homestay!!!

Well, I’m alive! So that’s good. This weekend was unbelievable. I often need to sit back and remind myself that yes, I AM in Africa and this is my life right now!

We began our homestays on Saturday, where we live with a host family for two weeks. It might be a loooong two weeks. My general feelings are benevolent towards the whole experience, overall, but there certainly were times of serious frustration. Thankfully I am paired up with Sarah, another USP, which certainly helps out the situation.

Let’s begin with my host family… I am staying very near school at the home of Rev. Henry and Irene. We call Henry either Reverend or “Mzumba” which is Reverend in Lugandan. They are a young couple (prob around 25-30) with one chubby, precious six month old son, Enock. Also living in the house is Mzumba’s mother, JaJa Sarah (JaJa is grandmother) and his younger brother, Elijah. Elijah is 15 and reminds me so much of my brother, Mike. Careful Michael! I might replace you with an African brother! The couple also cares for their nephew, Timothy, a lively 5 year old who rattles off Lugandan at us even though he knows we don’t understand him. They also have live-in help. From what I can gather, its partially because Mzumba is a pastor and it’s also because they have a young child. The help’s name is Drosa. She is 18 years old and loads of fun. She does most of the cooking and cleaning, so we learn everything from her.

The family is very friendly and very kind, but Mama Irene is fairly quiet. Very often, long silences occur. We ask a lot of questions, but their English vocabulary isn’t anywhere close to as extensive as ours, so we often just give up because we don’t understand one another. Mzumba’s English is great, and he is very lively and outgoing, but he is not around that often. He has a course he is finishing up this week, and we barely saw him yesterday because he had to be at church all day.

Speaking of church, that was quite an experience! The Christian religion here is predominantly Anglican. So yesterday we attending the English service at the Anglican Church of Mukono where Mzumba pastors. It was great to watch him in action! I will talk about the church service is a future entry.

So we helped make dinner yesterday… what a fiasco! We started preparing for dinner at 4pm… but we don’t eat until about 9 o’clock. The meal schedule is most commonly 7am breakfast, 10am tea (bread or the similar is usually served) then a 2 or 3 pm lunch, 6 or 7 pm tea with some snack, and 9 or 10 o’clock dinner. It’s difficult to adjust to, especially since I usually want to be in bed by 10pm! But back to dinner… the staple food of Uganda is called “matooke” (ma-toke-ay). It basically mushed up banana, but it’s more of a bitter plantain than the sweet bananas we eat. So we had to peel these suckers… not so easy. Drosa gave Sarah and I these huge knives, and demonstrating the peeling once. She did it so quickly and graceful, and was left with a perfectly peeled banana. (you cant peel these things like our bananas- they are unripe, sappy, and have a tougher outside) Then she told us to do it. Sarah and I looked at each other, then made our pathetic attempts. Basically when I was done, barely any banana was left because I had peeled too much of it off. Plus, we were also going as slow as dirt compared to Drosa. However, after peeling about 15, I finally was getting the hang of it. Plus I have two weeks to perfect this wonderful skill.

We weren’t done yet, however. We then had to peel the Irish potatoes. This made me laugh because at Thanksgiving this year, Mom asked me to peel the potatoes. Long story short, I ended up in tears because I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Well, mom… I can now peel a potato! With a 6 inch knife too! Be proud!

There’s so much to say, there is no way I’ll ever be able to describe it to you. But here are a few more funny things… we pee in a “latrine” aka an outhouse with cement floors with a 3 by 6 whole in the cement where you go “squatty-potty” style. Good times. The six month old Enock… yeah he’s cute, but they rarely use diapers. So I’ve been peed on about 4 times now. Mama Irene gives us a shirt to put on our lap, but its goes right on through to our skirts. I was getting very frustrating about this after a while. Like put the kid in a diaper on the kid, will you please! And poop! Oh my gosh. They just take the baby, put him on the cement floor in squatting position, and let him poop on the floors. Then they wipe it up and that is that.

All in all- I’m starting to appreciate America much, much more. And to my dear family- I love you and trust me, I miss you. This host family can NEVER compare to you… even you Mikey, even you ;)

Oh, and to my dearly beloved extended family- i absolutely hate to do this to you, but the 34 comments on my last post makes my my blog incredibly slow and difficult for me to access. I'm sorry to break up all the fun, but let's save that space for comments to me. Since you all have blogger name now- you can write on your blogs! and then we can comment on yours! Please don't think I'm mean, it's just that the internet is very testy here and i need all the help i can get to access it. Love you all, and keep the funny comments coming!