Victories in Drama

I’ve been writing over the last few posts about some of the “victories” I’ve had over the last few days (although the victories are always God’s, aren’t they? For from him and through him and to him are all things. Romans 11:36). Well one thing that has been coming along really well over the last couple of weeks is the work I’ve been doing with the older youth in drama. 

About 2 weeks ago, I finally started a project with them that I’ve been wanting to start for some time. I’ve been wanting to lead them in writing their own play, then performing it. I wanted them to pull from their own experiences or from other general experiences of DP kids—life on the streets, in the slums, etc. This way they would have real ownership of the play and would be able to voice some of their own stories. 

This project has been on the back burner for a long time for many different reasons. Honestly I very strongly doubted my own ability to lead such a project, and I also doubted the youth’s interest and ability. I don’t have any experience in writing scripts, much less in leading a group to write one together! And when I started it, would they slouch in their chairs and stare at me over the top of their eyes, refusing to participate like teenagers are just so good at doing? 

I’ve also been working with a local volunteer, and between cultural and language barriers, I had a hard time getting him in agreement and understanding over what I wanted to do. He was bringing in lots of other scripts for them to do, which I didn’t necessarily have anything against, especially because it’s always best to be working alongside a Ugandan person, so that way when I leave things don’t just fall apart. But eventually I had to sit down with him and say, “Look I’m leaving in a few months, and I want to do this project. We have to do it now because time is running out.” So we agreed to start it. 

Then... 

the students went on holiday. Back on the back burner for another month. 

Well now they’re back, and I knew I had to jump in with both feet the first day they were back, or it would never happen. Still unsure how exactly to drive this boat, I faked confidence and started with having the group brainstorm themes that could appear in the play, such as child neglect, alcoholism, drought or floods that lead to poverty, etc. Then we brainstormed possible settings, then took a majority vote, finally deciding on Katwe, Kampala’s biggest and worst slum. We also came up with some characters and traits, such as an alcoholic dad. It’s going to be a cheery play, can’t you tell? 

They had wasted half of our time the first day by being late (surprise surprise) so that’s all we had time for. I was a little thankful actually, because I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next! So the next time we met, we first dealt with a few questions like what we want to communicate to the audience, what we want them to think and feel so we could have a little focus. Then we started working on a plot outline. I had doubted their interest, but they were fairly participatory. A few just slouched in their chairs and didn’t input anything, but there were enough coming up with good ideas to create a general outline for the plot. By the end of the hour, we had a plot! I was kind of surprised how easily it had come together. I don’t know if it will be a quality production by the time it’s put together, but hey it’s something! 

Ok so Africans do theatre very differently than Americans. I guess that’s a no-brainer; it’s a different culture, why wouldn’t a cultural custom be done differently? It took me awhile to realize some of their methods because the plays they were doing were in Luganda, but I soon realized that the “scripts” the local volunteer (Kasozi is his name) was bringing in were not scripts as we know them in the West with specific lines for each character to memorize and follow directly. What he was bringing in was like one page for the whole play, with key action points jotted down. 

Kasozi would pick a few people, tell them, “You’re this character, you’re that character, this is what needs to happen in this scene.” Then they would just go at it and I swear you could think they had been rehearsing for months. They’re just naturals. Africa has always been a story-telling culture, so it’s ingrained in them somewhere to be able to just tell stories like this. 

If they weren’t doing something how Kasozi thought it should be done, he would step into the scene and show them how to act it, then have them do what he did. This felt like nails on a chalkboard to me at first. From all my training in drama, one of this biggest things you’re taught is to never ever ever show someone how to act and just tell them to mimic you. Directors (good ones anyway) are supposed to find the right words to get you to find the action from within and blah blah blah. Ok so I had to just let go of this. I’m not here to change the way an entire culture does theatre. You’ve got to look at the big picture in times like these. Is it working for them? Yes. So just go with it. 

So this has all worked out to be tremendously helpful in the task of writing a play together. We came up with maybe 10 or 12 key points in the play, then the next time we met, it was enough to get on our feet and start putting it together. There’s no need to get tangled in actually writing a word for word script. That could get really tricky and tedious working as a group anyway. As long as each person knows what’s to be accomplished in any given scene and is capable of getting it there, we’ve got ourselves a play. 

