Good news! We are feeling better J Well I am feeling better and Nate is at about 75% which means we were able to leave the house. Nate has been teaching business classes the last two days and boy was I happy to be able to leave the house.  I was feeling so sick and then this morning it was a miracle I felt better!! We had proud to be a girl today and it was awesome! We went clear out in the middle of nowhere.  The guy that we went with was named Amos, he rented a car (which is a pretty big deal) he took us all out to these schools.  So you have to picture this, we are teaching a curriculum to girls to help empower them and help them with the difficult challenges that these girls face.  We are teaching about HIV/AIDS prevention and Amos takes us to an elementary school that is ages 4-9 maybe 10. But the majority of the children are 4 or 5.  None of them spoke any English so our class that was planned didn’t really work.  The girl who is the main speaker, Abby just had to modify everything and it just turned into them showing us their school and asking for us to build them a new facility.   I was able to speak to the kids for a little bit teaching them to be kind to one another and not to make fun of each other. 

When we went to the high school it was awesome! The girls had lots of good questions and then there were like 15 girls that were sitting around me and they had no questions.  I gave them a good little chat on why abstinence is so important.  But they were just all there sitting captive and then they found out I was married and were giggling when I showed them pictures of Nate.  I told them how he proposed and that they need to marry someone who is kind and loving.  It was a pretty cool experience.  (So I started writing this last night and after I said I was feeling better I threw up) it was so weird but I think I am done with being sick for the rest of my life. There is a girl in our group that got a parasite who they had to take to the hospital last night.  We have a lot to be grateful for, I would never want to spend the night in an African hospital.

Today Nate and I went to Kampala; Nate said he just needed to get out.  We went to get some good “American food” we were starving by the time we got there and finally found a place we could get a burger.  We literally took two bites and were completely full.  It was painful to eat, we were kind of disappointed that we couldn’t enjoy it that much but it was sure good to get some meat in our bodies. We decided that we could never be vegetarians. 

We went to teach some classes on dental hygiene to this village tonight.  It was kind of an awkward situation because they were under the impression we were giving treatment and pulling teeth and giving them tooth brushes and paste.  The girl that set it up was sick so we felt bad they were a little disappointed.  We just got back from the Lugazi business classes which are doing GREAT! We are going to have to find a new venue because there are so many people we don’t have enough seats for them.  I think that is a great problem to have.  So we are happy and excited about the things that are going on.

Last night Nate told me, “I know why we are here, this is your counseling internship and New York is my investment banking internship.” We are having lots of drama in the house and lots of the girls have been coming to me for advice and crying because they want to come home.  We are both learning lots of lessons we never thought were involved in this African adventure... But WE LOVE IT!!

Sick Week

We are both sick right now and it isn’t very fun.  Everyone is off on their adventures and Nate and I are stuck in bed.  We can’t really get too far away from a bathroom because who knows what will happen.  Nate started feeling sick on Wednesday morning.  It came on pretty suddenly and wasn’t able to help me teach the business class on Wednesday night.  We kept thinking he’d feel better and be able to go but then about 30 min before we had to leave Nate was positive he wouldn’t be able to make it.  Luckily we have this amazing guy named Sanga who helped teach the class.  Sanga was born in Rwanda and moved here before all genocide started happening. He became an accountant which made his family very proud.  One day he saw his sister crying and asked her what was wrong. She couldn’t go to school because she needed to go fetch firewood to help their mother make dinner. He was really disturbed by this and thought there must be a better way.  He came up with this idea of turning Garbage to fuel.  He ended up selling pretty much all he had and quit his job to start this business.  He talked about finding good opportunities and how you need to go after your dreams.  He is a really incredible man, Nate is now helping him write a grant to have this machine made in China.  So I was worried when Nate couldn’t come to the class but Sanga totally saved the day.  

We are loving the Jinga branch they are such an amazing group of people. There was a girl who taught the lesson in Relief Society that got baptized 3 weeks ago.  It was just amazing how well she did and how strong her testimony is. I was really impressed with her willingness to just do what she was asked to do.  We stayed after church this Sunday for a baptism.  There were two couples that were baptized; it was so cute to see all their little kids come up to them afterwards.  They were so happy! I had never seen 4 people be baptized all at once it was pretty neat.  Nate was called to be the Elders Quorum Teacher and the Youth Sunday school teacher while he is here.

