Seven Months in Uganda

Reverse culture shock

2008-08-04T10:44:00.000-07:00

…does not seem to be in the cards for me. Home is wonderful, and feels like home. I am constantly getting excited over little things like being able to get a cold glass of water out of the tap, having clean feet, getting Chinese delivered and then microwaving it, etc. It is so easy to live in the US! It is so clean, and pretty!

The first shower back was pretty incredible. I’d occasionally had showers without the shower bag while in Uganda, but never without wearing flip-flops and never with real water pressure. Ahh.

My flight to NY was long, but seeing Tom and Emily at the airport was wonderful. It was really hot even at 11pm and had that muggy, east-coast-in-August smell. There was a lady working at the toll booth for the parking garage who leaned out of her window and shouted “Go a-ROWND! Go a-ROWND!” at the line of cars, but other than that everyone at JFK seemed so calm and efficient.

Emily has a cool apartment in Brooklyn and we had sushi, fruit salad, cookies, stir fry... it was a wonderful homecoming. We went to a nice outdoor mall the next day and got coffee and checked out this awesome grocery store called Amish that had all kinds of specialty foods and gourmet cheeses and hardwood floors and super-fresh seafood and a liquor room with fine wines and huckleberry vodka samples. I was thinking, wow, wow, wow.

Tom and I left NY that evening and stopped in Virginia to see my aunt Ruta for a brief but really nice visit. Ruta looks younger every time I see her.

Tom drove all night (minus a quick rest-area nap) and we got home to the parsonage around 8am. Being home is fantastic. It is such a nice and comfortable place. The ferrets have gotten bigger and are constantly cracking me up. I have had a serious headache and stomach issues for the last two days, but I’m feeling less debilitated today so I can actually start to unpack and things. I have a haircut scheduled in a few hours, and Tom and I are doing some shopping tonight.

Having access to my whole iTunes library is nice.

Once I get a little more unpacked I’ll boot up the laptop and put up some videos.

Homeward Bound

2008-08-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 31st:
This is it. I’m in Entebbe, fresh from a hot shower at the hostel and repacking my bags for tomorrow morning’s flight. I can’t believe it’s all almost over.

I’m glad I stuck around for debrief. We had a presentation this morning on the planned program changes for next year and the state of funding (dour), and it felt good to go over a lot of our feedback and it was actually kind of nice to get certificates.

Parting ways with everyone was rough. I got a big hug and a nice note from Dennis. I burned picture CDs for him and Wilber. Some people are staying in Jinja tonight with plans to head in to Kenya tomorrow, so I said goodbye to them after lunch, and rode in Kampala with the others who are traveling to Rwanda and elsewhere. It was okay saying goodbye to most of the volunteers, knowing that we’ll keep in touch and it’s likely that I’ll see them again someday. Saying goodbye to Lucy was tough. She’s been my outlet and ally for so many months and being the only two white people for miles was a pretty unique bonding experience. It’s going to be strange not sharing every waking moment with her and I’ll miss her like crazy. We have a whole lot of memories to look back on.

I had a serious bout of anxiety around lunchtime. The thought of leaving Uganda and being back in American society and saying goodbye to everyone gave me a serious claustrophobic and sick to my stomach feeling. Getting on the road helped and I’m actually really excited about flying tomorrow at this point. I am really looking forward to the movies and food on the plane, and seeing Tom will be so wonderful. Emily’s cookies are something to look forward to too.

Still, looking out the matatu window as I rolled out of Kampala, I realized just how used Uganda I am, compared with how foreign it all seemed at first. It feels like home. While I was waiting for my taxi to leave for Entebbe a vendor came up to my window, and I had him go and get me some cell phone airtime. And I thought, weird, I would never ask someone to do that at home. Everyday living is going to be so much different.

Paul (of the parish) had been calling me about trying to meet up in Kampala on my way out, and we had a brief final meeting at the taxi park. He gave me a drum and a nice card. It was a bit rushed but really sweet of him.

Rich’s friend Robbie, who’s been here working with another volunteer organization, is here and is on my flight tomorrow. It’s a small mzungu world in Uganda.

…Tom’s calling!

Friday, August 1st:
I’m in London! The flight here from Entebbe was great. I ended up being seated next to Robbie, so we got to share in the thrill of the in-flight food and movies together. I watched Cold Mountain, Smart People and The English Patient. Cold Mountain was set in NC.

I’m not experiencing any major culture shock as of yet. It just feels like being in airports on any other trip. I’m not home yet though, so the surprises may be yet to hit me.

I thought I’d be torn about leaving and anxious being around so many white people, but I’m feeling happy and excited right now. I am so pumped to have Tom and Emily waiting for me at JFK.

I’ll post again when I get home and maybe after a couple weeks so everyone can see how the transition goes, but this is about the end of the blog too. It’s been a fun way to keep track of my thoughts and keep people posted but I don’t think I’m cut out for year-round blogging.

See you Stateside!

Some final thoughts

2008-07-30T04:37:00.000-07:00

Things I won’t miss about Uganda:

getting ripped off on the matatu
garbage everywhere
being asked for money/scholarships/sponsors
frequent guilt-trips
cooked vegetables + starch = every meal
boda drivers yelling at me
flies all day, mosquitoes all night
always dirty feet
sketchy transportation
thin foam mattress
no flush toilet or shower
ants in the bread
our night prowler
being constantly on display
getting told I’m fat, or getting fat
painfully slow internet
the stink of latrines and rotting food
strange men wanting to “be my friend”
SPW training

Things I will miss:

delicious fruit
neighbors bringing gifts
growing vegetables in the back garden
goats everywhere
people’s excitement over my handful of Lusoga phrases
beautiful scenery
the weather
Teddy
the singing from church on Sundays
little kids dancing
the questions we get passed during lessons
Sandra’s visits and baby animals
working out with Kenneth after sunset (“Like this.” “What?”)
lots of stars
giant avocados
street food, esp. rolexes and samosas
weekends with the other volunteers
the excitement of care packages
monkeys
Dennis demonstrating the “jabber”
Father Francis’s laugh
Lucy, Lucy, Lucy

Debriefing

2008-07-30T04:25:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 29^th:
So much has happened in the last few days. It’s a little too much to think about at the moment, but I’d like to try to get some of it down.

On Saturday Lucy and I went in to the Agricultural Show at the trade grounds in Jinja. It was pretty much like a big street festival at home, except much muddier, less organized, and absolutely packed. I didn’t take any pictures because it seemed like a pretty likely place to get your camera stolen. There were a lot of booths with crafts and Lucy and I had fun souvenir shopping. There were some music stages set up too, a lot of street food, and a lot of tents of agricultural supplies and organic products. We couldn’t stay long because Wilber was frantically calling to tell us to meet up with Dennis and come to where he had hired the car to take us to their old school.

We finally did catch up with Dennis and his friend Stella, then fellow volunteer Ian, and took a matatu outside of town to meet up with Wilber. The six of us piled in to a little car and the driver took us up the bumpy dirt road to Busoga College Mwiri, the boys’ alma mater. It was a really beautiful school. There were sweeping views of Lake Victoria and the surrounding hills and lots of monkeys. It had the feel of a nice summer camp or a rustic university. Dennis, Ian, and Wilber appeared to have been BMOC’s and there were a lot of people to greet during our campus tour. It was a really fun trip, and really thoughtful of the boys to show us their school.

We left around dark, had dinner in Jinja at the Highway Restaurant, and made our last Jinja-Buwenge matatu ride.

Sunday was a day of nonstop calorific farewells. Lucy and I went to the Catholic church in the morning, and Father Charles had us stand and told the congregation that we were leaving the next day, and said thank you. A bunch of people shook our hands and said goodbye after the service, which was really nice. As usual, a bunch of little kids came by after church and we had a near riot using up my Polaroid film and giving out the last of our balloons. Everyone wanted a photo with the mzungus.

Then is was time for lunch at Sandra’s, and no expense was spared: chicken, rice, matoke, spaghetti, potatoes, dodo, and sodas. After the meal a group of little girls laid out a mat in the living room and performed a series of skits and songs for us. It was pretty adorable, and pretty comical at some points. There was a lot of mumbling in the song they sang in English.

Godfrey, the teacher from St. Gonzaga, had arranged to “pick us” at home for a visit to his house at 3, and at 2:45 Sandra was insistent that we go and visit the new house her family is building. “Where is it?” I asked. “Just there!” she said, pointing. “Can we walk there and back in 15 minutes?” “Yes.”

So, after walking ten or so minutes…. “Sandra, where is this house?” “Somehow near.” The house ended up being about a half hour away, but the girls were excited to show it off so it was worth it really.

Godfrey was late, so no problem there… we took a matatu to Bukyonda, his village, then walked to the compound where he lives with his extended family. We had an delicious and identical meal (substitute cabbage for dodo), and looked at his pictures of the AVs that had come to the primary school he teaches at part-time. After the meal he awkwardly asked me if I “could take that… booze, that….brew.” I was like, “You mean beer?” Which he did luckily, as opposed to waragi or some other locally distilled poison.

He ran off and came back with Eagle brand beer, which is brewed with sorghum and is a meal in itself. We were all pretty stuffed by the time we set off back home.

Then it was time to pack! It’s amazing how quickly those bags get filled up. Lucy and I both set aside a lot of things to give away.

On Monday we took care of last-minute details and said our last goodbyes. I handed out a bunch of broken and useless crap to three little kids that were hanging around while we cleaned out and they went nuts. The one-lens sunglasses and broken-zipper purse were both coveted items. Lucy and I decided that a group that took the junk from garage sale “free” tables and shipped it to African villages would be hugely successful.

Saying goodbye to Teddy was hard. She took a break from an all-day meeting to hug Lucy and I and there were tears all around. Leaving Sandra was sad too. I have her a big hug and she said, “Don’t forget about us,” which broke my heart a little bit.

A bunch of the primary kids came by to say goodbye and check to see if there was anything we were leaving goodbye, and Father Francis drove us to the SPW office in the priests’ car. It was the nicest ride I’ve had in Uganda. Driving away was a strange feeling.

Lucy and I dropped off our mattresses and extra bags, then had a celebratory lunch (with cake!) at Ozzie’s and tried to digest the fact that we were actually finished. It hasn’t sunk in yet.

Most of the international volunteers spent that night at the campsite at Bujagali. We had a nice last meal together and had a really weird night at the bar – lots of vomiting, crying, dogs, etc. Anyway.

The morning truck seemed to come much too soon, and it was back in to Jinja for breakfast at Backpacker’s and a slow migration over to Rubaga for debrief. I called Dennis and he was going to be late with our M&E forms, so I went in to town for a pedicure while people were showing up. Nice.

Jen, Carson, and Rich fly out tomorrow morning, so we had an emotional goodbye to those three after lunch. They changed their flights after I did and I wish I could have flown with them, but it’ll be okay. It seems unreal that people are actually leaving.

Last lessons, tree planting, HIV testing

2008-07-26T02:25:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 20^th:
Here are Dennis and I with our P6/P7 class at Buweera Primary. Can you pick me out of the crowd? I bet you can!

After many days of ardent preparation, the Holy Missionary Childhood event reached its culmination yesterday. The morning began with a parade up to Buwenge and back, which featured a marching band and several hundred school kids. Dennis and I joined the march. There was a group of nursery school kids in lime green being led by a teacher who was taking his marching steps very seriously, and the children were following suit. It was pretty adorable. As we walked, more schools joined us from alongside the road and by the end it was quite a stretch. Whenever the band started playing a song the kids knew they would all start singing along in high little voices, and it was a happy time.

The theme of the day was “Jesus Is Our Freind.” Yes, freind. One of the schools had made t-shirts.

After the parade returned, everyone gathered on benches set up outside the church for the service. The bishop was in attendance, and lots of visiting priests and children. The student choir, which had been in nonstop rehearsals since last Thursday, gave some excellent performances, but it was kind of ruined by shoddy keyboard accompaniment. The day’s premise was “children helping children,” since it was a fundraiser for children in the north who are in refugee camps. There were a bunch of speeches and skits that the kids had prepared, and the mzungu bishop gave a sermon in Lusoga. Each school came forward with their donations of food, money, and school supplies. It’s pretty impressive that kids that have so little still manage to pull together contributions for the kids that have even less than them.

The rain held off until lunchtime, when Dennis and I retreated home and a few dozen kids took cover on our porch. There were more festivities in the afternoon, but I was out putting up posters for our VCT day so I missed the evening entertainment. I was bummed about that but I did see them practicing all week, so I bet I didn’t miss too much.

The girls in the choir had been having full-day rehearsals, and they spent a couple nights in the empty hall next to our house. It was a full-on slumber party. I think they only slept about two hours on Thursday night, since they were making noise well past midnight and were up shouting long before it was light outside. It was a little crazy but pretty fun, since it was mostly kids we knew who are pretty funny. Like Sandra. Teddy was around all weekend doing massive event preparation and a lot of the Kagoma teachers and older students were around to help too. It was really fun having everyone around and getting excited for the event.

Dennis and I were up late Thursday anyway, typing up letters and designing certificates for the stakeholders’ meeting we’re holding next Friday. We printed them out in town on Friday (the power was out at the SPW office) which was a huge fiasco, but they look really nice and we’ll be able to recognize each of the schools and NGOs we’ve been working with in Buwenge. Certificates are a big deal here.

Paul (priest-in-training) was back around this weekend for the event, and it was nice to see him.

I went to church this morning with Samali, the girl who stays with Teddy during the week. A nice woman with two little kids I like named Fiona and Anton came and sat with us, and I got to hold baby Anton for most of the service. They are really pretty kids. Anton peed on me at one point but it wasn’t too bad really. I was probably bouncing him too much.

This is from a few weeks ago, but Fiona and Anton are always this cute:

Father Charles left on his motorcycle in the morning to do outreach, so Father Francis and a visiting priest did the service today. I like Catholic services.

Dennis and I had lunch with Reet and Jack in Buwenge before I went in to town today. It was a really nice time. Lucy spent most of the weekend looking for Georgia’s lost camera in Kampala. Most of the international volunteers had planned to go to Sipi Falls but ended up staying in Jinja, so I saw a few of them today. It sounds like people are mostly done with lessons but still have an event or two this week.

Tomorrow is our last lesson with the P6 class at Kagoma, and we meet P7 for the final time on Tuesday. I really like those kids, and it will be sad being in class with them for the last time.

Tuesday, July 22^nd:
The last couple days have been really busy. Yesterday I showered, walked to Igombe to put up a VCT poster and talk to people about testing, cooked lunch, gave a last lesson for the P6 kids at Kagoma, confirmed with AIC, walked to Muguluka to deliver letters at the primary school and Pilkington and put up a VCT poster, ordered more talking boards, cooked dinner, and washed all our of plates.

This morning Dennis and I had our last lesson with the P7 kids at Kagoma, which is my favorite class. When we arrive at the school Teddy had called an assembly so the whole school could say goodbye to us.

The last lesson with review prizes went over well and we got some class pictures. Then I walked over to the sub-county to deliver more letters about our wrap-up stakeholders’ meeting on Friday and make sure AIC had arrived to do HIV testing. They were supposed to show up at 10:00am. At 10:15 I called and the said they had stopped at the trade show in Jinja but were “on their way” and would be there in 30 minutes. I called again at 11:40. Same story. They finally arrived at 12:20, leisurely hung around while Dennis and I set up a table and chairs for them, then the sole technician and driver promptly left to have lunch while one of the counselors answered questions from the 100 or so kids from St. Gonzaga that were waiting to test.