They perform better in Luganda, and while we may have to eventually perform it in English, for now they’re putting it together in Luganda. So Kasozi has mostly taken over with directing it as they improvise through each scene, which is great because I finally feel like we’re working together on this rather than our conversations from a few months ago where he didn’t seem to understand at all what I had in mind. 

I’m watching the play sort of magically appear before my eyes, and it’s truly inspiring. 

Victories in Surprise Teaching

This last week was a week full of highs, although all I can do is be aware that it was a high and that we can’t just ride on those, thinking they’ll never be accompanied by lows. You can experience those kinds of things if you’re here for just a few weeks. You can run on adrenaline for that short of a mission trip and ride on all the highs, but for my 8-month assignment, I need more stamina than that. 

Still, it was a pretty sweet week. My week started off Monday morning with a miscommunication. What morning doesn’t start that way? No surprises with that anymore. I was told that there was a meeting with the education team, and what I thought the woman had told me was that she wanted me to be there. No, what she thought she had communicated was that she would be in a meeting and wanted me to teach her class for her. 

Again, a surprise teaching assignment. Again, nothing new. So I trotted down to the class and did what Uganda has been teaching me the hard way: wing it. And the beautiful thing? It was easy and comfortable. 

I remember last term, I had asked the teacher to come and observe that class, to see how school is done in Uganda, before I started teaching. I showed up to observe, and the teacher didn’t show up, so I ended up teaching. I remember that day, being so frustrated that the other teacher didn’t come, and floundering around in the book for something to teach them. 

This time, I had already been teaching that class for a term, so I know their level, their personalities, etc. So it wasn’t difficult to pull a few teaching activities out of my hat and just go with the flow. 

The rest of the week involved all sorts of things like that. In teaching both that class and another class, I felt like I knew what I was doing. Even if I hadn’t prepared a lesson in advance, I felt confident in the way I was presenting it, and the students understood it well. Time with the youth in drama was going well and I was stepping up in leadership, where I had previously just kind of observed. I finally started a project with them of leading them to write their own play, which had been on the back burner for months. Time spent with the kids was fun and meaningful, whether I was at the children’s home for fun, fellowship, or to work on the puppet show. The puppet show is coming along nicely, and the kids are having a lot of fun, arguing over taking turns to hold the puppets. 

Well I’ll finish this post for now, from a combination of my brain being fried, and knowing that if I go on it will be another forever-long post. Omutwe gakooye! (My brain is tired!) So I’ll save more for another post later. 

A few prayer requests: 

I’m heading to Tanzania for a couple of weeks! Praise God for the chance to go-- I’ll be spending a week at a conference, then enjoying a few days in the unbelievably gorgeous island of Zanzibar!! Pray for safe travel, that the conference will be fruitful in the work I’m doing here, and that the vacation will bring me back here with a renewed spring in my step to finish my last few months here. 

Continue to pray for the investment I’m making in these kids spiritually. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in “What are you doing? Are you actually accomplishing anything?” that we lose sight of why we’re here. Pray for focus and relationships that draw others closer to Christ. 

Even though I just said it’s not about the things I’m out to accomplish, I am nevertheless in the middle of a few projects-- the puppet show with the younger kids, the play with the older youth, teaching English, and working in the office to prepare the older youth to live self-sustainably. Pray that those things continue to go well!

Victories in the Small

Everyone learns to walk and eat and talk, but you never think anything of it. Then suddenly you arrive in a foreign culture and you have to re-learn everything. You're suddenly told that the way you dress, eat, drink, talk, walk, sit, etc is wrong. Of course those ways aren’t wrong, they’re just different. But the culture you’re in perceives things to be a different way than the one you’re used to, so if they say it’s rude to wear shorts or eat standing up, even if those things are completely normal in America, you just have to adapt. 

A Week in the Life: Recap

Well there you have it. There’s an average week for me. I don’t always have a hot shower and things aren’t always easy or comfortable. I’m not always on an exciting adventure that is filled with sunshine and laughter. It involves laundry, grocery shopping, washing the dishes, and tedious office work like anywhere else. A lot of conveniences from home are found here such as a washing machine and restaurants just like you’d find in America. You can get M&M’s or Snickers or Pringles, or take your computer to the Mac store if you’re having a problem. Shoot, I celebrated my birthday with burgers and fries! I still get some funny questions or comments with people seeming to think I’m in a mud hut somewhere in the bush. But Kampala is a very modern city, and while it has its... charming characteristics that make it almost a different world from the US, my daily life isn’t too different. (Although they’ve never even heard of Starbucks or McDonalds here, which makes me very happy!) 