 We went to Nagalama this week to teach our first business class to the group of women that are starting the reusable pad business.  We were under the impression we were teaching 15 women who knew English and could do math.  Well we ended up teaching 40 women and there were only 2 that spoke English.  There was a young girl about 17 or 18 that translated for us.  We asked them what their skills were and she wrote she had no skills.  We were trying to explain how valuable she would be to all these women. They were so kind and welcoming to us.  They had us try this pear but it tasted more like a leaf.  I felt bad not eating the whole thing but it wasn’t very good. The papaya was delicious though.  The fruit here is so much better than the fruit we have in the states. 

That night I went with a some of girls to meet with a group of elderly women.  Pastor Francis asked if we would do a physical activity with them.  The girls had planned to teach them the hokey pokey so we did that and had a good time and I was like you should teach us an African dance.  It was so much fun they got a drum out and this boy started playing and we just had a blast dancing with these women.  There was only one of the women that spoke English but it’s amazing how certain things like dancing and laughing are a universal language.

I was able to go to this project called proud to be a girl.  We went to a High School earlier this week to see if they would be willing to let us come and do an assembly at their school. We grouped up with this other organization here in Uganda. This project is seeking to empower women help them know more about HIV/AIDS prevention, self-esteem, helping these girls know that they can make a difference in society.  My favorite part was at the end when they were done lecturing they had a counseling time where girls could come up to us and ask questions.  There was a girl who came up and told me how she was teased and beat up at school.  It just broke my heart, these girls have a lot of questions about their periods and many of them have issues and no one they feel like they can turn to for answers.  The High School we went to was a boarding school so they only get to see their parents a few times a year.  There are two girls who were here last year that are leading this project and will be leaving in a few weeks.  Me and a girl named Whitney (who is hilarious, I love her) will hopefully will be able to be the speakers in the upcoming weeks.  We are trying to figure out how to make it more fun and not just a lecture.  I am excited to be more involved with it; we have 2 assemblies planned for next Tuesday. I just feel like this is right up my alley helping these girls with their problems and helping them to feel good about themselves.  It was interesting one of the girls I was telling her she was beautiful and she was like no I am not, I have black skin.  It was so sad she thought she couldn’t be beautiful with dark skin.  I told her that I wanted to have skin like hers. We learned the other night that many of the African people have never pictured God to be black and they have never pictured Satan to be white. It is really interesting to learn more of the culture and how they think about themselves. 

It takes everything I have not to want to take them all home with me.

One morning I went to get Nate a sprite and this girl came with me, I was asking her what she was going to do that day.  She told me that she hated Africa and she was deciding if she was going home or not.  Let me tell you more about this girl, she takes care of everyone.  She is an EMT and fixes all the sick people, she is on the food and supplies committee and just really good to help wherever she is needed.  She told me she felt like she wasn’t making a difference here and that she should just go home.  I bet we talked for a few hours about the things she was going through and I pretty much got to know lots about the struggles she is going through.  I think lots of people are having a hard time with the fact that most projects are taking a lot of time to get started and there is a lot of down time for most people.

We need you prayers so we can start feeling better and that Nate won’t be so mad that I brought him here to this place to come be sick in a bed that isn’t even comfortable.

Yes it’s true, I have been sick for several days now.  It began with dry heaving and a stomach that felt like a washing machine on Wednesday.  Ever since then I have felt like I was going to throw up but haven’t been able to.  Finally the light at the end of the tunnel finally appeared last night.  It’s too bad that the light had to be the small fly-covered window above the squatter.  We are both still sick today but are hoping our bodies can get rid of whatever we ate that was bad – probably that nasty pear in Naggalama.

I don’t have much to report on this week since I’ve spent almost all of my time sleeping and reading.  I had another meeting with the guys at the furniture store.  I showed them how to make an income statement and the results were a little bit discouraging.  They have been losing about $300 a month, 600,000 in their local money, for each of the last two months.  That’s about the equivalent of 6 people’s monthly salary each month (The more educated people that don’t do subsistence farming make between $20-50/ month.)   Still, they were excited to see how the information could help them with their business.  We also talked about the concept of commission-based pay.  Both the owner and the store manager were excited about that!

