More on the Christmas Cantata

When we considered older child adoption, we discussed many potential challenges and difficulties, including many of the things that we have faced.  But one thing we forgot to consider: musical taste.  We are a household that has earned degrees in music, both classical and jazz; there are two grand pianos in our living room, and another piano living with a friend; and other instruments include traditional drums and flutes from different cultures, classical strings (violins in several different sizes and a viola), and more guitar-like instruments than I can count.  What are we going to do with a child who has spent six years listening to this combination of hip-hop and pop music, complete with three chords and an insistent drumbeat, turned up way too loud.  How many years do we have to balance out this influence before she's old enough to buy her own music, and turn up the stereo on the back bedroom??!!

So Hibiscus thought the concert was awesome and amazing, and wants to go back today.  It was ridiculously loud and ridiculously dramatic, which seem to be the main criteria around here.  It seemed to be a lot of skits with really corny messages, that morphed into a song, and then all the secondary characters around the stage broke into some kind of crazy breakdancing.

For instance, a woman walks by talking on a cell phone and blowing her nose, and then drops the tissue on the ground.  Another woman is sitting on a bench, and reminds her to put the tissue in the bin.  Cell-phone woman rolls her eyes and walks away.  Nice Woman puts the tissue in the trash, and has a long discussion with the man sweeping the sidewalk about how important it is to put trash in the bin and take care of our beautiful city.  (Ugandans attitude towards trash seems to be a lot like that about lying, that they preach a lot about it but  honesty and picking up after oneself doesn't really enter into everyday behavior.)  Then it turns out that the sweeper-man is expecting his sister-in-law to call and announce the birth of his first child any moment, and that he and his wife have been waiting for a child for six years.  Then Nice Woman goes into a little spiel about how that reminds her of Jesus, and how the people waited for their Savior for all this time, but he finally came, and that is about God because of something-or-other, and then the Wise Men brought gifts and did you know that is where gift-giving was started?  Meanwhile, a spotlight comes on a little area on top of the high-rises, and we see Mary and Joseph struggling along, and the spotlight goes off and instantly they are on the side stage in a different spotlight, while the Wise Men appear as Nice Woman discusses them in the story.  Then suddenly they all burst out in song, and Joseph holds the Baby Jesus bundle above his head and swings around while singing this crazy exuberant pop-gospel stuff, and I am very glad that the bundle does not look like the shape that might mean an actual child is inside.  And a dozen other people come along in some kind of random costume and start dancing too.  And the song is not "We Three Kings" or anything that seems kind of related to the story, because "We Three Kings" would not be loud and excited enough, and I think it would be very difficult to add in the required bass and drum section to allow for the necessary switch into break-dancing.  Because everything has to turn into a break-dancing sequence.  Although they added speed and drums to several traditional carols in such a way to totally ruin them as "carols," let alone "traditional," which is apparently what Ugandans are used to because they all hummed and clapped along.

The program started with the (white) preacher enthusiastically welcoming everyone, and then we all sang "Silent Night" together.  The dancers had not yet appeared, so we only needed to go at about 170% of normal speed.  I don't know if Ugandans have a genetic predisposition towards alto-ness, but they certainly have a learned habit of singing in a really throaty voice.  This was funny because there is one sustained, moderately-high note in "Silent Night," and suddenly you could hear my voice singing it, because apparently I was the only person among the couple thousand who knew how to sustain a high note!

The main stage was this giant area in front, which when empty had a large waterfall surrounded by poinsettias and pine trees in the middle.  Then the couple-hundred voice choir filed in and filled most of the space in the middle in risers.  I think their purpose was mostly to look enthusiastic and sparkly, because they didn't do much more than hum in the background on a few songs.  There was a group song at the beginning and the end and they sang along with those ones, and the one at the end was some kind of enthusiastic praise-Jesus kind of thing, so some of them waved their hands around too.  There was a stage on a couple of levels in front of the choir, with a park bench and a few other props, and this is where most of the skits took place.  There was some kind of platform above the choir, which occasionally they used to dramatic effect, and a giant white screen all the way across the stage above that, which they used for different images.  Then there was another stage on either side of the main area, filled with pine trees.  The one towards our side had a manger, and Mary and Joseph appeared on it occasionally when someone sang about them.

I told a couple of the highlights of the cantata yesterday, so the story today is kind of out of order.  So I will go back to the beginning.  We were supposed to pick up our friends at 12:30, to arrive at 1 to wait for the 3:30 show.  But I knew we were on Africa time, so I didn't get everyone ready and over to their house until 1.  The children were all ready to jump in the car, but the mom wasn't, so we waited a while there.  Then we drove downtown.  Ggaba Road has been very slow lately, but it actually went smoothly, but then the traffic was just plain absolutely stopped once we got to town.  We could have walked it twice as fast, even with all seven children.  Finally, we got to the right place and found a parking spot.  Then it was time to wait.

First of all, we sat and waited under a series of giant tents set up outside, as the ushers gradually filled the tent sections in the order we would be allowed to leave them.  In another part of the parking lot there was a stand selling chapatis, popcorn, hot dogs, drinks, and other snacks, and behind the tents were a grand total of six porta-potties.  We arrived at 3 for the 3:00 performance, so we missed it, and waited the whole two hours for the next one -- but at least we were near the front of the line for that one.

About an hour after we started waiting, we were ushered out, through a church, and up to another room kind of to the side, which was also filled with plastic chairs.  It was the second room filled with people like that; I would estimate at least 300 people were in our room.  Luckily, we were up towards one corner, so the kids played with going back and forth out the edge.  I had a book in my backpack, so Emerson and I read that one together.  He was grumpy and tired and didn't really feel like reading, so he didn't want to read on his own.  We took turns reading the stories, switching at the paragraph for a while, until Emerson decided to switch every time we encountered the word "the."  That was interesting!  But inside my head, I was just amazed.  Back in September, he was still reading the Bob books and getting frustrated, and we were going very carefully over simple rules like what does "ea" say so he wouldn't be so frustrated.  Then something clicked, and he has been reading all kinds of children's books, like the paragraph-full Early Readers at school, and the Madeline books at home.  But this is a whole new level; this is totally text-dense read-aloud only, with unique vocabulary and small text.  He's gotten to the point where he wants to read something, and I say "okay, so read it," and he just starts, instead of worrying that it is too hard.  And really, most books in the world are mostly the same words over and over, so once you start in on it you can get a lot of the point, even if you have never yet encountered "vision" or "malicious."

I described sitting down to the concert, which was quite an adventure, so I will go back to some of the program.  The skits all started off corny, and ended with one of the characters delivering a little lesson about Jesus.  One of them was about difficulty, describing the basic story of the engagement, the census, and so forth, and that it was not actually simple or easy for them, and they probably kind of didn't feel happy all the time.  This was the LESSON.  There were definitely children in the audience, but it was not a children's show, and most of it seemed aimed towards the adults.  Is the assumption that adult Christians are not sure about when or why Joseph agreed to wed Mary, or that they had to travel for a census?   I have been shocked and frustrated with how confused Hibiscus is about basic Biblical characters, but I am beginning to understand why: it seems to me that most of the religion around here is totally based on homily and assumption, and very little on the actual Bible.  The children are told that if they are rude to their older brothers and sisters they will go to Hell, and given very specific definitions of Hell, and lists of other behavior that will land them there.  Which is The Divine Comedy, it is not the Bible.  Then they sing lots of songs with "praise God" and "Jesus loves me," and they turn around and tell me that they will beat all the people who are mean to them and to Jesus.  Hibiscus even described a helicopter with bombs she would drop on people who are mean to Jesus!  This is a nice sweet idea about loving Jesus, but when it is paired with no actual knowledge about anything Jesus ever did or said, it turns into a discussion about where he fits when he is inside you, under one's bellybutton or in the rib cage.

