First Two in Ibanda!!!

I am currently having trouble uploading the pics so I will do that as soon as our internet connection gets a little better. For now enjoy the rest of the post!

Pic #1: Me cooking the Sweet Potato Pancakes on a fire stove in the Hotel’s kitchen.

Pic #2: Tess cooking the Sweet Potato Pancakes on a fire stove in the Hotel’s kitchen.

Pic #3: Tess and I when we visited Laboyre’s (the headmaster of the Kimunyu Primary school) mother.

Pic #4: Tess and I after we got our brand new tailored dresses. The tailor put the extra fabric on our heads in the traditional way.

Pic #5: Me wearing my new dress during the picnic at our friend Roy’s farm.

Ibanda has been amazing!! Both Tess and I have been so busy with computer workshops and meeting new people that we have barely felt these past two weeks go by. Just now we totaled all the statistics of our workshops to date and we were so surprised by the numbers. We have held 22 hours’ worth of workshops, totaling 11 workshops, and taught 17 participants.

Everyone in Ibanda has been extremely accommodating! The ladies at the hotel are so nice, and while they think our food orders are weird, they don’t complain. The other day Tess and I went to buy some sweet potatoes and we made sweet potato pancakes in their kitchen…which is not the kind of kitchen you are probably thinking of. I have posted a picture of us cooking on the fire stove! We are still a little weary of buying things from places that don’t have set prices because we are pretty sure that most of the time they will give us the “mzungu price” and we would pay more than an average citizen. We are slowly learning what things cost and we are starting to catch people who do that, but we are still working on it.

The workshops have been going extremely well. As I mentioned earlier, we have held many more workshops than we had thought. All of the teachers that we have been teaching have picked everything up very fast. One thing that I really like is seeing them all work together to figure what we have asked them to do. They have also really enjoyed the typing program that we have provided for them to improve their typing. The headmasters at both the Kimunyu Primary School and Ankole Secondary School are very happy that we there and they have been very helpful in getting us settled in the town. Students go back to school on Monday and we have been invited to Kimunyu for their opening ceremony as well as to read a story to the students! We are very excited to do this, but I believe the students may possibly be even more excited than us because a lot of them have seen us walking around town and they really want to meet us. Also, starting Tuesday we will be starting workshops with the 50 secondary students at Ankole Secondary School. We will be teaching the secondary students every Tuesday and Thursday until we leave. We are very excited to meet these students (whose age ranges from 17-22 years) and learn of their ambitions for the future.

This trip has been a very big learning experience, especially around culture. Before we arrived we were told some of the cultural differences to expect, but being told is nothing compared to experiencing it and trying to get used to it. One thing that we have definitely started to notice is “African Time”. In North America time is everything…here not so much! People have shown up one hour late for things and not even phoned to say they will be late or to apologize. It is just expected that people will arrive when they arrive. We have also noticed this with our food. We will order it for 6pm and it won’t come out until 7 or 7:30. We are definitely learning patience, as hard as it is we are learning to accept it. Another thing we have noticed is how blunt everyone is when talking about people. In North America we would consider calling someone “the fat one” to be extremely mean. We would also take being called “chunky” as an insult! Here, they are very straight forward with describing people and it is not at all meant to be mean or an insult. The other day the headmaster of the primary school was talking about a women we had met and he started his sentence with “do you remember the women you met the other day, the fat one?” at first I was taken aback, but then I remembered that when they describe people, they say what they see. One thing that I really like here is how body image does not mean anything. Being skinny actually makes people believe that someone is not being well fed! Being on the larger side is considered healthy and beautiful and no one cares! It is such a nice change from the North American culture where everything seems to be about being skinny and looking “beautiful”. Here, beauty is who you are, not what you look like.

For the first little while, we were the only white people in town. But a few days ago, we bumped into two guys from England who will be working in one of the local secondary schools for 2 months. And yesterday, I met two guys from France who were from the European military base 15km away and I saw 3 other guys who I also think were from the military base. They were stopping in on their way to Queen Elizabeth Park. It’s funny, after being the only white people in a town for a couple of weeks, when we see other “mzungus” even we do a double take!

Well that is it for now!! Have a good last week of May!!