make it happen

The Final Post

2008-06-07T20:16:00.002+03:00

It’s been a long 2 years. They days went slow but the weeks few by. I’m home now, sitting at my parent’s kitchen table eating a grilled cheese sandwich while typing this. It’s certainly good to be home.

It’s not easy to summarize my last 2 years in Uganda serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer while working with Compassion International. I’ve seen and experienced so much in that time. Most importantly, my world view has changed. I no longer doubt that people can live on less than $1 a day because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen things that tourists would never see. It’s been an education process on people and societies and human life. My values have changed especially in regards to how my money should be spent. Now I look at $60 for an item and think, “That’s enough to sponsor a Compassion Child for 2 months. Is a new sweater really worth that?”

My favorite moments are many. I enjoyed immensely interacting with the Compassion children who were so accepting, full of energy and yet curious about me. I made so many new friends. The other Peace Corps Volunteers there are some of the most amazing people you’d ever meet. They’ve sacrificed so much to be there serving the people of Uganda. I’ve also met some of the most incredible Ugandans who challenged my way of thinking and impressed me with their goals, passions and their work ethic. I enjoyed teaching Life Skills to the secondary students who had so many interesting questions about HIV/AIDS and the difficulties that all teenagers face growing up and relating to each other. I was also proud of the 2 Purdue teams that came and did work around the community. They brought running shoes for my running clubs and they also brought over 400 children’s books to start a library at Compassion. They came in the name of Love, to serve and work and to experience Uganda and they left a lasting impact and I was very proud to be a part of that.

My last days with the Compassion kids was especially difficult. These kids, who are the poorest of the poor, brought letters they had written to me telling me thanks and wishing me well and telling me how they’d miss me. A few brought gifts. A coffee mug. A small basket with a little teddy bear in it that said “I love you”. A few of them gave candy with their letters.

I’m not leaving the place high and dry, however. The Peace Corps placed 2 new volunteers there to replace me. It’s a married couple and they seem to have just the right attitude necessary to survive. They’ve come with open minds and the desire to serve and they’re looking forward to a less hectic more easy going life where there are no phone, light or gas bills.

Let me just say, there’s no country in the world like the US, but maybe not for the reasons that you’d initially think. It’s not about wealth or prosperity. The US is an amazing country because we have laws that make sense and protect people’s rights. We have a democratic system in which our government is made up “…of the people, by the people and for the people”, and “we the people” have a say in who is running our country and there’s no thought to ballot rigging or the reining president staying in power by force. We drink safe drinking water and have reliable electricity in our homes. In Africa, diarrhea kills more babies than any other sickness. We don’t have to worry about that. We have schools in which there aren’t 60 pupils to 1 teacher. And possibly most important, we live in a land of opportunity. If you don’t like the career you are in then you have the option of changing it. There are jobs and education opportunities available. Imagine living in a country where there were no jobs and no chance at education past 7^th grade if you didn’t have the funds. We have opportunity and thus we have hope.

On June 11^th I’ll ceremoniously dip my rear bicycle wheel in the Atlantic Ocean as I begin my bicycle ride across the US which is being done to raise money and support for a simple building (community center) for the Compassion kids to meet in. We have raised over $30,000 for the trip already. The walls of the building are up and the materials have been purchased for the roofing materials. Once we get a roof up it’ll start to serve as a functioning building. What’s left are floors, windows and doors. (Follow the blog at http://bikeforcompassion.blogspot.com)

The big question I’m asked is: Would you do it again? Without a doubt, if I had it to do all over again then I would. Without hesitation. Whether or not I will again, God only knows.

Close to the End

2008-06-07T20:16:00.001+03:00

Tuesday May 20, 2008

Purdue Recap

The Purdue team is back on US soil now. They spent a total of 14 days in Uganda. They lived with host families, ate local food and built 4 mud structures in their time here. They also helped out with our Center Days when the Compassion children came in. The kids loved having them. They were teaching from Rick Warren’s 40 Days of Purpose. They also performed 2 dramas and gave short testimonies at 2 churches. Each of them brought something different to the table. Immanuel brought his video camera and 16 video tapes, so his camera was always rolling. Calin brought her big-dog-daddy camera and took a mega-ton of pictures. The rest brought their great work ethics and their willingness to serve, even at the extent of building mud structures (kitchens and goat shelters) for the poorest of the poor.

One highlight was our trip to Rwanda. We spent the morning at the Rwanda Genocide and then had lunch at the Des Mille Collines (Hotel Rwanda). To relive the genocide where 800,000 people died in a span of 100 days was both moving and exhausting. People of the same country, the same religion, the same language, the same skin color, killing each other as the world looked the other way. Some wore shirts that read, “Never Again”. I hope so, but I have to wonder.

The Purdue group also brought over 400 childrens books with them to start a library for the Compassion kids. Classic books. Books that I used to have. Dr Seuss, Berenstein Bears, Where The Wild Things Are, Clifford, Little Bear, Zoobooks, etc. The kids loved them to say the least. They really didn’t know what to think. They’d never seen books like these before. There are no libraries or kids books here apart for the few that Compassion has and the kids only get to glimpse at them occasionally, but we set up a library where the kids could take 1 book home with them and when that book’s returned then they can get another book.

I was really proud of what Purdue did in their 2 weeks here. I could see change in them from when they first arrived and looked like tourists with their cameras flying to seeing them wrestling and playing with the Compassion Kids after spending time with them. Two weeks may seem short, but the’ve seen more of Uganda and more of Africa than I’d imagine most Americans have seen, and seeing is believing. Seeing it moves one to changing it.

Good Bye

The Purdue group said goodbye to my village but they weren’t the only ones. I also bid farewell to my little home of the past 2 years. Yup, my time is up here. We had a little dinner where some gifts were given and some speeches were made. My Compassion kids cried and hugged me the day before when they left my last center day.

I guess now’s the time when I’m supposed to summarize what I’ve done in the past 2 years. Now’s the time to reflect on how I’ve changed this place and how it’s changed me. Really, right now the only thing I can think about is leaving. Moving on. I’m not really excited and I’m not really sad, I’m somewhere in between. The fact is that I’m ready to get home, to get on with my life and to be more in control, like being able to drive and being able to make decisions about where to go and what to do with my free time, rather than being stuck in a little village. I’m sad to leave the friends I’ve made there but I’m super excited to get back with my friends and fam back home. Of course I’ll always have a special place for Uganda and I’d like to come back and visit someday and I probably will, but for now my focus is on the horizon.

Some of what I’ve accomplished in my 2 years of PC service:

- Created a database of the Compassion children’s information.

- Tutored the Compassion staff on Word, Excel, internet and email.

- Taught English, math, science, social studies to students ages 8-16.

- Taught health and physical education to students ages 8-16.

- Raised $30,000 for a community center.

- Raised $5,000 through Rotary for income generating activities (IGAs)

- Organized a running club with 100 boys and girls participating and 45 receiving running shoes.

- Conducted over 100 home visits and visited over 120 children to monitor their health and home sanitation.

- Began a library with over 400 children’s books for Compassion.

- Organized and supervising 30 college students to come to Uganda, live with host families and build 7 mud structures for the Compassion families.

- Taught Life Skills such as HIV/AIDS education, reproductive health, peer pressure, goal setting, etc., to 300 students at 6 secondary schools.

- Organized an Ultimate Frisbee tournament for 6 secondary schools which included an HIV/AIDS theme and drama presentation.

Some more of what I’ve accomplished that wouldn’t be considered resume material

- Helped 2 students with their school fees on my PC salary.

- Found school fees for another student.

- Helped to fund to roof someone’s house.

- Found funds to buy land and build a home for a needy family

- Ran 3 marathons (2 in Africa, 1 in Boston)

- Didn’t completely loose my sanity

- Didn’t beat anyone up for calling me “Muzungu”

- Employed a neighbor to wash my clothes which provided for her well being

- Submitted newspaper articles to my local paper to inform my hometown about the PC, Uganda and Compassion

- Wrote a weekly blog for the same reasons

- When I went home last year I spoke to the Rotary Club, Lions Club, Optimist Club, Jr Highs, High Schools, Elementary Schools, and churches in an effort to inform Americans about PC, Uganda and Compassion.

Saturday May 23

RPCV

I’m officially a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. My card has been punched and voided signifying that I’ve completed my service. The whole process seemed like a birth and death. When we’re born there’s celebration and excitement and when we die we often go out with a whimper. It was something like that. I don’t think I’ll really feel like I’m done until I’m on the plane at the airport facing down the runway ready for takeoff. Then I’ll know that it’s not a dream and that I’m really leaving.

Today I’m leaving for Israel for a week before going back to the US. On June 11^th I’ll begin my bike trip across the country to raise money for the Compassion building project which is to be a community center to serve my village. The bike trip will cross 10 states and take approx 50 days. I’ll be riding with another guy who contacted me several months ago asking if he could come along. I’m looking forward to the bike trip the most. I’ve never been out west and it just seems like an epic adventure to top all others. At which point this blog will stop and that one will begin.

There will be one more blog entry briefly talking about my re-adjustment and that will close the chapter on this portion of my life as a PCV. I want sincerely thank everyone who sent me emails, cards, and packages over the 2 years. Your friendship and thoughtfulness brightened my days and broadened my waistline. Each package and letter were treasured, priceless possessions. You can’t imagine, really, how wonderful it was to get a little ‘lovin’ from home.

So, one more blog entry and that’ll be it. Stay tuned…

Campus House team rolls up their sleeves

2008-05-22T19:03:00.001+03:00

The Purdue team arrived with narry a hitch this week. All their luggage came with them ok. We loaded up 2 mini vans and drove to Backpackers in Kampala to spend the night. For all but one of them it’s their first time in Africa.

Day 1 we traveled to Jinja to see the source of the Nile River, Bujagali Falls. It was a beautiful day when we arrived and the trip there takes you through some dirt roads and some empoverished areas of Jinja. Once there we boarded a boat and took a trip out into the water to a small island nearby. Ben said he saw a crocodile but nobody believed him. We also paid a guy $5 to swim through the rapids. It’s his source of income to get tourists to pay him to do it. It looked death defying but when he did it it looked easy.

Back to Kampala and Backpaers to get our stuff and head to my village. Kampala traffic is always crazy. We had too many people in our vehicle and a traffic police man had us pull over where we had to pay $5 to him. Not sure if it was a bribe or a fine. A little later we encountered another police man and were going to have to pay again but the driver had me get out to meet him further up the road. I did, but when I looked back I couldn’t see our taxi amidst the dozens of other taxis or any white people. I freaked a bit and panicked. I called the drive but he couldn’t understand my accent well enough to actually communicate. I ended up having to jump on a boda and pay him to find our taxi, which he did a little ways up the road.

The guy I had hired to get us to my village didn’t show up so I had to call around and find another coaster (short bus) to get us there. By the time he got there we were 1 ½ hours late. This guy drove in such a way that it reminded me of my drivers-ed father. We were passed by every vehicle on the road. He practically stopped at every pot hole to navigate around it. In what is often a 4-5 hour trip took 7.5 hours to travel. We arrived late, which I didn’t think was a big deal in Africa after having lived here 2 years, but I still managed to get an earful for it.

We finally arrived and met our host families and got everyone to where they needed to go.

Thursday, May 8^th was a rest day. We explored my village showing them the ‘Wal-Mart’ which is a tiny little shop where numerous little useful things are sold there. The longer you stand there the more you find. You can take about 3 steps and get from one end to another, but it’s full of stuff. They were also introduced to Sky Blue, my favorite little restaurant in town and then it was on to the bi-monthly market which was filled with vendors selling 2^nd hand clothing, mattresses, cloth, pots, shoes, food and a bunch of trinkets you wouldn’t think they’d need in Africa. It was quite an experience and I think they wanted to stay longer to take it all in. Fortunately this year I have Jacob, Brock and Lindsey to help me show them around so we’ve been able to divide up as to not make up one massive group of 16 white people moving through town drawing stares, gawks, pointing, laughing, jeering, etc. It’s a little better when we’re in pods of 4.

Today, Friday, May 09, the Compassion kids came. I think the Purdue team enjoyed them worshiping the most. The kids really sing and clap and drum and let loose and worship. You can tell that it’s the kids’ favorite part of the day too. We went through our education sessions and the Compassion kids had a lot of questions to ask about America and dating and daily life there and the Purdue team was happy to answer and share their country and culture with them. The Purdue guys are adjusting to the quiet voices and the shyness of the Ugandan kids. It’s difficult to get them to speak out as English is a second language of theirs. They’re learning so much though every day. It’s a great time for me too because I get to share ‘my Africa’ with them. I spend 2 years here and have put a lot of effort and energy and emotion (and a lot of other words that start with an ‘e’) into this area and really nobody will every see it, so it’s nice to share my expertise and knowledge with a bunch of thirsty minds.

They’ve done nothing but enjoy their time here and they have many stories to tell already about their homestay families and using pit latrines (out houses) and bathing outside under the stars and eating the same bland food over and over and over. Tomorrow we go deep into the village for the first time to do some work. We’re sure to draw a crowd.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

What a day!!!

Saturday was scheduled to be a work day. 25 of the kids were invited to come along to help us work at one of our Compassion girl’s homes named Sarah. Sarah lives with her grandmother who must be in her 80’s. The grandmother is the only living relative of Sarah and her 4 younger siblings. The grandmother is very old and frail but she still somehow manages to take care of their garden and banana plantation though both were in desperate need of care. We spent the morning figuring out how to care for a banana plantation by watching the Compassion kids and doing what they were doing. They begin by cutting down the dead leaves that hadn’t fallen off. Then they trim any death that was occurring on the tree. My job consisted of removing the old ‘stumps’ and covering up the place they were with dirt. Others were cutting up stumps that had fallen to increase the speed of them rotting.

In addition to working on the banana plantation we also hoed in their garden. It was full of weeds. It was funny watching some of the Purdue girls trying to hoe, especially along side the Compassion girls who are experts at it. They all jumped right in and went to work though. We also put up a bathing are where the family could bathe more privately. They had been bathing from outside on the side of their house previously. And we also put up a drying rack for their dishes. It’s important for dishes to dry in the sun to kill some additional germs. This also prevents them from drying on the ground which is not sanitary. We enjoyed a meal of chapattis (like tortillas), bananas, sodas and water for lunch.

Purdue is coming!

2008-05-06T16:20:00.000+03:00

I know I haven't posted in some time. My computer has been on the fritz. The Purdue team is coming today. Only 1 holdover from the last group from a year ago. They are set to stay with host families for the 2 weeks they are here. They will spend their time with the Compassion kids in educational activities as well as games and sports. Plus they will venture out into the bush to do some physical labor as they work to build some simple mud structures like outdoor kitchens and pit latrines (outhouses) for the poorest of the poor of our Compassion families. It's an extremely exciting time to spend with these eager Americans and to share with them my tiny village in Africa with all of its comforts and culture.

Bruno and the Gorillas

2008-04-15T10:46:00.000+03:00

Bruno

My little friend, Bruno, used to be a waiter at Sky Blue Restaurant. He is the most hospitable little guy I’ve ever met. He’d just do anything for you. That kind of hospitality is sometimes difficult to fine in Uganda. Customer service seems so far from people’s minds, but not Bruno. It’s just how he’s wired.

Jacob and I along with another 2 people have helped pay Bruno’s school fees for him to follow his passion, studying tourism. Currently he’s interning in Bwindi Impenatrable Forrest as a Gorilla tracker! He’s been tracking the gorillas and taking tourists to see them. He came back this weekend with a number of stories and tales to tell. He knows the ‘grunts’ the gorillas make to say “I’m OK, you’re OK” and the noises they make when they’ve eaten something they really like. He even said he’s been kicked by them a couple of times…!!! Though my PC salary is small (a couple hundred bucks a month), it’s still more than I need living in my tiny village where there’s really nowhere to spend money, so it’s good to give it away. It’s taxpayers money anyway and not really mine, so I feel like it needs to be given away. I’m just glad to help and glad to hear the excitement of Bruno’s stories and to realize that they may never have happened unless a few people got together to help.

New Volunteers

Reinforcements have arrived!! There are 2 new white people living in my village, just a stone’s throw from my house. They are the 2 new PCVs (a married couple) who will be replacing me and Jacob once we’re done, but for the time being they are here to learn the ropes. It’s great to have some new faces here and to help them habituate to the surroundings. They are a great couple with a lot of great ideas about what they want to do here. They also seem to have the attitude about things which is nearly essential to survival here. They’re ready to ‘make lemonade’ as my VSO friend Chris likes to say. I’m looking forward to hearing about their successes in the next 2 years.

Win $5,000 and help Compassion!

2008-04-08T11:32:00.000+03:00

Rushville Rotary to Raffle for Compassion

My time here in Uganda with the PC is nearly complete and I’m happy to announce that I’ve got a very exciting thing to pass along to you!! The Rushville Rotary is conducting a raffle to help support needy families in the Compassion International project specifically in my village in Uganda!!! I spoke at one of their meetings a year ago about PC, Uganda and Compassion International and they said they were in need of an international project to sponsor, so a partnership was made. Their goal is to raise $10,000 and to give HALF of it to us here and the other half will go to the winner of the raffle! That’s right, the winner will receive $5,000!! The other $5,000 (which could triple to $15,000 through matching grants from Rotary International) that goes here will NOT be going to the building project, but rather to our neediest families for a number of income generation projects, such as goats, cattle, garden projects, clean water collection projects, etc to improve the health, sanitation, income levels, and general living conditions of our Compassion Families, which have already been identified as being the neediest of the needy in this community. Most of the household incomes of the families which we deal with is around $1 a day!! The goal is to tangibly help and support the community through income generation projects while the community center building project is also going on which will support the community in another way.

I’m super excited that the Rotary has taken this project on! It’s a GREAT opportunity for you to help these needy families here as well as a chance for you to make some money for yourself!! Raffle tickets are $50 a piece (or 5 people could all pitch in $10 to buy one and then split the winnings $1,000 a piece). The raffle will be held on April 19^th. Tickets are limited. Tickets can be bought from any Rushville Rotarian, so they can call Markus Strobl or any other member of the Rotary Club in Rush County. Markus’ phone is 765-938-5110 (business), or 938-3424 (hm), and the email is: itsjustglass@verizon.net.

Please consider helping this needy cause!

Caroline’s Story

I heard this story when I first arrived but some new developments have arrived. Caroline is a 14 year old girl. She was found in the bush by a cattle keeper after she had been abandoned by her mother when she was an infant. The cattle keeper took her to his sister who raised her along with her own children. In the following months this new caregiver of this girl talked to local government officials and churches to identify the parents of her. Nothing came of it.

About 4 years ago a wealthy man came forward identifying Caroline as his grand daughter and said that he wanted to take her into his home. He claimed that is son fathered the girl by a house girl they had at the time. This house girl was of an ‘inferior tribe’ and in relative poverty and thus the boy could not marry her.

Caroline has known for some time that she wasn’t born into her current family but that she was found and raised by this older woman. They live in dire poverty. The grandfather and even the father are trying to claim Caroline reasoning that they can provide her a better life. They have money to afford secondary school and to provide for her needs. The grandfather reasons that he has all this money and why should one of his granddaughters be suffering in poverty when he has the means to help her.

The current caregiver, however, is reluctant to let Caroline go with them claiming that she doesn’t know who the parents are and wonders why they are just now stepping forward to claim her. Caroline has a striking resemblance to both the father and grandfather and she would receve more opportunities with her birth father. The situation was even brought to the police to have them resolve it but they said without DNA proof that the girl is related to the father the could not intervene. So, if the father & grandfather wish to continue to pursue this matter they’ll have to go to Kampala for DNA testing, but even so, trying to convince this poor, uneducated caregiver woman about DNA testing, what it is, how reliable it is, etc, may prove to be another bridge to cross.

Caroline has yet to be asked what she would like to do, but I believe that Compassion is going to do that soon.

Stolen Scale

We had a scale stolen from Compassion recently. The scale is used frequently to measure a number of food stuffs that are brought into the office. I didn’t realize it but the scale costs over $100. We have 2 cooks that work for Compassion who have been here the whole 2 years I’ve been here. The staff has told me that small amounts of food seem to disappear from our store room all the time and they have always suspected the cooks, both men. The cooks are paid around $30 a month to cook and work around the office. Sometimes, depending on what jobs need to be done, they earn $50 a month.

When the scale came up missing the cooks were immediately suspected and one in particular started acting funny. He went to the local radio station without being told and took out an ad asking for the return of the stolen scale. He also thought that the cooks should work together to replace the stolen scale. Nobody has admitted to stealing it, but it looks somehow suspicious and right now it looks like the more suspicious cook is going to replace the scale.

Leaving Soon, A Friend Visit, Post PC Plans

2008-04-01T12:10:00.000+03:00

I’ve been away from blogging for the past few weeks, so I apologize. It’s been a combination of things. First, we had our final COS party to bid farewell to our fellow PCVs who will be leaving in May. It was a theme party where we all dressed up as movie characters. Fortunately there is a plethora of second hand clothing all over this country so piecing together a costume isn’t terribly difficult and is actually quite fun and feels quite ‘normal’, as in it’s a break from the daily routine of what always feels the same. The party was great. It was held at a Turkish restaurant near Garden City called Effandy’s. It wasn’t just my group that was in attendance but a number of other PCVs from the other groups to bid us farewell and also for just a reason to party.

The party also served as an opportunity to show a slide show video set to music of our past 2 years in Uganda. I begged, borrowed and stole over 4,000 pictures from my fellow PCVs and put it to 45 minutes of music. Songs ranged from “Find Yourself” by Brad Paisley to “Africa” by Toto to “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by Animals. I just tried to take the pictures and music and create a range of feelings and experiences that we all felt and experienced over our 2 years. 45 minutes of pictures may sound like an eternity of hell, especially if you’d compare it to Aunt Helga’s vacation videos or something like that, but it was different. It was a chance to see everyone’s point of view, their villages, their experiences, their Ugandan friends and families.

Friend Visit

My friend, Nanette, came and visited for a week. She had served in the PC in Burkina Faso, so she was already “Africa ready” once she arrived. We traveled around a bit and saw my village. We also visited her Compassion Child who lived in one of the slums of Kampala. I’d never been to the slums. It was moving to say the least. People living in cramped conditions. It had just rained, so you can imagine the mud, muck and whatever else we were traipsing through. We visited her 8 year old girl’s home where 7 people slept. The girl’s father had died, presumably of HIV. The mother was HIV positive, but the 3 children were negative. The mother sold tea to neighbors to earn a small living and the step father drove a car owned by another man as a special hire taxi. It’s a difficult way to earn a living because motor bike taxis are cheaper and can maneuver Kampala’s frequent traffic jams quicker and easier than cars. The step father earns around $7 a day but sometimes comes home with no earnings. This ‘home’ they live in is only a single room that is 8 ft by 12 ft. There are 7 that sleep there including the mother’s 2 siblings. Nanette’s girl often sleeps with her grandmother who lives about 1 km away but who also lives in a single room. They share a bed. The grandmother whom we also visited, says that she enjoys her grand daughter’s company and that she’s a hard worker when she comes over. The slums are compounded by the fact that Ugandans have no regard for trash disposal, so they just throw their trash outside and expect it to just wash away or magically disappear.

The Compassion staff accompanied us on our visit. They were so friendly and kind. We really had a nice time with them. Each Compassion center has 4 staff members that work there full time plus a handful of teachers that come once a week when the kids come to give them supplemental education and care. This particular Compassion was a new center. When I first arrived I was told there were around 155 Compassion centers around Uganda, but on this visit I was told there are now 212. Each center has around 280 children. That equals a total of around 60,000 Ugandan children who receive education, clothing, a mattress and mosquito net, free health care and social services in addition to Christian education that would otherwise be without. And the children are identified by community members as being the poorest of the poor and the neediest of the needy.

Nanette went on to comment on how drastically different Burkina Faso and Uganda are. Burkina Faso, she said, is extremely hot year round, even at night and it’s very dry and dusty all over. Uganda is lush and green and the temperatures are comfortable and even cool in the evenings, at least in the mountainous south west. She also said that there are very few tourists or touristy places in Burkina, where as Uganda has a number of tourist attractions including the Nile River, a number of National Parks including Gorilla Trekking.

New Volunteers

Jacob and I are both getting PC replacements for our organizations for when we are gone. There will be a small overlap due to when training was scheduled for them. We met the new couple. It’s a married couple. The guy is going to work with Compassion and his wife is going to work with Jacob’s organization. My village is a nicely sized place with a decent array of restaurants and decent electricity plus it’s nestled in a beautiful valley with scenic mountains all around that are begging to be climbed.

We had a great visit with them. They seem anxious to just get here and get started. They also just seem to have a great attitude about what they want to do and what their expectations are. That is so essential to being a PCV. Living a simple life, the ability to ‘make lemonade’ when you are given lemons and the willingness to just kind of go with the flow. Those elements can make or break a PC experience. It sounded like, mostly, they were just ready to get here and to start working as a PCV. Typical. Those weeks of training seem to always drag on as the fantasy of the real PCV life looms where you are free to come and go as you please and free to get your hands dirty and start working on your own projects. It should be a great next few weeks that we all spend together before I leave.

Leaving Soon

Speaking of leaving, I have 8 weeks remaining in Uganda. To be honest, I’m ready to go home. I know that I’ll look back with very fond memories, but for now I’m focused on the light at the end of the tunnel.

This whole 2 years was supposed to give me an idea of what I was supposed to with the rest of my life. What I’ve found instead was that it was the same 2 years of uncertainty that I would have had in the US, just in a different place. Without actively searching out purpose, it’ll never be attained. So, about a year ago I actively tried to tackle that exact issue. I searched deep within myself as well as far beyond myself (thanks internet). I decided, after much thought and prayer, that after the PC I’ll be going into campus ministry somewhere, hopefully around May of ’09. I looked back on all my work and life experiences in addition to my own gifts and talents and I feel, and have always somehow felt called to ministry though have also felt like I had to find myself first and pursue my own objectives. I’m reminded how Jesus didn’t begin his ministry until the age of 30. I wouldn’t trade my experiences, in fact, I believe they all shaped who I am, from teaching to working construction and working at Applebee’s to being in Uganda. I feel I have more to offer and am more equipped than I otherwise would have been had I jumped in straight after college. But I also feel like I’ve taken the role of Jonah and have tried to flee from a calling, if you will, and that fleeing has led to general unsatisfaction in the careers that I’ve pursued. They just didn’t jive with me, so to speak.

So, the plan in full is to ride my bicycle across the US from June to the end of July to raise money for a building project here for Compassion (http://bikeforcompassion.blogspot.com) and then to move to Knoxville to work with my friend and former minister Mark Nelson (http://standingonthedesk.blogspot.com) for 10 months, training and learning how to minister and manage a church before taking the plunge myself in May of ’09.

Getting sick happens...

2008-03-11T10:50:00.000+03:00

I didn’t want to blog about this but I think I need to. I found myself face down in the dirt last week outside of my pit latrine unable to move or yell for help. I was lying in the dirt in a pool of my own sweat struggling not to faint as my world got darker and further away. I had left my phone in my house so I was without any lifelines. I panicked. I was terrified. I didn’t exactly know what was happening or why. Earlier that day I had felt uneasy with no appetite. I had laid down for what turned out to be a 3 hour nap and then felt the need to vomit. I went to the latrine for what turned out to be diarrhea and then it happened.

