Days off

 October 22, Kampala

So it's Friday morning, but the last day of my "weekend". I'm going back to work tomorrow because I'm in the midst of co-instructing the Teen Girls' Workshop. It runs for three weekends, in the afternoon, and tomorrow is the beginning of the second weekend.

We got off to a bit of a rough start last Saturday, but by mid-afternoon on Sunday we had eleven girls in attendance. We had girls age 13-17 yrs (instead of the 16-18 yrs we had planned), and we had girls on the list that didn't come and girls that came that weren't on the list. This is Uganda, however, so when things don't go quite as planned you just laugh it off, count your blessings and move forward. And we definitely are blessed, with a great group of very sweet (though a bit shy) girls. We had lots of fun doing yoga together on Sunday. It was the first time all of them had heard about yoga, let alone tried practicing it, and nearly all of them were wearing skirts . And I was leading the class!! Still, we all quite enjoyed ourselves.

This weekend we are tackling some heavier topics in the workshop: menstruation, family planning, healthy sexuality, rape, and HIV. We are having a guest speaker join us each day; one of the ShantiUganda midwives on Saturday, and on Sunday one of the leaders of the Shanti Women's income generating group will come to speak on living a healthy life as a person with HIV (all the women in the income generating group have AIDS). It will be great to have these women share their expertise with the group, and there is the added bonus that they can speak to the girls in Luganda. All of the girls are second language (at least) english speakers, and so we have to make many efforts to make sure we are well understood.

And I am gradually adjusting the way that I speak to Ugandans in general, to increase the likelihood of being well understood when I am speaking. There is a particular accent that I am learning to adapt and I'm also modifying my vocabulary and using certain phrases. It is quite amusing for us Canadians - Kristen, Jaime and I - to hear one another speaking "Ugandan english". And I have a feeling that it's starting to rub off on me, on the way I speak in general. Perhaps you'll be able to notice it when I return to Canada! It's pretty funny.

Jaime and I are enjoying our time off in Kampala. We went out for yummy, cheap Ethiopian food on Wednesday night - complete with beautiful view over Kampala. Yesterday we did some walking about and shopping (and went on another death-defying boda ride!), and in the evening went to Comedy Night at the National Theatre. It was pretty fun, though a bit of a challenge to understand some parts as they were in the habit of switching back and forth between english and luganda. I'm gradually starting to learn a few things in Luganda, but I still have a long way to go.
This afternoon we're going to see a BBC-award winning play, written by a Ugandan playwright, called Cooking Oil. It sounds pretty interesting. I'm really enjoying the opportunity to do some "cultural" things here (at very reasonable prices too!), and I'm planning to go to a few more things at the National Theatre next time I'm in Kampala.

I'm going to sign off now, and go back to working on the Teen Girl's Workshop handbook, which we are completely revamping along with leading the workshop. It's a bit of a project, but I feel like I'm doing something worthwhile.

Keep those comments coming. I love hearing from you.

P.S. You should check out Jaime's blog too. It'sjaimetraynor.ca