This is the child perspective, and it seems like many people do not really deepen their understanding as they get older.  The religious message that I have overheard again and again is how if you believe in God and really love him, LOVE LOVE LOVE, with lots of swinging your arms around and stamping your feet and singing really loudly... then you'll get rich.  Because God blesses the people who love him, especially when they sing really loudly.  I have actually had discussions with my friend the priest on how prevalent this view of loving God = getting rich and lucky, which he finds a big problem, so I am not naively imagining this.

And this bring us to why Hibiscus wants to have a helicopter to drop bombs on mean people, which was the part of the Cantata that made me absolutely livid.  If you are really into melodrama, I suppose Jesus' birth scores you lots of sequins, but the real drama is in the death.  So it couldn't be left out of a Christmas program.  (Unlike the entire life, ministry, and philosophy of Jesus, which was not alluded to in any way!)  I think it followed the young man's monologue about how he slowly descended into peer pressure, parties, alcohol and drugs, until he realized that his life was empty and the only thing that could fill it was Christ.  I realize that a lot of modern churches really like this "testimony," although personally, I would rather my kids don't hear so much about drugs and descending into "coolness."  But then there were some lighting changes, and another guy came out and sang some very dramatic and sad song.  At least I assume it was; I wasn't paying much attention to him.  Because behind him, they started playing a movie on the big screen of the crucifixion.  It might have been part of Mel Gibson's movie, or it might have been something else.  But it was gory, and it was detailed.  It started with Jesus carrying the cross and falling down, and we got close-ups of his arms and his back.  Later we saw nails positioned in the hands, and a hammer swinging.  It was several minutes long, and all fade-ins and fade-outs to different gruesome parts of the crucifixion.  I didn't see most of it, because I don't like to watch things like that, and then I was busy trying to convince the children not to watch.  Emerson was on one side of me, and all the children until Teacher Monica on the far side.  I started in on Emerson, because I know he has this fascination and deep terror of scary things.  He wouldn't look away, and I could cover his eyes but he yelled at me.  On the other side, Hibiscus was watching with her eyes literally bugging out.  Lately she has been especially terrified of bad things happening at night, and bad people coming into our house, and monsters nabbing her.  I know that images of someone being beaten bloody are exactly the kind of thing that pops into your mind when you are afraid of the dark and you want your mama to stay next to you, but she actually has to do your sister's bath at that moment.  So I tried to convince her not to watch, but she told me she liked it, as the tears started to fall.  Then I noticed Hosta on the other side of her, who had huddled up with her knees up to her forehead (she spent most of the program on her feet, jumping up and down), her face totally covered with tears, but she also could not tear her eyes off the video.  After that I was trying to distract Emerson again, and meanwhile thinking about how I could lean my body so Buttercup, in my wrap, wouldn't have an ideal view of the screen.  In the end, I'm not sure how much it helped, and all the children saw way more than was good for them.

So what happens today?  The children have mentioned half a dozen times how much they liked seeing Mary and Joseph, since they just did a little pageant of their own at school.  And then they've spent a significant portion of the day pretending to fall on the cross and discussion exactly where the nails were placed on the feet, and banging pretend nails into each other.  It really makes me mad.  Overall the cantata was not my cup of tea but it was a fun experience, but supposing I actually lived here, I would seriously consider not attending again next year just to avoid that disgusting video. (Or whatever they replace it with next time.)  It is NOT something that is appropriate to put into children's hearts and minds!  First of all, they have so many of their own difficulties to cope with, and this was just plain gory and unpleasant, and these images now live inside them.  Secondly, they are too young to get any actual meaning from it.  The first thing, that we have already discussed several times, is that this was a MOVIE, not the Bible.  In my own home and church life, I certainly expose my child(ren) to the story of the crucifixion, but I keep it simple and based on the actual Bible.  A young child will remember their first exposure to the story, and I want it to be the actual, literal story, not some film-maker's interpretation.  You never know if what will stay with a child will be the parts that he took from the text, or something random that was never important.  (Like Jesus being tall and blond, which he was.)  But the deeper issue is that if the children are too young to understand the meaning and the reason behind the crucifixion, they are way too young to be thinking about the details of death.  Never mind calling for bomb-dropping helicopters, Jesus actively refused even mild violence on his behalf, and refused to protest or defend himself.  Why?  THAT is what Christianity is about.  If you're not old enough to discuss that, you're not old enough to discuss what they used to whip Jesus, and how much he was bleeding.  Period.

So, that was my philosophical rant; let's get back to the cantata.  Shall we discuss breakdancing?  There was really quite a lot of it.  The theme seemed to be a city park, so we had streetcleaners breaking out in breakdancing several times.  However, there was some attempt at variety.  For one number, a ballerina (the one white woman in the entire thing, actually) was in a spotlight in the little stage that was above all the other stages, and she twirled a couple times, and then lights came on the main stage and a bunch of girls in ballerina-like outfits swooped out, twirled a couple times... and started breakdancing.  A later troupe of mostly male dancers were wearing black and white, leather jackets, and sunglasses.  It was a little hard to see how that fit in with the sequins-and-Christmas theme, but they certainly were matching costumes.  And the breakdancing was quite good, and they did a bunch of fancy tricks.  I probably would have been impressed if I weren't so amused by how everyone kept breakdancing!

Another part of the cantata for me was dealing with the children.  I decided to keep Buttercup on my back, where she could see (and incidentally not escape).  She figured out pretty fast that she had a good view and was perfectly content, although that involved lots of jumping up and down in place.  I had also gotten snacks before we went in, and gradually handed them out to the children. I started off with half a chapati each while we waited for the show to start, which went smoothly.  But I had tried to get something at the snack stand that wasn't JUST simple carbs, so I got little slurpy yogurts.  These are small plastic bags filled with sweet yogurt, and you cut off a corner and stick a straw in and drink it out.  This works pretty well if you do it properly, which half the children managed to do.  Unfortunately, half the children wanted to put their yogurt down for a while, and since they are just plastic bags, this is not very technically possible when you are sitting crammed in a pew jumping up and down.  So when Buttercup got full, I gave the rest to Hibiscus, and then I refused to get Hibiscus her own because she'd already eaten half of one and I didn't want her to put down the next one, but when Hosta got tired of drinking I gave that to Hibiscus too.  Needless to say, that made everyone mad at me.  The friends' children managed to drink their yogurts without incident, although the older girl was still carrying the bag when we were trying to walk to the car.  Her mother had to ask her to drop it, which shows how deeply the no-littering lessons sink in -- although she had to ask twice, so maybe the child noticed the discrepancy and the next generation will manage to do better.  But it was Emerson who won the yogurt award.  He asked me to hold his yogurt several times, or offered it to me to take a drink, so I took a drink and handed it back.  But at one point he got the straw stuck inside the bag, so he put it on my lap so I can fix it.  Imagine: it is dark, there are strobelights, you are trying to figure out which of the next six children wants a yogurt, and there is a bag with a hole in it somewhere plopped in your lap.  It ended up spilling yogurt all over my dress, the wrap, the camera case, the floor, and who-knows-what else.  And then Emerson took it back and sucked the rest of the yogurt directly out of the hole, which worked well, except he took forever to do it (like most things that he does), and I think yogurt bags were designed for speedy consumption.

