AIDS Day pictures

My new favorite picture ever.

marching to Buwenge

the PA truck and some honorary marchers

Kagoma Primary rocks the mic

Buweera Primary, I think? Mutai wears yellow too.

TASO drama

the shorter Father entertains the kids

Our first event!

Friday, April 18^th:
Jason’s birthday!

Today was a bit stressful, which isn’t surprising considering the massive event we’re throwing tomorrow. Lucy and I had to go in to the office to register online with our embassies in the morning, so I met with the Fathers about cooking arrangements and Teddy about borrowing school plates and saucepans before we split. We had to wait quite a while for a matatu.

We walked from town to the office, but the internet cable had been cut in half, so the embassy registration was off. There was supposed to be someone coming in to fix it at 11, which meant it may or may not happen today. I picked up my passport with plans to register at the internet café. Upon leaving the office, Lucy and I ran into other volunteers and were asked a question that made it seem like there is more gossip floating around about our placement, which has been a major problem for us at home. That was upsetting, although hopefully not a big deal.

We used the internet briefly (it was slow, so I’ll register another time), ate lunch, and tried to figure out what to do about the certificates I’d intended to print for the schools participating in the AIDS day tomorrow. They have to be on nice paper, and there were too many decisions to be made… white paper? Colored paper? Color printing? Black and white printing? Cardstock? Normal paper? We finally decided which paper to buy, but by that time the power had gone out in Jinja so there was no way to print anything. While we were in the stationery shop, we were drawn outside by lots of shouting and saw a man getting walked down the street with his pants halfway down. Another mob justice incident in the making? Who knows.

At the taxi park, the matatu slated for Buwenge was a complete rust-bucket. We opted to sit in an empty one and wait for it to fill up instead. It did fill eventually, but the driver kept driving to different spots in the taxi park and getting out an in instead of actually leaving. He finally did make some headway toward the gate, where a matatu had broken down directly in the single-lane exit. We waited for the people in the van to get out and push it out of the way.

We got home fine and the conductor didn’t give us a massively inflated fare, which was a bonus, but we hit a little goat on the way which made me sad.

Sometimes I want to say, Africa, COME ON.

We arrived home at the same time Peter got back from wherever-he’s-been-for-the-last-three-days, and it was crunch time. Peter and I tried (unsuccessfully) to borrow plates from the sub-county and from St. Gonzaga, then Peter and Wilber left for Buwenge to sort out the PA system, truck, and buy the food. Lucy and I rounded up some school kids to clean out the hall, then helped Dennis make banners for the march. The cook, plates, chairs, sodas and firewood need to happen in the morning. Here we go.

Sunday, April 20^th:
AIDS day was a success!

Ugandan events seem to be an odd mix of things totally falling through and magically coming together at the same time. This was no exception. Despite half of our schools not showing up and nearly not having a chief guest, it all seemed to work out and was well-received by the community.

We were all up by seven to begin preparations. There were chairs to be moved, a truck to track down, sodas and meat to buy, programs to print, and speaking arrangements to be made. The first schools to show up (right on time!) for the march were Mutai and Buweera, which are our two furthest schools. When a series of phone calls confirmed that the other outreach schools weren’t coming, we rounded up a bunch of kids from Kagoma and St. Gonzaga (which are within sight of our house) and lined them up to march. Peter and Wilber had already turned up on the field with the PA system in the bed of a pickup.

One particularly obnoxious teacher from St. Gonzaga complained that we didn’t have a policeman with us, so there was a long delay as Peter tried to round up an officer from the police headquarters. We never did find one but we managed to start marching anyway about an hour and a half after we had told the kids to show up. Off we went.

The truck played some lively youth-affirming pop tunes while Wilber prattled on in Lusoga over the mic, hopefully saying things had something to do with HIV/AIDS and young people. We marched up the paved road to Buwenge, through town, and then back down to the parish. It was a little hot, but thankfully not raining. The march lasted about an hour I think, but I was too busy running up and down the line trying to keep kids off the road and holding up their banners to notice the time really.