Sometimes, yes, my days are filled with crazy things that spring up like one of our youth who had a baby on a boda, or a mouse hunt in the apartment. Sometimes a trip to the grocery store means being stuck inside for 3 hours to wait out the rain while your ice cream melts (true story-- happened a couple of weeks ago. And even on the boda ride home, the rain started again and we had to seek shelter for another half hour). Somedays hours of my time are wasted going on trips into town that end up not being fruitful for reasons like the power is out at the store and they can’t mix paint for me. I’m frequently on carb and banana overload, and miscommunications due to the language barrier or cultural differences or both are to be expected every day. Even when I make a special effort to be late to events, I still find myself waiting hours for them to start, and my days frequently end very early because power outages tell my body it’s been dark for hours and it’s time for bed at 9:30 pm. 

But my days are always filled with joy, whether it’s from hanging around with our youth and teaching them about the Bible, or walking into the children’s home and being tackled by 20 kids. Or by attending fellowship time and hearing them sing praise songs and watching the little ones fall asleep on the benches when we pray. Or by singing sweet songs to them and watching their faces as I catch their attention by throwing their names in to make them songs like “Jesus loves the little Lucy’s, all the Lucy’s of the world.” Or something as simple as bouncing them on my knee or tossing them in the air and hearing the unadulterated laughter of a child that is unequaled by any other sound in creation. Sometimes it’s a boda guy I use regularly who actually looks out for me and gives me his coat when I find myself caught in the cold rain completely unprepared. Or a personal testimony of God’s goodness shared in staff devotions. 

Some days are filled with hours crammed on public transportation. Some are filled with taking kids to their homes and encountering their alcoholic parents and completely uninhabitable filth in the house, and seeing why a child would choose to actually run away from home and live on the streets instead. Sometimes anger at parents who choose to spend money on alcohol when there isn’t even food for their children is all that can fill my heart for the day. But anger and sadness don’t get anyone anywhere, so all you can do is focus on the positive work that is taking place through Dwelling Places. “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

I’m learning so much and growing so much, but I’m also a slow processor and couldn’t actually begin to put into words all God is teaching me right now. Ask me in about a year what God taught me in Uganda and I might be able to tell you. For now I’m enjoying the ride, and enjoying seeing different projects I’ve started really starting to bloom now, and seeing relationships continuing to grow, and seeing God really moving here.

A Week in the Life: Sunday

Sunday

As part of my breakfast, I had some fresh fruit. How do you safely eat fresh fruit in Uganda? Well the method used by most people I know is to add a little bleach to a bowl of water, add the fruits or vegetables, and then rinse it with filtered water. I’m not the biggest fan of using bleach with something I’m going to eat, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

The church I go to is pretty Western, and actually starts on time (gasp). Well, really they have 3 services and they all just run back to back, so I guess in that way it keeps them on schedule. If you come late and miss worship, hey just stick around for the next service! My church has a lot of similarities to a church in the US. The music is Western, the preaching style usually has 3 points that start with the same letter, and they’ve got things like a snazzy announcement video each week. We do meet under a tent though, since they’re still raising money for a building. And the fervor of worship (and the occasional song in Luganda which makes them really get going) and the slightly pentecostal nature of the prayer segment of the service always bring me back to the distinctly African nature of the church. 

But the teaching is usually Biblically sound, which is what’s important, and I like the church for a lot of different reasons. This week though, we had a guest speaker, and honestly I didn’t really care for the message. I wasn’t necessarily against anything he had to say, but I opened my Bible for just a few seconds of the sermon, which is a big problem for me. I think the Bible should be priority in any sermon, and the message should flow from the Bible. When you start letting it be about your personal opinions and quote Scripture when it’s convenient for the point you want to make, you head into dangerous waters quickly. But anyway.

After church, Cassandra and I went for lunch at a very Western restaurant, which is a nice break from matoke and rice. On the way home it started to rain a little bit, but since I’ve now been caught in the pouring rain a few different times on a boda, a little sprinkle doesn’t phase me. 

