guest blogger, georgette!

So, many of you have noticed that it has been awhile since my last post. I am so sorry I dropped the ball....but I promise to make it once I am back to the land of good internet speed. ha! The past 2-3 weeks have been so full, I can't even believe where the time went. Our second team arrived and we went full steam ahead into our other 2 organizations.

Georgette is back in the US now, but sent me an entry, upon request, for the blog. She shares one of her favorite continual interactions with the "Bug Man" we would pass on the way to Idoome, the TAOST location I wrote about in the last entry. Geoffrey is TAOST's director.

"Geoffrey is a remarkable man with a great sense of humor. He picked us up every morning & drove us to Idome for our day of classes & came back for us in the evening.

He always had to make several stops along the way to talk with these & those...Andrew, our translator, asked him if he was running for office because he seemed involved in the lives & problems of so many people.

After about 45 minutes on the main road we would turn onto a small dirt track that was navigated at about 5 mph because it was so chewed up. This road took us through the fields of crops planted by the residents of Idome which was their food supply. There was a man by the rice paddy every day whose job it was to keep the bugs off the rice. That gave us a good laugh because we couldn't imagine how he went about it but once we did see him setting fire to an ant hill. Anyway, each time we passed Geoffrey & he would exchange a few words & then Geoffrey would translate for us. One day he asked Tara for 500 ugs (about 25 cents) - the next day he asked for 1000 ugs. Our amusement factor went up along with the requests. Tara asked Geoffrey to ask him what he was going to give her in exchange & he offered rice. The next evening he said he wanted to go to the UK & everyone had another good laugh. We began to look forward to the interaction.

On the Fri. Tara had other business to attend to & did not come to class with Judy & myself. As we passed "bug man" Geoffrey leaned out the window & told him that Tara was away making arrangements for his ticket to the UK. On our way out on Fri. evening (with a live chicken in the trunk) to our surprise, "bug man" wasn't there. Geoffrey said that he was probably at home packing his bags, or maybe he was getting a passport photo taken, & we all had another really good laugh.

Geoffrey is one of the most charmingly good natured people I have ever met. Out of the goodness of his heart he works toward the improvement of the lives of people, especially women & orphans, in his community. I was struck by how many Ugandans work tirelessly for the benefit of others without any compensation. Whether because of or in spite of the country's history of violence, they seem to have a lot of love & compassion in their hearts. I will never forget them." Georgette

Gifts Gifts Gifts!

The women of Idoome were so wonderful to us last week and each day as we left would bring out gifts to thank us for our day of teaching. The first day, pictured above, consisted of a Jack fruit, a bag of maize, and a bag of greens. We were so pleased and touched to receive these!

This picture is of some of the gifts we gave them on the last day, again, thanks to your generous support of Sewing Hope. Among other things, we gave 20 pairs of Fiskar scissors, 20 clear plastic rulers, and 30+ 6 yard peices of fabric. We are also having a proper cutting table built for them, sending their teacher to additional vocational classes, and supplying a salary for their assistant teacher, Rose.

So, it was really very amazing for us to receive their gifts on the final day of our classes. Pictured above, you see a huge papaya, a whole branch of Matoke bananas (one of the staple foods here), some more maize and eggs, and yes, that's right, you see clearly....a live chicken!!!! Judy accepted it gratefully, did a little dance with it and then they promptly stuffed it in the trunk for the ride home. ha!

English class

One new thing for Sewing Hope this trip has been an english class, taught by Judy. We have capitalized on her ESL training and have started pretty much every day with an English/Lusoga class. It has been really fun to hear the women speak our language and, especially, to learn theirs. It has also been a very easy ice-breaker and bonding time for us to get to know the new groups of women. I just thought that this was a really great and quite representative picture of Judy during one of her classes.

TAOST Idoome

So, hopefully some of you have noticed that it has been awhile since I have posted. Last week was a very challenging and very busy week, so I was not able to even get to the internet cafe until now. So, I am going to try to make up for lost time by catching you up on some highlights of the week with the wonderful women of Idoome.

We found, after arriving, that we needed to do some rethinking of the classes we had prepared for this group. Not only did we need to do some changing due to skill levels, but we we prepared for a class of 19, but each day our class grew until we had 36 women. The teacher, Mary, and Geoffrey (TAOST's director) were excited about this because it meant that the class was beginning to have a presence in the community....but for us, it just added stress and an organizational challenge with how to teach this many students at once.Our most successful classes were Georgette's bag class, where we managed to have 36 women make bags in a little over a day of class!!!!...and the rosette class, pictured above put together as a placemat. We also were requested to do a hand-knitting class, which we managed to put together despite knitting needles not existing in Uganda. We hired some girls to cut the teeth off rat-tail combs for us, then file them down as smooth as possible. We were actually very surprised with how well that class went. I must admit I was a skeptic! ha!

