Blog July 9
From what I can tell no one slept too great last night and as we prepare for a long day on the road and surrounded by kids that's not exactly the way to start your day. It was pretty quiet this morning since the Colorado team and Rwanda team left yesterday so it's just us, Carl and Tracy (the physics teachers), and Kelly and Eleanor (the cutest mother and daughter ever). We had breakfast and talked to Andrea about all the things she has to get done today and the plans for replicating the site in the future. That woman is incredibly busy and a very hard worker. Then we piled into kyemba's car which at the start of the day I would now consider relatively uncrammed.
We drove for a little bit and picked up pastor Andrew and Joseph. For a quick layout the car consisted of kembya and Andrew in the front, sue , Denise and joseph in the middle and Moses Esther, Kylee and me in the back. Kylee and I got really close to each other during this car ride since it took us about two hours to realize that I am in fact small enough to sit on the seat and not have to sit on her lap in this back row. The road we took was the scenic route to say the least. This was the closest to a jungle like setting I have ever been in. There was grass taller than Moses on either side of the car at points and extremely tall trees absolutely everywhere. I think we were the first car ever to drive down this path since it was also about 3 feet wide and 3 feet deep in some places too. At one point we saw a building selling some caskets and I heard Kylee call out that the bright purple casket was the one she wants to be buried in for anyone asking just thought I'd put it out there.
Also I never want you all to doubt that we, wait not we, but kyemba will do anything to make sure sue gets the pictures she wants. As we drove past a passion fruit plantation sue got her camera out to take a picture but by the time she was ready we had passed it. So naturally, kyemba put his van in reverse on this 3 foot wide road with steep drop offs to get sue back in place. All I can say is expect some good pictures of passion fruit when we get home.
As we got closer to the village we started to see lake Victoria so is oblivious teenage girls start to ask about the alligators in the lake. First sue corrected us by informing us that they were in fact crocodiles and not alligators. Then she told us that we would be going into that "crocodile" lake later in the day and mentioned how she was going to throw us to the crocs to make them full while her and Denise swam away to which Esther so kindly responded with "but have you seen aubra they're not going to be full". Thank you Esther.
Eventually we made it to the village and jumped out of our clown car. All the students lined up from baby class to p4 and we got to have a quick music session with them. Something that I've noticed that translates across both the musana campus and the campus here was that the kids are very disciplined. They respond to the teachers words with several chants in unison. After introduction to the teachers, church staff and students sue introduced each of us. When she told them my name we were again met with dumbfounded stares since "Aubra" is a hard thing for them to pronounce so instead I took my middle name again "Fayth". I noticed the kids were a little more skittish then most of the kids we had seen in town and then pastor Andrew informed us that we are the second missionary group to have ever come to their village. It was very different to have the kids running away from us than to have them walking right up to us.
Then we split up the group and each went to our separate classrooms. I was with the baby class who are by far some of the cutest kids I have ever seen. Their teachers Would call out signal words and the kids would jump in with a song about their body parts or fitting an elephants into a bus or friendship. One thing I started to notice in the classroom was that the language barrier was definitely back up. Not many of these kids knew English and the ones that did didn't know much. When class let out they all ran from the classroom to go get lunch while we started a walk to a nearby cliff. I know what you're thinking "no Aubra don't go to that cliff or Esther will push you off!" But don't be alarmed we just went to get a view of lake Victoria and all I can say is wow. That lake is absolutely stunning and incredibly vast. Walking to the lake had attracted a crowd of children who at all times kept and 2 foot distance from you. At least that was the case until I pulled out the very limited local language vocabulary I had and asked "niwe ani"( what is your name) which brought on a whole eruption of laughter at my awful pronunciation, but it was okay because then a couple of them took a step closer and shook my hand. We all walked back to the village and the kids crowded around Esther and me. At this point they were no longer scared to stand close to us but we also were really struggling on the communication end so Moses came over and helped us to get them all in a circle so Esther could play music and they could dance. This worked for a while but dang these kids have a lot of energy. We sat down with them and tried to find a song we all knew. We found out that they knew the main part of "yes Jesus loves me" so we just really tried to teach them the rest but I'm not sure how much it stuck. Eventually sue called us over and we hoped back in the van and drive down some more bumpy trails to get to the neighboring village which was right on lake Victoria.
Once we got to lake Victoria Kylee, Esther and I tried to get as close to the water as possible without completely falling in or giving sue a heart attack. Then a man walked over to sue and asked if she wanted a boat ride into the lake for a little bit and our very brave leader said of course. So he went to go get his boat and we all piled in. I learned the hard way, twice, that boats are slippery and wiped out very gracefully. Once we were all seated the boat got moving. There were 4 men in the front paddling, two men in the back and Moses in the middle scooping water out of the bottom of the boat and throwing it out (kind of a new experience). I can not express how beautiful the lake itself was but I will give you a quick rundown of what we saw. First we saw some ducks, then we saw some kids playing in the water, then we saw what we thought was a snake but was actually a crocodile, then we saw some more kids playing, then we saw about 4 more crocodiles. I was horrified and amazed at the same time. No one was taken off the boat ,or should I say pushed, and we made it to the shore again in one piece. I tried to be extra careful getting off the boat but again found myself on the floor, but it's okay I've really been working on accepting defeat sometimes.
We got back into the van and drove back to the village. Pastor Andrew then invited us to lunch so we followed him into their church building while they pulled out some tables and chairs. The room was pretty small and made out of dried mud which was honestly incredibly impressive. We washed our hands in a bucket that Andrew carried around to us and an incredible amount of food was brought out. There was absolutely no way that our group of girls and the three boys could eat that much. Or so I thought. Esther are probably enough food to make up for everyone else and she did it the traditional way, with her hands. When she does something that girl is all in.
Once everyone had finished we got back in the van but this time we had four more guests in the back sea, some fresh fish from lake Victoria. Quite a shock if you weren't expecting to turn around and see dead fish by the way. On our way out we crossed paths with another giant truck that was picking up lumbar in the forest. Remember how I told you it was a very narrow road? It's still a very narrow road. This is why we admire kyemba to no ends as he maneuvered his was around the truck without falling off. On the drive to musana us girls in the back were pretty exhausted so we took a pair of headphones and played music for each other. I didn't have it in my heart to tell Esther that her singing could be clearly heard in the silent car even if she had her head phone in.
Once we made it back to musana we ate dinner, somehow Esther ate more than all of us again. After we ate Esther, Kylee and I went to fill water bottles with oil for the trip we're taking tomorrow back into the villages. When filling water bottles by moonlight you're not always entirely accurate so in the end we were 3 water bottles short of our 50 and had to go back and re distribute all of them but it got done. After finishing up we were all pretty tired and as far as I remember I was out for the night.
I love and miss you all very much and I hope you you are all doing well.
Signing off now, Aubra
