change, but basically the way my daily life will look until January, when the Tricarico family gets back from furlough. 

I'll be teaching history, English and Bible to Bobby, Mary and Kipsy Wright. We're continuing a world history curriculum (every day), a Bible curriculum (M/W/F), and for English we're using a writing textbook and a literature textbook which we'll intersperse with a more in-depth study of several novels (M/W/F). I'll be done with teaching by lunchtime. After lunch, Chloe, Erika and I will be doing "gym class" (i.e. exercise videos -- kickboxing! Zumba! etc) with Mary and Kipsy.

On Mondays Erika and I will continue our Bible study with the kids down at the clinic ward. As soon as I arrived in Karamoja, kids began excitedly greeting me. At one point I walked up to a group of kids and they called me "amusugut kosi" - "our mzungu". Talk about heartwarming. I missed these kids! I'm so glad they remember me and are "ever greeting" me.

On Tuesday mornings Martha, Mary, Kipsy and I will go to the clinic for devotions with the clinic staff, and then we'll go on to the village of Moru Athia to lead a Bible study. On Tuesday afternoon we may go to Namalu to do some shopping at the market, or just take the afternoon off. On Thursday, after clinic devotions, the four of us will go to Nakaale Primary School to teach Bible stories and some literacy classes for the kids. I'm REALLY looking forward to gaining experience teaching in a Ugandan public school. I know it will be a challenge, but I'm sure it will be a rewarding experience.

On Wednesday and Thursday I will be going down to the clinic to teach the children of Kyalo and Elizabeth, two Kenyan members of the clinic staff. Faith has returned from boarding school in Kenya and will not be returning this year, so Erika and I will be picking up some of her schooling. I also plan to continue helping James and Stacey with their English.

Along with all this, I will be taking piano lessons from Erika and guitar lessons from Martha Wright, and I'll need to find time for ngaKarimojong language lessons with Rose. I've lost so much of the language in just the four months I was gone! I also have the Mission's Wednesday night Bible study, a Bible study for young lady MAs one evening, dinners with different families several nights a week, lesson prep and cooking/baking from scratch (bread, making and freezing tomato sauce, etc) to fill up my free time. I'm also anticipating doing a fair amount of travelling all over Uganda and Kenya with the Wright family, which will be such a good time!

So, as you can see, I've got a pretty full schedule, although it is quite a bit different from last year's schedule. I'm excited to be spending more time teaching the Karimojong in addition to the missionary kids. I feel completely at home here... I was able to basically to hit the ground running and am adjusting to life here pretty quickly. I would love to stay more than a year (and the missionaries would like me to stay longer) but it may not be financially responsible for me to do so. I'm going to get as much as I can out of this year and trust the rest with the Lord.

I'm with the Wrights in Mbale until Tuesday or Wednesday, and we'll start school later next week. Thanks for all your prayers! 

Mbale

I've been down in Mbale, Uganda's 3rd largest city, with the Wrights for a couple days now, and I'm enjoying city life, electricity, warm showers, shopping in the markets with Mary and Kipsy, and amazing food.


 I asked the Wrights what they miss most about living in Mbale, and they said they miss the people. Karamoja is quite isolated. However, I'm learning that being a mzungu (foreigner) here in the city can also be extremely isolating and discouraging. No matter what we wazungu do, we will always stand out in a crowd. You could live in Mbale for ten years and taxi drivers would still try to charge you double. Young mzungu women shouldn't go out into town alone. So both rural and urban missions have their ups and downs.

Yesterday I was blessed to be able to go with Martha to a Bible study of expat/missionary women here in Mbale. A couple of them I'd met before -- Julie and her husband Derek run Cure Children's Hospital, and Dianna Tuininga and her Missionary Associate teacher, Tess, are the new OPC missionaries in Mbale. Nada Eid and MJ McCollum are lovely women who are married to local businessmen, and Lexi and Natalie are young women who do adoption work/orphan care. Three others are women who are visiting short term while they and their husbands do ministry work in Mbale for a while. It is really encouraging to meet all these women who love the Lord and love the work they've been called to do here. 

Unfortunately Martha and I probably won't be going to that study

again for a long time, but at least I met lots of new friends. 

At one point in the conversation we started talking about Karamoja, and the whole room was determined that they could never handle life up there. Truth is, I love Karamoja, and I've never lived anywhere else in Africa, so I guess I don't really know what I'm missing. I don't know if I'd want to live in an African city. It's wonderful to visit occasionally, but I really like the quiet, slow pace of Karamoja. Of course, ask me again at the end of my trip and I may think differently!

 The topic of the Bible study is building up a commitment to daily devotional time with the Lord. Let me dispel any rumors right now that being here makes you feel spiritually "on fire." It's simply not true. I remember last year soon after I arrived, I shared with the other missionary ladies that I felt completely spiritually deflated and dead. I thought that being surrounded by Christians, on the mission field, going to Bible studies and teaching the Bible to Karimojong kids all the time would make me feel more intensely devoted to God.

 It would be an overstatement to say that the opposite is true, but honestly, this is a battlefield. The surest way that Satan can cause our work to fail is if each of us missionaries individually "fall off the wagon" and stop spending time alone with the Lord. It's easy to make excuses not to read the Bible, especially when we are going to Bible studies and teaching Bible stories almost every day. So please pray for me, and for everyone on the mission, that we would not neglect our prayers and time in the Word. It's a FIGHT every day... but communion with God is something worth fighting for. Pray that we would have the strength for the fight, not in ourselves, but in Christ and the promises of the Word.

Road Pictures :)