Today was a jam packed day full of screaming kids, lugging bags, and some of the best experiences of our lives. After a morning wake-up and slightly jet-lagged breakfast time, we showered and got ready for the bus. Harold, who’s been our guide around Mityana, drove us to a school called Nkonya, a small fishing village’s school. There we were greeted with all 150 kids rushing at the bus doors while we struggle out trying to meet everyone. They were eager to see the “Mzungu” (Luganda for White People) they’ve wanted to play with and they sure did play.
After visiting the classrooms, handing out friendship bracelets, and meeting the teachers along with their students, the kids were let out for their recess. This is when our real fun started. Despite the growing heat and humidity, everyone from teachers to kids to Mrs. Andersen played some of the games that we had brought over from the US.
Some games were just a simple duck-duck-goose or simon-says but other games included a massive game of soccer, where Paul showed his stuff and did his best at playing the majority of students and their teachers. While this was happening; Caitlin was leading an arm-flailing, laugh-inducing follow-the-leader, Mrs. Andersen was double dutching and trying to show off her stuff to the kids that already had a leg up on us, and Matt was being led around by his ever-growing flock of admirers and adoring kids. This whole experience at Nkonya showed us how much happiness we can really bring to kids who couldn’t have had that experience otherwise.
The most gut-wrenching part of leaving Nkonya came on the bus ride home. The teacher asked us if we could give some of the kids a quick ride home, because we were going their way anyway. (The road into and out of the school by the way, is a wild bumpy, overgrown, messy excuse for a road leading to some queasiness from the bus riders.) After the kids boarded the bus we thought about some of our own walks to and from school or the parking lots and then we saw what was going on around us. We drove kids anywhere from half a mile to 3 miles down this winding road. The kids we were driving, having walked this everyday multiple times a day, were usually shoe-less, almost all of them went in large groups into incredibly small mud shacks, and were all much younger than the average 1st grader. Colleen mentioned later, that if a Lake Forest/Lake Bluff child walked anywhere with no shoes, their parents’ role would be questioned; if they made their kids walk the distances that these kids are forced to walk; there would have been a lot of DPFCS calls to LF/LB.
After dropping these kids off we took a drive to Patrick and Eva’s home where we were treated yet again, to a spectacular taste of Uganda. Everything from stew and Matoke, to Spaghetti and Sodas. After thanking them for their immense generosity and hospitality we took a drive to our hotel to pick up a few things for the nursery we had gotten donated to us. On the drive we were exhausted. Some were trying not to dose off while others knocked back water bottle after water bottle, drained from the activities under the sun. But after lugging the medical supplies and toys onto the bus, Harold took our sleepy and drained crew back to the main school we visited yesterday. Seeing the genuine happiness and eagerness to play and talk by the students seemed to wake up the crew and we found there was just enough energy for some foot-races that Nell, Matt, and Dan gladly took home the silver and lower. Reid’s proudest moment of the day was when one of the boarders--having just defeated Reid in a run--turned to him to say “White boy can really run.” After playing with them and reuniting with some past friends (Matt and Moses, Colleen and Stevie) we boarded the bus home, even more exhausted but never as accomplished and proud of what they’d helped do. Today, by making hundreds of kids’ friendships and helping their school and nurseries, and most of all making them, at least temporarily, carefree and happy to be there, we had some of the best and most rewarding moments of our lives.
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