WHERE THE HECK DID SUMMER GO!

I cannot believe tomorrow is my last full day in Columbia, Missouri as a resident! Life is going at a million miles a minute and this summer has gone by even faster! Today was the first time all summer that I got a chance to catch up with some of my grad school buddies and I cannot believe I am leaving them (Jodi, Chu-Chun I miss you already).

So this was the craziest summer, it started off with Nic and I graduating the same weekend, she from undergrad and me from my Masters. I skipped my graduation and went to hers and I am so glad I did, it was so much fun. After this weekend, the fun was only beginning! I did not spend one weekend in Columbia because there was always something I had to do.

June was the engagement party at Mattitos Tex Mex Café, which I love me some Bob Armstrong Dip! I had a blast, got to see my Dallas friends and my daddy gave the sweetest speech. (Although at the wedding, he will have a time limit :) Then the next weekend was the BIG move where I moved majority of my big furniture to Kansas City, my new home : ) Then the weekend after that was Jerod going away party and Melissa’s (Jerod sister) 30th surprise birthday party. My parents were in town for the parties and then it was nice to have father’s day with both father’s there, so we hosted it at our house and cooked up a big breakfast. Then we celebrated FOUR June birthdays in the family and Jerod got his wisdom teeth taken out. The next weekend Jerod and I left for our last trip before his deployment to Disney Land! It was so awesome and so much fun, but I was so mad because our camera DIED while riding “it’s a small world.” We also got a chance to go to Magic Mountain IT WAS AWESOME, and for some reason it was dead that day, so we got to ride 13 roller coasters. However, I realized that I am getting old and scared because instead of thinking this is going to be awesome, I would pray that God does not let me die or have a heart attack. And YES some roller coasters have now been retired! Nevertheless, this trip was so much fun and the first time all summer that Jerod and I got a chance to be by ourselves.

When we returned Jerods grandpa was not in the best shape, we got off the plane, drove straight to the nursing home, and spent the night with him, the entire family took shifts staying with him until he passed away. Bop Bop was sick for a very long time and he battled many heart troubles and kindey problems, so when he passed, we all finally knew he was at peace. I never had grandparents that lived in the states, thats why we would spend our summers in London so we could see them once a year, but as we got older it got harder to leave for a summer. So I really cherish other peoples grandparents and the ability to see them whenever they wanted, so I did become very close to Bop. Bop passed away just the way he would have wanted it, it was the one night that the entire family was there visiting. In a way, it was beautiful, him finally being at peace with all the people he loved the most in the room. There was just so much love there that night.

Then for the funeral all of Jerods aunts and uncles came up from Tennessee and they are AMAZING!!! It’s as if they have always been my family and we all knew that, but hadn’t met yet, they are amazing, and you can’t help my Thank God for having such wonderful people around you. Between Jerods family and my family we have enough love to last us a lifetime. And to both Jerod and I there is nothing more important than family, and they are ALWAYS our first priority…no ands, ifs or buts about it.

Then last, the inevitable, Jerod had to leave for what will be a 13-month deployment. I miss him every freakin’ day but this is just one year out of forever, and from what I hear forever is a very long time. You always believe that people come into your life for a purpose, and that other relationships do not work out for a reason, and things are going to happen the way they are supposed. Gods (or whoever is up there) master plan will come to fruition. Well if 13 months is all I have to do to have forever, then its worth it.

OH...and I forgot to mention, Jerod and Piper went SKYDIVING somewhere in July...

I have a ton of pics and I will post them later!

Only can happen to the Omoile’s...OH San Fran

Here’s the deal, I have been really bad this summer with blogging but you have to understand life is moving at a million miles a minute. But I thought this would be an entertaining story for everyone. So last week I got really sick on Wednesday, on Thursday my mom calls me asking me to go to San Francisco with my sister to go apt. hunting. I told her NO because I was deathly ill lying in bed. Then she made me feel guilty because Oni had just gotten his wisdom teeth out, my dad was in Nigeria and she was all alone and she could not do it. So I agreed, so I start looking for tickets to leave on Friday and they were like $1000! I was not even going to let her pay that, I am trying to have a wedding here! I was like Mom that could PAY for more stuff FOR MY WEDDING (selfish right). Anyway, my sister decides that she is going to ask my uncle for passes because he works for American Airlines, which my mom did not want us to do, but we did anyway!

San Fran was amazing, but those “hills” which are really mountains covered in concrete KILLED ME I am so out of SHAPE that I thought I was going to die, I couldn’t move from the waist down, I am sick and tired. At least it jump-starts the wedding workout I guess.