My latrine is fenced in so nobody could see me. I laid there for I don’t know how long. I could hear people going to my neighbors house to get milk for their evening tea. I mustered up the strength to cry for help. Help to get me inside to my phone. I yelled (as best I could) in English and in the local language. …I heard laughter in response. 3 people walked by the fence immediately outside and as I begged for help I heard laughter. From kids I suspect. In my delirious state I thought to even offer them candy to get them to come. More laughter. So then I was angry on top of being disoriented. I yelled for my neighbor by name… nothing.

Slowly my strength came back and I forced myself into my house to get my phone. I called Jacob and he came over immediately, but he lives 1.5 miles away and it took him a while by bike to get there. I also called the Peace Corps nurse.

My strength was back by this time but the panicked feeling of wondering what had happened, how a strong, healthy runner can nearly faint out of what seemed like the clear blue sky.

She calmly told me that what happened wasn’t terribly unusual. Fainting after a sizable diarrhea is fairly common and that it had even happened to her. She said that I was dehydrated and that I had lost a lot of fluid in my ‘long call’ and that I need to rest and drink fluids and keep in touch with her if anything else happened and that she would call in the morning to check up on me.

I remember reading about a common question that people had before joining the Peace Corps about getting very sick with nobody around to help. I didn’t think that could be the case with neighbors so close by who watch your every move and with a cell phone which I always have with me. Generally it’s not a concern, but I had just happened to leave my phone by my bed when this occurred, which could happen to anybody.

I felt a little silly by the time Jacob got there. I was feeling much better, only weak from the ordeal. I was furious that I was laughed at instead of being helped by the kids/neighbors. They must have thought that I was joking and they obviously couldn’t have seen me behind the fence, but still I was outraged that I could be lying there in need of help and hear laughter as a response.

In all honestly it was kind of a culmination of a number of feelings. With only 11 weeks left to go in my PC experience I’m tired to the point of being utterly frustrated at walking around my village and still being harassed by the same people and the same shops that I have passed for over 2 years now. They don’t see it as harassment as they yell out “Muzungu” every time I pass, but to hear it 50 times a day, every single day, just gets so old. I think that even the sickness was brought on buy stress and frustration the last few weeks, suffice it to say. But, I’m on a downhill slope now. The end is in sight. It’s been a purely wonderful experience and I would DEFINITELY do it all over again if I had it to do again, but there’s also a big part of me that’s ready to come home and see my friends and family, eat pizza and ice cream and go to the dollar movie theater again. Is that such a bad thing?

My Replacement

The newest group of PCVs arrived on February 15^th. 60 of them but 3 have already gone home so I hear. In that group are my and Jacob’s replacements. They will actually be here with us for the final 6 weeks, which will be neat. It’ll be a chance for us to show them around town, teach them how life as a PCV is, answer any questions they have along the way and to give them some golden advice as to how to merely survive in our village. I wish I had had a PCV here to ease me in, in a way. But also the figuring out on your own is a magical time as well.

It’s going to be a fast 11 weeks. I have a good friend coming to visit next week, then in April my replacement comes and then in mid May Purdue Campus House is sending another group of 15 college kids to do some work in and around my village with the Compassion kids and their families. Last year when they came it was EASILY the highlight of my year and I’m so looking forward to their coming and seeing them experience Africa and Compassion. There are definitely some things to look forward to in the coming weeks!!

Mr President, could you pass me the grape jelly?

2008-02-26T11:40:00.000+03:00

My cousin and I joined the Peace Corps at about the same time, unbeknownst to each other. Each of us had a desire to experience life in another country and to contribute in our own unique special way towards changing the world.

President Bush has been in the news recently on his tour through Africa. He stopped over in Ghana where my cousin is serving as a PCV and she had the pleasure of meeting him and having supper with him. I put on my flickr account a picture from the Ghana paper. That’s her sitting between George W. Bush and Condolezza Rice. How does one get such a seating assignment??

Power Outage

They’ve been replacing the power lines around my village for the past 2 weeks. The power has been off during the weekdays and on during the weekends. It’s really affected the local economy and well being but you don’t hear people complaining about it (but maybe that’s because I don’t understand 90% of what’s being said around me). The fact is that the power goes off and on so often that it’s just a way of life. Frustrating but normal. I can always tell if the power is off during the day because the metal workers who make the gates and barred house windows aren’t welding, they’re hammering or painting instead. The power was off for 4 days straight one week and 3 days straight last week. Those businesses who have generators burn those with fuel that is at $5.80 a gallon right now (no joke). And yet, I don’t hear anybody complain. It’s just how it is here. People aren’t as reliant on power. Life goes on.

“Hey man, nice, uh… outfit!”

That was the greeting I received from Jacob when I walked in wearing my blue Colts hat and my brand new Colts jersey with “Dunn” across the back. It was an outfit, I admit. It looked like I was going to a tailgate party for the pre-game celebration in the RCA dome parking lot. I admit it. I looked like a tool, but I’m in Africa, who cares? Nobody else would think anything of it. At least that’s what I thought. Until…

I was having breakfast at Sky Blue. My normal breakfast of poached eggs, toast and African coffee (instant coffee with boiled milk and not water). It’s $0.10 cheaper to have poached eggs rather than fried or scrambled for some reason. As I’m sitting there enjoying my meal in the warming morning sun, not 1, not 2, not 3, but FOUR mini-vans pulled up and unloaded 30 Americans who looked like college students. (Granted if they were Ugandans there would have been closer to 80 of them in those same 4 vehicles.) There I was in my ‘outfit’, looking like quite the Colts fan. Not that I’m ashamed of the Colts, but everything has it’s limits and by American standards I knew that I had crossed the line from a fan to a fanatic. I tried ditching the hat to tone it down a notch but I feel like the damage was already done. Of all the days to see a group of Americans…

It's a bit long, but it's good...

2008-02-19T12:54:00.002+03:00

So here was my day yesterday. Not that it was so interesting or so funny or so different than other days here, but it just all happened on one day and it was particularly funny to me:

I was told by my organization that I had to attend a meeting at the District Council Hall at 8am. There was a letter about an OVC committee meeting for organizations from all over the district. I asked what time I should REALLY be there and they told me 9. I arrived a bit late, about 9:05, hoping that I wasn't the last person there. To my utter astonishment I wasn't the last one, but rather the first one. Even the organizers of the event hadn't arrived. I found a seat and waited. I waited some more. I waited and waited and waited. Finally at 10am I called my organization to ask them "what's up"? They told me to leave because they needed someone to go to Mbarara to pick up messages. So I left.

I traveled to Mbarara and started to pick the things they had sent me for. First I had to pay the electricity bill. No problems. Then I had to go to a book store to buy a number of Christian books for our kids. I went to the first book store and couldn't find any of the items on my list. I went to the next book store and again came up empty. I asked the lady about the books and she referred me back to the first book store. I then decided to look for a bookstore which I heard had the books called "Focus Bookstore". I asked a small group of people, "I'm looking for Focus Bookstore. Do you know where it is?"

"It's called what?"

"Focus"

"What?"

"FO-cus"

"What?"

"FOCUS! I can't say it any differently! Fo-cus! FO-CUS!"

"What?"

"It's called Focus Bookstore. Focus Bookshop. Something. It used to be next to the Pelican Hotel but it has moved."

"Oh, you're looking for Pelican Hotel?"

"No! I'm looking for a bookstore called Focus!"

"It's called what?"

"Argh!!! Never mind!"

I walked around all afternoon and I never did find the books. Every book store referred me to every other one. I decided to leave Mbarara and let someone else worry about the books. I went to the edge of town to catch a taxi, but I didn't stop there. Those taxi drivers are clever. They know that people go to the edge of town to catch a taxi, so they pick them up there and then go BACK into town to pick up other passengers, sometimes doing this for hours before they actually leave.

Well, I'm more clever than they are. I went to the edge of town and then walked an additional 1km to make SURE that they were leaving town when they reached me. A minibus came. I got in the front seat. THEY PROCEEDED TO TURN AROUND AND GO BACK INTO TOWN!!! I tried to jump out but the conductor grabbed my door and wouldn't let me out. "Muzungu! 2 minutes! 2 minutes and we'll leave. I promise." Yeah right. "I'm timing you," I told him. "2 minutes turns into an hour here!" So we went a short distance back into town, then sat for 10 minutes, a few people got out, we drove up a ways and then... turned around AGAIN to go back into town! We left 30 minutes later. Could have been worse. Ah, Uganda!

Mr Maxwell

When I was a kid I always looked forward to going to church. Not because of the flannel board stories of Daniel and the lions den; it was because Mr Maxwell always had gum for me. If I remember right, it was called Mormon gum and it was these 2 little chickletts in this small, yellow cardboard box. I wouldn’t even greet Mr Maxwell, I would just run up to him and ask for gum, and every time, he gave me some. If he didn’t have Mormon gum, then he’d give me Wrigley’s. It was the best part of church as far as my 5 year old mind was concerned.

Well, now that I’m older, I’ve decided that I want to be Mr Maxwell. I want to provide gum to the 5 year old kids of Uganda.

That was my first mistake. I started keeping candy at my place, and because I live around a number of other houses there are always kids around. I started giving candy to these little kids. Then more kids came. And more. Before I knew it, all of the kids in the neighborhood were lining up outside my door every morning with their grubby hands sretched out saying “Give me sweetie!” Not hello, not good morning. Just Give me sweetie, as if I was the candy welfare man who had bottomless pockets of sweets to hand out. Slowly I’ve been trying to wean the kids off of thinking that I’m the candy man, but it’s taken time. Each time they come to my door in droves, I open the door and show them the empty bag of candy. Sounds kind of cruel, I know, but I’m telling you, droves of kids were showing up at my door, knocking at all hours, waking me up and saying, “Mpa (give me) sweetie!” Apparently even my generosity has it’s limits when gauged against my sanity.

Spaceship Landing

I thought I had talked about this before, but I guess I hadn’t. A couple of weeks ago I saw some construction going on at the Primary School located near my house. It looked like they were building a guard house at the entrance by the road. Unusual, I thought, because it was the holidays and generally they don’t build unless there’s money and they wouldn’t have collected money until the school year had begun.

A week or so went by and I was going home one evening when I noticed the most peculiar sight. There was a light on at the ‘guard house’. The primary school doesn’t have electricity and the guard house is a good 100 meters from the school anyway. Upon a closer look I saw a satellite dish and solar panels on the structure. It also looked like there were 2 ATM monitors glowing on the building. I froze. Asked myself if I had traveled through a wormhole to the US somehow, the got closer for a better look.

They weren’t ATM monitors but the screens were computer monitors and the men there were on the internet. Internet? What the…? I must be in another country.

I stood there and gawked for at least 10 minutes (seriously) trying to comprehend what was going on. Finally I had enough. I asked the men, one of which was Indian, what this was all about. He explained to me that the government of India had donated this to Uganda. It is free public internet for anyone who wishes to use it. There were 2 monitors behind the Plexiglas, the keyboards and touch pad were secured into the wall. There was even an outdoor light and it was all powered by solar power and a battery. There were 4 of these donated to Uganda and we got one.

“Free internet?” I asked.

“Yeah. Free internet.”

“And who pays for it?”

“The government of India pays for the internet services and for any upkeep needed. If there are any problems then the school has the number to call and a technician from Kampala will come to work on it and the bill will go to India.”

Unbelievable. Really, it’s like a well for the village, but instead of providing water they provide communication. Email, news, internet, etc. It also has some children’s programs to teach them math, kids wikipedia, typing, etc. It’s really amazing, I only wish I had thought of it.

“They’ll lock it up.” I told him. “They’ll charge people to use it. They’ll do something funny with me, mark my words. Not while I’m here, I’ll make sure of it, but I’m telling you, I have my suspicions.”

Sure enough, a week later I noticed that the head teacher for the school had an energy saver (florescent) light bulb in his home and the one for the internet shack was missing. Nobody in my village uses energy saver bulbs except for me. Nobody. And he suddenly has one at the same time that the one for the new internet place disappears? Ah, Uganda. I’m not accusing anyone, I’m just observing things.

So, we’ll see how it pans out, but it seems like a great idea. To visit their website, check out http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com

The Kenya Effect

A few prices of things have gone up here. I noticed that the prices of baked goods has gone up. After inquiring I was told that wheat prices has increased from 2,500 Ush to 4,500 Ush, almost doubled. The landlocked country of Uganda continues to suffer the effects of the election in Kenya.

Republican Article

Here’s the latest article I sent to the Rushville Republican. It’s adapted from a former blog entry on a school visit I made earlier this year.

Ultimate Frisbee, Fund Raising, and a WHOLE Bunch of Pictures

2008-02-12T15:57:00.000+03:00

I spent the past 2 weeks in and around Kampala for a workshop/vacation. Taking pictures mostly but also wearing myself out playing Ultimate Frisbee. (Please check out my recent pictures of Kampala on my flickr.com badge on the right. They’re some of the best pictures I’ve taken while serving as a PCV.) The Peace Corps put together 2 teams to compete in a 6 team tourney. We played last year and were only able to beat the high school kids, several of which were playing for the first time. This year we set out to do a little better.

Didn’t really happen. We fielded 2 teams this year instead of one. We beat the high school kids again and we were able to beat the other PC team, but other than a late game ralley where we trailed 8-7, we really weren’t in any of the games, but it was still a ton of fun. It’s the only time of the year that I can let loose my competitive side. In Kampala they meet weekly and scrimmage/practice in a sort of a league, so the Ugandans and ex-pats who play are very good! Very good! We played 5 games the first day. Five games of sprinting around, covering people, like you would in football or soccer is very tiring, but as my friend Przemek said, “It’s a good tired.”

Rotary to Fund Raise

I just received word that the Rushville Rotary is preparing to begin fundraising for the Compassion project I’m working with. They are trying to raise $5,000 by selling raffle tickets. We still need to raise a little over $8,000 for the building project and I would like to be able to raise some extra money for income generating projects or purchase land/home building materials for some of our poorest families. I’ll try to get information on the raffle and post it soon.

Picture Time

I don’t want to write a whole lot. I really want you to just scroll through my pictures. I put up just under 100 and if a picture is worth 1,000 words, then you’ve got a lot of reading to do!

COS Confrence and a visit from a friend

2008-02-06T10:19:00.000+03:00

We had our COS Conference this past week. COS stands for Close Of Service. it's nice because we stay in a $100 a night hotel. Sort of the Peace Corps way of rewarding us for making it to the end. Basically it’s a series of meetings getting us prepared to finish our time here. We go over everything from what to expect after Peace Corps to getting paid once we return home (we receive around $6,000 for what’s called re-adjustment allowance), to getting cash in lieu of our plane ticket home so that we can travel around. There was a panel of 5 ex-pats, 4 of which were RPCVs who talked about what it was like when they returned and what they’ve done since the Peace Corps. It was interesting and very helpful to hear about their experiences and expectations. I remember that one of them said that she just felt like after her Peace Corps experience that she would be able to transition immediately into an international development position but what she found that she was competing against people with 15 years of the same experience and that she had to start at the bottom and work her way up.

A Visiting Friend

My good friend Leslie Whitehead just happened to be in Kampala recently. She came with a group to do some short term mission work and just happened to chose Kampala to do it in. Leslie is a college friend whom I haven’t seen in several years so it was great to see her again. How she found out about this particular mission trip is also interesting. She was telling me that she was looking for a short term mission trip to do in Africa dealing with orphans. She put that exact criteria into a search, entered the dates she wanted to come and came up with a short list of mission trips already in the works. From there it was just a matter of picking the country and which trip to do. The group she came with was from all over: Australia, Canada and all over the US. They all basically met in London for the first time before flying to Uganda. They all came with a woman named Sherry who resides in California. Sherry first visited Uganda a few years ago. She and her husband immediately fell in love with the people and the place. She has since gone on to open her own orphanage in Kampala. But it’s far from your typical orphanage.

Orphanages here tend to be crowded compounds with wall to wall beds and kids of all ages. Sherry decided to do something different and in her own style. She found 8 children in need of help, 4 boys and 4 girls between the ages of 6 and 10 I’d say. She rents a nice home on 1 acre of land where these kids have a nice big yard to play in. Three ‘moms’ rotate in and out in shifts to take care of these kids. There is also a night watchman and a maintenance man. It’s a beautiful compound and a beautiful house. The kids each have their own things ranging from bicycles to umbrellas. They have nice clothes to wear that aren’t thread bare like so many of the children around and they are home schooled by the ‘moms’. Sherry has such a heart for these kids and they’re so loved and cared for. All 4 of the little girls had hair extensions (a popular thing here) and their ears pierced and the kids were so well mannered. It’s just a very different and refreshing way of tackling the problem of poverty and need.

Culture Shock

I don’t get culture shock here any more. Most of the romantic feelings of being in Africa have long since gone, but I did get a taste of something new this past week. Leslie’s group and I went to KPC, Kampala Pentecostal Church. It’s located downtown Kampala. From the moment I walked in I sensed that I wasn’t in Uganda any more. I’m so used to churches in the village. On stage was a full band warming up for worship. The patrons there weren’t dressed in the traditional Ugandan dresses and suits that I was accustomed to. The girls were actually wearing pants instead of skirts which is a little taboo in my area, but much more common in Kampala, and the church was filled with young people in their 20’s. I just couldn’t believe that this was in Uganda. I was sure I had found a wormhole back to the US. I didn’t know the worship music, but it was performed so well and it resembled ‘worship’ that I was more accustomed to with people really offering up worship to God, again something I’m not used to.

PCV Uganda Projects

There are a couple Peace Corps Volunteers in my group that are seeking funds through the Peace Corps Partnership program. A young, married couple here are trying to get a Borehole (well) constructed for a village that will service 350 men, women and children. Another project is for a tree nursery at a local primary school with the intention of teaching the students career skills in agriculture, art, and business aiding the local environment and improving the academic performance and experience of the student with a school income. Please take some time to consider helping these friends of mine with their Peace Corps projects as well as helping these Ugandan villages in their development.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=617-033&region=africa

https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=617-034&region=africa

Demons Hit School

Here's an interesting article from the local news paper about demons invading a primary school. You may have to subscribe to the New Vision to view it.

The struggle & about being 'trained'

2008-01-22T13:03:00.001+03:00

I received a phone call the other day from Olivia, a Ugandan friend of mine who used to manage the Sky Blue restaurant. She was calling to tell me that she had succeeded in raising just over $100 for her post secondary school fees. A majority of that came from her uncle. Her mother died in an auto accident over a year ago and her father is a peasant farmer. She was calling to ask me if I would give her some money. I had already given her some, but she needed more if she was going to be able to attend school. She probably needed an additional $50.

That’s life in Uganda. I’ve received several such phone calls and letters from people asking for ‘top-up’ money for school fees or other things. They come by way of not only phone calls but text messages and notes under my door. Once a man came into my office because he heard there was a white man there and he proceeded to tell me that his wife was sick and he needed money to get her to a hospital. I generally give away a fair portion of my Peace Corps income each month. I don’t really feel like it’s my money. It’s your money. Tax payers money. And it’s such a small amount that trying to save it up to ‘get ahead’ would be like trying to fill a swimming pool with a thimble.

It’s even futile to get a job and try to work to save up money. The going rate for a worker in a restaurant is about $1 a day and if you go to school and try to work in the evenings it’s even less than that. Many school students eat beans and rice for every single lunch and dinner (our equivalent of Raman noodles?). Breakfast is similar. Not to mention that if you’re a female then you’re subject to sexual harassment which runs rampant here with very few laws to protect women, not to mention the general stereotype of women’s inferiority. The belief here is that if a woman wears the wrong clothing (pants or a skirt that shows her knees) then she is asking to be raped and that it’s HER fault if she is.

You know, I think on these things and I always go back to what a land of opportunity America is. How despite what we would consider high unemployment rates, there are jobs available for people willing to work. There are opportunities to succeed and get ahead.

Nutritional Supplement

Jacob moved across town several months ago so our chats have been sporadic. No longer do we just sit around with time to kill talking about anything feasibly interesting and terribly mundane. The other day, however, he came over looking for a particular type of tree he had seen before. This tree has very nutritious leaves. The leaves can be mixed into a number of meals. By weight, he said, the leaves contain 4x the Vitamin A as a carrot and 4x the calcium of milk, thus acting as a nutritional supplement for people whose diet is mainly rice and beans.

Drama Kings & Queens

Our Compassion kids recently competed in a drama competition that was held for the Compassion centers in this region. I was very impressed with the way in which it was organized. Instead of shipping 20 or so kids from each center to a central place to have all of the dramas, which would have been a costly ordeal, albeit exciting. They instead drove around and video taped each 10 minute performance. The kids were to write a drama about “What general thoughts do you have about Compassion.” Or something like that. I tried to volunteer to work with the kids to do dramas but I was told that I wasn’t qualified and they needed a ‘trained’ person to teach them. OK, I thought to myself. I don’t know if all of Uganda is like this but I’ve run across it a number of times. For example, we have a lady here who comes and teaches the kids when they are here. She’s a wonderful teacher, especially with younger kids which I think takes a special talent. However, she isn’t a ‘qualified’ teacher. She isn’t ‘trained’, though she’s one of our better teachers. So, when it comes time to hire teachers next time around, I’m quite certain she won’t be among those hired, because she isn’t ‘trained’.

Back to the Drama Kids. They won the competition! They were the best group, and it’s no surprise. They are amazing, bright kids with loads of talent. Give credit to their ‘trained’ drama teacher. Maybe there is something to hiring a ‘trained’ person after all…

Pickpockets and Kenya Elections

2008-01-08T16:18:00.000+03:00

Pickpockets in Kampala

I spent Christmas with my friends in Entebbe. It was incredible to say the least. I had pizza on the beach of Lake Victoria one day and then stuffed the most amazingly rich food into my face the rest of the time all the while enjoying the peace of not being called Muzungu for the first time in several days.

Getting into Kapmala, was another story entirely. I had my backpack stuffed full and as a white guy I’m, of course, a target for pickpockets. I was careful to not pack any valuables into pockets that were easily accessable. I had even put my phone deep into my backpack to get it out of my pocket.

Kampala was PACKED with people on December 23^rd. Everyone trying to leave the city at once to go visit their loved ones, who all seem to live in the bush. As I made my way through the bus park to the taxi park to get to Entebbe, I noticed a 13 year old boy wearing a read shirt, following me. My walking strategy is to quickly duck and dodge in and out of people, leaving a difficult trail for someone to follow. I glanced back a second time and saw this same red-shirted boy who caught my eye this time and then proceeded to look all around like he was looking for someone in particular. I reached back for one of my side pockets and found it open. (I had cleverly put my underwear in those pockets to surprise any pickpocketers.) I just stood there and pointed at the kid while staring him down. He got the message and bolted.

That was pickpocket attempt #1. The second came as I was about to board the bus back to my village. I was bargaining for my bus fare (this was before the Kenya riots and hiked gas prices) when a laughing and seemingly friendly man who was trying to befriend me, casually reached into my pocket where my phone was. It was subtle, but not so subtle that I didn’t notice. I jerked back and put my hand in the pocket and half pretended that I didn’t notice. I don’t want to react too much in such a situation. I’m the only white guy there and who knows how many of his friends are around. Not that I don’t feel safe, I just feel outnumbered and I’m never sure who would pick to be on my side in case fisticuffs broke out.

Kenya

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the election in Kenya has been in the news. The current president is being accused of rigging the election as early results had reported the opposition leading by a million votes before the current president miraculously pulled out a victory.

Since that time 600 people have reportedly been killed and 100,000 have fled their homes. Here in Uganda the effects have been felt. Uganda is a landlocked country that is dependent on Kenya for use of ports in Mombassa. The scuffles caused the import of goods, namely gasoline, to cease which then caused fuel stations to ration their petroleum and for some to run out all together. Once the filling stations ran out those who did have gas were reportedly selling it for upwards of $20 a gallon. Public vehicles are charging upwards of 4 times their usual rates, which are already hiked due to the multitude that travel during the holidays. Fortunately for PCVs, we use bikes and thus haven’t been as effected by the petroleum shortage, but we have also been ordered to stay at our sites.

Here's the latest article about running the marathon.

Christmas in Uganda

2007-12-20T12:19:00.000+03:00

Christmas is upon us, but you wouldn’t know it from the looks of things. It’s just another day. My favorite restaurant, Sky Blue, just today (December 20^th) put up about 3 Christmas decorations. I’ve heard 3 Christmas songs on the local radio so far this month and I saw 3 French hens in Kampala last week (not really, but I needed another “3” to throw in). The only other indication that it’s Christmas is the occasional flyer in the newspaper from Game, the country’s only Wal-Mart type store in Kampala, a mere 5 hour drive from here.

The Big Question

Corruption. How bad is it? Recently Jacob was asked an interesting question by an Australian man. “If you wanted to give money to a person or organization and you had to go through a Ugandan that you didn’t know very well, how many Ugandans would mis-manage that money and pocket some?” Get a number in your head before you continue to read. Guess for yourself what percentage of Ugandans would pocket some of that money which is supposed to pay someone’s school fees or go toward building an orphanage for needy kids. Got it?

I’ve posed this same question to Ugandans and their answer is shocking. The answer is typically within the same range of one another and the answer comes quickly, as if they need no time to even consider it. The answer: 90% Ninety percent. 9 out of 10 people would help themselves first before putting the money towards who it is supposed to go to, regardless of how needy they are. This is the answer across the board. So the question that begs to be asked is, why?

“We live in poverty. We are more needy than those people in America and we have extended family to look after and provide for,” was one answer I received. “Won’t you feel guilty for taking school fees from some child?” “Most people wouldn’t. But we would still put that child in a school, but they would be sent to a lesser school than what the money was sent for.”

So maybe the question to ask you is: What percentages of Americans would do the same?

In the nearly 2 years I’ve been with Compassion I haven’t once seen money go where it shouldn’t go. I haven’t once seen the staff get something for themselves or try to work the system. Whether it’s money for the kids or money that’s going into the community center. The people I work with are very trustworthy and show a lot of integrity.

12 Days of Christmas. How to save money for Christmas by living like a Ugandan

#2 & #1. I have to do two because I skipped a week of blogging in there somewhere.

#2. Recycle everything imaginable. Plastic bags can be wadded up and tied together to make cheap soccer balls. The rubber from inner tubes can be cut into long strips and used as bungee cords. And you would be shocked by the amount of uses you can get from banana trees and leaves!

#1. Raise goats. Sure your neighbors might think it’s strange that you live in town and have goats grazing in your front yard, but goats multiply quickly. If you have 5 goats, in a year you may have 15. The meat is tasty, they can help you mow your lawn and the droppings make great fertilizer.

2007 MTN Marathon Moments

2007-12-11T19:17:00.000+03:00

The MTN (cell phone company) Marathon was this Sunday. It was #7 for me and the first marathon I’ve run 2 times. Two other PCVs ran the marathon and another 2 ran the 10k. How incredibly blessed (I honestly don’t know any other word to describe it) were we to have friends like Jen and Przemek (psh-EH-mek), our missionary friends who used to live in my village but have since moved to Entebbe, drive us around Kampala. They took us to eat Italian the night before and then they picked us up at 6am (they were even 15 minutes early) to take us to the start line.

Allow me to describe the race. For weeks now the newspapers had bragged “6,000 to run Marathon”. In reality, as I suspected, only a few hundred ran the marathon distance of 42.2 km (26.2 miles). The rest of the “6,000” ran the 10k and the new half marathon. We arrived at Lugogo Mall, an upscale strip mall with Game (think Wal-Mart) and Shop-Rite (think Krogers), just as dawn was beginning to break. Kampala weather is generally hot and sticky so an early start time is imperative. My running mate, Chad, had purchased some, I can only describe them as, 80’s style spandex to run the marathon in. As if he wouldn’t stand out enough just being a white guy… After we stretched and warmed up we made our way to the starting line. There was a massive bottle neck of people as everyone tried to get into the blocked gate of the starting corral. I’m pretty sure that white men introduced the concept of a line here because it is noticeably lacking. When the starting time came and went and still the corral was empty, a few anxious runners charged the guards holding up the gates, toppling the guards and the gates, and allowed the marathoners to approach the start line. The half and 10k runners had to wait until the marathon began.