This is SO FRUSTRATING to me. I came home before the technician reappeared, but they delayed starting by at least three hours with no explanation. That’s a lot of people who could have been tested and now aren’t going to. I had to turn people away who showed up at the time I had advertised this morning, and everyone was expecting me to explain what the holdup was. I’ve gotten more patient with “African time,” and I expected they would be about an hour late, but wasting the entire morning is totally unacceptable to me. People are testing now and hopefully they’ll get through a lot before they split, but I hate that I can’t depend on people to uphold their agreements here and it makes me (and SPW) look bad when I have absolutely no control over it.

Two of the Kagoma teachers didn’t show up today, so Teddy has the kids over watching a movie about the apostle John on our porch so that the one teacher who did come to school can have a break. It’s an American movie and the narration is horrendous. They just went through the water-into-wine story, and now it’s on the money changers in the temple. I bet Jesus is blond.

When I was delivering a letter to the Sub-County Chief I got called in to the office to chat with some official dudes that had turned up. They were having a discussion about people they’d heard of that could be summarized as “innocent people that got killed by mob justice.” Someone who had stopped to help after a vehicle hit and killed a kid, someone who was shot while chasing a thief because they were mistaken for the thief, someone who had gotten a ride and then was killed after the driver hit someone and fled, etc. People always laugh about these stories here but I find them pretty unsettling. One of the guys kept calling me his sweetheart and wanted to take me to his village but I told him he had to get an HIV test first.

I’m about to go check on the VCT progress. It’s threatening to rain, but we have access to the hall in the sub-county so hopefully testing will continue as long as people keep coming. I’m tempted not to pay the AIC workers, but I’ll get over it.

We found out last Friday that our SPW debrief is being held at Rubaga Students Center. Everyone is so disappointed. We had our first three days of training and our mid-placement workshop there, and it’s scratty and has no good communal place to hang out. It’s in Jinja, which means people will probably go into town at night and it’ll be nationals and internationals splitting up and the community volunteers stuck at the dorms because they won’t be able to afford nights out. In past years debrief has been held at the Adrift rafting campsite, which would have been a nice send-off. It’s been a long time since that first morning in Uganda crying in my bunk before anyone else was awake, but being at Rubaga still dregs up feelings of anxiety and loneliness. I really don’t like being there.

Hopefully I’ll be able to report that the VCT day was a big success, despite the late start. We’ll see how it wraps up…

Wednesday, July 23^rd:
I am tired. We had a long last visit to Kalebera, which included a very rainy last lesson, a very muddy tree-planting session, and a soda-infused farewell from the teachers. Each teacher wanted their picture planting a tree with Dennis and I, and we had to write down all of our contacts for quite a few people. It took quite a while, but it was a nice time and I’ve really enjoyed working at that school. The kids didn’t understand me very well but the students and staff were always really friendly, especially the headmaster, Aron.

Dennis and I had a big high-five afterwards: our last lesson, complete!

Tomorrow we have lunch with the headmistress at Nkondo Primary, and Dennis should be picking up our talking boards for Kagoma. Friday is our stakeholders’ meeting at the sub-county and we have farewells planned at St. Gonzaga and Kagoma.

The VCT day wasn’t a complete loss, but I was disappointed in it. We had about 70 people tested, and we could have had at least twice that many if AIC had shown up on time. They told me that one of their service trucks had broken down, and they’d had to drop off another outreach group before coming out. A lot of people who were waiting to test were turned away at the end. One person tested positive, and the technician said it was one of the adults from the community, not one of the school kids. Most of the people who tested were from St. Gonzaga. Weirdly, a bunch of the secondary school kids today were saying that they doubted the results, because some people thought they were positive. I trust the blood tests but that seemed really strange to me.

People waiting to get tested:

I didn’t sleep much last night and have been feeling pretty exhausted. It feels good to be finishing up and we’re getting a lot of positive feedback from the community. Everyone seems to want some kind of send-off in the next few days. I’m missing a few people already but it’s fun to think about getting home and sending people pictures and letters. Only nine more days now!

Thursday, July 24^th:
Lucy and I made a kitchen garden for the priests with Father Charles this morning. I think this is our best one yet. Shoveling manure:

While collecting bricks for the walkway I uncovered a bunch of toads!

I went over to the priests’ place last night to transfer some pictures from my USB drive to their computer. I managed to load a virus that prevented their desktop icons and start menu from showing up. I was really anxious that I had ruined their computer but after an hour of Tom talking me through things on the phone I was able to restore it to normal function – thank God! They didn’t have their Windows disk for a reload and you can’t exactly call in the IT in rural Uganda, so it was pretty tense there for a while.

We were going to have lunch in Nkondo today, but our host has been called to an emergency headteachers’ meeting in Muguluka. It’s the first day in a while I haven’t been running around all day and it’s nice to relax at home for a bit.

I can’t believe placement is almost over. I’m not sure if I’ll head in to Jinja on Monday or Tuesday, but either way it’s nothing but packing and filling in forms once tomorrow is over. Dennis and Wilber are going to take us to visit their school in Jinja on Saturday, which should be fun.

Friday, July 25^th:
What a long day! We had our stakeholders’ meeting this morning, which started a couple hours late but went really well. We all shared our volunteering experiences, had a nice round of thank yous from our head teachers and NGO directors, and ate some tasty snacks. Nat came from the SPW office and handed out some data sheets which were very well received. The certificates were a hit too. It was a nice way to wrap things up and say goodbye to most of our key contacts.

Handing over a certificate to key teacher Godfrey from St. Gonzaga:

After the meeting we had a quick goodbye with the students and teachers at St. Gonzaga, then joined a parents’ meeting at Kagoma. We were supposed to just stop in, say goodbye, and go, but the teachers wanted us to stay until lunch was served at the end so we ended up sitting through a few hours of discussion in Lusoga. I kind of wanted to kill myself but didn’t want to cause offense at our final showing, so we waited it out and then had a nice meal of matoke, rice, chicken, and cabbage around 6 or so.

Teddy said some students had prepared songs for us, but one of the teachers sent them home on accident. So we’ll get to see the performance on Monday morning.

Our lunch with Nkondo teacher Molly has been rescheduled for tomorrow, which messes up our plans of going to the agricultural show in Jinja and seeing Dennis and Wilber’s old school. Sunday’s kind of busy already so I hope we can fit everything in.

Dennis brought home the first set of our talking boards for Kagoma Primary last night. They all look good, except for one that reads, “Be Panctual.” I think the teacher that made them will redo that one. They’re painted blue, with the messages carved into the wood and painted black.

Saturday, July 26^th:
Sadly, Molly’s brother has been in a bus accident so our lunch with her is off today. It’s back to the original plan to go to Jinja to the agricultural show and Dennis’s school. I’m almost packed! Two more nights on placement.

Beginning of the end

2008-07-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 11^th:
I changed my flight! Well, Tom changed my flight really. I now depart Uganda the morning of August 1^st, connect in London, and spend the night in NY. With EMILY!!! I have a flight booked from LaGuardia to Raleigh the next morning, but Emily and I might meet Tom partway south (probably DC) and make a little road trip out of it.

I am really excited. I would like to see Rwanda, and it’ll be hard to say goodbye to Lucy and the rest of the volunteers. Still, the thought of arranging the trip and storing my stuff and doing the traveling is a little much for me right now, and this gives me a week to get over jetlag and readjust to the US before starting grad school. It also eliminates a costly night in London on the way back. I looked at pictures of Kigali online today and I have a feeling it would be really cool but also quite a bit like Uganda. And as much as I love everyone here, the thought of more of the same just isn’t that appealing to me at the moment.

I’ll get in late, but I kind of want to go out that first night and spend my first night out of Africa on the town in New York City. If that doesn’t shock me back into life at home, nothing will.

This also makes is suddenly very real that I’m about to head home. Shaving off that extra week really puts things in almost-time-to-go perspective. I have mixed emotions about leaving. It always seems like you have to pack up and leave right when you get comfortable and things start running smoothly. My tolerance for certain things has been whittled away, but the last few weeks of work have been really great too. It’s hard to know how I’ll feel when I step onto that plane.

Monday, July 14^th:
By the calendar, it’s supposed to be the dry season again, but we’ve been getting more rain lately than we have for the last six months. I was just putting out my bucket to collect rain water and slipped and fell in the mud – luckily there were no kids around.

The weekend flew by and was a lot of fun. A group of us spent Saturday night up in Buyende at Rich, Orlando, and Rachel’s placement. Orlando officially “quit SPW” on Saturday to go traveling, and we got to see him briefly on his way out. Theirs is the most remote placement, and the landscape looks a little different than it does near Jinja. It seems flatter, bushier, and the buildings are much more spread out. They’ve had to deal with quite a bit a resistance from their community but they have a huge house and it was a really relaxed, if a little lonely, setting.

Behind their house is a run-down two-room concrete building where the headmaster (or somebody) keeps their goats. One goat struck me as particularly personable.

I’m feeling really happy about the next few weeks. I can’t wait to go home – I’m really excited about seeing Tom, playing bass again, training for a tri, Mom and Dave’s visit, starting grad school. It makes me want to put a lot of effort into the remaining work and really make the most of my last days in Buwenge. Dennis and I are going to do something fun for our last lessons in our schools and I’m looking forward to the VCT day on the 22^nd. I want to do something nice for the people that have really made this experience for us. It will be hard to say goodbye.

Tuesday, July 15^th:
I love the P7 class at Kagoma. Dennis and I did a lesson on Communication this morning, and it was pretty hilarious. We had the kids draw a house and a dog in pairs, with both partners holding the pen, and some pretty ludicrous animals were produced. Dennis held them up at the end and one girl actually fell out of her desk she was laughing so hard. A row of boys came up to the front of the class and had to arrange themselves in order of their birthdays without talking, which included some classic miming, and we did a little game of Telephone where the phrase started out in English and ended up in Lusoga. There was some brainstorming on the board in the lesson too, but the kids got really into the activities. We told them that next week we are going to have review questions with prizes and the kids got pretty excited.

Lucy and I had planned to go to the district music competition after lunch, but it turns out it’s happening tomorrow. We walked up to Buwenge to check out the new supermarket and then caught a taxi into Jinja on a whim, where we had a nice dinner, used the internet, and I got an awesome package of treats from Tom! There were so many perfect snacks in there: instant oatmeal, nice tea, chocolate, protein bars… my mouth wouldn’t stop watering when I opened it. I only have to wait a couple more weeks for “home food” but any kind of quick, tasty food on placement is enough to make my afternoon.

Dennis and I got stuck in a rain storm down at Muguluka yesterday; we had to wait inside a shop in their trading center for an hour while the ground flooded and everything shut down. It was a muddy walk back. My clothes were out on the line but they just got wet instead of falling down into the mud, so no harm done.

I got another email from UNC and I have pretty full days of orientation from the 11^th-14^th. I’m glad I’m no longer getting home on the 9^th! One day of readjustment wouldn’t have been quite enough, I think. I also have a Physical Chemistry placement test the week after I get back. Hope those notes from Thermo are lying around somewhere at home…

Thursday, July 17^th:
The music competition at Muguluka was pretty cute yesterday. One of the long classrooms had been converted to a performance hall by stringing a couple of curtains across one side. A guy with a rolled up paper megaphone did the announcing, and the panel of judges sipped their sodas.

We saw Mutai, Kalebera, Kagoma, Muguluka, and bunch of schools we didn’t know perform. It was a random assortment of Western and traditional songs, poems, and skits. Kagoma was pretty rough on their harmonized Western piece but did an awesome traditional piece with drumming and some cool stop-time. Mutai pulled off the Western song nicely and we found out today that they won and will be performing at the district competition on Saturday.

Dennis has something going on in Jinja today, so Lucy accompanied me to the final lesson with the Mutai Primary kids. I wrote up a long list questions reviewing what we’ve covered in the last six months, and kids that answered correctly got sweets, balloons, markers, and stickers as prizes. It was a hit. I really tried to call on different kids but the same ten or so managed to answer most of the questions. The head girl delivered a really sweet thank you address and we left our contact info for the teachers.

I had my second health center visit today, so I confirmed with the nurse when we got back, then played toss with the primary kids on the field for a half hour or so. Toss is one of my favorite games.

It was a special lunch at St. Gonzaga today – rice instead of posho! I even got some avocado. After lunch, key teacher Godfrey and I took 24 kids over to Magamaga Health Centre, where they had a talk about STIs, family planning, and testing services. The nurse told the kids about a couple who had seen a condom demonstration using banana, then gotten upset when the wife became pregnant even though they had been putting a condom-coated banana at their bedside each time they had sex. The kids had tons of questions about contraception, and Godfrey was delighted with how much the nurses’ knowledge and the resources available. They’re planning to have more visits or maybe bring the nurses to address the school in an assembly. The kids fought over the biscuits I brought at the end, but other than that it seemed really successful.

I made some posters for our VCT day last night and brought one to St. Gonzaga with me. The teachers seemed really excited about it and had lots of questions. The answers to their questions were clearly outlined on the poster, but at least they were interested.

I went over to Sandra’s after the health center visit to see the little pussycats. They are full-on kittens now. They’re cute, but pretty fearful so they’re not that fun to play with. I love hanging around with Sandra; it really makes me sad that there’s no good way for us to keep in touch after I leave. I can call her, but our verbal communication is always a little rocky, and her family doesn’t have a post office box.

Dennis is still in town, and Lucy’s accompanying Georgia to Kampala. I just caused a mini-riot making balloon animals on our porch, but it’s getting dark so the kids have started dissipating.

Instant oatmeal is the greatest thing ever! Two weeks from now, I’ll be spending the night in Entebbe, waiting to catch my early-morning flight. As the leaving date draws nearer, I feel more attached to placement and less attached to Uganda as a whole.

The rats in the ceiling tonight sound like they are about dog-sized.

There’s a big event in the parish on Saturday – something to do with children and missions. The whole Jinja diocese will be here. The kids are practicing the entertainment portion over in the church right now and it sounds awesome. I’m looking forward to it.

More events

2008-07-11T06:19:00.000-07:00

Monday, July 7^th:
Wilber appears to be the proactive one of the group today. He’s running around buying things for a youth resource corner and trying to get events underway. Good for him. The rest of us are decidedly lacking in ambition at the moment.

I went by the health center this morning, and we are going to have some of the primary school kids come by for a visit this Thursday. The goal is for the kids to find out what services are provided (STD testing, contraception, etc.) and feel comfortable with the staff and the clinic. If it goes well, we’ll have the secondary school kids do a visit next week. Thursday the Dance4Life tour team is coming by again as well.

Last weekend was a lot of fun. A few of us stayed up at Nawanyago placement on Friday night for a mini 4^th of July celebration. We ate a lot of fried food from the trading center and roasted marshmallows over the sigiri. Not quite like the 4^th at home, but still a nice time.

On Saturday, ten of went to the Hairy Lemon for the night. It’s a hostel/budget resort place on an island in the Nile an hour outside of Jinja. You have to bang on a breakdrum when you get there, and they come to pick you up in one of those long fishing boats (you could probably just wade across, but it’s a nice touch). It was pretty basic, without electricity or running water, but they had pretty nice cabins and bandas, places to swim and sunbathe, and tasty buffet-style meals. Getting into a bikini was discouraging for most of us I think, but it was nice to lay in the sun, read magazines, and enjoy a break from placement. You can’t beat an island without cell phone reception for getting away from it all.

On Sunday morning I woke up and walked out of the dorm onto the misty lawn on my way to breakfast, and it felt exactly like a morning at Burton. This is the first July in six years that I won’t spend teaching at music camp, and it felt a little sad.

