Okay so forgive my delay in being able to post anything. So this is going to be broken up into ports starting off from the last time I told people I was about to go to language immersion. A lot has happened since then so I will attempt not to ramble and hit all the good points… here we go!
Language Immersion (March 21-26)
So my language group consists of myself, Jacque, Stella, Rachel and Liz. We are the only all girl language group out of 9 groups but it worked out well. The only downside to our group is the inability for us to go out after dark because we have no muscle to back us up haha. But it really doesn’t matter we don’t need to be out anyway haha. There aren’t too many volunteers up around our area because they have only been sending people there for about 2 years now but it is a concentrated location for NGO workers. We went to Lira, which is the main city (using this term loosely haha) where they speak our language although there are 5 other districts (which I would qualify to counties) that speak our language as well. Lira is a district itself and Lira town well, is the main town of lira district where we stayed.
So our bus ride to Lira was interesting….. it was supposed to take about 4-5 hours. It took us near eight due to the fact that one of the wheels didn’t want to stay on so we had to stop every 10 minutes to balance it I think…. It was ridiculous but we did finally get there and thankfully before dark. We braved trying the meat on sticks that they sell on the side of the road and none of us contracted mad cow disease so that’s a plus! We stayed in a hotel across from the bus park which was sufficient and nice except for the fact that there was a constant smell of urine eminating from the bathroom and filling the halls.. Judith our language trainer came out of her shell that week and she is by far the funniest person I have met here. I don’t think I could explain some of her random comments in writing because its in the delivery where she gets you rolling. For example though, the girls and I were talking about getting I<3 LIRA shirts made and we wanted a phrase in our language on the back… Judith suggested Nenna pe gudda (translation: look but don’t touch) Where she learned that I don’t know but she has been busting out one liners ever since!
We practiced our language by going to the market, restaurants and even to this old woman’s house and Judith forced us to speak in Lango. It went okay, you just have to get over the fact that people are going to laugh at you, not to be mean but because they can’t believe a foreigner is speaking their language! Most are really supportive and just wanted to help us improve which is nice because we had heard stories about locals wanting money and things like that just for talking to volunteers.
So I will wrap it up with my likes of Lira! Pork joints in lira are REALLY good! The fry pork and put it in a plastic bag with chips(French fries) cabbage, tomatoes, onions and hot sauce and ketchup. Amaro Ringo Punu lol. You can get almost anything you need in Lira which is nice because the less I have to drag from Kampala the better. DIARY… all the “dairy” advertisements are spelled like this. I guess there was one guy in the whole town that did the stenciling and so yeah haha. All the bikes and less motorcyles! Everyone has a bike (or gali in my language) and I feel much safer walking around. I love not hearing mzungu or munu (white person) as much. I barely here either one and it is a relief because it gets really annoying. And lastly the people are really friendly! It really is like another country in the north compared to the rest of the country and what I have gotten used to living with the Buganda people. The climate is different (it is hotter probably gets up to mid 90s… but not always and it is a dry heat) The people are much taller and have darker skin tones. The languages are nilotic (totally different from bantu languages in the south and east like comparing Chinese to English) The landscape is flatter and although it is still pretty up there it is mostly bush! Hopefully posting some pictures underneath will work, but refer to facebook for photos in the future and it takes forever to upload ones on this blog!
At the hotel in Lira Town. From left to right: jacque, stella, rachel, liz, me and judith!
No comments:
Post a Comment