The few hundred of us anxiously approached the start line. Runners were chomping at the bit to get going. The starter had to call them back 3 times before officially starting the race. As I looked around I saw a number of baffling sights. The man in front of me had on a full sized, green book bag. It didn’t seem heavy, maybe holding a jacket. A few runners were wearing sweat pants though the temperature was mild, it would get very hot very quickly. I also saw a wide variety of shoes. High tops, casual dress shoes, boots… one guy had on 1 shoe and 1 sandal.

The race began and people surged ahead. Chad and I went slow and steady. In the first mile I counted 7 people walking. “Only 25 miles to go” I thought to myself as I felt pity for them.

Easily the most shocking moment of the entire run, and possibly the most shocking moment of my entire time in Uganda, came at the 2 mile point. A man from the crowd wearing casual pants, a button up shirt and loosely tied boots jumped into the race a few feet in front of me. “He’s not going to get very far dressed like that,” I said to Chad. Shortly there after a guard, wearing a navy blue sweater and carrying a silver shotgun went after him. When the man refused to stop running the guard began swinging his shotgun at him and hitting him, hard, in the head and legs! He hit him 5 times with a loaded shot gun and then managed to punch the guy in the head with his fist. Still, the bandit runner continued. For a time the guard was running behind him, yelling something to him in Luganda while pointing the shotgun at his back. The people around me yelled “No” and even covered their ears. I was nearly certain the man was to be shot. It cost $2.50 to run this marathon. It’s over $100 to run some in the US. We were in the middle of the pack. I can’t imagine what this guy was thinking or what the guard was trying to prove exactly, but eventually we were able to convince the guard to back off and let him go. I was later told by Japheth, my friend and supervisor at Compassion, that there could have been state officials running the marathon and the man could have been looking to harm someone, possibly even Chad and I, though it seemed unlikely at the time.

A few miles later we turned off the main roads and into “The real Kampala”. Back roads, little shops and stores lined the streets. Garbage everywhere. Kids changing “How are you Muzungu.” Thick clouds of black exhaust from passing trucks. Pot holes large enough for me to lie down in. The elite half marathon group BLEW past us with mud splattered on their backs, kicked up from their fast pace. One by one the halfers went by. You could distinguish the half and the full by the amount of mud on their backs (marathoners were running a slower pace, thus less mud).

Hearing people cheering was unusual. The spectating Ugandans didn’t exactly cheer. They generally yelled something at us and then laughed. I heard someone yell “Sadam” and someone else yell “Bin Ladin”. I even heard “Mexico”. The funniest was when someone yelled “Muzungu Big Balls” to Chad about his spandex… Groups of 30 or so were especially intimidating because you never knew what they were going to yell or do. I fully expected someone to reach out and grab me as I went by, but it never happened. There was plenty of water along the course. Bottles of it. I began carrying the water bottle with me and dousing kids and the most annoying spectators. Fortunately they seemed to think that was funny. Around the 10k point, down a long hill, I began hearing some loud cheering from a small, motley crew of white people. Unusual, I thought, to hear cheering. Jacob and 2 other PCVs had a big sign saying “Only 25 miles to go” with our names on it. Jacob’s idea of humor. They were really yelling for us and it was a nice boost of adrenaline.

The course continued on through Kampala. It was extremely hilly! Extremely! The biggest hill near a place called Backpackers. All the focus for the first half was on that hill. Make it up that hill and you’ve made the marathon. Chad and I reached the hill, buried our heads and chugged along. We passed a few people along the way, including a white guy and girl. Upon reaching the top there was a down hill then another hill, though not as steep. Chad began getting side cramps and the other white guy caught up with me and we ran most of the rest of the way together. With 3 miles to go I could tell he had fresher legs than I had so I told him to go ahead. I thought I would finish in 3:30. The course was only sparsely marked so when 3:25 came I started looking for the finish. “Only 5 more minutes,” I kept telling myself. 5 minutes went by. 10 minutes. 15 minutes. I thought I saw Lugogo Mall at one point and let out a huge “Thank You” only to discover I was mistaken. Finally I came to marking: 41km. I remembered it from last year. They tell you when there is 1 km to go. I’m not sure if that’s beneficial or torturous. As I came around the last corner there was a huge crowd cheering. Not Ugandans. It was about 10 PCVs who had come to see the race, but it felt like 100 of them. They cheered for everyone as they passed, but especially for us! I think I sprinted all the way to the finish line. They were so supportive. The Ugandan runners, as they passed, didn’t quite know what to think. They weren’t used to hearing people cheer them on and had to double check that they were cheering for them. Some smiled, some waved, but all picked up their pace a little bit as they crossed the finish line.

My finish time: 3:42. All things considered, I’ll take that any day.

Ebola outbreak

There’s an Ebola outbreak in Uganda. The newspapers are reporting that over 100 people have contracted the deadly virus and over 20 have died thus far. They are also reporting that it is in 8 districts. The Peace Corps is telling us that it’s only in 1 district and that many of the suspected cases are coming back negative. The Newspaper is trying to sell newspapers. The Peace Corps is looking out for our health… In 2000-01 there was also an outbreak. Ebola is named after a river in DR Congo where it was first discovered. Generally it is lethal 60% of the time. It is spread by contact with a contagious person. Symptoms include fever, diarrhea, upset stomach, vomiting, and bloody discharge. We have been warned by the PC about it and encouraged to continually wash our hands and avoid contact with sick people. I’m not sure how bad it would have to get before PC will become proactive, but rest assured, the #1 priority of the PC is the health and safety of the volunteers.

12 Days of Christmas. How to save money for Christmas by living like a Ugandan.

#3. Haul your water from the nearest swamp or stream. Think for a moment about where the closest pond, creek or stream is. Then think about lugging two 15L containers back and forth from your house to get water. Round trip for some takes over 2 hours… but think of the money you’d save on your water bill.

Internet Indeed

2007-12-04T16:05:00.000+03:00

We have achieved a great level of civilization! We now have the internet at my Compassion site! We are now ready to conquer the world! More and more messages that are sent from my site to the Compassion regional offices in Mbarara and Kampala are sent via email. The modem, which is an interesting little device about the size of a small cell phone and which inserts directly into a usb port, cost around $200 and it will cost $70 a month. $70 a month sounds pricy, and it is, but it’s really all that’s available here and the Compassion head offices are trying to get as many of their projects (there are currently 155 in Uganda) on board as they can. It operates using a small chip that is typically in a cell phone called a SIM card and thus uses a cell phone signal to transmit information. I only tried it out this morning. It’s not fast, but it does what it’s supposed to do. The only limitation is that with this package you can only transmit 600 MB of information a month. The unlimited internet package was $120 a month.

Why my dad would have made a great Peace Corps Volunteer

I was thinking about my dad for some reason the other day. And I was thinking that he would have made a great Peace Corps volunteer if they would have had it back in the 50’s. My dad turned 80 last week. It seems like I’ve been bragging to my friends for some years now that my father was 80 and that he mowed 30 yards every summer (though he’s cut back recently). I find a lot of correlations to what my father taught me, by the way he lived, and what it takes to be a PCV. Allow me to indulge:

-Frugal. I live on a very modest salary. I have to budget and think about what I spend. My father raised 5 kids on a teacher’s salary and grew up in the depression era. I can’t remember how many times my brother and I would split a large order of fries from McDonlads. “One large Coke and 2 courtesy coups, please.”

-Greeting everyone. I can’t wait to get home where I can blend into the thread of society again. I’m the type of guy who likes to slip into the back of the room and sit unnoticed and observe. Here, I am given the seat up front, I am stared at daily and greeted by everyone… My father seems to know everyone in my home town and greets them often. How he has managed to thus avoid a job as a Wal-Mart greeter is beyond me. Maybe he’s saving that for his 90’s.

-Exercise. My father was a great basketball player in his day. My mode of transportation through these hills is a bicycle… you do the math.

-Helper. I think the reason my father went into education is because he is naturally gifted at helping others. He just has a heart for it. And he does it without expecting anything in return. If that’s not Peace Corps material, I don’t know what is.

-Patience …he’s getting there.

-Reading. I’ve read more books in my one and a half years here than I’ve read in my life. And that’s a good thing. Although I don’t remember seeing him reading too many books, if you count newspapers he’s far ahead of the curve.

12 Days of Christmas. How to save money for Christmas by living like a Uganda.

#4. Don’t buy toilet paper, just use scraps of regular paper or leaves. Seriously. Even people who earn a decent living do this.

Touch Football, A Strike

2007-11-27T14:52:00.000+03:00

I think I ate more this Thanksgiving than in all the years past! Despite not having the luxury of a conventional oven, consistent power, or a nearby grocery store, we were still able to successfully have a superb Thanksgiving dinner this year including Turkey Bowl II, a rowdy game of touch football. Instead of the usual turkey, we instead had fried chicken (of sorts), stuffing, mashed potatoes, potato salad, beef stew, along with no-bake cookies and apple pie for dessert. The chicken prepareation was especially interesting as Lonnie put a broom handle over the head of the chicken and then yanked up on it’s feet to, in effect, de-head the thing. I wanted him to put it down in order to see a chicken run around without it’s head, but it was to no avail. The chicken just flapped while he held it instead. The blood did squirt onto Marcus’ face though. All in all it was a great time of feasting and being thankful with a number of friends, some new, some old.

On Strike

I went on a school visit this past week. We visited a Catholic secondary school way out in the bush. This particular school has a female head teacher. 3 years ago when she first arrived, the students protested to having a female as their head teacher. They organized a strike for when she arrived. She arrived, however, during the Easter break, so the students organized their strike 3 weeks after her arrival. Later I asked what it meant to have a strike here and Japheth informed me that it wasn’t pretty. The students, 600-700 of them form a wall in front of the school and won’t let the teachers enter. If this particular female teacher would try to enter by way of a car, the students would light the car on fire, break out the windows and remove the teacher, stone and kill her!

What about the police? I asked. In the deep bush, there may be only about 5 police men stationed at a post and they would be essentially powerless to stop a group of 700. They cannot use lethal force and they don’t have the luxury of tear gas or non lethal crowd control.

Eventually, somehow, this female teacher was able to enter the school peacefully and she’s been there for the past 3 years. She now has a night watchman guard her house and the staff quarters. Women’s rights have come a long way in Uganda, but you can see that there are still problems. There are currently 2 women head teachers at the 6 secondary schools around my village.

12 Days of Christmas. How to save money for Christmas while living like a Ugandan.

#5. Own only 3-4 outfits. When I bought my first house I was surprised by the tiny closets. A hanger wouldn’t even fit in there without tuning sideways. I was told that, back in the day, there were only pegs on a board in the back for the clothes. That’s how it is here. Kids have only a few clothes. A school uniform, an outfit for church and travel and play clothes. Adults may even have fewer depending on their income level.

Invitation to stay

2007-11-20T12:08:00.000+03:00

I was invited by my organization to extend my service this week. The overseer of Compassion who is also the church leader and my neighbor came over to my house and asked why I couldn’t stay… for another 2 years. When the Compassion board met they discussed that it would be best if I stayed to continue the work that I was doing. I admit that I let out a few chuckles under my breath. I couldn’t help it. I tried to explain that in 6 months my 2 years would be up and that it would be time to go home. I like it here. I’ve enjoyed my PC experience and I’ve enjoyed immensely working with Compassion International, but at the same time I’m ready to go back to my homeland. I’ve considered doing the Peace Corps again, possibly in another continent, but right now I’m just ready to come home.

Right and Wrong

If there are 3 things I despise, it’s lying, cheating and stealing. They’re all the same in my book and I hate them equally. So when I found out recently that my organization was lying about conducting their home visits to the children I was irate! Each project is graded by Compassion. They pull out the children’s folders and look to see if the information in the folder is up to date. In each child’s folder are copies of their school reports from each term, medical records and doctors visits, photographs, family history, as well as records of when they were visited by our staff. Projects get graded on a number of things at each project and the children’s files are among them. So, when grading was approaching in April (when I was in the US for vacation) they forged a number of the home visit forms to appear that the children have been visited. This would NOT have happened if I had been here. It’s deceptive and it cheats the children first and foremost while my organization protects themselves instead of taking one on the chin for NOT visiting the children. Now, granted, it’s time consuming and can be expensive to visit each child’s home. About half of our kids are supposed to be visited yearly and another half every 6 months. The 8 children who have HIV are supposed to be visited monthly. I would be glad to do the home visits myself but I can’t effectively communicate with the caregivers so I would be limited in what I could do. First of all I would have a difficult time finding the homes without being able to ask or understand directions. Secondly I wouldn’t be able to accurately assess the needs of the family without being able to communicate with them. Have there been any sicknesses lately? How far do you go to fetch water? Are there any immediate needs that you have? I could only look and observe, which is at least something. I was so upset that I had to leave the office for a time to cool down. Granted, also, they do visit the children unofficially. I know they do. But sometimes it’s not documented which leads to inaccurate information about who has and hasn’t been visited! Oh, Uganda!

Home Visits

On Thursday I did go to visit 4 homes with Japheth, the director. We’ve been advised to visit the children in pairs because of a recent incident that happened in another village. A pastor of a church was visiting some Compassion families when the mother of one of the children hit the man with a brick! She then claimed that he was trying to rape her. So, now we’re in pairs.

The reason it’s so important to visit the kids’ homes is for this reason. We visited Sarah’s home. Sarah is a sweet girl. She’s in P4 or P5. She always comes to Compassion looking smart and clean, however, upon arriving at her home you see another side entirely. Her home has been visited before by the staff, but never by me. Some of our children have never been visited in the 5 years of the project. Sarah lives with her grandmother and grandfather. A very elderly couple. She also stays there in a small house with an older sister (maybe 12) and a younger brother. This family really has nothing. The old man can barely walk. They have so little that they can scarcely go into town to get things because of the distance (about 5 miles). Once we have visited, we can monitor the family more closely. We will know the situation better and will better be able to care for them.

As a volunteer, many times, my hands are tied as to what I can do. For many reasons. Because of language. Because I’m an outsider. Because I just “don’t know” the African way of life.

Ah well. Re group. Re organize. Remember why I’m here and reform the angle at which to attack the problem. “The squeaky wheel gets the oil” as they say.

12 Days of Christmas. How to save money by living like a Ugandan

#6 Bike everywhere you go with your wife and infant child riding side saddle on the bike rack. No need to worry about rising fuel costs. Everyone here has the same ‘Hero’ bikes, so there’s no complaining from the wife about getting the newest model. When biking, the fresh air and scenery are better than when driving. Plus, if you have a hefty wife, think of the great workout it’ll be…

Look what the cats dragged in

2007-11-13T10:01:00.000+03:00

Corruption

A volunteer friend of mine was telling me about events within his organization. They provide assistance to groups of the poorest people deep in the village, but in order to do so they rely on native volunteers to report to them who is in most need of assistance. Recently they found out that these native (Ugandan) volunteers were charging these poor people to be on the list to receive support! -Social Injustice. Another way this organization supports poor children is by donating block grants. Instead of giving money to a school, for example, they donate items in exchange for a certain number of orphans to attend school for free. Recently they found out that the head teacher received these items and was also charging the students to attend the school. –Social Injustice.

I hate to even have to tell this story but my running kids, upon receiving donated shoes that were sent from the US, quit running. They had to run with me 10 times to receive the shoes but disappeared after receiving them. I had to go back to the school and explain to them that they were given to them to run in and then threaten to take them away if they didn’t run again with me a certain number of times. Upon explaining this to my Ugandan friend, he exclaimed, with a smile, “Ah, you forgot that this is Africa.”

You forgot that this is Africa? What is that supposed to mean? I didn’t forget that this is Africa, I was just hoping that people would be more honest than that. The fact that he even said that got me fired up. By saying You forgot that this is Africa it just excuses people to continue to behave that way. When does this stop being Africa and start being a civilized society that loves thy neighbor as thyself.

I hate writing about corruption because that seems to be all that people hear and thus think about when talking about Africa. I even ask myself what I would do if I were in the same situation. Making very little money and using whatever means necessary to get ahead in life. It makes it difficult to work in such an environment. It makes it difficult to trust anyone. There’s also the “Muzungu price” which is to say that white people get charged 2 and 3 and 5 times the regular price of things because they are assumed to have money.

I guess I think that is why staying is so important. Fleeing is the easy answer. Leaving and saying, “I can’t deal with people who don’t want help” isn’t the right answer but instead, staying, struggling and creatively solving the problem is a better solution. There is a whole lot of help that is needed here and giving up won’t alleviate the poverty situation.

Where I work

I haven’t seen any corruption within my organization in the year and a half I’ve been here. When I first got here someone was taking some food items (sugar and flour) home with them from our storeroom, but it was stopped right away. There are a lot of checks and balances in place within Compassion to keep those things in check. They have frequent internal audits plus checks must be signed by several individuals before they can be cashed or banked. There’s a lot of red tape but in a way it’s good.

“I was just trying to be a good mother”

That’s a line from Into the Woods. That’s how I felt last week when my cat brought into my bedroom the 2^nd half-dead rat to teach her babies how to hunt and eat meat.

Rain, Rain Go Away

Another Saturday when the Compassion kids came and another rainout. We have such a need for a building. Meeting outside isn’t the solution. The rain forced us into our small offices and our day’s plan was then discarded. Fortunately we had power and I was able to show them my friend Shelly’s video she made on Life Skills, specifically learning about the facts of HIV and making healthy relationship decisions. Then that was followed by The Gods Must Be Crazy, so I guess it wasn’t a total waste of a day.

Here is a link to the recent article I submitted to my local paper regarding fundraising for our new building.

http://www.rushvillerepublican.com/archivesearch/local_story_309202735.html

12 Days of Christmas. How to live like a Ugandan and save money for Christmas.

#7 Pay-as-you-go Phones. It’s hard to mail a phone bill to a mud hut on a dirt path. So instead, people buy airtime ahead of time. You buy a little card and scratch to reveal the pin number. Phone conversations typically last about 10 seconds because you’re charged for each second you talk. Incoming calls, however, are free. There are no free nights or free weekends and you can’t call network to network for free either (though one company did have that promotion going on for a while). I was paying $75 a month for my cell phone. Here I pay about $15 a month.

Movin’ on up, to the East Side

2007-11-05T15:10:00.000+03:00

My wash lady is moving soon. My sister is now paying for her daughter’s secondary school fees which has freed Justine up enough financially to escape the poverty trap. She now owns an acre and a half of fertile farm land which already has a small banana plantation along with a decent house. She had told me that she needed land to grow crops which she didn’t have at her previous home. She also said she needed land where she could be buried when she died. They don’t have cemeteries here; people are buried on their own land. If they don’t have land then they’re buried buy relatives or friends. As I walked the property with her she was telling me all of her new plans for the place. She’s already adding a sitting room and has plans for a new kitchen. It’s like anyone is when the buy a new place. They see the possibilities. They are filled with new hope. And hope springs eternal… or is it ‘hope floats’… something like that. At any rate, I’m extremely excited to see her with her own place where she can eek out a decent living.

Attack of the white ants!

In Moses time, they dealt with plagues of locusts. Here we have grasshoppers and white ants. It’s not exactly a plague, but it can seem like it at times. Every morning I go outside and I see their discarded, white wings on the ground under the outside light. I rarely find the bugs themselves on the ground so I don’t know what happens to them. Power has been funny here last week. It’s been on and off. One night it was off and I had my lantern cranked up so that I could read. These white ants, which aren’t ants nor are they white, were swarming my room. They are attracted to light and they were finding cracks in my door and windows. There were dozens of them in my place. They have 1” wings and they look like a long, skinny cockroach. Fortunately I have 5 exterminators at my house. My cat, Akamogo, and her 4 kittens. They chased and ate every single one of the ants/cockroaches. It was actually fun. I walked around with my headlamp and knocked the bugs down and the cats would pounce on them and crunch them up. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. I recently found one of our Compassion kids who had caught a number of them crawling wingless across the ground on the way to the center and she had stashed them in her mathematics set (something like a tin pencil box). The locals cook them and eat them as a snack!

12 Days of Christmas. How to save money for Christmas by living like a Ugandan.

#8. Walk almost everywhere you go and carry things (up to 80 lbs) on your head as you do so. You not only save money but you gain strength through exercising as well as reduce overall pollution. For an extra workout, tie your infant child to your back. Unlike adults, kids like to be swaddled. When they’re all snug and cozy they sleep like a… baby.

School Days

2007-10-30T11:29:00.000+03:00

Last week I decided to visit one of the area primary schools for the day. The pictures I took were probably the best set of pictures I’ve taken here, so if you get a chance, check out the photos on the flickr.com badge on the right. I’ve spent over a year and a half here and I don’t know a great deal about how the primary schools function as a whole. Mutanoga Primary School is one of the primary schools where a number of our Compassion children attend. It’s approximately 4 miles from the Compassion center and my home and it’s a well run school in large part because they have good leadership from their head teacher (principal). They have 746 students and 15 teachers with 3 ‘helper teachers’. (50 students per teacher.) They currently have 12 classrooms for the 8 grades (including nursery school kids) and are constructing 3 more classrooms. The school is free for the students, the government pays the teachers salaries, but parents are asked to pay 8,000 Ush ($4) for additional projects, such as the new construction. The following are my observations from the day:

I begin my visit with the Primary 7 (P7) students. 7^th graders. These are the oldest students in the school. They can be anywhere from 11 to 19 years old. The students all rise upon my entering. They are all wearing their school uniforms: pink shirts with navy blue shorts or skirts. The head teacher is teaching and they are doing graphs. No text books. The teacher is teaching in English. There are just under 60 students in a smaller than normal (by US standards) sized classroom. The students sit 3 to a desk. A blackboard is in the front of the class with a large paper taped to the board with a graph, x & y axis and grid. The students are learning coordinates (3, -2). Around the room several other graphs are taped up to the walls. They all read “distance vs time”. There is also a hand drawn map of Africa and a hand drawn picture of 2 simple machines. Most of the kids have shoes on here, which has come to be my observation of their age and poverty level.

“Who can calculate the area of this figure? Giftee?” As Gift goes to the board the teacher uses a piece off a foam mattress to erase another section of the blackboard. “In ½ h(a x b), what is h, class?” A few students blurt out the answer. “ah, ah…” the teacher says then mumbles something in Runyankore to the extent of, “You should raise your hands instead of speaking out of turn.”

There is no ceiling in this classroom, only an aluminum roof which means when it rains it’ll be almost impossible to teach due to the noise. Even a light rain creates a heck of a lot of noise on a metal roof!

The students don’t have text books. They take meticulous notes in small notebooks. They use newspaper to create covers for their notebooks for decoration and protection.

“Who can name the shape?” “A triangle,” a student replies. “It is a special shape. What shape is eeet?” Class, in perfect unison, “A right angled triangle.”

The students are asked to draw the graph in their notebooks. A flurry of notebooks and metal math sets shuffle. The math sets include a ruler, protractor, compass and eraser. The students rush to copy the graph from the board.

I then shift to the P4 classroom. I can smell the multitude of kids upon entering. It’s a musty smell of mud huts, feet and bodies. It’s a smell I’m accustomed to from living here for so long. As I enter the kids again stand and I’m greeted to the all too familiar clap clap clap-clap-clap, Clap! I immediately notice several of our Compassion kids I’m seated again in the back of the classroom next to Immaculate Harriet, one of my favorite little girls from Compassion. She has severe burns over 90 % of her body from a house fire where she hid under the bed while the blaze burned. Despite her disfigurement she has one of the most beautiful smiles of any child I’ve seen in Africa and she’s a good athlete to boot. Her little hands are misshaped and her fingers curl up. She has to hold her pen in a special way between her fingers just to write, but she’s worked hard to overcome her limitations.

This room has around 80 students in it and is a little bigger than the previous classroom. Far less shoes here. I greet the class and tell them I’m happy to visit them.

“Reproduction in bads. Reproduction in what? Bads (birds). How do we call a male bad?”

Class, “A cock.”

“And a female bad?”

“A hen.”

The teacher is a man called Frances. The students are learning science. He teaches mostly in English but often repeats himself in Runyankore.

“The incubation period of a bad takes 21 what? Days. Which is equal to 3 what? Weeks.”

After class I spend some time talking to Frances. He tells me that as a teacher he makes 200,000 Ush a month. $114. Less than $4 a day. That’s 1/3 of what I make on my very modest Peace Corps salary. There are times when teachers will go months at a time when their salaries are delayed. He also tells me that teacher’s pay is supposed to increase with experience, but to get that raise you have to submit forms to the local government. So far, he tells me, none of his forms have been approved for a raise in his 5 years.

Next it’s on to P1A class. The larger classes are divided into 2 groups, A and B. They are divided randomly, not by smarts. “Hello Saa. You ah wel-o-come.” My nostrils are again greeted with the same aroma. It’s a small classroom. The desks seem to be bigger but maybe that’s because the kids are smaller. 60 kids. 1 teacher. Same uniforms. The alphabet is written in chalk across the top of the blackboard. Upper and lower case. The door is labeled with the word “door”. The only poster in the room is one which says, “Days of the week. The first day is Sunday. The second is _______. The third is ________. “

This class is taught in Runyankore. I recognize some of the words on the board. Enkoko = chicken. Omwana = child. Taata = father. Ente = cow. If I started attending P1A regularly I could definitely improve my Runyankore. Every time I look up from writing there are at a minimum a dozen pairs of eyes on me.

Earlier, as I was sitting in the office waiting to begin my school day visit it was the P1 kids that crowded around the doors and windows to see the Muzungu. I was told that they would be ‘very happy’ to have me in class with them today. The head teacher invited the kids into the office and what felt like 100 kids (though it was probably half that) crowded around me to shake my hand and touch my skin. It’s a little overwhelming. It always reminds me of scenes of Jesus walking through crowds of people wanting to be touched and healed.

The P1A teacher is called Jolly. It took me 3 times before I understood. John? Joann? Jolly! She was patient enough for me to get it right. A sign of a good teacher, indeed!

The teacher asks for any student to come up and read a simple sentence in Runyankore. A wave of hands go up. A few students stand and others grunt, “mmm, mmm…” trying to be called upon. If you have taught elementary school then you know what I mean by, “mmmm, mmmm….” Nice to know that wasn’t just your class, huh? Young Boaz approaches the board, points a stick high to what he’s reading. “Mariira nebigambo byawe.” They read it just like any 1^st grader would read it. Sounding it out with mistakes in phonetics all along the way.

When a student goes to the board and fills in the blank correctly they receive the ‘universal reward’. Clap clap clap-clap-clap, Clap!

The classroom is located immediately next to one of the school’s 2 latrines (out houses). When the wind picks up I’m smacked in the face with the odor. No doubt this is why P1 is at this end of the school and not P7.

The teacher smiles a lot. It’s as if she is amused at some of the student’s responses and she is pleased to teach them. There is a lot of repetition in what they are doing. The teacher reads something and the kids repeat it. There is a lot of audible learning. Maybe that’s how 1^st grade was for me, I can’t remember. “Ente zituha amate.” Aha! I know that one! “Cow’s give us milk.”