I am pretty tired of teaching lessons. Most of the time, they go just fine. Still, it feels like work, and it’s tough teaching at seven different schools and still not knowing the kids at all. We’re mostly doing lessons that we deemed unimportant at the beginning, and it seems a little pointless. Having some extra events this month will break things up a little bit, but we’re so close to going home that part of me just wants to blow it all off and spend the month in bed.

Wednesday, July 9^th:
Today is one month until I arrive in NC. That’s 85.7% complete!

This is a music term for our local schools, and we’ve had a couple lessons cancelled since kids are in choir practice most of the day. We stayed to watch the kids rehearsing at Kalebera today, and it was really fun to see. For most songs the group stands in a semicircle and does a call-and-response thing with the soloist. Sometimes there’s a little play being acted out. The district choir competition is on Tuesday at Muguluka, and if I don’t have to go into town for something I’m going to attend.

There’s a sight-singing component too so the kids were practicing their solfage. I was pretty impressed. No hand motions though. I have several cute videos of kids singing and dancing but I think I’ll have to post them when I get home. Being able to check email is a triumph with the connections here.

Dennis and I did a lesson on Love and Infatuation with the secondary kids today and that was pretty interesting. Infatuation seemed to be a new concept. They are pretty excited about Dance4Life coming tomorrow.

The three of us went in to Jinja yesterday. My goal was schedule the AIDS Information Center’s mobile HIV testing unit and check for mail, but the person we needed to talk to at AIC was gone for the day and the SPW staff is out of the office this week. So that was a bust. I had a nice meal at Ozzie’s with Lucy though. There were a couple American church groups sponsoring orphanages at the restaurant, and one table sat a bunch of big dudes from Texas in head-to-toe denim and handlebar mustaches. They were pretty awesome. One guy kept asking people what their meals were and drawling that he was from “United States, Texas.” It was a little reminder of what I’m in for when I get home. (Southerners. Not Texans.)

If anyone wants me to bring something special back for them, send me an email and let me know. There are lots of paper necklaces, earrings, carved wooden things, bags, etc.

Thursday, July 10^th:
When I say Dance For you say Life! Dance For…

D4L came to St. Gonzaga today, and it ran quite a bit smoother than last time. The St. Gonzaga kids can be bratty but they love dancing, so it went over okay. A few kids from the primary school showed up too and I think their enthusiasm helped get things going. We started out on the school compound but moved over to the church hall when the drizzle picked up so there was a long equipment-moving lapse in the middle, but the Q&A and dancing went just fine. Dennis and I were up on stage helping the tour team demonstrate the moves.

After the dancing wrapped up I took a group of twenty P6 girls on a health center visit. It went really well; one of the nurses talked to them about their services and pregnancy and HIV and abstinence and took them on a tour of the facilities, and another talked to them about menstruation briefly (I think – it was in Lusoga). It seemed friendly and beneficial and the girls were excited to get the biscuits I brought for them.

Tomorrow we go to Buweera Primary and maybe in to Jinja again if I can meet with someone at AIC. This weekend Lucy and I are going to visit Rich, Orlando, and Rachel’s placement I think. Lucy’s feeling ill today but I have a feeling she’ll pull through.

Friday, July 11th:
In Jinja. I got AIC booked for the 22nd, and Lucy got the all-clear from Dr. Debbie. There's a possibility I might fly home right after debrief. It'd give me a week to settle in before grad school starts, and mean missing Rwanda. I'm torn at the moment. I am a lot more excited about home than Rwanda, but don't want to skip the opportunity either. It should be sorted out today.

Welcome to July

2008-07-05T01:49:00.000-07:00

Sunday, June 29^th:
I got an email about orientation at UNC while in Jinja yesterday. The registration and paperwork begins two days after I get home. It might be a little bewildering.

I had a pretty normal day today: washed my sheets in my bucket, tried to remove ants from our breakfast, read on the porch. Lucy and I went over to Sandra’s to check on the kittens. They’ve opened their eyes now and having some kitty playtime made me happy. Sandra picks up the cats by the ears and legs and it kind of makes me cringe, but I realize that “pets” are quite a different thing here.

Four weeks left on placement!

Tuesday, July 1^st:
July! We got to flip our NOGAMU calendar to its final page for our Uganda stay, July/August. In the seven-month week, we’ve finally reached Sunday. Feels good.

Dennis and I usually have a lesson first thing on Tuesdays, but we’ve having a placement visit from the office today so we’ve postponed it by a few hours so the SPW staff person can come. We’ve gotten through all of the health-themed lessons with the Kagoma kids so we’re doing life skills classes now. The plan for today is to teach about Friendship. It’s really tough trying to pick lessons at this point. You’d think it would be easier for the kids to grasp the relationship/life skills material than the SRH stuff, but they really struggle with it. I was really surprised when I got here and the secondary school kids couldn’t wrap their heads around what “emotional changes” were. And “values” is always a tough one. All of the self-esteem, assertiveness, and feelings-talk that we throw around with kids at home is totally absent from people’s upbringing here, and trying to get the kids to speculate how people would feel in certain situations is like pulling teeth.

My stomach has been upset for a couple days. The bugs that seemed to attack everyone else right away may have finally caught up to me.

Paul finishes his stay at the parish on Thursday, and the three of us took him out for dinner at Green Valley last night. We had a nice chat. GV always has something ridiculous on their television set, and last night it was a Mexican soap opera called “Until We Say Goodbye” or something. Surprisingly, Paul was really into it and gave us the back history on all of the characters. He said it wasn’t a very good show for entertainment because it was very complicated but that it was good for learning about “relationships and business.” Lucy and I found that funny. The acting looked pretty horrendous, but being dubbed into English probably didn’t help.

There was another sports day yesterday, where schools picked their best players to make local teams. It’s usually annoying when kids from other schools are on our field; they’re not used to seeing Lucy and I, and don’t allow us the relative privacy the Kagoma kids do. There was a massive crowd on our front porch, and one girl from Muguluka kept running into our room and picking up things. We spent much of the morning in our room with the door shut.

Thursday, July 3^rd:
Last night was probably the most fun I’ve had on placement! The priests had their going-away dinner for Paul at their place, and it was everything we could have wanted and more. The whole crew was there: the Fathers, the Sisters, Teddy, Jen (teacher at Kagoma), Samali (cute girl who stays with Teddy), and a few other characters. With the exception of a couple school kids, everyone I like in Magamaga was present. The priests kept the beers and sodas flowing and we had the best Ugandan dinner I’ve had since I got here. Everyone was being highly sociable and having a really good time.

After the meal we took turns saying nice things about Paul and giving him gifts – most people presented envelopes of what I assume was cash, but we wrapped up a nice shirt for him that Dennis had picked up while in Jinja that day. Then the music was cranked up and we spent the rest of the night dancing. Father Francis had some pretty choice moves. Drunkenly dancing the night away to ridiculously cheesy music with a bunch of priests and nuns was definitely a highlight of my trip thus far.

Dennis had been at the SPW office and brought home letters from Grandma, Emily, and Jeff (all the way from Kazakhstan!), which was a perk to the evening as well.

Paul left this morning for a month off around then Kampala before he starts his philosophy training for the priesthood up north in Gulu. I’ll miss seeing him around.

Today was kind of crappy; we had to wait forever for matatus to Mutai and back for our lessons, missed lunch at St. Gonzaga because we were late, got rained out of our lesson (metal roofs make it impossible to teach when it’s pouring) and then had to sit around in the cold for a long time waiting for the rain to let up enough for us to run home. By that point it was around 4pm and I was starving. I got some chapattis though and I kind of enjoy the rain as long as we don’t have to go anywhere. And it’s almost the weekend. A group of us are going to this vacation spot called the Hairy Lemon on Saturday, and that should be really fun. I keep remembering how little time there is left and the daily struggles suddenly seem much more manageable.

Tomorrow will be busy. And it’s the 4^th! I still don’t know if I’ll manage to do anything to celebrate, but I hope that everyone at home will eat a little extra BBQ and light off an extra firework for me. Marching in the Enumclaw parade last year seems like so long ago.

A couple week's worth

2008-06-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, June 17th:
I had an on-placement weekend. On Saturday, I stopped by a fundraiser St. Gonzaga SS was holding in effort to finish off their half-completed girls’ dormitory. The Minister of Education was in attendance, so it was a pretty massive deal that the kids had spent the entire week preparing for (mostly by drumming). When I showed up there was a really excellent traditional dance group performing. They had a man with them who would climb up a bamboo pole and hop around and do positions while balancing at the top. It was pretty awesome. One of the priests told me later that he was crippled from polio and didn’t have the use of his legs.

The Minister of Education had her own special couch:

I sat through a bunch of speeches in Lusoga and tried to sneak out during the auction (of mostly livestock and food) that followed, but was called out over the microphone and made to come up in front of everyone and buy something. I got another paper necklace. It was kind of embarrassing, but I should have expected that my invitation to a fundraiser came with the expectation that I would shell out some cash.

On Sunday, I was collected for church by Sandra (a P7 student). After the service, a group of primary school girls showed up and sat on our porch at my feet silently for a while. Then they started asking me what I assumed were honest questions, like “How would you describe the climate in Uganda? What is the Southern Hemisphere?” It quickly became clear that they were quizzing me on what they were learning at school, though. “Who is the inspector of all schools in Uganda? What is a meteorologist? What do you call someone from Switzerland?” Etc. It was pretty random, and comical. Then they asked, “What is Sudan in full?”

I was confused until they answered, “Stupid Ugandans Danced At Night.” Some other gems:

Kenya: K___ (some name) Entered Nairobi Yesterday Afternoon
Uganda: Ugly Girls Are Never Deceived at All

They giggled awkwardly for a while, then suddenly announced, “Bye!” and got up and left.

Lucy and I went to Sandra’s house for lunch. Her dad chatted with us and ordered Sandra around for a couple hours while we ate matoke and beans. I feel kind of bad that Sandra invites us over and then ends up waiting on us the whole time. This is the family that lives behind the primary school and had the piglets last month. While we were eating, I kept hearing a distant mewing, and asked if they had kittens. “What?” “Do you have cats?” They did, and one of the little girls was ordered to “bring the little pussycats.” I was expecting full-on kittens but they were only two weeks old! As you can imagine Lucy and I were delighted, which the little kids found pretty amusing. Cats are pretty rare around here, and I will definitely be going back to visit them.

Sandra is a really sweet kid. She’s significantly bigger and darker than the other kids in P7, and Teddy has described her as “a bit slow.” She always comes by the house with treats for us and to chat, and I like her a lot. Today Dennis and I did a true/false game as part of a lesson on STIs (sexually transmitted infections – the new, hipper way to say STD) this morning. She was always adamant in her responses, and always wrong. She always yells at the kids to be quiet when I am trying to get the class to settle down. She is a highlight of my Magamaga experience.

After the lesson today, Lucy and I made the trip out to Buyengo to visit Jill, Katie, Lillian, and Oscar. We had a really nice time catching up, seeing their place, and having tea and lunch. They live at the base of a steep rocky hill that we walked up to get a look at the surrounding landscape. Buyengo is out in the middle of a bunch of sugarcane plantations, and it was a really beautiful view. Lily returned home partway through our visit from getting her hair plaited into an afro. It was pretty awesome. She has plans to sing “Like a Prayer” at the casino in Jinja this weekend, and entertained us for a while with her game plan and costume choice. Hopefully this is something I’ll be able to put up pictures of next weekend. Buyengo placement:

It is hard for me to tell how I am going to react to being back in the States, but I know I am going to miss the people from placement a whole lot.

Thursday, June 19th:
Busy day today. Dennis and I have been milking the STI lesson for all it’s worth, first at Mutai Primary, then at St. Gonzaga. The deputy head teachers at Mutai are great. We’ll only make it there two more times before we split, since we teach there every other week. That’s weird to think about.

Lucy and I finally took up St. Gonzaga’s insistent invitation to lunch with the teachers. There was a lot of babbling about language/questions about where we’re from, as well as the standard interrogation about our religious beliefs. We had some tasty rice and beans though, and a nice chat really. Dennis and I stuck around after lunch for a lesson while Lucy and Wilber trekked off to Kalebera for a farmer’s group (as usual, there was a burial going on so they didn’t get to meet them).

We split the STI material into two lessons: one on diseases, their symptoms, and their consequences, and one on myths and facts. The kids split into teams and take turns answering true/false statements. How well would you do?

1. A person can always tell if she or he has an STI.
2. With proper medical treatment, all STIs except HIV can be cured.
3. You cannot contract an STI by holding hands, walking, talking, or dancing with a partner.
4. It is possible to contract some STIs from kissing.
5. The most important thing you can do if you suspect you have an STI is to inform your partner.
6. Only people who have sexual contact can contract an STI.
7. Condoms are the most effective protection against the spread of STIs.
8. Abstinence is the only form of contraception that is 100% risk free.
9. Once you have gonorrhea, you cannot get it again.
10. There is no known cure for genital herpes.
11. It is women who are spreading HIV and STIs.
12. Having sex with a virgin cleans a man of HIV and cures him.
13. If you have unprotected sex with someone who has HIV you will definitely catch it.
14. STIs are a curse from God.

There are more, but you get the idea. Surprisingly, the kids often get #11 wrong.

Tomorrow July’s event proposals are due. It’s going to be a busy night as we try to sort out which activities we can feasibly hold before we leave. I’ll spend tomorrow night in Jinja (witnessing Lilly’s casino debut), then head to Kampala for Jill’s last weekend. Like Darcy, she is heading home to Canada for health reasons.

Monday, June 23rd:
I was online last weekend but forgot to bring in what I’d typed up already. So this’ll be a long blog post.

We ended up proposing six events for July: a sports day, two health center visits, tree planting, a VCT day (HIV testing), another video workshop, and a stakeholder’s day where we go over everything we’ve done in the last six months. I have a feeling I am going to feel pretty burnt out by debrief.

I had a great weekend! It was our second-to-last 3rd “weekend off,” and it ended up being full of fun activities that fell together without much planning. Friday night we went to the casino to see Lillian sing. She never did get called up to the mic but she was there in her shining mini-dress glory and we had some good food and a nice time hanging out. There was a terrible house band that was playing something like electric reggae early jazz tunes, and the whole place was just bizarre. It felt more like a church basement than a casino, with baby blue sponge-painted walls and cheesy paintings of country cottages and things. There were some odd characters hanging around. There were roulette and blackjack tables, and video slot machines that looked about the same vintage as the Pac-man game they had at my childhood dentist.

On Saturday a group of us went out to breakfast at Ozzie’s and then spent the day at the pool at the Jinja golf club. Not the cleanest or nicest pool, but a great time! It was a hot sunny day and Jack did some flips off the high dive. I busted out some basic synchro moves and missed it.

I split a little early and got a pedicure, which I severely needed and enjoyed. There’s a salon place in the little shopping arcade that has the casino, and I was pretty excited to see it on Friday night. Plus, it cost about $4.

Then we went to the campsite for the usual debauchery, and had a rough time getting a ride home. Nothing noteworthy there. Rich made friends with some dorky British guy that had some choice teenage-boy dance moves.

On Sunday, six of us rolled in to Kampala. I spent lunchtime at Café Pap drinking milkshakes and lattes and enjoying the wireless internet. Then we all went to the Sex and the City movie. It had some terrible dialogue, but it also had pretty clothes and New York and romance, which are things that I am seriously lacking out here.

Wilber just showed up and went into Dennis and Peter’s room – Peter’s mattress disappeared over the weekend! Looks like he’s officially not coming back. Not that he’s been here since April…

Five more weeks on placement. Jill should be on her way to Canada (via London) right now. Yesterday, Jen said, “If someone offered you a flight home tomorrow, would you take it?” I am really excited to come home, but I’m excited about finishing up the last few weeks too. I’m pretty comfortable with the time that’s left.

