boda boda

Blog 9 July 3^rd 2008

 Yesterday after school I came home exhausted. School days are run very differently here, and I find that making the most of my tine is one of the most important things I will learn here. At the end of the day Steven asked me if I had a “football”, and I needed to get newspapers for our honesty in the media discussion anyway, so I figured I would head into town. When I got home at first though, I couldn’t move. The long days, being at school from 8 to 4 in the heat, and the crazy bumpy boda rides really tire me out. I took 15 minutes and passed out on our couch and waited for someone to come home to take the ride in with me.

 Wendy, one of the girls that I haven’t gotten a chance to know to well, came home and said she needed to go, and a lot of the other girls were craving chocolate, so we took a boda into town to pick up some stuff. I was excited because it was my first time riding into town for 1,000 shillings, they’ve been making my mulu butt pay 1,500 since yesterday, maybe that was my initiation. The feeling I have when I’m riding on a boda is pretty hard to describe. I can’t take the smile off of my face, and the exhilaration that runs through my body is so intense. There’s nothing like near death on a bumpy boda ride to make you really feel alive.

 I was able to find 2 newspapers in town for my lesson, the Monitor and the Vision. The Monitor I independent and the Vision is government run, so looking at the same news stories in each publication is interesting, because the stories are usually told 2 different ways. For example, the UPDF (Ugandan People’s Defense Force) was accused of killing and kidnapping two people in South Sudan yesterday, but the Vision put out an article accusing the LRA of the crime. It really makes me question both organizations and the media in general. Over here, it seems really easy for one organization to point the blame at another, and no one really knows who was at fault. I’m also getting very accustomed to not trusting the military. Growing up with a police officer for a father (and a wonderful man at that), it was very easy for me to grow up trusting the police and the military. I’ve come out of that as I’ve grown older, and I realize that not everyone in a uniform has the same integrity that my father has. This trip has most definitely reinforced my suspicious perspective.

 Yesterday was Amy’s birthday, and we invited the Invisible Children house to come over to our neck of Gulu and have a birthday party celebration. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun at someone else’s birthday party in my entire life. It started with just our house and Ben, who walked over from the IC house early. We grabbed wine and beers and vodka from town, grabbed a birthday cake, and waited for Amy to arrive as the rest of the IC house trickled in from down the road. Amy went to the Acholi Inn with the members of group one for dinner and swimming and a manicure, so she didn’t arrive until about 9. Group one is unique because they are almost all theater majors from NYU, so their arrival with Amy was absolutely spectacular. I was sitting outside of the dorm by myself, drinking a beer and getting some air when I heard a truck rumbling down the road. Immediately after I heard singing, and then I saw all of group one, Amy, Jaimie and John totally decked out in outfits they made from the same material in town. They were singing the whole way in which definitely caused a commotion on campus. Little heads were popping out of buildings all over the compound. When they arrived they jumped out of the truck and preformed a little skit with music for Amy’s birthday, which was so funny! Nothing spells out a good time like a bunch of theater majors. After that we poured some beers and some drinks and had another super crazy dance party. I’m going to go home and have to convince Kristen to dance with me around the apartment because I’m going to miss dancing my ass off so much. We plugged Ashleigh’s Ipod into a dock and just completely let go. Amy is one of the most genuine and sincere people I have ever met, I can honestly say that it was a pleasure celebrating her birthday with her.

 I’m going to make a special trip to REI when I get back to thank the man that works there for convincing me to buy a head lamp, because a couple tipsy trips to the latrine on the compound in the middle of the night was definitely made easier by having a light on my head.

 Needless to say, our crazy dance party made it a little hard to wake up this morning, especially because it started to pour around 5am. For one horrible second, when I heard the rain, I forgot why I was here and was excited at the prospect of staying in bed. Sometimes when it rains here the roads get so bad that it is impossible to get to school. I got past my western princess attitude pretty quickly however, dragged myself out of bed, threw on crocs and a raincoat and made my way to the road. Alice and I took a wet boda ride to school and attacked the day. I saw some of the

 Teaching is so different here because sometimes it’s like going to war. I feel like it’s so crucial for me to be at the top of my game here, to give my students and my teacher the best of everything I can give.

 Last night before we went to bed we all did something called “high/low” where we all spoke about the high point of our day and the lowest. Today definitely had it’s highs and lows, although I felt like as a whole, it went really well.

 I had S3 first today, and I was excited because it was my first time speaking in that class. It took them a second or two to get used to my accent, and to have a white woman in front of the room, but their sense of humor as a class was really hysterical. I was able to be funny and over the top and they ate it up. I gave myself a crash course on relative clauses this morning, and really felt like they were understanding what I was getting across. I broke them up into cooperative groups, sent students to the board for competitions, and generally tried to make it fun. It’s hard to get excited about school when it’s a down pour outside, and I was really impressed with their ability to push through.