“Who can erase the board for me?” I think is what the teacher says. 2 boys sprint to the front and grab pieces of foam and rub the board as if the winner gets a prize. They erase as high up on the board as they can reach. The teacher finishes the job and writes “English” across the top. “Now go to number 2. Go to number…? Two.”

They all take out a worksheet that says, “Primary One Term III Examination” across the top. They’ve all been graded in red pen. Simple English. Fill in the missing letters: s_n (son and sun were accepted), sc_ool, b_ok. Then it went to a picture section. “Fill in yes or no. Is this a box? Is this a chair?” I look around at the student’s papers and see scores in the 70’s, 50’s, 40’s, and 30’s. Ellenah scored an 88%. The kids in upper and middle primary generally score in the 50’s on average.

When teaching English the teacher speaks entirely in English. “We say one boy but two _____.” “We say one house but six _____.” When a student is incorrect the teacher says, “Is it? You are lying.” Which may sound harsh but it’s a common thing to say in the local language.

On to P1B. Tuwensye Maud’s class. I pretend to understand her name when she said it but she was on to me so she wrote it out for me. P1B meets in a structure built of mud bricks. It’s an older, deteriorating building with mud floors, not concrete like the other classrooms I’d been in. 70 kids this time. 3 to a desk, sometimes 5. They’re small so they can fit. Not many shoes on any that I see. The whole room has a brown, earthy look. Brown walls, brown floors. Around the room are posters of Jesus. Fairly well drawn either by the teacher or an upper primary student I suspect. Jesus with kids, Jesus with a larger than life sized loaves of bread and fish, Jesus healing a man. There’s also a poster with the upper half covered in pictures of a chair, a book, a blackboard, a teacher, etc and the bottom half with the corresponding words.

The teacher is asking questions. Kids have their hands raised. More of the “mmm, mmm…” responses but this time accompanied by “Teachah! Teachah!”.

The students begin a song. Clapping and singing. The song is about the Creation Story. I hear the word Adam (Adamu) and the word for ‘man’ and see hand gestures of making or creating and pointing to their ribs. 3 kids are brought to the front of the classroom to act out the story. The story is about Adam and Haawa (I have no idea why) but it of course also involves the ‘enjoka’, the snake. They perform a drama. I hear the snake saying things like “God is lying. You won’t die.” Eve or “Haawa” picks an imaginary apple from the tree and throws it at Adam. The kids laugh. The boy then produces a real fruit that he brought for lunch from his pocket and pretends to eat it. Nice touch! Clever for a 1^st grader. The students again laugh. Louder this time.

As I’m leaving I see the kids eating their lunches. A number of kids run home for lunch. That or they’re skipping eating to play for an hour. Many of them have brought small plastic buckets with leftovers from supper the night before. They share lunch with either friends or siblings. I see mostly starchy foods, potatoes, cassava, sweet potatoes, without much, if any protein.

And that concluded my day at the primary school. It was a neat thing to experience. Eye opening. Very different than the States, obviously. Much larger classroom sizes, textbooks used only by the teachers and not by the students. No lunch provided by the school. It’s not a one room schoolhouse. Way too many kids for that to be a possibility. Underpaid teachers. At least that’s the same as in the US. All in all it opened my eyes to the need for aid in their education services.

12 Days of Christmas. How to save money for Christmas by living like a Ugandan.

#9 Grow your own food. OK, so this will be a little difficult to do in the winter but it would also drastically reduce your weekly grocery bill. Grow your own beans, corn, tomatoes, cassava, millet and pumpkins. And while you’re at it, raise 5 goats. The meat is excellent and they don’t require much care. Just tie their hind leg up to a tree and let them graze all day.

Nothing to talk about

2007-10-23T15:47:00.000+03:00

I have nothing really to talk about this week. I’ve been looking at a blinking cursor for the past 30 minutes now and my mind is blank. I could tell you about my trousers getting stolen from my clothes line. Or that my cat moved her 4 kittens into my place… again. I could. But I won’t. I could tell you the story of Sheila, one of our little Compassion kids who came up to me with big tears welling in her eyes as she told me that she lost $1 which she was going to use to purchase a math set (compass, ruler, protractor) and as she asked me to help her, I reached into my pockets to discover them empty, just as the tears, one after another, came streaming down her face. (I gave her a math set a few days later.) Or I could tell you about Jacob finding what he thought was a tarantula next to his pit latrine. Now I could tell you that we have $17,950 raised for the Community Center thus far and that the walls are up! (http://bikeforcompassion.blogspot.com) Or I could tell you about the dinner I had this past week in the home of Przemek and Jen, my missionary friends, where 6 different countries (and 5 different states) were represented! You know, I could tell you about the book I’m reading called Mountains Beyond Mountains about a doctor named Paul Farmer in Haiti who is living a radical life and working with the poorest of the poor to treat some of the toughest cases of TB and to change their entire health system in one area of that country. (read the book!) I could tell you about getting up at 3:30 am to watch the Colts game and having to monkey with the DSTV for an hour before I finally got the stinking thing to work! I could tell you about my running club where I run Monday, Wednesday and Friday with 30 or so kids to improve their health and well being. Or I could tell you about my Life Skills classes where I am teaching kids about the dangers of HIV/AIDS, peer pressure, condom use, STDs, drugs/alcohol, decision making, etc. I could tell you about the curriculum I developed for the Compassion kids or that we’re getting ready to install the internet at Compassion for the first time ever. I could tell you about the amazing people I work with every day: Japheth, Barbra, Sarah, MacLean and Donnat. I could tell you that the Purdue group is planning on coming back again next year to work in and around this community.

I could tell you.

Maybe someday I will.

12 days of Christmas. Living like a Ugandan to save money this year for Christmas.

#10. Instead of driving yourself to work, carpool. But first, trade in your car for a Honda Civic. You’d be surprised how many people you can fit in one of those things. The most I’ve heard of was 13. 5 in front, 5 in the back and 3 in the trunk! Just think about how much money for gas you’ll save by carpooling!

2007-10-17T14:45:00.000+03:00

Give it up Long bus trips aren’t fun. Long bus trips in Africa aren’t fun. I know that I harp on this but it’s true. Bad roads. Cramped seats. My knees up against the seat in front of me. And they overcrowd the thing too so that people have to stand in the aisle. The buses I travel on from Kampala generally begin dropping people off after they’ve been on for at least 4 hours. So when I was sitting in my seat and I saw a woman get on with a baby strapped to her back I knew I had to get up and giver her my seat. I couldn’t let this woman stand for 4 hours with this child. I wonder what the Ugandans thought of that. A white man giving up his seat to an African woman. One old man who was wearing a hat that looked like it came out of Robin Hood (minus the feather) or Gulliver’s Travels grabbed my hand and said “Thank You”. Possibly one of the few English words he knew. But I felt good, giving up my seat. My legs for the next 4 hours disagreed with me. The return of a friend Our friend Shelly came back to our village this week. Jacob and I first met her just a few weeks after arriving here. She came to do an internship with Africare. In her time here she wrote and produced a video in the local language about the dangers of HIV/AIDS. She came back just to show the kids the video, especially the kids who she worked with that were in the video. It was great to see Shelly. She’s arguably one of the funniest girls I know, but she’s also one of the most passionate about Africa and HIV/AIDS awareness that I know. And that’s saying a lot because there are some very passionate people in the Peace Corps (and some that are not so passionate). This is her 6th trip to Africa and she hasn’t even reached her 25th birthday (I don’t think). She works while she’s in school to save up her money to come to Africa. It’s her ‘calling’ in her own words. And she’s a difference maker. She changes a place. She’s a social entrepreneur. I went with her out into the bush to find her actors and to show them the video. The actors and actresses in her video were kids who were part of a program for students who had dropped out of school. Of course whenever you’re showing a video in the bush people flock to see it. We went with Africare and hooked up a TV and DVD player to a generator. We set up in a church for the premier. Before our arrival, however, the church was having classes with upper primary students on confirmation. These kids had come from deep in the bush for confirmation. Upon seeing us they were a little, shall we say… excited. I’m quite sure they had never seen a Muzungu before. At least not up close. They rushed us as we walked up to the church. Fearful at first but when they saw that we came in peace they started to engage in their curiosity. They reached out and touched our skin. They touched Shelly’s hair. If we would turn our head quickly or stop suddenly they all scattered. There were about 100 kids surrounding us. They were curious, apprehensive, fearful and happy all at the same time. It was like something out of a movie and something I haven’t experienced to that extent yet. Being the playful spirits that we were we decided to have some fun with it. We started skipping and all of the kids started laughing and skipping with us. Then we hopped. And they hopped. Then we ran in a circle and they all scattered. One particular older girl was so fearful that whenever Shelly even glanced at her she sprinted away at full speed half smiling but checking her back to see if she was being followed by the strange white people. The video went over very well! The kids were glued to it. The actors in the video, as they watched themselves, weren’t amused with their own performance, so much as they were critical. You could see it in their faces. It was quite interesting. In the end Shelly handed out some gifts to her cast that she had brought from the US. We took some pictures to commemorate the occasion. Shelly seemed to be genuinely sad as we pulled away. She worked so hard with those kids and also on the video itself. She didn’t think I saw it but she shed a tear as she left them. She was so proud of them and she knew that it was the last time she would ever see them again. 12 days of Christmas. How to save money for Christmas by living like a Ugandan. #11 Send your children to school barefooted. I’m sure child protection services may frown on the idea but think of the money you’ll save in not having to buy the latest style of shoes for kids who are going to grow out of them before they wear them out anyway…

Sole Responsibility and Life Skills

2007-10-10T11:55:00.000+03:00

Sole Responsibility

I need to say a HUGE thank you to Sole Responsibility for sending a dozen shoes for my runners! Sole Responsibility is a non-profit organization based out of Ottawa that collects gently used running shoes and distributes them overseas to thousands of underpriflidged people to wear. Last year they collected 10,000 running shoes to send. Of the half dozen organizations I contacted to help me with shoes for my runners they were the only ones to respond!! Check out their website!! I also need to say an equally HUGE thank you to my sister, Jennifer, and her co-workers for also rounding up several running shoes. The kids LOVE their shoes, they are in GREAT shape (the shoes and eventually the kids). They treat the shoes like I treated my first car. They wash them to a sparkling shine and treat them like gold. They are far superior quality than any shoes they can get here and they will last for a long time! Thank You!!

Life Skills

I’ve begun teaching Life Skills. Basically, Life Skills teaches students to connect the information they know (like the dangers of HIV/AIDS) with behavior change. Often students KNOW the dangers of HIV/AIDS, drugs and alcohol use, peer pressure, etc, but when it comes right down to it, many are sexually active, they don’t use protection… essentially they don’t change their behavior despite ‘knowing’ the risks. So do they really know the risks?

I’m using resources that the Peace Corps has given me. They’re good materials. The first day I had the students help me with a drama. In this drama a girl (Lucy) visited her friend (Rita) who had just had a baby. Rita went on and on reminding Lucy to remember all the advice she had given her to avoid having sex with these boys while she was still in school so that she could finish her education, avoid HIV and live a successful life. Rita also gave Lucy condoms as a precautionary measure if she chose to go ahead and have sex. As it turned out, Lucy had come to tell Rita that she had also become pregnant, reasoning that she didn’t use the condoms because her boyfriend didn’t want to and that the church discourages condom use. When I asked the students if Lucy understood the risks of having sex, they had mixed responses. Some insisted that she did know them, that her friend Rita had clearly explained them to her and that Rita had also demonstrated the risks by becoming pregnant herself. Other students argued that she didn’t know the risks, otherwise she would not have become pregnant. I was shocked that they would think she did not understand the risks despite all of the warnings and evidence provided by her friend Rita. It was as if they didn’t think that Lucy was responsible for what happened to her. But that’s why I’m here, I guess. That’s why I’m teaching life skills. To teach them to take ownership of their actions and to fully understand both the risks and the necessary behavioral changes.

I also provide an opportunity for them to ask questions at the end. Now when English isn’t your native tongue and when you’re dealing with difficult subjects such as sex, HIV/AIDS, drug use, etc, it can be difficult to just put up your hand and ask a question in front of all your peers. So I stole this idea from other PCVs who teach life skill. They put a box in front of the class. I call mine the Anonymous Box. The students are free to write down any question they have about what we are talking about or any other topic and to put it in the box. They don’t have to put their name on it, but if they don’t want me to ask the question out loud but to speak with them in private then they should put their name on the paper. Let me give you a sampling of the questions I received. And this was just the first week!

What advice do you give to those who have already been infected by AIDS?

My mother died in 2002 and my father is very poor, even the school fees he gives me he sweats for. I am meeting some problems with my life, what should I do?

If I play sex (have sex) with a boy the first time can I lose my virginity and can I get AIDS?

What are the signs of HIV/AIDS?

I feel pain when I urinate. How can I solve it?

I do not want to play sex (have sex) but my girlfriend wants me to. I want you to advise me on this because I am worried.

I have a married woman nearby our home. She tries to convince me to have sex with her. How can I avoid her?

What if somebody kissed you with AIDS? Can you get AIDS?

I am addicted to porn. How can I overcome this?

Sir, I hear people talking about using condoms but most of us don’t know how to use them. I request you to explain to us how to use them.

I have a boyfriend and I don’t want to have sex with him but I love him and he loves me. What can I do?

I have a girlfriend who loves me so much and I also love her. We tested (negative) for AIDS and every time we have sex we use a condom. Is there any problem we are likely to meet?

How can I live freely with my enemies who have proved to me that they hate me but we have to live together, eat together and study at school together?

And lastly, and this is to be expected: I like whites very much. I would like to have a pen friend from America.

Evidence

I was biking past the football pitch and saw some kids throwing a Frisbee my dad had sent that said “Davis Towing” on it. I guess I’m just leaving my footprint here one way or another…

The Community Hall

The hall is going up. It’s now up to the top of the windows. The budget has increased recently because of the decision to add 6 office rooms to the hall. This will enable Compassion to shift entirely there when the structure is complete. It added an extra $5,000 to the cost, but after some consideration and talking to others I felt it was a necessary move to make. It’s just awesome to stand in the center of the building and to see it going up around me. So many people have already helped so much in the construction process, I’m truly overwhelmed.

12 Days of Christmas

As promised, I’ll be sharing over the next several weeks what you can do to save money for the Christmas season by living like a Ugandan.

#12. Cut the power to your house 3-4 days a week. Just trip the circuit breaker or remove the fuse. Light some candles, read some books, go to bed earlier. You’ll be saving 50% on your electricity bill. You’ll enjoy the serenity and peace of the TV not being on. Listen to the radio to get your news for the day. It’s funky at first but after a while you come to appreciate it and you soon discover that there is life without power.

Bike for Compassion

2007-10-02T12:19:00.000+03:00

A common question I receive is, “What are you going to do after the Peace Corps?” My new answer to them is, “Ride a bicycle across the US!”

I’ve begun planning a bike trip across the continental US to raise money for a building project for Compassion International with cooperation from Purdue Christian Campus House. The bike trip will take around 50 days and will cover over 4,000 miles. My goal is to raise $30,000 by August 2008 (the end of the bike ride) for the Child Development Center (Compassion) where I am serving as a PCV. I have yet to determine the exact route I will be taking but it will generally follow the Transamerica Bicycle Trail.

When I first arrived at my site in May of 2006 I began assessing the needs of the community and the organization for which I worked. Doing that requires observing and inquiring. I soon discovered that there was a need for a community hall to be used not only by Compassion but also by the church as well as the 2 nearby schools. Since that time a building committee has been formed, building plans have been submitted, revised and re-submitted, building estimates have been calculated and construction has begun. The building foundation is set and the walls are soon to go up. We have thus far raised $14,000 but we are only half way to our final goal.

For more information on the project and the bike ride or to make a contribution follow the following link: Bike for Compassion.

Basketball, Coins, Republican Article and Christmas

2007-09-25T11:44:00.000+03:00

It’s a good thing I’m here for a full 2 years because it took me over 18 months to even think about putting up a basketball goal! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve longed to just shoot some hoops. It’s so therapeutic. It’s so mind numbing. It’s so relaxing. It’s so Hoosier (which I hear is another way to say ‘redneck’ in Illinois). And now, Compassion has the first and only basketball goal in the district. It wasn’t difficult to make. The metal workers made the hoop and the carpenters made the backboard. Then we hung it on an electrical pole and viola! The kids have been trying their hand at it. It’s funny to watch them, or anyone for that matter, play for the first time. People don’t seem too enthusiastic about it, which is fine by me. That’s not why I put it up. I’ve seen basketball courts in other districts at secondary schools and they’re like ghost towns. There are cobwebs growing on the goals. The students would just as soon take a basketball and kick it around like a soccer ball than throw it into an iron hoop. At least I’ll get some good use out of it while I’m still here.

Human metal detector

I was walking back from the missionaries home the other day when I saw what looked like an old, weather beaten coin on the ground. It’s a little unusual to find a coin on the ground in a 3^rd world country. People are definitely going to stop and pick up a coin here. Now I have to tell you that I have a great deal of experience in looking for coins. Many a summer day I would ride bikes with my dad and brother. The goal was riding the bikes, but the prize was finding money. I’d be cruising along lost in thought when dad would U-turn all of a sudden or almost break his neck trying to stop his bike to pick up a nickel or a couple of pennies he found. Dad’s like a hawk when it comes to that stuff and he trained me accordingly. But it didn’t stop there. We used to also ride by the McDonalds and Burger King drive-thrus looking for dropped change. Once we would find some change we would then bike to Dairy Queen and spend it all on a dipped ice-cream cone.

Well I picked up this coin and started to rub away the dirt. I soon discovered that it was a 1976 coin worth 1 Ugandan shilling. The smallest coins they use now are the 50 shilling coins (though you can get 20 shilling coins in Kampala but they’re worthless out here). One Ugandan shilling. I kid with the Ugandans that I want to buy something with it and they laugh and tell me that I can’t even buy a piece of candy or a nail with it, but when it was made it was worth the equivalent of 500-1,000 shillings today, which is enough to buy a bunch of bananas.

Rushville Republican Article

I wrote another article for the Rushville paper. In it I’m talking about my experience staying with the family out in the village. You can read it online here.

Community Hall Construction

The foundation has been dug and they are putting in the foundation on the Community Hall for the Compassion children. The hall will also be used by the church and 2 schools nearby. It’s exciting to stand in the center of the future hall and envision what it’ll look like when it’s finished. It is situated beautifully on the side of the hill and overlooks the soccer field in the valley below and the town just beyond it. We have fundraised almost half of our budget and in the coming weeks I’ll be beginning another fundraising project, so if you would like to help out this community and these kids… stay tuned.

12 days of Christmas

Believe it or not, Christmas is just about 12 weeks away! So, I’ve decided to write a weekly segment telling you how you can save money to use for your Christmas shopping by living like a Ugandan. I’m sure it’ll be quite interesting.

Painting Maps

2007-09-18T10:28:00.000+03:00

I’ve started a project at Compassion in which I’m painting maps on their walls. I’m painting 3 maps. Uganda, the World and the USA. I’m painting the US because many of the kids have sponsors from the US and I want them to be able to identify where their sponsors are from exactly. I have almost finished my map of Uganda. It didn’t take quite as long as I expected, but it was tough. I had made a list a few years ago, before I joined the Peace Corps, of things I wanted to accomplish before I turned 30 (won’t be long now). One of the things on the list was to paint a mural. About half way through my map I realized that I was accomplishing that goal without even really knowing it. I have a picture of me with my map on my flickr account. I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. At least not an artist with any kind of pencil or brush. I like to think of myself as being artistic and I am a bit of a perfectionist. I do want things to look a certain way and I’m willing to put in the time to make sure they do.

IDP

IDP stands for Internally Displaced Person. Refugee if you will. I know I spend a fair amount of time on this blog talking about things that bug me and drive me a little crazy, but this is the icing on the cake and I’ve taken about as much as I can take.

I live in an office of the church next to the Canon, the religious leader for the Church of Uganda. Every 6 months or so the church has a mini-retreat. A hundred or more people come to pray, sing, fellowship, etc. And I have no problem with that. We’re worshiping the same God here. Hakuna Matata. What I do have a problem with is that fact that 20 or so of them end up staying in the big room directly next to my room. Ugandans DO NOT respect sleep time. The sun goes down at 7:30 here and I’m typically in bed by 9 or 10 at the latest. At 10, when the party is still going strong I go out and ask them nicely to be quiet. They giggle a little bit and I go back to bed. At 10:30 when they are even louder than before I again go in to ask them to be quiet. At 11pm the Jesus party is still going strong so now I’m livid. I raise my voice, telling them in their own language to Shut Up, that I’m SLEEPING next door and they are being very rude! Their response: more laughter at the funny, irate white man. I’m about to throw stones at this point. I can’t get them to be quiet, the only thing I can do is drown out their noise with my own, so I put on my headphones and listen to Chanticleer until I’m drifting in and out of sleep. I have to do this until they all go to bed at around 2am. Now I don’t sleep with music on or a TV on or anything. I sleep in silence. I don’t really sleep when there’s background noise. I float in a sub-conscience state, which isn’t really sleep. See me the next morning if you don’t believe me. I’ve told the Canon about it and he acts apologetic, but nothing gets done. Recently, when they were having prayer meetings mixed with morose singing mixed in I cranked up the BBC on my radio to drown them out. I’m sorry, but this is MY HOME! This is the one place in all of Uganda where I can shut my door, turn up my American music, music that isn’t created on a synthesizer and which words I can understand, and I can temporarily leave Uganda, and if you’re impeding on THAT, my one shred of freedom and independence, then I have a problem with that! You can charge me the ‘white man’ price for things, you can cram 25 people into a vehicle that holds 15, fine… but don’t you DARE impose on my peace and quiet! I was livid! I actually had to leave my home and stay with the 2 missionaries that live across the hill for several nights (on a side note, they did make brownies for me…with frosting).

The reason I think this is a universal Ugandan sentiment is that one night in Mbarara while staying at a hotel (remember, a hotel is where people pay to sleep), that same hotel had rented out their courtyard to a wedding party that played music at mind numbing volumes until 4:30am! I could do nothing to prevent my bed from rattling from the mega decibels that pierced the air. How can a hotel permit that? I paid for a night of sleep! Apparently that means nothing to a Ugandan!

Community Hall

I haven’t blogged much about it yet but construction has begun for a community hall which I’m raising money for for Compassion. Currently our kids meet outside and when it rains our entire day is shot. With the generous help of several individuals along with Sexton Church we have raised about half of what we need. Here in Uganda, you start construction with what you’ve got and then hope the rest of the money comes in. So we should have enough to build up to the roof line. I’ll be sure to post pictures as it goes up.

I’ve never believed more strongly in something being a God thing than this building. I don’t like to thing of buildings as being God’s will (except when a building is just outgrown). Buildings cost a lot of money, money that could be spent helping so many poor people, but the money for this building has just poured in from very unlikely sources and I can attribute it to nothing more than God’s hand at work. For those of you who have already helped, a sincere Thank You, from all of us here! And if anyone wishes to help… stay tuned.

Birthday wishes to Melanie and CJ

Nickle & Dimed

2007-09-11T12:43:00.000+03:00

At least you’re not working in the restaurant business here! Let me tell you how it is… The new manager here, for example, works 7 days a week, 15.5 hours a day, from 7am to 10:30pm with NO DAYS OFF for the first 3 months. No… days… off!!! She has hours of paper work to log each day about food costs, purchases, labor costs, etc which she must do BY HAND! Any mistakes and it throws all of her numbers off and she can’t just change one, like in Excel, and it fixes everything, she has to go back through and re-add everything. Remember, No… days… off! There are very few customers that come in, 30-40 a day, so they are bored all day. I constantly come in and find the servers sleeping in the chairs. They serve “white people food” and have tourists stop in and eat on their way to the tourist spots. The meals for the customers costs about $2.50 a meal, but the workers here must eat rice and beans which would cost about $0.25 a meal, if that. And they eat the same thing for each meal, sometimes only eating 1 or 2 meals a day. And for all her efforts, she gets paid $1 a day. One US dollar a day… They would give anything to be washing dishes in the US and would still find a way to send 1/ 2 of their money back to their families.

Mountain Climbing

I went mountain climbing the other day to ‘get away’. The idea of physical exercise and solitude appealed to my soul. Finding solitude as a white man here is next to impossible. I had to sneak up the ridge I wanted to hike by beginning in a very isolated place. Once climbing, I could hear people yelling Muzungu at me from the homes and gardens below. On the way up, a small band of children began tearing up the hill after me, so I went into full commando mode and made a game of hide and seek of it. Once I reached the top I angled like I was going to the left but then ran (sprinted actually) off to the right and ducked behind the ridge while watching my back for tailgaters. My whiteness shines like a beacon in these parts and people are intensely curious as to why there would be a white man on their hill. Not to mention the fact that I must have money spilling out everywhere which I’ve brought to dole out to anyone who asks.

Getting close with the people here

2007-08-27T15:28:00.000+03:00

I don’t like going to Kampala, the capital city. There are several reasons for this. Long gone are they days when I could just hop into my car and drive wherever and whenever I felt like it. Now that I’m a PCV, there’s public transportation. While it differs for PCVs from country to country I opt for the bus trip. First I have to get a bus. Busses come along fairly regularly. Every 30-45 minutes or so. This is a good thing. They’re some of the biggest vehicles on the road, which in Uganda means they travel the fastest, which is generally a good thing. Buses make fewer stops than the mini van taxis, which is also a good thing. If I’m lucky I can catch the 4:30am bus (that’s right, 4:30am) which arrives in Kampala around 9:30. 5 hours on a bus. Not bad. (ok, it is, but bear with me) A normal vehicle could make the trip in 4 hours, but buses stop to load passengers along the way so it generally takes at least 6 hours from my site. The 4:30 bus is trying to get to Kampala as soon as possible in order to reload and make a return trip in the early afternoon. Another reason I don’t like buses is because it’s a money making venture for the bus companies, which means they cram as many people into the bus as possible. Normal buses have 2 seats on each side with an aisle in the middle, plenty of leg room and seats that recline. Here it’s 2 on one side, 3 on the other. Fortunately Ugandans have the build of a flute player in a marching band and not that of the starting nose tackle of the football team. Not only do the squeeze extra seats across the bus, they also squeeze in an additional row or two, which means my lanky 6’2” body doesn’t fit into the seat. My knees are pressed firmly against the seat in front of me for the entire 6 hour trip. Once I had something grabbing my ankles and when I looked under my seat I was surprised to find a duck! Occasionally there are also chickens and goats. There’s always the possibility of standing for the entire trip, as the bus conductors overload the buses to make a little bit more money. What surprises me is that they Ugandans never complain about this or demand their money back, though once the police stopped my bus and the driver received a fine of $5 for each individual that was standing, which was less than they price they paid for the trip, so they still made money off the deal. Inevitably the standers end up sitting on my arm rest reducing my already small seat into ½ of what it was. As if those weren’t enough problems there’s always the bus driver who cranks up the radio to it’s highest volume (even if it’s the 4:30 am bus) because he wants to hear it and the only speaker that’s working is in the back of the bus which, of course, is directly over the seat I’m in and it proceeds to play horrendous Ugandan music (though not all of it is bad) that is created by a single individual and a synthesizer to what seems like the same generic background music and beat for every song. Occasionally you’ll get a break from the Uganda music and instead you’ll get a mixture of Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Don Williams. Who would have guessed? Once arriving in Kampala the situation doesn’t improve, it gets worse. The bus takes you to the bus park which is grossly overcrowded with people commuting and shopping in that area. It’s notorious for pickpockets and before you even step off the bus you are being hawked by numerous taxi drivers to take you anywhere you want to go. Because you’re white, you obviously have oodles of money and aren’t capable of walking anywhere in the city.