One amusement of each day was the small herd of cows which passed through on their way to get water each day around 2pm. The women never even batted an eye as they stomped, rather close, right through our class space. But, Judy and Georgette and I giggled every time, and managed to take a picture. Another thing I won't ever tire of is how the women tie their babies onto their backs as they sew or cut. They also hoe gardens, carry water, chop wood, etc. with their babies tied calmly on their backs. Judy has seen several babies not even tied on, but just holding on as their moms lean over to watch us do a demo. Brilliant little things. This baby clearly has a mind of its own and wasn't enthused by the photographer. ha!

Goodbye Georgette, hello girls!

We've had a change in our team....Friday, after a wonderful last day in Idoome, we welcomed our new team of Courtney, Rachel, and Shannon, and had a farewell dinner for Georgette. It has been great to have our new girls here, as they not only bring a new set of skills, but a great sense of humor and lightness to our group. We have been introducing them to the local money, the local transportation, and the local food. It has been great!

But, Judy and I do miss Georgette. She has a frankness about her that is refreshing and easy in this culture. I saw her relate to people by telling them in all sorts of ways how their culture and our culture are different, but more often than not, similar. It was always fun to hear her perceptions and opinions on things, as she either saw them in a different manner, or we saw them the same, but she put things in a way I wished that I could've. Those of you who know Georgette, please take the time to look at a few pictures and ask for her best stories. We have had some good belly laughs...and Georgette, if you are out there, please write something for me to post here....maybe the story about the bug man...or buying the needles...or your triumphs during knitting class.
Here is a picture of Georgette fitting a dress with the women of MOHM. This feels like a memorial or something. Ha! Sorry about that!

Muzungu!

Just a little blurb about the word MUZUNGU. As mentioned before, this is the term used for a white person here and you tend to hear it alot....mostly by kids, but also by people wanting to get your attention. The most common phrases are really kind of cute, in a way, since they make a rhyme...kind of sing-songy:

"Muzungu, how are you?"
"Muzungu, I love you."

Geoffrey, the leader of TAOST, where we spent the day today, explained to us this afternoon that muzungu actually means, "Wanderer". This is because of when white people first came, they didn't actually know what they were doing and were said to be wandering around. ha!!

I wanted to tell a little anecdote from Georgette last week. It was on a day we spent at MOHM, when she was teaching a class about different seam finishings. Shannon had created these amazing little cloth books that have examples of different ways to finish seams nicely if you don't have an overlock machine, which these women do not. She showed a french seam (sorry to those who don't sew and don't know what this is) and Rehema clasped her hands and said, "Muzungu, THANK YOU!!!".

I think this is my favorite way of hearing muzungu said!

New group!

Today was spent in Idoome, a village a little over an hour from Jinja. This was the first time I had ever been to work with the women there. I must admit it was a hard day. It just takes some time to become comfortable in a group, and for them to as well. And, not working with them before made us unaware of their skill level, so it requires some figuring out on how to teach things. Nonetheless, the women are lovely, and we were joined by several men who either are on the local council or have wives involved in the class. They added a great dimension, as the women giggled at their mistakes during English class, and as they taunted a man named Willy when he finished his fabric rosette and pinned it onto his shirt.

We returned to Jinja this afternoon knowing that we need to regroup for tomorrow and think carefully about how to plan for this group. In our meetings before coming to Africa, I said to my teams several times that the most important quality you need to have to come work with us in Africa is flexibility....and days like this are exactly why. Because we come for a few weeks in the summer, it is difficult to assess just what the women are learning and what level they are at....even knowing the needs of the class is difficult. So we tried a few things, had some success, but also need to change the way we do our classes a bit. I am confident that each day will get better and better. Not only because we'll get to know the women and they us, but also because Judy and Georgette are excellent teachers and will roll with whatever we face.

One surprise highlight of the day was entering Jinja's central market for the first time today. Basically, it is a labirynth of booths in the middle of Jinja, surrounded by a wall. It can be a little scary. But, assured that we could find knitting needles inside, we bravely entered like we had done it a million times. Unfortunately, the first section we came to was the butchery/meat section. I averted my eyes from the tables of guts several times until we came upon shoes...a section I was MUCH more comfortable in. After asking several times where to go and wandering a bit, we found a woman, who low-and-behold, was actually knitting!!!!!! We begged her to tell us where she got her needles and she said that we can't get them here....she had made hers out of a coat hanger! ha! She was really cool....after leaving her and deciding maybe we can find something else that will work for us, we stumbled upon the spice section....my favorite. That was such a cool place with bags and bags of great smelling curry's, all types of beans, some barks and rock salt, etc....so cool. We then went to the paper section and bought some cement papers to make more patterns for our class tomorrow, and eventually made it out the gate. So cool....it actually brought my spirits up quite a bit after such a draining day.

Being able to find the things you need in a new town and a different culture is one of the things that is most empowering to me. So, finding yarn and machine needles, combs, and pattern paper was really fun. It is a comfort.