Sundays

This post about the last 2 Sundays. I will tell what happened between in upcoming posts.

June 20
I entered Agnes' car on Sunday morning wearing dirt covered pants. This was not the first time. At the house where we are staying lives a 6-month year old dog named Bosco. He's brown, average looking, jumpy and overly rambunctious because during the day he is locked in a dog house. Many morning, they forget to control him and he likes me much more than Nick as I engaged him at the beginning of our stay. Because it rained Saturday night, his paws were extra dirty Sunday morning. I walked out the door. He jumped. I pushed him off. He went behind me and jumped. Both sides of my khakis became the color of Kampala soil - a little browner, darker than sand. I had to grab a new pair of pants and change in the car.

After a short drive, we arrived at church a little late, shuffled onto a bunch, and listened to the priest deliver his sermon. The church has a young following, which is reflected in the vibrancy of the music. At the end of the service, before and during the final song, everyone in the congregation turned to each other and said, "Peace be with you." I am glad I did not slip and say "Shabbat Shalom!"

Last Thursday, Alexis and Jeremy arrived in Kampala from Dallas with the first of visitors who will be trickling in until July 2. One of the benefits of having visitors is the EAC children get to spend more time at the EAC house. While I had met many of the older children, this was my first time to meet the younger. They were in attendance at church and greeted us at the end of the service with smiles and hugs. The children EAC serve are enthusiastic, confident, and mature. Creating a logic model to measure success would be much easier if we only had to collect qualitative data. The social abilities of the children are proof of the organization’s success. Unfortunately, quantitative data needs to be assessed as well.

From church, we headed to the EAC Children's home for the day. There was so much to do. On the yard, many of the children played games including horseshoe and egg toss. Inside, Jimmy, Nicholas and Moses - three of the older boys - taught Jeremy, Nick and I chords on a Ugandan string instrument called the adungu. My lack of eye-hand coordination was outmatched by the patience of my teachers. After a few minutes, I could play the first 4 chords of the instrument.

I took a brief break from music and went outside to watch the younger children play games. Moses stood with me, and we had a wonderful conversation about his experience in the United States, school, and sports. He is soft-spoken and one of the most genuine people I have ever conversed with. His demeanor exudes wisdom, a drive for knowledge, and love. When we heard song coming from inside the house, we went to join. While I only had the ability to watch, Moses enhanced the music by playing the flute. Jimmy has a beautiful soothing voice, which he used to lead the group in a composition full of call-and-response. I dubbed him the singing master.

Soon after, we ate lunch – a wonderful buffet of local foods including Aunt Sarah and Aunt Justine’s wonderful cabbage! Before eating, we held hands in a circle for song led by Joan – one of the children – and a prayer. I ate with Jimmy and Rajab. We had a very interesting conversation about school and caning. One of them missed the practice because the threat of the punishment inspired them to work harder. I thought this was an interesting view of what I think is a horrifying practice.

Following lunch, we played a series of fun games including a game where you run around until someone says a number and you have to find that many people to hold hands with or you are out, a staring game, a staring game, and Badu Badu – a game where someone in the middle says one of three words, which indicate where you put your hands. Rajab acted as the man in the middle. During the game, he would say a word while putting his hand in the wrong position. While this is what the person in the middle is supposed to do, I do not think anyone could have been trickier. He has a fantastic playful sense of humor.

Florence is one of the younger EAC girls. Somehow, we ended up playing with a red beanbag together in the late afternoon. She is mischievous in a fun way, which caused my goofiness to come out. We tried throwing the beanbag so the other couldn’t catch, as far as we could, and even to the sky. Our games were broken up by the departure of the guests and the approaching World Cup Match.

Jengo, the Bryans, Daniel, Simon, and a few other of the older EAC boys joined Nick and I to watch the Italy-New Zealand World Cup match at Cheri’s – a bar in Kabalaga at 5:30. On the walk back, Jengo and I developed a game, which we have continued to play. We switch names. Both of us get confused, usually fail to answer to our other names, and resort back to our given title; however, it can be pretty funny. We are still wondering if my passport will work for Jengo.