Why I almost went home

Yeah, I almost left. I was seriously thinking about it a month ago. I’ve had down times here before but not like this. I woke up about 10 days in a row and the first thought on my mind was, “Why am I here?”. The fact is sometimes there’s not enough work for me to do and I like to be busy. Another problem is that sometimes my organization doesn’t use what I’ve created for them, and that’s frustrating. I don’t need to stay the entire 2 years here. I don’t need the title of RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) for me to know that I’ve served as a volunteer. I think that what kept me here were the Compassion kids, my friends on staff with Compassion and that I have not made plans for what to do when I get home. I hate to let people down and I just felt like I would really be letting a lot of people down if I left. I know I’m not supposed to worry about what others think, and I wouldn’t let that supersede my decision to come home if that was what I thought was best for me, but it plays a part. Another reason, and please don’t pass judgment too quickly, is the upcoming NFL season. I absolutely love football, especially fantasy football. More than is healthy, but it’s my hobby, my interest and I’m entitled to it. So, I’ve been reading about the Colts and reading fantasy football magazines and scouring the web as often as possible to get ready for my 3 upcoming fantasy football drafts this weekend and it’s helped to pull me out of a funk. So, I’m still here, with no foreseeable plans to leave. I’m busy now painting 3 murals on the walls at Compassion. Uganda, the World and the USA. It’s time consuming, but I’m really enjoying it and it will be something to benefit the kids here, especially to see where their sponsors come from.

3 days in the village

2007-08-22T10:48:00.000+03:00

The following are journal entries from living in a small mud hut with a poor Ugandan family and their 9 children…

I arrived late. Much later than I had intended. It was nearly sunset by the time I made it to their place. Their home is 4.5 miles out of my village and they live way up on top of a small mountain range. Everyone in the area must have known I was coming because I couldn’t remember the way to the house for a minute. I couldn’t remember exactly which footpath went to their house and as I stood at a crossroad (crosspath) one of the guys I had just passed who was turned around watching me called to me and started gesturing to my left.

So I arrived. The father, Alfred, was there to greet me along with 3 of his children, a set of young twins and a younger daughter who I later learned was Samantha Ruth. My director from Compassion, Japheth, came shortly after to ease me into the situation and I’m glad of it. He came with my mattress and blanket but he came to make sure I was settled in alright. It was a good transition with him there. This house is so small. 2 rooms, barely 8ft by 8ft. 11 people (with me it’s 12) sleep here each night. It’s one reason I chose to stay here. I wanted to be here when everyone goes to sleep to see it for myself.

We walked down the path to a small duka (shop) where we met the Local Chairman 1 (LC1, equivalent of a mayor of a small village). I had to meet the local government. I was told that since I was a guest it was customary to introduce me to the LC1. The meeting was brief. There were a number of other villagers who were loitering around the shop, curious as to why a white man was there so late in the evening. Some of them were drunk and were trying to talk to me in Runyankore. I bought some packages of cookies and headed back up to the house. Japheth left and Alfred and I shared a bowl of katogo. Jacob describes katogo as “a bowl of screaming souls”. It’s made of matooke (unripe banana plantain) mixed with about anything else. Sometimes intestines, but usually beans. Mine was with beans. I had intended not to eat any of their food while on my visit for fear of diarrhea, but when offered, I had to eat it.

I then met the rest of the family. Mostly girls. Six of the 9 kids are girls. Deborah is the oldest. She told me she’s 19 but her birth date makes her 20. She looks about 14, probably from years of malnourishment. I asked her if she was in school and she assured me she was. There aren’t any secondary schools around here so I was curious as to what year she was in. P6, she tells me. P6!!?? That’s only 6^th grade! You’re 20 and in 6^th grade? Janet is the next oldest at 17 and she says she’s in P5! I mean it’s good that they’re in school but why are they so old and in primary school? The rest of the names I’m still learning.

As we ate supper they told me thaty liked to sing, so I had them sing me a song. An hour later I was fighting sleep listening to them singing. They sang quite beautifully. They not only sang but they danced for me. It was really special and I began to realize how blessed I was to have them open their home to me. Japheth was telling me how excited people in the area would be tonight just knowing that I was here. So now we’re singing what seems to be bedtime prayers, led by the mother. I’m in the “boy’s room” for sleeping with Alfred and one of the sons. So the other 9 are in the other room. They’re now all praying very quickly and loudly in the other room. It almost sounds like praying in tongues… no, more like a prayer auction by the speed they’re all using. It’s quite unusual and mildly disturbing to hear as the final sound before I drift to sleep. Oh well. Good night.

August 15^th

After simultaneous, auction style, speed prayers, the girls room began remedial lessons in English, reciting what seemed like English dictionary terms and definitions. The light was still on so I guess they were reading them. I’m not sure if it was being done because I was here or what. Annet, the Compassion child who is in P3 is one of the brightest girls in her class (3^rd out of 103) and her older sisters seem to know English well.

Shortly after lights out, around 9:30, came the noises. Little pitter patters of feet just inches from my head around my bookbag. Mice or rats, I’m not sure. I’ve got candy and cookies in my bag but they’re well sealed. My mosquito net I slept under doubles as a rat protector, so I wasn’t really worried, but it’s a disturbing noise to hear. I missed having my cat, Akamogo, around. I may sould like a baby by saying this but I would always bring her inside whenever I heard a bump in the night. She’s an expert hunter and she’ll eat anything: mice, rats, birds, bugs. And she’s not fooled by the gekos lose-their-tail trick.

I didn’t sleep well. Normally I’m out like a light within seconds of hitting the hay. Partly due to the noises but partly due to the fact that I was sleeping in a small mud hut with 11 other people in the middle of Africa!

This morning, very first thing, we went to work in the banana plantation. Cutting down dead leaves and laying them in a certain way on the plantation floor. There’s a right way and a wrong way to lay the leaves apparently. My job was to follow with the machete and cut the lower leaves while Alfred used a tool on a pole to cut the higher leaves. He works very hard and we finished on his small plantation in about 2 hours. I’m not used to working so I had blisters on my hands from the machete. I also couldn’t help but wonder what he does the rest of his time. This job took 2 hours and was necessary for the health of the banana trees but it obviously hadn’t been taken care of in months.

Afterwards I was given milk-tea, popcorn and breadsticks. After that it was on to climb the nearby mountain range. I planned on going solo but when I looked back Alfred was following me, so we went together along with the family dog. It was beautiful but hazy and I saw the mountain range I want to hike tomorrow. I’ve seen it before from One Tree Hill. I was struck by how peaceful it was on the hill. Quietly sitting, able to see everythihng while a heard of cows quietly grazed nearby. I could have styed for hours.

I tried to skip lunch and head into town but they had already prepared katogo for me. So I was obligated to eat it. I don’t exactly hate katogo but it’s easily my least favorite food here, and villagers eat it by the truckload. I biked into town to bathe and change. I planned to walk it to see what it’s like but it’s 4.5 miles, 2 hours walking each way, so biking was the better option.

The downside to the experiment is that there’s really nothing for me to do. I sat under a shade tree all afternoon while neighbors came and stared at me. Groups of like 20 neighbors just sitting in the yard watching me flip pages of Moby Dick for hours. Mostly kids. I had a small army of kids follow me anywhere I tried to go. I did manage to see where they fetch water. It's a borehole about ½ km down a steep hell, but not far away at all.

This may sound random but tonight I finally realized why Christmas didn’t feel like Christmas. I thought it was because of the warm weather, ack of snow and lack of Christmas marketing, but I was wrong. I passed out small gifts to all the kids tonight and their eyes lit up just like Christmas time, and then I realized that kids were the missing ingredient for me this year for Christmas. I gave them jump ropes, bandanas, little etch-a-sketches, and twine and beads to make necklaces and bracelets. I also gave them each a tooth brush because oral hygiene was seriously lacking, especially in the younger kids. The older girls had beautiful teeth, however. They were very excited about the gifts. This is a family, after all, that really has nothing. The Purdue Team when they were here visited this same family and brought with them mattresses, blankets, saucepans, mosquito nets, plates and cups. Before that they had only 1 small twin mattress that had been given to Annet from Compassion.

August 16^th

I decided to end my visit this morning. I had spent 2 nights there and had seen all I wanted to see. I gave the family $25 for keeping me and they were instructed not to use it to buy any food or anything for me. Instead Alfred used it to buy 2 large trees which he’ll later cut down and use to build a new house for his family. They had some ironsheets that they had purchased from little money the Purdue Team had given to them. So with $25 and some hard work Alfred will be able to build a bigger house, minus the roof, for his family.

It was an interesting time with the family. It was tough to sleep at night with the noises as well as the young kids waking up at all hours of the night and Alfred yelling at them to go back to sleep. The kids woke up early, swept the dirt front yard and washed before going to school. When they returned home from school they fetched water and spent the next several hours preparing supper. There wasn’t any play time for the school kids that I noticed, except for recess at school. I was amazed at how clean they kept themselves. Bathing several times a day and encouraging me to do the same. And really scrubbing themselves down. The took what I would equate to a sponge bath, just washing arms, face and head, but they were immaculately clean. Their clothing was another matter. The kids wore the same clothes every day that I saw them. They had their school uniforms and then they had 1 other set of clothes. They may have had church clothes too, but I didn’t see any.

All in all it was fantastic experience to see what village life is like. I would like to do it again in a month or so with another family and possible go back to help Alfred construct his house.

Living in a mud hut

2007-08-13T13:47:00.000+03:00

The plans are set. Later this week I’ll spend 3 night in a mud hut with a very poor African family. I specifically chose this family. They have 9 kids and live in a small 2 room mud hut. When the Purdue group came we bought them mattresses, blankets and a variety of cooking and eating utensils. The father came this morning and we explained that I was coming and that we didn’t want them doing anything extra or out of the ordinary for my arrival. Japheth, my director, even advised me to just show up and not tell them I was coming because they would automatically make preparations for me. The father insisted that they didn’t have anywhere to put me when I came, but that’s why I’m going. I hide myself away in my pseudo-dorm room where I have everything I need. I can successfully shut out Africa and watch movies, listen to music and read books that take me away from this place. Even though I live here I can’t know what it’s like to live as a villager, so for the next few days I’ll be finding out. I’ll take along a mattress, blanket, pillow, bottled water, a notebook and a camera. While there I want to fetch firewood, fetch water, eat matooke and beans (which I’m not all that crazy for) and do any work I can around the place. They have 9 kids, so I’m sure there won’t be a dull moment. And if this is successful I’d like to do it again next month. We’ll see.

“So, how’s the climate in America”

I HATE being asked this question. I get it all the time when I’m first talking to a Ugandan. I hate it because there’s never really a good answer for it. When you tell them that, yes, we have warm weather in America. They’re shocked. They must think we all live in the snow covered tundra and sleep in igloos, I’m not sure. It’s between 60-85 Fahrenheit all year here. They think that’s hot. For them to comprehend temperature extremes of sub zero temperatures with several feet of snow as well as temperatures in triple digets with 100% humidity boggles their minds. They automatically think I’m lying to them. And of course, America is a HUGE country so then I have to go into the explanation that in southern California (the only state most of them know due to Schwartzeneger being the governor) it’s nice most of the year but that in Maine it’s much colder… it turns into an hour long conversation with anyone who asks.

Early Morning Call

One great advantage to living in Africa, as well as one major disadvantage, is the concept of time. I can show up to work 30 minutes early or 2 hours late. No problems. I was planning on having one of my late days when I received a phone call. I rarely answer a call from a number I don’t know because it’s usually a wrong number and it takes the person on the other end of the line a minute or so before they realize that the person they’re talking to not only has a grossly different accent than they have but is also speaking another language. But this time I answered the phone and the man said he was waiting on me at my office. So I got around to bathing and heading over there.

When I arrived there was a well dressed man in his early forties there with a nice looking bag in his hand. He had a serious dimple on his chin which made him remind me of a black John Travolta the entire time I was talking to him. He started in on how he heard that I was staying there and wanted to ask me to help him. He and his wife both had HIV and the wife was suffering from paralysis on her left side and needed to go to the hospital and he wanted me to help. Now anybody who knows me knows that I love to help people. It’s one reason that I’m even here. But when random people show up on my door step asking for money… it’s another thing entirely. And the fact is that I had just dropped half my salary on that Frisbee tourney and I was broke. I told the man that I was sorry but that I couldn’t help him.

I’ve never in my life experienced what it’s like to be viewed as being wealthy before. I’m helping to pay for Bruno’s school fees for him to study tourism and the weekend of the Frisbee tourney he was here and he helped out with it. I almost felt that he was helping out of obligation. I mean, here we’re paying his school fees, he must feel a certain sense of having to do whatever we ask of him. Now Bruno has been a friend of Jacob and I for a year but I feel that I am more of a benefactor who hold some kind of clout over him. It’s just a strange feeling and I’m not sure what to do with it.

Japheth’s home

My director is asking me to donate some money to him to help him build a house. I’m glad to help him, he’s one of my best friends here and he’s not asking for much money, but I was questioning his need for a house.

He owns land near his birthplace on the complete other side of Uganda from here. It’s possible that he’ll take a good job in Kampala some day and have to live there for his work, but nonetheless, he says he needs to build a house even if he never lives there. He says it’s important for a man who is in his early 30s to own a house. For starters, when he gets married he has to have a house to take his wife to. Secondly, when he dies he has to be buried on his own plot of land where his house is. Apparently they don’t believe in cemeteries here. Of course I couldn’t convince him that it’s illogical to build a house that he may never live in, so I told him that I would certainly be willing to help him.

Flying saucer?

I’ve been hearing stories lately that kids all over have been throwing their plates, lids, anything that’s flat and will fly. After our Frisbee tourney I guess there’s been an onslaught of flying saucers. Even at Compassion this Saturday kids were throwing trash can lids back and forth. I’ve created a monster…

The Frisbee Tournament

2007-08-06T17:38:00.000+03:00

Ultimate Frisbee Tournament

We held the first ever Ultimate Frisbee Tournament this weekend with the 6 secondary schools in the area. I had to tell them to arrive an hour and a half before the competition was to start to make sure they came on time and still I had a team show up an hour late which forced them to forfeit their first match.

I spent the entire day on Friday getting ready for the competition. I bought 3 50kg bags of wheat posho to use as lines on the field. I had to put a total of 1km of lines down to make 3 Frisbee fields. Fortunately Bruno and some kids who were hanging around, curious about the white man wasting food were available to help. I paid the kids in candy for their help. Bruno told me that they were basically street kids who weren’t in school and stayed ran around town all day. They were quite willing to help, though I think they ended up wearing more powder than they used on the field. I also saw them eating handfuls of it. In retrospect I probably should have bought them food rather than given them sweets. Bruno later told me that some of them stole some of the posho and hid it in the bushes to cook and eat later. It didn’t bother me one bit.

So the day came for the tourney. Slowly the teams began to arrive. The lines that I had worked to hard to put down were barely visible, mostly due to the thick grass. The kids showed up with their teams. Some walking, some in the back of a pickup truck. They all had athletic uniforms on for their respective schools. I paired them up and began the tourney only 30 minutes later that I wanted to begin. One team had failed to show up so I sent someone to check on them. I gave them a half hour extra to arrive, I counted down the time: 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 10, 5, 2, 1, 30 seconds… then I gave their opponents the win. Not 2 minutes later I saw them walking around the bend. Too late, I had already called the game, but it was a double elimination tournament so they now had one loss, the same as 2 other teams.

The games proceeded on. The play was a bit sloppy at first but as it went on the kids picked it up and the games were quite interesting. It reminded me of my days of high school football. There were some great deep passes and some diving catches. Some superb defensive plays and good Frisbee management. The girls played well and the weather was sunny and warm. The nearest school even donated a sound system and a DJ, a student, who played local music throughout the competition. After each team played 3 games we broke for lunch and then came back to watch an HIV/AIDS drama that was performed by a local group of adults who all have been tested for HIV, some positive, some negative.

Jacob made some funny observations about the tourney. First, the students would fall down and grab a knee or an ankle if they were fouled. They would roll around in pain for several minutes before getting up and playing again without the slightest limp. Reason: European football. This is how soccer players react when they get fouled. They flop around and pretend to be injured to draw a foul from the ref, and because they watch a lot of Premiership Soccer here, that’s what they did in our Frisbee tourney. And after the injury, if they did leave the field, someone would come over and rub Vaseline on their injured calf or hamstring and within minutes they were miraculously fine.

We did have a problem with students officiating themselves. In the 30+ years of the game of Ultimate, it’s always been played with the players officiating themselves. As Marcus pointed out, that’s because it began in the 60’s by a bunch of hippies. Every single call in the final 2 games became an argument. ‘He was in!’ ‘He was out!’ ‘It was a catch!’ ‘It wasn’t a catch!’ It was like that with every call. They’re supposed to mutually agree on what happened and if they can’t then they just re-do the play. I think it was a combination of it being a new sport and their age as to why they wouldn’t play fairly. It almost ruined the entire competition. Jacob was yelling at them, I was yelling at them. The final game was just one big argument. And to top it off it started to rain. Dark clouds came in from all around. There was lightening. I tried to call the game off but the teachers from the school told me that lightening doesn’t strike people!! Yikes! The lightening wasn’t bad and it was far away, so we kept playing. In the end the team we thought would win did. They received a trophy and a goat for their efforts. And I received a headache and a sun burn for mine…

Making rocks

I spent some time out in the ‘bush’ on Sunday and I happened upon a small rock quary. Very small. As I approached I realized that there were people working there. 6 men using primitive tools to make rocks. One man’s job was to use a ball-pin hammer to break baseball size rocks into marble sized rocks. Another man was using a pry bar (similar to a crow bar) to pry the rocks from the wall. Another man was using a garden rake to sift the rocks. The other guys were sitting in the shade watching. When you have an ample supply of manpower that’s super cheap and machines are super expensive then you give them primitive tools and pay them a dollar a day to do basic work. It’s really amazing.

Road ID

When I was home I bought a bracelet that has my name, my village, the Peace Corps Medical Officer’s number and Jacob’s number on it in case of an emergency. I run up to 20 miles some days and am always afraid that I’m going to get clipped by a vehicle and knocked unconscious. I don’t run with any ID n me so I thought this would be a good thing to have, that is, until I was informed that if I did get hit and knocked out that the villagers would probably steal my bracelet because it looks valuable!!! If, for example, someone is in a car accident, people will rush to the vehicle and make it look like they’re helping, but really they’ll steal whatever they can and leave the person to bleed to death or whatever. They’ll take the phone, watch, wallet, luggage, whatever. Just one more reason poverty needs to be eliminated.

A thief, a hug and free school for a year

2007-07-31T09:53:00.000+03:00

Here’s a link to the latest Rushville Republican article which was published. In it I’m talking about some of my secondary projects.

To catch a thief

Friday night a thief (or two) broke into where Jacob works and stole 3 of their motorbikes. The motorbikes are locked up in the back which is like a small courtyard in the middle of the offices with a locked gate located between two buildings. I’m not exactly sure how they stole the bikes, but I do know that there were 2 night watchmen. Typically when night watchmen catch a thief, if the thief tries to run they are shot and killed, which always makes me a little leery when I have to go and retrieve my bike from their late at night or early in the morning. As a precaution I go in with my arms up saying, “It’s me! It’s just me and I’m getting my bike.” On several occasions I’ve found the guards sleeping. Let’s face it, it’s a boring job and some of them have day jobs as well as their night duties.

The next morning, when the rest of the staff came in to work nobody had even noticed that the bikes were gone. The guards had even changed shifts. When the theft was noted, and this was the interesting part, the guards that were on duty were thrown in prison! This was done for one of two reasons, first off it was their duty to protect the place and they failed. Secondly, it’s possible (though not likely knowing the trustworthiness of these guards) that they conspired with the thieves to coordinate the robbery. As a result, they’ll be in prison for an indefinite amount of time or unless the bikes are recovered. In addition, two of the staff were thrown into prison for a few hours because on the sign-out sheet they had signed the bike out but had failed to sign them back in when they came back with them, which I’ve been told everybody forgets to sign the bikes back in… Yikes!

Up the ante

Last time I talked about Israel from Israel who had always struck me as a Scrooge character, a real miser, who randomly decided to sponsor a race if I organized it and to give the 4 winners free school fees for a year, totaling around $1,000 USD. Well yesterday, he stopped me on my bike to tell me he had changed his mind. I knew it was too good to be true. I figured he had too much to drink or was in some state of euphoria and that this type of generosity had to have been short lived or only the stuff of a Charles Dickens novel. He said to me, “I’ve changed my mind. Instead of 4 kids receiving free school for a year I want 5 to receive free school for a year. And for the rest of the participants I’ll buy mosquito nets for them. 50 mosquito nets should be enough, don’t you think?” I must have stood there for a minute with a deer in the headlights look on my face because he started to laugh and then punched my right shoulder causing me to stumble back a step. “We’ll have a big celebration at my farm when the finish, too! You just get it organized!” So I told him I would.

On our doorstep

A woman literally showed up on our doorstep last week at Compassion. She was traveling in to town to go to the police because her husband had abused her and thrown her out. She was traveling with 3 small children and a small burlap bag that had all of her and her children’s worldly possessions and she had collapsed at our office, 1 km from town, without even the strength to finish her journey. The husband had 8 wives and this woman was poor, destitute and desperate to flee. The district probation officer had been called to help remedy the situation and after some discussion with the staff we decided that she should take her children and go to be with her mother who lived an 8 hour bus ride to the east of here. We discussed taking the children into the Compassion program which is sometimes a lengthy process, but we thought that more immediate action was needed in this situation. We collected some money amongst the staff and sent her along, hopefully into a better situation.

Husbands can have several wives here. Olivia, the manager at Sky Blue, tries to convince me each time we talk that it’s ok for men to have several wives, especially if one or more of the wives fail to provide him a child. She has told me on several occasions that if her husband chose to have another wife then that would be just fine by her, that men are in charge and are permitted to do so and that it’s the wife’s job to just be submissive and accept it. Talk about a different culture. Her uncle, a Christian man who has 4 wives, has helped to pay for her school fees along the way. He has a good job and is able to support all of his wives, however, many villagers that I’ve seen who have several wives have little means to support one wife plus children, not to mention several. Of course, each wife needs her own house and plot of land. It’s just more backwards logic they have here about family planning, believing that multiple wives and children are a source of pride rather than a financial burden.

Random act of kindness

I was at Sky Blue restaurant last week having a rather bad day to go along with a bad week and a bad month when all of a sudden I felt something wrap around my legs. It was quite a different feeling than my cousin, Dixie, who had a cobra wrap around her leg and bite her in Peace Corps Ghana last month (she’s now the only person in her village to survive a poisonous snake bite). I looked down to find some random 5 year old boy with both arms wrapped firmly around me, smiling at me saying How are you, Brian? I say a random boy because this isn’t anyone I recognized. It’s not a Compassion child, nor any child I’ve had any previous encounters with. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Occasionally as I’m walking down the street some small child whom I don’t know will wrap me up in a gigantic hug (gigantic for a child that is) and greet me. Instantly my mood is transformed and I wonder what I’ve done to receive such a kind gift. Kids have this amazing way of teaching the rest of us a better way to live sometimes. There’s another small girl I pass on my ride up to my place who, twice, has greeted me and then told me Brian, you are good. You are kind. I don’t know where she picked up this phrase or why she uses it with me, but it acts to serve as a reminder to me. I’m rather hard on myself and forget that I am, at times, good and kind.

Preview of Coming Attractions

2007-07-24T08:26:00.000+03:00

Ultimate Frisbee Tournament
15km Run. Winners receive School Fees for a Year ($250 each)
"The Simple Life" in Uganda

There are a few blips on the radar that I am excited about. First is an Ultimate Frisbee Tournament I’ve organized between 6 Secondary Schools that are each located less than 1 mile from the center of town. Each school has around 300-600 students. The game is maybe best described as a combination of soccer and football but played with a Frisbee. It’s non stop action and it’s very aerobic. The only equipment required to play is a Frisbee, so it makes sense in that regards, and the rules are quite simple. Baseball, on the other hand, has a complex set of rules and a lot of expensive equipment. So for the past few months I’ve spent 6 days a week visiting the various schools teaching them how to play. I’ve made it mandatory to have girls on the team (to which one student replied, “But if we are to have the best team the girls will slow us down.”) The girls seem to like the game but they are a bit slow to come around to it. This is the best part. I’ve found a couple of businesses to contribute some money, so the winner of the competition will receive a trophy (The Nile Bakery Cup), a goat to cook and share, and I would like to take them to Kampala for a Frisbee Tournament held there in February. It will be a double elimination tournament which means each team could play as many as 6 games. There will also be a group there to perform some singing and dramas regarding HIV/AIDS plus I’ll have some HIV/AIDS trivia questions I’ll ask throughout the tournament with small prizes like candy to pass out.

The next thing sort of fell in my lap. I was eating at Sky Blue the other day when a man from Israel (coincidently also named Israel) happened to be having a beer out on the patio. He’s kind of a harsh man in his late 50s or early 60s and he manages a very large set of greenhouses where they grow flowers which are sold to Europe, I’m told. It’s an absolutely huge facility in the middle of the bush and it sticks out like a sore thumb. Israel (the man, not the country) is kind of a tough nut to crack. He’s very blunt and can be very coarse, but at the same time he also insists on my pulling up a chair to join him most times when I see him. Since he found out that I run marathons his entire view of me has changed. This last time I saw him he was almost gushing at me, saying over and over “I really admire you,” and while asking about the Boston Marathon.

Maybe it was because of his harshness that I was very surprised by what he said next. “If you can organize a run to my farm (greenhouses) I’ll pay the top 3 winners’ school fees for a year.” It was like a flash of lightening that came from a clear blue sky! I couldn’t believe my ears! First off, he’s not one to spend money and it would cost around $750 USD to pay for 3 students school fees for a year. Secondly it’s 16k to run to his place. Immediately I saw an opportunity for some of these kids and tried bargaining with him. “Make it 2 boy winners and 2 girl winners and I’ll do it!”

“Done!” He said. “But you organize it and let me know what you come up with.”

The last thing I’m looking at is a bit of an experiment of sorts. I don’t know where the idea came from exactly but I’m really excited about it. I live in a small village in Uganda. I work with some of the poorest of the poor children. I visit their homes and see where they live, but I don’t know what village life is like. I live in a decent home with electricity. I fetch my water from about 30 meters away from a tap. I eat my food from a nice restaurant in town. I don’t fetch firewood or dig in a garden. So I’ve asked my organization to find a poor family deep in the village that I can stay with for a few days. I want to sleep where they sleep and eat what they eat. I want to dig in their fields and fetch firewood and water with them. I remember losing sleep when I was fretting over one poor family we have in Compassion where a mother, father and 9 children were sleeping in a small 2 room house with only 1 mattress. Imagining them choosing a place on the floor on a mat, huddled together for warmth. Now, I want to see it myself. My organization will help me find a family and get ready. I’ll take along a mattress, blanket, camera, books, notebook and bottled water. Otherwise I’ll try to be experiencing life in the village and of course I’ll blog all about it. I don’t know when this will all happen, maybe in a few weeks, but I’m looking forward to the experience.