Tuesday, June 24th:
I asked Dennis last night if he was looking forward to the program being over. He smiled and said, “Yes. Very much so.” I think that’s the overwhelming consensus of the volunteers. There are a few people who are staying in Africa for a while after they’re done volunteering, but I don’t think anyone is wishing that the SPW program was just a little longer. Dennis’s sister was an SPW volunteer several years ago and said the people that year didn’t have the same desire for it to be over.

The three of us had a chat about how it’s hard being a volunteer who gives “knowledge and skills, not material goods” in these types of communities. People see volunteers and want things; they want them to fix up their school, give them seeds, fund their projects. We do leave some tangible things behind, like talking boards and kitchen gardens. We’re not here to feel appreciated but it is kind of sad that we get badgered for goods a lot of the time or that people are disappointed when we tell them we’re not here to give them money. I wish we had some training and funding for physical projects that would benefit our villages, like building latrines and painting schools. There are other groups that do those things, but since we’re here for this long it would have been fun and rewarding to do some productive hard labor. I guess you can’t expect one NGO to do it all.

It’s summertime, and things are changing at home. People are graduating, moving, marrying, splitting up. It’s strange that I am missing this year’s world and personal events.

Wednesday, June 25th:
I’ve had a killer headache all day. I taught a couple lessons (Drug Abuse at St. Gonzaga, Resisting Peer Pressure at Kalebera) and had lunch at the secondary school, but other than that I’ve been curled up in bed most of the day. It was Kenneth’s birthday today but I didn’t see him. I made him a card with magazine cutouts of his favorite celebrities: Jay-Z, Beyonce, Rhianna, and David Beckham. Hopefully I’ll get to give it to him tomorrow.

Paul, the “priest-in-training,” is finishing his residency here next week and will move to Gulu (in northern Uganda) to continue his studies. I love my daily chats with Paul on the way to the toilet and it is going to be sad to see him go. The priests are having a dinner for him next Wednesday and Dennis has suggested buying him a shirt as a parting gift.

I’ve gone back to my origami book. I finally figured out the hummingbird, but there’s a step on the praying mantis that I just can’t get.

Saturday, June 28th:
Yesterday was sure busy for not accomplishing much. I walked to Buweera and Muguluka, but lessons were cancelled at both primary schools due to district sports days.

Wilber and Dennis led our first Be A Man video workshop. Lucy and I showed up in the middle since we had been walking to Muguluka and back for the cancelled lesson. It was all in Lusoga and I couldn’t actually see the video from where I was sitting, but there seemed to be some good discussion going on about gender equity and things. I think we’re having a couple more in the next few weeks.

I was pretty frustrated with people shouting obscenities and trying to guilt-trip me into buying baby toys yesterday, but today’s trip in to Jinja has me looking up a bit. There’s no better pick-me-up than a milkshake and the internet.

I just looked down at the quarter of the piece of bread I had left and noticed it was crawling with ants. I think I just ate about 100 ants for breakfast.

This little lady is nowhere near as ugly as the ugly sheep, but here’s an image of the African sheep, dreads, tail and all:

Oops

2008-06-20T06:28:00.000-07:00

I wrote up some stuff but put the wrong file on my USB drive! Here are a couple of classroom shots for the time being...

Group fun

2008-06-10T03:47:00.000-07:00

Monday, June 9th:
Happy Hero’s Day. The schools have the day off, so I’m at home taking care of some things I would have done this weekend had I been around. I really like being on placement lately.

Last weekend involved a lot of socializing and going out to eat. We had a going-away get-together for Darcy on Saturday at the campsite. It’s really sad to see her go but we had a fun time partying as a group. The first half of Saturday was frustrating; I spent a long time in the internet café watching my connection go out every time I had almost loaded something, and being caught in the middle of conversations between the new batch of AVs in town. If anyone doing Africa Venture reads this, or if your little sister is in it or something, I’m sorry. But they are terrible. AV is a gap-year company that sends rich British 18-year-olds into Uganda to terrorize Jinja in beachwear and annoy everyone. As far as I can tell, anyway. They also work in schools so they get compared to SPW a lot, which we all enjoy. It was a rainy and crappy afternoon, but by the time we got to the campsite everyone was ready to have a good time and we had a really fun last night with Darce.

On Sunday a bunch of us went to the Lubani placement, where Jack had organized a community football tournament. It was pretty impressive! Sixteen teams had signed up, including one made up of SPW volunteers. I didn’t stay until the finals but did have a really good time seeing the games, people-watching, and listening to impromptu karaoke over the PA system. It was Jack’s birthday and he had bought a goat for us to feast on in the evening – it was delicious! Thanks Jack! The prize for the winning team was also a goat.

We’re within two months now. Time’s ticking.

Also: if anyone is planning to send post while I’m out here, try to do it in the next week or so – some things take about six weeks to get out here, and I won’t be getting things from the office the last week I’m here.

It’s back to the office tomorrow. I think we have been averaging two trips a week since mid-placement training. Dance4Life is coming to two more of our schools this Thursday, so I have to pick up some materials for that and – fingers crossed – actually get the money for our proposals that have been lost three times now. Lucy and Wilber have a model farm visit with the women’s group tomorrow. It should be a hit!

We’ll miss you, Darcy!

SPW All-stars in action:

Tuesday, June 10th:

The kids all laughed at me in our lesson this morning because I coughed while listing STDs. Punks.

I'm back at the office... will today be the magical day we get our event money? Nobody knows...

Boring stuff

2008-06-07T03:44:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, June 4^th:
We’re back to teaching now. Last term our most of the lessons with the primary kids were on HIV/AIDS, puberty, and reproductive systems. This term we’ll probably spend most of the time on drug abuse, STIs, and gender. We can do more of the life skills topics like relationships and decision-making with the secondary kids, but the young ones seem to have a lot of trouble grasping those lessons.

There’s some sad news around Magamaga this week. First, the daughter of one of our parishioners was killed by a car as she was crossing our paved road on Sunday. She was five months pregnant. Thankfully Lucy, Dennis and I weren’t around when it happened – I wouldn’t have wanted to be there for the accident scene. Kagoma Primary lost a P4 student to tetanus on Monday. She had missed the school vaccination day a few weeks ago.

And, less drastically but closer to home, Darcy is leaving Uganda this weekend. Since her antimalarials don’t seem to work and she reacts badly to quinine, it’s not safe for her to be here and she’s going back to Canada. She made it back from Dubai for a week to say goodbye. We are all really going to miss her.

On a happier note, Dennis and I had a good lesson at Kalebera this afternoon and our proposals have been approved, so Lucy’s women’s group will be having a model farm visit and we’ll be setting up a youth resource center, hosting two video workshops, and making talking boards at Kagoma as a group this month.

Lucy and I just had a nice training session on the field with Kenneth. Just two months to shed this African tummy before I get home!

Friday, June 6^th:
Shockingly little to report this week. Dennis and I had a really good lesson at Muguluka Primary this afternoon, on abstinence and drug abuse. We did a “myth or fact” game with the P6 kids (Coffee, tea and sodas contain drugs. Alcoholism is a disease. Smoking will hurt a pregnant woman, but not her baby. Etc.) which the kids were massively competitive about.

Lucy went in to the office today, but they didn’t have our proposal money for some reason. So there will likely be another trip to Jinja in the near future.

This weekend should be fun. We’re having a last night with Darcy at the campsite on Saturday, and Jack’s having a birthday party at his placement on Sunday. Those of us leaving on the first flight have two months left now. I’m excited about going home. Every time I look around I think of people and things that I am really going to miss, but home is home. The prospect of a beach trip the week after I get back has got me pretty revved up.

Some dancing flower girls from a wedding last weekend:

Kitchen gardens

2008-06-01T01:28:00.000-07:00

One of the practical lessons that our livelihoods volunteers teach is how to make a kitchen garden. It’s a dirt mound with a cylindrical space in the middle to put your food waste; the food decomposes and fertilizes whatever you plant in the dirt surrounding it. Nice, huh?

Man, stuff grows here! Here’s our personal kitchen garden under construction about a month ago:

When we left for the holiday, the dirt was piled up but we hadn’t planted anything yet. Come back two weeks later, and here’s what you find:

Massive plants! That we didn’t even plant! And better yet, it’s dodo, an edible fibery green that Dennis happens to be pretty good at cooking up. I love it.

Lucy and Wilber started a kitchen garden with their Kalebera farmers’ group before our break, and when we went back today they had not only finished building it, but had been using it for their kitchen waste. This is the same group that was generally rude and took any excuse not to turn up for meetings just a few months ago. Now they’re friendly and seem to be taking the lessons to heart. A little SPW success story.

The kids were around too, of course, and they wanted to make sure the baby’s head was turned my way for a picture. Poor baby.

The most wonderful time of the year

2008-06-01T01:26:00.000-07:00

Well, the holiday was wonderful. Seeing everyone was the best part. Getting to check out some really beautiful places and having new adventures was a blast too. It was so much fun to live as a tourist for a couple weeks, and get share first experiences of Africa with Jason, Jen, Tom, and Grace.

Tom and Grace got here on Monday the 12th, but since the rest of my placement parted on Friday I spent the first weekend of our vacation doing a little exploring on my own. I spent a boring night in Jinja, then caught a taxi into Kampala. I’m not a big fan of Kampala; it’s busy and dirty and kind of unpleasant. Still, I had to relish the opportunity to go to a movie theater (I saw Made of Honor, which was standard romcom cheesiness), get Japanese take-out, and have a room to myself with a private bathroom and double bed. The next morning I rolled into Entebbe, which is lovely – palm trees and nice houses and views of Lake Victoria. I checked into a hostel and spent the afternoon at the Entebbe Botanical Gardens. The entrance fees for the gardens had been hiked because there was – get this – a rally car race going on. So I had a nice stroll of the park and got to see the occasional import car fly by.

The next morning I woke up early and had the “transport officer” from the hostel give me a ride to the airport to meet up with Tom and Grace! It was kind of overwhelming to see Tom and kind of felt like I’d seen him yesterday. We spent the morning napping and waiting out the rain on the couches at the hostel, then split for the 3-hour ferry to Buggala Island.

The Ssese Islands were beautiful, relaxing, and quiet. We stayed at a campsite called Hornbill Camp that was pretty bizarre. It’s a collection of brightly-painted wooden buildings reminiscent of a hippy summer camp run by an eccentric middle-aged German couple. Tom, Grace and I pitched our tents near the beach and had a couple days full of swimming, exploring, fish dinners, stray dogs, beer and campfires before Jason and Jen joined us on Wednesday. We camped another night at Hornbill as a fivesome, then spent our last night on the islands at Panorama Lodge, which wasn’t on the waterfront but had nice self-contained cottages and a very helpful waitperson named Arnold.

Then it was off to Mbale, near the Kenyan border. Everyone piled off the ferry and into their first matatu. We stopped in Kampala to change money and get snacks and be overwhelmed for a few minutes, then rode for another four hours or so. Our taxi stopped at the rest stop where vendors swarm the car and poke bouquets of meat on a stick and drinks and fried bananas through the windows, which came as quite a surprise to sleeping Jason and Grace. We spent that night at a basic hotel in town and had some tasty Indian food.

The next morning we stopped in at the Uganda Wildlife Authority office to plan our next few days, deciding on a couple nights at Sipi Falls with a night camping on Mt. Elgon in the middle instead of a three-night summit trip, which we didn’t really have the gear for. Sipi was gorgeous. We made the Crow’s Nest our home base, which is a rustic collection of cabins set opposite a valley from the waterfalls. We hiked down to the main waterfall on our first afternoon, and were aided down the last muddy slope by a bunch of little boys that appeared out of the bushes like oompa loompas. The biggest fall is long and skinny, and really pretty to look up at from the base.

Mt. Elgon is a long and flat mountain, so hiking around seems to be just as cool as reaching the actual highest peak. We hiked in about ten miles to Tutum Cave, passing through farmland, rocky mountainside, bamboo forest, and lush jungle on our way in. The cave was loaded with bats and it was pretty creepy to shine our lights onto the ceiling and see thousands of swinging orange eyes glowing back at us. We had two rangers with guns with us, and we all had a nice bonfire before a very cold and damp night. We saw a few monkeys, a chameleon, and lots of large biting ants during the hike (Grace even saw them in her pants). It rained for a while on our way out. We took shelter at an empty primary school for a bit but ended up braving the drizzle and extreme mud when we realized that the sky was pretty solidly gray. Patrick, our helpful boy-guide, requested something waterproof and walked back inside Grace’s pack cover.

We had another night at Sipi, which featured very welcome hot showers and hot food, and then arranged a ride back to Jinja. We shared a vehicle with a guy from the Netherlands named Shuldth or something who was pretty nice. The five of us got dropped at Backpackers, the favorite SPW haunt, then went out for dinner at the lovely Ginger on the Nile. We sat under a big grass umbrella on the banks of the Nile, had cocktails, and watched some monkeys. Then it was off to the campsite at Bujagali Falls for a night of hanging out and then being kept awake all night by rats in our dorm room.

The next morning, we caught the shuttle truck back to Backpackers, where Jason, Jen, Grace and I got the prep talk for our day of Grade 5 rapids and Tom rented a mountain bike and had a day around town. Rafting was awesome! We flipped our boat in three of the rapids, and the times we didn’t turn over we were definitely on the edge. We did a lot of swimming. It was scary and exciting and fun. We relived it all on the projection screen at the campsite and then I did what I typically do when out with Grace, which was to get a bunch of free shots and act like a fool.

By then it was Thursday, and Jason and Jen left for Murchison Falls National Park (where I went over Easter) and Tom, Grace and I visited my placement, got dinner and souvenirs in Jinja, and rolled back to Entebbe to get some sleep before their early morning flight on Friday. It was rough seeing them go, but saying goodbye for 10 weeks is a lot easier than seven months.

I made the trek back to Jinja and snuck in late to the last couple days of our mid-placement training. It was pretty uneventful: sharing ideas, relearning Dance4Life (again), clarifying some policies. It was nice to see everyone and hear about people’s holidays. The other international volunteers set off to Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, etc. and everyone had a pretty good time with the exception of maybe Lucy and Darcy, who both fell ill with malaria during the two-week break. Lucy got the malaria meds pretty early on but spent some time in the hospital in Kenya with a secondary stomach infection. She’s back to her old self now. Darcy is still in Dubai. She had a bad reaction to quinine and was in intensive care for a few days. It sounds like she’s past the dangerous point but I think they’re still keeping an eye on her liver and making sure it’s safe for her to come back. Everyone really misses her.

After training Lucy and I got to spend a day with Jason and Jen in Kampala on their way back from their safari time. We had an awesome meal (with the first real espresso I’ve had since January) before they set off to the airport with some Texans they met up at Murchison. Lucy and I stayed in Kampala for the night and saw the new Indiana Jones movie. It was silly. We had a great time.

So now it’s back on placement, and back to work until the end of July. Returning to Magamaga was happy. There was quite a chorus of “Welcome back! You are most welcome! You are lost!” etc. the first time Lucy and I made a trip to the trading center. I’m sad that the holiday is over, but it’s nice to be home and unpack, wash my clothes, and see everyone. The student turnout is always pretty low the first week after a break, but I did a lesson on Gender at Kagoma this week and will probably have a couple classes tomorrow.