By the time we got back, the kids were in a good mood but complaining that they were tired and hungry. “There will be food!” I assured them.

After some waiting around while the PA system and generator were moved from the truck to inside, the kids, teachers, and invited guests assembled in the church hall to begin the festivities. Students led the national anthem and an opening prayer, and our LCI chairperson gave a brief, smiling welcome. Then it was on to the presentations prepared by the kids. This part was amazing! There was singing, dancing, skits, poetry, drumming, and speeches. I have no idea how the school kids pulled it all together so quickly and so well, but it was really adorable and informative too. Kagoma had the most students present and the effect of 80 or so primary kids singing their hearts out and dancing to some very enthusiastic drummers (the cheeky boys) was just… awesome. It was one of those “only in Africa” moments.

When the students finished up, we had a pleasant, if somewhat long, address by the in-charge at our health center about the AIDS-related services they provide. Then the TASO drama group got onstage and worked their magic. There was a long, extremely well-received drama (in Lusoga) that dealt with a few scenarios of HIV transmission (I think). They concluded with a song, and managed to captivate several hundred hot and hungry school kids, which is pretty impressive. Finally, Teddy thanked everyone for coming and emphasized the importance of the subject matter, and introduced our chief guest. Simon, the project coordinator from TASO, agreed to be our chief guest a week or so ago, but had forgotten the date of the event until Dennis called him during the ceremony. He made it in time and gave an excellent speech. He spoke about growing up right there at Kagoma Primary and covered a lot of material and statistics having to do with AIDS in a very reasonable time. He had to split immediately afterwards but I’m so glad he made it – I was really impressed with his talk.

Then it was finally lunchtime, which meant the invited guests got rice, meat, cabbage, potatoes and soda, the kids got fried rice, and the volunteers ran around a lot trying to get drinks and find bottle openers and make sure everyone got food. Thankfully, a few hundred plastic bowls had turned up from somewhere, so we were able to get the kids fed without a catastrophe. The women cooking did an excellent job and we had enough to go around, but none left over. I’m not quite sure what we would have done if the other four schools had shown up.

So in, the end, everyone was happy (except Mr. Kabi, who was freaking out that we didn’t have the sub-county chief speak, but whatever), Dennis and Peter did a great job introducing everyone, and all the necessary pieces managed to fall together. Georgia and Ian, SPW volunteers from other placements, came for the day and were a big help. We thanked everyone for coming, then Georgia and Lucy rushed off to the rafting campsite while the rest of us got kids to help move chairs, clean up, and return various borrowed items. Peter, Dennis and I came home, debriefed, and collapsed.

It’s hard to know the community impact of something like this; since it has to do with behavior change, we can’t really see any results right away. While we were marching, I was thinking, “Is seeing a bunch of kids with banners really going to convince people to get tested? Or be faithful? Or use condoms?” Who knows. But I do think that acting out a song or writing a poem about HIV brings it home for the kids in a much bigger way than teaching them about it in school can. It was great to hear so many of the topics we cover in our lessons – transmission, symptoms, VCT, prevention, etc. – coming back to us in the performances. It was great to see the kids teaching each other, and getting so many people in the area interested in what was happening.

I felt like we really bonded with the community too, through the planning and the event. So many people expressed their support and gratitude, and we certainly made a lot of connections through the whole thing. I think a lot more people realized who we were and what we’re here to do, and that’s a big step for us.

Now that the term’s finished and the event’s over, we have a couple weeks of slow time ahead of us. At the moment I feel pretty wiped out, but I’m hoping to find some projects to work on while we’re not teaching. I think we’ll start planning some more events for next term – but likely smaller ones!

Tuesday, April 22^nd
Today was the Ugandan Dance4Life Tour Team’s very first school visit, at our own Pilkington College Muguluka. And man, was it a long day.

