taxi strike and nursery rhymes

Yesterday, I worked in the morning, but then I blew off work had some things to do in the afternoon, but there was a taxi (matatu) strike. I got a call from Alex, through a surprising (because we both have MTN, a giant telecom in Uganda) and yet unsurprising (because MTN is a giant telecom in Uganda) amount of static, saying that I'd have to take a boda to Makindye. The cost of a taxi is 2,000/=, and the cost of a boda is 4,000/=, and while neither are expensive, boda rides can add up, and they're more dangerous. But danger being relative, when I got off the boda, to my right just down the street were about 15-20 men banging on the sides of the empty and unmoving taxi, and by that time it was around 1pm, so I don't doubt they were not only angry, but some of them were probably also drunk. Makindye is a suburb south of Kampala, and it has a little bit of everything, from impoverished slums and crowded orphanages, to lower class Ugandans, up to middle-upper class Ugandans, and all the way up to (relatively upper class) muzungu families. But Ugandans heavily rely on taxis, so a day without transport means a day without work, and a day without work can mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people, so when taxis go on strike, it is something that is truly felt.

Luckily, taking a boda on a day when there is a taxi strike means there was no (traffic) jam. The extremely ambitious plan (for an afternoon in Uganda) was to go and meet a lady --- who knows Sapheen, who is Ramadan's mother, who is Alex's friend, who is my friend --- who works at a bead factory. When I arrived I found Alex, Gerald, and Jamil as I usually do, Alex listening to music on my iPod (and singing or dancing, often both), Jamil scrawling in a notebook, often writing a letter or drafting a document to raise money for the Makindye Ultimate Frisbee Club or in hopes of starting a business, and Gerald, today looking on as Jamil wrote, but often aligning himself with one or the other according to his mood. I was greeted by being enveloped in a hug from Alex, continuing to dance and persisting to sway me with him before he let go to tell me that because of the strike, the woman at the bead factory might not be there, and the bead factory might be closed. I felt stupid for not connecting the dots (no taxi, no factory, no beads), but that being just 1 of 3 things planned for the afternoon, I told Alex's mom for months, who runs a kindergarten, nursery school, & day care, that I would visit her class and teach the students some new songs, we headed over to Alex's house. I had thought the night before about what to teach such a developmentally broad range of kids (ages 1-5), but capacity building is such a core fundamental at IDI, and in Uganda as a developing country, that I didn't worry too much as some of the older students that learned more quickly could teach the others and the younger ones. It made me think of summer camps songs I used to sing, as a microscopic sting of sadness swept through my consciousness that I don't really remember any songs that I used to sing back when I went to nursery school. (Note to self) I remember more the songs that my parents used to sing and teach to me, and even more the ones that my grandparents used to also sing to me, like the one involving my feet, and going toe by toe (technically called fingerplay by the experts) singing: "This little piggy went to the market, this little piggy stayed home, this little piggy had roast beef (you know you've been in Uganda for too long if, when you fail to remember the words roast beef, you substitute gold teeth), this little piggy had none, and this (the pinky toe) little piggy went wee wee all the way home." I didn't want to deal with feet though, so I settled on 3 songs: I'm a Little Teapot, Johnny Whoops, and The Princess Pat, the last song of which I could only definitely remember the first 2 verses, which equals a total of 4 verses, but the first 2 songs proved to be more than enough material, and so that was my injection for the day, steeping some Ugandan children in some American culture with nursery rhymes!

[insert video here]