Time, is not on my side

Busy busy we are. After 2 weeks from now, 4 December, there will be a big exhibition in Lalle Primary school. We will be presenting the kids art works from the Art group, the kids music piece, which is Neil Young's "Helpless" in an African arrangement, from the Music group and finishing with an exciting quiz between 4 teams!

The Art exhibition will consist of art work made from colour pencils, water colours , Coals, clip art, art forms and callicraphy. We will have around 300 art pieces

The preperation has begun for this exciting event! We got the kids to make flyers and posters and after having made 40 flyers and 4 posters we proudly marched to the market to distribute them. Afterwards one 12 year old came up to me and asked me sincerely if 4 November hadn't already passed?

Oops....

Has time really gone past so fast???

Well, if you look closely at this photo you can see a 12 year old doing his flyer conscientiously, following closely my directions on putting 4 November as the date of the event...

Here we are practising "Helpelss"

And practising the chorus. The

Our lovely P6 class

Here is were we often buy our breakfast, lunch and dinner...mmmm.....

Until next time,

Harps

Snapshots of our lives

Our neighbour bought us a new chicken, and here you can see the results. Notice the "nest" which was a gift from our friends in Iceland. This chicken is less vouyeuristic than our previous one. We were courteously invited to a mass the other day, where the locals showed us some moves.

The sermon was on the longer side, and in the local language to boot, so we took a break outside.

Then the fun continued.

Others were equally tired.

They were very excited to see their performance on video.

And of course they gave us a chicken, now we have two!

The kids playing badminton for the first time.

Me, the chicken farmer.

Motorcycle diaries

We went back to chaotic Kampala the other day, we used the visit to stock up on some nessecities, bacon, burgers, sausages, cheese, BBQ sauce and such and such.

But the main purpose was however so that Harpa could participate in a Boccia tournament!

Well, not only to play Boccia, there was an event called Nordic Sports day, where all the hundreds of Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and 10 Icelanders stationed in Uganda competed in various events.

The Icelandic population in Uganda couldn't very well put together a whole soccer team, only one brought a swimsuit, we weren't invited to play in the volleyball game, the Danes had been practicing for weeks for the running and even though Harpa showed excellent prospects in Boccia we failed to bring a win home there as well.

The tug-of-war was our home ground, however, we put in all our efforts and won almost everybody, except the Danes! A bitter defeat, given that the Danes cheated. But we did however win one event: the warm-up!

(For those of you who don't know how to win in a warm-up, it is calculated this way: the percentage of those registered who participate in the warm-up. 9 out of 10 Icelanders did, which gave us a 90% score!)

A typical day in Lalle Primary: the younger kids so very curious about what we are doing that they flock together around the windows, the doors and wherever they can catch a glimpse of us.

We went to a new site, where some farmers are interested in growing chili.

They greeted us with mandarins, which was all fine and well, but their second offering was harder to refuse...

They had puppies and they offered to give us one, we don't even know if we can keep a dog in our house... they're only two weeks old anyways, so we couldn't take them anyway, but we sure hope we'll be able to...

They were three all together, but one of them possessed unique serenity and tranquility, which is something to look for in a dog...

We decided to take a trip to Serere, which is a small town of some 3o.000 people. When we went to look for a restaurant, there wasn't much to be seen. So we stopped some people and asked around and wouldn't you know it, one of them owned a restaurant.

He was very proud of his establishment and commented especially that the sanitary issues were up to date, as can be seen by these pictures of the "toilet..."

...and the "kitchen."

The food was however decent enough, stewed goat meat, rice and some beans. But the chef had a special spice mix, a secret sauce if you will, which was delicious. We even got him to sell us some of it to take home (I think Harpa is going to try to steal his recipie.)

On the way back I persuaded Harpa to climb a hill, which was beside the road. She was somewhat reluctant, claiming snakes were around and what not. "Pish, posh" I said, "Snakes, brakes." We climed and didn't find any snakes, but a beutiful view we did find.

On the way back, however, we almost drove over a snake on the road!

The sky is blue, trees are green, smiles on faces, road is wide, Africa sure is great.
Harpa doing a great job driving, while I'm fooling around with the camera.

Power out!

From our trip to Mbale, which is a big city 100 km away from Soroti. We went there to get our visa extended, but the immigration officer was nowhere to be seen. A whole day wasted, but at least we got some Indian food. And we bought an enormous beef fillet (more on that later).

Harpa is unbelivable excited about growing our own crops like the locals, mostly spices and foreign stuff. But first we have to cultivate the land. Our next door neighbours were so surprised to see a white man doing this kind of labour, that they stopped whatever they were doing just to see the Mzungu work!

We are teaching the teachers how to use a computer in Lalle (even though there is no electricity there.) This can be quite challenging given the fact that most of them have never used a computer before.

