Jan 2009

January has pretty much come and gone. Its been a good month. Feel like I am really connecting with people, both in my village and friends to have fun with when I just need to get away from village life and feel like an American.

Met up with 3 other PCVs to watch Obamas inauguration. As power is unreliable in the village, we went to the nearest town with a generator. Watched with a whole room full of Ugandans who claim Obama as their son as he is a “Black American” and they say that his grandparents house was once in Uganda(it is on the Kenya/Tanzania border). We enjoyed the speech and it was fun seeing what the Ugandans thought were great points. We especially loved the prayer/poem at the end though the Ugandans didn’t know why we thought it was great.

Had a community meeting today and it went really well. Had about 25 community members there and we talked about different projects we could do in their area. There are some water projects that I think I can help with. They are also going to form a farmers cooperative so they can get fair prices for their crops and we will also do some education through that. They also have needs such as getting the ARVs for AIDS patients closer to the patients, getting subsidized mosquito nets(few are using them to prevent malaria), building gardens at schools, etc. The community members were engaged and willing to work which was encouraging.

Last week we had language training in a nearby town. There was 9 of us Luganda learners and we had a great time. It was so nice to be around American, English-speaking friends full-time. Learned some good things, played a lot of cards, made a lot of smoothies( I invested in a blender here… there is just too much amazing fruit to not take advantage of it) and watched movies. A very refreshing, fun time. Here is some of my group-mates cutting up fruit for the smoothie feast.

Had a small success this week in some of the kids I play with almost daily. Molly is a little girl who is pretty much unstimulated. Well, she used to cry when I tried to hold her, and then she decided she liked me and wanted me to hold her, but still had a blank face. I was in Kampala and decided to buy her a little plastic car. She loved it and I saw her really smile for the first time. Now she is REALLY happy to see me and sometimes cries when I leave. She also laughs a lot more. Here is a picture of her with a great smile.

Got a package from my fellow DURPies (many, many thanks!) which included an origami calendar. Taught the art class how to make birds, fish, sailboats, and flowers. They loved it. We have also started painting which was the first time most of them have ever picked up a paintbrush. Here are the kids the first day. Most of them really enjoyed it- one said she wanted to use colored pencils the next week. It was a good exercise though to make them think outside the box a bit.

A few other random pics. Was walking home the other day and saw these kids giving two kids piggyback rides. Why carry one kid when you can carry two???

Random pic of kids pushing car. Who needs a good starter when there are kids everywhere to push your car for you???

Lastly, this ones for my dad. Making bricks in the valleys…. It is interesting as bricks are made pretty much anywhere. Want to build onto your house, you can make bricks right in your yard, fire them and then build. This was one valley near Kampala where there was lots of bricks being made. Quite interesting..

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! The new year came without much excitement but it is nice to be in 2009 as finishing Peace Corps in 2010 seemed really far away when we were still in 2008.

I haven’t updated this since Christmas so I will start with that. After spending Thanksgiving alone at my site, a group of us decided to go visit another PCV on Lake Bunyonyi, a lake in Southern Uganda. Sarah, the PCV is working on an island that has a resort which funds development projects in the area so that is where we celebrated Christmas. Christmas was quite low-key with a gift-exchange in the morning followed by a game of scrabble, sitting on the dock and swimming in the only Bilharzias-free lake in Uganda, made spaghetti for lunch, spent some time painting and ended with a great dinner and talking to family.

It was about 75F out and the only sign of Christmas was a small Christmas tree at the lodge, but they did play Christmas music for us and it was a very rejuvenating time for all of us. Uganda does not commercialize Christmas so you had to look fairly hard for signs of Christmas which made it easier to be away from home on the holiday.

Here are a few pics from the island

The bus ride to Lake Bunyonyi was about 10 hours each way. On the way back I got very ill so it was not a pleasant trip for me or my friends sitting next to me. When I got back to my house I had to new roommates in the form of rats. One was IN my bed and the other in my kitchen. My bike then broke and I had to walk it 5km to town to get it fixed. I think that this was getting all the bad stuff out in 2008 so that 2009 can be great!

For New Years my friend Kristen came to visit me at my site and was my first guest. We had a great time cooking, playing cards, watching movies, etc. New Years Eve the power went out at 7pm so we cooked and played cards by lantern until 10pm and then went to bed as we were exhausted. It is hard to entertain yourself and have energy without electricity. The Catholic Church nearby had generators and a party/mass to bring in the new year so we heard it come in from our beds.

After Kristen left, my two brothers from my homestay family came and they are here for a few days. I am really glad to have company as the college campus I am living at is pretty much empty. There are 3 students who have stayed, but overall it is quiet and a bit scary at night. They are now working on painting a mural in my sitting room and will soon ride my bike, an exciting thing for them to do as they don’t have bikes.

Before Christmas I let some of the kids I play with come to my house. I made cookies and wrapped them up for them and let they color and play. It was a HUGE deal for them and we had to wait an hour before they came as they all changed clothes, washed their feet, and put oil on their face. They brought the babies they take care of and both babies peed on my floor. Lovely.

My work here will hopefully pick up now that the holidays are done. We are working on an economic development project that will help and train people on how to raise chickens in larger quantities. As income level is directly related to education and health here this should be a good project for the people in my village. We will start having meetings and workshops next week. I am learning that things just move very slowly here. However, it seems that it is better for it to move slowly and last then to push projects through that are not initiated or built by the people and that will end when I leave.

I have taken a lot of pics here, but these are some of my favorite. THis is during the bean harvest and teh kids come carrying these in from the gardens. I am not sure how they see, but they somehow manage.

Wishing you all a very happy 2009.