The tale of an insane cat, an orange spray bottle, and a giant cockroach

Kitty when we first got her - she was tiny!

 When we first moved to Uganda, we got a kitten for Natalie to help ease the transition into a new place.  The cat’s name has evolved with time because Natalie keeps changing her name.  At first, she was “Skittles Sweat Pea Muigai” which changed to “Daisy” and is now “Whiskers.”  So we all usually just call her “kitty.” 

As she grew older, we came to discover that she is certifiably insane.  Seriously.  I realize most kittens are very playful but kitty’s behavior was extreme. 

Walking through our sitting room became a highly dangerous endeavor because kitty would leap out of nowhere and attack legs - trying to get her off or running away was futile, she would just keep jumping on us until we closed her in one of the bedrooms for a while to calm down.  She would pounce on my arms again and again every morning when I was trying to change Nathan’s diaper (and changing a squirmy baby’s diaper is hard enough without a crazy cat attacking me!)  Several times when I was sitting nursing Nathan she would sneak up behind me and pounce onto my head.  And if anyone made the mistake of scratching a mosquito bite in her presence, she would attack their hands! We had many unsuspecting guests surprised by a kitty attack.

It got to the point where her nails and teeth were really hurting and we were seriously considering giving her away.  Then my parents came to visit in Dec and gave us the idea for a secret weapon:

Our orange spray bottle.  This thing has worked miracles with kitty.  Whenever she attacks, we just spray her with water and she runs away.  It only took a day or two until just the sight of the bright orange spray bottle would prevent her attacks.  She has now become a very sweet cat (still very playful, but no longer crazy), and will actually sit purring in our laps at times, which she never used to do.  I would highly recommend the spray bottle trick – but only for cats, not for babies.  I actually knew a mother who used to spray her 6 month old baby with water to teach her no.  I think that is a terrible idea.  But for cats it works well.

Natalie is pretending to be a cat and sitting like Kitty

Kitty is also quite a good hunter.  She has caught mice, lizards, giant cockroaches, and even a small frog.  She mostly likes to play with them – she will catch them in her mouth, let them run away, pounce on them again, and this cycle repeats over and over again.  In case you didn’t know, lizards can voluntarily detach their tails when they are being chased and the tail keeps wiggling.  We had a wiggling lizard tail on our sitting room carpet the other day.  It was a good science lesson for Natalie.

Yesterday when my sister Kelly was here kitty had caught a giant coackroach in her mouth and was chasing it.  So Kelly decided to take a video and here is what happened:  (the funny sounding scream on the video is Kelly!)     

Visitors, Visitors, Visitors...

       We are having a great time with Auntie Kelly, my sister who arrived in Uganda from Switzerland on Sunday.  She was supposed to arrive late Saturday night but her flight was delayed for 5 hours in Brussels - the upside of that delay was that she got to tour Brussels and brought us some delicious Belgian chocolate!  Lucky for me, Muigai doesn't like chocolate much (I don't understand that) so that means more for me.  Natalie and Nathan have been having a blast playing with their fun auntie, and I've been having a great time catching up with lots of long conversations and tea!

     Hosting visitors is a big part of our life in Kampala - between personal friends/family and work-related visitors, we have hosted a total of 25 overnight visitors in our house since we arrived 7 months ago!  Having household help to assist with the stressful parts of having visitors (cooking, cleaning, etc) has enabled us to focus on the fun part of hosting people, and we've enjoyed the opportunity to connect with old friends and get to know new friends.

  In other news, Natalie is learning how to write letters and numbers in school and is always practicing at home.  She wrote this note the other day:   

 We love and miss Nana so much, as well as other family and friends back home!

A few random updates...

In case you’ve detected a pattern, I’m trying to update my blog every Tue and Fri….I have a busy day at work today because we had a meeting at the Canadian Consulate and I have a major report due next week that I’m trying to finish before my sister comes….so for today I’ll just post a few random updates….

The most exciting thing is that my sister Kelly is coming to visit!!!  She moved to Switzerland just six weeks after we moved to Uganda to work at an international school in Zug.  Natalie is SO excited to see Auntie Kelly, and Nathan would be too if he could remember Kelly :)  She arrives late Sat night and will be staying for a week. 

