Lake Victoria & Bank Day

We walked to Paga beach on Victoria Lake this morning.  It took us around 45 minutes on a scenic, rustic road.  On our way there, we saw a goat herd, many children who yelled “Mzungu, mzungu, how are you?” and most of them wanted to shake our hands.  We ran into a ton of butterflies on our way there. I have never seen anything like it.  It was beautiful.  I also climbed this big, African tree and posed for a photo.  This mama who spoke English quite well told us when saying good morning to many people, we must add “uru” at the end of “oyaore”.  So we must say “oyaore uru”.  Down at the beach, children were fishing with a wooden stick without success.  Children here don’t have fancy toys like N. American children. They play with straws, tires, fishing, lids that are rolled, garbage bag soccer balls, and drawing on dirt.  They look very blissful playing with these materials which made me feel very greedy, having everything I need in life and still wanting more. 

a tree climber

These ladies taught us what "uru" meant

Fishing in Lake Victoria

toy examples:

Straws

ropes, tires, plastic bottles etc. 

On our way back, this man who very kindly shook our hands started following us.  He was mumbling as well which made it slightly creepy.  He was talking about issues in the world, life, miracle, and god.  We said “oriti” which means good bye but he just kept following us.  When we got to our front door, we asked the guys in front of our house to tell the old man to stop following us.  The old man told the guys that he was escorting us to our house.  Who knows what he was doing. We will never know. We got home around 11:30 am and ate lunch at around 12:00 pm.

It was bank day today which was a big day for the Econ team. They were introducing microcredit to the community members and also the new board of director members to the community.  The event was supposed to start at 2pm but it didn’t start till like 4pm.  Maurice was expecting around 500 people at the bank day because that’s the amount of people that are registered with the bank but approximately 50 showed up.  I think it was because the archbishop who comes once a year was in Kanyawegi.  We saw many people gathered at the church on our way to the bank.  The bank day was held near the Obambo Market and there were many children in that area. Stephanie, from the Nutrition team, had colouring paper ready for the children so we attached them on the wall, and it was definitely a hit.  They occupied themselves by colouring in the main food groups.

 The children here love to get their photo taken. This kid named Leon was yelling out “Picture, picture!”  They also want to see the photo afterwards and they giggle and smile which was adorable to see. 

Dadi, 9 years old

Leon and his friends. Leon is showing off his smile. Bwonjo!

The bank day went well even though I couldn’t understand more than ½ of it.  The community eventually agreed to pay the bank a monthly fee so they can hire a bank officer who can take care of the bank so Maurice can focus on other things as well.  

Bank day certificates

We met several CHWs (Community Health Workers) at Bank Day and we asked them what their plans were for the next couple of weeks. They said that polio vaccination is occurring at the moment in the community for children below the age of 5.  We immediately took the chance and asked them if we could shadow them and they said yes. 

Woot! We have something to do for the next couple of days.