A Day in the Life - Jinja, Uganda

    The sun is shining brightly through the little window in my room. I hear babies crying, and children talking, and birds in the trees. It’s 6:30am. I roll over and try to tune out the sounds and catch a little more sleep. The children get up at this time, and the mamas feed them breakfast. I get up around 7:30 and make some breakfast with the eggs and fruit that is provided for us. I then go down stairs and say good morning to all the mamas. It’s shift change, and the mamas are telling each other about the night shift, if any of the children are sick, etc. Most of the mamas greet us aunties with a big hug. After stepping inside the nursery (kids newborn to age 2),  I am nearly pushed over by 10 little kiddos all running or scooting their way to me saying “Auntie, Auntie!” Everyone wants a hug. After giving them each a hug or high five, we see if there is anything the mamas need us to do. Once the shift change is made, the children are told to get their shoes (crocs) on. There may be some tears as someone always likes to take the wrong crocs on purpose, leaving a child without their crocs and extremely mad and sad. These children do not have things of their own except their clothes and their crocs which they are extremely possessive of. This usually happens at least once a day by some lil troublemaker who thinks its hilarious. Imagine a 2 year old going on 14  that wants to rebel at anything they are suppose to do. Once everyone has their shoes on, we head to the playroom for an hour. Everyone takes off their shoes outside the door. The children are suppose to sit on the floor, while we get out legos, toy animals, or play food for them to play with. Also the little potty chairs come with everywhere we go. We are currently training 10 of them from age 6 months to 2 1/2. Not gonna lie that is not the easiest thing to do. After playing from till 9am, it is field time. Back outside, everyone gets their crocs on by themselves mostly. We are not suppose to give any extra help and the children are suppose to be as independent as possible. We try to respect the Ugandan culture and child training as much as possible. Us muzungus (white people) are way too easy on the children compared to their way of teaching. And it is best if they are trained according to their own culture as most of these children will go back to family members once they have enough money to take care of them. While it may not be a parent,  some have grandmothers or aunts that would like to take care of them but do not have the time, space, or money to take care of them when they are young. The only way for a child to be up for adoption from this orphanage is to have no family found. Typically these are children who were abandoned and no history is able to be found about them. This is because of the possibility of the adoption being reversed when family comes forward. This of courses causes a lot of heartache. Back to field time, we swing, play on the slide, roll tires, walk around and find sticks to play what they call “uncle machine.” The men who work here are called uncles as a form of respect. They are the ones who use weed eaters to mow the grass. Therefore the children love to get a stick, and make the sounds of the weed eater starting which is very realistic. Then they will make their best impression of a weed eater running and spend a long time “weed eating” the yard. Other times you will find them tearing up leaves and flowers to make food, the serving it and saying the prayer we always say before meal times together. The littles sit in the sand and they love to eat it. I do not know why they think it tastes so good but it can be a full time job taking sand and rocks out of little mouths. At 10am it is porridge time. The nursery children drink a cup full of porridge and then get a half a butter and bread sandwich. At 11am it is preschool time. Anyone who is three and behaves well enough goes to preschool. There they learn their letters, colors, and numbers till noon. None of my nursery kiddos go, so I stay behind to take care of them with their mamas. We continue to play outside till 11:50. That is when my littles who are about 3 weeks to 3 years  go inside for their lunch. 

    We go inside and wash their hands at the little sinks that are their size. We sit down in a row and say our prayer repeating after auntie or a momma. Hands apart (hands apart) Hands together (hands together) Eyes closed (eyes closed) Father God (Father God) Thank you (thank you) For this day (for this day) Bless us (bless us) Bless our food (Bless our food) We are going to eat (We are going to eat) In Jesus Name ( In Jesus Name) We pray (We pray) Amen (Amen!) Pa Pa Pa   Pa Pa Pa    Pa Pa! They clap their hands on the Pa Pas together which means we are finished! Everyone eats with their hands. It’s messy for sure. Once the children are done eating, they get washed down and go to sleep in their beds till 3pm. In the meantime that is my break. We eat lunch then. Often it is rice or posho which is a cooked corn meal and beans. Sundays and Mondays we get meat with it. At least once a week we get lentil sauce or peanut sauce with our rice or posho.  We sometimes eat downstairs with the mamas. Sometimes it has been an exhausting morning and we take a nap. Or else we run into town on a boda to grab a coffee its just one of those days. We just got a 3 week old baby so there are always opportunities to hold or feed the baby. 

  After nap time we get the groggy kiddos up and dress them as they all sleep in their diapers. We head outside and roll out the grass mats. It’s snack time. Sometimes they get a banana, sugarcane, orange, or peanuts, or crackers. We then play the rest of the afternoon till 5:30. We have different activities throughout the week for the afternoon. Sometimes we do exercises, singing and dancing, games, and going for a walk outside the compound. And that my friends is chaotic. We take the oldest 2/3rds of the kids and they hold onto a rope with loops on it. So we walk for an hour to hour and a half, stopping several times for them to use the bathroom in the ditch to be real and honest with you. They are all so busy looking at everything on the walk, they are constantly tripping in the big potholes and uneven road. If one goes over, another will trip too and can cause a domino effect. Then during our stops along the way, the children run around and play. And we try to keep them from running out in front of vehicles or motorcycles, chewing on dirty plastic they find, or putting literally anything they find in their mouths, or just wondering off. That is my least favorite activity. My best days are Tuesdays and Thursday’s. Each of us volunteers get an older child and we go into town with them on a boda. We all stay together and go to a place with a playground, take them to the grocery store, or a restaurant to get ice cream or treats. They are often completely quiet, just taking it all in. And often on their best behavior. They thrive on the one on one attention that they rarely get. A 4 year old lil boy that I took with me the first Tuesday I was here always mentions it every time I am with him since then. His brown eyes were glowing that day when we got back, as he told one of the mommas We got ice cream!!! He has been here one month and his English is impressive for him knowing no English when he got here. He was forced to learn it quickly as he had came from a remote tribe and only one of the mamas here even knew his dialect. Him and his little brother are the cutest and so close to each other. 

   At 5:30 we take the kiddos inside and feed them leftovers from lunch. They eat and then its shower time. This is when the kids have the most energy and their true personalities come out. With one person showering kiddos, one drying, and one putting on pajamas we have it fairly streamlined. But then how do you keep the kiddos out of trouble while you mop the floor and do all that at the same time?! It’s hectic. We try to keep the kids on a mat or else in booster seats on the table. But they are two and try to escape or jump on the table or whack another in the head for fun. So once we have most of them pajamaed then we sing with them or play with them. They love to sing and they are so stinkin cute singing their hearts out at two years old. 

  At 6:30 the night shift mamas come on shift. That’s when we head out. We head upstairs and hang out, call our families, or grab Rolex (a fried thick tortilla with an egg omelet with peppers onions and tomatoes) for a 50 cent supper. We sometimes cook too. It’s been a little difficult cooking because in this town we have a hard time finding good meat, cheese, and dairy. What we do find is either not good or very expensive. Anything American is at least 3 times the cost of what it is in the US. If we went to a bigger city we might be able to find it but we really do not have a way to get there because it is too far to go on a boda which is our basically or only mode of transportation. Eggs and vegetables and fruit  are easy to find and cheap so we end up eating that a lot. We stay in after dark which is around 7:15 as it is not the safest to be out after then if you are taking a motorcycle back to the orphanage. And that ends our day… We go to bed and hope the 3 rats that live in our apartment will not get into anything during the night… And that ends another day in Africa.