One of the evenings that I was feeling a little better, Liz and I took the bubbles outside the gate.  The kids went absolutely crazy.  Within about two minutes I bet we had thirty or forty kids surrounding us and chasing after the bubbles.  We showed them how to do it, but you could tell it was very foreign to them.  They looked so sad when we ran out of bubbles and the muzungus had to go back inside.

The pounds are just falling off of me, especially since I got sick.  My diet has been a small banana for breakfast, a small banana for lunch, and some rice for dinner.  That’s about all my stomach can handle.  Thankfully, I haven’t been hungry despite not eating.  It seems like every day a few more people get sick.

We love you guys!! Thanks for your love and support :)

Liz & Nate

The KOA is now luxury? What's happening to me?!

Hello!

(This was Monday)  I only have a second before we run off to Nagojje for a business class.  Just wanted to tell you about our little vacation this weekend.  We went on a class 5 river rafting trip down the Nile!  It was so awesome.  The scenery was incredible, and one of the kayakers that followed our raft to save us when we were thrown out was named Moses!

We got up early and went with several of the girls from our group.  After a few of them went bungee jumping, we hopped on our rafts.  We rafted for six hours through a series of about 10 rapids.  I knew from the beginning that it was going to be intense because they spend about 20 minutes teaching you what to do "when" the raft flipped and you were thrown out.  (Not "if" it flipped) One of the girls got scared in our group and went on the safety raft for the rest of the day. It was interesting because she had gone bungee jumping that morning.


The first couple of rapids were awesome.  Liz and I were in the front so we got the most intense action.  It was amazing that we could survive crashing into 10 foot walls of water and not get flipped.  By lunch time, we were ready for something a little more intense. (Liz speaking) We thought we would be fine with our 15 SPF but the sun is so hot and with the combination of our malaria meds we got pretty burnt. Nate got burnt pretty bad (he said it was the worst he's ever been burnt.) The top of his knees looked pretty painful.

The next rapid was called "Vengeance."  If the raft flips at the beginning, you are carried about 500 yards before it is even possible for a kayaker to pick you up.  They said that rarely happens.  Well it did.  Almost right after we started our raft flipped and we were thrown into the rapids.  There were several times where you were thrown under for 5-10 seconds before finding the surface.  It was a few minutes before I found Liz and the raft.  It was the best water slide I have ever done!  When a kayak finally found me and began taking me back to the raft, there was no sign of the other 7 girls.  I came back to find one of them had stayed with the raft...under the raft.  Her eyes were as big as anyone's I had ever seen.  She was in shock, and truly thought that she was going to die.  Still no sign of Liz though.  Slowly the other girls were brought to the raft.  Some happy, some near tears.  Then finally, I saw Liz, giggling and making small talk with her kayaker.  Then there was Kerri.  She is engaged and makes sure we don't forget how wonderful her dear Jeffrey is.  Like Breeann, she had quite the wild ride.  She spent the rest of the day telling how she had let go..given up on life.. and felt so horrible that Jeff would never see her again.  We still don't let her live it down.

 When we were all safe, Liz and I just talked about how we loved it.  Not all of the girls felt that way!

When the rafting was done, they fed us meat! Real meat!  Not eggplant, not peanuts, but real meat!  I ate like it was the last time I would ever have it again.  And it's true, haven't had any since.

Then they took us back to the campground.  It's basically like a KOA overlooking the Nile river where we paid for the rafting trip.  Included in the trip was a free night stay.  Even though it was a nasty public shower, it had HOT WATER.  I spent at least an hour in there.  Then we went to the bar and had pizza and said in a chair with a back on it, it even had a cushion.  Ah, life's luxuries.  It was a great weekend.

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It was the best of times...it was the worst of times

It was the best of times...it was the worst of times.  I think that will be the theme for our time in Africa.  Luckily the good tremendously trumps the bad.