As for the grand finale: Snow.  Snow is really spectacular here in equatorial Africa, and they had an amazing production of it.  We are not in rich Dubai, which apparently has an indoor ski mountain, so it wasn't the actual cold stuff, but it poured from the ceiling in huge quantities for several minutes.  (I think it was some kind of bubbles.)  The kids were very excited and impressed, and jumped around and squealed and tried to catch it.

And now I will conclude my story with what Hibiscus told me the next day.  First of all, she keeps repeating that she wants to go back, and I have not the slightest intention of reliving the rest of the exhausting day in order to attend the performance again!  But then she told me this morning that she was glad we went to this show, because Ugandan people don't go to shows, and no one in Uganda knows about shows like this.  This is pretty amazing information, given that probably between a thousand and two thousand people were happily watching the show, and I saw exactly one other group like ours, which had a couple Americans mixed in with the locals.  There have been two shows a day for the last ten days or so, and they will switch to four shows a day from tomorrow until Christmas -- just at this church, and I think the other churches do their own shows, and a few of the other mega-churches definitely have mega-shows.  A quick estimate gives about 40,000 Ugandans attending this particular show, along with a hundred or so muzungos, which is a slightly different number than "none."  I reminded Hibiscus about the Ugandans who had been all around her, and that our Ugandan friends had brought us, so it was pretty clear that some Ugandans knew about shows like this.  She calmly and didactically informed me that her daddy in Bbunga did not know about shows like this, and she had never been to a show like this while she lived in Bbunga, and no one else went to shows like this either.  Therefore no one in Uganda knows about big shows.  Obviously, mom.

In preparing for adoption, we talked about the significance of taking a child away from their culture, but I think this is the equally important side of the same coin: a naive six-year-old, starting a new life, comes to the assumption that she is the expert on her own culture.  In many ways she knows more about the Buganda than I do, but in other ways, her experience is so narrow and misunderstood, she really knows almost nothing about her own culture.  But since we take her away from it, she thinks she knows everything.  It makes me very glad that we are spending these months here, and hopefully we can combat a little bit of her own assumptions through the coming years, so that she does not believe that her miserable little life in the slums is the only option for Ugandans.  That some people are kind to their friends, and some children like to read, and some Ugandans go to concerts.

We can have those discussions while not engaged in our full-immersion program of symphonies, jazz quartets, and choirs with actual sopranos in them.  And Christmas performances of The Nutcracker, but only if it has been pre-screened for not switching to breakdancing part way through!

b

On the Subject of Sacrifice

Tonight we read Tomie de Paola's Legend of the Bluebonnet, in which The People are experiencing drought and famine.  The shaman reports that the Great Spirit needs the people to sacrifice their most important possession, and all the adults go to bed justifying that what is special to them is certainly not special enough to the Great Spirit.  But the little girl leaves her bed in the night, knowing that the beloved doll that her parents and grandparents had made for her before they died was surely the most important possession, and she sacrifices it in a fire and spreads the ashes.

The children were deeply drawn into the story, with its musical language and quiet pictures.  (Okay, the language was more musical before Hibiscus joined us and started asking questions constantly, which made it a little hard to hear.)

At the end we talked about giving something up.  Emerson readily admitted that his legos were his most important possession, and Hibiscus immediately chimed that her legos were too.  I suggested that they were important to Emerson, but they weren't the thing that Hibiscus cared about the very most.  She sat mulling that over while I asked Emerson whether he would be able to throw them into a fire.  He thought about it, and obviously wished that he would, but his whole body curled up as he thought and he whispered no, he couldn't.  I asked, even if there was no food to eat and your family was sick and hungry?  (I felt like we didn't need to talk about the dying part.)  He thought about his legos and shook his head no, still curled up, wincing away from the possibility.

"No food?" Hibiscus asked, who had apparently missed that central point so far.  She had been thinking about all the wonderful THINGS in her life, but the idea of no food shocked her out of her reverie.  "I would give up all my nice new fings and I would throw ev'ry-fing in the fire if my family had no food," she said frankly.

I praised her for being unselfish, and tried to compliment her the same way the girl in the story had been honored, but it turned out she had missed that part too.  (The problem with asking so many questions is that you don't actually hear much of the story, apparently.)


But it makes me a little sad inside.  I hurt for her, that she knows so very distinctly how terrible it is to have no food.  She knows how hard it is to not have anything, and she clings to each toy and article of clothing and bit of ribbon and special, pretty, mismatched fork in the apartment's drawer.  Hibiscus is nothing if not blunt, and I'm sure the thought of throwing all her nice new things in the fire was very real to her -- and nothing to the specter of hunger.

Hibiscus Drives Us All Crazy

It's the middle of the afternoon, and I said we could have more birthday cake and presents if the kids could clear the table off.  No one started on that project, which seems like actual work, but Hibiscus found a piece of mostly-unused construction paper and made a birthday hat for Buttercup.  First of all she taped it into a cone shape, and when she put it on Buttercup's head the little girl started glowing with her unaccustomed special-ness.  Then she wanted to add a chin band, and Emerson helped her find materials and they all started singing "Happy Birthday" variations happily as they worked on the hat, while Buttercup fairly danced with pride.  Suddenly, Hibiscus decided it "wasn't good" and she ripped it apart and crumpled up the pieces, while the other children watched in shock and disappointment, and Buttercup's joyful little face melted away.

That's our Hibiscus!

Then she spent a while arguing, because I had already said I wasn't giving them any more paper or art supplies until the current mess had been cleaned up, but Hibiscus apparently felt that because she had made the mess even bigger while making all the other children upset, that she deserved an exception to the rule.  Which she didn't get, so she sulked.

Then she started cleaning one thing up, which is generally how it goes.  She wants to be helpful, but as soon as she starts she gets distracted or sees something new to get out.  In this case, she put some cheese from snack in the fridge, as I asked.  For some reason, Emerson was also near the fridge, and he pushed it shut, which Hibiscus thought was too rough, and she started scolding him.  One of our frequent scripts in this house is "who does Hibiscus need to worry about?" and the answer in "Hibiscus."  (In other words, stop bossing your brother and sister around!!!)  Hibiscus ignored me, and opened the fridge again and started fussing around with all the little bottles on the side, putting them in "perfect" order while telling Emerson how bad he was for messing them up.  I agreed that Emerson could have shut the door more gently, but thought there was no reason to stand there rearranging everything in the fridge meanwhile, so I told Hibiscus to get out of the fridge and Emerson to shut the door gently.  Twice.  Maybe three times.  Hibiscus said "I just doing this" and continued to adjust the bottles and then grabbed the door away from Emerson to shut it herself.  That falls under our Just One More criteria for a Sit, so she got one.  And she tried to sneak out of it when I wasn't looking, so she got a longer Sit.

Earlier today, I decided I would do just one little project that would make me feel better, so I had cleared off the couch.  It is the largest horizontal space in our main room, and it was totally heaped up with stuff.  Besides, then I could sit on the couch and do some work on the ipad while being kind of relaxed and drinking a cup of tea.  First of all I got mad at Emerson for climbing right on the newly-folded clothes I was arranging, and then the kids kept passing and dropping the extra parts from their projects on the nice clear couch.  After addressing each incident, I finally told the kids all to look at me, and to not put anything more on the couch today.  Period.

When I told Hibiscus she could come out of her Sit, she went straight over to the windowsill where Buttercup's birthday presents were sitting and picked up her most exciting new game.  I warned her that she better not be playing with her sister's new game without permission, and she said she wasn't.  Then she brought the toy bag over to the couch, and I said she had better not be putting anything on the couch, and she said she wasn't.  Buttercup was watching her lovely toy and her bossy sister with increasing worry.  Hibiscus then proceeded to take the toy that she wasn't playing with and dump the entire thing out on the couch that she wasn't putting things on.        


