dig hard, dance hard

We have officially been here for just over a week, and each day I fall more and more in love with this country.  We worked hard in the garden Monday-Thursday, and on Friday we helped Moses paint a room that he plans to turn into a computer lab.  It was a messy yet very fun affair (I still have paint 0n my feet!).  After reading through the posts that I spat out a few days ago (sorry for the mistakes), I realized that I did not say much about the actual organization we are working with.  So here we go…

We are working with an HIV/AIDS initiative started by a group of women who are infected or affected by HIV in our village in 1999.  The village has a population of 400, and there is a 15-20% HIV infection rate.  The aim of the initiative is to reduce the infection rate through education, and also enable those who are infected with/affected by HIV to support themselves through agriculture.  We are digging the demonstration garden, which provides fresh vegetables for the school, and those in charge of the garden invite local people in to learn how to plant low-maintenance yet healthy food in their own gardens at home, reducing the cost of food while often generating income.  Really neat idea, and through combining education and agriculture, they have reduced the infection rate significantly in the past decade.  They have also gained quite a lot of international recognition, even receiving donations from Elton John’s foundation.  I’m really stoked to be a part of this movement, and I want to stay involved even after leaving Uganda.

We have the weekends off work, so yesterday we went into Kampala for the day to wander around – ended up at a predominantly white restaurant for some Mzungu food (after eating all natural food food for a week, a chicken burger and fries made me feel like crap).  Wandered around a craft market looking for gifts, and then came back to Mukono to go dancing.  Moses takes excellent care of us, and he brought us one of his friends, Gertrude, to dance with us since she can, in his words, “shake it like Shakira”.  We had such a fun night dancing like crazy with our local friends and letting loose after a week of digging – our legs kill today from all the dancing we did!

Super short post (sorry), but my time on the internet is running out.  We’re going to a hotel in Mukono now to use the pool (and real showers and toilets – we have been using bucket showers and pit toilets, so we’re excited to have an afternoon with these luxuries).

Much love to everyone and a HUGE shout out to my amazing mother and grandmother, as it is mothers day today.  I love you Mom and Granny!