One exciting tidbit from the mid-placement workshop was that our debrief has been moved up a few days so that we’ll have a week off at the end of the program to travel. I think I’ll be headed to Rwanda with Lucy and Katie and I’m excited that I’ll get to go. We did quite a bit on the Rwandan genocide in Core 350 at Whitworth and I’d really like to visit the genocide museum and see the area, plus it’s supposed to be a really beautiful country with a lot better infrastructure than Uganda. So it’ll be a nice educational/relaxing wrap-up to the trip.

Holiday pictures

2008-06-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

Ssese swimming

Lizard.
Me, Tom, small puppy.
Tom, large puppy.
Me, monkey.
Grace, dog. Dog.
Sunset from Hornbill Camp
Everyone's here!
Kampala frenzy

Sipi Falls
Pempe sandwich!
View from Crow's Nest
LadiesGents
Mt. Elgon area

Chameleon!
Tutum Cave, where we slept with many bats
Grace's camp shower
From inside the cave

Patrick's impromptu raincoat
Lots and lots of mud
sibs
Sunset at Bujagali Falls
Ready to raft!

Vacation has arrived!

2008-05-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

Yay!!!

I'm in Jinja, gradually making my way to Entebbe to meet the Chappells at the airport on Monday morning. What a feeling. A visit from my favorite people and an action-packed holiday all in one... what more could a girl ask for?

Really, I can't think of anything.

It was a little sad to say goodbye to Magamaga and Lucy this morning (her 15-hour bus ride to Nairobi should have just departed), but I think the next couple weeks will be the refresher we've all been waiting for.

Let the fun begin.

Almost vacation, really

2008-05-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

Monday, April 28^th:
Well, life’s a bit slow. The kids are out on break, so there are no SRH lessons to teach. I’d like to get going on setting up a youth resource center tomorrow, but it’s not really the same as having class time on the schedule.

The power at our house has been out for the last three nights, but Teddy got the electrician (a big fan of the “red to red, and black to black” principle) over here tonight and he got it working again. Success! I can see my food, and use my laptop!

Dennis is in Jinja for a few days, and Peter never came back from the Be A Man conference that ended last Wednesday. He’s sent me a couple text messages saying he’s sick. So Lucy and I have had the house to ourselves for a while, and it’s been pretty fun despite a little loneliness. We’ve enjoyed planning our meals, and it’s easier to cook and clean up after two, even if there are less people to help.

Today for lunch we had a “turkey egg vs. chicken egg” omelet competition. I’d say the turkey eggs won out. Lucy’s aunt and uncle had sent cheese and crackers for her birthday (awesome), and having a little emmental in there was simply delicious.

Yesterday we were startled to discover baby rats crawling out from under the door of the locked storage room. They were pretty gross – still with their eyes closed and no fur. I got them to creep back under the door and blocked up the crack with sticks. We got Paul to come around with the key this morning so we could clean out the nest, but the peeping mound of rat babies appeared to have disappeared during the night. Where have they gone? We’ll probably hear them chewing under our beds at night in a few weeks. Lucy and I had quite the struggle shooing a rat out of our room last night in the dark.

We spent last Friday night up in the Kamuli district at Hannah and Jen’s placement. They live in Nawansaso, which seems like a really great community that had a lot of SPW success last year. They have a big house – four rooms! – with electricity, and a trading center that has lots of cheap food available in the evenings. It was really fun to see them and catch up. Since I skipped out on rafting last weekend, I feel like I haven’t seen the other volunteers in a long time. Jen and Hannah's place:

Our room has smelled funny for the last couple of days, and yesterday I discovered a decaying lizard in the nonfunctioning sink at the foot of my bed. Gross. Another lizard replaced it in a matter of hours, but I got that one out of there before it croaked.

Thursday, May 1^st:
Today is Labor Day in Uganda. Apparently, the way to celebrate Labor Day is to hang around my house saying that you’re hungry. This has been the overwhelming theme of our visitors this morning.

Dennis and Peter both got back yesterday. Peter has been kicking around quitting for a good month or so and seems closer to making a decision. He said he’s going to talk to the office on Friday. I hope he stays, but I’m ready to have some resolution either way.

We had a couple guys from the SPW office here yesterday to complete a survey for NOGAMU (National Organic Agricultural Movement of Uganda) seeing if our farmers would be able to provide produce for an organic store NOGAMU wants to open in Jinja. The survey was about ten questions long, mostly yes/no, and it took about five hours to complete it with the Kalebera Farmer’s Group and then Sister Claire, who runs the women’s groups that make crafts. So that kept us busy yesterday. The SPW guys also brought a letter saying that all event proposals for June had to be in this Friday (tomorrow), so that should give us something to do today.

I knew this to some extent already, but the last few days have taught me that I am much happier when I have something productive to do. Waking up with a completely blank calendar looking me in the face is not something I like, especially when I’m in Africa and have little access to entertainment.

We have M&E (monitoring and evaluation) forms due on Friday, and I’ll probably be the one to head in to the office in Jinja. Getting off placement for the day should be pretty nice. It’s also less then two weeks until Tom and Grace get here! And then Jason and Jen! This is keeping me pretty excited despite my many hours of downtime. I think the time after the holiday is going to be good, too. There’s a lot I want to do in the last couple months, and the kids are back in school at the end of May. It should go pretty quick. Then it’s back home, and ten days later, grad school starts!

Wednesday, May 7th:
In Jinja once again. Despite being equally uneventful, the last few days have been less boring than last week. Highlights included playing with piglets, spending a night at Bujagali Falls for Darcy's birthday, spending some time with Sister Claire, and getting awesome packages from my mom and grandma. I now have a french press and Starbuck's coffee. Ahhh.

I'm at the internet cafe so I'll keep it brief. I still want to go in to the office today and possibly to a clinic since I've had a string of strange and annoying symptoms this last week. Today's new thing is feeling like there is something stuck in my throat.

TOM AND GRACE GET HERE ON MONDAY!!! That's pretty much all I'm thinking about at the moment.

Here's a little "too cool for school" moment from Dance4Life a couple weeks ago:

AIDS Day pictures

2008-04-23T06:07:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-04-23T05:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-18T01:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-10T05:55:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-05T04:41:00.000-07:00

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.

Easter getaway

2008-03-25T01:26:00.001-07:00

Murchison Falls was a blast. We stayed at the Red Chili campsite, which was great -- real toilets, showers, a decent restaurant and a nice seating area to hang out. We brought a bunch of two-person tents with us and sleeping on the ground was a little rough, but overall the accommodation was wonderful.

A hippo walked through the camp shortly after our arrival on the first night. Crazy!

We spent Saturday morning doing a game drive, and saw loads of elephants, giraffes, wildebeest, warthogs, antelopes, baboons, and a lion. The terrain was beautiful, and much different from the landscape we're used to in the eastern part of the country. I couldn't get it through my head that we were seeing the animals in their natural habitat; I really felt like we were in a zoo or a fenced-in park, and that the animals had been put there for us to witness. Pretty great.

Easter Sunday was spent doing a boat tour to the bottom of the falls, which allowed for lots of hippo and crocodile sightings. In the afternoon we drove up to the top of the falls, which was incredible. Seeing huge mammals is great, but the sheer power of the water pounding its way down the rocks was more breathtaking in a way. We spent some time swimming at a campsite a short ways up the Nile, which was short-lived and a little scary since we could see the hippos surfacing halfway across the river.

The hippos and warthogs were my favorites. The hogs hung out around the campsite, and are pretty cute despite their giant tusks and weird back mohawks.

Spending time with the other volunteers and having a real, safari-style holiday was a much-needed break from placement life. We're all a little bummed to get back to work, but it was a lovely respite and got me pretty excited to be a Ugandan tourist in May.

This computer isn't linking up to my camera, so I'll post some pics next time I'm in. The SPW staff called a mysterious meeting for all of the volunteers this afternoon, which is why I'm still in Jinja and not teaching lessons today. Our placement is having an additional meeting afterwards about the security situation in Buwenge afterwards. We expressed concern to staff person Nat on Thursday night, and I think that some security measures are going to have to be implemented or SPW might want to move us. Starting over in a new community would be a little unbearable at this point, but we might get shifted to a different trading center and stay at the same schools. I really don't want to think about moving house, but I don't like not being able to leave our house at night either.

I have moments, like this weekend, where I love Uganda and dread the thought of readjusting to American life. There are also plenty of times on placement where I wish I had an excuse to pack up and head home. I have a lot to look forward to when I get back.

I got to eat a bacon cheeseburger and chocolate this weekend! Rock on!

No one said it would be easy

2008-03-20T05:51:00.000-07:00

Sunday, March 16th:
Sunday appears to be drum circle day. It’s kind of cool and kind of tiring to listen to kids going nuts on their djembes all afternoon.

I started developing some kind of weird skin irritation last night. I have little white bumps on the right side of my chin and neck, and it feels like a bad sunburn. I walked over to the health center this morning, but apparently a 24-hour schedule doesn’t apply to hours people spend in church. I’ll try again later. I have no idea what’s causing it. I’m thinking of Kelly’s experience with mystery travel skin rash and hoping it goes away soon. I feel kind of tired and dizzy too, but it is really hot today.

Kagoma Primary hosted Sports Day on Friday, and we had groups from about 15 primary schools here. The kids were lined up around the field, and different swatches of the school uniform rainbow bounced and sang depending on who was leading each race. Some of the kids had running uniforms, but most of them ran in their school clothes. All were barefoot. The boys had a 12k race – 25 laps around the field – and quite a few kids collapsed or fainted over the course of the day. It was a hot, sunny day, and I don’t think the kids had access to any water unless they brought some or trekked over to the borehole. Some of the kids have been training pretty much the whole school day for the last couple of weeks. They were pushing themselves to the limit, even though the javelins were sticks and the shot-put was an irregularly shaped rock.

Lucy and I were recruited to sit with the Kagoma kids, since Muguluka PS had “brought their mzungus” (they have four volunteers from AV, a British gap-year organization). We did get a chance to walk around and cheer for some of our outreach schools, chat with the students, and greet a few teachers we know. The weather was beautiful and it was a fun, festival-like atmosphere. There were lots of vendors selling fruit and various fried foods, which was wonderful. I got some grilled corn on the cob, a chapatti, and a few feet of sugarcane.

Later in the day, Dennis and I went in to Jinja to meet with some partner NGOs we’d like to involve in an AIDS awareness event we’re planning for April. We met with people at TASO and the AIDS Information Center and gathered a lot of information and contacts. We’ll have to go in again this week with letters outlining our plans and to arrange the details.

I love going to Jinja. It was a pretty quick stop, but I got to use the internet and buy a juice box, two things that always make me happy.

I had a relaxing Saturday back in the parish. I washed a lot of things, read, and went on a fun exploratory bike ride. Lucy and I made fried Ugandan-style spaghetti, which will be a tasty addition to our meal collection.

I’m really missing Tom lately, and feel like I could use a break. I’m not exceptionally busy, but I could really use a day where showering, cooking, and getting around weren’t major undertakings. Jason, Jen, Tom, and Grace got their tickets to visit in May, and I am really looking forward to the vacation.

This weekend most of the international volunteers are going to Murchison Falls for our four-day Easter break. It could be a bit of a disaster since we’ve arranged the whole thing on our own, but I’m pretty excited to see the park.

Dennis and I saw some beautiful marabou stork while in town on Friday, and having the kids bring by the monitor lizard last week was pretty wild. They eat chickens.

Tuesday, March 18th:
Bad times on the home front. Lucy is fighting a losing battle against the fleas that Georgia imported to her bed last week. I still have a weird rash on the back of my neck, although I went to the health center and was prescribed a cream to try out. Dennis has a fever and Peter was diagnosed with malaria this morning.

Dennis and Peter saw a little girl being raped in the parish on Saturday night. This has been really upsetting for all of us, and Lucy and I especially it seems. We talked with Tedi last night, since it was likely one of the girls at Kagoma Primary. She’s going to talk to the girls who were absent Monday, and get each class together to talk about defilement. It’s not uncommon around here, which is pretty disgusting. Little kids get lured out at night by men who promise to give them gifts or money, and some of the time they know what’s in store for them but go anyway. There are laws against defilement, but they’re loosely enforced. And sadly, Tedi said that some of the parents encourage it, since their kids get money or goods in return.

I feel pretty helpless knowing that this is going on. We’re here to be agents of change, but what are we supposed to do, erect signs that say “Don’t rape children”? It’s repulsive to me that defilement and mob justice are just “the way things work here,” and that we’re supposed to take it in stride. There are countless campaigns and NGOs and new laws, but it’s still socially acceptable to beat your kids and cheat on your wife.

It’s becoming more apparent that we’re living in an area that’s not particularly safe. If we stick around the house after dark we’re fine, but there are too many sketchy characters to venture out alone after the sun goes down. It seems so quiet in the parish, but the vodka sachets, condom wrappers, and anxious neighbors tell a different story. Peter said that one of his family members bought land in Buwenge, but the rest of the family urged him to sell it instead of building a house because “Buwenge is no place to raise children.”

I don’t want to upset anyone at home; I’m being careful and trying to make changes. I expected things like homesickness, discomfort, illness, and poverty to be part of this trip, but the recent incidences of violent crime have come as a bit of a shock.

Wednesday, March 19th:
It’s been a rough week, but I’d say things are looking up. No new crimes have come to light. My neck’s getting better, and we found Lucy some flea powder. Dennis and I have been busy planning an AIDS event for April, which we’ll propose to the SPW office tomorrow morning.

My frustrations with Uganda are waning, and I’m getting really excited about the vacation in May. Jason, Jen, Tom, and Grace will be here, and there are lots of exciting things we can do. It’s going to be a blast to be a tourist for a couple weeks.

We have this Friday-Monday off for Easter, and I’ll head into Jinja tomorrow morning. Friday morning, 13 of the international volunteers leave for Murchinson Falls National Park. We’ll be camping, hiking around the falls, going on a boat tour, and doing a game drive. I haven’t thought about it too much, but I am going to be really pumped if we see some elephants or something. Maybe I’ll get a chance to put some pictures up if we roll into town at a decent hour on Monday.

I haven’t taken any pictures for the last few days. It’s raining a lot more, which I like. It’s good for the farms and the water tanks, and I feel less guilty lounging around when it isn’t beamingly gorgeous outside. I decided to accept the offer from UNC, and Tom sent in my matriculation forms this week. I am really looking forward to being a grad student next year. I know it’ll suck sometimes, but I can’t help but feel a little twinge of nostalgia when I walk into a classroom and there are half-reactions written up on the board.

Happy Easter to all. Maybe I can hard-boil some eggs and get someone to play the egg-tap game with me.

Days in the Life

2008-03-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

Thursday, March 6th:
Haven’t written for a week or so. Last weekend was a blast. All of the international volunteers (minus Reet, who had a teacher’s meeting) gathered at Georgia, Carson, Iggy and Becky’s placement near Iganga. They have a huge house, a pretty yard with some unused farming structures, and a kitten. Cats are pretty rare around here, and Ugandans seem to dislike them. The kitten has turned out to be quite a nuisance, but I was really happy to get to play with it for a while. She was loaded with mites. I finally got out the five or so that had embedded themselves next to her eye, and Jack and I tried unsuccessfully to clean a few dozen more out of her ears.

We partied in celebration of several volunteer birthdays that fall at the beginning of March. Jack slaughtered a chicken for the occasion, and everyone brought snacks, sodas, and fruit to share. After lots of catching up and goofing off we covered the floor for a mass slumber party, and Carson entertained us well into the mostly sleepless night.
Everyone seems to be having really different experiences on their placements, and I’m very thankful for the way things are going at mine. The fact that we can agree on food, budget our money, and teach together is not something to take for granted. We also have electricity, a variety of vegetables available, and some semblance of privacy. Lucy and I were escorted to Georgia and Carson’s place by about thirty shrieking children, and were surrounded by many more the entire time we were at their house. I’m grateful that the kids show up to hang out with us at home, but take off when we’re busy or it gets late.