Dance4Life started in 2004, and it happens in about 30 countries now (mostly in Europe and Africa). It’s a series of dance routines that go along with the D4L theme song, which is a peppy techno monstrosity. The tour teams travel to secondary schools to teach the dance and share information and personal stories about HIV, and every year before World AIDS Day (Dec 1^st) there’s a massive worldwide event, with people doing the dance together via satellite. Kind of a cool idea. It also provides about a quarter of SPW’s funding.

So Dennis and I have been teaching the Dance4Life moves at our various schools, and this was the first time since training we’d had a full-on session with the music and everything. The tour team was scheduled to start their 90-minute program at 11am, but this being Africa, they showed up at 12:35. They then spent about an hour setting up speakers and sound equipment and taping a banner to a chalkboard. This made for awkward timing, since the kids usually eat at 1pm, and had to wait for lunch until after the program.

This being their first time, the tour team was pretty choppy, and managed to teach the drill, the “freeze” portion, and then teach the drill again as it if had never happened. Weird. It was also kind of a train wreck because most of the team members clearly didn’t know the dance steps very well. Lucy, Dennis and I do, since we spent a lot of time practicing during training when our facilitators didn’t show up. Even though it went more or less okay, it was pretty frustrating to mime along while they taught the moves backward and put things on the wrong counts.

In the end, the kids had a lot of fun, and the discussion parts went pretty well. They got some pretty good video footage as the kids piped up with cheesy answers about what they had learned like, “I have learned that AIDS is a killer disease. And I have chosen to abstain [thunderous applause].”

The 90-minute program ended up taking until almost 4pm, and since cooking at home takes a good couple of hours, the three of us (Peter’s at a conference) caught a taxi to Buwenge and ate at Green Valley. They had fresh half-cakes, which are like deep-fried cornbread. Ahh.

Almost forgot! While I’m talking about food… Lucy got home from rafting yesterday afternoon (she had a blast) and we had a mini birthday celebration. I made a box of mac n’ cheese that Tom sent that was like heaven, and then Lucy opened her birthday packages from home INCLUDING a really incredible fruit cake from her Grandma. Man, was it good. It was moist and raisiny and had brandy in it and delicious marzipan icing. I have to get that recipe for when I get home.

Teddy came home as we were celebrating on the porch and gave Lucy a painting that she’d had her son do for Lucy’s birthday. It’s really nicely done, and has a bunch of abstract images in shades of gray and blue. I thought that was such a thoughtful gift, and a really cool souvenir of Africa to take home.

Speaking of home, Tom found us a house for next year that sounds perfect and adorable. It’s a two-bedroom cottage in a great neighborhood, and I’m really excited about it. I haven’t gotten any info from UNC about next year yet, but it looks like August will involve grad school orientation, a trip to Seattle, hopefully some time at the beach, and moving house. I can already tell that it’s going to be really hard for me to readjust to being back in the States, but I’m looking forward to all of those things.

Wrapping up this term

Thursday, April 10^th:
Today’s highlights:

Peter and Wilber made some serious headway on a kitchen garden in our backyard.

Dennis and I went in to the SPW office in Jinja to print a bunch of invitation letters for our AIDS day. We had a good run-around at TASO too, trying to sort out who to pay for the transport costs of their drama group.

I ran into several other international volunteers while doing some errands in Jinja. All there on business, I’m sure.

Lucy and I played soccer with ten 5-10 year olds on our field, and followed up the game with some raucous gymnastics and dancing. The kids were delighted.

That’s all.

Wednesday, April 16^th:
I felt pretty ill yesterday, and spent the whole day in bed with an upset stomach, headache, and mild fever. Today I’m feeling quite a bit better, despite having a seriously adverse reaction to dinner last night. Just a little woozy still.

The AIDS day is coming together. One of the priests suggested holding the event in the church hall instead of on the field, which will cut the cost of tents and a generator. We still have to make signs for the march and get the cooking sorted out, but I think it’s all going to be ready for Saturday.