It has been a very busy week for us with lots of great experiences.  As I think Liz mentioned, be began our series of business classes on Wednesday night.  We will be teaching three different groups of people.  One in Lugazi, the town where we live, and the other two are in small villages (Nagojje, 40 minutes away from Lugazi, and Naggalama about 2 hours from Lugazi)  That means six classes each week.
Lugazi is our most advanced group.  The people are very eager to learn anything that we can give them.  It is amazing to be giving advice to middle aged, and well-educated people that already own their own businesses.  We teach them in Pastor Francis church, a good friend of help who we are working on many projects with.  The church is probably 10x20 with concrete floor and walls.  The blackboard is spray painted on the wall.  As the sun went down, the only thing I could see of the students were there eyes and teeth!

I think Liz explained the other two villages very well.  Their english is not great but they are very eager to learn and they treat us like kings.  They will be the ones that are starting the reusable pad business.  Currently there are no products available to the young women.  They are forced to drop out of school and are often raped because men know that they have come of age.  This is not only a way for them to generate income, many live on wages of 500-1000 shillings a day (25-50 cents), but also provides an important social need.

The classes have been fun for me, but I can tell the most enjoyment will come from a project that I am working on by myself.  I asked Pastor Francis to introduce me to a few members of the community that already own their own businesses that might be open to consulting.  I have already met with Monday and Bruno, owners of a local furniture store.  They learned extremely basic book keeping from the businesses classes last year and were very excited to have some one on one training.  I introduced them to the concept of warranties, to help them increase their profit margins and assure customers of quality.  They had also never heard of a sale before.  It's amazing how common business practices in America are so foreign here.  They have been extremely receptive and it was fun to sit and ask question after question about their business, products, customers, etc.  I will be meeting with them again on Monday.  On Tuesday I am meeting with a man that has invented a way to turn garbage into fuel and wants to franchise it to farmers all over Uganda.  He is already profitable so it will be fun to try to take him to the next level.  I am hoping to get 3 more consulting clients.

This is what constitutes the best of times - we'll call this 10 am - 5 pm.  The worst of times makes up the rest of the day.  We are starving! Absolutely starving!!  It makes me wonder where our collective $75,000 went.  But no worries, Liz and I have taken that into our own hands.  Liz joined the food committee, while I joined the finance committee.  We also had private conversations with several of the members to complain individually about the situation.  Lets just say things have been running a little better lately...

Then there are the girls.  All 22 of them, well 21 minus Liz. 26 of any kind of people in 1200 square feet just doesn't work.  But 26 people, with 22 of them being spoiled, whiny 19 year old girls is worse than having Kony and his cronies hanging you by your toenails and having you devoured by a pack of angry gorillas. (True story)  But it is nice to be able to have our own bedroom and escape to reading Barbarians at the Gate.  In truth they really aren't all bad.

Well I think that's all for me.  We are going on an adventure tomorrow but I don't want to reveal what it is until we get home safely... Love you mom!

So far our highlights:

1.  Eating fried grasshopper - a local delicacy.  Tastes like potato chips.

2.  Cramming 16 people into a taxi designed for 8 and driving several hours
3.  Playing with the kids that chase us around saying "hey muzungu!"
4.  Eating about 600 calories a day and actually feeling full.


Well love you all.  Pictures are not working with the connection but we will somehow figure out a way.

Nate

Hello Everyone! We have had quite the week.  We are really excited about the things going on here in Uganda.  First of all I just have to say  that the people are so so kind and loving and welcoming to us.  This last weekend was a little hard starting out because we hadn't started on any projects.  If you can only imagine 22 girls that are mostly 19 and 20 screaming and being crazy you can imagine Nate asked me a few times what we were doing here.  We went and played soccer with some children in the village.  These kids schooled us barefoot, they were so good.  Church on Sunday was AMAZING! We went to a little branch in Jinja and they were so excited to see us, most of the volunteers went to Mukono for church.  The people were really inspirational and loving. There is a Sister who got baptized 3 weeks ago who is teaching Relief Society on Sunday. Isn't that amazing?

We have these committees that we volunteer to be on and since everyone in the house was starving I am on the food committee and Nate is on the finance committee so he can pad the budget so we can get more food.  It really isn't that we don't have a budget it's just that the we have no fridge and it's hard when you have to shop for 25 people.  It's getting to be a pretty big project.  We went to a small village called Nagojje that is about 40 min ride on a boda boda (motorcycle) This town has never had white people come into the village to do trainings.  There was a baby that was crying and Nate went to touch the baby and the baby started bawling.  The mother said sorry she has never seen a white person before.  The people are so humble and grateful for us coming to teach them business.  They started and ended the City council meeting with prayer.  This is when I first realized why WE needed to be there. After the meeting they brought us into their homes and gave me a necklace and fruit and were just so sweet and kind to us.  They asked us a million questions about America and what happens when we get too much sun.


