The days are going by and there are a few worthy things to note…

Ok so I have discovered a fascinating fact about the Ugandan culture and the tooth fairy. Families that are able to afford it often leave money behind for their children whom have lost their teeth. Except there is one big difference there is no tooth fairy here, it’s believed that if you hide you tooth around the house somewhere rats will come and take it and leave you a small amount of money in exchange for your tooth. My host mom was asking me the other day if I liked rats, with an odd toned answer I replied, “no, not really”. Jacob came running around the corner and yelled, “I love rats!” Then they proceeded to tell me that it’s tradition to leave a child tooth and have rats come and leave money. Jacob loves them as long as they bring him some dough. I told them in Canada it’s a little different, I told them that there was a fairy that came and put money under your pillow. They laughed and thought it was sort of unrealistic, I couldn’t imagine telling a young child in Canada that a rat will visit him at night and take his tooth. If I was that child I wouldn’t really care if that rat left me a cheque, I wouldn’t want a rat in my room. Nonetheless either story is unrealistic, I just would have thought they would have picked one a little less creepy.
All of this occurred right before dinner was served and when they first asked me if I liked rats I had a sinking feeling I was going to be served one. I was quite relieved to find out it was not on the local menu, luckily for me no one else but the children really like them.
My host mom made Banana juice for me! She gets really long grass and folds bananas up into it then twists the grass squeezing the juice out of the banana’s, she adds water, boils and cools it before serving. There are bits of grass in it, I just look at it as pulp, it tastes really good.
My host family keeps bugging me to play guitar for them, finally I cracked and brought it out to the backyard while the girls were making dinner. The parents had gone to town for a bit so it was just me and the kids. It was actually pretty fun, the hired hand (john), Jacob and the girls all started dancing and laughing, they really liked it. I played just random chords to make up easy songs they could dance too, they kept asking me to play calypso music but I told them I had no idea how to play that kind of stuff, I should put it on my list to learn…dinner was late that evening…someone distracted the chef’s.
Susan one of the daughters of the Lukwago family brought home a dvd to watch, she had borrowed it from a friend. She asked me if they could watch it and I said yes they don’t get the chance very often to watch dvd’s so I felt like it would be a good treat for them. Unfortunately the movie she borrowed was Freaky Friday a Lindsey Lohan flick, the worst possible movie they could have picked, I am pretty sure they had no idea what was going on throughout the entire film. They loved watching it though, Jacob couldn’t take his eyes of the screen, haha.
Obama’s inauguration was pretty unbelievable; everyone in Mukono watched it at various restaurants and clubs around the town. The Lukwago’s had a TV they bring out from time to time, they can get one channel and who would have guessed that that one channel was playing CNN. I was sitting in my room when all the sudden I heard Anderson Cooper talking, I jumped up and ran into the sitting room to join them. The reaction I got from most people here was that it was amazing how easy Bush just handed over power. Mr. Lukwago fears that the current President of Uganda Museveni will not hand over power easily, in fact he believes that there is so much discontent with the government and their corrupt ways that the next election will be rigged and he believes the only way to get rid of him would be to have a bloody war. Sad to say, It’s true though, Museveni will not leave peacefully.
Work has been going slow, a rainy day cancelled our member meeting and prolonged the wait to start initiating some of our projects. I visited the new Orphan house that is about 1km east of Mukono, it’s old but big. We are hoping to bring about 25 orphans up soon to live there and we are going to have a big welcome party for them all. There is enough room on the land to have a garden, a pig pen and a chicken cage as well. In the next few weeks we are also going to initiate a beekeeping project close to the house in hopes to start a sustainable income generating project. Honey is expensive here and if we can start generating it at a decent pace I think they we could really benefit. Even the wax left over from the comb will be used in our candle making projects. I am excited to get the home up and running and we are really hoping that the orphans will like it and that we can make them feel as comfortable as possible. I am hoping here that they will have the chance to spread out and find themselves, life can be uncomfortable for them in the Kampala orphanage they are in now. I will be posting pictures and most likely write up a report about the events that occur within the next couple of weeks, they will be exciting to say the least.

Lots of Love,
Matt