Dennis and I are juuuuust about done teaching this term; we have one lesson at Mutai Primary left tomorrow. Next week Dance4Life is coming, and after that it’s going to be pretty uneventful around here until the vacation. We’re going to make a proposal to SPW to set up a youth resource corner this week, so that should give us something to work on while the kids are on break. As Dennis said, “If you stay around here without anything to do, you just get sick.” Agreed.

Thursday, April 17^th:
This term’s lessons are all wrapped up. Our lesson time at Mutai Primary was commandeered by a visiting NGO called Boys and Girls Brigade, so we did a quick recap of the things we had covered with them this term: HIV and AIDS, adolescence and puberty, and abstinence. In May we’ll start in with reproductive systems, and then probably get into some of the life skills-oriented material.

Dennis came down with malaria today but we’re getting some of the final preparations for Saturday sorted out. Tomorrow, we shop.

Tomorrow is Jason’s birthday! Sunday is Lucy’s birthday! Next Friday is Tom’s birthday! Lucy is rafting the Nile for her 19^th.

Lucy and I go in to Jinja tomorrow morning; the SPW office is having all of the international volunteers come in to register with their embassies. I’m not sure why we all have to converge on the computers at the office to do it, but we’re not exactly living for efficiency here.

Murchison pics

Jack, Katie, Georgia, Darcy, Hannah, Roo, Lucy, m'self, Sarah

Lucy lookin' tall

sunrise on the Nile

Sausage tree. The hippos get drunk off these.

'Bout halfway

Monday, April 7^th:
I was playing with a praying mantis on our porch when Teddy got home for lunch just now. “Some people say they bite, and some people don’t,” I said. “What do you think?”

“They bite, and their bite is like a snake. It is very poisonous.” I quit playing with it.

Vacation plans are coming together! I am eight parts excited to see everyone, and two parts excited for the traveling.

Georgia and Katie met Lucy and I for lunch yesterday, and they came to our house afterwards. Kenneth (kid who brings us eggs) came by to chat, and the drunken man who sweeps showed up. Kenneth translated that the man wanted to know why our friends were so dirty. I found that entertaining.

Lucy and I have to go in to the SPW office to register with our embassies on the 18^th. The 19^th is our big AIDS march and event. The 20^th is Lucy’s birthday and a bunch of volunteers are going rafting (I’m waiting until the vacation). The 21^st-23^rd we have to send two people away to be trained on giving Be A Man video presentations. The 22^nd, the Dance4Life tour team will be at three local secondary schools, which Dennis and I are supposed to facilitate. The 25^th is the last day of the term for the school kids, then they break for vacation. It is going to be a crazy few days, followed by a whole lot of nothing to do.

My mom sent spices in a package I got last week, and I flavored our beans with taco seasoning today. I love that taco aftertaste!

Tuesday, April 8^th:
Happy Birthday, Di!

Medi came by for our security meeting with the sub-county today. Per usual, Mr. Kabi was nowhere to be found and hadn’t informed the other community members about our chat, so it was yet another meeting to schedule a meeting. Hopefully the real thing will go ahead on Friday.

I had a really good lesson on the female reproductive system with the P7 kids this morning. That class seems to be understanding me better, and they were being well-behaved and laughing with me. I don’t have high hopes for learning the names of the hundreds of kids that we teach every week, but since we leave so close to the school I do feel like I’m getting to know the Kagoma kids. There are three “cheeky boys,” Collin, Armon, and Paul, that are always around after school preparing for exams with Teddy. They are sassy and very entertaining. Collin has taken to giving me one of those salutes where you kiss two fingers and then throw it out there, boy-band style.

Teddy just came by with millet porridge for Lucy and I to try. Not bad! Unfortunately I just stuffed myself on pasta with sent-from-home pesto that Lucy made, so I doubt I’ll be able to finish the mug.

Wednesday, April 9^th:
I love the kids at Kalebera. We gave a lesson on menstruation today and they were enthralled, especially with my demo of how to make a pad with local materials. They had tons of questions (Godfrey, the teacher, had a couple too) and by the end it had erupted into mass chaos as Dennis tried to explain in Lusoga what the clitoris was for.

