Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Dull Knives...

This morning we headed to the school to follow up on the tippy tap hand-washing project. Last time, the other Kasambiika team visited the school and found that all the soap had been stolen. The teachers said the issue was that the soap was scented. That was pretty disappointing, but this time we brought unscented soap so we're hoping that they won't get stolen. Yet, our team is trying to think of a better way to have the students wash their hands. One major problem with soap (besides the stealing) is that it's not a sustainable chain. We don't think the school will be able to maintain a feasible method for obtaining soap for the students to use. We are working on different methods, but we are leaning towards switching from soap to ash. Supposedly, ash is a very good disinfectant and since the school has a kitchen, ash is almost always available. But we are waiting to see how the school manages with the soap batch we gave today before making the switch.

After planning for our HIV sensitization next Tuesday and lunch, some of the kids stopped by. We didn't have the football today, but Kenzie brought out the volleyball. The kids held it out as long as they could, but after awhile, their forearms hurt too much. So we just circled up and tossed each other the ball. After some time, it turned into a giant game of keep away with 2 teams. With all the screaming, more kids arrived. It was definitely fun, but tiring! They have so much energy. I met up with Batale after some time and peeled some more cassava. I had a knife today! Woo! And of course, I cut myself... on a dull knife. They invited me to their rice fields tomorrow. I'm excited to see them. If I'm cutting rice at the same rate it takes me to peel cassava though, I'll be at it all night.

I did have another Kasambiika Surprise today. I learned that Ugandans have a different way to tell time. The clock runs from 7-1. So the first hour of the day is at 7AM and they call that sawa mundala (1st hour). 8AM is then sawa babiri (2nd hour) and so on. Then at 7PM, the clock switches back to sawa mundala (the first hour of the night). It's some crazy schtuff. It took me at least 20 minutes to wrap my head around, but I think I finally got it.