This is all in about the span of twenty minutes or so, but she is like this ALL.  DAY.  LONG.  She is constantly taking things from her brother and sister, which she is likely to break or just drop randomly in a different place.  She tells them what to do, and grabs things from Buttercup to do it for her and goads Emerson into getting upset, and then "reports" him for using his angry voice.  She ordinarily has a very good relationship with both siblings, although of course they have their little altercations, and they actually have a great deal of patience with her explosiveness.  One morning they were getting ready for school, Emerson and Hibiscus bumped into each other, and Hibiscus rounded on Emerson and screamed "DON'T BUMP ME LIKE DAT!!! DAT'S MY OWIE!!!"  I would have reprimanded her that it was an accident on both sides, and there was no call to scream, but luckily I am a little slow on getting between them.  Emerson turned and immediately apologized and asked to see her owie, and Hibiscus showed him her leg in that special aggrieved manner that young children reserve for small pains, and Emerson knelt down and admired it and sympathized, and then they both went on with their day quite calmly.

Buttercup is even more accustomed to being pushed around and adores every chance to be with her beloved sister, which is a little bit of a problem in itself and I am glad that she is gradually learning to stand up for herself.  Now in the last few weeks, Hibiscus is back to her early behavior in our house, when every time Buttercup says something she repeats it to the rest of the family, and every time Daddy or I address Buttercup, she answers quickly and loudly.  If we ask Buttercup to do something and she doesn't immediately jump into action -- which is pretty much always, because she is either going through a toddler-refusal, or just because she thinks things over carefully before beginning -- Hibiscus repeats it for her in Luganda, ordering her to do the thing in rapid-fire succession which simply confuses Buttercup, and then grabs the things out of her hands and starts to do it for her.

Or then there are times like this:  The morning after her birthday party, Buttercup wanted to look at her new book.  She sat in the middle of the floor to pore over it, and Hibiscus said "you want me to read it to you" and sat down next to her and took the book out of her hands.  Buttercup acquiesced because she likes spending time with her big sister.  But then a minute later I looked over, and Hibiscus is holding the book over Buttercup's head while Buttercup is reaching for it and starting to screech and sob.  Hibiscus saw me ready to interfere and protested "but she WANTS me to hold the book for her, Mama, she is wantin' me to do like dis!!"  Ah, no, my darling, I really think this is a misinterpretation of the situation!   Buttercup is becoming very capable of expressing her feelings about things -- not to mention understanding spoken English -- and yet Hibiscus will announce to the rest of us how Buttercup is feeling.  Which, coincidentally, always seems to be that Buttercup wants what Hibiscus wants, even at Buttercup's own expense.


But that's not the only thing she announces.  She tells me when my phone is ringing, or has the text-message sound.  If I don't come running immediately, she keeps telling me over and over, imitating the text-message sound.  She tells us when a Skype call is ringing.  She tells us when fire engines go by.  In fact, she informs everyone of every sound all day long, which I suppose could make her an excellent assistant if we were all deaf, but as it is she just makes us WISH we were deaf.

One day I asked her if she saw anything poking out of the side of my head, and that they were called ears, and since they were still in their usual place she might assume I could hear things on my own.  I tried to make a joke out of it, but I might have been too irritated to fully succeed.

But that's not all she says.  At the best of times, she is a talkative child, and there's nothing wrong with that.  As Daddy says, she gets a lot of practice in spoken English!  But when she's stressed or tired or excited or generally out of her precarious internal balance, she talks all the time.  And I do mean ALL the time.  One night I started counting to myself, mostly to give myself something to do other than run and scream, and I think the longest she ever went without talking was about three seconds -- and that was the exception.  Most of the time it is more like one or maybe two seconds; just long enough to hear what the next person might be talking about, so then she can tell them what they meant to say, or what she would say on the topic, or that they are wrong, or just because she was in the process of swallowing and was physically incapable of speech for a moment.  Only a moment, though, as she keeps talking through most of the eating process, even when no one can actually understand her because she is also shoveling food in at top speed.

I am a talkative person, as everyone knows.  My son has been a chatterbox since he could string words together, and does indeed have excellent speech for his age with all that practice, so I am used to talkative children.  And I'm the kind of person who doesn't mind some overlap in conversation, and with my good friends we will both be very talkative and sometimes be both talking at once, while also listening and one or the other pauses for a moment and then rejoins the story at an ebb in the other's conversation.  So, "talkative," I can handle.  I have experience.  You will have to trust me that Hibiscus is another category altogether.

So all through dinner, we have either a monologue or, if someone else gets a word in edgewise, she changes course and tells them what they meant to be saying.  We try to discuss conversation rules, but after a while it kind of puts everyone else in an exhausted coma, and no one else can think of anything to say anyways.  Then we get up from dinner, and she narrates what she is doing as she cleans up and gets ready for bed, along with telling everyone else what they should be doing, and of course every major or minor injury to body or soul she feels along the way... which are prolific, since she also is in her manic and awkward stage of the day.  Eventually we get to books.  As in, I read books out loud, and the children listen to them.  Except it goes something like this:

"Hedgie the hedgehog climbed --"
"Oooh, he is climbing, look he climb!!"
"--up to the hayloft ---"
"Mama mama mama, what a hayloft? What is dat one?"
"It's the top of the barn, see, right here.  -- the next morn ---"
"Look, dis one a bird!  Dere a bird in da sky here!"
"-ing to get a ---"
"One, two, tree, FIVE birds, YOU count Buttercup, one, two, no, you doing it WRONG I count da birds---"


I have my masters degree in education.  I know how valuable reading books is to young children, and that a significant part of the value is that it inspires conversations between adults and children.  The children get to explore and learn new vocabulary, and have practice talking about characters and counting objects and so forth, all with lots of interaction with their loving adult.  The conversation is an important part of the reading process.

Nevertheless, this is not what they meant.



I know in my head, that if it's been a hard couple weeks for all of us, it's probably been worst for Hibiscus.  She has by far the least internal regulation (even included Buttercup), so the move with all its change of routine has been the most difficult for her.  She has loved our guests, but they have come with more changes of routine and new personalities to figure out.  In the court room, she is the only one trying to balance complex relationships with both sides of people, and she's picking up all the emotions and understanding none of the logic.  She and Buttercup are more deeply disturbed by loving people having to leave (especially Daddy, but also Diane and it re-awakens how upset she is about Gramma and Bubba being gone), because they have more experience with loving adults leaving than loving adults coming back again.  So I understand.  It's enough to throw anyone off kilter, let alone a little girl who doesn't have much balance to begin with.

But lately, I've been pausing for a while at night to adjust her blankets and say a little prayer over her.  Because it's been easiest to love her when she's asleep.

Our Afternoon

For the first part of our walk home, Hibiscus and Emerson were quick-marching in a little row, one behind the other, chanting "poom-bah! poom-bah! poom-bah!"  They swerved into each driveway and alley we passed, pretending that they were going to leave me and go down that way, and then swerved back again, one right behind the other.  When we walked along a stone gutter, they marched straight down the middle of the water.  I love watching how connected they are and how joyful their play can be.

Of course, an hour later at home, they couldn't stop sniping at each other.  Lately, Hibiscus has been being unbearably bossy, and also somehow is always holding someone else's toy/food/craft/random bit of fluff that "she didn't kno-ooow" was theirs; and Emerson has started screeching and whining whenever he doesn't get his way; and they both are using pinches and pushes and shoulder butts.  I am trying really hard to not get involved in their little arguments -- until they draw blood, which actually happened yesterday.  Hibiscus pushed Emerson down on a stone ledge, I think because he wanted to help bring in laundry and she didn't want him touching something-or-other, and he got a big scrape on his back.  Once genuine hurt is inflicted, I do take sides, on the no-drawing-blood side (which always happens to be on one -- no, two, since there are three children -- directions).  Whatever happens beforehand doesn't matter; they need to learn to stop themselves before getting that rough.  Ahem.  She needs to stop her self.

