Indian Africa. . . . . .

Well. . . I am sitting here and for the life of me, I can't remember what I did on Friday . . . so I will begin with Saturday. We didn't have any set weekend plans for our days off, so we just decided to wing it and head to Jinja and figure something out. So we hopped on a taxi and went on our way! I still love just driving in the taxi's and watching all the amazing Uganda sights, sounds, and smells pass by! We told our taxi driver to take us to the source of the nile because we heard that it was a cool place from a guide book, but we didn't really know what to expect. When we got there, we saw tons of little shops that were in traditional African huts and little boats floating in the Nile and we decided that we would just go on a little boat ride! It was very chido ;) But it was kind of weird in a way because I have heard about the Nile my whole life, and now that I was there touching it, I just couldn't believe it! But it was beautiful! It seemed like a jungle and we even stopped on a few little islands along the way that we name Gilligan's Island! O and we saw monkey's hanging out in the trees for the first time since we have been here! So in case you are curious, the Nile river is 4000 miles long. It begins in Lake Victoria where 90% of it's water comes from. The other 10% comes from an underground spring. The water (where we were at least) was moving very slow and we found out that it takes 3 months for it to make it all the way to the Mediterranean Sea! After our little boating excursion, we were all hungry and so we separated into different groups to go find food. The only problem was 1. we didn't know where we were in Jinja and 2. there was no public transportation nearby. So we did the only thing we could do, started walking! ha ha we didn't even know if we were going the right direction! Soon we just started flagging down bodas one by one to pick us up! You know, it still seems so odd to me that to get around in Uganda, you go up to some random guy on a motercycle and ask him to take you somewhere and hop on! But that's what we did!
Random fact about Jinja, although it is obviously majority Ugandan, there is a large percent of Indian people here that work in the sugar factories so it is rumor that the Indian food is amazing! So we decided to check it out! So four of us told our boda drivers to take us to this random Indian food place and it was super small! But we were excited becuase everyone in there was Indian so we figured that was a good sign! We ordered our food and waited. Now it seemed logical to us that when you order Indian food it would come with rice to put the sauce on. Apparently that isn't so! So they brought us out little bowls of sauce and we were so excited to eat it because it smelled delicious! After a few minutes of staring at it we asked if we were getting rice too and they laughed and said. . um no! ha ha so we had to order some, but it was so worth it because it was amazing!!! We will definiately be going back there before we get home! After we ate, we decided to continue our Indian Africa adventure and head over to the Hindu temple. It was awesome! we talked with the Hindu priest and the care taker and they were telling us about the way they worship and everything. Then the priest came over with the bowl of the most disgusting cheese looking chunks and offered it to us! I definately hesitated a bit before putting it in my mouth, but was pleasantly surprised when I discovered it was practically pure sugar! Then we decided that since we were in a bigger city we would spoil ourselves and go to the supermarket before heading back to Lugazi.
Sunday we were back in Jinja for church. A few of us have been going to young womens lately because they invited us the first day and we have loved going ever since! We had the manual and weren't exactly sure if we were teaching or not but didn't worry too much about it! Well I walked into the room and it said next to lesson Sister Kate! So I had Ally come teach with me too and we tried to teach a decent lesson about sharing the gospel. It went alright, we talked about all the ways that we can share the gospel. However, it never occured to me that maybe we missed part of the point of the lesson. Once we finished one of the young women got up and said, "It is important for us to share the gospel because Heavenly Father wants us to to bring souls back to him." I just sat there for a minute and thought, ya know, that statement alone was more meaningful then our entire lesson! All I can say is that the young women in that branch are awesome! I look up to them so much! That night, we had a team meeting about planning out our projects. We were reminded that we need to be searching out different ways to help among the people instead of taking our western world beliefs and trying to implement them here. But after we finished, we watched a documentary called War Dance and it talked about all the kids in Uganda who have been victoms of the war in Northern Uganda and how they cope with it through music and dance. It was incredible!
Today is Monday and it has been a great start to the week! I began it by heading to the Buikwe district this morning where we visited some school who we are thinking about helping. The people who work there are so amazing! There was a school that had 87 students who were either orphans or were being raised in single family homes. We wanted to see if they had a mucic curriculum since me and Ally are interested in doing that and whenever we asked the schools they would say yup we have a choir and go round up all the students! The students would sing us songs and they are so adorable!! There is one song that they love and it goes, "Jesus is a winner man, a winner man, a winner man. A winner man, a winner man, a winner man. . etc." With a second verse that goes, "Satan is a loser man, a loser man, a loser man. A loser man, a loser man, etc." They all were so happy!! Then they had us sing for them! ha ha believe it or not, we sang "Jesus wants me for a Sunbeam" and "popcorn popping". Yes they looked us like we were crazy mzungus but. . I like to think they secretly enjoyed watching us humiliate ourselves! We all laughed together and it was so hard to leave! The kids actually chased us down the street and the pastor had to go tell them to go back to the school! But, the teachers there are all volunteers!!! Then we had a teacher training and I could just see how much the teachers there love their students!! They were all experienced teachers and were asking us such hard questions about what they should do. I felt so inadequete!!! I tried to answer best I could. Part of me wanted to just say, you know so much more than I do about teaching, can you just teach me instead? But seeing the hope they had that we could help them, I just tried to answer the best I could. I just felt so much love for them and their determination to better the lives of their students! Through today's experience, I know without a doubt that I want to be a teacher and the teachers I met today will always be some of my role models.