Here you can see the pizza mentioned in the previous post.

We brought some water colors for art class the other day, the kids were ecstatic. We only had three sets so they just piled up on top of each other to see what was going on.

The next generation of Ugandan artists.

There is an album by the age old post-punk band Wire (a personal favourite) which is called "Chairs Missing" Now we know why.

Harpa preparing for class.

The classrooms in Lalle can be quite crowded, some 130 kids in one class is not uncommon.

The power has been out in Soroti town for almost a week, which was pretty bad considering that we just bought an enourmous slab of beef in Mbale, to be saved for a special occasion. We had been trying to save it until the power came back, but were eating all the meat we could. Spaghetti bolognese for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch, an then when dinner time came there was no other option than bringing out the barbeque. We used literally everything we had in the fridge 2 kilos of meat, enourmous amounts of cheese, cream potatoes, vegetables, and it was delicious. But as fate would have it, the power came back on when we had just started eating.

Our daily live in Soroti

Soroti is treating us fine. We have marked our spots; found the club, the local bar, the local shop, the supermarket, the take away place, the best beer brand, the internet cafÈ, the fresh food market... Well, for most of you guys that¥s everythnig you need, right? For those who know me that is ALMOST everything I need.

So, where is the pizza? (Or pizaaa like they pronounce it here in black Africa)

Firstly, I was shocked they don't have Pizza Hut here. No Pizza Hut? Like most of you know, my week routine always involved one delivery from Pizza Hut (ok, Martine, 4 deliveries a week is maybe more accurate…;/) Secondly, I had noticed that in Kampala they had indeed desent pizzas, even a Dominos!

Here in Soroti there's another story…We have already made three attempts to go out for Pizza. First, the waiter at the restaurant told us that we had to wait for 1 hour and a half for the pizza. We didn't have time, unfortunately, but decided to come another time. That time the oven was “spoiled” and for the third time they suddenly didn't have any pizza!

But, wait a minute. This traged story has a happy ending! Because my Vignir sure knows how to bake a pizzabread! So we rushed to our supermarket, bought frozen minched meat, frozen cheddar cheese, weat flour, vegatable oil and a pizza sauce (yes, they even had a pizza sauce at this remarkable market!) and made THE best pizaaa in the world. Lucky for me, but not so lucky for Vignir, because now he has to make pizaaa for me 4 times a week! (I'm pretending I haven¥t learned it yet….;/)

Yours pizaaa lover,
Harps

What are we even doing here in Uganda?

We get the feeling that some of our dedicated readers have no idea whatsoever as to what we are doing here in Soroti. First of all, we are here representing a Belgian NGO (godgerdarsamtok) called International Friendship for Development (IFD.) The NGO is relatively new and still very small. IFD is headed by Pamela Anoyti, who is originally from Soroti. IFD has two main operations in Soroti and surrounding areas; Lalle Primary School and Chili Production. We are involved in both these projects as follows:



Lalle Primary School: We are teaching there as volunteers. We are however not teaching in the conventional sense, as the school already has a number of teachers. What we are trying to do is introduce new methods for both the teachers and the students. We will be having special groups for different topics with the agenda to fish out the individual talents and interests of the kids. As the school has some 1000 children and only 16 teachers, there hasn’t been much room for the individual, which we wish to change.



The Chili Production: IFD, in co-operation with another company, has been supplying loans to local farmers in Soroti to finance chili production. The situation for farmers here is pretty desperate, they have no money to cultivate the land properly, no money to buy proper equipment, no money for fertilizers, they have little or no access to external markets and most of their labor is spent on growing their own food. IFD has and will supply money (interest free) for plowing, growing and harvesting and will buy the chili back from the farmers. This process is, however, plagued with many difficulties and needs to be supervised constantly. The people have been burnt on many occasions by NGO’s with good intentions and bad management and "NGO money" has therefore been turned into "free money" in the minds of many. Our job is to monitor the farmers and encourage them to continue with the project.


Here are some pictures from the school:

The classrooms.
The children playing a game we introduced. The kids were so excited, but initially failed to grasp the concept of the game, so there was a lot of running around in the beginning.
Harpa managed to get things going and before we knew they got it. They were singing, clapping and yelling during the entire thing (even though I suspect some had no idea why.)
The kids are very dutiful and lower the flag after school every day.

Music club was interesting, the teacher spent most of the time tuning the thumb pianos, but we mangaed to jam to the chords of Neil Young's "Helpless" way past schooltime. After some time I expect to hear a choir of children singing: :"And leave us helpless, helpless, heeeeelpless."

The kids find us very interesting and crowd around us at all times. Not strange given the fact that one of the teachers said that the last time a Mzungu (white person) was seen in Lalle was in the 70's.