Various thoughts.

I thought I'd just tell you about different things I've noticed/experienced lately.

• I was driving through the bush from one of the villages that is really far from town.  We passed some school children who were going home.  As we drove by all of the girls knelt in respect for our vehicle. And it wasn't like they saw me and knew I was a foreigner, I was in the back seat.  But at this specific school they're taught to kneel when somebody passes while the boys can yell and wave and do whatever.  What does this teach them about gender roles?  The other Ugandans I was traveling with said they don't support that kind of education but that in the schools deep in the bush that is what's taught.
• An American grad student came to the Centre one day last week for part of her research.  I was typing away when she came and didn't say anything to her because she was talking to my supervisor.  When they were done she sat waiting, I asked her a couple questions like "where are you in school" but that was about all.  When she left the man who works in my office just started laughing and said "I will never understand your culture, if we see someone of the same color skin we think they're our brother and we greet them and are excited, but you guys don't treat each other any differently."  
• My friend Phil Wilmot and Susan Abong came to visit yesterday, they're traveling through Uganda together and stopped here for the weekend!
• I've been able to talk to a lot of girls who are wanting to go back to school.  It's so encouraging.  One even went to tailoring school already, she was able to pay the $5 admission fee but she doesn't have any fabric or anything to work with so she just sits and watches. We're going to pay the rest of her fees and buy her the needles and fabrics she needs so she can put what she's learning into practice.
• God is good.  All the time.  These girls teach me that much more than I could ever teach them.

So my cook here in Uganda is a also a tailor. She teaches basic tailoring to the girls that come through the Centre.  She's my age and she singlehandedly is paying for her sister to attend secondary school and taking care of her orphaned nieces and nephews.  She's hoping to be able to buy a special kind of sewing machine so she can expand her enterprise.

I told her I'd tell my friends about it and see if they were interested. So here's the deal:

Skirts - $10-15
Dresses - $15
Bags - $10
Set of ten napkins - $8
Aprons - $10

Other things - just give me your ideas and we'll see what we can do!

Here's the link to pictures of a bunch of fabrics (examples of skirts and dresses are at the end)!  Email me (meganclapp@gmail.com) what you'd like and appropriate measurements!   We'll settle up once I get home!



See Fabric Selections Here!!

New Pal

This is my new friend Tier (pronounced: "tea-A").  She's fabulous, one of the mothers here asked whose family I belonged in and she said "ours!" and gave me a big hug.

Alumni Success

As I was visiting some schools in the community I had the chance to see some of the girls that were at the Centre last time I was here.  They had no idea I was back so when they saw me they dropped their things and ran to me in surprise.  One girl, Beatrice, took me to the market where she has started a small business with the knowledge and startup money that she got from the Centre.  She has also started at the tailoring school in her village.  In the morning she sells small fish and these pastry like things called mandazzi and then in the afternoon she goes to the school.  In the small market we ran into about 6 girls who had been in the Centre at various times in the past.

This is Beatrice at her stand in the market place.

This is the reason that the Centre exists, these girls used to sit at home or dig in fields for very little money but they are now beginning to be entrepreneurs.  Their lifeless eyes are gone and they are now happy and proud of what they've become.

These are all the Centre alumni that we found in the market.

This guy is living right outside my house.

Reality

I had one of those moments today when you realize that you're alive.  Like when you're looking in the mirror and suddenly realize that you are there, brings you back to reality.  Today was one of those days.

I was kicking around a soccer ball with some of the girls from the Centre when I realized where I was.  Here I am in Northern Uganda kicking around a soccer ball with a woman who is HIV+, another who spent 11 years living in abduction and another who is a child mother/rape victim.

A little later I wandered into the kitchen and started talking to the one of the girls, Colline, who was cooking.  She asked me to take a picture of her.  I said I would.  She then slightly lifted up her skirt to show me the back of her thigh where she was hit by part of a bomb while she was abducted.  She's basically missing all of the back of her thigh to the bone.  What she wanted was for me to take a picture of it so that she could see what it looks like from behind.  I only had my video camera so I filmed a couple seconds of it and showed it to her.

She just watched and turned back to cooking.  She then asked to see it again.  She said that this was the first time that she's actually seen it and put her hand on her head and asked if that really was her leg.  I asked her what she thought about it and she said that she didn't have anything to say yet.


Reality.
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