(pictures in next post)
Hi everyone, I hope all is going well wherever you are! Today I didn't do much, it was kind of a rest day for me but my mom had meetings all day. The good thing is that it was in the house so we didn't have to drive! Today I just hung around the house playing soccer with the kids that live here and lying down and just resting. Honestly it was pretty fun. Since today was very uneventful I am going to talk about Uganda and Zanzibar because those are the countries that we will be in.
A fun fact about Uganda is that vehicles drive on the left side of the road and the drivers side of the car is on the right side, not the left. It is very confusing and I always feel like we are about to crash. One funny but scary thing about driving in Uganda is the motorcycles. They swerve in and out of cars and in a traffic jam they just go in between the lanes! But there are no lanes so the cars are basically doing the same thing too! So pretty much there is just a big bunch of non-moving cars and motorcycles going 100mph in between the cars! It is very scary. Typically, between 2-5 people are on 1 motorcycle! Whole families drive on them together. Also motorcycles are the most used transportation device selling almost 150,000 in just the town of Kampala! Another fact is that in Uganda there is a law that for every tree you cut down you are legally obliged to plant another! I think that is a very good law because it means that if you follow the law there should be no loss of trees! I think this should become a law in America. Uganda is home to 11% of the worlds bird population! There are 400 billion birds in the world so that means that 44 billion birds live in Uganda. Those are some pretty cool facts about Uganda!
Some awesome things about Zanzibar are that the shortest war ever recorded by man was the Angelo-Zanzibar War where the British bombarded the Beit al Hukum Palace and after 40 minutes a ceasefire was called. Zanzibar is popularly known as the Spice Islands because they used to be the worlds biggest producers of the spice cloves. Freddie Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen, was born in Zanzibar in 1946. His birth name was actually Farouk Bulsara. Zanzibar is famous for its mix of "exotic" beaches. Thank you for reading! Have a good day! Gatarina! (goodbye in Kinyarwanda)
Friday, January 31, 2020
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Youth with physical disabilities
Today my mom and I got to rest until noon and then we went into the field to see kids in their wheelchairs that my moms organization provided. We saw two boys named Marvin and Soulin. They were in wheelchairs and they had a lot that they had to persevere with. Marvin's parents abandoned him when he was very young so his older brother cares for him. Mavin made me very sad because he is differently abled and has to sit in a wheelchair because when his mother was giving birth the doctor pulled on his head and it stretched his spine out so it was unstable. That made me feel so bad and it made me think about how privileged Americans are.
It has been a big couple days so I am going to wrap this up!!
It has been a big couple days so I am going to wrap this up!!
Africa!
Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't posted yet! We made it to Uganda and the reason that I haven't posted yet is because I have been busier than I have ever been. I will be posting twice today because I have a lot to talk about. Uganda is 10 hours ahead of Lander so as I am typing it is 2:30 in the morning in Lander but here it is 12:30 in the afternoon! An easy way to figure out what time it is where I am is by taking the time in Lander (2:30) and subtracting two hours (12:30) and switching from A.M. to P.M. or P.M. to A.M.
I left my house at 5:45 A.M. on Friday the 24 and we drove to Riverton to fly to Denver, which is about a 1 hour flight. Once we arrived in Denver we had a two hour layover, then we flew 4 hours to Newark, New Orleans and once again had a two hour layover there. Then we flew from Newark to Brussels in Belgium, that was an 8 hour flight but that wasn't even the worst. Once we arrived in Brussels we had another two hour layover but then we flew the 10 hours to Kigali, Rwanda. In Rwanda we had a one hour layover and we just stayed on the plane because it was flying another hour to out final destination: Entebbe, Uganda. When we got to Uganda it was around 1:00 in the morning and we still had an hour long drive ahead if us to get to the house that we are staying in. We arrived at the house at around 2:30 and we had food and we finally ended up going to bed around 3:00 in the morning! I slept until 1:00 in the afternoon! That day we went shopping for the week and we also went to the zoo, which I thought was too bad because we are in Africa, and when I think of Africa I think about safari’s and lions and elephants and animals in the wild... but we still went to the zoo. The cool thing about the Entebbe zoo is that they house two of the 80 Sumatran Rhinos left in the world!
On Monday we went to a place called Girl Up Initiative. They help girls who live in the slums of Uganda. When we arrived they sang for us and they fed us lunch and talked to us about their organization. They are specifically the Mazuri Design Group and they teach girls how to tailor or as we would say, they teach girls how to sew. The person who is running Girl Up is housing 8 different girls that are either orphans or girls who do not have suitable living conditions (abuse, poverty, homeless, etc...). We got picked up by a driver who worked for Bulogo Girls Program named Jude. He drove us a proclaimed 4 hours that ended up taking 8 hours. It was not the greatest experience because in Uganda they call dirt roads "Ugandan back massage roads," which, judging by the name, is very unpleasant. There are potholes everywhere and sometimes the road just has a two foot drop which will definitely wake you up if you are trying to sleep.
The next day we woke up and drove to the Bulogo Girls Program and we got to learn about what they do to help girls with education and to help with girls succeeding by selling their own products, they call that street business. I gave some local kids a soccer ball and we played a game while my mom was visiting people.
Thank you for reading!
Kwaheri! (Goodbye)
pictures below
I left my house at 5:45 A.M. on Friday the 24 and we drove to Riverton to fly to Denver, which is about a 1 hour flight. Once we arrived in Denver we had a two hour layover, then we flew 4 hours to Newark, New Orleans and once again had a two hour layover there. Then we flew from Newark to Brussels in Belgium, that was an 8 hour flight but that wasn't even the worst. Once we arrived in Brussels we had another two hour layover but then we flew the 10 hours to Kigali, Rwanda. In Rwanda we had a one hour layover and we just stayed on the plane because it was flying another hour to out final destination: Entebbe, Uganda. When we got to Uganda it was around 1:00 in the morning and we still had an hour long drive ahead if us to get to the house that we are staying in. We arrived at the house at around 2:30 and we had food and we finally ended up going to bed around 3:00 in the morning! I slept until 1:00 in the afternoon! That day we went shopping for the week and we also went to the zoo, which I thought was too bad because we are in Africa, and when I think of Africa I think about safari’s and lions and elephants and animals in the wild... but we still went to the zoo. The cool thing about the Entebbe zoo is that they house two of the 80 Sumatran Rhinos left in the world!
On Monday we went to a place called Girl Up Initiative. They help girls who live in the slums of Uganda. When we arrived they sang for us and they fed us lunch and talked to us about their organization. They are specifically the Mazuri Design Group and they teach girls how to tailor or as we would say, they teach girls how to sew. The person who is running Girl Up is housing 8 different girls that are either orphans or girls who do not have suitable living conditions (abuse, poverty, homeless, etc...). We got picked up by a driver who worked for Bulogo Girls Program named Jude. He drove us a proclaimed 4 hours that ended up taking 8 hours. It was not the greatest experience because in Uganda they call dirt roads "Ugandan back massage roads," which, judging by the name, is very unpleasant. There are potholes everywhere and sometimes the road just has a two foot drop which will definitely wake you up if you are trying to sleep.
The next day we woke up and drove to the Bulogo Girls Program and we got to learn about what they do to help girls with education and to help with girls succeeding by selling their own products, they call that street business. I gave some local kids a soccer ball and we played a game while my mom was visiting people.
Thank you for reading!
Kwaheri! (Goodbye)
pictures below
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