The Weekend

This weekend we got lots of much needed sleep after having a hard time with jet lag. On Saturday we slept in and then played with the kids for a few hours. Lunch was rice and beans, as it had been for the 3 previous lunches as well, and after we ate we got ready for the beach. The children all put on clean clothes and we piled nearly 30 people into our van and Robert dropped us at the beach. We ran around, ate watermelon, and then everyone stripped down to their underwear and went swimming. The lake is absolutely beautiful and the water was incredibly warm.

After swimming for a while, we got dressed and walked to a nearby rugby field. Kato, a friend of the Malayaka House, plays in a rugby league and the children go to watch whenever his games are in Entebbe. After the game ended we drove home, ate dinner, and the children played a little before bed. Once the kids were upstairs and in their pajamas I went up and read them a story. About 18 of them share a room so we put out a blanket in the middle and I sit with them and read a book. For some reason, we haven’t figured out what it is yet, the youngest children don’t go to bed with the others. So Elijah, Amina, Mercy, and Diego were up playing with us a bit longer.

Once all the young children are in bed, the older kids stay up for another 4 or 5 hours playing games, hanging out and making food. So, on Saturday night, I learned how to climb up to Hakim’s tree house that he built a few months ago. It’s extremely high in the air so I was intimidated, but I knew the views from up there would be great so I wanted to practice climbing up. I also spent some time skateboarding and playing basketball with Hakim. He has a basketball rim and net in the garage so we’re going to find a good tree to attach it to sometime this week, and then he wants Evan and I to help him practice. When Hakim found out that I like to rollerblade he made me put on his friend Joseph’s pair that he was borrowing and we rollerbladed through the first story of the main house (because the concrete outside the house isn’t smooth enough to ride on). According to the data at the Malayaka House Hakim is 12 years old, but I think he’s actually 14 or so. Robert said that many of the recorded ages are incorrect because when children come to the house they are often behind in their schooling, so he would record their age as being younger than they truly are. This way they could stay in school longer and hopefully catch up on the education they had been missing. Since Hakim is so much older than all the other boys (the next oldest is 9 or 10), he spends his days hanging out with his friends, sometimes at the Malayaka House and sometimes out around town. I think we’ll have a lot of fun at night with him and the older girls who kind of lay low during the day when the kids are running around.

We also slept in on Sunday and then spent the whole day playing and reading. We had all the young children’s names down by last Friday but there were still a handful of older girls that I didn’t know. They spend much of the day making beads that they later use to make necklaces, bracelets, earrings, key chains, and bags. They make the beads by cutting a long thin triangle out of colorful paper, then you roll the paper up (starting with the wide end of the triangle), and it becomes a bead. I learned how to do it on Sunday and it’s very difficult. The things they make with the beads are incredible and it’s one of the businesses that have developed here at the house. They have their items in a few markets in Uganda and Robert is taking tons to the US when he goes and he’ll be putting it in shops there. Aside from the bead making, there are two women here (Carol and Dora) who spend their days sewing bags, aprons, cushion covers, pot holders, and a few other items. The goal is that one day, hopefully in the near future, the profits from the sale of these items can cover the costs of a few salaries and this can turn into a business for two of the oldest girls here, Namatov and Naiga.

Another business that we have is cheese-making. Jacinta, another one of the oldest girls, has learned how to make mozzarella cheese. A friend of Robert’s, Julio, who has a local Italian restaurant taught her the entire process and now she makes several kilos each week and it is purchased by two or three shops and restaurants nearby. Jacinta also learned how to bake bread and pastries in the brick oven we have here and we’ll soon be combining these skills into a new money-making endeavor. Starting next week we’ll be making pizzas on Tuesday and Thursday nights and inviting guests and friends to come eat at the Malayaka House. For 25,000 shillings, or $11, dinner guests will get a large ‘made-to-order’ pizza with exactly the vegetables and meat you want on it, a small fresh salad, a few small loaves of bread, juice or soda, and a dessert pastry. Jacinta will make the cheese, sauce, dough, and bread, and the goal is that eventually all the vegetables and meat will also come from our own farm. Robert figures that even if we only have four people come each pizza night, that’s 200,000 shillings per week (almost $90), and it would cover a portion of the aunties’ salaries.

I’m sure I’ll be posting frequently about these businesses because right now they are a major focus, both because the job market for the older girls is frightening here in Uganda, and because the Malayaka House needs to find ways to cover the salaries of the people it employs so that Robert can stop paying out of pocket.

The last thing I want to mention is that I went out for dinner Sunday night with Evan, Fran, and two other Spanish guests. They were only here for two nights because they were just delivering donations from Spain. They both work in the cabin crew of an airline and are somehow connected to Dilia, Robert’s partner, in Spain. Because they fly for free, it is cheaper for them to come here and deliver the donations than it would be to ship them. They were nice people and had some interesting stories because their life is centered on travelling. Fran took us to a very nice restaurant, called Faze 3, in the wealthy part of town. They call themselves an Indian restaurant, but they have a very wide menu. I ate ‘English style’ fish & chips, and it was delicious. It was a welcomed break from rice & beans. To get there, we walked the half mile to Entebbe town and then took a ‘boda boda.’ Essentially these are motorcycle taxis and it’s the preferred form of transportation in this part of Africa. It was a little frightening and will take some getting used to, but it’s very cheap and very fast. So that was how we ended our weekend.