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..