We stared our first business class on Wednesday and it went really well. They had us sing our National anthem which was kind of funny. The people that came to the class in Lugazi were really smart.  Nate went to do consulting with a man who did the business classes last year.  He went to his furniture shop and is helping him to understand how to make a better profit and market the furniture.  Nate was saying that the guy thought it sounded like rocket science and that they were just so happy for the help.

Our Nagojje people who invited us in their home.

I went to one of the schools to observe the teachers and see if we can implement a teacher training.  Since I have been going with Nate on the business classes there hasn't been a lot of free time.  Yesterday we went to this small town past the middle of nowhere to meet the women that are starting the business of selling reusable pads.  They treated us like Kings and Queens.  They brought water to wash our hands and fed us fruit it was really so wonderful.  It takes us about 1 1/2 hours to get there and we go on these taxis but they stop every two seconds to pick up more people.  We get pretty cramped in there but we are able to make some great friends.  I decided they like you just because you are white, they wanted us to get them a visa to the U.S.


I will add pictures for sure, we just forgot the cord and the internet cafe is SUPER SLOW. But the children all love us and are so excited to see us. We are loving it and adjusting the the African lifestyle.  It is pretty crazy how many things we have that we take for granted.  We love you all!


Love, Liz & Nate

We made it to Lugazi!

We made it!  After two straight nights of red eyes,  we were extremely excited to find our little metal beds pushed together with a camping pad for a matress!  At least we got to lay down right?

Before hitting our pillows (KLM flight blanket and sweatshirt, respectively) we said to ourselves...what in the world are we doing here?  I think the thought crossed our minds again as we poured cold rain water over ourselves this morning for our bucket showers and ate pb & honey sandwiches for breakfast.  But it sure beat the three days prior of no shower and airline food.

I threw up a bad mango... I wasn't too happy

Nate just loves the Boda bodas

This morning we ventured out into Lugazi, which is a small town about 40-50 miles from Kampala, the capital.  You'd think it would be a quick trip, but the roads are not great and you have to dodge all the boda bodas weaving in and out of yours and the oncoming lanes.

Our house is probably the nicest in the entire town, and (for Susie's sake) is surrounded by a huge wall, padlocked, and watched by two guards 24 hours a day.  There are 25 people living in the house that is probably 1200 square feet.  Should be interesting when all 22 girls body clocks set to each other.

We realized we were in the right place when we started walking through town and seeing all the cute kids.  We are like celebrities here (because we are white) they call us Mzungu's as we walk by.  There were a group of about 5 kids that came up to me and Nate and have us high fives and knuckles which they call bonga.  We are super excited to go play soccer with them this afternoon.

We are way excited to be here an we'll make sure we update you at least weekly.  I think we'll just do it on the blog so we have it all in one place. We'll post pictures and stuff when we get it but until then, HAVE A GREAT WEEK!

Love, Liz & Nate

We are Leaving for AFRICA!!

We are starting a blog to document our wild adventures this summer.  We are headed to Africa today.  We just got back from Mexico a few days ago and had a great time.  We couldn't be more excited to go to Uganda. We got an email from our country director the other day she said, "We got a great house, but it comes with a few quirks.  We moved in way before it was ready so we could experience all of them and learn to adjust before you all get here.  :)  It is a big 4 bedroom house (if you count the garage as a bedroom).  It has a big kitchen (this inspired a little dancing and singing when the cooks saw it), an indoor bathroom with a shower head, a semi-flushing toilet in the house, and 2 squat toilet and a shower room out back!  There is running water in the house, but water seems to be a precious commodity around here.  The city is not sending it through the pipes quite as often as we expected so we have multiple buckets and water carrying/pouring devices.  This will give us all a greater perspective on how the people live here."

 We thought it would be an adventure worth documenting.  I had this great idea when we started dating that we would write in a journal everything that happened.  Nate pretended to be excited but once we got married it didn't happen.  He agreed to write if it was on a computer so here we will start our documenting!