Saturday, July 25, 2009

Monkeys and Rain Buckets and Screaming Children

This past week I have had a few adventures. Early this week I decided to go into my backyard which is adjacent to the jungle to cut a jackfruit off a tree. If you don't know what a jackfruit is you should google it. It basically is a large basketball sized green prickly fruit. In order to pick it, you must climb up a tree and cut it and carry it down although it weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 10lbs. As I was walking to the jackfruit tree, a large monkey jumped out of the tree and ran into the adjacent jungle. Thus confirming that I do in fact live in the African bush;)

Another night this week, I was woken by the rain and thunder pounding on my roof at 4am. Now you must understand life is very different when you lack running water. You must rely on rain tanks and bore holes which means I have to rely on some one to fetch my water in two 20L jerrycans. So when we are lucky enough to have a rainstorm in the dry season, we must ac on it. So I dragged myself out of bed at 4 in the morning to put out my three wash basins to catch rain. As I waited for them to fill, I realized how much I have adapted to the culture here. In the end I was able to fill my 10L jerrycan and my 60L bathing bucket. After I put everything back, I crawled into bed to get some sleep before class in the morning. However, when I went to my 8am class I had whopping 2 students because Ugandans do not do anything in the rain. Oh Uganda:)

Last night I stayed with my dear friend, Amanda. Amanda lives about two hours from me at a primary school in the teacher housing. In the night at around 3:30am, we were awoken by a child next door screaming at the top of her lungs "Maama, Maama, (some luganda) Yesu(Jesus in luganda), my friend come help me..." (Clapping, more clapping). As I lay there wondering what in the world is happening next door...Amanda rolls over and says " Lizzie, do you hear that?" my response, "Yea, what is going on?" Amanda responds " My neighbor girl next door has been having nightmares about people living in the corners of her room trying to steal her..." Now I am thinking when in the world will this poor little girl stop screaming, and it didn't stop for an hour. A neighbor went and prayed with them and the screaming continued to wake the entire school. Finally, an hour passed and the screaming stopped but started again at 6am. So it was just another fun filled night in Uganda.

2 comments:

  1. hey lizzie sound like you are having a ball email me and i what hear all abount it love you and miss you bye Libby

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