Pub Nite

Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning's End.

Unfortunately for this blog, as it is a travel blog, my not traveling precludes it from being continued.

Look forward to my forays in Canada and Botswana, coming soon enough.

So until next time, Adios!

Siba Bulungi!

I am standing condiments

Everyone thank Jane for this blog post title. She misread the name of my blog... Gosh... WTF?

Anywho, this blog post is dedicated to reporting on Ling Ling, the Chinese restaurant in Jinja.

So Aashish and I were supposed to meet coworkers at Ling Ling last night for dinner. They didn't exactly come, so Aashish and I were the only two people in the restaurant the majority of the time. If you are curious as to what Ugandan Chinese is, I guarantee we were curious too. We started with an egg roll apiece. Essentially it was cabbage lightly sauteed with a pinch of salt, then rolled into egg rolls and fried. Tasty. I then had spicy shredded beef, and Aashish had veggie fried noodles. At this point we were still the only people in the restaurant. As we paid and left, two people wandered in. Awkward, but good enough Chinese...

The weekend was nice and relaxing, with hanging with people, meeting people for lunch, etc. Sunday we were invited to my host sister Irene's house for lunch. She made a whole spread, including different types of rice. It was delicious, as we expected. The kids were VERY energetic, and we played for a while before I dispensed with giving some gifts (markers and scissors), and it became evident how long it has been since I was a little kid. With two sets, I left one at Mama's house because the kids are there every day, and giving out the other set, Joseph and Blessing began to fight and cry and scream and I had to take them back until I added the other set and then gifted them together.

CUtting this short, I have to go now.

Whatevs.

See you back in the states!

Ecclesiastes/ The Byrds

Unlike past blog posts, this one will not be whimsical in nature, and the sarcasm will be significantly toned down.

It is with regret that I blog on the death of one of the community members in Naminya, reducing the number of people involved in my bakery project from 25 to 24. Margret was also part of the community the FSD team at St. Francis worked with on their demonstration farm project. A TASO client and then a St. Francis client since the mid 1990s, Margret was the community organizer for the group. Late Monday night she was taken to St. Francis for tetanus, and the next day she was moved to the regional referral hospital in Jinja. She passed on Wednesday afternoon. She was 58 years old with 2 children.

Most of this unknown to my coworkers and I, we went to Naminya from TASO on Wednesday around 11 to have a community meeting. Upon arrival we discovered all that had transpired and left to return to the hospital (TASO is on the hospital grounds) to visit Margret and her family. She was in what appeared to me to be a dying room, set aside from the other patients in the ward in her own room. She was sprawled on a bed, struggling to take in air. Shortly after we left she passed on.

The next day we were informed that the funeral was in Bujawali (near Naminya), so Aashish and I joined Norah, our baking trainer, as she had also expressed interest in going to the funeral. Upon arrival the funeral was bursting with people. We found the other community members we worked with and together observed as the funeral passed from phase to phase. People were sitting everywhere in every square inch of shade, hundreds of people spread out over a vast area. Then the pall bearers carried the wooden coffin to the grave site, accompanied by a call and response prayer and song led by a woman in the community. The pastor led prayers and the coffin was lowered, and then men began filling in dirt. They then laid iron sheet and cemented over the grave. The ceremony then continued with prayers for the heir, traditionally the daughter of the deceased's brother. Then the service ended and after a few moments Aashish, Norah, and I bade farewell to the community members and made our way back to the main road in order to arrange transport home.

The entire experience was somewhat unusual. As one of the only Mzungus (white folk/foreigners) in attendance, I got a lot of stares. But Margret was a member of our community, and I felt it was more than appropriate that I attend the funeral.

Hopefully the allusion in the title isn't lost on anyone. If it is, youtube the song Turn Turn Turn, or just open the book of Ecclesiastes.

Hopefully my next installment will be on a happier note.

Tell the men that their accoutrements are out of order

Hi! Did you miss me? Too bad, I am STILL blogging. It has been a while, yes, but now I am back, and better than ever. And if you don't believe me, okay, whatevs.

Let's create the table of contents on the last week and a half or so:

1. Nile Friday and Burna's Birthday

2. Chill Day and Sunday

3. Last Week

4. Sipi

Starting with #1:

I didn't get to go to the development speaker because we had a rather annoying meeting that lasted way too long and covered way too little to be worth missing my speaker, but I did. So forget that, but I did get to go on the Nile Breweries tour. A bunch of us GESI folk met at the factory gates and were led around by Herbert (Don't ask who Herbert is, I don't exactly know. He knows my host sister's husband, Frank, who is the assistant technical manager at the plant). The tour of the manufacturing process kind of sucked, but then we got a tour of the bottling plant, and mechanization is just really cool to watch. After the tour ended, we hung out in this pavilion-type area where they gave us a ton of beer and we chilled for a few hours. Best tour ending ever, even if the beer was kind of crappy.

Which brings me to Bruna's Birthday. We went to Leoz for Indian food, then Bruna and Kenny from KORD in Kakira met us to go to a club called Spot 6, a fun bar. So we partied there for a while, dancing our hearts out (we were the only white people dancing, and the only white people, and the only people dancing), and having a grand old time. I am not sure why exactly, but I got a free hat. Neat, right? Kenny wound up sleeping over at Mama Robinah's house, and we chilled most of the day on Saturday at home and in town, and then Sunday happened rather uneventfully, with only a few gastrointestinal bumps along the way.

And now we discuss last week. We FINALLY brought the oven to Naminya and had oven training! They learned to make cake, cookies, and bread (the bread was legit good). We bought the community's first cake, which said "First Cake," and shared it with TASO for Maddie's (another FSD intern working at TASO, she is doing soap making, today was her last day) birthday that was that Monday. Also, for the Wednesday staff meeting our community supplied 300 half cakes, which was a great opportunity to showcase our products to all of TASO.

And now, this past weekend: FSD had a retreat to Sipi Falls, which northeast of Mbale (if anyone cares), at Mt. Elgon national park. We hiked the falls, had AMAZING local lunch and coffee (best. avocados. ever.), and had lots of time to ourselves. I was inducted into the world of bananagrams (for better or for worse. Peel!), and it was really chill. We stopped in Mbale on the way back for lunch, and at the restaurant some Bollywood film that Aashish recognized was on TV. I totally called that in one song number people on motorcycles would start riding behind the main character and his girl friend and dance, and then it happened, and it was awesome. The movie was set in Switzerland? Whatevs, who cares really.

And now I am back in Jinja, chilling after a long day working on our community's business plan, wondering how things will go once we leave Jinja and come back to the States.

I also discovered that Maddie is planning on bringing a machete back in her luggage. I think I might want to be afraid of her.

More later, when there is more to say.

Adios!

Also, Aashish, if you read this, Sezi's wedding.