Every summer for at least the past 6 summers since Blossom Shoes and Such opened in Greenwood, SC under the classic eternal good taste of Kimberly Stephens, I have enjoyed a new pair of Jack Rogers sandals every year.
Past pleasures for my feet with ridiculously expensive taste have included:
And this is to name only 3 of the pairs I have. I have more Jack Rogers sandals than maybe Jack Rogers.
I love summer and I'm always on the lookout for a really great summer sandal. Since I knew I was going to Uganda this year, I didn't buy my annual pair of Jacks and decided to wait and see what treats would be over here. Let me tell you how glad I am that I waited. Check these out!
These hand-sewn and hand-beaded sandals are made in Uganda. I found them at the local crafts market in Entebbe. The cost after bargaining, 22,000 UGX (about $9 USD). There are all kinds of local crafts around that are stunning fashion and home decor pieces, not just the mass made masks.
Hope you like these as much as I do. I have another pair too. I'm saving them for special occasions - Havianas can do the everyday job.
Good morning everyone! Meet my student Irene Agadi. Irene's husband called this morning just before 5 a.m. to tell me that she had a healthy baby boy. Irene is doing well too which is amazing because about 1 month ago Irene developed a soccer ball sized cyst/tumor in her vagina. Week before last, doctors at a local hospital said she MUST have surgery to remove the tumor so that she would be able to deliver vaginally. The cost of the surgery was around 200,000 UGX (about $80 at the current exchange rate). An impossible amount of money that required her husband to go to every relative they had plus a few others to scrape together a loan package for the surgery.
C-sections are a curse here in Africa because the recovery time is 6 weeks and no woman in Africa has enough family support or time to recover from a C-section. There is water to fetch twice a day, digging in the garden, clothes to be washed, homes to be swept and mopped, harvesting to be done in the garden, cooking to be done, shopping for food to be done. There is literally no end to the list of work that an African woman must do in order for her family to survive.
And the miracle of Irene's new son is that she was able to have the surgery just in the nick of time and two weeks later, she has a brand new son. Her oldest child, a two year old girl named Mercy, has been beside herself with excitement about the coming of the new baby.
This little boy doesn't have a name yet because it is Ugandan custom to wait until the baby is three days old.
There needs to be a new international standard for the strength of deodorant. Really. Just think about the various situations in life that you face regularly and how your deo either cuts it or it doesn't.
For the record, in Africa, I stink. Two hot baths a day, plus my so-called deodorant and I still smell like hell. The problem is, in part, that I have chosen one that is "unscented". This is perfect for my mighty endeavors of things like eating lunch with the girls where I don't want anything to clash with my carefully chosen perfume. Can you imagine what the other ladies who lunch would say if I did otherwise?
When I was packing for this trip, I bought a flotilla of my normal deodorant being certain that they would not sell any that was worth the money in Uganda. On this account, I was right. Remember Ban roll-on from the 70s? Well, all that left over Ban that did not sell in the US in the 70s is now for sale in Uganda. And, get this, the deodorant that they do sell is kept behind the counter with the booze and condoms. I guess smelling presentable must be more likely to lead to sexual encounters here than in the rest of the world.
So here's a starting proposal to deal with the problem of assessing deodorant strength and developing a rating system. First, since this is a global problem that affects all Westerners and therefore it affects the non-Westerner too even though they are not yet enlightened enough to know it, I propose that the UN, the World Bank and NATO (just in case there are strategic military interests at stake in the the solution to this problem) form a joint committee to study the problem. From my friend/colleague Carolyn from Sydney, I know that it will take 2 years to come up with a name for this working group. Carolyn has also taught me about the skill of vague-ing things up when dealing with international committees on the resolution of anything.
But this is the rough outline of what I hope the standards will look like in ascending order of strength:
Mall Walking for Seniors
Part-time fast food worker
Middle distance runner
Endurance athlete
Africa strength
Pretty good start don't you think?
Anna, Agnes #1, me in my ubiquitous aid worker skirt and Mary Akengo
Saturday, 18 October 2014: I have just paid 20,000 UGX for a stick of Old Spice high endurance. This translates at the current exchange rate into about $8.00. 8-f'ing-dollars! I better smell darned good all day for this price.
Six weeks into the beginning crochet class, things are going
well.My students are eager to learn and
I have found that I love teaching.The
yarn I had shipped is running out too quickly, but that is a good thing because
it means that my students are practicing morning, noon and night.Some of the students have invested in
battery-operated night lights so they can crochet after dark.Their willingness to learn this skill and
their hope it will bring them and their families a better life weighs on my
mind in a way that gives me vision for what to teach each day.
