Turkey Time, Part One

In the last post, which, I know, was a long time ago, I mentioned a turkey project. It was an idea and plan that came from Okwakol John Michael, one of the volunteers I trained as a home-based HIV/AIDS counselor last year. He gathered a group of ten individuals from his village, Odwarat, some ten or fifteen kilometres from town, all of them living with HIV or AIDS, that would raise turkeys, keeping and feeding and breeding them to expand their flock, as an IGA, a way to make money to pay for antiretroviral treatment, or school fees for their children, or food, or whatever, along with more turkeys. A month or two after he first came to me with the idea, and after a lot of support from some wonderful people (you know who you are; embrace that warm-and-fuzziness that you're more than welcome to feel), we bought the first group of turkeys, seven females, and made plans to buy three males when I got back from a trip to Rwanda I had planned (which means we should be able to buy them this week, and stories from Rwanda will come shortly). We went together to Odwarat, north out of town and then east well off the main road down a narrow rutted dirt track, flooded over with massive puddles where it wasn't covered with five or six inches of loose sandy dirt, to where there was nothing to be seen but the occasional handful of huts interspersed between fields of sorghum and millet and cassava, to the home of the woman whose name I forgot who had turkeys for sale, stopping on the way to meet one of the group members and its treasurer. She showed us into the small hut, barely seven feet across, where she kept seven turkeys. They negotiated over the price, agreed on four of them, then we went back outside where they herded together three more from between the legs of a handful of cows and the trunks of orange trees. The sale complete, Okwakol took me down another narrower dirt path to his home, a couple huts of and a small, not-yet-finished square brick house and a mango tree in the middle of the compound under which his white-haired and smiling mother sat on a mat shelling a pile of groundnuts, to show me the turkey house the group had constructed, another small hut, the door latched and bolted with a shiny new gold padlock. He smiled and laughed and talked to me in way more Ateso than I could understand, but it was obvious --as it already was in the fact that he was wearing his best, shirt buttoned up to the collar, trousers pressed, grey blazer clean and smart-- that he was happy and grateful and hopeful and proud and the feeling was mutual.

Okwakol, checking out the turkeys.

Four of the birds he decided on.

Price negotiations.

Rounding up the other three turkeys.

Our turkey lady. (She was smiling and gregarious the whole time, Ugandans just don't smile for pictures.)

Okwakol, outside of the newly constructed turkey house, at his home. (He wasn't ready for the picture, so I was able to catch a smile.)

Okwakol and his mother, because she asked.





So, there it is, part one. It made for a pretty great morning, and hopefully it'll make for a pretty great, and long-lasting, source of income for the group, thanks again to some awesome people. Another update, more pictures, when we get the last three turkeys, hopefully in the next few days.

Less Serious, Probably More Boring

The last two posts were serious, and had little to do with what I've actually been up to, so here are a few random, short, potentially funny stories and updates.

1: I recently survived a crocodile attack. True story. More or less. True, it was only a baby crocodile, only about ten inches long, and it 'attacked' me only when I picked it up: it twisted its head back around, hissing, to bite me on the back of the hand between my thumb and index finger, and held on for a good ninety seconds before finally giving up its grip. And true, it didn't actually really break the skin much, but there were definitely teeth marks, and it was bruised for a few days. And that's how I survived a crocodile attack. It's actually not quite as cool as another time when we went to see the baby crocodile (it's in this little concrete pit enclosure down the hill from a place we stay in Jinja; I don't know why, but it is) and a friend of mine picked it up, it bit him on the finger, and his first instinct was to get it out of his hand. By throwing it. Right into someone's chest. So he actually wins, I think, as the only person (probably) ever to throw a crocodile at someone else. (I also got a pretty gnarly spider bite recently, which was much worse than the crocodile bite, and is probably actually going to be a nice scar. Uganda is apparently trying to eat me.)

2: Here's a list of some of the things that I've eaten recently, between various things trying to eat me–