Last week we finally started taking Luganda classes.  MCC usually has their workers take intensive language classes at the beginning of their assignments, but there is no overarching language in Uganda that is widely spoken, and English is the language of education and business.  Our partners are from many different ethnic groups so we would need to learn about 7 or 8 different languages to cover all the groups we work with! (But they all know English in addition to their mother tongues so all our work and communication is done in English)  The common language in the central part of Uganda where we are living in Luganda, so we’d like to learn that.  I’m a little disappointed I can’t use Swahili here since I invested so much time and effort in learning it, but it’s encouraging that Luganda is in the same language group (Bantu) so there are a LOT of similarities – the structure is very similar and I’m finding that there are a lot of Luganda words that resemble their Swahili words. 

Our MCC Uganda team is growing!  One part of our job is to lead and supervise the MCC Uganda team.  When we arrived, there were three Ugandan program staff and one international service worker.  A month after we arrived, we welcomed two more international service workers, and earlier this week we welcomed our fourth service worker.  We also have three one year service positions available beginning in Aug, and one of them has been filled by a Cambodian woman, another by a Colombian man, and the third is still open.  More about all these workers in a future post….

And just for fun, here are two recent pics of the kids:

Natalie playing the guitar and making up songs to sing to her baby, just like Muigai does with her and Nathan!

I love Nathan's hair!  But a lot of people here think he's a girl....Ugandans generally don't dress their kids in only "boy and girl" colors like we do, so even if he's dressed head to toe in "boy" colors people still think he's a girl. 

Happy birthday Nathan!

             This weekend we celebrated Nathan's first birthday.  We are so grateful for our sweet, happy boy.  He is always smiling and laughing and is very easy going. I think God knew that we needed an easy going baby with all of the transitions we've had in the past year.  In his one short year of life so far, Nathan has been on 8 airplane rides and has been in four different countries (US, Uganda, Kenya, and Zambia).

Sleeping in his carrier

            He LOVES to eat and so far there aren't any foods that he doesn't like.  He loves bathtime, swimming, playing with balls, and playing with cars and trucks.  He also loves dancing and chasing after big sister Natalie.  Natalie is great at making him laugh and they have a lot of fun together.  He has probably spent about half his life in my Boba baby carrier - I've been grateful to have had two family-friendly jobs since he was born, and he has tagged along to work with me in his carrier.   He still comes to the office with me every morning and takes his morning nap in his carrier while I work at the computer. 

Natalie admiring her newborn brother

His birthday was on Sat (Feb 2) but sadly he was sick on his birthday - both Natalie and Nathan were sick last week with a virus so he spent most of his birthday either sleeping or sitting on my lap.  By Sunday he was back to his normal self and we had a few friends over to celebrate his birthday and have some cake.  

       He actually ate his cake very neatly so we didn't have any messy baby face pictures.  Happy birthday Nathan, and may the Lord bless you with many more!

Conversations with the Ik

The Ik - from left to right - Clement, Monica, Grace, Veronica, and Calisto

                Our dinner conversation on Sunday with the Ik included discussion of marriage, school, cattle raiding, bee keeping, traditional dances, food, and future hopes and dreams.  It was fascinating for me to have the opportunity to get to know five Ik teenagers that are sponsored by MCC and to learn more about their culture and way of life.

                Some interesting facts about the Ik:

-          They number about 15,000 and only one Ik has ever completed higher education

-          Their primary livelihood is bee keeping and subsistence farming

-          If an Ik man wants to get married, he has to work on the farm of his future bride for one or two seasons instead of paying a bride price

-          They live in the mountains between the Dodoth and the Turkana, two nomadic tribes that keep cattle.  There is a lot of cattle raiding and the Ik sometimes get caught in the cross fire.  They don’t keep any animals because in the past when they tried to keep cows or goats neighboring tribes would raid them, take the animals, and sometimes kill people.

-          Cattle raiding (common in Northern Uganda by the Uganda/Kenya/South Sudan border) is NOT a few mischievous teenagers taking a cow or two from their neighbor.  It is often a highly organized raid with many men armed with machine guns where they steal up to hundreds of cows. 

Here’s a little more info about two of the Ik teenagers we met:

Veronica (“Nikki”) was the oldest in the group and has just finished senior six (in the Uganda system, there are seven years of primary (p1 to p7), four years of high school (senior 1 to s4) and then 2 years of A level (senior 5 and s6).  At the end of each cluster, the students take an exam and must pass the exam to move on to the next level of education.  Their grade on that exam is the sole factor in which school they are able to attend.

