Friday, July 27, 2007

Doing Jewish in Uganda

Greetings from the brand new "Shalom Internet Cafe" in Nabugoye, Uganda.
Shabbat is approaching and with it, the sound of chickens being shechted (slaughterd in accordance with Jewish law) behind me.
This will be the second shabbat that we are with the Abayudaya and the site of Jews in rural Uganda is getting a little less strange.

For the past week, we've been hanging out here, (sleeping in our tent which is set up next to the synagogue)and being helpful in any way that we can.
We've managed to keep pretty busy so far.
The 3 of us taught a Hebrew class in the Haddasah Primary School (which was a little different than Associated Hebrew School where I went).
Since then I've been teaching evening math tutorials for the high school students (many of whom sleep in the classroom). Jon is teaching English at night and Hillary has found a student who she has been privately tutoring in Hebrew.
On Wednesdat we helped out at an HIV-AIDS testing clinic in a neighbouring village.

Most of my time in the past couple of days has been to help with this new internet cafe which will hopefully be open to the public on Sunday. I don't have a lot of technical expertise in this field, but they're pretty desperate for people.
Mostly I've been setting up excel spreadsheets and trying to develop the business plan (2 things that I'm decent at).

The cafe has 6 brand new computers that were donated by an organization in the States. The "cafe" is more of a small room with a concrete floor and lots of dust and flies. I really hope that it will be a successful initiative. I think that as of Sunday, I'll be the technical support guy until I leave.
After that, I don't really know what going to happen.

I still have lots more to say about the Abayudaya community, but I should have more time for that later.
Unfortunately, I have to go now because I promised that I would hold the chickens' feet during the schechting!

Shabbat Shalom

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