This week, like the last two, has gone by very fast. The sports season has started up for our local schools, which means rampant evening activity at the field next to our house and rescheduling some afternoon lessons. Peter and Lucy have taught a couple environmental lessons in schools and met with some farmers’ groups now. One primary school class presented them with gifts, and we ended up with a box of about 35 avocados and a box of pawpaws (papayas? I’m not sure what we’d call them at home). We were very pleased.

I’m reading a book I borrowed from Carson called Race Matters, by African-American scholar and activist Cornel West. It’s interesting to read about race relations at home while living in a setting where it’s rare for me to see another white person on any given day (other than Lucy). The book was published in 1995 so it feels a little outdated; he cites a lot of examples from the LA riots and Rodney King, and the stats are a couple decades old. Still, it’s extremely well-written and thought-provoking. I’m white, heterosexual, fairly moderate, middle class, religiously inactive… living in Africa is the first time I’ve been on any sort of fringe.

Other books I’ve read since my arrival:
The Consul’s File
The Kindness of Strangers
On Beauty
Hide
The Guardian (by Nicholas Sparks; so awful it’s almost good)
The Death of Achilles
Into the Wild

Lucy’s grandparents sent a few books… I’m looking forward to borrowing them!

Peter went into the SPW office yesterday for our required monthly visit, and came home with mail for me and Lucy and a bike for our placement! Both of us received clothes and sweets from our moms, which was better than Christmas. The bike is HEAVY, large, one speed, and rickety, but I impressed the priests by riding it around this morning and I’m excited to have it.

What else? Dennis turned 19 on Monday, which would have been my Dad’s birthday too. We went to Green Valley and had fries, goat, and sodas. As they say upon parting here, Nice time.

Friday, March 7th:
Today was a bit of a taxing day, without good reason really. I think the weekdays go by so quickly that suddenly – BAM! – it’s Friday and we’re all pretty exhausted.

Sports season is in full swing, and our field was packed with soccer spectators for most of the day. This means that we have lots of “visitors” whenever we’re home and out on the porch. Some are friendly and some are trying. The kids especially are either really sweet or really annoying.

Dennis and I taught a first lesson at Buweera Primary today. The students were quiet, disciplined, and unable to understand me. We planned to cover two lessons since we had a two-hour block, but only made it through one with all of the interpreting and explaining. They had some questions about HIV prevention at the end, including, “If a condom is too big, can you tie it on with banana fiber?” This happened in Lusoga but I think Dennis answered with something to the effect of, “You’re too young for condoms, kid.”

Our lesson at Muguluka Primary was cancelled due to aforementioned sports season, which Dennis and I were fine with since it would have been another hour-long walk (in the opposite direction).

Kenneth, a soccer player that likes to come around and ask about scholarships, brought us a dozen or so eggs from his family’s farm. I made some egg fried rice which turned out really well! Any deviation from our usual repertoire of meals is a cause for excitement. Tomorrow we’re planning to try egg toast for breakfast… hold on to your hats.

Saturday, March 8th:
Another weekend. I spent the afternoon in Kamuli, an hour’s taxi ride north of where we live. Kamuli’s a nice town; it’s small and easy to navigate, but has two grocery stores, a big market, and an internet café (which was closed this afternoon). About ten of us met up and had a good, wallet-friendly lunch, swapped stories, and did some shopping.

Georgia and Carson saw a man beaten to death in their village yesterday, and were pretty shaken up. He had stolen some chickens and the entire community had stripped him, attacked him with bricks and sticks, then left his battered body in the trading center. It was removed at some point today, but the blood and the memory of his death march past their house were still waiting for them.

We were all upset to hear what had happened, and I think a lot of us were questioning what we would have done. I’d like to think I would intervene, but realize that protesting against a violent mob isn’t a safe option. I think one of the hardest things for them was knowing that the people they teach and interact with every day had dragged their children to the scene, excited to partake in the killing. It’s an unsettling reminder that we are living in a very different world sometimes.

Our taxi home was packed with people, birds, and a goat under the backseat. Seeing the other international volunteers is always really grounding somehow. I think we all care about each other, and having a sounding board for our experiences on placement is invaluable.

Tomorrow should be a nice day, as Georgia, Katie, and Jill are going to meet us in Buwenge for lunch, and I’m planning to attend the Catholic church service in the morning. I’ve visited a lot of cathedrals but don’t think I’ve ever attended a mass. It should be nice, and I know our presence will be appreciated by the Fathers that have been so friendly to us since the day we arrived. It’ll probably be conducted in Lusoga, but I bet I’ll be able to get the gist of things.

I think the word is out that I like avocadoes – Dennis said that a group of boys from Kagoma Primary showed up while we were out to add to our collection. Fruit is a wonderful gift. We’re each going to have to eat a couple every day at the rate they are ripening. It’s the good kind of fat, right?

Today is Womens’ Day. Traditionally, this is celebrated by the men doing the cooking and cleaning. Lucy and I have been told repeatedly that there is not a designated Mens’ Day because “every day is Mens’ Day.” We figured we wouldn’t have much opportunity to observe the holiday, since Dennis does most of the cooking and cleaning around here anyway. Right now he is adding his signature spicing to my favorite home-cooked meal, BEANS, so I suppose there’s a cause for celebration after all!

It actually gets kind of chilly when it rains. It’s nice to wear long sleeves in the evening, especially with the recent influx of bugs.

Sunday, March 9th:
Lucy and I attended the Catholic church this morning, which I really enjoyed. The kids from Kagoma Primary were in charge of leading the music today, and the service was dominated by singing and dancing. There were a couple songs we do at home (This is the day…) and a lot of African ones. The songs are accompanied by a drum and something that sounds like a tambourine, and, unlike any church service at home, they are sung in a register that is comfortable for me.

The shorter Father (I still don’t know their names) led the service, and he introduced Lucy and me in English. The offering part was really cool; most of the adults came forward first to put money into the basket, and afterwards there was a long period of singing and clapping while the kids tramped down to the altar carrying sugarcane and fruit. I think there was a chicken in there too. I like the idea of offering food. It’s easier to give stuff than money, and it can go directly to meeting needs in the community.

The service was in Lusoga but there was very little sermon, really. It was mostly music and prayers. A bunch of people said they were happy to see us there and I plan to attend on the weekends we’re around.

Tom and Grace bought their plane tickets! The rest of my time here is punctuated with trips and events and I have a feeling it’s going to go by really fast.

We spent some time at home last night talking about mob justice. Dennis said it’s pretty common, as thieves typically pay off the police and go back to stealing. Since there’s no retribution with the legal system, the community takes it into their own hands. It’s terrible but not uncommon. Stealing is a major offense when people have very little they can do without. Lucy pointed out that the situation isn’t so different at home when the community finds out that someone is a pedophile, although it doesn’t go as far.

There’s a drum circle going on outside. The sound of lots of people hand drumming makes me think of smelly white people hippy-dancing at the Seattle Center. Thankfully, this one comprises about ten little boys in their Sunday best, not patchouli and dreads. I stepped outside and they started chanting in rhythm, “Mzungu! How-are-you! Mzungu! How-are-you!”

Wednesday, March 12th:
Yesterday we had a visit from Medi, one of the SPW staff members. Now that we’ve been on placement a month or so, the office is checking up on all of the volunteer groups to see how things are coming along. We had fruitless visits to the health center and sub-county office, then Medi chatted with key teachers at a couple of our schools, watched Dennis and I teach a lesson, and had individual and group chats with all of us. There were surveys to complete, records to go over, and events to plan. It was a long day.

Georgia and Carson’s placement (which had the mob justice incident last Friday) has moved locations, so they’re a 15-minute taxi ride away from us now. They left the kitten behind.

Dennis are I planning to head into Jinja tomorrow to stop by the TASO (The AIDS Support Organization) office and see if their outreach group will participate in a AIDS day we’re planning for April. I haven’t been in to Jinja in a couple weeks and I’m looking forward to some supermarket/internet time.

Last weekend was nice; I got to see a lot of the other international volunteers, but had a relaxing weekend too and didn’t spend a bunch of money by staying in town. Our stipend is pretty limiting, and I’ve had to make withdrawals from home in order to visit people, have some snack food on hand, and send the occasional text message. Our personal allowance is 45,000/= a month, which works out to about $25. Not a lot if you want to, say, meet people at a restaurant.

There seems to be less to report nowadays. Dennis and I are teaching regularly, and there aren’t too many new developments. Wilber has more or less replaced Ronald as our community volunteer, although Ronald still comes by the house to talk to the boys for some reason. I think he is trying to weasel his way back in. Peter’s been gone all week because SPW selected him to attend an AIDS conference in Kampala.

The lack of privacy is starting to drain me a little bit. I’ve gotten used to the constant attention I get while walking around town, but I haven’t been by myself in one place for more than an hour or so in the last few months. It’s like living in the dorms again, I guess. Sometimes I could kill for a fenced backyard or a real bathroom.

There’s a really ugly sheep on our walk out to Kalebera – it has a fat tail, like a stubby kangaroo. I’ve decided to touch it every time I see it, and yesterday it looked at me lovingly with its ugly little face while I patted its head, then gurgle/snarled at me as I walked away. It is my favorite.

Lucy and I battle sugar cane (Lucy's mouth started bleeding).

Dennis models backseat-driver technique on our new bike.

Proud hunters come to visit with their kill!

Entertainment Tonight

2008-03-01T01:28:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, February 20th:
Per request, I’ll be putting the most recent stuff at the bottom of each post. I thought it would be easier to keep the overall bottom-to-top flow going, but turns out people like to start at the top of each entry. New and improved!

We were invited to address a parents’ meeting at Kalebera Primary today. I like Kalebera a lot; the kids are excitable and friendly, and the headmaster, Aron, has been really welcoming. We showed up around noon, taught part of a lesson on HIV, and then were asked to join the meeting. The meeting was conducted in Lusoga (Dennis translated for Lucy and I) and was pretty interesting at times; the main purpose was to persuade the parents that their kids needed something to eat during their 8-5 school day. Aron told us that most of the kids weren’t getting a lunch, and that it was pretty impossible to get kids to focus when they were hungry.

It was a bit of a flashback to our training days: debate for debate’s sake. Any monetary contribution for maize seemed to be too much, and numerous other issues were brought up. There was a long tirade from one of the teachers about male dominance. One father objected to a command for better discipline at home. How was he supposed to discipline, now that caning was illegal? He said that “child rights” made discipline impossible. On and on and on. By 4:30, I understood just how hard it must be for those kids to concentrate when they haven’t eaten all day.

SPW was brought up pretty frequently, and it was decided that Lucy and I needed Ugandan names. I have been renamed Nangovi, and Lucy is now Kakuwaire. I asked Dennis if Nangovi meant goat-lover, but he said he didn’t think so.

Peter is away this week, which is a drag. His friends have coerced him into planning a massive graduation party, and it requires him being in Kampala to organize the details. He and Lucy are supposed to teach a two-hour livelihoods lesson at secondary school tomorrow morning, and now she’s going to be on her own with kids that might not understand English. Their first farmer’s meeting is scheduled for Friday, and if our newly unreliable community volunteer doesn’t show, it might be a language barrier disaster.

I hope we get to go to the party though – it’s in his home village, and it sounds like it will be quite the event.

I’d like to get a few annoying “cultural differences” off my chest:
1. Understatement. How long will the food take? Not long. (Probably hours.) How far away is it? Very close. (Miles.) It would be nice to get some concrete answers instead of being unpleasantly surprised with the truth.
2. Eagerness to point out your faults. Peter’s friend Michael marveled for several minutes the other day at how bad I was at peeling motoke.
3. Borrowing means keeping until asked for it back, even if you were using it at that moment. (Lily did a lot of this during training.)
4. Timing. I am not a fan of Africa Time. It’s hard to keep a schedule when things happen several hours after they are supposed to, and there’s a lot of sitting around waiting for people to show up.
5. Assuming that being white means being rich. Kids ask Lucy and me for money and sweets without blinking an eye. A couple boys came over the other night and one wanted to know how he could get to England. Lucy told him he’d need a visa and a plane ticket. When we declined his request for us to buy him a plane tickets, he wanted to know if he could open a bank account and have us put money in it. We told him that we didn’t have money to give and that he should look into scholarships, and he asked if we could get him sponsors from home. Dollars and pounds go a long way here, but it’s hard to get across that we don’t have buckets of cash and no clue how to spend it.

On a lighter note, one of the Fathers told us that we get monkeys here when the bananas are ripe. I am pumped for monkeys. Dennis said he grew up around lots of them, and one time they caught a baby and caged it in their house. The baby’s mother freaked out, and their house was ambushed by monkeys of all sizes. He called it “monkey solidarity.” They had to release the baby and run to avoid mass monkey attack.

And even more exciting: an acceptance letter from UNC arrived at home! Some pieces still have to come together, but it’s very likely that this’ll direct my life for the next several years. It’s an awesome program and I’m so glad it’s an option.

Thursday, February 21st:
I’m writing in a less frustrated state tonight. Dennis, Lucy and I had a nice day today; we postponed our faraway morning meeting until next week, which got Lucy off the hook for the solo teaching session. Dennis and I taught a rowdy bunch of S1 and S2 kids about HIV in the afternoon.

I’ve tried teaching some of the Dance4Life drill to a couple classes now, and Ugandan kids appear to have no rhythm whatsoever. There is no syncopation. There are only quarter notes. The phrase I’m working on is “HIV and AIDS we can beat it,” and the rhythm goes 1 2 3 4+ +2 3 4. The kids say one word per beat, regardless of whether we clap it, do call and response, do the motions along with it… curious.

Emily linked on to Tom and my Skype chat this evening, which was pretty exciting! I wish I was in NC this weekend for her visit.

Despite missing out on Masher Time, this weekend promises to be pretty fun. Peter’s party is scheduled for Saturday night, and we’ve been invited to the wedding of one of the primary school teachers on Sunday. I’m looking forward to seeing a Ugandan wedding and reception! Lucy and I were concerned about what we would wear but Dennis stepped up as helpful male by saying, “You have lots of clothes.” We have one drawerfull each.

I gave a group of primary school girls a balloon animal I made from the kit Ruta got me, and they were pretty confused. “What is it?” “A giraffe!” I don’t think they had seen balloons before. They giggled a lot and carried it around the school yard for the whole day.

(Late-night fun when the power’s out.)

Sunday, February 24th:
We ended up having to miss out on Peter’s grad party due to lack of transportation and communication (Peter couldn’t get phone reception out in the village). Alas. He’s back tonight and it sounded like the party was a huge success. He brought us back a piece of cake so all is forgiven.

Dennis, Lucy, Wilbur (Dennis’s friend) and I spent most of the day at the wedding and reception of one of the primary school teachers, Monica. It was a lot of fun. The ceremony was pretty similar to a wedding at home – same vows, same procedure – but with much more dancing and ululating. There were a lot of people in the wedding party, and the little boys in suits were pretty cute. Afterward, we walked over to the reception, which was held in tents at a primary school compound, and listened to a lot of speeches in Lusoga before having a bit of cake and a big dinner.

The meal included most of the Ugandan staples and was pretty tasty:

Chapatti, rice, spaghetti, motoke, cabbage, irish potato, beef stew, yam and pumpkin.

We had to each with our hands, as there were no utensils. I thought, Mom would hate this! I just shook the hands of about 100 people and held a baby, and now I’m licking rice off my fingers without getting to wash my hands first. Let’s hope I don’t get dysentery.
Here are Lucy and I with the happy couple (Monica had changed dresses for the reception). The groom seems pretty attached to Lucy…?

