Dancing, Animals, and Laundry

Happy Valentine's day everyone. I was surprised to find out that it's celebrated in Uganda. The colors for Valentine's Day here are red and black, but wearing those colors send a message that I don't fully understand, so I opted out.

I have been really busy this week between class, excursions, and my family's very social life. my classmates and I  were able to visit the cultural institute on Friday and speak with the top three elders of the tribe. It was so interesting to hear their traditions. There are some incredibly meaningful reconciliation ceremonies the Acholi practice that I would love to see. It was a challenge to listen to the traditional gender roles however. I am trying to be open to learning about the new culture, but some norms here (like the distribution of work for one) are hard to adjust to. It is honor though to be so close to such a rich  culture.

After talking to the elders we wre able to watch traditional dances. Beautiful is the best word I can think of to describe these dances but that does not do it justice. There was something incredibly powerful seeing the long tradition of dance being practiced.  Most of the dances are for courtship and the men play drums while the women dance. If one of the guys like the way a girl dances he picks her out of the crowd to get to know her. At that point she can accept his offer of courtship or return to the dance.

My classmates and I tried joining in one of the dances. If I ever need a reminder that I'm not Ugandan I will just try to dance. I have no idea how these girls can move their bodies like this. The munus (white people) were quite entertaining for all the Africans watching. 

On Saturday I was surprised with a day trip to one of the National parks. It is about two hours west of Gulu. I went with my host dad, sisters, and cousin. We drive through the park and were REALLY lucky with everything we saw considering how hot it was. I didn't get awesome pictures, but pictures never capture how incredible sights are anyway. Hopefully I'll get more when we go as a class.

Overall we saw a bunch of antelope, a few deer like creatures that no one could identify, buffalo, five wart hogs, four giraffe, six elephants, and one baby monkey. I would call that a successful trip to the park

Here are a few of my classmates 

This is where I'm spending most of my days. It's the SIT classroom

My latest adventures include trying to wash clothes and eating pork. I was out of laundry yesturday so I asked to learn how to wash clothes. It turned into a bigger production that I thought. I watched how to do it first and thought I had the hang of it, but when I started I obviously did not. An uncle was watching me wash commenting on how slow I was and how I need to learn this job so when I "marry a stubborn Acholi man I can keep him happy." I don't think he had every washed clothes but he tried showing me again. Then Janet, (a cousin) came to show me again. I couldn't tell what I was doing wrong, but they didn't trust the cleanliness of my clothes. After two more clothing items she said she would wash and I could do the second part (which is washing again). After I tried to rinse my clothes and I couldn't do that part either. Eventually we came to hanging the clothes on the line, I was allowed to do that. I acquired quite the audience through this process. Washing your underwear and hanging it in public for the town to see is embarrassing enough, let alone having six children laughing at you while you do it. I will hopefully get better at washing so people don't need to keep doing my laundry for me.

After an eventful evening of washing clothes I tried a new food for the first time in a while. Most of what we eat is rice, greens, maize meal, and some meat served in a lot of broth. Yesterday my host mom prepared pork which I have had here, but before dinner she came out with something for me to try. She didn't tell me what it was until I finished, but turns out it was the tongue of the pig. It really wasn't bad, it tasted like the rest of the pork, however I did not care for the ear. Luckily that's my host mom's favorite part so she finished mine.

Thanks for all of the emails everyone! I am thinking about and praying for all of you