Stuff On My Bike 2, by Shannon

As promised, here is the second round of "Stuff on my Bike". Although we were usually all in the car together yelling, "On the right! On the right!" or "Bike, 2 o'clock!", these particular shots were captured by Shannon. They are a pretty good collection...hopefully this will motivate Rachel to get hers to me also for the fullest representation of this wonderful phenomenon of balance, creativity, and strength. The shot above is an amazing stack of mattresses, and the first two below are of the most common material transported, jerry cans for gathering water.


Soda or Beer?A schmorgazboard of random things...among others, I can identify a coffee table, two patio chairs, a trunk and a jerry can.


A long pipe and peice of moulding.

Pineapples (with a very proud owner).




Housegoods...welcome mats, brooms, buckets, etc...

Pile o' wooden furniture.
Blankets?
Stay tuned for more pictures of precariously stacked goods on bikes!

Kato Andrew

For those of you who have been following from the beginning, I wanted to introduce you to Andrew, who is Peter's twin brother. The two of them are Sarah's youngest sons, and were vital to our team, working as translators, as well as becoming fast friends to us all. One or both of them were with us everyday as we taught our classes, aiding us not only in teaching, but also in negotiating prices, giving directions to drivers, and generally building relationships with the women we taught. They have truly become like brothers to me over the years, and it was awesome to see them bond so quickly and easily with the rest of the team also! There were many laughs as Andrew adopted some new "American" phrases. And there were some tears as we heard, through their translations, the heart-wrenching stories of the women and teens we work with. Their gifts of speaking sensitively, yet honestly, with people brought out some true stories that broke our hearts and brought us closer to the work we do in Uganda.

Waiswa Peter and Kato Andrew, THANK YOU! We loved having you as a part of our team!
This is Andrew with Misham, their little cousin whose mother died as an infant. He now lives with Sarah and is the sweetest little thing with huge eyes and cheeks. He is very serious and was captivated, and a bit scared by us. Towards the end of the month we spent in Jinja, he had improved slightly and would take my hand after much prompting, but mostly he kept his distance.

Another side note...."Waiswa" as in Waiswa Peter, means "elder male twin" and "Kato" as in Kato Andrew, means "younger male twin". "Nalongo" as in Nalongo Sarah, means "mother of twins", which means her named changed when she had her twin boys. Peter, unfortunately, couldn't remember her previous name. Peter, if you are reading this, find out and let me know! Interesting, isn't it how some African names are descriptive of factual information like that?!

Stuff On My Bike, part 1

This is just a quick-teaser of a blog post.

During our trip last year, Courtney was blown away by the amazing efficient use of the bicycle in Africa. On every street or dirt path or such, you will see the most amazing sights of men transporting crazy things using their bikes......huge bags of maize, furniture, chickens, etc. We decided that it was a visible picture of a euphamism for when you have so much going on you don't know what to do...we all know that feeling....."I just have so much stuff on my bike!" Before leaving, Courtney presented me with a "Stuff On My Bike" award....a wire statue of a man with piles of "stuff" on the back of his bike. It proudly sits in my living room in New York.

This summer, our team was again constantly amazed by the bikes full of stuff, and decided to do a project where we tried to capture as many photos of "Stuff On My Bike" as possible. So, in anticipation of the "Stuff On My Bike" and, the soon to follow sequel "Stuff On My Head" posts, I wanted to send a little something out to whet your pallette, so to speak. This photo was taken by Kathleen Lindeman, who traveled with Fount of Mercy this summer, serving on another team.

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!