So...I'm back on-campus after our rural homestays and a weekend at Sipi Falls. I'll start...at the beginning-ish. We had our midterm on Friday morning. I studied for a little while on Thursday night, but mostly didn't study. The test was a little harder than I expected, but I think I did okay. We left basically right after the test and it was about...a 6 or 7-ish hour drive to the district we were going to, Soroti (Uganda's divided into districts, sort of like states but much different). We stayed for the night at Margaret's, a Ugandan woman who helps in the USP office and such. She's really cool. Most people stayed outside in tents, but I opted for the mattress on the concrete floor inside. We had a campfire that night and it was...amazing. It's very rare that we (USP) gets to hang out together and especially for it to be only us. I like hanging out with the UCU students definitely, but a few hours with Americans was nice. Anyways, we left in the morning to go to our houses. I was with Caroline an we were just down the road from Beau. Overall, my week was good. There were ups and definitely downs. I think I hit my low point of the semester so far, just frustrated with my family members and missing my real family at home and tired and not wanting to do what I had to do and disappointed and...such. And then I knocked my flashlight into the pit latrine. The hole's really really deep, which I could see because my flashlight was down at the bottom. It's still there, although the battery has probably died by now although it was still going when we left the next afternoon. We spent the weekend at Sipi Falls with some of the UCU/Honours College students. It was really good. I hiked down a mountain an then back up another one. In the pictures I took, it looks really intense.
Some general homestay notes:
-Our 'house' was made up of about 5 mud huts with thatched roofs, a cooking house, a latrine, and a couple bath houses. Caroline and I were in one with our 2 sisters, Sarah and Annette,.
-One of the first days, our brother came by and dropped off our nephew Shadrach, who's about a year old. He's adorable, even if he did cry when he saw us for the first couple days. We were friends by the end, due to my persistence if nothing else.
-There are a ton of stars. I seriously didn't know how many. The sky is so crowded here.
-We took evening walks with our papa most nights. They were cool. We went to the fish pond, a water tank on top of a huge hill, and to see the monkeys. The monkeys always had the wrong timing, so we only saw 1 or 2 once; we tried 3 times. Beau and his brothers usually came with us, because they lived so close. Beau told us that they wanted to marry us. Since I'm generally more reserved and quiet, they didn't bother me too much. Caroline, however, is much more friendly. She talked with them a lot, while I was pretty content to walk in silence. The last night when one of them tried to talk to me, I wasn't in a great mood so I shut him down when he asked if he could carry my water bottle.
-Our parents had 9 kids. The oldest died, we never really asked why/how. They were all in secondary school and only Sarah and the 2nd youngest boy, Andrew, were home. Sara's 23 and is in a nursing program somewhere. Schooling here is very different from in the US. Also, she's learning pretty basic stuff, a lot of which I know.
-We helped with chores a lot - we fetched water, hoed and weeded, washed dishes and clothes, swept, helped make simsim balls and chappati, herded and tied up the goats to graze, mingled (mixing flour and water to make posho. Caroline slaughtered a chicken; I documented. We went with our papa to herd the cattle to grazing once. We watched our sisters cook and saw how to make passionfruit juice, smear houses with cow dung, grind millet, and probably more.
-We had cows, goats, chickens, and pigs at our house.
-Hygiene is not the top concern of people here. Washing hands is basically rinsing them with water. It is totally okay to smear cow dung on the ground (it's used like cement), rinse your hands, and then make lunch.
I wrote in my journal every day while I was there, so there is a ton more I could write. Maybe later. I'm sick of writing about myself. Vaya con Dios.
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