FAST FORWARD to Sunday when we are supposed to be going home, we get to the airport at 11:00 pm because we were going to take the Red Eye flight to Dallas and then I would catch another to KC while my sister stayed in Dallas with the parents. Well we didn’t make the standby list for the 12:20 am flight, but there was one at 6 am, so we decide to get a room at an Inn close to the airport, well by the time we get there at 2 am, I realize that I don’t have my Iphone. Iphone has a CREEPY thing where you can locate anyone on your family plan, so we did that and my phone showed up in a 400-yard radius in the SF airport. So we are like whatever we will go in the morning and find it. We get up (I did not sleep at all because I have a hacking cough, but Nic slept just fine) go to the airport and are searching for this dang phone. The woman at the ticket counter tells us we are confirmed on the 740 am flight to Dallas, but my phone was still locating and we wanted to find it, so we STUPIDLY give up our tickets and say, we will catch the next one.

I give up on the freaking phone, the phone is still locating but I am convinced it has fallen in a crack, we go to the ticket counter as the woman announces that Chicago Airport is having mechanical problems so everyone who was going to Chicago is now re-routed to DALLAS! ARE YOU KIDDING ME! So they tell us there is no way we will get to Dallas today or tomorrow (this is already Monday and I should be at work). We start asking her to fly us anywhere, to St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver and there was nothing. She says we can catch a flight to Santa Ana airport in Orange County. We take it! We get to Santa Ana, and the first thing we do it go to the gate to get put on a flight to Dallas. Dramatically the woman say, “uh-huh no way, no how there is no way you are getting to Dallas today, tomorrow and probably not the next day.” We are like GREAT!! We go out of the gate to the main ticket counter and the woman tells us if we can get to Burbank Airport there is a flight leaving in 2 hours for Dallas. WE RUN to the shuttles and ask how much to Burbank, $90 we take it. Well we are so tired on the hour ride to Burbank that we both pass out in the shuttle, we get to Burbank with 20 minutes to our flight, we rush through security, to the gate and there are tickets waiting for us. Then Nicole goes, where’s my phone? She thought I had it I thought she had it, and we could not leave it because people were calling her to tell her if she got the apartments. The ticket woman looks at us and ask if we are getting on this flight, and with my sister freaking out, I just said, “No.”

We are thinking Santa Ana is a smaller airport there can’t be that many shuttle companies, UMMM there was like 28, so as Nicole starts calling them all. I go upstairs and beg the administrative assistant to call over there because there has to be someone in charge of all the shuttles. Since we BOTH don’t have a phone I have to wait in this office for an hour because they have to call the airport to get a hold of us. We finally find the phone and they tell us we can come and pick it up or pay another $90 for him to bring it back. At this point our life is just comical. Luckily, Nicole’s friend that was keeping her car lived in Pasadena nearby the Burbank airport, so we take another shuttle to her house to get her car and then drive back to Santa Ana airport, where we just came from. So we get there, go to chipotle, back to Pasadena and then we take another shuttle to LAX, we figure it was the last airport we could try and there is a flight every 45 minutes to Dallas. We have not showered since Saturday, we are tired and just feeling like whatever at this point. We get to LAX, they tell us we wont be able to get on til 6 am, so we decide to sleep at the gate. But It just so happed there was a 12:50 am flight to Dallas, and we finally GOT ON! Then I flew back to Missouri got in my car drove 2 hours to Columbia, took my first shower in 3 days and had to go to work….It was a wonderful trip.

And yes, Nic found an apartment, I will never fly stand by again, just what my mom wanted.

My Sister Does Amazing Things

Friends, Families, and Supporters:

My name is Nicolette Omoile. I am a graduate of the University of Southern California ('09), and Founder and former President of a student-run organization at USC, RAYSE (The Rise of African Youth through Self Empowerment). I would personally like to thank you for your support of RAYSE, and give details about the major success of the 1st USC co-sponsored Alternative Summer Break to Africa, ASB: Uganda.
A year ago, a good friend and I were discussing how amazing it would be if we could get USC to take more interest in African affairs, and get USC students interested in making an impact in Africa. It was a crazy idea that my good friend, Divinity Barkley (USC ’08) and I were discussing, but we both were determined to see it through.

Divinity had a head start, as she had courageously defied the naysayers, turning down a lucrative job offer to venture off to Kampala, Uganda to found a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering women and youth in East Africa. I had the task of conveying this crazy idea—to take USC students to Africa to support this and other grass-root non-profit organizations—to the administrators and students of USC, hoping (or praying) that someone would take notice of me. After a few bumps in the road, R.A.Y.S.E. (The Rise of African Youth through Self Empowerment) was ready to take USC by storm and make a visible difference in the lives of African youth.