(I couldn’t follow the explanation, but he had them chanting “We choose to abstain” at the end, so it must have been pretty enticing.)

As we left, one of the little boys said, “Liz!” and handed me four avocadoes.

Our four-day heat wave came to an end today, which I appreciated.

Things in Kenya appear to be pretty unstable still. A main railway was torn up by rioters recently, which is supposed to drive up food prices in Uganda. The boys went to the market in Buwenge last Saturday and said that most prices had gone up about 150%, which effectively cuts our food budget by a third. We’ve managed to budget better than most placements, but I’m sad that we’re probably going to have to cut out fruit if prices inflate and our food allowance doesn’t. The priests gave us two bunches of bananas yesterday, so we’re doing okay for now.

Dennis and I have been busy this week distributing letters for our AIDS day. We’re going in to the office tomorrow morning to print some more. I write the letters and Dennis Ugandifies them for me – there’s a funky and highly standardized business letter format here that I fail to grasp.

Kagoma Primary received three huge boxes of school supplies from this group called Opportunity Education in the US. Teddy had all of their new stuff out on the porch last weekend, and had me help her with the box of elementary percussion instruments. We had a nice little jam session going with a guiro, claves, tambourines… but we were disturbing a men’s group meeting at the church, so we had to take five.

Our front path is now filled in with jagged red rocks, which is pretty, but highly uncomfortable to step on.

A cow wandered into our kitchen while I was showering today.

Another week bites the dust

The only way for the modern goat to travel:
Saturday, March 29^th:
Our surprise meeting last Tuesday was an attempt to reconcile the multitude of placement problems that have come up in the last month. Apparently, there are way more interpersonal issues emerging this year than ever before, and the emergency mediation trips are costing SPW a bundle. After a good three hours of heated discussion we had listed 33 problems, and identified which ones were the worst. The resolution part comes later, I suppose.

Dennis, Peter, Lucy and I had a separate meeting to go over our security concerns, and SPW arranged for us to have a meeting with our sub-county on Monday to talk about a course of action.

Last week flew by, since we only taught the last three days. Yesterday, Dennis and I arrived home from a lesson to find Lucy, Peter, and a very muddy and shaken teenage girl on the doorstop. “This is Sylvia,” said Lucy. Sylvia had run into Peter from behind while he and Lucy were walking to a youth group in the rain, and crashed her bike into a ditch. A group of secondary kids immediately gathered, and told Lucy to make Peter forgive her, give Sylvia her jacket, give her money, etc. They ended up taking her home to get cleaned up, since they weren’t sure what to do and didn’t want to leave her muddied in the ditch.

It was all pretty comical, especially since Sylvia didn’t say a word the whole time I was around and no one seemed to know what to do with her. She borrowed my sarong while she washed her skirt, then went on her way after Lucy gave her a sandwich.

Peter complained of a sore butt for a while, but seems to have made a recovery. I told him it was a good thing we didn’t give her money, as we would likely have kids crashing their bikes into us every time we left the house.

It’s the rainy season! The overcast days remind me of home, and everyone has been out tilling their fields now that the ground is soft enough. Peter planted some cabbage and collard seedlings (courtesy of Wilber) in the backyard.

I had a lovely day in Jinja today. I went to a restaurant called Ozzie’s that sells burgers and baked goods and had a cinnamon roll with Lucy and Georgia, then sat drinking coffee and writing letters after they left for a family reunion thing. It was all so civilized. I ran into Darcy later and had lunch with her, then spent some time on the internet before heading home to Magamaga.

Dennis and Peter had gone out, and had taken the key to their side of the house (which includes our makeshift kitchen) with them. I couldn’t cook, get to our food, or use the power outlets, so I had a pretty lonely evening reading in my room. They finally showed up about 10:30, and we made tea and looked at my pictures from Murchison on my laptop. I was annoyed that they prevented me from making dinner, but happy to see them too. I think I need to get a copy of that key for future weekends.

