Day 4: Katelyn Fabri

Day 4 With Katelyn

Saturday, May 25 2013.

Today was day 4 in Uganda! I've been waking up early every day so far, to sit on the porch with my cup of tea looking out at the beautiful mountain scenery that surrounds the entire house. I woke up early again today and Lena woke up early as well. We decided to go on a morning run down to one of the neighboring villages. All the villagers were awake and ready to greet us as we ran by them. Each and every individual was smiling and excited to say “Mlembe!” to us. Once we returned from our morning jog, it was time to get ready for the girls self esteem workshop. We began our walk to Arlington School of Hope. It was in a different direction than the Bulobi School with a steeper hill than we were use to. We get to the school and all the girls are sitting at their desks waiting for the exciting day ahead. We split up into 6 different small groups to discuss with the girls in a more comfortable setting. The first topic we discussed was puberty and pregnancy. After this, we gathered in our large group again to go over what we talked about and then we handed out the menstruation pads to all the girls that the volunteers made out of towels and fabrics. The girls loved it so much that we let them trace the outlines out to take home to make their own! 

After this it was time for snack and we had this snack called Mundazzi. It tasted like fried dough it was soooo amazing! Then there was a huge interruption because we found a chameleon in the tree!  After snack time we went back inside and made friendship bracelets with the girls. They loved this activity and we gave them extra string to take home with them. Once the bracelets were finished it was time for lunch. We ate matoke, rice, beans and cabbage. Our next activity was to get back into our small groups and discuss self confidence, appropriate attire and bullying. I feel like the girls were really able to connect when discussing these topics which helped the flow of conversation. Our final topic we did with all the groups. We talked about what S.M.A.R.T. goals were and had every girl make a smart goal for themselves with something motivating them to complete school and pursue whatever they wanted to be in life.

Since it was a girl’s workshop, only the girls in our group ran it.  The boys, Ricky and Tier, got to sleep in.  They left at 12:30 to bring us snacks, but got lost and ended up walking 45 minutes in the wrong direction.  When it started raining out, a man named James invited them into his house to stay dry. They spent about 2 hours talking to this man about all sorts of things; from the pros and cons of industrialization to how unemployment is treated in America.  He told them the right route to the school and they made it right at the workshop was ending. Boys will be boys!