“You people, school is good”

June 20th, 2008

I saw this scrawled in chalk on a wall today while we were on our way back from Kampala to get ingredients for the dinner we wanted to cook. Cathy says “you people” whenever she’s trying to get everyones attention. Anyway. Our trip to Kampala went as it usually does, a lot of people telling us we’re white, like we didn’t know we are already. I was saddened again by how much poverty is on the street. There was this beggar, she looked to be around 5 who was rocking back and forth, holding her ear and just weeping, she looked like she as if she was starving to death. I felt completely helpless in coming to her aid. The young beggars target us because they know we’re foreign, so they surround us in the street with their empty palms facing up to us. I know that giving them what makes the situation worse. I still don’t know how to go about helping in situations like these.

We heard the children had never tasted cheese or grapes so we bought ingredients for macaroni and cheese and a lot of grapes, which are incredibly expensive. We bought everything to feed 50 people, carrying it back to the home was definitely tiresome. We set up for an art show to display all of the kids pieces from over the time of us being here. I hand-painted a sign and added a little something for the event too. It was not the most organized of art shows. All we had to hang was some scotch and duct tape, but we did what we could and the results were great.

So we had lunch and cleaned all of the dishes to attempt to say thank you, but I don’t know how we ever will be able to adequately. They really have done so much for us. Here in Uganda, they don’t have garbage men, or garbage pick-up, you burn all of your trash, or you heap it somewhere on your property, even the plastic.

It rained today and afterwards there is a lot of runoff of mud that turns into dust when the water evaporates so there is this ritual after every rain to sweep the ground outside. Every available broom is taken so I just sit back and lazily take some photos.

Norah asked if we could do more work and draw tonight. I wanted to but since I committed to cooking, I could not. They did art a little bit on their own and I wanted so badly to work with them.

We put 20 liters of water in a giant pot that we put over a fire and waited for that to come to a “rolling” boil. This man called Cyrus was visiting the home from Ohio. He was involved in an organization dealing with helping orphans and told us about his wife who was adopted from Africa to live in America. His accent gave him away almost immediately, the first American accent I’ve heard in a month. It was good to talk to someone who was like-minded. We ended the night by presenting our 15 lbs of macaroni and cheese to everyone and finished up with a desert of mangos and grapes. They didn’t love the macaroni and cheese which is probably for the best, the grapes were a huge success though and it was so interesting to watch them eat. I’m going to miss them all so much.

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