Greetings from Kampala!

Hi everyone!
I made it to Kampala safe and sound after the craziest flight path that I have ever taken! I left Toronto at 11:00 on the 5th and flew to London for 8 hours, had an 8 hour layover, flew to Nairobi for 8 hours and had a 1.5 hour layover and then I flew to Entebbe for an hour, then after that I was driven for an hour to my new home. I arrived home at 10:30am on the 7th. It is safe to say that I was very tired after that. Krista had some fun exploring London and a few of the sights (I will have to upload pictures later sadly because I do not have a camera here with me). Then once we landed in Kampala I found my ride home easily but Krista didn't have a ride home at all! No one was there to pick her up from the airport! That was a scary moment. My Ugandan father told her that he would drive her home and he got her there safe and sound.

Once I got home I was introduce to a little five year old boy who is now my "brother". He is very cute but he asks me what everything is! He also likes to follow me around and wants to play all of the time. I do not know how that little boy has so much energy! For most of the weekend I just slept. The jet lag hit me so hard that I could not stay awake long at my home. So sleep it was! The weekend passed pretty uneventfully.The house that I live at is very nice. There are three children, Francis, his wife and two house helps and of course there is also myself. So it is a very full house. The children are all nice but they are still in their "omg there is a white person in the house" phase. They have recently starting talking to me a bit more but at first I was more gawked at rather than talked to. My Ugandan father is very, very protective. My family will be happy to note that I feel like I am 16 again. I have to ask if I am able to go out. I know that it's all because of safety that I have to ask if some things are ok but it has been an adjustment to get used to asking again! He is very caring and very concerned. I really am treated like a part of the family! Everyone there is so kind. I feel like I am living the high life in my home because the house helps do everything there! They even clean my sneakers off for me in the morning, make food, do the dishes, do my laundry. Ummmm, aren't I in a developing country? I can defiantly say that I am living a lot better off than many of the people who live here.

Once I got to work it really hit me, Jacquelyn you are not in Canada anymore. When I go to work in Kamwokya (I live in Ntinda) that is when I see the poverty that many Ugandans live with. I work in one of the worst slums in Kampala. I have been assigned to the social workers office to help there. The one difficulty with working in Kampala is that many of the people, although they can speak English, speak Lugandan. The only way that the children open up to the social workers is in their native tongue. This is not limited to the people who come into the office but the social workers themselves mostly speak in Lugandan. This makes it very difficult to assess what is going on and what my office really deals with. I hope to start learning Lugandan soon.

Mostly at work what I do is help the children write letters to their sponsors in the developed world. I hope to start branching off and being able to do more. My boss, Maggie, told me that I will be able to start helping with support groups soon. Mostly I've just been observing what is going on in the office and what the social workers do. I have made one home visit and have walked around Kamwokya a little bit. From what I have seen it is so very different from the life I lead. The families have ten people in one small house which is usually made of cement and a tin roof. There are not beds, just mats laid out for people to sleep on the floor. A lot of the times children will be running around without any clothes on or just a t-shirt. It has been a real shock to be living among all of this when I go home and I have my tea prepared for me after I take a shower and change my clothes. I am excited to continue working at my office and I hope that I can comment a little more about my work a little later on.

I don't know how much more I'm going to write (although this is a long enough post as it is!). I am very, very, very tired and I can't really think too straight. I will write more (and more coherently) when I post next time! Until then,
Bye!