June 27

I arrived at the EAC children’s home by Boda at 8:45 on Sunday morning to learn about Ugandan cooking and help Aunt Justine and Aunt Sarah prepare lunch for the US visitors. My first job was to cut cabbage. I now know why my mom sometimes buys the pre-cut cabbage for coleslaw. It’s hard to cut – especially to the small size needed for the recipe. I may or may not have slightly cut one of my fingers as a result of the knife slipping on the very moist vegetable. My second task was to sort through the rice to remove all the “funny stuff” as Aunt Justine calls it. The most fun assignment involved g-nuts. G-nut sauce – a staple of Ugandan cooking is grounded peanuts with water, salt and other additives. This particular time we were mixing the paste with greens. My first job involving the sauce was to thin it out with water. The ground peanuts were placed into a pot with water, which I placed my hands into and kneaded until the water and paste became one. After this mixture was heated, the greens – Gobi (I think they are Collard Greens) – were added. I stirred for about 5 minutes until the sauce was allowed to rest on the charcoal stove alone. One of the benefits of cooking instead of going to church was I got to eat a plate of peas (my favorite), beef stew, and rice at 10:30.

Guests arrived around 11 from church, and the children performed at 12. I will go into detail about the children’s performing in a future post. For now, let me just tell you they are amazing.

Following the performance, we ate lunch. Because Donna was turning 10 on Monday, we sang happy birthday to her. Then, the children received gifts from the US visitors who they would not see again. In thanks, they sang two beautiful songs. I have found singing in Uganda to be powerful because it is seen as a gift not just something to entertain. As they sang, I became sad for the first time since arriving in Kampala because I began thinking about how we only had 3 more weeks until we returned home. While it’s easy to say I will return next summer, the reality is I do not know when I will have the opportunity to hang out with my new friends again.

After the guests hugged the children goodbye, we departed to Taibah to drop them off for a week at school. Moses and I walked from the lower school to the upper school together. We dropped off his stuff in his room. He is learning how to play guitar and plucked out all of the chords for me. Somehow, I ended up in the school office with a teacher who thought I was there to sign Moses in. It was very humorous because the teacher thought Moses was Willington – another EAC student. Moses was just trying to show me the computer lab.

We then went to the dining hall to check the score of the Germany-England game. I met Moses’ English teacher and explained to him how the US Congress works. Moses joked as we were walking to our next destination – the football (not American) field – that we shouldn’t go check the score again because the teacher will ask me too many more questions. At the soccer field, I said goodbye to Daniel and Jengo. As we were walking away, Daniel scored a goal, which was cool to see.

Our time at Taibah ended with Nick and I playing an intense game of monkey in the middle with Sharon – another EAC student. I was so proud of myself. When I ended up in the middle, one of the girls joked I would never get out. I proved her wrong by catching the ball the first time Sharon threw it.

As we were leaving the children’s home for Taibah, I told Aunt Justine that I was going to come by to say “hi” at night. She didn’t believe me so after dinner I returned to prove her wrong. I think she was shocked.

In the “special” (the word used for a private taxi) on the way home, I witnessed an exciting fit of road rage. The road that leads into our neighborhood is currently being reconstructed, which makes it difficult for the traffic dance, which I talked about in one of my early posts, to happen smoothly. My trustworthy driver exited his car to tell someone to backup after about 6 minutes of waiting. When the people finally did what he said, he entered the car. Unfortunately, he forgot to put on his blinker when he re-entered the car. The people he corrected earlier took the opportunity to start yelling at him. The only words I could decipher were “you are stupid.” Although everything happened in Luganda, I knew exactly what was happening. David, my driver, was right. These people were being ridiculous. At least, I was entertained!

The reason I started this posting with the story of Bosco is because with the exception of my pants, nothing about the last two Sundays needed to be changed.

- Feldman