So today, they were just bickering, and they wouldn't stop, so I separated them.  Emerson stayed in the living room and Hibiscus in the bedroom, because that's where they each do their "quiet time" (eg. not exactly nap time).  I explained that it wasn't a punishment, I was just giving them some alone time.  Hibiscus howled like a banshee.  Apparently the only thing worse than being around her brother was being away from her brother!

In the late afternoon, our probation officer came and visited.  We have been playing phone tag for a couple weeks now, and I thought as long as I had a chance to see him I would ask his opinion about this new crisis.  He was very thoughtful, and pretty much his advice concurred with the other advice I have gotten.  Then I told him we had decided to apply for guardianship, and oh by the way our court date is Tuesday, and can he please come?  He said he would be there, and is there anything else he can do to help out?  I never would have imagined hearing those words a few months ago!

I wanted a calm conversation, so I tempted the children with playing iPad in the other room.  They were easily bribed!  However, they still kept popping in to ask questions and ask me to fix things, and of course "Buttercup touched my game! she is disTURBing me!"  Still, we managed to have a pretty reasonable conversation.  And Hibiscus told me in the evening that she is in a happy mood, because today she got to play iPad!

By the time he left, we were late for dinner and had no way of cooking anyways.  Our cooking gas ran out at breakfast, and then it turns out the hot water heater in the bathroom isn't turning on either. I managed to find cold things to eat for breakfast and lunch, which isn't as easy as it sounds because most "cupboard" items spoil so quickly here, almost everything goes in the fridge and needs heating back up again, or is totally dried and needs cooking.

So I gathered them up and we went into Ggaba to see what we could find.  So I ended up feeding my kids fried street food for dinner... I'll pretend it was a little adventure, instead of just a mama-fail.  Kind of like going to the fair or something.

So we ate chapatis and chips and kabobs and roasted bananas and popcorn and samosas.  In case you didn't know, samosas (often pronounced sambusa here, which amuses me) are triangles of dough folded around something and deep fried.  Because there is already dough, it is reasonable to contain meat or vegetables or something.  These samosas were filled with.... rice.  Yes, that would be carbs, with carbs, and a good side of pure fat, with a little bit of extra oil.  Welcome to Africa!

The kids loved everything.  Buttercup took on her food with her serious demeanor, although amazingly enough she applied herself most vigorously to the banana and kabob, which are kind of remotely healthy.  Emerson even deigned to eat a samosa, seeing that it had nothing healthy touching it.  And Hibiscus.... Hibiscus ate like a backhoe.  She plowed through her serving.  She inhaled my extra sausage.  She gobbled up seconds.  She asked Buttercup if she could have her uneaten kabob, as her chomping teeth simultaneously came flying towards the meat, and Buttercup screeched at her.  She absorbed thirds just by looking at them, and asked for more.  I suggested she sit quietly and listen to see if her body was full, and she screeched at me.  By then we were leaving the table, and she asked and finished the ends from my sausage, and finally got Buttercup's leftover kabob.  And then all the rest of us were in the next room, and the magnetic force of not-being-alone finally dragged her away from the table.

Cold baths.  They didn't have to wash hair.

Usual bedtime illogic, like Hibiscus jumping out of the bath and standing in the door to the bedroom, and ignoring me several times when I asked her to dry off and put on clothes, but then when Emerson came in she screeched "I don't want you be lookin' at my poochoo-poochoo!  You no be lookin' at my poochoo-poochoo!" as though he were some kind of pervert coming along for the view, and not merely entering his own bedroom.

Can you guess what poochoo-poochoo means?  I hear it about five hundred thousand times a day. Emerson and Hibiscus will just sit there and say "poochoo-poochoo" to each other and giggle hysterically.  Another one came home today, which is "bada-bada" and apparently is an uncouth way to refer to the rear side, behind the poochoo-poochoo, and is best delivered with a name, such as "bada-bada-Abudul-ah."  Then the other child says "ooh, you said bada-bada-Abudul-ah, I'm gonna report you!" and the first child accuses the second child of saying it in that sentence, and so forth.  They are incredibly fun names to say; much better than anything we've managed in English.

And we actually managed to calm down and read books.  Reading books is magical.  And the children told me about something that happened in school.  Esther couldn't read her book properly, even though she is seven years old and thus ought to be able to, so the teacher invited the children to take off her clothes so they could put a diaper on her like a baby.

I was just flabbergasted and horrified, and I told them so.  I think both children had accepted the teacher's logic and instructions at the time, because they are so used to listening to the teacher, but that this time they both felt deep inside like this wasn't very good.  Which is probably why I didn't hear about it until bedtime, because it felt so not-good to them.  Not to mention, Hibiscus is almost seven and can't read a blessed thing either, because no one has taught her how.  Good grief.  I can understand why Hibiscus complains that she doesn't like this teacher to lead her class, she prefers Uncle Derrick.

Luckily we still had prayers and blessings ahead of us to end the evening on a good note.  I even managed to convince Hibiscus to stop talking long enough to actually say the blessings!

I do love my little family.

Student Led Parent Conferences

Friday was the special day for conferences at The American Montessori School.  I was supposed to put them on the bus as usual, and show up around 11... and I was kind of confused about what that meant.  Apparently it meant it was Student Led Parent-Student Conferences -- how's that for a mouthful?

A little background: the school is very small, with only about 22 students from around 3 years old through first grade, in four classes.  Two of the teachers are a married couple who founded the school, and it is run in their house.  The school is only a few years old, and they are trying to expand to a much larger facility, but right now the small size is a major bonus for me as a parent.  I appreciate getting to interact with the teachers, fewer kids is much less overwhelming for my children, and they get lots of individual attention.  However, it's a striking example of Ugandan use of space vs. what American's would "need."  The whole school is run in one small front room, with bookcases that slightly divide it into two spaces that are each maybe 10 or 12 feet square, the larger front porch, a toilet room, bath-and-sink room, and kitchen.  They also use the yard, which has a natural divide of a small hill, and around the size of a typical suburban backyard.  The equipment comprises a handbuilt play structure with two swings and a climbing rope net, a sandbox, some painted tires half-sunk in the dirt, and a rusty old mini trampoline with three of its legs missing.

I didn't manage to get there until 11:30, and I was still almost the first parent to arrive... and the lead teacher wasn't even back with the materials!  He rented tables to make different stations, but the shop decided not to open very promptly on Friday morning, so he wasn't able to pick up the tables until the event was supposedly underway.  We're on Africa-time!  So Buttercup and I sat on the couches in the covered patio area, and watched the children line up and be a train around the grounds, and then play Mr. Lion, Mr. Lion on the lawn.  Buttercup was eager to join in, but I kept her near me, and we enjoyed watching how the children did.  They enjoyed playing the game, but I could see why Emerson is not excited about going to school by watching his tired face.  The teacher probably spent 10 or 15 minutes getting the children properly organized in a line to move, and then once they finally got going she allowed someone to change their mind about wearing shoes, which meant that half the kids suddenly had to run around and throw their shoes in a pile or move the pile.  The children who had lined up in the "train" properly from the beginning (including both of mine) just stood there looking bored, or started to get poked by their neighbors, which of course meant they had to get in arguments.

