Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Just a little rafting on the NILE!


My dear Mukwonos! ( friends!)

There is so much to update you on, YIKES! So enjoy the brief updates and tons of pictures!
So I rafted the Nile. Yeah, that’s not really a sentence I ever thought I would say. But I did! It was so much fun! I got super sunburned but its all good now! Yes, I did lather up on sunscreen too but the Nile is powerful! There were class 5 rapids but we had amazing guides! TUTU was the guide for our raft and we had so much fun! We met friends from Iraq, Iran, and Egypt. They work for the U.N. and were HILARIOUS! George, Hakeem, and Achbar were TERRIBLE rafters and paddlers but still entertaining!







Last week we finished painting the world and began digging in the Garden at the Orphanage. I think it turned our pretty great. We added Antarctica as well so don’t worry we included the whole world!
 



Tomorrow we have our last girl’s empowerment at Child of Hope and I am so sad! These girls have been one of the highlights of my summer thus far and I am sad that we will not be together every week from now on. They are PHENOMENAL dancers! Here are the videos I made of the girls. They are the same song but you can see all the beautiful girls we have been working with!



 










This week we finished our teacher training at IUIU. It was amazing and stressful! Thank you Jaeda for your help from the United States! J We had 8 teachers attend on Friday and 14 attend Saturday. It went really well. It is hard to have a lot of discussions with the teachers because discussion is not a part of their teaching strategies. BUT we think that they caught on. We had them do many activities as if they were children which was extremely uncomfortable for them. But sometimes I like to make people feel uncomfortable! 

Here are some great pictures of the training. We were really grateful to work with Islamic University in Uganda and are excited for further projects!


 








We got our new volunteers this week and we are excited to have them on board! Now there are 17 of us living in the house. Personal space doesn’t exist here in Africa so it isn’t too bad!

This week I got a taste of home… well Tennessee/Kentucky when we had torrential downpour while we were in town. When it rains here EVERYTHING shuts down. We had to wait in town for a while for the rivers down Republic Street (the main street) to calm down but I love the rain here. The people still believe that the rain gives people malaria which is difficult for them to try and understand that malaria happens more in the rainy season but it is not brought by the rain.

Today we met with an amazing new partner that Bradi met at the bank this weekend. They have done what so many do and created a community based organization that does a little bit of everything! We are going to help clean some wells, play some football, and hopefully some girls/women empowerment projects with them! Seriously the people here are so amazing and they are everywhere doing something good. So you never know who will meet in the bank!

All is well in Africa. Take Care.
Ketty




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