Veronica is waiting for her senior six exam results to see if she will earn a place in a University.  She was consistently at the top of her class, so there is a good chance she will qualify and earn a spot.  She is outgoing, friendly and ambitious, and wants to be a lawyer so she can advocate for the rights of her people.  She said, “"The assistance MCC is giving us will serve to help IK children for generations. As a sponsored student, I am also prepared to give back to my community."  She is also great with kids and made friends with Natalie very quickly, who had a great time playing and laughing with her.

Monica, resting after her group did their dance

Monica is the oldest of six siblings and is waiting on the results of her senior four exams.  Her family depends on subsistence agriculture, bee keeping, and they also have a few chickens.  Monica remembers several years ago when some cattle raiders came through her village after a botched raid.  In frustration, they actually stole all of her family’s chickens.  From their hiding place, Monica and her family could hear the raiders fleeing with all of their chickens. 

Monica is a bright and ambitious young lady who also hopes to become a lawyer.  In reference to taking her senior four exams, Monica said, “ I am honored to be part of the group of Ugandan children who sat the national examination; moreover being a girl and being consistent up to this level is in itself a great achievement and an example to many.  Many girls who were with me from the beginning cannot be traced, because most of them dropped out of school and were married off.” (early marriage is very common in the Ik culture).

I really enjoyed the time we had to talk with these teenagers and was inspired by their hard work and determination.  For more information about MCC’s partnership with the Ik and our other education programs, check out our website: http://globalfamily.mcc.org/programs/uganda

Living with Shalom Cultural Gala

Some highlights from the Living with Shalom cultural gala in Hoima:

The day started out with all the participants marching about 5km through Hoima town led by a marching band.  They carried banners promoting peace and picked up trash along the way.  The kids and I marched for about 3 of the 5 kilometers before Natalie got tired and we followed the rest of the march in a car.

After the march, there were about 2 hours before the show started.  Natalie had a great time playing in the dirt - here she is building a "dirtcastle."  I tried to prevent her from playing in the dirt for about 5 minutes before I realized it was futile - with 2 hours to kill in 95 degree heat, there wasn't much else for her to do.  But dirt and germs build the immune system, right??

And here's Nathan imitating his big sister and also playing in the dirt!

Once the cultural gala started, the youth each performed two different dances from their culture..it was a very entertaining show!

Two of the facilitators from Living with Shalom join in the fun!

Even the MP (member of parliament - the local government official who was the guest of honor) got out of her seat to join in one of the Ik dances.

The five Ik participants - we ended up getting to know them more than we expected when we hosted all of them in our house in Sat night, then had dinner with them on Sunday before they took the night bus back home.  More about the Ik in my next post...

What is an Ik?

An Ik community

This weekend, I’ll be meeting an Ik.  Five of them actually.  The Ik are a small and very marginalized group of people that live in Northern Uganda right near the Uganda-Kenya-South Sudan border.  Among the 12,000 Ik, only one has attended higher education.  Because they live more than 40 kms from the nearest town where most schools are, it difficult for the Ik children to access education, despite the free primary education for all Ugandan children. The lack of educated leadership among the Ik has kept them at a disadvantage in terms of being able to advocate for their basic rights to education, healthcare, roads, water and food security; hence making the area lag behind in terms of development. They have also received little support from humanitarian agencies working in the region.  Since 2006, MCC has had a partnership with KOPEIN (a local NGO) to provide sponsorship for Ik children to attend school, which has been the only consistent educational support for Ik children.   MCC currently supports about 90 Ik children in primary and secondary schools.

A student sponsored by MCC standing next to her home

                This afternoon, we embark on another “fun family adventure” and will be traveling to Hoima for the weekend, a town about 3 hours from Kampala.  We have a partnership with an organization called Living with Shalom, which brings together youth from different MCC partners from all over Uganda.  The three week training focuses on breaking down stereotypes and teaching about conflict resolution, health, and the environment.  To end the training, they hold a big cultural presentation where the different groups perform songs, poems, dances, etc from their culture.

         

  For the first time, five Ik children are participating in the Living with Shalom training.  For all of them, it is their first time to travel outside of their home area.  For the rest of the Living with Shalom participants, it is their first time interacting with an Ik (many Ugandans have never even heard of the Ik!)  We are really looking forward to meeting the Ik and the rest of the Living with Shalom participants, and I’ll post an update next week when we return.

Ikland

                In other news, thank you for your prayers for Natalie – there were NO TEARS this week when I dropped her off at school, which is definitely an answer to prayer!   Now that she is feeling comfortable, she seems to be really enjoying school and always has lots of stories for me when I pick her up.