At one of our lessons on Friday, a kid asked Dennis in Lusoga: If someone with HIV has sex using a condom, then throws the condom away, and a chicken eats the condom, could you get HIV from eating the chicken? Some questions are easier than others.

Monday, March 31^st:
Almost three months down. I feel like I’ve been on placement for years, and with that adjustment comes a degree of boredom. The new situations and instances of “Wow, I’m in Africa!” are becoming more rare, and hoofing it around the sub-county to teach the same lessons over and over is becoming a little tedious. I miss the freedom of having an income, being able to go where I want, and being able to cook whatever I feel like for dinner (or even – gasp – making a sandwich, and not having to worry about cooking at all).

Murchison was a great break, but also a bit of a tease as to how much fun it is to go and play.

I’m not apathetic to what I’m doing, but my initial ambitions are starting to wane. We put up with a lot of shit sometimes, and it can be hard to tell whether the kids are actually learning anything or just practicing their well-honed habit of reciting back whatever is written on the board.

I suppose that’s life as a teacher. I get the feeling I would like this so much more if the kids understood me when I spoke normally.

There are things to look forward to in the upcoming months, however. I’m hoping our AIDS Day will be a big success. The holiday break in May is going to be awesome. I do enjoy the downtime, too – I’ve gotten to read a lot, learned how to make a mean origami squirrel, and learned how to french braid my hair. Still, the lifestyle hybrid of being in high school and camping is a little trying.

Wednesday, April 2^nd:
Last night during dinner, we watched the lizards on the wall eat bugs. That might sound lame, but I found it really entertaining.

Dennis and I had some good lessons today and yesterday – we’re starting to do a lot more question-and-answer time with the secondary students, which seems to work rather well. The kids pass forward questions on slips of paper while we teach. Some highlights from this past week:

“I hear that AIDS can be cured in the USA, because they say that AIDS came from laboratories in the USA. Is it true or false.”

“1. Is it true that when you wash a vaginal cococal soda you cannot lose your virginity. 2. Is it true that when you try a stomach with a piece of clothe while playing sex you cannot get pregnant.”

“When you buy a condom when it has a hole in it how do you know that it has a hole? You put air in it? Or when it doesn’t have a hole? How do you know?”

We’ve been covering the male and female reproductive systems with most of our primary kids this week, which gets the kids pretty wound up. We get lots of good questions though. It’s still pretty frustrating to me that I can say something in class and the kids won’t have a clue what I’m talking about, and Dennis will say the exact same thing (in English) and they all pick it up. After two months, I want to say, seriously? My accent is still that difficult? I speak slowly and even do the Ugandan pronunciation on some of the key words: vol-OON-tary, va-JINE-al, a-DOLE-escence, mari-jew-auna. Still, nothing.

I haven’t seen the ugly sheep in a few weeks. I hope it didn’t get eaten.

Friday, April 4^th:
I woke up this morning to the sounds of shovels on rocks and children shouting. I put on my headphones and listened to Röyksopp in an attempt to get back to sleep, but it was fruitless. When Lucy and I peered outside, we were surprised that our dirt front yard now looked like this:

It’s funny to me that pulling 30 or so kids out of school for a landscaping project is totally normal around here.

I accompanied Peter to a group called Youth2Youth this afternoon, since Lucy was taking forms to the SPW office and my lesson was cancelled due to a visit from President Museveni. The session was kind of dull (“What is an entrepreneur?”) but I rode the bike there and back with Peter on the back, which was entertaining for me. It entertained several dozen spectators too. Well done! Well done!

What else happened today? A man with few teeth and eyes pointing in opposite directions asked me for money in a roundabout way while I wrote a letter to Kelly. A kid that stops by sometimes popped in to marvel at my laptop while he was drunk. Lucy came home from the office with a package from my mom! I missed Tom. I got my stipend and basked in that payday feeling all the way to Green Valley Restaurant.