obanga mi gumm

My name is Akello Jen. I am in University. I have 20 years.

Our team fell ill over the past week and we still do not know what we got hit with. First, Elena gets typhoid. Next, Scott, Jill, and Alisa experience some aches and pains, which the clinic deems Malaria. About 4 days ago I slept for almost 30 hours, which resulted in a great concern for my health. Richelle and I get tested and what do we have? We have malaria. But do we really now? The answer here is this: Ugandan Health Care Clinics need some money, and when they see white people, we light up like little light bulbs in their heads. We have money! And they need it! So what do they do, diagnosis 5 of us with Malaria. We felt a bit ill; none of us obviously knew what it feels like to have such parasites, so we told our loved ones of our new friends. FALSE ALARM. Richelle went to a different clinic the same day to get tested [we felt our previous clinic was sketch] and she is Malaria free! [which resulted in an overall misdiagnosis for everyone] I do not have malaria. No one really does. Oh life!! How silly you are sometimes. We all still feel strange. IBUProfen has become our cure all.

Pleasantly, mobile school has been picked up again near the new COTN village construction site! I am in charge of the nursery children [preschool] which are anywhere from 2-6 years old. The language barrier is tough with these little ones, even with a translator. We have spent 3 days learning A, B, and C. We still do not know which letter is which, but I am perfectly okay with it! At first I became frustrated, felt like I was wasting my time, but then I began to see how intensely my little ones were trying. I will literally have them look at a big poster with the letter A on it and repeat A, A, A 30 times and then I will go back to it not minutes and they will all be dumbfounded by such a foreign script. I give them all a piece of paper with A B and C on it and have them copy the letters. The older ones do exceptionally well and are proud of their work. I smile as the little ones show me their scribbles. We often go on short jogs [to the tree and back] to release some of their ever-abundant energy. Their little legs are so quick. My love for them grew fast. We went over numbers 1-5, too complicated. We are dropping both letters and numbers and will be drawing shapes, playing balancing games, and learning about the Bible this last week.

Yesterday [Saturday] we went to the children’s home to help with chores. I sorted through rice for rocks with Adong Janet [one of the older girls]. I love watching the children cook. Everything is such a process some aspects more exciting than others. Dinner was going to consist of rice, chicken, and peas [lentils]. Chicken here does not come packaged from the grocery store. Chicken comes alive. The boys, especially Morris, enjoy the slaughter. We gathered the chickens and took them to the place of death [back of the house by their coop]. The boys start plucking the neck feathers and laughing a bit as we all cringe. The first chickens throat gets slit and blood gushes out like water from a broken pipe. I leave at this point. I think if chicken blood was a different color than human blood I would be okay. The slaughter took a while [five chickens died that day]. Oh the joy these kids get out of such daily routines!

A new team of 6 older women and 2 couples arrived yesterday. Some came from Malawi and others from the states. They will be putting on some sort of teachers training conference. It is nice to have other people in our house!

I have not blogged in a while due to our frequent and long lasting power outages. Sorry.

Have a nice day!
Jen