My students have become a family.They help each other, they love each other,
they support each other.And I love each
woman.I respect their strength, their
openness, their hardships.Every class
meeting starts with shaking one another’s hand around our circle.Most of them follow Ugandan tradition of
kneeling when they shake my hand.I
kneel to them in spirit, because if I knelt to even one of them, I can’t
guarantee that I could get up.I have
told them as much and they laugh with understanding.
Beatrice and Agnes #3 have left their families to come just
to take this course.Beatrice has two
small daughters that she brought with her, Purity and Esther.As a mother, she is experiencing the
heartbreak that Purity (age 5) has sickle cell.In rural Uganda the only treatments available for Purity are folic acid
and pain killers to help her with the pain.Shegets sick easily, but
mercifully she is very resistant to malaria.Her younger sister Esther (age 18 months) is very healthy and a sweet,
sweet child.Beatrice has two other
children that remain at home.Agnes #3
has three children, the youngest is 3 years old.I know that these women are sacrificing so
much to take this class and it is humbling.
Ann Okurut has 4 children, the youngest is about to finish
high school.Christine (Toto #1 – Toto
is Ateso for mother) has 10 children and is expecting her 11th.She is due in September.Irene has one daughter, Mercy, and she is
expecting her second child, due in early October.Teddy #1 is a nurse and the office manager
of the clinic here at PACODET.Teddy #2
is not yet married, but the class jokes about taking her on market day to
Abilla (a village close by) and finding her a boyfriend.Agnes #2 is also unmarried and she is
completing her nursing training here at PACODET.And there is also Benna, Florence (Toto #2),
Phoebe, and Dinnah.
Most of the class has perfect attendance.Phoebe and Dinnah aren’t coming now because
they are newly pregnant and have terrible morning sickness that seems to last
the whole day.They can get caught up
when they are feeling better.
But then there is the Other Ann, Ann Apadet.She is pretty and she is very reserved.I know from my boss Stanley that she has a
very hard life.She has one daughter,
Sharon, and she has said she is expecting again.She said in the last class she attended that
she was one month along.A few weeks ago
I learned that Sharon was born very early, weighing a few ounces at most.Sharon was hospitalized for the first few
weeks of her life and kept in an incubator.Ann’s
attendance in class has been spotty at best and as a result she struggles to
keep up with the class.Her grades are
so low at this point that she will not be able to advance to the Intermediate
class.
This week I found out that Ann had run away from her home
here in Kapuwai.Her husband has been in
Kampala for some time now looking for work.Apparently, her husband called her and his brother answered her
phone.Customs for visiting married
women are different in Uganda.Her husband
asked his brother what he was doing in their home.Words were exchanged.Ann left in fear of what her husband would do
when he came home.If Ann is actually
pregnant, she is in great danger of severe abuse or worse.Ann went to her family home several hours
away. Not many people have considered that Ann may not have had a choice regarding participation in the sex that led to her latest pregnancy.
She is lost to many things now, not the least of which is the
program.If her husband catches up with
her, she will most certainly lose Sharon.In Uganda, children are the possession of the father.I pray her husband will never catch up with
her.
First sentences are always a bitch. No matter how clever I try to be, I usually just sound like an idiot or a jerk. And let's face it, when I'm thinking of what to write in the shower, I always sound more clever than I actually am.
And another thing, writing well is a lot like good taste and a sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have good taste and a good sense of humor, but in truth not many of us actually do. If we are lucky in life, we have many friends who have one or the other, and sometimes we get really lucky and have a friend who has both. Thus, I am not much of a writer; I'm more of a think-out-loud-on-paper type communicator.
So, why Uganda and why now? Many of you may know that for the past four years or so, I have been a volunteer grant writer for the Pallisa Community Development Trust or PACODET. PACODET is located in Kapuwai Village, near Pallisa township, in Pallisa District of Eastern Uganda. PACODET is a non-governmental organization (NGO) that works to improve life for the 60,000+ residents in the area it serves through food security, integrated rural community health services and agricultural/environmental projects and initiatives.
I will spend 7 months on this trip to teach about 12 to 14 women whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS how to crochet. Together we will set up a micro business to sell these items first in the local markets, and later on, hopefully, we will expand upward and outward. I have very high hopes for this project. I want these women to succeed in every possible way and I'm willing to work myself to death to help them achieve that goal.
I leave for Uganda on Sunday, June 8, 2014. Posts to this blog will be made weekly, and some times more often if there is more to share.