Overcoming unforeseen obstacles, a name change, a horrible fundraising economy, terrified parents and even more terrified USC administrators, On May 26, 2009 nine USC students, ranging from freshman to grad students, showed up at the steps of the Amagezi Gemaanyi (“Knowledge is Power”) Youth Association (AGYA – pronounced A-Guy-Ah) in Kampala, Uganda, ready to embark on the journey of a lifetime.

The students came prepared to teach new curriculum that would be co-administered with one of several AGYA Youth Leaders. These youth leaders are amazing young adults (age 17 – 20), that actually lead all classes and run the organization. Our classes ranged from dance to technology, film editing to language and culture. Each day, the two groups interacted beautifully learning about one another and perhaps most importantly, themselves.

I believe we succeeded in our goal of opening the lines of communication between youth in Africa and USC students. For example, our initial unconscious complaints about the unchanging food menu turned into a critical discussion on stereotypes of Americans and Ugandans. And our tardiness to Luganda language class provoked a discussion on the compulsory English requirements in Ugandan schools, where children are unable and at times disciplined for speaking their mother tongue in class. It put into perspective the same immigration “issues” exacerbated by the American media, that our fellow American immigrant communities encounter daily.

And as the Ugandan children lovingly called their new white friends “Mzungu,” our USC students experienced what it means to be a minority in that culture--the discomfort of always being noticed and the expectation that you are always a certain way (in this case…rich.) But while these discomforts were annoying, they were trivialized by the positive impact our presence had on the local community, the local schools we worked with, and at AGYA. In fact, the administrators at one of the schools (Good Hope) where we taught our lessons, in awe of the impact the creative lessons were having on their students, decided to implement art into their curriculum for years to come.

I can with 100% certainty say, that all of the people who participated in this trip were positively affected. We discovered that the fears and unconscious stereotypes of our parents, our teachers, and ourselves – of instantly contracting yellow fever, malaria, stomach worms, of violence, corrupt dictators, helpless children with flies on their eyes – were soon quelled by the reality of a strong African people, largely victimized by a sensationalizing media that fails to recognize that these people – are people. When we were told the devastating news that one of the youth leader’s brothers had been murdered, and saw that he came to AGYA for comfort and love – we knew that our mission and our calling was higher than the naysayers and those who said we were going to “save” children. Our mission became about opening our hearts to understand the commonality of humanity. We realized how blessed we were to be born in our situation, with unlimited resources and support systems all around.
It was an easy decision then for the USC participants to open their hearts (and wallets) to donate around $1400, the amount AGYA needed to secure a larger property that would allow the organization to continue growing and helping the surrounding community.

June 19, 2009 was the official last day of the 1st USC Alternative Summer break trip to Africa. It was full of meaningful words, changed hearts, and a celebration on the part of the leaders in charge. Even with a trip to the Nile and various side adventures, everyone was returning home happy and healthy. Five students were so moved by the experience, that three continued for two more weeks to Kenya and Rwanda, and two others have gone to Dakar, Senegal to do an internship that ends in August.

As I pass the torch on to the next executive board headed by Co-Presidents, Jillian Chou and Marianna Singwi-Ferrono, it is my hope that RAYSE continues to dispel stereotypes of the African continent and its people. Our organization is dedicated to educating, empowering, and enriching the lives of women and children in Uganda, and eventually all of Africa. We are committed to providing a safe, supportive, sustainable learning environment where youth in Africa (initially Uganda) can develop the leadership skills needed to create a new generation of leaders in Africa. We ask for your continued support of our mission. It is our hope that with the additional continued support of the USC Volunteer Center and the USC Africa Fund, RAYSE will continue making an impact on the USC Family and youth of Africa.

Most importantly, we would like to give special thanks to the people and organizations that made this trip possible: to the parents of our participants, the Amagezi Gemaanyi Youth Association (AGYA), The USC Volunteer Center (Dir. Melissa Gaeke), the USC Health Center – Travel Clinic, and USC Health Insurance.

We are currently working on a website, but feel free to email our new account – uscrayse@gmail.com (formerly bavubuka@usc.edu) for any questions, comments, or concerns and for ways to get involved!
Also check out the Amagezi Gemaanyi Youth Association’s website at http://www.amagezigemaanyi.blogspot.com/ for more information, or contact the organization via email - amagezigemaanyi@gmail.com for ways to make a tax-deductible donation, or your own personal trip to Uganda!

Thanks for your blessings and good wishes. We look forward to speaking with you in the future!

Best,

Nicolette OmoileFounder, RAYSE (The Rise of African Youth through Self Empowerment)

-- "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."-- Albert Einstein