Bdianee

I’ve almost shaken free from being called Muzungu all the time in my village. It’s now changed to having people say my name all the time. But it’s not exactly my name. I mean, it is, but it isn’t. The way they say it it sounds like they put a ‘d’ where the ‘r’ is and then they add an ‘ee’ to the end. So as I bike through my village I have almost everyone calling my name, whether I know them or not. They want my attention, they want me to just look at them and it drives me just as crazy as being called Muzungu (which I won’t acknowledge). I’ve found that ignoring being called Muzungu gives me great satisfaction. They can’t figure out why I don’t look at them when they are saying it. But with the “Bdianee”, because most of the people who are saying it I don’t know, I have to either recognize the voice or wait for them to say it multiple times before I can look at who it is.

I’ve also discovered that eye contact gets me in trouble. If I look at someone as I’m approaching them or passing them on my bike then I’m almost certain to get a remark or a stare from them. Guaranteed. So here goes the white man biking through the village with his eyes diverted from people and ignoring most people who call his name. Sounds like a real friendly guy, doesn’t it…

My favorite is a little boy whom I encounter as I bike up the hill to my home. Whenever he sees me he runs to the edge of the road which is a small cliff, really, and smiles and waves vigorously as he yells “How are you Bdianee!” I have sooooo many kids say “How are you, Bdianee,” that I usually just give a slight wave and keep going, but this little guy has gotten to me. He’s so consistently there and greets me with such pleasure and then he smiles and runs back to his hut after I’ve greeted him back. It may sound harsh or cold that I’m not greeting everyone who greets me or calls me Muzungu, but the novelty of being one of the only white guys around and the center of EVERY bit of attention wore off long ago, so this is how I deal with it. Join the Peace Corps and find out for yourself.

What's in a name?

2007-07-17T13:51:00.000+03:00

A person’s name. It’s their identity. A good name can define an individual and give strength and meaning to the mere utterance of that name. Names carry meaning and are often carried down a family line. Which makes me wonder what people are thinking when they give their kids names here. Not that it’s much different than in the states, I’ve heard some whoppers there too. Let me start with my new co-worker at Compassion. His name: Donnat. Prounounced: Donut! My best guess is that his parents heard the name Donald and tried their best to match it. Every time I say his name I chuckle inside to myself. “Hey Donut! Good morning, Donut! How are you Donut?” Another personal favorite is Gad. Jacob works for a guy named Gad. But it doesn’t sound like Gad it sounds like God when you say it. So he begins several of his stories with, “So, I was talking with God this morning and…” I just have to let it sit and marinate for a second before it sinks in what he’s really saying.

Here’s a list of a few of the names here: Savious (I think this one resembles Savior in some way), Dorcus (A common girls name here. Dorcus is a Biblical name, but in the Bible she’s also referred to as Agatha), Innocent (A guy or a girls name), Dr Alexander (This was a child’s name. Seriously.), Patience, Japheth (one of Noah’s sons in the Bible), Allen (A girls name when spelled with an “e”, a boy’s when with an “a” –Allan), Barnabas, Bright, Constance, Eva (their version of Eve), Fortunate, Happy, Immaculate, Batista (If a guy’s name is John then he’s often referred to as Batista… meaning Baptist), Praise, Kedress, Talent, Jadress, Scovia, Lovence, Federesi, Yosuf, Zilla (What is this? Short for Godzilla?).

Queen Elizabeth

I took another trip to Queen Elizabeth National Park this weekend. My third time there. It’s a neat game drive and I got some great pictures. I saw elephants, lions, cape buffalo, bush buck, warthogs, hippos and mongooses. I think my favorite animal to see there is the elephant. They’re so big and fascinating to watch. An entire family will slowly walk towards your vehicle and just meander and graze while you watch. They have a certain elegance to them yet they are still massive, wild creatures. While we were there we saw a very small mud hole where 2 hippos were. We got out of the car to take pictures. We were being kind of noisy as we peered down as these massive beasts sunk deep into their mud bath. As I expected (and somewhat feared) the hippos didn’t appreciate the interruption of their morning and quickly jumped up out of their little paradise and onto the bank which sent our little entourage scurrying back towards our cars. Hippos kill more people annually than lions do in Africa and I warned my group before anything happened. Fortunately the hippo was satisfied with giving us just a mean stare down. I don’t think you would be too happy either if you had to drag 600lbs of yourself out of your bath because people were being loud and taking pictures of you!

We really had a nice time. We stopped at the Mweya Lodge which is arguably one of the best hotels in Uganda and had some great food there. As we sat and ate on the patio we could look down and see elephants and buffalo who had gathered at the shore of the lake. We also watched as 2 fish eagles (which closely resemble bald eagles) soared overhead looking for their lunch. Toward the end of our meal a warthog came rooting around looking for his meal. Thankfully he kept moving past us in his search for foliage.

Social Injustice

2007-07-10T14:38:00.000+03:00

Social Injustice

Home visits this week. Occasionally when doing this we run across caregivers abusing the Compassion children by taking the mattress or other items we have given the children and using it themselves or by treating the children poorly because they aren’t their children. These Compassion kids live with an uncle or maybe not even a blood relative so the child gets treated like a 2^nd class citizen or worse. Recently we went out to do home visits and we ran across a blatant case of social injustice on another scale. One of our Compassion kid’s mother was living in a small room behind a school. Her home, which was built by her late husband, was being rented to the brand new school and being used as a girls dormitory. There were approximately 50 girls living in the home, sleeping in bunk beds. The school just happened to have been started on almost the same grounds that the home was on, so the home was basically part of the school. The money that was being paid to the woman by the school for the use of the house was around $12.50 a month, meaning that each boarder was paying $0.25 a month to live there. If this woman were to rent this house out herself to each student, collecting their monthly rent, she could charge them each upwards of $4 a month or collectively $200 a month. The school was paying her $12.50 a month and essentially keeping the rest. Blatant social injustice. This woman, as a peasant farmer, just didn’t have the clout or the leverage (or so she thought) to combat this so she just accepted what the school offered and made due. Meanwhile, as you could imagine, the girls living in the house are treating the house like any group of teenagers who are renting a place would treat it. They’re destroying it. Not blatantly, but by living in it and not treating it with the same care and respect that an owner would. So Compassion is intervening on her behalf and dealing with the school to either increase what they are paying her per month, buy it completely or she will rent the place out herself to the students which is my recommendation thus creating a sustainable and fairly substantial income for herself for years to come.

Random Factoid

Speaking of incomes, I read in the local paper that Ugandans monthly who earn 400,000 Ugandan Shillings (Ush) or $250 US dollars are subject to 30% taxation. That’s about how much I make as a PCV and it’s a very modest salary, but for a Ugandan it’s fairly substantial. When you take into consideration how few people make that sum of money it clearly represents the upper tax bracket in this country. In learning more about taxes, the people who line the streets to sell bananas, meat on a stick, and bottled water to buses when they stop all wear the same color jacket (more like a lab coat). They wear them to show that they have paid taxes for their earnings.

Birthday Wishes to Ella!!!

Not so hot

2007-07-03T16:02:00.000+03:00

Not so hot

I can’t go through 2 years and pretend that everything’s wonderful and that I don’t ever think about quitting and just going home. There are times when I feel incredibly underutilized by my organization, that they just keep me around to type documents because I can type fast or to fix their computers because they don’t know how to. I really feel this way when I work hard to create or develop something only to find it tossed aside once my back is turned. “Why am I here?” “Can’t I be doing more and be more appreciated somewhere back home?” “I know I could be making more money.” Of course the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. One volunteer had a rule that if he woke up 3 mornings in a row with intense feelings that he wanted to go home then he would. It never happened but that was his sounding board. I felt like going home all last week. Without a doubt all PCVs think about it. There’s no punishment for leaving. It’s not a dishonorable discharge or anything. In fact, if you’re not happy you’re better off going home, and so is the community that you are serving. You’re not going to do much good if you’re unhappy all of the time. The fact is we all have bad days. It’s when several bad days are strung together that it begins to gnaw away at you. It’s tough to fight depression when so many of our usual coping mechanisms aren’t readily available. I can’t pick up a phone and call another volunteer because the phones here charge per second and it adds up very quickly. I can’t escape to see a movie. I can’t treat myself to a nice meal or ice cream. I can’t buy some expensive new toy. It’s even difficult to talk to a Ugandan to garner sympathy. I think of how my problems pale in comparison to earning less than a dollar a day like so many people around here. How they would love to have my problems for a while. I think about the months leading up to joining the Peace Corps when I would have done anything just to be here, out of my dead end job making a difference in the world. I do run every day and that helps, but even my runs are filled with people shouting ‘Muzungu’, uneven dirt roads which cause sprained ankles and vehicles that speed along narrowly missing me. The trick for me is to keep myself busy, focus on what’s important (other’s needs instead of my own, God and my faith) and to realize that this is a temporary home. When I get back this will all seem like a distant dream and there will be times when I wished I was back here in the warm sunshine, rolling green hills and have the ability to leave work just about any time I want to just get a way for a while.

Kampala

I spent the weekend in Kampala with all of the other PCVs. We had an All PCV conference, so it was the first chance to meet the newest PCVs. There are 48 of them. They are where we were a year ago. They’re trying to feel their way along right now, trying to find work to do within their organizations and struggling to pick up the language.

I took my 3 kittens to the conference to give away. It was quite an adventure riding 6 hours on a bus with a small box of kittens who were desperately trying to get out the entire time. They destroyed the box they were in from the inside. Jacob and I traveled together and every time the kittens meowed he would cough to try to cover it up. Not that it mattered, those busses have chickens, ducks and goats on them from time to time. Three guys sleeping in a hotel room with 3 kittens and no mother cat proved to be quite difficult however. It was their first night away and they cried all night until at 2:30 Jacob crawled out of his bed and scooped one up and brought it back to bed with him. The kitten stopped crying but the other 2 were now reaching new decibels of crying. So I grabbed them and put them in bed with me. Some time later the one with Jacob must have left his bed to join his siblings because when I next checked I had all 3 kittens. So they slept with me from 2:30 until 6:30 when it was time for my run. They didn’t cry but I slept so lightly that it was almost like not sleeping. The next night I had to repeat the ordeal, otherwise the kittens would have kept the entire hall from sleeping. We’re not talking about a hotel with nice soundproof doors. Concrete floors are very conducive to carrying sound. Fortunately it’s also conducive to cleaning up after kittens… We also asked the housekeeper not to turn our beds in an attempt to keep the kittens under raps. Quite frankly I don’t think they cared.

Herbie the Dentist

Does anybody remember the clay-mation Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer movie where Rudy’s friend the little blonde elf named Herbie wants to be a dentist rather than make toys? OK, well that’s my lead in to visiting the dentist on Monday. People may wonder what medical and dental services are available for PCVs. I’ve had only good experiences with both though my cleaning last month was a little rough. I had a temporary crown in and got it replaced with a permanent crown. The procedure was rather simple. I wasn’t there very long and it wasn’t a very complicated or painful procedure. The tooth had to be molded in South Africa, so I had the temp for about 3 weeks with no problems.

Guest of Honor

2007-06-25T14:20:00.000+03:00

Guest of Honor

I’ve never really thought myself worthy of being the guest of honor for anything. Guests of honor are usually older people who have accomplished great and spectacular things. A 7 time winner of the Tour de France, Superbowl MVP, former President of the USA, etc. Here in Uganda, anytime you have an organized event or special day you have to have an invited guest of honor. For example, we recently celebrated African Childs Day with the Compassion kids and our guest of honor was the Local Chairman 5 (LC5), a basic equivalent to a member of the State House of Representatives. The man didn’t show up and we had to have the chairman of the board of directors for our compassion fill in for him, but that’s beside the point. Also beside the point is that to honor these Compassion children on Africa Childs Day we had them sit through endless speeches for hours on end. Only in Africa.

The point is that I was invited as a Guest of Honor for Sports Day by the local secondary school. The morning of the event I received a short hand written note delivered by one of the teachers inviting me to come. Now I suspect that I was about the 6^th guy down on the list and that when the other 5 guys didn’t come I was summoned, but that’s entirely speculation. So as the invited Guest of Honor I had to miss an entire day’s work and watch secondary students participate in track and field events. Never mind that I had quite a bit of important work to do for that day, I was the invited guest. Again, only in Africa. As an invited guest one is supposed to deliver a speech. So I began scribbling in a notebook some things about running marathons and how in secondary school I was the 8^th worst runner on the cross country team out of 10 runners, but that I persevered to qualify for the Boston Marathon. As I waited out the day, reading the book I had brought in preparation for what I knew would be a lot of down time, I could sense that I wasn’t going to be around even to give my speech. I had another place to be at 4:30 and things weren’t going to be wrapped up by then. Besides, the seat for the guest of honor was under a shade tree immediately next to a speaker which was cranked up nearly as high as it would go playing local music created entirely with a synthesizer. The speaker was already distorted from having been blown out who knows how long ago. For reasons I’ll never ever be able to comprehend, nobody else seemed to be bothered by this and the event rolled on. The kids raced around a track which was just a field that had been marked by pouring oil on the grass to mark the lines of the track. They had various running events (though I didn’t see any relays), high jump, triple jump, shot put, discus and javelin. Several of the kids were wearing the shoes I had given them for joining my morning running club.

My new roommates

Jacob came over the other morning. He doesn’t often come over in the mornings but he needed to tell me to move the cat and kittens out of his house. He’s moving across town and will be about a 10 minute bike ride away instead of living almost next door. Not more than 2 minutes after he had mentioned moving the cat, she walked in the door carrying one of the kittens in her mouth and proceeded to slip under my bed and head out the door for the other two… Whoever said animals aren’t intelligent creatures. So for the past several days I’ve had 6 week old kittens traipsing around my living quarters. They’re cute. They play a lot. I have a drawer on the side of my bed and I heard scratching around in there one night, opened it up to find 3 kittens snuggled up. Apparently there is enough room underneath for them to squeeze into the drawer, so that’s their little hiding place.

Earthquakes

I had never actually felt an earthquake. Indiana isn’t exactly in a high earthquake zone. I’ve felt 2 in the past 2 weeks here. The first time was around 11pm and I woke up and thought someone was nudging my bed because it was rocking back and forth. It lasted for a few seconds and then stopped. This week it was around 9pm and I thought someone was knocking at my door. There is a padlock on the outside which I use to lock the door and it was banging against my door. I asked who was there and when I didn’t get a response I realized that it was more than the lock that was shaking. This last one was stronger, maybe about a 4-5 on the Richter scale, but that’s just a guess.

Jacob’s Move

As stated earlier, Jacob is moving. He’s the other PCV who lives about 50 meters from me. He comes over most nights and we talk, play video games or watch movies on my computer, play guitars or whatever the mood calls for. The school which he rents from recently gave him an eviction notice. After inquiring from the neighbors we thought that maybe they just wanted more money for rent. He pays about $25 a month to rent a nice duplex that has a sitting room, bedroom, bathing area, storage room, outdoor kitchen (a room outside) and a nice latrine. And when I say that ‘he’ pays, the organization he works with pays. That’s how things work in the Peace Corps. It’s the PCVs organization that provides housing. So they offered to double the rent and the school said yes… and then they said no. We finally found out that when that building was built, it was built specifically for teachers at the school. For years the school had complained to the district that they didn’t have adequate housing for their teachers, so they built a few places to live. When the district found out that they were renting out those buildings instead of using them, they were more than a little upset. To evict a white person who is paying and willing to pay a large sum to rent is more than a little deal. So they were in a little trouble to say the least. So, very soon Jacob will be moving across town.

"Dear Mr Brian Dunn"

2007-06-19T08:44:00.000+03:00

“Dear Mr Brian Dunn” I came home late last night to find a note under my door. It read as follows. Re: REQUESTING FOR A SPONSOR I apply that I, Nagiko Monica, aged 14 years am in Senior 2, am an orphan and also a needy who needs help. Am requesting for a sponsor from American state. I would request you, sir, to help such that I can get a sponsor. I really failed to get a chance of being in a Compassion. Since chance knocks once I would like to use a chance since you’re still in Ntungamo to help by all means that also I can get a bright future. I usually read (the) Bible and I prefer studying, but the waste is, am reaching in different classes and young brothers and sisters are also reaching in upper classes, so my mother will not afford all of us and I dislike to leave school at this age. Am sorry for disturbing you but I am not me. It’s life. I wish you could have mercy for me so that I can get a sponsor. With God’s will I will not fear and I pry so much to God. Nice staying. Thanx!! Yrs…….. Nagiko Monica – It’s not the first time I’ve had kids ask me for a ‘sponsor’ from America, but it is the first note under my door I’ve had. When someone here asks for a sponsor they’re not askinf for a pen pal. They’re asking for someone to pay for them to go to school. If a family has 10 kids and just a little money they’ll only educate which children they can afford to. They get free education through 7th grade and they’ve started free education for secondary but there’s talk that it won’t continue, and even then they parents are asked to pay a small amount. Often PCVs pay for some student’s school fees, but we do have just a small salary and I have other things I’ve given money to. I have this belief that the money I make belongs to Uncle Sam anyway so why should I horde it? I make around $250 a month and school fees are $50 per term for 3 terms. This month alone I’ve given away over half my allowance… What to do, what to do? Shave and a Hair Cut, 2 Bits The first 6 months at site I didn’t get my hair cut. I was under the great disillusion that if I grew it out it would cover up the fact that I’m getting older and my hair is thinning a bit on top. (OK, a little more than a bit) In actuality it just gave me long, thin hair on top which actually had the opposite effect I was going for. But since the first of the year I’ve been going to a local place in town called the Turquoise Salon and getting it cut short. It’s a nice place. They have 3 ‘barber chairs’, a TV going all the time which plays Nigerian films and music videos. It’s well lit and has mirrors all around and when the power isn’t on the run a generator. I used to go in and sit and wait my turn to be called to the chair, but then I realized that the other people there who I thought I was waiting in line with were just barbershop bums that just come in to sit, not even wanting a haircut and that other people would walk right in and sit in the chair for a hair cut, so now that’s what I do too. When in Rome… The guy that cuts my hair does a nice job, with a few notable exceptions. Now granted, he’s never cut the hair of a white man before. He uses the electric clippers, but instead of going against the grain of my hair, like you would normally do, he goes WITH the grain. The haircut looks fine after he’s finished, but once I reach home I can see all of the random individual hairs he missed that are now twice as long as the others. Recently, after finishing my haircut, he started trimming other parts of my face. (This should give anyone cause to be nervous.) He shaved my quazi-facial scrub, which was a bit painful because he went over and over and over the same parts, but I let him finish. Then he proceeded to trim my uni-brow, which I didn’t mind one bit, because it needs it periodically, but then he proceeded to trim my nose hair with the clippers. I had to draw the line there. Another funny thing he did was to take the electric clippers and trim right along the edge of my receding hair line, which, of course, made it look even more receding that it already is and ruined all the work I had done to grow the hair out over it in the first place! Agghhhhhh! I can’t win sometimes! “Watch it, Bud!” Speaking of not winning… I’ve said before that the larger the vehicle the more right of way it takes on the road. Today on my way home I was clearly in the right of way. I had just turned onto the road when a boda (moped) carrying a passenger also turned up ahead of me. As he approached me I was pulling up next to a guy on a bike carrying matooke when this boda drive decided to cut me off and in doing so clipped my front wheel nearly causing me to flip over my handle bars! I was already having a bad morning so I turned around and yelled something about him not owning the road and he was yelling back. For reasons I can’t explain I felt like going back and reemphasizing my point, so I turned around for a confrontation. Of course, upon doing so, the 85 men who are just sitting around without anything to do began to gather around. The guy began immediately apologizing and I was just trying to explain to him that he was endangering several people’s safety by his carelessness, but when the crowd started to gather I felt the need to scram. Crowds here freak me out. Twenty African men, all of them probably somehow cousins of this guy… whose side do you think they’d take in this argument? There’s also crowd justice here where they’ll stone a thief to death. They’ll also stone to death someone who hits someone with a car. They wouldn’t kill anyone for a minor fender bender but I just wanted to err on the side of caution. Crowds also produce thieves. If there are a bunch of people around it means possibly (but not probably) someone will unzip a pocket of my backpack and take something. Once a car hit a truck, killing the 2 passengers of the car and the people rushed ‘to help’ but they actually just took the possessions of the people who had died in the crash! I get real nervous around crowds. Even though I generally always feel safe in my village, I still just don’t like crowds. It’s funny the things I do here. The other day I was passing by a group 12 or so men who were spreading coffee beans out to dry. Coffee is the main cash crop here. These guys are ripped because they haul 110 lb bags of coffee beans all day. They’re seriously buff and they are the equivalent of construction workers in the states. As I was passing one of them started in on the Muzungu bit but then I also thought I heard him swearing at me. Now normally if a construction worker and his 11 friends were swearing at me in the states I would probably just keep walking with my head down and my tail tucked firmly under my skirt, but here I feel an air of… cockiness and of defending my right to not be called Muzungu. Maybe it’s because I’m white and generally respected or maybe because the Ugandans are so soft spoken generally. I don’t know. So I stopped, got off my bike, glared at him for a few seconds and said to him in the best teacher voice I could conjure, “What’d you say to me??!!” “Nothing. Nothing. I’m sorry,” he sheepishly replied. As I rode off I thought about how I would have never, never done that back home unless I just absolutely needed to have my head kicked in. I hope I don’t forget that when I go home.

Rushville Republican Article Here’s a link to the latest article I submitted to my local paper. http://www.rushvillerepublican.com/archivesearch/local_story_158211333.html

Mid Service Conference and Child Abuse

2007-06-13T08:34:00.000+03:00

Child Abuse

We received a report the other day that one of our Compassion kids had been seriously beaten up by his brother, who is his caretaker since both of their parents passed away. He also happens to be one of our HIV children. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of this happening. The story went that the Compassion boy who is approximately 13 went out dancing one night (which he wasn’t supposed to do). When he came back his brother beat him severely. The punishment didn’t nearly fit the crime. Japheth, the director of Compassion, after consulting with his boss who is the local church leader, decided to take action. Now Japheth watches a lot of these Nigerian movies which are intensely popular among the Ugandans and all Africans from what I understand. They are poor quality and low budget soap operas basically but they are Africans, they speak an African dialect which the Ugandans understand better than American English and American films, they take place in African villages and they involve African themes (somehow). I believe that because Japheth watches so many of these videos that he uses cunning measures to take action in these circumstances. To capture this older brother without arousing suspicion he could have had the police sent to the brother’s house, but he probably would have had to pay for their transportation to get there (which is a bribe). Instead, he called to police and told them that he would summon the brother to the office and then call them to pick him up. So he sent for the brother. He came. Then he acted like he needed to get something out of the other office and he phoned the police They asked if they needed to bring their guns (AK-47 assault rifles). Japheth assured them that this was a simple boy and that he wouldn’t be any trouble. So they came and took him to prison. He was merely detained there for a time and they took a statement from him. (He may have been beaten too, I’m not sure) The entire ordeal was just done to shake him up a bit and to teach him a lesson, but it’s interesting to me that Japheth has enough clout to have him apprehended and taken to jail for ‘suspected’ child abuse.

Breakfast Club

The running club at the secondary school here has commenced. I began passing out shoes on Monday. Over the course of 6 months I’ve had 80 kids run with me, and it’s been an equal number of boys and girls. That’s impressive because the head teacher told me that girls don’t like to exercise and that I was wasting my time by trying to convince them to run. It didn’t take much convincing really. They just came.

When I was home in America I collected shoes from my brother and another friend who teaches. The problem I have now is that I typically have 30 or so runners each morning and I don’t have enough shoes in their sizes. Many of the shoes I have are size 10 and above, which are too big for these small African kids. I’ve contacted Runners World and they’ve sent me a list of organizations to contact who routinely donate shoes to Africa. I’ll keep you posted.

Mid Service Conference – Toothpick Awards

Since my group first swore in as PCVs, we’ve routinely done this thing called the Toothpick Awards. It’s a time when we recognize, not the important things that the others are doing (why would we want to do that?) but the strange, stupid and embarrassing things that our fellow PCVs have done. For example I received an award for the best receding hairline as well as for being Med Evac-ed to South Africa for what THEY called a vacation. It’s a great time to just share some very funny and embarrassing stories about each other. We use a toothpick because of it’s insignificance (ie cheapness) and significance of removing leftover food from one’s teeth.

It was truly great to see everyone and to also share in their other Peace Corps experiences. I’m truly amazed as I hear their stories. Some are starting libraries, teaching arts and crafts programs, directing women’s income generating groups, etc.

Another neat thing we did at Mid-Service was to read a letter that we had written ourselves one year ago at this time when we were still in training. Everyone’s letter was different of course. Mine was simply a reminder of where I was 2 years ago, working a dead end job as a store manager, unsure of what to do with my life. In desperation and frustration I wrote down 2 things on a piece of paper: What am I supposed to do with my life? Followed by: What about the Peace Corps? I filled out an application shortly thereafter. In the letter I also reminded myself of everything I had to go through to get to this point: Selling my house (barely) and truck, leaving friends and family, committing 2 years of my life to this. It’s all been worth it. The other cool thing I did was leave $10 in Ugandan currency in the letter for myself. When I was in college my dad used to write from time to time and I could always expect $20 in the letter. It usually came as I was finishing my last package of Raman noodles too!!

Going Barefoot

2007-06-05T11:50:00.000+03:00

Going Barefoot

A lot of people go barefoot here. Mostly people from the deep village who can’t afford shoes. They walk into town from miles with no shoes on. You can also generally tell how well off a child’s family is by whether or not they have shoes as they walk to school. Many times though I think the kids prefer to go barefoot. I think if I could have gone barefoot to school I would have (but not in the winter, of course).

I want to go barefoot. I want to live like the people live and walk like they walk. I want to walk a mile in their shoes, or without their shoes. I’ve also been on this ‘take off your shoes because you’re on holy ground’ kick, like when Moses saw the burning bush. He probably passed the same bush a hundred times before and the ground was just normal before, but because God was there, it was then ‘holy ground’. So this week I’ve been going around barefoot and this is what I discovered.

People looked at me funny. They couldn’t understand why a well-off, white person, would be walking around like a poor villager.
I had to choose my paths carefully. I couldn’t walk just anywhere. I had to find smooth paths to walk on.
Things hurt my feet that otherwise wouldn’t. Pebbles, sticks, rough and hot concrete.
My feet were in direct contact with the ground. I felt everything. I felt the wetness of the grass and the dirt under my feet. I felt more at one with the earth.
At the end of the day I had dust on my feet from everywhere I’d been.

Sunrise from One Tree Hill

I’ve been here for a year and have yet to watch a sunrise from my favorite hill so this morning while it was still dark I set out to do so. I think it’s been about 10 years since I just sat and intentionally watched the sun come up over the horizon. And the last time I did it it was awe-inspiring and I vowed to do it more often. Ten years later I’m finally around to doing it again.

The air was cool this morning and the grass was wet. It takes about 25 minutes from my doorstep to the top of the hill, one mile away. I took with me my Bible and my Nalgene. There was a layer of fog surrounding the hill. I couldn’t see the top as I started to climb. There’s a new barbed wire fence about 1/3 of the way up the hill for the cattle. I scurried under it and kept going. As I began to get up out of the fog I had to remind myself not to stop to enjoy the scenery because the view from the top would be more grand, but it was tough.

Eventually I reached the peak and it was much more than I could have imagined. The fog around made it look like I was standing on an island with a sea of white clouds below me. There were other ‘islands’ rolling in and out of the fog. The sky was becoming lighter and the colors were changing minute by minute, from lavender to pink to orange to yellow. It was like a Thomas Kincade painting. It reflected off the clouds and painted the whole sky. It was an insult to even try to photograph it. This is art that can’t be captured and by trying I was only missing the real thing. I have to admit I got a little misty. And then it happened. Slowly but surely this bright orange ball peeked over the mountains and flooded the valley with light. The day had begun. It was so beautiful, like watching something being born. The miracle of life. This is how God makes every single day begin and I barely even noticed.

