The Island (Mon. 22/6/09)

Today was quite the adventure! We went to a part of town that rarely has mzungus (white people) to get on a boat to go across Lake Victoria (second largest lake in the world...following Lake Superior--extra tidbit of knowledge :)). Now imagine a giant wooden rowboat with a little motor on the back...that's what we put 20 people in to cross the lake! Just before getting to the island we have to go through a narrow channel...probably about two feet of water on either side of the boat. Well, when we got to where we could see land, there was an abandoned boat across our path! Ken had to get out of our boat and onto that boat to move it out of our way. Haha so another boat FULL of wood decided that it didn't want to wait so it starts coming toward us right as we get the boat moved. We're all saying there is no way that both boats can fit and it was a looong way back to the open water and he was not backing down. So we just moved over as far as we could and the boat made it through!! We were all ducking because it had all this wood hanging over the side. So we survived that but our next form of transportation was riding boda bodas. These are little mopeds that travel at crazy speeds--very popular form of transportation in the city too. Debra (one of the teammates) and I got on the back of this lil boda boda for our 6 minute ride up to the school. I loved it, but most of the team members were terrified. All of the kids we passed along the way were so excited to see us...they were jumping all around and waving. The school sits on a hill, so when our boda boda came into the clearing and up the hill we were greeted by hundreds of kids screaming and running full speed down the hill at us...the warmest welcome I have ever received! This school was by far the poorest we've seen. The classrooms literally had one chalkboard and benches for the kids to sit on. That was literally it. I even saw some garbage smooshed together to make a football (soccer ball). One classroom had a few desks but that was it. The kindergarten class was held outside under a tree with a 4x2 chalkboard at the front and a couple wooden benches to sit on. We played with the kids, sang and danced with them, gave them de-worming pills, gave them each one toy, a sweet (piece of candy), and a biscuit (sweet crackers). They were so grateful--a lot of them knelt down at us to say thank you.