After Mr Lion, the children came back and all sat around the sandbox with their feet inside, where they sang songs and eventually the teacher passed out water.  Again, there was a lot of time spent scolding the children and reminding them how to sit and whether to spread out or squash together, while half the children sat there vacantly.  Perhaps they do better in smaller groups when all four teachers are working with the children, but this also had the air of a regular routine that everyone expected.

By that time, the tables were finally set up, and Hibiscus was called over to start my conference.  There were only about three parents there, and a couple more drifted in over the course of the day.  As far as I could tell, most students never had a parent come by to listen to their accomplishments.  It is a huge and striking difference from participating in American schools, where parents will miss work to attend special school events, and at the very worst send a grandparent or babysitter.  This is a special and expensive school attended only by the (upper) middle class, and yet it still seems like a steep uphill battle to get parents to actually be involved in any way!  The conference notes for the parents described the different stations, and had lots of scaffolding help for the parents, such as "use words like 'good try!' and 'nice work!'." I will note that one of the parents there was a father, and all of the parents who attended did seem to be trying hard to be positive and support their children, and genuinely proud of them.

There were three stations for each class: literacy, numeracy, and science.  You can see what is important in Ugandan schooling -- parents want to know their kids are mastering the basics!  There was no information whatsoever about how they were doing socially, or if they could follow directions or be creative.  I think the school does care about those things, and I often talk with the teacher at pick-up time about these issues, but it seemed like they didn't expect parents to be interested.  Since they couldn't even get most of the parents to show up, I can understand why!

Each station had a table set up, with some different activities.  For kindergarten literacy, Hibiscus was supposed to write her first and last name for me, then move on and write small and capital letters when I requested them in different orders, then sound out and read short words that were in cards in a box.  She wrote her American first name beautifully, and then started thinking about our family name, which she has only written a few times.  But my children are not really "sit still and do the activity as directed" kind of kids; they have to keep thinking of something more!  In this case, Hibiscus decided she needed to write "Hibiscus." As the next activity will prove, her spelling skills are way way below the level of a strange word like that, which she still pronounces "Kah-biscuits"!  She didn't want me to tell her, and we spent a few minutes stalling while I tried to convince her how beautiful she had already written the words, and maybe we didn't need to spend all day writing a nickname.  Finally we managed to move on.  When I selected words from the box, she proudly and successfully managed to sound out "at" but could not manage "hat."  She made all the sounds correctly, but struggled to blend them together.  When I compared it to the "at" she had just finished, that confused her; apparently they don't do much rhyming.  Eventually we moved on to writing letters.  At this activity she shone, and her handwriting has become very neat and nicely small.  I do not fail to forget that she has only had this name for a couple of months, and that he is only learning to speak English, let alone write it.

We moved on to numeracy.  She was supposed to point to numbers on a chart when I said a number, between 1 and 100.  She could manage 1-20 fine, but she still hasn't figured out that there is a system to the rest of them, and just counted from "1" to find whatever I named.  Then she was supposed to put marbles (called "glass balls") in my hand to demonstrate her understanding of number values, and she did a great job at this, although sometimes she rushed and slipped an extra ball in!  Then the children are working at addition by going backwards, when they solve a sentence like "6= __+___."  I think this is a great idea for really learning about how numbers fits together, and Hibiscus did a good job when we used the marbles.  She enjoyed making one column full of 4's, by always having a 4 be the second half of her number sentence.

The science table was simply a pile of their drawings, and Hibiscus was supposed to explain her drawing to me.  It sounds like they do a good job of exploratory, hands-on science, although I never would have deduced it by simply listening to Hibiscus's wandering explanation about zebras and apple trees!

And that was Hibiscus's conference!  I gave her praise and kisses, and she glowed.

I had tried to let Buttercup run around, but "around" became the operative word, as she tried to get into everything and pull all the displays down.  Writing with pencils kept her happy for a little while, but then she was needing too much supervision, and I decided to wrap her on my back again.  The older children get very little focused one-on-one parental attention at this point, and I really wanted to treat this like their own special day. So Buttercup went up, and bounced up and down and sang and grabbed everything within reach, and hit me in the head with books, and when I sat on the couch she got her legs under her and jumped around, which totally ruined the wrap job, but still kept herphysically  contained.  There was plenty for her to watch, and I could pretend to almost ignore her, enough at least for the conference-giver to feel listened to!

Then Hibiscus went back into the kitchen, where I guess they were singing songs, and Emerson came out for his conference.  Emerson notes seriously that he is "in two classes," since he goes to first grade for reading.  So we started with reading, and the first activity was to take full sentences of dictation.  The Montessorians maybe have eliminated most of the "copy work" that defines most Ugandan schools, but they still can't seem to get their minds off the stilted learning-to-read vocabulary, and the sentences were full of boys and girls with boxes and balls and trees -- none of which are very logical early phonics words!  However, I was amazed how excited Emerson was to be taking dictation, and how neatly and competently he wrote.  Fine motor and writing skills have always been his great weakness, and his whole life his writing/drawing skills have lagged far behind his comprehension -- until now, apparently!

He was also supposed to read three pages of a book for me.  Emerson is always worried about failure, and would rather not try than attempt something he doesn't feel confident about, so he sorted through the pile of books anxiously, looking for something he already "knew."  Then he read me a whole story.  Emerson has become an amazing reader in the last few weeks!  He reads through many of the children's books we have around, and starts in reading when he wants to know something.  Yesterday he read the entire "Madeline" compilation to Hibiscus -- all six books in a row!  So I was not surprised to hear him read, but it was nice to be able to sit next to him and really concentrate on what he was doing.  Poor kids, we don't get much concentration lately!

At the math table, Emerson breezed through the first activities, so for the addition sentences I added a digit and made the 7 into a 17.  He was fascinated figuring out how to create the bigger numbers, using our mutual fingers.  Then he told me to change the other numbers, too, to make the game more fun.  I saw the teacher giving us some weird looks; I don't know if he disapproved of me changing the activity or had no idea that Emerson could mentally play with double-digit numbers!  I just see no reason for kids to repeat doing things that are not an interesting challenge for them.

After science, Emerson wanted to keep going, so we went back and did more dictation, and then read a new books.  This time, a younger child was interested in one particular book, so Emerson decided to read that one although he didn't "know" it yet.  I was proud of how he allowed his desire to hear the story triumph over his fear of making a mistake!


After that, I was told that I could go home and pick the kids up at the regular time, but I didn't much care for the idea of walking home and then turning around to pick them up again!  So I was invited to eat lunch with the children, and that lunch was almost ready.... which probably involved sitting around very hungrily for half an hour or so!  But the children were obviously very excited and honored to have me eat with them.

Emerson became very distressed, because some of the parents were carrying bags with presents to congratulate their children, and I had not brought any presents.  Something later at home was not acceptable!  So on the way out, we stopped at a nearby little grocery stand, and I got each child a little treat.  They were talking about lollipops, but then Hibiscus wanted a chocolate coin instead, and I was on the verge of getting Buttercup a lollipop before I realized what a terrible idea a lollipop on my back would be! So she got some smartie-like things that needed to be eaten all at once and had no smearing potential whatsoever!  Of course, Emerson's lollipop was going strong long after the girls had finished their treats, and I could see the wheels turning in Hibiscus's head as she contemplated short-term vs long-term treat value!

Contemplating long-term (or rather, something besides immediate) value is really one of the skills I want Hibiscus to be working on, and I am not really that worried about math and blending letters and things.  I want her to learn to not leave her sweater out on the grass and scuff up her shoes, so they are not ruined for later.  So I'm glad that the teachers say things like "she still needs some more positive support in this area, " which is more pleasant than what *I* can manage when she ruins her things!  And I am pleased to arrive after school and see Hibiscus very focused on learning to ride a bike, and Emerson in the sandbox busily making plans with a couple of other boys, making positive friendships.