The afternoon was spent doing laundry-- I know, again, not interesting blogging material. But I wanted to just mention that we’re blessed enough to have a washing machine in the building! I did hand-washing the first few months I was here, which I didn’t really mind, but recently one of the other long-term missionaries in the building got a machine that they let the rest of us use. And hearing that  beep as it turns on and says “let me do the work for you” is such a beautiful thing! But then again, you have to have both water and power turned on in order to use it, and that’s always a challenge! 

For the rest of the afternoon, I moved into another room in our apartment because it’s bigger than the one I had been staying in. I’ve now lived in all 3 rooms in the apartment! 

A Week in the Life: Saturday

Saturday 

Today I went to an event for the women at church. It was a cooking class, and I thought it would be fun to learn a few new recipes and get plugged in with the women in my church. It’s kind of funny, the other missionaries who were going and I had to really analyze what time to arrive. The natural tendency in all of us was that we didn’t want to be late, but we also didn’t want to be the first ones there, waiting for hours for the others to arrive. The church is pretty Western and the services always start on time, so we weren't sure how this event was going to go. It's kind of sad though, we had to make an actual effort to be late, and still we were some of the first ones there and probably waited at least half an hour for it to start!

But at an event where you can chat and get to know people while you’re waiting, you hardly notice it. I was pretty impressed with how well organized the event was. We learned quite a few good dishes, although it was about 5 hrs long and by the end I was waning. 

Since we finally had power again and I could restock the fridge, we went up the hill for some grocery shopping, then my roommate Cassandra and I split ways. She is here long-term, so is really settling into the place. She came home a little while later with a bed for our extra room as well as a TV! The extra room is bigger, so I’m planning on moving in there. I went into town to get paint for that room, only to find that the power was out at the store. They were running on a generator, but it wasn’t strong enough to support the paint mixer. Gotta love problems like this that come up. 

To make it not feel like I wasted a trip into town, I did find a few things we’d been looking all over for, and also treated myself to some lychees! I’ve only seen them at one place in Kampala, and they were a little pricey, but that was my treat for a wasted trip into town!

When I got home, Cassandra had brought home a kitten! Her name is Mallie, and she’s super cuddly, curious, and playful. So we got a kitten, a bed, and a TV today-- exciting day. 

A Week in the Life: Friday

Friday

Fridays are my day off because I frequently work on Saturdays. Plus when I arrived, they offered and practically insisted that I take a day off in the middle of the week, so why argue with taking Fridays off? 

Well I woke up to find that the sticky mouse traps we had laid out the night before hadn’t worked, and he somehow got around them and had gotten into even more food. So we upped our tactics with some insane sticky glue we found hidden in a cabinet, and baited all the traps with peanut butter. 

The power also was still off. It normally comes back on in the night, so I can charge things again. But my laptop was completely drained, and it still didn’t come back on all morning, so I later took it into town to charge it at a restaurant. 

The morning was spent around the house, then I went in town to a craft market. This one is the best and cheapest in town, so I got a few souvenirs for friends and family (and of course me!) :)

I had a few more errands to run in town, which is usually pretty stressful, navigating through the congested, chaotic town center. Battling off boda boda guys saying, “yes Mzungu, we go?” and the streets overcrowded with foot traffic as well as taxis, cars, and bodas coming out of nowhere, always leaves me on edge. 

I then met a friend, Rachel, another short-term missionary, and we went to this great second-hand clothing shop in town. I got a few things that will be good to wear to work, then we went to a Thai restaurant in a really nice hotel. The hotel was so nice, it was a little strange stepping inside to that distinctive smell of a hotel pool, high arched ceilings, large glass windows, and a piano playing, after the grit and chaos of town. But it was so nice to retreat there and almost feel like we were on vacation for an evening. 

After dinner, we went grocery shopping at a very Western shopping center. (I know, terribly boring blogging material, but remember-- some days are not about this crazy adventure I’m supposedly on, but it turns out I’m just living life). I hate the boda boda guys who work outside that shopping center. They’re really aggressive and charge ridiculous prices because they know they get business from a lot of bazungu. We might have taken one of those guys, but since it was dark it’s usually safer to call someone you know, so we called a good driver that we know. When we came, we first passed through all the boda guys practically running us over with their bodas to get our business. They saw us telling them no, then talking to this other guy, Robert, the one we had called. 

