Come let’s do this

Come Let’s Dance (CLD) was an amazing experience that I won’t forget any time soon.  I loved getting to know the kids at the school, learning to harvest corn and be at the very first stage of everything corn (including popcorn), and all of the people I met.  I got my hair cut and braid taken out and learned how to make a leaf purse.  And the food was great!!! Did you know Rolex isn’t only a watch brand?

The school was the second place we went after Thread of Life. Wakiso Christian International Academy is a boarding school and they just got new dorm rooms, CLD volunteers now stay in the old dorms.  Their dorms are right outside the school which has a small, grassy field in the middle of a U-shaped building which has 1 room for each of the 10 grades they have.  It was one of my favorite places!  All of the kids were so energetic!!  We and played football (soccer), capture the flag, and a game I learned called “elbow tag”.  All of them were so eager to spend time with us I just couldn’t help smiling.  Walking into the school was like a celebrity walking down a red carpet; the kids would see you and scream your name and they would all try to hold your hand.  As amazing as it was, it was just as overwhelming.  Those of you that know me, you know I can’t go 12 seconds without cartwheeling.  So I did do a little gymnastics at the school.  They all wanted me to teach them something and/or do a backflip.  They mostly wanted to learn a “180” (splits).  But I learned just as much as they did; I now know how to dance and make a leaf purse!  I taught English/art and Math/art.  And we watched a movie and ate popcorn that we harvested only a couple hours before. They had church ceremonies every night and occasionally in the morning.  They had from preschool to 7th grade (8th grade is considered high school).  7th grade has school until 9:30 on week days and they have a full day of school on Saturdays because of a test they have to take to get into high school. All of them were very hard working and I was really impressed. I loved the school and all of the kids in it!

The third place we went to was the farm.  I was really looking forward to the farm and helping the animals, but we never got to the animals.  We went straight to the fields and began harvesting corn!  We all got assigned a line of stalks to harvest.  You peel away the leaves, pull the corn out, throw it in the wheelbarrow, and then flatten the stalk vertical to the rest of the line.  Then you check the ground for fallen stalks that might have unpicked corn on it.  After 1 line, I was happy for being at the very first stage of everything corn and satisfied with finishing that line.  But I definitely didn’t want to do more.  So me, Liam, and my mom all started to unshell the best of the best corn.  They pile up all of the best corn from the recently harvested and then we choose the best from that pile to unshell.  The “best” means the biggest corn with the biggest seeds.  Then we took grinder and grinded of the tips of the corn for food, specifically posho.  Posho is basically corn porridge.  Then you use your thumbs to remove the last ⅔, which is basically the biggest seeds.  These are the planting seeds.  You can’t use the grinder for this because if the seeds break, they won’t grow.  We might have cheated on this step.  The farm was fun even if I couldn’t work with the animals.

African food really surprised me, I wasn’t expecting it to be good (thanks to dad).  We had Kikamondo (pronounced: chick-a-mondo) and Rolex.  Kikamondo is like a bag of beans with tortilla triangles in it, it is like 2,000 times better than it sounds.  And a Rolex is a burrito with tortilla on the outside then egg right under it with tomato, onion, curry sauce, and sometimes cabbage on the inside.  Our whole family thought it would be like a breakfast burrito, but not as good.  But it’s way better than a breakfast burrito, I can’t get enough of the stuff!!! They have stands lining the street selling two things, Kikamondo and Rolex.  The exchange rate is also pretty big, everything may seem expensive, but barely anything was more than 1 USD.  It’s 3,300 shillings for 1 USD.  And their public transportation was chaotic in a way that made sense. They had taxis that could hold 16 people and they all fight over a customer.  You can always go to a taxi park and know you can find a taxi going to the place you want.  They’re driving everywhere and honk constantly waiting for someone to flag then down.  I seriously think they could win a Guiness World Record for most people in one taxi!!!!  It could have been a sport just to find a taxi that goes to the place you want to go!! But the system actually worked and made sense once you got used to it.

CLD was an amazing experience and I definitely want to do it again.  I learned sooo much!! I think more people should take trips like this, you learn a lot more than you do in school and it’s 50,000 times more fun!