Yesterday was pretty uneventful since we didn’t go to the party, but a bunch of little kids stopped by in the evening. We played jump rope for a while, and I brought out some more balloons which were a hit as you can see:

Wednesday, February 27th:
Things are just rolling along. We have our first required visit to the SPW office in a week, and we have a ton of forms to fill out and meetings to arrange between now and then. We’ve been slow about it but it’ll happen.

Peter’s back, and he and Lucy have had a few meetings with people that have connections to farmer’s groups, out-of-school youth, and demonstration gardens. It seems like the livelihoods work is picking up. Dennis and I are still teaching 1-2 lessons a day, and they have been going well. It’s really gratifying when the kids can recite back the things we talked about the week before – sometimes I’m not sure how much is sinking in, but they seem to be getting the main bits.

We had a chat yesterday with Sister Claire, one of the four nuns that live in the parish. She’s in charge of several women’s groups (some for widows) that get together weekly to practice farming techniques and make crafts. The women showed us some of their handicrafts and they’re really cool. A lot of them string necklaces out of beads made from rolled-up strips of paper, and they weave purses and bowls and things. It seems like a really good business idea but there’s really no market here. There are a few shops that sell the necklaces but the supply seems to be much higher than the demand, and they can’t really sell them in their villages. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way I could sell them at home and ship them. Most items cost $1-2. Ideas, anyone? I could set up something through Etsy if the shipping wasn’t too expensive, or see if I could get a store interested in buying a bunch of them.

Claire showed us around the sisters’ place, too. They have a beautiful demonstration garden, a couple cows, and pigs. Their house is immaculate and landscaped, and they have internet access. I’ll have to get some pictures of it. It’s absolutely gorgeous and it seems like such an idyllic lifestyle. The sisters are wonderful and do a lot of meaningful work all over Kagoma. I hope I get to know them better over the next few months.

The four of us had an impromptu party last night – we set out for Buwenge to get out of the house for a bit and ended up getting rolexes (an omelet wrapped in a chapatti, my favorite Ugandan snack), stopping at our favorite restaurant for fries and sodas, and watching The Life Aquatic on my laptop to commemorate the return of our power after a two-day absence. What a life.

I’m a little uncomfortable with our garbage situation here. There’s no trash pick-up, and we’ve been instructed to pile our waste at the bottom of the tree in front of our house until someone comes around to burn it. Most of our garbage is vegetable peelings and paper so it doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the kids come and root through it and take away things like empty cookie boxes. I also feel bad about burning plastic. I don’t see an alternative but I don’t really like it.

We had RAIN and hail yesterday. I put my bucket out and it filled up within a couple minutes! I love it when it rains here; the sky goes all gray and windy and everything feels exciting until it pours. I asked Dennis if we should make a run for St. Gonzaga to teach our lesson and he was like, NOOOO! I hope it’s okay that we just didn’t show up to teach yesterday?

I hear my blog has quite a following in Ilkley! Hello to the Newtons and other friends! I’m sure I’ll be planning a trip to England after I get home and hope to meet all of you at some point.

The plan is to head into Mayuge this weekend for Georgia’s birthday celebration, with a stop in Jinja on the way. Time to mail some letters! Dennis’s birthday is on Monday so I might be in for a lot of celebrating this week. I wonder if we can get a cake?

Thursday, February 28th:
The S1-S2 kids at St. Gonzaga Secondary started off our lesson by parroting back everything I said in my accent today. RUDE. Dennis and I yelled at them and they were quiet for a while, and actually had a lot of good questions about VCT (voluntary counseling and testing for HIV). They are our most difficult class; I think they are testing us at the moment to see what they can get away with.

The four of us went to a couple new schools today in Mutai, which is a ten-minute taxi ride away (probably a two hour walk). The high school was the most rural school we’ve seen yet! There’s a concrete building that serves as the office, and the “classrooms” are in a rectangular building made of sticks and boards. There are chalkboards at opposite ends, and the side of the room you face determines which class you’re in. Lucy and Peter taught their first Livelihoods lessons there while Dennis and I gave a lesson at the primary school, which was pretty big. We’ll be out there every other week, since we can’t afford to pay for transport each week.

I keep getting told that I’m fat. I know it’s not supposed to be rude here but it’s starting to bother me.

Duke emailed and wants to interview me.

Peter caught a moth in the mouth after dinner. He did something pretty similar to Grace’s cat-sneezing impression, pinched the moth by the wings, and then with big eyes said, “Thees ees iiize eating!” This cracked me up for a long time.

Friday, February 29th:

Happy leap year! Dennis, Lucy and I went to Buweera Primary this morning, and scheduled lessons there every other Friday. This brings our school total to nine. I’m hoping we don’t stretch ourselves too thin, as we’re still meant to set up clubs, after-school activities, a youth resource center, and community events.

We took bicycle bodas out to Buweera. It felt great being on a bike again, even if I was just sitting on the back! We’re supposed to pick up a bike on Wednesday when we go to the office, and I can’t wait to start riding again (even if it is on a massive single-speed).

Lucy said that the 29th of February is traditionally the day that women are supposed to propose to men. I hadn’t heard this. British thing?

I’m looking forward to heading into Jinja tomorrow and seeing friends this weekend. The weeks are slipping by really quickly now. I can’t believe it’s been 2 out of 7 months already! It seems like I’ve been here for ages, but it feels like we are just getting going with our program.

First lessons

2008-02-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

This is our first official "weekend off," and all of the international volunteers have descended on Backpacker's Hostel in Jinja. It's been wonderful to see everyone and catch up with everyone's lives on placement. They are all very different, but the challenges seem to be very much the same. Lots of the SRH volunteers have started lessons, and the livelihoods pairs seem to have a harder task with mobilizing farmers and out-of-school youth.

After living in the parish for a couple weeks, Jinja feels like a bastion of modernity. We went to Two Friends last night, which serves indian food, pizza, and chocolate cake. The internet seems lightning fast today. And I'm pretty excited to go to a supermarket to get some fruit juice and jam to bring home to Buwenge. There are rumors of a trip to the chinese restaurant in the next day or so. Be still, my heart.

Speaking of hearts, Lucy and I dished up a special Valentine's Day dinner of scrambled eggs for the boys. They balked at getting candles, but the heart-shaped chapattis were a hit:

Teaching has been a blast. We gave a lesson on Adolescence and Puberty on Thursday to Senior 1 and 2 (age 14-16ish) students, which was a riot. The tiniest boy in the class did a great demonstration of how boys and girls' walks change during puberty, and there was lots of laughter all around. So far we've only taught one group where Dennis had to translate most of the lesson into Lusoga. It takes a lot of effort for me to speak slowly using very simple language, but it's getting easier. Explaining "immunodeficiency" to kids that barely speak English is tough sometimes.

I've tried to bring some "scenes from daily life" pictures this time. Here's the sigiri where we cook all of our meals:

And my little slice of home:

Women selling motoke at the market.

And the tree in front of our house. H.N., any idea what kind of tree this is? It doesn't have fruit, but it has pink spikes at the end of the branches that the boys say don't open up into flowers.

Uganda started to feel like home this week. I even had the confidence on the way into Jinja to refuse to pay the taxi conductor's inflated mzungu price, and handed him the normal change instead. He laughed and said, "You have money" to Lucy and I as a means of explanation. I got a card from Grace! Everyone seems to know who we are in our village and most people are really friendly to us. Lucy, Dennis, Peter and I are all getting along really well. Teasing Dennis about girls is always hilarious. Lucy and I get bored in the evenings sometimes, but we torture ourselves talking about food to pass the time. I haven't gotten sick yet, and now that we're teaching I'm really excited about being here.

Stubby-tailed Scorpion Muncher

Wednesday, February 13th:
And we’re off. Dennis and I have led two lessons now: a session on Values at St. Gonzaga Gonza Secondary School, and a surprise one-hour introductory session at Kalebera Primary.

In both cases, I was surprised at how attentive the kids were. Our class at St. Gonzaga was made up of about 60 senior 3 and 4 kids, which were a couple years older than we were anticipating. We discussed what values were and how they influenced behavior. We played a game where we would read a values statement and the kids had to go stand under signs that said “agree,” “disagree,” or “not sure.” It was a hit.

I was surprised at the students’ responses to some of the statements. Most of the girls agreed that “boys and girls should have equal opportunities,” but most boys disagreed. Most students (of both genders) agreed that “if a woman wears miniskirts and sexy clothes, she is asking to be raped.” And surprisingly, most boys thought boys should pay for a dinner on a date, while the girls disagreed. On sexual issues they mostly gravitated towards the conservative answers.

The kids at Kalebera Primary School were pretty insightful about some things, and totally missed the boat with others. We showed up at 2pm expecting to meet some teachers and sort out our teaching schedule, and were startled when Aron, the headmaster, gathered all 150 of the P6 and P7 kids in a classroom and told us we had an hour. We spent most of the time introducing ourselves and SPW, which the kids eagerly copied off the blackboard.

Dennis asked them to identify problems that youth face. Their answers: poor nutrition, not being immunized, poor sanitation, denial of education, family planning, defilement, poor transport, personal hygiene, famines, lack of clothing. Pretty severe, when I consider the problems I faced as an adolescent. Gossiping friends and not being able to find pants that were long enough, maybe?

I was pleased in both cases that the students could somewhat understand me, but even if I speak slowly and rephrase everything I say, they seem to have a lot of trouble with my accent. With Lucy it’s not so bad; I think they are more used to British English. There were a few cases where I asked the kids to raise their hands about something and was met with lots of blinking faces. At that point, Peter or Dennis has to step in.

It’s great being up in front of the classes. The kids are pretty excited to have us, and I think as we get to know each other the lessons are going to be a lot of fun. Per head teacher request, we are starting right in with the HIV/AIDS lessons tomorrow morning at Kagoma Primary. It might be difficult. The kids seem pretty bright but the understanding of the lesson material is much lower than what I would expect from kids at home. I suppose that’s a good reason for us to be here.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I like Valentine’s, but it’ll be a reminder that I’m far away from people I love. As Lucy said, “Last year you had lobster and a trip to Canada, and this year you have… me!” If the power goes out in the evening, as it often does, we can at least look forward to a candlelit dinner with the boys.

Tuesday, February 12th:
We’re finally getting rolling. Yesterday we met up with Ronald, the most eager and present of our community volunteers (and likely the one we’ll choose), and built a tippy-tap. I got a little frustrated because the guys seemed adamant about building it their way, but tried to let it go and make myself useful by gathering rocks, retrieving scissors, etc. Snubbing the girls during construction projects (however simple) seems to be universal, I’m afraid. Anyway, it works and will be a nice demonstration piece.

Ronald (community volunteer), Peter, Lucy, Dennis, building.

Nearly finished tippy-tap. It now has a stick attached to the string, which you step on to make the water pour out.

In the afternoon we spent a few hours walking around and, using Ronald as a translator, talking to local farmers about setting up groups and meeting with the livelihoods volunteers. We had a great chat with a primary school headmaster about 40 minutes from home, and a fun introduction to several hundred purple-clad primary kids. We’re going back there tomorrow to meet the teachers and set up our timetable space.

We also met with the head teacher at the Catholic secondary school near our house, and we’re scheduled to teach there on Tuesdays and Thursdays, for an hour at a time. Dennis and I are giving our first lesson today! We’ll have a combined group of Senior 1 and Senior 2 students (roughly 14-16 year-olds, I think), which should be somewhere around 100 kids. I’m nervous about whether or not they’ll be able to understand me. By that age most kids are being taught in English at school, but the American accent seems to be pretty difficult for them.

Still, I’m excited that we’re starting. We’ve now met with head teachers at five different schools, which seems like a manageable number if we spend a day or two per week at each one. Mr. Kabi has sort of abandoned us; he fell through with inviting the local head teachers to a mass meeting this morning, and we haven’t seen him in almost a week. It’s actually been a lot easier to make connections by just wandering onto campuses and introducing ourselves. Most of the school staff has been happy to have us, and say that the topics we’re covering are really needed in their schools. It’s good to hear, and I hope we can deliver.

My body seems to have adjusted to this lifestyle. For the first several days, I felt fat, my skin was bad, my hair was greasy, and I was hungry all the time. As enticing as that sounds, I’m glad that those problems seem to have gone away after a week or so of this routine. I’ve gotten more used to people shouting at me too.

I realized that the Ugandan kids’ reaction to white people is pretty similar to the reaction of people at home when we see a deer out a car window. It’s obligatory to say, “Hey, look a deer! Did you see the deer?” no matter how frequently they go by. ‘Round these parts, Lucy and I are the deer. “Mzungu! Mzungu! How are you? Mzungu! How are you? Bye Mzungu! Byee! Byee!” It doesn’t matter if we respond, or how many times we see them. We are a source of endless entertainment.

Sunday, February 10th:
Sundays are lazy days at our house. We slept in, listened to the worship songs drifting over from the Catholic church, and did a lot of cleaning. We’re meeting with our three potential community volunteers tomorrow morning, and wanted to have them help us build a tippy-tap (a simple hand-washing structure made with poles, a plastic container, and string). Gathering those materials should be one of our goals for the day. It’s going to be hard to have to select one person – we have three applicants, but only a stipend for one. They’re meant to help us network in the community, translate if necessary, and help with lessons. One of them, Ronald, has been showing up every couple days to express his interest. We’re never quite sure what to do with him.

I had a great time in Jinja yesterday. It’s so comforting to spend some time on the internet and find out what’s happening at home and in the lives of friends and family. I feel pretty disconnected sometimes and appreciate the emails and facebook messages. The big news on MSN was Heath Ledger’s funeral, so I assume I haven’t missed any major world events.

It’s also satisfying to go to a supermarket. I got some cookies and snacks to tide me over for those long breaks between meals, some soap, and string so I could hang up my mosquito net properly. I asked one of the workers for string, and he misunderstood. “Skin… curry?” Yes, sir. Please show me the skin curry.

Lucy and I almost got off of the matatu several miles before we were supposed to. That would have been an unpleasant walk in the dark. Apparently, giving the name of the sub-county you want isn’t specific enough.

I’m glad I have my laptop here. Thanks, Tom and Jason. I’m sure much of what I’m posting isn’t enthralling, but it’s relaxing for me to record it. Skim at your leisure.

Dennis is a delight. He gets tea and breakfast ready in the morning. He lights the sigiri for every meal (I tried once while he was gone and failed, but tried to hide it). He finds out his scores and university admission in the next month or so and wants to study public health, which is called environmental health here.

If I were to set up an NGO, I think I would try to get medical and lab equipment to rural health centers. I’m not sure what my level of involvement with development work will be after this trip. I’d like to do some shorter volunteer trips to different places, and I’d like to stay connected to Uganda in some degree.

The word from UNC is that they mailed a letter to me a couple of days ago. Fingers crossed!

More photos

2008-02-09T03:43:00.000-08:00

Here is our house in Buwenge. Lucy's on the porch. The boys have the left side, and the head teacher of our primary school (Theresa) lives in the right side during the week.

Lucy, Peter, and myself at our last day of training. Notice our extremely flattering oversize polo shirts. Thanks, SPW!

The waterfall we visited during our "social outing" a couple weekends ago.

Liz, Jen, and Jill. Three names that are easily confused by Ugandans.

This is from our first week at Kasenge -- playing football and hanging out with some kids at a school field.

My Fellow Americans. Jen, with her ever-present gymnast's smile, and Carson, with his... I think I just threw up.