We were standing there negotiating the price with him, when all of a sudden, one of the other guys came over, pulled his key out of his boda, and walked away ranting and raving about something. Rachel and I were a little concerned and didn’t know what was going on. Robert told us that they thought he was stealing their customers. There are concentrated areas called stages where bodas work from, and since Robert didn’t belong to this stage and these other guys did, they thought he was encroaching on their territory and stealing their beloved bazungu customers who didn’t even want to use them anyway because they’re aggressive and rude. 

So to show them that we knew him and had called him to come for us, he called Rachel’s phone. She showed them that her phone was ringing, and they gave him his key back, but yelled at him to never come back to their boda stage again. And now they just lost 2 customers for good because I know I’m now going to do everything I can to never use those guys again. 

When I got home, the power had just come back on. It was a little frustrating since I’d been carrying my laptop around all day so I could charge it in town, and it was heavy by the end of the day. But still, power is better than no power. 

Well, good news and bad news. We finally caught the mouse. He finally went for one of our traps, but despite our efforts to not kill it by only using sticky traps, it turns out the glue was pretty powerful, and he fell on his side struggling to get off it. We could tell that there was no way he was getting off the trap without ripping off his fur, so we had to let the poor thing out of its misery. We weren’t happy to have to get rid of it that way, but after several days of throwing away food he got into, and cleaning mouse feces out of the cabinets, we were glad to finally have gotten rid of it. 

A Week in the Life: Thursday

Thursday 

I started work this morning in the office, but didn’t do office work. I had a few finishing touches to put on the puppets I’d been working on for the puppet show with the kids, so the office was covered with Bible characters, Noah’s ark animals, a huge rainbow, etc. 

After devotions and tea, Denis set me to work on some lists of the youth we’re responsible for. They fall under different categories too-- some are in the apprenticeship program full time, others are in independent living (meaning we pay their rent and upkeep), some are in a remedial education program, etc. As I started compiling these lists, I saw how important it was because I found many lists in many different places on the computer, and none of them were consistent. So it was important to figure out who belongs where and to delete the inaccurate files. 

Sound a little tedious and boring? Well it kind of was. But it was important. Maybe it’s not the most interesting blogging material, but I feel sometimes like people expect me to be on some wild and crazy African adventure, but the truth is I still go to the grocery store, I still do laundry, I go to work on normal working hours, and sometimes there are fairly mundane tasks that just have to be done. Yes, sometimes there are adventures like wading through knee-high floods to get home and chasing mice through the apartment, but really it’s just life. Mine just happens to be in Uganda at the moment. 

Anyway, for lunch we had rice, noodles, chicken, and a banana. All the essentials of the Ugandan food groups-- 2 heavy carbs and don’t forget the banana! Haha it was actually pretty good. The sauce the chicken was in was nice. 

After lunch I headed to the children’s home to do more work on the puppet show. Again, one of the other local volunteers helped me out, and it made a huge difference. The kids are really into the idea of the show and were going nuts wanting turns with the puppets. And so far the puppets haven’t been destroyed by eager little hands, so all’s well! 

I’ve had some unbelievably sweet moments with the kids at the home lately. I have a ring with the word “love” on it, and as the kids are learning their alphabet, they love identifying the letters on it. I’ve told them what it means, and once when we were talking about it, I was holding baby Silas (though he’s not much of a baby anymore-- he’s about a year and a half now) and he started mimicking the sounds I was saying. So since then I’ve really been trying to get him to say it. He’ll mimic the sounds when I say “love” or “I love you” but he’s not quite there yet. If he gets to saying it, I don’t know if I can claim it as a first word because I think I’ve heard him say “one two” and “bye” but it’s still up there with the first, and it’s too unbelievably sweet, I can hardly handle it. 

Well, sweet moments took a backseat as I got home and discovered that our mousey friend was still in the house, and had found a way into the food cabinet. He got into my Reeses stash, so this meant war!! Trying to resist Dr. Seuss rhymes of “a mouse in my house,” I spent the afternoon taking everything out of the cabinets, throwing away things he’d gotten into, and wiping mouse poop out of the cabinet. Aren’t you so jealous of my wild and crazy African adventure now? 

The power that had so miraculously come on the night before turned out to be a tease, because it went off again just as I got home and didn’t come back on all night. I’ve started watching the Lost series, which I realized is a terrible idea in a country where power is frequently out and I don’t have computer battery to watch the next addicting episode!