The Minority Report

2007-05-29T15:35:00.000+03:00

What all the Purdue team did

I went back with the Purdue team to Kampala to send them back home. It was tough to say goodbye. Having them around and seeing them with the Compassion kids was unlike any experience I’ve had here to date. It a word, it was joyous. Their time here went so quickly and they did and saw so much in their time here. While I was in Kampala shortly after they left I ran into another group from Purdue and from the same church (Purdue Christian Campus House) which had gone on a separate mission trip to Gulu, Northern Uganda. They had gone to work with the Invisible Children program. It was cool to bump into them and to share some of their equally life changing experiences. It was just neat to have 2 Purdue teams doing such fantastic work clear on the other side of the world.

Let me try to summarize the entire trip. 14 members from Purdue Christian Campus House (http://www.pcch.org) traveled to Uganda to work with Compassion International, my host organization. I attended Campus House with two of the leaders while I was a student at Purdue. They stayed with host families in groups of 2-3. In their time here they worked with the Compassion children when they came in for their center days, two days a week, teaching them English, science, social studies, math and health education. The other days were used to go out into the village to construct some simple but necessary structures. They fundraised extra money to buy construction materials. In all they cleared land, donated materials and helped to construct 5 outdoor kitchens. They also helped to construct/renovate 3 pit latrines and several outdoor bathing areas and drying racks. When there wasn’t enough work to do they went to the gardens and pulled weeds which was a great help to the caregivers. For Annette, one of our poorest children who lives in a small house with 8 siblings and her mother and father, they gave 4 blankets, three mattresses, 10 iron sheets, saucepans, plates, cups, mosquito nets, and money for food. They also collected donations from Purdue students from their church crayons, toys, markers, coloring books, squirt guns, bouncy balls, stickers, etc to give to all of the 285 Compassion kids. Some of the clothing they brought to wear they left here to give to needy families to either wear or to sell to make money. We took a safari one day and saw a lion, elephants, hippos, crocodiles, warthogs, bush bucks (deer like animals), water buffalo and mongooses. Many of them have posted pictures of the trip on my Flickr.com account which is located in the upper right portion of this window. If you click on a photo you should be able to navigate around that page to find my ‘groups’ page where there is a group called Purdue-Uganda Mission Trip. Check out the photos…

Northern Exposure

I have to talk about this now, it’s gone on long enough. Boobs don’t mean anything here. It’s a thing in America, but not here. I started up my running club again and this time the girls were there. Sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t but yesterday they were there. Whenever the girls run, towards the end of their 2 miles, they start taking off their tops to cool down. Granted the sun isn't up by the time we finish running, so it's plenty dark, but still. I’ve come to the conclusion that boobs just don’t mean anything at all here. It’s nothing to walk down the street to find women breastfeeding. Males back in America gawk at women as they walk by, even rating them. They’re ‘window shopping’ or ‘checking out the menu’ as I’ve heard them say. It doesn’t happen here. I find these nuggets of truth here which teach me that some things aren’t just ‘human nature’ but are American instead. We’ve been programmed to think the way we think through advertising and media, laugh if you will, but it’s true. Sex sells and marketers use it extensively and they knew exactly which angles to play it.

Here, an attractive girl walks by with a shapely figure (most of them have shapely figure, hardly any of them are over weight and they wear clothing to accentuate their figures) and the group of men she walks past just keep right on talking with no regards to her, in part, because behind her is another slender, shapely girl, and then another and then another. Shapely figures and breasts are just nothing to see here because they’re everywhere. In some way it’s just part of their culture, not that they go around topless, because they certainly don’t, but there’s no ‘censorship’ which in some way alleviates the desire to see it. But I still have to remind the girls to keep their shirts on. Which just seems funny to me.

My horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day.

There are times when I hate being in Uganda. Yesterday was one of them. I do fine for the most part but sometimes I’m just pushed to my limit. Yesterday started out fine. A trip to Mbarara to deliver messages for my organization. I got there in a timely fashion. Had the front seat in the matatu (mini-van taxi) which is the best seat to have. The driver drove slow but I had a good book with me and slow = less dangerous. I got there and started running the 7 errands I had to run. No problems here either, things were going smoothly and then it started. I was told to go to the bank and get a form for my organization’s tax information. The bank said they didn’t have the forms and that they were at the other end of town, but they gave me horrible directions, so I walked that way, couldn’t find the place, nobody knew where it was and I had to walk back and ask again. The building I was looking for had no sign to distinguish it. I’m now over an hour off my schedule, not a huge deal, after all TIA (This Is Africa) so I go to the next errand, looking for fuses for a voltage regulator. Shouldn’t be a problem. …I had to go to 5 different electronic stores before I found the right one. Five! Sometimes I was convinced that they told me no just because they didn’t want to look through their 10 fuses to see if they had the right one. I’m convinced of this. So that set me off a little more. Then it was back to the bank to give them the newly filled out forms. There is always a line at the bank of around 30 people or more. Sometimes the line goes out the door and halfway down the block. That’s ok. I have my good book and am prepared to wait. After nearly an hour I reach the front of the line and my teller must have been in her first week of working there. She didn’t have a clue what the forms were that I was giving her and I didn’t know what they were because I was just a helpless messenger. There was a place to sign them at the bottom which I was waiting for her to tell me to sign them cause they had to be signed and witnessed by her. Before she did anything I told her I needed to sign them first. She tore the forms out and then asked me why I didn’t sign them. To which I replied why didn’t you check them before you tore them out. Now I’m set back over 2 hours and my organization is calling asking why I’m not back and that they need the papers I’ve picked up.

Finally, I get all my stuff done and get on a matatu to take me back. It should be about a 45 minute trip if I was driving, but these vehicles stop along the way to pick people up and drop off so it takes over an hour, but then sometimes you get on the “Matatu from Hell” and they stop at every town, sometimes turning off the engine and going somewhere, who knows where, and the passengers are just sitting there, somehow patiently waiting for the driver to return. This was like that, only worse. It started when I was picked up at the edge of town, ready to leave, and then the driver turned the vehicle back around to go back into town to pick up at least 1 more person to have a full vehicle, which always makes me mad because I just figure they can pick people up along the way anyway. Then this happens also, 2 guys get out of the van because they’re just occupying seats to make it look like it’s more full so that other people will actually think it’s leaving soon, so we have more people to pick up before we can go. I’m in the back seat in the middle. The guys on either side of me are eating peanuts out of a plastic bag and when they finish they just throw the trash out their windows, which I HATE. This country is beautiful, but there is trash EVERYWHERE! I grew up behind the Rush County fairgrounds and every city in Uganda looks like the fair and the carnies had just left and left their trash everywhere. It’s ridiculously uncouth. I’m already mad so I give these guys lectures about respecting the environment. Then it starts to train along the way and the back window isn’t sealed right so it drips in on me and I have to sit way forward in my seat to avoid taking a shower. Along the way we seem to stop in every little village along the way and the driver then also stops at every roadside vendor to buy his groceries which by now is really making me mad because he can do this on his own time. He stopped once to buy pineapples, another time to buy tomatoes and then when we were literally just a couple hundred meters from town he stopped again, disappeared for 15 minutes behind a building and then emerged with a loaf of bread! I was about to shoot him, seriously. That was the icing on the cake! It took 2 ½ hours for what should have been a 45 minute trip. At one time they stopped to work on the matatu and then had to push start the piece of junk! The passengers the entire time are yelling at him “Tugyende!” (Let’s Go!), but it’s futile. He’s in control and he knows it and he’ll go at his pace. I almost threw the money at him as I got out, but I don’t want to be the rude American like so many tourists can be as they pass through, so I keep quiet. It really wouldn’t have done any good anyway, so I try to be the bigger person and just keep it to myself. (It came out later though with Jacob. Poor guy.)

Dental Work

I’ve been here a year. That means that I have to go to Kampala and get a routine physical exam and my teeth cleaned and checked. The food here isn’t sweet and doesn’t contain much sugar, so it’s not that tough on teeth, but I do drink a lot of Coke here and I was having some sensitivity in one of my teeth a few weeks back.

The dentist was great. I walked into the dentist office with my bright blue Colts NFL Champions shirt on and he said, “Aw man! I’m a Bears fan. You can’t wear that shirt in here.” He was cool. His mother was from Chicago and he studied dental stuff there. He had a thick American accent. His office was about the most sophisticated dental office I’ve ever seen. He was using equipment to take pictures of some of my teeth and then showing me on the computer. It was cool, until he found a loose filling. Then came the bad news: You need a crown and maybe a root canal. A note to all dentists out there. Don’t keep saying, “Oh man, this is bad. This doesn’t look good. Oh man!” Just don’t go there please. Ignorance is bliss and I’d rather not know that it’s so bad. Thankfully he decided that a crown was enough. So they worked away and basically grinded my tooth down until they could fit a temporary crown on it. The real crown is made in South Africa and will be here in a couple of weeks. I was there for a total of 3 hours in tooth hell. A part of me thinks the dentist was just torturing me because the Colts beat the Bears in the Superbowl, but he wouldn’t admit to it. Needless to say I haven’t drunk a Coke since. Trying to preserve my pearly whites.

Small Successes

There’s a free publication that’s available to anyone who requests it called Straight Talk. It’s a monthly publication that deals each month with issues like HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention, sex education, sugar daddies/mommies, making positive decisions, health and nutrition, etc. To be honest, it’s almost the same publication each month with almost the same topics discussed, but it’s a fantastic resource for secondary students to read about health topics and they love to receive them. It’s one of the very few things that is published just for them, and it’s free! Recently there was a section asking the readers to read about a problem that someone had written in about, a teenage girl who had an older neighbor asking her for sex, and the readers were instructed to advise ‘Miriam’ on what to do. I challenged my secondary students at Compassion to advise her and one of my students took me up on it. I mailed in his advice and this week, much to my great surprise, he was selected as one of the top 20 winners for submitting the best advice! And if you knew this kid, it would be even more surprising. So he will be receiving a free Straight Talk T-shirt soon! His advice wasn’t published, only the top two were, but his name and school was listed for being the top 20. What was funny was that I hadn’t noticed his name in this month’s letter and he brought me a copy and laid it on my desk. I told him I didn’t want the thing and that he should keep it. Then he pointed out his name in it and I whisked it away to show the other Compassion staff, all of us beaming with pride for Nicholas!

One Tree Hill

2007-05-23T10:17:00.000+03:00

I think that it’s important that when a group does a mission trip that they also include some sightseeing. As a veteran of a few short term trips, I always look forward to getting out and seeing some other sights and buying some trinkets for the fam. On one of the last days they were to spend in Uganda, I took the Purdue gang to Queen Elizabeth National Park (QENP). There are 2 ways to get to QENP from my site. One route takes you backwards an hour to Mbabara and then another 2 hours to the park. Another way looks shorter and goes straight north and meets up with the other route but goes through the bush and is entirely dirt roads. We took the dirt roads. The roads where white folk rarely travel. Aside from a bumpy ride and having to stop along the way for some cows to move out of our path, it was quite beautiful, but because of the reduced speed of maneuvering around potholes and giant ruts carved into the road by rainwater it actually took us about the same amount of time than it would have to take the other route.

We eventually made it to QENP. Upon entering the park we immediately saw a family of baboons just along the road. Of course we stopped to take pictures and proceeded to throw any food we had in the van out at them. As we ventured deeper into the park we saw cape buffalo, bushbuck (large, deer-like animals), elephants and a sleepy male lion. We hired a guide and proceeded to take the scenic route around the park for sightseeing. This time we encountered some warthogs and hippos. At some point in time the group veered toward being giddy and Junior High (wait, maybe that was me) and started asking, over and over, “Do those ones eat meat?” The highlight of the trip was just as dusk was setting in, a large family of elephants was scattered all around us. We stopped and watched as they crossed the road in front of us and behind. Mother elephants with their babies. Large males. They were so majestic and fascinating. It was too dark to take pictures, which in some way was good because it meant putting the cameras down and just soaking in the moment. It was pretty powerful to just be with these huge creatures in their natural environment. The guide kept saying, can we go, but the group just wanted to stay and observe.

After spending the night in our hostel on the Mweya Peninsula, we bought tickets for a boat ride on the lake. Upon making the decent down to the pier we encountered a large group of mongooses (yes, that’s the proper plural form of mongoose – it’s not mongi). Mongooses are groundhog/squirrel like animals. Their nearest relative is the hyena. We were literally right on top of them. They were running all around us. Some even aloud themselves to be petted. The boat trip was another highlight. We got up close and personal with some crocodiles that were sunning on the shore with their mouths wide open. We also encountered several hundred hippos (which I hear kill more people annually than lions). QENP has around 5,000 hippos and they’re hard to miss.

Upon returning to our village Ken and Brad wanted to take the group up to One Tree Hill, a small hill about a mile behind my house with one tree on the top of it, hence the name, and with a nice overview of my village. I go up there frequently myself to pray, think, feel and cry. They wanted to go and do the same while reflecting on these past 2 weeks. We all stayed up there for a couple of hours. Reflection time. In the end we circled up and talked about what was the most significant moment for each of us. It was something different for everyone. One said that visiting the first family who had 11 living is a home “smaller than my bedroom” and being able to give them a few necessities. Another said that sharing time with the Compassion kids and seeing them smiling and happy was the highlight. The last girl to go had a hard time fighting back the tears. She talked about going to her host family that first night. The host family’s house is in the middle of a boarding school where 200 girls were staying. She said that they were all just looking at her at first, unsure of how to approach. Then one girl stepped forward and kneeled and shook her hand, followed by another and then another and before she knew it she was shaking hands with a group of all 200 of them. “It was just so overwhelming and amazing all at the same time.” As dusk was falling we gathered up some rocks from the top of the hill and built an alter there by the one tree. Brad reminded us that throughout the Old Testament they would build an alter to God whenever he had shown himself. He had certainly done so many times in the past 2 weeks.

I get so jazzed up

2007-05-18T09:38:00.000+03:00

Nothing fires me up much more than just helping people with absolutely no expectations of anything in return. It’s the kind of help that just blows people away. Have you ever been helped like that? Seemingly for no reason. It might have been big help or such an insignificant little thing. It may have been something so simple, but it came at a time when you just needed some help or from someone you wouldn’t have expected to help you. To me, I see this as a great representation of Jesus Christ and of Christianity. The mere fact that God came down and manifested himself in the form of Jesus, God on earth, to dwell and serve amongst and amidst the people perfectly illustrates it. I love it! What must have those people thought who actually got it, who understood what was going on. God in the flesh. The healings, the teachings. I can only imagine.

The Purdue team hit the field again to do some simple work out in the villages. This is their mission work. This is why they came: to work. It’s tough coordinating a group of 14 white people, untrained in African building techniques and then to coordinate an additional 20-40 Compassion kids who are coming along to also help. Sometimes there just doesn’t seem to be enough for everyone to do. So when that happens we take the leftovers and go down into the garden to dig in the fields. There is always gardening to do. Even though the weeds will grow back in a few weeks, it still must be compelling for Ugandans to see Americans rolling up their sleeves to work in their fields. A couple of the Compassion staffers go with us into the field. There is also a neighbor who is home from college named Francis who is also around. We’ve asked him to just go around with us. He overhears what the locals are saying as they are standing around watching the Muzungus work. Here are three stories from him of what people said as they saw us working:

A local government member of the tiny village we were working in called the LC 1 (basically the mayor) came and spoke after one of our groups had finished working. His eyes were filled with tears and his voice was shaky as he spoke of the utter amazement of Americans, AMERICANS, who were there in their midst for the first time, digging in the dirt and getting their hands and feet muddy as they helped to build these mud structures for these Compassion children, the poorest of the poor. He didn’t think Americans did this or would do this and he wished that the local people would take the example they had set, coming from a place that was ‘so high’ and working here in Africa, and that others would follow their humble example.

A Muslim woman was also deeply moved that these white Americans were working so hard for these Compassion children without expecting anything in return and doing it in the name of Christ. She was amazed at how hard they were working and that they had come from so far. She exclaimed that she was so moved that this was what Christianity was about that she would seriously think about changing her own religion to Christianity because she had never seen this kind of selfless giving by other Muslims within her own religion.

Another woman couldn’t believe that Americans worked so hard. She thought they just traveled from their air conditioned house in their air conditioned car to their air conditioned work places along perfectly paved roads. She couldn’t fathom them coming to Africa and arriving in their village, working alongside local people, laughing, working, donating materials to build structures and then helping to build them. She sat there most of the day and just took it all in.

I love it. I absolutely love it. Working for work’s sake and giving without expecting anything in return. Helping just to help, because people need help. We all need help. I, even as I type this, need help in some form or fashion. We all need it, though it can be tough to receive at times.

We had 2 groups working today. One was building an outdoor kitchen for a family. When the group came they wanted to buy goats for some of these families, but after they arrived the focus shifted to doing some light construction. Not every family has the land or the capacity to raise goats, so they can be a problem rather than a blessing sometimes. And it’s possible that they will raise a family of goats and then sell them for something like an outdoor kitchen. An outdoor kitchen will enable the families to cook even if it rains. I imagine that with a good rain the family would go without food, so an outdoor kitchen is almost essential. It costs about $60 to roof a small outdoor kitchen. The group doesn’t just pay for the materials, they also have become exceptional builders of these local structures, which involves cutting trees with a machete, digging holes for them with the same machete, using banana fibers to tie some smaller sticks to the frame which work as slats to put the mud in, they dig up dirt and make mud and then build the walls up with the mud. Everyone finds something to do and we’re working side by side with the Compassion kids, which makes it that much neater. The kids work HARD! You wouldn’t believe how hard these kids work. I’m not talking about working hard for a 12 year old, I’m talking about working hard like grown men, construction workers work! They know how to work! And there’s nobody telling them to jump in to do something, they just do it. Maybe because they’re working at their friends home, maybe it’s because there are some ‘Muzungus’ around, who knows? Maybe it’s just because that’s their livelihood and they know how to work.

The 2^nd group worked across the village at another home improving an outdoor bathing area. We also tore down an old pit latrine. Most of the pit latrines in the village are constructed by digging a hole in the ground, covering it with logs to make the floor, putting mud on the logs to make the floor but leaving a hole for the business. The walls are made of timber from nearby and sticks tied together to make slats for the mud. The roof is usually made either from thatched grass or banana leaves. It doesn’t have to be absolutely leak proof, just enough to provide some shelter when doing one’s business.

The structure that was up was only about 4 ft tall and was falling apart, so we demolished it and began to build up new walls and made up some new mud for the walls. The girls really had a good time and started to really connect with and have fun with the kids. They began racing the kids to tie the sticks to the frame using the banana fibers from the banana trees which were all around us. They began declaring who were the winners and who were the losers. The kids thought they were quite funny.

Also... My cat had her kittens. Three of them. The Purdue girls who are animal science majors think that they are from 2 different fathers because one is quite a bit bigger than the others. My cat, Akamogo (Blemish), had them in my neighbors office, somehow squeezing her big pregnant belly under the crack of the door to get in. I've since moved them to a T-shirt lined cardboard box next to my room. Mother and babies seem to be doing fine. I now understand the term, "Weak as a newborn kitten" better than before.

Back to the Field

2007-05-15T09:35:00.000+03:00

We took the Purdue team back to the field yesterday. We have 3 kids who lived very near each other and each of them needed some work done. We spent most of the time leveling the land to build outdoor kitchens for them. The Purdue team paid for some ironsheets to roof the kitchens with. It’s quite amazing what a group of 14 volunteers along with a group of 20 Compassion kids can get accomplished in a couple of hours. The same amount that it would take a single person more than a week to do. The Purdue team worked diligently. They used hoes to move the earth and then machetes to dig holes for the poles to build the kitchens. Along with that they built a couple of outdoor bathing areas using local, available materials as well as drying racks for dishes. We also hauled large timber to be used for construction of the kitchens. It felt like we walked a mile but I’m sure it was closer to ½ kilometer, but it was up the side of a hill/mountain. Wherever we go small crowds of locals follow us, especially kids. It makes for great picture taking. What you do is take a picture of them and then show them the picture. Inevitably when you go to take a picture of one of them, whoever is around tries to sneak slip into the picture and before you know it, what was supposed to be a picture of one turns into 5 then 10 then 20. Today we had the Compassion kids at the center for our Center Day. The Purdue team helped to teach some of the classes and then taught them some new games to play including ‘steal the bacon’, ‘Chinese tag’, and the animal/pillow game, which was always a camp favorite when I was a camp counselor. They did a drama to start out the day. One called the pool which I’ve done a dozen or so times. It’s a great illustration about how some people come to the pool, which is God in this case, and just wash up or wade around for fun, but how the main character wants to and eventually does jump in in an effort to completely surrender to God. It’s a powerful visualization. They did it in church this past Sunday too. Finally, we stopped in to tour a small lemongrass factory where they process lemongrass and make lemongrass candles, soap, foot-soak and tea. The lemongrass candles repel mosquitoes and smell quite a bit better than citronella candles. It’s altogether strange to have these guys here. I still just can’t get my head around it. It’s strange and fantastic. Strange in a good way. “This is Africa” like they say in the movie Blood Diamond, so it’s just out of the ordinary to have 2 of my good friends here along with a team of 12 missionaries from my college church to be hanging around my tiny little African village. They’re going through all the things I and my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers went through in our training. They are picking up the local language and improving their Uganglish (a way of speaking English that infuses English with an African dialect but it makes you feel like you’re talking to a retard because you’re speaking so slowly and deliberately). Also… My cat is pregnant. Should give birth in a week or two.

Time for Church

2007-05-14T09:11:00.000+03:00

The Purdue group is here to do some mission work. That involves some dramas and talking at the local church. But before that, on Saturday, we visited Itojo Hospital which is a JCRC HIV/AIDS hospital. Unfortunately for us they conduct their HIV outreaches and programs on Tuesdays and Fridays, which are our Center Days when the Compassion kids come. So on Saturday we went to visit the hospital. I thought it’d be really interesting to show them a 3^rd world hospital and to especially visit the children’s ward.

We had to first stop by the doctor’s office in my village to pick him up. He was to go with us. He is a doctor at this particular hospital and he was to be our tour guide.

The hospital is a one story structure with several small buildings surrounding it which serve as the staff quarters I believe. There are usually a number of people around, mostly because it’s not the nurses that tend to basic needs of patients, it’s the family members. They bring rolled up mattresses and basins for sleeping and washing clothing while they’re there. They often sleep in the aisles or under the beds of the patience. Patients all stay in a dorm like environment rather than individual rooms. The rooms have a faint but distinct urine smell which zaps the nose upon first entering but eventually settles to habituation. We first visited the lab. Nothing really out of the ordinary here. Basic lab equipment. Microscopes, a few chemicals around, a hand operated centrifuge. It looked a little disheveled but not too bad. We made our way through the hospital stopping at but not going into the theater which is their term for surgery. Eventually we made it to the children’s ward. The first thing to notice was the mosquito nets that were hanging above each bed. A welcomed sight. Children from 12 on down were scattered throughout the room with their parents. There were around 25 or so children and 16 of us to visit them, so we may have been a bit overwhelming and judging by their faces at first I’d say that’s an accurate description. The Purdue girls had made some small care packages with markers and stickers which we quickly passed out. The group was tentative at first, maybe not sure what to think or how exactly to approach these children and gawking parents, but eventually they were well infused with them and I had a difficult time pulling them away. They just loved on the kids and spent some quality time with them. The gawks slowly turned into smiles and the smiles into laughter

The next stop was Mbarara where we met up with several Peace Corps Volunteers for some Muzungu Food or a reasonable facsimile. One of the themes we’ve had this week has been “Lowered Expectations”. When you lower your expectations, things aren’t too bad. When you don’t expect a good pizza and then you get an average pizza, it’s somehow ok. So we all ate and laughed together. Eating together, especially in Uganda amongst Peace Corps Volunteers is a fantastic social experience which goes on for hours, in part because it typically takes 2 hours between the time we place an order and we receive our food (no exaggeration…). But when you have lowered expectations… it doesn’t seem to matter as much. The last thing we did in Mbarara was to hit the disco. One of the Ugandans with us had a brother who was a DJ in the VIP room, upstairs. As Marcus says, “Once you go VIP, you don’t go back.” It’s just a slightly different crowd of people who are willing to pay a little more to dance. I tried to warn my visitors of what they would see, and they basically saw what I told them. In the downstairs part of this club there are mirrors all around the walls. The Ugandans dance with themselves in front of these mirrors for hours. And they can’t dance well at all! In fact they are horrible dancers, flat out! They love to dance, they are just terrible at it. I blame it on not having grown up watching MTV. I don’t know what else to attribute it to. Another funny sight is the guys dancing together. They get in groups of 2 or 3 and dance together. They dance like there’s no tomorrow. They throw their arms in the air and dance like it’s 1999 and they don’t know or care that guys don’t dance with guys. Homosexuality is not a thing in this country and guys are openly affectionate to one another but, I assure you, not in a gay way. So they dance together. It’s funny to see and a little weird to get used to, but always entertaining.

So after a late night of dancing it was up at 5:30am to drive into my village for church at 8. I knew church wouldn’t start at 8, but being that we were the main part of the program I knew we had to be there around that time. So we got there at 8 and waited, and waited, and waited. By 8:45 nobody had arrived. We were supposed to lead the church’s first English service. Then the Compassion staff arrived. Finally we decided to just begin in hopes that people would eventually show up, but they scrapped our program. Instead of the Purdue team leading worship and doing 3 dramas and a little bit of preaching, they were reduced to 1 song and 1 drama and the rest was to be lead by the canon, the religious leader of the Anglican church, and my neighbor. Everything went well and, yes, eventually, people started showing up. By the time it was over there may have been around 20 people there.

The second service was another story. There was a group from a neighboring church that had been invited to do some presenting. Seats were saved for them. The Purdue team did their 3 dramas and they did a fantastic job with them. This 2^nd service isn’t an English service. It’s in Runyankore. The dramas we did were in English, which some of the people understand, but probably only around 15% or so. This service was packed! I would guess around 600 plus. Black faces stretched all the way to the back of the church. So after each drama they explained what they were about and had a translator translate for them. I was able to get them out of staying for the whole 4 hour service (in a foreign language). I did provide them with reading material in case we did have to stay, but it wasn’t the case.

Food has been a tough thing for them. At firs they told me that the food wasn’t too bad, which it’s not, but then the reality of eating almost the exact same thing every single day set in and they changed their minds. They’re eating about ½ what the Ugandans eat, just picking a few things here and a few things there, but it is tough and different. So they made it through another lunch and then they all crashed hard for naps in the afternoon. It’s already been a long, challenging week and we were all tired.

The highlight of the day was going to the 2 missionaries house for a cookout and movie. They had hot dogs (kind of), potato chips, pineapple (which the Purdue team LOVES), coleslaw, baked beans and for dessert… chocolate chip cookies baked in their oven! A little slice of America and heaven combined! We ended up watching the God’s Must Be Crazy, a mockumentary about life in the Kalahari Desert, a fictional tale of a bush man who finds a Coke bottle and travels with it to find the end of the earth to throw it off and what he encounters along the way.

I can’t believe they’ll be going back in a week. I feel like they just got here and I’ve so enjoyed having them here. I’ve been going non stop and have been tired each day, but it’s been that good tired. That tired you feel when you’ve been doing something you like all day and have just wanted to keep working even after it’s time to stop and go home. It’s been something like that.

