I've officially been in my homestay for a week now and will be living here for another week before taking an exursion to the western part of Uganda and Rwanda (Whoo!). I think my family is well-off and at first I was afraid they weren't going to talk to me because at the meeting event at a hotel they didn't say very much to me at first. But then once we got home everyone talked to me a lot. The family is really big, but they don't all live in the house (pictures to come). There is Jaaja (mom/grandmother) and her husband but we don't talk much so I don't call him dad or grandad or even his first name which I think is Francis. They have five kids, but they're all grown up. I've only met three of them. One sister and one brother both live in the United States with children. The first sibling I met was Helen who is quite the character and speaks english much faster than I can understand sometimes. She is 29 and has a son in the U.S. (I think). She would normally be staying at the house, but her younger sister, Gloria who is 27, is expecting (she's due in November I think) and her husband Andrew who's really nice is away in China for the next 2 weeks, so Helen is staying with Gloria for the time being. Gloria and Andrew got married 3 years ago and live in Kololo. I live in Ntinda. I don't know what Gloria does, but Helen works as a risk assessment and compliance manager (or something like that). Andrew is a total tech nerd and works for some information technology company and is in love with everything Google. He loves his new iphone so much that he never writes anything down anymore, he just takes pictures of tickets or something on a board or a document from a meeting so he doesn't have to copy it. His wife, Gloria, says he keeps forgetting everything because his brain is turning to mush from not using it anymore because of the iphone.
My first night there I spoke alot with Andrew and the two sisters. Sometimes Jaaja and the sisters would start talking in Luganda and Andrew would translate for me. He talked to me the whooolleee time which was really nice. We talked about so you think you can dance and they think that Americans are the best dancers in the world which is pretty cool. We talked about t.v. shows, movies, Uganda, religion, their family, a whole bunch of stuff! I'm excited for when Andrew comes back from China cause he said Gloria and he would show me around the city and take me to contemporary church where they sing christian rock (like Camp Cherokee!) So I'm super pumped for that.
I have my own room, which is nice so I do get a lot of alone time but other than that I play a lot with Paula who is 6 and the daughter of one of the brothers in the U.S. She is absolutely crazy, but really nice too. Most of the time if I need to do work or read she leaves me alone. Last night was the only time I actually had to lock my bedroom door because she wouldn't leave when I was going to sleep. We started watching Monsters Inc. but haven't finished it yet.
There are also two housemaids, I always forget the girls name but she's my favorite person to talk to and helps me alot with my Luganda homework. And then the other is Freddie who I usually watch music videos with. Last night we watched a few Michael Jackson videos, which was awesome.
There's also Peace, one of the brothers, whose real name isn't really Peace, but apparently he was born during the war so his parents called him Peace. I barely even saw him for the first half of the week, but now we always eat together and talk sooooo so much. He is a talking machine and neeeever stops. Yesterday during dinner he was talking so much that he eventually realized I was dozing off cause it was late (Ugandans eat dinner late which stinks). I've showed the whole family all my pictures that I brought but he was the most animated when I showed them, especially the dance pictures. He just couldn't believe them. You would have to be there to get how animated he is about everything, but it's very entertaining. He also showed me his HUGE photo album yesterday at lunch.
All in all my homestays pretty good. I wish I would do more with them sometimes like go shopping or show me around, but I'm sure we will do that more at some point. Jaaja drives me to school every morning cause Paulas school is right near mine so I wake up at 6 am eeeeevverrydaayy ugh. The house is pretty nice and I'm definitely getting more used to the food. Lunch should be served soon which is good cause i'm staaarving.
No comments:
Post a Comment