But I am proud of the skills that they are learning too, and I was proud of how happy they were to show them off to me!

Fritz

Fritz

We have a book of Jan Brett's, "Fritz and the Beautiful Horses."  I find it beautifully illustrated and the words have a nice flow, but pretty much lacking in logic.  The citizens only let the most beautiful horses inside their city; Fritz is a fuzzy little pony but he is "gentle, sure-footed, and always willing to work;" Fritz eventually rescues the stranded children of the city when the beautiful but vain and high-spirited horses won't step in; Fritz is allowed in the city and all the children love him.  I think the lesson is supposed to be that there are more important things than beauty.

Hibiscus has been loving this book lately, but I think she has the lesson about backwards.  She praises and admires all the horses in their amazing Jan-Brett-y decorations and fancy saddles and clothes and braided manes and tails, and then she gets to the "silly horse" that she "no likes" and he "is dirty" and she is "going to 'eet 'eem" (hit him).  She continues to make fun of Fritz and praise the beautiful horses all through his brave and kind rescue scene.  However, on the last page he also gets a beautiful blanket, and then she likes him again.

I have tried to discuss with her that Fritz is nice ("no, dese ones nice, Fritz not nice") or that he's beautiful inside ("he not for beautiful, dese ones for beautiful") or that Fritz is kind ("him for diiiiir-ty") or any other combination of words that I can think of, but the message is clear: being good is all about having the best clothes.

A Typical Day

A Typical Day

We don't have a very strong pattern to our days, so there is a lot of variation, but this is generally how things might go.  The rhythm of the day is very different from an American day, so it might be interesting.

The sun starts to brighten at 6:40, and I am generally awake somewhere within an hour of that time.  I rarely set my alarm, which is pleasant!  Emerson sleeps for a while yet, so this gives me some quiet time, which is a wonderful treat.  I usually eat my breakfast and enjoy a calm cup of tea or two, and read or write.  When I wake up I turn on the hot-water heater, and it takes an hour or so to get ready for a shower.

For breakfast, we usually have peanut butter and jelly toast; occasionally the neighbors have given us chapatis or I make pancakes.  The bread is the white fluffy packaged kind, like I would never touch back home -- the peanut butter is to try and add some nutritional value!  But there are not any other good options, so I figure white bread for a few months won't kill us.  There is a variety of porridges available, from all different grains, but the Africans like them all ground up so the porridge is totally smooth -- that is, slimy and mushy.  I made it once, and Emerson wouldn't touch it, and I could barely get it down myself.  There is cold cereal in the grocery stores, but it is exorbitantly expensive (and there is no ordinary milk anyways).  I was excited when I found a box of rolled oats, for making regular oatmeal, at one of the big groceries.  But I haven't even made it yet, because after buying it I got to thinking about the price per serving -- especially since at home oatmeal is one of the cheapest meals -- and now I feel like I ought to save it for a special occasion!  However, the tea is all local Ugandan tea, and very black and flavorful, and just wonderful to drink.  The sugar is a coarse sugar, ground from local sugar cane, and it has a pleasant, subtle taste; not like regular white sugar, which is nothing but sweet.

When Emerson is up, I try to drag him through his morning routine.  I take a shower every day, and tell Emerson to bathe every other day.  I probably should make him do it daily, but it isn't worth the fuss!  Our shower has a lower nozzle that is a sprayer on a long hose, and he enjoyed showering with that, but it is currently broken.  So now he bathes like the Ugandan children, in a bucket, and I pour cups of water over him.  Unfortunately for him, his hair is much more complicated than the local children's!

Sometimes we have somewhere to go, and we go there.  When we have to be somewhere relatively early, I get everything done before I wake Emerson, and then with me hovering over him the whole time I can get him out the door in half an hour.

More often, after showering we do some household chores.  It is a very small house, so sometimes that takes only a few minutes.  Other times, I realize the little things have piled up and we spend a while.  It is a constant battle with the ants.  For the first while, I tried to keep clean enough that they wouldn't have reason to get in, and I swept and mopped after every meal and cleaned every speck I could see in the kitchen and took the trash out at night.  They still constantly came in.  I sighed and gave in to the African method, which is spraying them with poison whenever I see a large bunch of them.  This works much better, but I still find them almost every day.  Now they are in the kitchen where I don't want to spray, so perhaps I had better look for ant poison today. 

We have a small sink and small number of dishes, which I wash and lay out on a towel (no dishdrainer).  Our small kitchen counter is mostly taken up with bananas and keys and bottles of water so I hardly have anywhere to actually cook!  For drinking water, the easiest thing is to boil it in the electric kettle, and then pour it into large re-purposed plastic jugs.  I have to be careful to not pour it in too hot, or the jug warps, so over the course of the day I gradually keep adding water to a big jug.  The next day, we drink that jug and make a new one.

For laundry, we have a washing machine (in the kitchen, obviously!) and then hang the clothes out on the side of our building.  If I hang them out in the morning, when the sunshine hits it and the wind is blowing, the clothes are dry in an hour or so.  It is a very rough washer, though, and already tore up one of my shirts with decoration, so I have to hand-wash anything remotely delicate.  Everything gets dirty very fast here -- there is no wearing clothes twice, and even the towels get visible orange dirt on them every few days.

When I do a proper cleaning, it takes about an hour and a half to clean the whole apartment from top to toe, including bathroom and kitchen and dusting and everything!  This is quite a treat, since that amount of cleaning at home barely even looks like I've started working.  So I am enjoying our small-house living!

In the later morning, we are apt to go out and do a little shopping and go up to the orphanage for an hour or so.  I usually get things at the supermarket as we pass on the way home, but sometimes we make a special trip to the fruit and vegetable stands.  If we go to the bigger supermarket, that is a specific trip because it is in a different direction.

Some times we spend the whole morning at home because we are waiting for someone to come along and fix something, or they come in and get started and then leave to get a tool and come back again.  That might be the case today, because I just heard that the plumber is coming to fix the shower.  "Is coming" is a very general term here!

Many Ugandans go inside or nap during the afternoon, from about 1 to 4 or 5.  The orphanage children are eating, bathing, and napping, so we cannot go there during that time.  It is the hottest part of the day, so if we are around the Gaba area I aim to have us home and quiet during that time as well.  If you go to the market, most of the women will be laying down and napping in their stalls!  But if we are going out on a longer trip, shops still remain open, so it is still possible to do things during this "quiet time" of day.

If we have been out in the morning and come back home, we usually eat a lunch of leftovers.  We have no microwave, so I have to turn something into a soup to heat it in a saucepan.  Our stove has four gas burners, and the only adjustments to make are "high," "very high," and "burns food immediately."  

If we go to downtown Kampala, it is best to leave in the morning.  It takes about an hour to take the minibus into town, and then once we are there we mostly walk everywhere we need to go.  This can take a while, but first of all, I don't want to take the boda-bodas (motorcycles) that are the common transport, and I like to see everything as I go by, and furthermore walking is the only exercise around here so I figure we might as well get some good walking in.  I am finally starting to get a sense of where things are in downtown, and we are starting to go more or less directly to where we need to end up.  I re-drew the guidebook maps in my own little notebook, which helped me learn the geography, but more importantly I feel more comfortable about stopping and checking the map when it does not look like a map from the outside.  

If we are out for the day, we have lunch out.  If we are just in Kampala, I try and find a reasonable place.  I have gotten a couple local meals this way.  If we have gone some place particular, the on-site restaurant usually serves "fast food," which is a fried meat and french fries.