Also…

Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times about the New York Giants defensive end who is from Uganda who came back to visit his family for 3 weeks for the first time since grade school and since becoming a millionaire in the NFL. It’s an interesting perspective.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/sports/football/09giants.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Here come the kids...

2007-05-14T09:10:00.000+03:00

Today was the first day that the Purdue team was to work with all of the Compassion kids. I wasn’t sure how everything would go. We do things differently here. The schedule is much more flexible and much less planned than anything I’ve ever done before. It’s tough to speak to kids who are in 4^th grade and lower. There are cultural barriers as well. At first, it was like a Junior High dance. The kids came and stayed on once side of the compound and the Purdue team stayed on the other. Then it was time for the kids to have their devotionals in the church, so they gathered together. I told the Purdue team before they went in to just disperse themselves throughout the kids. “Get right in the middle of all of them.”

I think that the reason they just stood there, staring in awe at the kids was that of bewilderment at first. This group of 300 African kids singing in unison songs thick with their little African accents. They just stood there and smiled at them. Amazed, I guess you could say. Just smiling. The kids were singing, dancing, drumming and generally excited about singing songs to Jesus, in part because there were 14 visitors there, and in part because that’s what they do every center day that they come.

We led them in a few fun, kid songs and then did a mime type drama teaching the kids to follow Jesus, followed by a short sermon by Ken. It was the teams first taste of Compassion and I think it set the tone for the rest of the day. The excitement and enthusiasm was there.

Afterwards the team spread themselves out and worked with the different classes of kids (primary 1-7 and secondary) teaching them from their textbooks (each class has a textbook, not each child). They taught science, math, English and social studies. They also played games. Some were the games that the kids knew and had to teach, like my favorite game, seven stones, where 2 kids stand 30 ft apart with one person in the middle who stacks 7 stones on top of each other while the other two try to tag the middle person with a soft ball (not to be confused with a softball) that’s made of plastic bags. Kind of like dodge ball, but on acid! Oh, and did I mention that only girls play this game? Boys don’t want anything to do with it, but it’s my favorite Ugandan game!!

I loved how the Purdue team just loved on the kids. Normally there’s only one white guy to go around to 300 kids, but here they were well dispersed. One girl was sitting in the middle of a swarm of kids, telling fairy tales like Cinderella and Snow White! Others were helping the kids write letters to their sponsors. The kids were touching their arms and their hair. Usually about 5 children were holding hands with, pulling arms of, or generally tugging on the Purdue team members, and let me assure you, the team was eating it up! They loved it as much as the kids did. Brad was tossing a football around with them, which they’d never seen a football before. One team member was just sitting in a room answering questions about American with a group of the secondary school students. Then it was on to duck-duck-goose, freeze tag and volleyball. That was followed up by relay races, including balancing an egg on a spoon – race, and a bottle filling contest involving handing water from one person to the next… the kids beat the Purdue team on that one! Those kids wore us OUT, but it was easily the best center day that I’ve ever been a part of. At the end of the day we passed out bags of goodies (stickers, pencils, bubbles, crayons, etc) to each and every child. We had spent HOURS the day before getting things sorted evenly. Before the Purdue team came, many students (poor college students at that) had filled boxes with gifts to give to the Compassion kids. And normally the kids RUN away when they’ve been dismissed from Compassion, but this time they stayed around and didn’t want to leave their new American friends. I’m sure the feeling was mutual!

Community work at it's greatest

2007-05-14T09:08:00.000+03:00

The plan today was to take the Purdue group out into the field and work along side a group of the older Compassion kids. To see the things that tourists fly by in their chauffeured SUVs on their way to visit the gorillas or the lions or elephants. To see the homes of these poor children, to see where they sleep and the gardens where they grow their food. It was a day of working but also of being like a sponge and just soaking in the surroundings. As expected, and as I explained to the group the day before, we planned on leaving around 9am, but we didn’t actually get to where we were going for a variety of reasons including that we were leaving on ‘African Time’ until around 11am. The first stop was at one of the poorest families I’ve seen in Compassion. A family of 11 people, a father and mother and 9 children living in a very small 2 room home with only one twin mattress amongst them. They didn’t have much work for us to do there at their home, which was the plan. The father is a hard worker and capable of taking care of the place, not to mention the fact that we are untrained in the skill of African construction using only local materials to build with. So instead of doing work there, we brought gifts: plates and cups, sauce pans, 3 mattresses, 4 blankets, corrugated metal sheets to replace the banana leaves they had thatched together for their leaky roof, plus mosquito nets. We also left them with a small amount of money to use for food or medical purposes. While we were there, the mother, an already sickly lady, was coughing and her twins were burning up with fever, do likely to malaria. Like in the recent TV episode of American Idol, we went inside their home and asked them to show us how they sleep at night. They have 8 of them in one room and 3 in the other. It was surreal to see it and imagine them bedding down for the night, huddling together, crowding together on thin mats and pieces of foam used as bedding.

We then divided up into smaller groups. One group worked at a home, leveling ground for a new small structure to be constructed. We again delivered the necessary corregated metal sheets for the roof. The group labored on putting up the mud on a pit latrine that was in very poor condition. Working alongside the Compassion kids and staff they learned how to get muddy and to ‘throw’ the mud onto the structure. It almost looked like fun rather than work, like kids playing in the mud. While they were doing that a small group went down into the valley with machetes to cut some grass to be used for the roof. A pit latrine doesn’t necessarily need a nice roof, you’re only there for a few minutes a day. The kids they went with really opened up during that time and started asking the Purdue guys what the climate was like and what kind of food they ate in America. When they got to the grass to cut, the Compassion kids were doing all of the work, mostly because they were more skilled at cutting the grass than the Americans. One of the African kids was wearing a watch that had a picture of Osama Bin Laden and it had the words “I Love You” across it. Thinking this was odd, one of the members asked if he really did love Bin Laden and he exclaimed ‘Yes. Of course.’ When he was asked why, his response was, “Because he’s white,” meaning that if you’re white you’re intelligent, respected, rich, holy, etc.

The other group went down into the garden to do some digging. It was comical to watch the American girls using these hoes. Some of the girls are even ‘farm girls’ and they were learning this for what seemed like the first time. Needless to say there was a crowd of locals that gathered who were quite entertained by watching a half dozen white girls trying to dig, and the girls seemed to enjoy the friendly badgering. The Ugandans even took the hoes from them a time or two to show them how to use it. The Compassion girls were working along side and it was a neat bonding experience. Even some of the little, little kids, who gathered by the dozens to watch the foreigners who had magically appeared in their neighborhoods, grabbed a hoe and tried digging and did a pretty good job of it.

The last home we went to was of one of our Compassion kids who lived with her brother because both of their parents had died. What was neat was when we first got to the area she was fetching water from a protected spring, so we were able to walk the ¾ mile from the spring to her home, except we weren’t carrying a container of 5 L of water (around 50 lbs maybe) on our heads!! We dug weeds in their gardens while a small group worked on building a bathing area, which is a simple outdoor structure which provides privacy for someone to bathe in. They used only stuff that was on the property to build it. Some straight branches for the frame, banana fibers to tie the frame together and then dried banana leaves for privacy, in addition to some flat rocks for them to stand on while bathing.

Afterwards we talked as a group. About what we saw and felt and experienced. We talked about the first poor, poor family and how what we had given them was life changing for the entire family and how it cost us only around $200 or less than $15 per group member. We talked about the absolute gratitude of the family and the amazement of the neighbors that this group of collegiate Americans had traveled from so far and cared so much to give this generously to this far corner of remote Africa. We talked about all of the kids who followed us everywhere and loved just watching and carrying our hoes as we walked from one home to another. We talked about how grateful we were for the Compassion kids who went with us, not only to show us what to do, but for the opportunity to work alongside them and to get to know them a little better and to appreciate how hard they work and without complaining or being told to keep working. We talked about taking vehicles down footpaths, way up in the hills where possibly no 4 wheeled vehicles had gone before. We talked about the difference between seeing this poverty on TV or reading about it in a magazine and then actually seeing it and walking into the homes of the poorest of the poor. And I guess I was impressed that we didn’t talk about how grateful we should be because we are Americans and of what we have, but instead we talked about what more we can do to share and to help. Maybe that’s the idealistic and mind of a group of college students who want to change the world in very tangible ways. It’s a good way to think. I think I was most impressed by Francis. He is my neighbors son who tagged along with us today. He’s a college student in Uganda and like most college students on vacation from school, he was looking for something to do. He said that he had never experienced anything like what we did today. He had never gone to visit the poorest of the poor. He had never actually seen his own people this way and how they live way up in the hills and it left an impression on him, that he saw it and that we just did some simple things to help them. To have a Ugandan express those sentiments really put it into a greater perspective.

The Purdue Group

2007-05-14T09:07:00.001+03:00

Shortly after I arrived in Uganda, I started thinking about how neat it would be if Purdue Campus House would send a small team of college students here for a mission trip, similar to what I did when I went to Mexico and largely a reason that I’m doing the Peace Corps now. I had an email typed up and ready to send in, but I waited for some reason. Then, unexpected and shockingly, I received a message from them stating how they were interested in sending a small team to Uganda and were wondering if I could help them out in any way… I couldn’t believe it to say the least. So… several months later, it’s all set, they’re now here for a little less than 2 weeks. They are living with local Ugandan families and are working with Compassion. I love the schedule I’ve got for them. It shouldn’t be too rigorous. You don’t want to try to squeeze too much into it. There’s only so much time after all. We’ll be working with the kids when they come to the center, going out to the kids’ homes and doing some basic work around their houses and gardens, donating things like goats, roofing material, toys (which were bought and donated by Purdue students). The Purdue team had to raise about $2500 each for their trip here. 14 of them. A mix of students, former students, and 2 team leaders whom I went to school with when I was at the Purdue Campus House. They will be visiting an HIV/AIDS hospital one day and hanging out with Peace Corps Volunteers one night for good food and dancing. They will be doing some dramas at 2 local churches and they’ll also be going on a safari while they’re here. It should be an absolutely amazing and eye opening 2 weeks for them and I’m glad that I’m even in a position where I can just be a part of it all.

Home

2007-05-14T09:04:00.000+03:00

Home was wonderful, but I was ready to come back to Uganda to be honest. I don’t really have a place at home now. My home, work and friends are in Uganda right now. Here are the highlights of my trip home:

-Running the Boston Marathon

-Running the Indianapolis Mini Marathon

-Visiting a friend who has recently started a new ministry in Tennessee. Sharing the excitement of this growing, living, moving ‘new thing’ and seeing so much volunteership from the congregation to make the whole production work. (which by the way is being done in a functioning movie theater, so they have to set up and tear down their church every week!)

- Watching an old college roommate lead worship at his new church, a campus ministry, like I’d seen him lead worship so many times on the camp team we’d traveled on for years during the hot Indiana summers.

- A marriage proposal that took place after ‘senior night’ at the same campus ministry of people I’d never met before, but he wanted to propose there because of what that place had meant to both of their personal and Christian lives.

-Laughing so hard I cried at some of the same old things we laughed at when we were college roommates.

- Visiting a long time friend whom I only knew for a week but hit it off with like we’d always been friends. Seeing him teach his college freshman English class as he takes masters classes in creative writing, watching him interact with his students as they came in for conferences and having a piece of a book “White Noise” (not like the movie) read to me (which sounds corny, but it was cool, trust me).

- Attending a poetry reading with some friends of his (again, sounds corny and maybe gay, but you had to be there)

- Visiting my brother’s high school business class. (He actually teaches out of a trailer classroom because they have run out of class rooms. The kids call it the trailer park.).

- Collecting 40 pairs of running shoes that had been gathered by some teachers I know.

-Going back to the school I used to teach at and sharing with the geography class about my experiences in Uganda.

-Speaking EVERYWHERE! Rotary Club, Lions Club, Optimist Club, Kiwanis Club, high schools, junior high schools, elementary schools, churches, amongst friends, relatives and strangers. I talked to groups as large as 100+ and to as few as 7. Everywere from an hour to 15 minutes.

-Hardly ever buying a meal! Most times whoever I was with offered to pick up the tab! I didn’t object! I even got a free haircut!

-Eating Pizza King Pizza, cherry pop-tarts, McDonalds, chicken Quesadillas, fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, pancakes and sausage, zingers, waffles, ice cream sandwiches…

- Visiting with soooo many friends and family.

- Spending time with nieces and nephews. Everything from wading in the creek to seeing Spider Man III on opening night.

- Attending rehearsals and then performing (in a tux) with the Rushville Community Choir directed by David Doyle, one of my favorite people of all time! Can’t describe how cool this was.

- Morning jogs through my home town, down my old paper routes and past where my grandparents used to live.

-Being able to talk for hours on the phone with a close friend.

- The smells of home.

- Starbucks

- Visiting with the group of 14 students and leaders from Purdue who were preparing to travel to Uganda to do some work with Compassion in my village on a mission trip. Answering dozens of questions and inquiries to prepare them for the trip.

-Watching the NFL Draft and throwing a football around.

- Receiving money from generous and caring individuals who just wanted to help the poor children of Compassion where I work.

I’ll save what the experience was like to be back home for when I go home for good. I could talk about it, but I’d rather wait and tackle it all at once.

Ugandan teenager meets his American sponsor

2007-04-25T21:26:00.000+03:00

I came across this article written by a man who came to Uganda to visit his Compassion child. It's a neat article and he tells how Willy, his Ugandan child, was moved to tears when he saw him and that he said, "Next to God, you are the most important person in my life." Check it out. Ugandan teenager meets his American sponsor.

The Boston Marathon

2007-04-17T18:25:00.001+03:00

The Boston Marathon

The weather prediction for the Boston Marathon was predicted to be the worst weather in the 111 year HISTORY of the race. Temps in the lower 40s, heavy rain, 30 mph headwinds and 3-5 inches of rain expected over the weekend. Bad, bad running weather to say the least!

I awoke way to early, a combination of nerves and jet-lag, the morning of the marathon at around 4am. It’s always a good idea to get a great nights sleep 2 nights before a marathon for that exact reason. The wind and rain was so noisy and irritating outside that I had to put on my iPod to drown out the impending weather.

I arrived at the pickup place at 6am, 4 hours before the start of the run. Rain still coming down. I boarded the bus and arrived soon there after at the athletes village. Tents were set up to shelter runners from the rain and cold, but only enough tents for about 7,000 runners, not the 22,500 runners scheduled to run the race. The weather was so bad that almost 2,500 runners didn’t even bother to pick up their racing bibs. The rains continued right up to the start of the race. The atmosphere was dampened as runners just waited and waited for the race to actually get underway.

Finally, they began moving runners to the start line. Minutes before the start, the rain picked up one last time, almost as a last hurrah. Then, the race was underway. The 111^th Boston Marathon had begun and very soon into it… miraculously the rain stopped! All this forecasted rain and wind just seemed to suddenly stop. It was still chili but not cold.

The tempo was fast, downhill for the first bit. The pace was fast, but I held back. I settled into a fast pace, hoping it wasn’t too fast. I always like to buddy up with someone running my pace and I did that, locking on with a man who had a GPS watch which he was using to monitor his pace. The course eventually went by a couple of universities where university students were lining the course, screaming for the oncoming runners. As I approached, it sounded like a football game was going on, they were so loud. The crowd, obviously thinned by the weather, was so enthusiastic and helpful. Pound for pound they were one of the best marathon crowds I’ve ever witnessed. At about the 15 mile mark, as is usually the case, I could tell that I had started at a pace that was faster than I could handle. I began to back off my pace in order to just hold on and finish in a decent time. Then came the infamous ‘heartbreak hill’, nearly a ½ mile hill at the 20 mile mark. Many runners began walking ½ way up. After running so far and so hard, it’s so difficult to push up and over that spot. I always begin to question my sanity at about the 20 mile point. “Why am I doing this? Is this pure insanity? Who in their right mind runs this far!” Usually there is an onslaught of runners walking at this point, but This Was Boston and the most dedicated runners in the world were running here. The walkers were few and far between.

As the race wore on, I began to feel coldness in my hands. My extremities begin to loose mobility towards the end of the race. My fingers try to open to grab a cup of water or gel, but they don’t respond as usual. Finally, downtown Boston was in sight and I knew the end was near. Then it was onto Boylston Street and the finish line was in full sight. I crossed the finish line with a time of 3:34. A respectable time.

Running the Boston marathon was a dream come true to say the least. Especially coming in the middle of my Peace Corps experience, coming home to the United States and staying with my friends Al and Kate. It was an experience I’ll never forget and will count as one of my greatest life achievements.

Momma I'm Coming Home

2007-04-10T11:56:00.000+03:00

Momma, I’m coming home!

I’m coming home for a vacation THIS WEEK! Needless to say it’s about the only thing I’ve been able to think about lately! I can’t wait to indulge myself in some food other than rice and beans, watch SportsCenter, have the freedom to drive myself around again… the list goes on.

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend is like Thanksgiving back home in some ways. It’s a four day weekend that includes Easter Monday in which many businesses are closed. Many people travel and spend time with their families. It’s a time of eating and visiting. Some volunteers went into Kampala for the COS (close of service) party for the volunteers who are about to wrap up their service, but I stayed around, partly, because I don’t particularly enjoy 6 hour bus rides into the city, especially when I’ll be making that journey later this week.

The president and his wife were in town to attend church services here. They’re both from around this area. On Sunday morning, when I went for my morning jog I was met by several soldiers around my house (which is near the church they were to attend) with AK-47s and a metal detector for people to pass through who were to attend the church. That’s the common practice for the general public to be attending anything with the First Family.

Back to School

Bruno’s going back to school. We decided to help Bruno go back to school to study tourism. It’s a 2 year degree and he eventually wants to work in Bwindi, where the gorillas are. Everyone seems to know and like Bruno. I’ve never met a Ugandan, and maybe never will, who is as hospitable as he is. He really treats customers with respect and prompt service, which is SEVERLY lacking here, in part because they generally make less than $1 per day and don’t make any tips. So we decided to go in together with the other ‘Muzungus’ around and pool our resources together to put him through school. He’ll be in Kabale which is about an hour away. It’s his home area. We’ll be really sad to see him go, but it’s definitely for the best!

Invited Guest

I’ve talked before about a missionary couple that’s just moved here. They’re working with a couple of local churches in this area. They are also teaching music and English during the week. They invited me to their home on Sunday for a GREAT meal of Pizza (yes, Pizza!) and AWESOME brownies! I didn’t think one could make brownies like that in this country! We chatted, played cards and watched a movie! It was a really peaceful, quaint time and a nice way to spend Easter. They’ve begun a small farm. They now have 2 puppies, a kitten and some chickens. I told them they now need a goat to mow the lawn! It’s nice having other ex-pats around. It’s nice to relate together about experiences that we’re having here and to share good food, good company and movies. For many reasons, it’s sometimes difficult to have those same relationships with Ugandans. I have it with a few, but it’s really tough. It’s just 2 different worlds clashing. Different language, different interests, different tastes, different styles.

Bike Stolen

My bike was stolen and recovered this week. I accidentally left it locked up outside where Jacob works. When I went there in the morning the lock had been removed. The night watchmen told me that at about 5am someone came and broke the lock and started to ride off on the bike when they chased him down and caught him. They have warned me about leaving my bike out there before, I partly just thought they were being overly cautious, but I guess not. So now it’s recovered and I need to pay them something for catching the thief.

Newspaper Article

The following is the recent article I’m submitting to my local paper

Not Your Father’s Peace Corps

This isn’t your father’s Peace Corps! My idea of the Peace Corps before I came was that I would be living in a mud hut in a very rural African village a thousand miles from nowhere. One of my biggest concerns was what would happen to me if I became deathly ill and couldn’t contact anyone for help and would inevitably die from some strange African disease and my body not be found for months! Although each Peace Corps Volunteer’s experience is exponentially different from one another, my perception and my reality also differed greatly. For one, I have a cell phone which I use several times a day to send text messages to friends both here and in the US. I use my laptop on a daily basis for everything from email, internet, blogging (http://pervispc.blogspot.com) databases and to watch DVDs which I rent from my village. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that getting here –leaving friends and family, selling my home and truck- was much more difficult than actually being here (although being here has its own daily quirks, believe me), and that I have a rich network of support and friendship from the 70 or so other PCVs who currently serve in Uganda with me, as well as a top notch PC staff, including 2 nurses on call 24/7. The reality also is that, as one of the only Caucasians in my village, if I do get sick or something does happen to me, the villagers couldn’t help but take notice.

A part of the work that I do with Compassion International, the organization I work with via the Peace Corps, is Home Visits. The Compassion staff is required to visit all 285 kids’ homes once or twice a year to check on their living conditions and to see if they are using the items that Compassion has given them (mattresses, mosquito nets, etc). Sometimes kids manage to sell the items they’ve received before they ever reach home! I both love and hate these visits. I love them because I get to see and do things that others don’t. No tourist gets this deep into villages and into homes. I hate it because I see what real poverty and desperation looks like. Entire families living in extreme poverty, which is defined as earning less than a dollar a day. Recently I went on one such visit.

We found a Compassion family whose house was located way up on a hilltop. When we reached there, we found the father and mother along with 5 of their 9 children (Ugandan women average 7 children). The home in which they lived was a small mud home, approximately 12ft x 6ft, consisting of 2 rooms. The leaky roof of their home was made from banana fibers that they had gathered near their home, unable to afford $60 to properly roof using metal sheets. Upon entering the home, they had only 1 twin mattress, which Compassion had provided them, and no furniture whatsoever. Whoever didn’t fit on that mattress slept on various portions of mats on the cold, dirt floor. Clothes were lying out on the grass to dry, which were washed, I’m sure, without soap. Clothes which had so many holes they resembled Swiss cheese. They wouldn’t have made suitable rags, I assure you. The mother of this family, a hard working and likable woman, was so weak and sickly that they said that birth control methods (pills or injections) would endanger her life and were too risky. Condoms, though prevalent and accessible, are either too expensive for the poor or are considered “un-manly”. Without intervention, it’s quite possible that this family will grow to 14 children! When we identify a family in such need we discuss what should be done. We take pictures and write a proposal to the Compassion head office requesting assistance which can range from land, new housing or income generating projects. Whatever the staff, along with the family, agrees upon that they need to achieve a better standard of living.

Compassion works. I’ll personally vouch for it. I’ve seen lives literally saved because of the Compassion program. I’ve also seen those same Save the Children commercials on local Christian TV at 2am that you’ve seen. The ones where you wonder if they really do help the kids they portray. Their job, it seems, is to find the poorest of poor children, the ones covered in flies, and then emotionally move people to help. That’s my take at least. But those conditions are real, they do exist. I’ve seen some of them. I’ve been in their homes. Fortunately, I don’t see them every day. Fortunate, because not everyone here lives like that. But some do. And I see the need for aid, development organizations and people to help people out of the recurring poverty trap. A trap that they can’t get out of through hard work alone. Not without assistance.

When I first arrived here I found another family in a similar situation. A family of 5 living in a rented 6ft x 6ft mud room. One small, twin bed. Two twin mattresses. They even had chickens sleeping in that same room because they had nowhere else to keep them. The father had been killed as a soldier and the mother -another hard working woman- along with an elderly grandmother were left to work a small piece of land which they rented to grow food. Along with gardening, the mother earned around $10 a month doing casual labor at a nearby secondary school. $10 per month for the entire family of five.

We were able to secure funding ($500) to buy them a plot of land and construct them a modest house. Now they’re getting out of the poverty trap of just trying to survive and soon they’ll be able to make a living off their land. They’ve been given a chance. And that’s all anyone can ask for.

The Recriuter

2007-04-05T08:56:00.000+03:00

The Recruiter

My years of teaching has given me some useful tools for the Peace Corps. One lesson that I as a teacher learned was that you sometimes have to recruit kids to take your classes. It was a lesson that Mr Florence, my supervising teacher for student teaching and Lanny Parker, my principal at the school I taught at both reiterated. My running club was still going on in the mornings but it had been several weeks since any of the girls had run with me. I was afraid that the head teacher at the secondary school had in some way restricted them from joining running. Girls have different rights in this country. Girls, in some ways, are viewed as second class citizens. It’s changing, but that has been the culture here for years and years. Just this morning I heard on the BBC that there is a movement to change the law which states that it is not a crime if a married man commits adultery with a non-married woman, but if a married woman commits adultery with a non-married man then that is a punishable offense. When I went to the head teacher to talk to him about it he told me that he hadn’t restricted them from joining our running but that maybe they weren’t choosing to run because, as he explained it, girls prefer to do less physical activity and maybe they don’t enjoy running. He went on to explain that in Africa, when a fat man walks into a room, people applaud because of his large size. Size in this country equals prestige. People are often surprised, he told me, when they find out that he is the head teacher at that school because he is a small but older man. The same can be said of girls, they want to be bigger and not exercise, though this conflicts with what they see and hear from western influence of movies and music.

I decided to take the law into my own hands. That evening I went to the area where they play soccer and netball after school. I saw a group of girls that normally ran with me in the mornings playing netball, a game similar to basketball but without dribbling or backboards. I had never played netball and had always wanted to, being a Hoosier and a basketball player myself. So I asked if I could join and of course they were excited to have a white guy jump into the game. We played for a while. It’s a difficult game with a lot of running up and down the grass court. People say it’s closer to the original game that James Naismith invented than today’s modern game. We had a blast playing. Height plays a big factor in this game so I was instantly a prized possession on whichever team I was on. By the end of the game a small crowd had gathered to see the white guy playing.

Afterwards I asked the girls if they were still interested in running in the mornings. They said they were. I went on to tell them how running can benefit them in school as well as becoming better netball players. They agreed to meet the next morning for ‘jogging’. I still wasn’t sure if I would see them or not.

The next morning, at around 6:15am, I headed out the door to see who had come out for running. To my great surprise, the girls were already there, lined up, ready to begin. They asked me where I had been saying that they had been waiting there for 45 minutes! I reminded them that I had told them 6:15 sharp and that I was sorry that they had waited. In all there were 22 girls that ran with us that morning. Many of them for the first time. I was glad to have them join us.

I wish I could say that they continued to run on the other days but unfortunately they haven’t joined us since then. Maybe I need to recruit again, I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like the work is never over, even when you get a taste of success.

Queen Elizabeth National Park

A group of college students are coming for a 2 week period to work with Compassion. I’m taking them on a safari while they’re here. They need to be tourists for at least a little while during their stay. I visitied Queen Elizabeth National Park to make room reservations. I had been through there before but not quite like this. It was really cool. I saw buffalo, elephants, Ugandan kob (like deer) and warthogs. And I was just driving through the park, I wasn’t on an animal hunt. The man that drove me into the park was telling me about something I had read in the paper. Apparently a lion had attacked a man who lived on the outskirts of the park. The villagers were able to get the lion off the man and after some discussion they decided to go after the lion. This guy had driven this man to the hospital, only to have him die there later. The villagers killed the lion with sticks and stones, believing that the lion could attack another man if it’s already attacked this one.

There aren’t any lions where I live. Not many wild animals at all, really. But it’s interesting to me that this happened a few hours from where I live.

And Finally…

I ate rabbit this weekend. Someone had given Jacob a rabbit and he made a stew of it. It wasn’t bad. Jacob said, “Tastes like chicken, but more gamey.” Not sure what that means exactly. I used to raise rabbits as pets, and I couldn’t help but think about ol’ Thumper and Bumper as I was dining on my cuisine. Don’t know that I’ll ever eat it again.