Placement

2008-02-09T03:25:00.000-08:00

Finally on placement! I've been saving up posts on my laptop, so the details for the past week are below. Lucy and I made the half-hour trip in to Jinja to use the internet, visit the post office, and mail some letters. We met up with a bunch of the international volunteers in Buwenge earlier today for lunch. It was so great to see them! It's only been a week but it's comforting to see everyone and hear that the challenges of placement seem to be the same all over.

The last couple days, we visited the local health center and were introduced to the classes at our nearby primary school. The kids had a great little sing-song greeting in garbled English that went something like:

Hello Madam you are welcome
This is Primary Four.
-Good afternoon children.
Good afternoon Madam.
-How are you?
We are all right
Thank you Madam.
-Will you sit down?
Thank you Madam.

Pretty cute. They laughed hysterically when Lucy and I introduced ourselves, and immediately upon our departure from the classroom.

I love the internet. I'm reading my emails, and then will attempt to put up some pictures of my new digs.

I miss everybody.

Wednesday, February 6th:
We had a productive day today, despite waking up without a plan. Lucy rallied us all into walking around the village after breakfast, and we stopped by Mr. Kabi’s place to ask if he could set up a meeting with head teachers for us. We ended being escorted to a primary and secondary school about an hour’s walk south of here by the deputy sub-county chief, Stephen.

We had great introductions in both places, and the high school head teacher especially seemed anxious for us to work at her school. They have a couple of clubs set up already that relate directly to the material we’re going to be covering. The primary school head teacher, Paul, is helping to arrange a meeting with the head teachers of all the local schools, to be held on Tuesday morning. Then we can really put the word out about what we’re doing here, and hopefully select which schools we will be working in. There are dozens in our area.

Not sure what’s in store for us between now and Tuesday, then. We’ll likely visit health centers and try to spend some time with the agricultural officer so Lucy and Peter can get started with their livelihoods material. There was mention of getting them some space to demonstrate their ARTs (appropriate rural technologies), so maybe we’ll be helping them with a little construction later this week. They’re meant to set up an example garden too, so community members can see the effects of their organic farming methods first-hand.

For some reason, I feel a lot more settled today. Peter, Dennis, Lucy and I had a really fun time making dinner together last night and talking about accents. While we walked back from our school visits this afternoon, I started to feel at home here. I still have my moments of disbelief, but life in Africa is treating me well for the time being.

Tuesday, February 5th:
I’m settling in, slowly, to life on placement. The last few days have mainly involved meeting with community members and getting the things we need for our house. We haven’t started teaching yet, but we have a meeting set up with the head of the head teachers, which will hopefully result in Dennis and me getting some timetable space and starting work in schools soon.

Our arrival in Buwenge was sobering, to say the least. We were the third group on our bus to be dropped off, and after brief goodbyes and hugs we were on our own. Mr. Kabi, our liaison of sorts, was here to unlock the doors to our place. We’re staying in half of a house owned by the nearby Catholic church.

From the outside, it looked like quite a step up from the other two volunteer accommodations we’d seen, but it was a little bit of a shock to look inside. Of the four doors off the front porch, we were let into two: one which opened to a single concrete room (where Lucy and I are staying) and one which led to two smaller connected rooms, with a tiny closet space that features the base of a broken toilet. Nice. The alarming thing was that exactly none of the items SPW requires that placement communities provide were present: no beds, no cookware, no utensils, no table and chairs, no lamp, no containers for water. The floors and walls are concrete, and it looked like our rooms hadn’t been inhabited in a long time. Very dusty, very run-down.

As politely as we could, we showed Mr. Kabi our checklist of necessary items. He assured us that everything would be fine and took off on a motorbike, presumably to look into beds. We checked out our new home. Two faucets, which didn’t work. Four power outlets, which also didn’t work. There was a hanging bulb in my and Lucy’s room that did turn on. The drainage hole in the bathroom seemed blocked. We tried to lock our things in one of the rooms, but the key broke off in the lock when I turned it.

So we sat on the porch with our luggage, and wondered what to do. We didn’t know where we could use a toilet. We hadn’t heard where to collect water. Most importantly, we didn’t have a way to contact Mr. Kabi, and weren’t convinced that he was going to come back. I thought about the next six months of my life and wanted to cry a little bit.

Luckily, Mr. Kabi showed up again on his motorbike after what seemed like several hours with two wash basins, jerricans, and a sigiri (charcoal stove). We were relieved not to have been forgotten. He assured us that the rest was on its way, and slowly but surely, things started to turn up. The priest showed up and introduced himself and told us that we would have to move, since they had another group was going to have to live in this house during our stay. Eventually they decided to leave us where we were, but he did show us the other housing option, a brick building of dorm-style rooms, and told us we could use the toilets and shower in that building. This has been a blessing. It doesn’t have running water, but we can hang my camping shower over the spigot and have a private place to bathe.

The priest (“Father,” of course) had us over for dinner the first night, which we were all thrilled with since we didn’t have the charcoal, food, or energy to prepare our own. Apparently, SPW had seemed skeptical when they came to check out our placement, and hadn’t confirmed that we were coming until a couple days prior (or the powers-that-be in Buwenge missed the memo until that point). Hence the lack of preparation.

The next couple days have run together a little bit. We’ve had several meetings with the assistant Sub-County Chief and various other community leaders, and met three potential community volunteers. We were shown the bore hole where we can collect water. It’s not a long walk (across a field and behind the primary school), but it feels like a really long way carrying 20-liter jerricans. We spent a long day getting food at the market, which Dennis and Peter luckily took charge of. Lucy and I are still pretty clueless when it comes to pricing, and it’s easy for us to get ripped off. We’ve cooked a few meals on the sigiri, which takes hours but the results have been delicious. We are still waiting on plates and utensils but the Father let us borrow some.

We are all getting along really well. Lucy is totally rolling with the punches and manages to be agreeable 100% of the time. Dennis and Peter are both quiet, considerate, and seem undaunted with taking care of the things Lucy and I haven’t figured out yet.

The biggest challenges for me right now are a nagging feeling that I’d rather be at home, and worrying about when I’m going to eat next. We’ve been eating around 9am, 1pm, and 8pm. I like to have small meals every few hours so I’m always starving and cranky by the time our food is finally ready, and we haven’t been cooking very big meals. I might try to go into Jinja next weekend and stock up on cereal and snack foods.

The “electrician” came by yesterday to attempt to remedy our problem with the outlets. After a long afternoon in the attic he decided to come back this morning (it’s 4:30pm, with no sign of him yet), but he did wire in a power strip and plugged in a light for the guys. It’s the first time I’ve been able to charge up my laptop in a while, which is why I’m having a little typing binge this afternoon.

We’re technically in the Kagoma sub-county, and the Magamaga parish. There are something like 13 government-funded primary schools in our parish, so I’m not sure how we will identify a target school yet. The parish is lovely. Our house is clustered with buildings owned by the Catholics, many of which seem empty, and a Protestant church. We’re right next to a large playing field, with a primary school behind that. Directly south of us there are houses, small farms, county offices, and a jail. If we walk about a half hour up Kamuli Road (the paved road which goes to Jinja) we hit the town center of Buwenge, which has restaurants, shops, and a pretty big market.

It’s not as rural as some placements, but it’s definitely rural. There are mud-and-stick huts with grass roofs, naked babies playing in the dirt, cows wandering everywhere. Lucy and I have all eyes on us at all times.

To make the time I’m here a little more digestible, I’ve been thinking of it as a seven-month week. I’ve made it through Monday, the day of getting started and seeing friends. Now it’s Tuesday morning. I’m a little tired, and I assume it’ll have some low points. Once I get into a routine, I’m sure the weekend will be here before I know it.

Thursday, January 31st:
Good news today!

First, we got our placement assignments. I’ll be in Buwenge, just north of Jinja, for the next sixth months. My placement group consists of myself, Lucy, Dennis, and Peter. Lucy is from the UK, has a really thick British accent, is bubbly and 18. Dennis will be teaching SRH lessons with me. He grew up in Jinja, and he’s just out of high school too. He’s pretty easy-going and I think it’ll be fun to teach with him. We did role plays last week and he expressed his love to his girlfriend by telling her, “I love you as if you were the only button on my shirt!”

I haven’t talked to Peter, and he’s been gone for a graduation ceremony this week. I think he’s about my age, and he’s from Uganda. The kids in livelihoods said he’s quiet but “comes out of his shell in a good way.” I think it’ll be a fun, relaxed placement group, and I’m excited that we’re so close to town. There might even be electricity.

Also, I had a good phone interview with UNC and am pretty excited about the program there. They haven’t sent out offers yet, but given what the Director of Graduate Studies said I think chances are pretty good that I’ll be a Tarheel next year(!).

This morning, we played that game where you walk around with a piece of paper stuck to your forehead with an identity written on it and get people to give you clues about who you are. Most of the papers had animals written on them. I sat around for a good ten minutes with “COCK” stuck to my forehead. Excellent.

Humble abode

2008-01-27T03:32:00.000-08:00

Here's where I'm currently living. It's better than it looks. My room (which I share with Scottish Sarah, and Ugandans Lilly and Winnie) is on the opposite side. Check out the landscape!

Taking a break

2008-01-27T03:18:00.000-08:00

I’m back in Jinja for a Saturday night getaway with the other internationals. We were here last weekend too, enjoying a break from our training routine and indulging in the foods that remind of us home (cheese-based). We stay at the Backpacker’s Inn, a nice hostel with an outdoor bar that costs about $4 a night. It even has free internet.

I started feeling sick a couple days ago, and have been doing my best to fight off a head-cold. It’s not bad, but since nearly every white-skinned person has been sick this week I’d rather get better than come down with one of the other bugs floating around. Staying healthy is a top priority right now.

We find out where we’ll be placed at the end of this week, and leave for our new homes on Saturday. I’ve been nervous lately about who I’ll be placed with and how the food allowance budgeting is going to work, but the training sessions have gotten so repetitive that I think we’re all pretty ready for the next step.

Friday night was “culture night,” and the volunteers managed to put together about two hours of quality singing, dancing, and acting entertainment. The North America volunteers (all five of us) performed classic songs from our continent – Alouette for Canada, Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay for the States, and La Bamba for Mexico. Jill provided ukulele accompaniment. It went over pretty well although our Spanish left something to be desired on the last number.

We took a group trip to Ssezibwa Falls last Sunday. Legend dictates that barren women should throw an animal over the falls if they wish to conceive – if the animal dies, you get pregnant, if it lives, no luck. So you end up with either a baby or a wounded goat, depending on how your luck plays out.

I neglected to bring my mosquito net to Jinja and got devoured last night. I've always been a target for biting bugs...

Pic!

2008-01-27T03:07:00.000-08:00

Finally! A photo is up! Here's me in Kasenge, with some kids that were pretty excited by my camera.

Training days

2008-01-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

We are into the swing of training now. The volunteer group has split into two focus areas: livelihoods and sexual reproductive health (SRH). I’m in the SRH group. While the livelihood kids spend most of the day outside learning about soil composition and farming methods, we’re indoors with Dr. Alex discussing contraception, life skills, and hygiene.

Most of the information is old news for the overseas volunteers, but it’s helpful to go over it in a lesson context so we’ll know how to teach the content when we leave for our placements on the 2nd. There have been some frustrating cultural differences. The most noticeable one is that homosexuality is illegal in Uganda, and is seen as a strictly deviant practice. The white kids all objected when it was listed as “transactional sex.” After some argument I had to accept that there aren’t consenting gay couples here – at least not open ones. The only expression of homosexuality is in the form of prostitution and rape, but it’s still upsetting that the term is met with such disgust.

There have been a few other topics that raised some eyebrows among the internationals. We were instructed to tell adolescent girls not to wear bras – to “leave them pointy,” because wearing a tight bra will make your breasts grow downward like chapattis??? There’s a practice called “pulling” that shocked the internationals, and we’re called on to give personal examples of a lot of adolescent changes which can be pretty awkward. I want to object when it feels like misinformation, but I’m learning to let it go unless I feel like it’s going to be harmful to the kids we teach.

Other than some arguments during training, the group of 40 or so volunteers is getting along pretty well. The Ugandans are indispensable when it comes to getting around and not getting ripped off (too badly) by vendors. They’ve taught us some new card games and some key Lugandan phrases. There’s still some separation between national and overseas volunteers, especially at meal times, but I think it’s more because we stick to the people we’re comfortable with than because we have any aversion to each other.

I’m one of three Americans: Jen, who’s 27 and from Pittsburg and Carson, who just graduated from UPS. There are a couple of Canadian girls too. We’re a pretty powerful front, in terms of people who say “pants” instead of “trousers” and can eat bread without Marmite.

We’re staying in Kasenge for the rest of our training at an organic farming center. It’s a tiny town with one strip of shops we can walk to, but Mukono (which has a post office and an internet café) is 5-10 minutes away by taxi. There are converted vans called matatus that shuttle people from town to town. There are always packed to capacity, and the trip to Mukono costs 1000/= (about 50 cents) if you’re white and 500/= if you’re local.

The little kids here are a riot. They chase us around shouting “Mzungu! Mzungu!” whenever we go to town, and they are fascinated by digital cameras. There are lots of funny misconceptions about white people, and I think some of the kids think we are painted. If I touch one of their hands he or she will stare at it afterward in disbelief.

I’m thinking about picking up some multivitamins, because we are stuck with a pretty starch-based diet. Our only hope for iron or fiber is the occasional pile of leafy greens. I’ve tried some new fruit here, but a lot of it is perfumey and it’s hard to eat very much.

I finally have the address where I can receive letters:

Liz Pempe
c/o SPW
P.O. Box 1208
Jinja Uganda

Packages have to go to the physical address, which is:

Plot 6 Acacia Road
(behind Cool Breeze Hotel)
Jinja Uganda

I’ll be able to get my mail about once a month, either during trips to headquarters or visits from SPW staff.

In terms of life state-side, I’ve been invited to interview at UNC. I have to miss the recruitment weekend at the end of the month, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to do some phone interviews? It’s a good sign and I’m pretty excited about it.

That’s the wrap-up for now. I miss internet access, Sunday breakfast at the parsonage, and variety in my diet. But I’m happy to be here and ready for more!

Getting started

2008-01-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

Hi! I'm here! Turns out that internet is pretty hard to come by, even in Jinja. I'm at an internet cafe with slow dial-up and charge by the minute, so no pictures yet.

Uganda is pretty, tropical, and fun. We train for the next three weeks or so. Right now we're staying in a "student center" (kind of like dorms) and we move to an organic farming community this weekend. There are about forty volunteers, half of which are Ugandan. The rest of us are from the US, England, Canada, Scotland, and there's a girl from Estonia. The national volunteers are great. We had to brainstorm lists of goals this morning and the Uganda guy presenting read "become less pasty" from the list and then was like, I have no idea what that means.

I love the accents, except that "guy" sounds like "gay." That's thrown me off a few times. That gay in the other room...

The food's good so far, mostly rice, potatoes, stew, corn bread. And tea between every meal.
I'm having a good time and feel fine, other than missing Tom so much I can hardly stand it. If I can get my cell phone unlocked this week I'll have a little communication relief.

More later... gotta head back for dinner!

Today's the day

2008-01-07T09:25:00.000-08:00

Just about time to go! I fly out in six hours. I still have to finish packing, pick up the rest of my antimalarials (CVS gave me 34 out of 215 pills), get a British power adapter, and get some traveler's checks. It's doable.

Some things I'll miss:

Leavin' on a jetplane

2008-01-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

I depart for Africa in just four days. I'm excited to go and sad to leave Durham. There are a lot of things I like here.

Hopefully I'll be able to post regular updates and pictures while abroad! Until then...