The late afternoon, from 5-7 or so, is the best time of day to be out.  It is still hot, but people are out and around, shops and markets are open, and it is generally a lively time of day.  We often visit the orphanage during that time, too, and since Hibiscus is in school in the morning that is our chance to see her.  That is why our nights have been getting later and later!  We have often been getting in around 7; it gets dark precisely at 7:10.  In the 7:00 hour, people are still out and about all over, so I still feel safe walking through our village area, although I don't particularly want to be on the quieter road from the orphanage and I really don't want to be in Kampala itself.  

So around 7 I make dinner, or we go up to the neighbors' for dinner.  I enjoy the company, but then tend to eat later and slower.  We start bedtime routine around 8:45 or 9, and I just get ready at the same time as Emerson.  We get into our bed, put on the fan, and tuck in the mosquito netting in all around.  After I read to Emerson, I usually read for a few minutes myself, and then we go to sleep.  The mattresses are all made of foam, which is not nearly as comfortable as a spring mattress at home, and I usually wake with different small night sounds.  A couple of times there have been big parties down in the village or on the beach, and the sound carries easily up here, but usually it is pretty quiet.  We can look down to the lake from the upper apartments in the building, and there are trees all around and birds calling from the trees.  It is a very pleasant setting.

Visits with the children

Visits with the Children

We have been visiting the orphanage almost every day, and sometimes in the morning and afternoon.  I think we are getting to know most of the children and they are getting to know us, and our visits there are feeling a little less chaotic.  A little!  If I had ever thought it would be a good idea to have 15 children of my own, let alone with about a five year span between them, spending time with these children will have disabused me of that notion.  I am so aware of my own inadequacy to give everyone the basic acknowledgement and affection that they require.

There are about 14 or 15 children who are usually clustered around me.  In the mornings, Hibiscus and Hosta are at school, and sometimes some of the younger children are distracted or inside with the nannies.  There are also about five more older babies or very young toddlers, who sometimes are out with us or nearby, but aren't so active and insistent.  When I come in the gate, if the children are out several of them come running up and grab me and cry "mommy!"  They are eager first of all for hugs and greetings, and then they are curious what I have brought with me.  Usually I bring a few books and one activity.  I try to balance bringing the novel and the familiar, and not so much that it gets overwhelming or I lose track of it.  I wish I could leave some toys and books with them, but things get ruined.  They love looking at the books so much, once I left a few sturdy little board books when we were coming back in the afternoon -- and already one was ripped to pieces and destroyed.

They are starting to understand my patterns.  For instance, if I'm playing some game with each child in turn, their tendency is to all crowd around and push each other out of the way and demand their own turn, and as soon as they finish they are pushing and yelling for another chance.  They are starting to understand that I give each child a turn before starting over, and I've started to put my hand on the head of the next several children to indicate how the "line" stands, so they know they've been heard.  The older children, especially, are understanding this system, and after I acknowledge them they are more content to stand quietly to the side, knowing that they will get their turn.  Some of them are also very "helpful" insofar that they will grab away the children who have already had their turn and so are not in line any more, or slap at them if they try and get close.  Slapping and yelling and the occasional kick seems to be the way that the older children keep the younger ones in check, and it is constant.  

Anything that I bring to play with or look at totally engages the whole group of children, in their various and lively ways.  They are so eager to see anything new and figure out any challenge -- which is how things get ruined, when their own experiments turn towards the ripping and chewing side.  

Sometimes when we arrive before the nap time is over, one of the nannies will go and bring out out Hibiscus and Buttercup for us (other times no one is around whatsoever, and we just have to leave).  The other day I had started a game of Memory with Hibiscus and Emerson.  They both understood the game and got the pairs quickly, so I got out a larger group of cards, but at that time the wind was picking up and blowing away all the cards, so we moved our game inside.  The other children were just getting up, and two or three more joined our game.  The rest of them were soon crowded all around, watching attentively.  They actually did a very good job of watching the players and not interfering (of course, because some of the older children enforced the peace!).  The funny thing was that a couple of the new players had no idea what the game was.  They love taking turns -- or rather, they love getting their turn -- so they were very eager to play, but turned over cards at random, until someone slapped them for turning over too many cards.  Tulip is an older boy with a gentle temperment, and he kept turning over two random cards, putting them back, and giving me an angelic smile.  After that game finished, all the children wanted to play.  I hoped that I could set up two games, and leave the original bunch of children -- including Emerson and Hibiscus, who understood what was going on -- in the first circle and start a new game with several more children, but this was overly optimistic of me.  First of all, Hibiscus mostly wanted to be close to me and prevent anyone else from being close to me, so she prowled around between games and demanded things go her way.  Emerson, on the other hand, decided to play the game in a different way, which he explained in his cheerful monologue, of course totally confusing the children who could have imitated what they had seen but had no idea what he was talking about.  He was left with his one special friend, Daffodil, and pretty soon they ran off outside anyways.  

Meanwhile, I was trying to make something joyful for a group of children who included rule-enforcing early elementary schoolers, as well as preschoolers who just wanted a turn to touch the lovely cards.  Most of the older ones quickly picked up the idea that you were trying to turn over two cards and make a pair.  What was a great deal more confusing was the idea that you went in a circle and everyone got a turn.  As soon as someone saw a pair, they wanted to go immediately and pick it up.  Luckily for these greedy pair-getters, half the time the interim children were the ones who had no idea about the pairs and happily turned the one or two cards closest to them over, and then back again, so the first child got the pair anyways.  The most complicated rule was whether, when you get a pair, then your turn continues until you miss a pair, or whether everyone gets one chance to turn over cards, period.  I had been playing with the former rule with the small group, but with the confusion over basic turns the game had turned into everyone getting one turn, period.  Except for one child who had clearly observed that he ought to get as many turns as he could keep getting pairs, and firmly insisted on it.  Then there was Hibiscus, who know how to play perfectly well, but had gotten grumpy about the chaos (and less attention from me) so she kept grabbing cards out of turn, trying to prevent other people from turning over cards, and wandering away when it was her turn.  For a while she took an entire row of cards for her own, and brooded over them intently before putting them back.  Despite all this, the game went on, and the children were having fun more often than they weren't.

Several times I have brought a set of small colored stacking cups.    This morning the group of children sat around me playing with them for well over an hour.  They are a very simple toy but there is quite a bit that one can do with them: I started today by handing them out when a child asked for a color, and then letting them play with their group, but demonstrating myself several different things to do.  For the younger ones, it is quite a challenge just to stack the little cups into towers, and they were mostly content to stack a few until they fell over, and then re-do it.  Some of the little ones held them in their hands and experimented with how they slid together and apart in their fingers.  Some of the older ones started sorting them by color or lining them up other ways.  Mostly, they understood that the blocks that they had were their own to play with, and were defensive about anyone else getting them but willing to hand spilled ones back to the correct child.  Except for Dandelion.  Most of the older children ended up with  lot of blocks and the younger ones had a few, which suited the games they were trying to play very well, but Dandelion had amassed a huge pile.  I'm not even sure he had figured out what to do with them, but he had the strong idea that it was better to GET them.  I kept hearing squalls when he grabbed a handful from the nearest little child, or then yells from Dandelion when one of the other children tried to actually play with his blocks.  On the other hand, Tulip showed the first generosity that I have seen among the children.  Like the other older children, he had a large stache, and I repeatedly saw him giving a few blocks to little ones whose blocks had mysteriously vanished.  

And now, it is 5 o'clock.  The children will be up from their afternoon rest and we should head back up there to see what kind of joyful chaos awaits us!