Hello Happy Harvesters!
I hope your Sheep Camps, Labor Day Parties and Grateful
Harvest Celebrations were enjoyable, successful and productive. The schools are
breaking for the holidays again and all the kids and teachers are heading home
to harvest potatoes and celebrate Christmas with their families. “We will have
meat and enjoy, and many family members will be together!” It sounds so similar
to the holidays at home, food and family, the two greatest things, yet, of
course, so very different and two different extremes. While crammed into a bus
with my daypack stuffed and heavy with necessities sitting on my lap, I can’t
help but notice the guy next to me, who isn’t carrying a single thing with him,
not even in his pockets. Of course I need my sunblock, I don’t want to get
burnt. And water, that’s an obvious one, but how does he go without? In the
blazing heat, all day long, one meal in his stomach somewhere around 3 or 4
p.m. When it rains he gets wet and when it rains on me, I pull out my umbrella.
I also have to carry my sunglasses, snacks, the camera and a sweater, when it
rains it gets cold. I have my book and my notebook, when we sit for hours
waiting for God-knows-what, I have my book to read or paper to take notes with,
while everyone else just sits and watches the world go by. My neighbor sits
next to me with a handkerchief in his pocket, if he’s lucky. I am envious of
his empty lap, of his freedom to move. Sometimes I feel like a real schmuk, of
course I loved the few occasions a kid walked with me under my umbrella, or
that I was able to share my snacks with the kid next to me. The problem often
is that I don’t have enough for everyone, so I can’t share with anyone.
Irish potatoes are the big harvest for us right now, so it’s
what we have morning, noon and night! Usually boiled, but sometimes fat-wedged
chips or, we even had them mashed a couple of times! Grasshoppers are also in
season! They are sprawled out drying on tarps all over town, it’s not the taste
of them that I mind, it’s more the smell! They are salty and crispy sautéed in
their own oil and with a dash of salt, they’re pretty decent! There are
elaborate “farms” that set up shop for the month to harvest them. A 55 gallon
drum stands with a huge iron sheet standing up inside of it. Then, they run
lights overhead and the shiny steel attracts them, they land on it, slide in
the drum and are too “drunk” from the bright lights to fly out. These men spend
the whole month, working overnights catching the insects and on a good night
they can fill up to twenty feed sacks! They sell each sack for up to 150,000
shillings, almost $60. It is a lucrative, but temporary business, so lucrative
in fact that someone was recently murdered for his full sack of grasshoppers!
I started working at a Government school a few
weeks ago
when I returned to Kisoro and it is a whole new ballgame; no porridge
served, no
lunch served, dirty uniforms, dirty kids and most of them are barefoot.
It is not allowed to come to school without shoes at Amazing Grace. It
is more than slightly intimidating to walk into a classroom with over
one hundred and forty students in it. They tell me they want me to work
with
“only” about seventy of them during the holiday, to help them
read better. I explain that that is
just too many and that we won’t make an impact on any if we try to work
with so
many. But the teacher insists, she will keep them busy outside, while I
work
with small groups inside. Ah….luckily we have a small library to access
thanks
to all the wonderful packages that have been sent from you, my faithful
friends! Two more boxes have just arrived from my generous and
thoughtful friends in Hope, AK! They will read, read, read aloud to
me...all seventy of them! Often when we finish a page I’ll ask a
question about what we read, like, “how did the dog get wet?” And quite
often
the response will be something like, “Yes”. So…comprehension isn’t quite
what
it should be, but “buhoro-buhoro”= “slowly by slowly”! At Amazing Grace, we are building shelves in
the back of the office to house all the books that we’ve acquired to start our
own library.
Alaska’s coming to
me, perhaps the Universe really does know exactly what I need, and exactly when
I need it! My friend Haley, a co-worker at St. Elias Alpine Guides in McCarthy,
AK arrives in Kisoro tomorrow and she’ll be here for a whole month! She is a
photographer extrodiare’, a rugged and rustling outdoors woman and has the most
cheerful and happy nature! The children are gonna love her! As if that isn’t
exciting enough, two days after that Brita and her mom Karen arrive for one
short night and assumingly one million short stories. I cannot wait to catch up
with these women who are following in
the footsteps of Brita’s Grandmother through Eastern Africa. I wish I had more
of the story to share, but I’ll find out soon! Haley will be volunteering and
adventuring with me. She’ll teach First Aid classes to locals, she happens to
be a pro at it and we’ll also work at the school, planting some trees and maybe
even some real labor building a new toilet, a “brick shithouse” type!
Just as the rest of you are presumably feeling these
days…time is flying by! I am thinking of you all, even you brand new ones who I
haven’t even met yet! I am loving you too, enjoy the holidays and all the love
you are surrounded by. Consider those without and those less fortunate than
you. My sincere wishes for each of you is to feel blessed and to be happy!
Love and Light,
Bonnie B.
“The most effective medicine here on
earth is LOVE unconditional.”
“In about the
same degree that you are helpful, you will be happy.” –Karl Reiland
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