• Cow shin: I've had this several times now, though it made me a little bit nauseous the first time. I ate it first when I went to my counterpart's home and she assured me that 'the part that presses the ground is the sweetest part.' It's not. I ate it for a second time when I was at the ajon circle (the local-beer-drinking place) and they had started serving food now, and I was told I had the choice between goat and cow, and I chose cow, for some reason, as if either would actually be a decent cut of meat, and it turned out to be the 'part that presses the ground' again. I'm pretty used to it now, though, and actually just order it willingly – when the choices are limited, that is.
• Goat pancreas: I've had this a few times, too. And it's actually good. They serve it dried, so it's kind of like if you were to make jerky out of liver and salt it. That sounds like something you'd want to eat, right?
• Goat tongue: The last time I was at the ajon circle and ordered the cow shin, I ate all of the meat –read: skin and gristle and fat– off the bone. I thought. Because there's not much there, so it's hard not to eat it all. I thought. The next time, though, we ordered food and my friend Martin turned back from the lady who makes the food to me, and said 'She is wanting to know if you would like the tongue of the goat.' I wanted to make sure I had heard correctly, and pointed inside my mouth: 'The tongue?' The laughter died down, and Martin said, 'Yes.' And I said, '...Sure.' She went off to serve up the food –the meat, or 'meat', comes with katogo, which is bananas boiled in a savory broth, and is one of my favorite foods here– and Martin leaned it and said, 'She is fearing that you don't like the molokon [cow shin] because you did not eat all of it last time.' Apparently, cleaning a quarter-inch of skin and gristle and fat off the six-inch-long, inch-and-a-half-diameter bone is not enough. I must have left an eighth of an inch of fat on there. Silly me. So I ate the goat tongue instead. Which was fine – I've eaten the entire face of a goat before anyway, in South Africa. No big deal.

3: There are a handful of work things that could keep me relatively busy for the last six months of my service, which makes me happy–

• The HIV counselor project is continuing and we've had good success with that; I'm going to try to go out with some of the counselors and collect first-hand (well, translated-first-hand) some of the success stories, which I think will be cool to see and meet these people and hear and record their stories directly.
• One of the counselors has created a group of people living with HIV/AIDS in his community who want to start a turkey-keeping project as an IGA (Income-Generating Activity). This comes after the handful of turkeys he already owned were stolen in the middle of the night, and the seedlings for the citrus-growing project that was supposed to start in their community were also stolen. But they put together an outline with a significant community-contribution and sustainability plan, which is always a good sign that it's going to be taken seriously, and so I'm going to be working with them to try to make that happen.
• Another counselor has people in his community saving money or pooling money together to buy seeds for keyhole gardens. I had told all of the counselors to encourage keyhole gardens (the mound-of-dirt style garden I planted –there are pictures on the blog, somewhere– which is good for people with HIV/AIDS as it allows you to grow the same amount of produce without having to move up and down rows in the garden), and they did, which was great – except that they all came back and said people needed seeds. I told them that people could mobilize –a favorite word in development-project-speak– for seeds, and I would love to help construct and plant the gardens. This was six months ago. I'd heard nothing back, other than that people wanted keyhole gardens and needed seeds, until a week or two ago. Finally.
• I'm going to get the life-skills club up and going again at the secondary school.
• I'm also going to try and start a football –soccer– league for kids who aren't in school, with a life-skills component, and I'm looking forward to that, if we can make it happen.

4: I killed my first chicken a couple weekends ago, a milestone moment in any white-guy-in-Africa story, and the only time I've ever killed anything but insects and spiders. I had gone to church with Mr Olinga, the security guard from my organization, because they were doing a fundraising auction to raise money for an event celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Catholic Diocese. People brought in g-nuts, cassava, chickens, goats, flour, among other things, and everything was auctioned off. I bought about seven pounds of g-nuts, which is awesome, and should last me probably until the end of my service. I was also given a chicken to auction. I awkwardly stammered through my Ateso numbers and the word chicken and the phrases 'Who wants?' and 'Any more?' until finally the bidding ended. I went to give the winner their brownish-red new chicken, its feet tied together with string, when they told me they had actually bought it for me. Someone I'd never met, and actually didn't end up meeting at all, spent 10,000 shillings on a chicken for me. Really nice of them, and it led to, later, after the auction was finished and we were clearing out, a sentence I'd never thought I'd hear in church: 'Daniel,' someone called out. 'Where is your cock?' I assured them I knew exactly where it was. When we left the church, we stopped first for lunch at the primary school across from the church, and then Mr Olinga and I went on to his place, walking between and over giant boulders, thin threads of pathways through tall grass, hot and bright sun, through homesteads of huts built up against the walls of rock, nothing else in sight but more rocks and grass and brush, me with a chicken in one hand –holding it by its feet, it hung upside down with splayed wings and flitting eyes– and a black plastic bag full of g-nuts in the other, and Mr Olinga with three more chickens and his wooden folding chair that he'd brought with him to church, and it was possibly one of the most visually 'African' experiences I've had, and then we were at his place, four or five huts and a mango tree for shade, the last homestead before the swamp. He showed me how to kill the chicken, then, after sharpening the knife on a rock. I yanked out a handful of feathers from the throat and, standing on the feet, took the head in my left hand and drew the knife across and back and across, and I must have done something not quite right, because blood sprayed out and speckled my pants and feet, hands and arms, but I finished and ten or fifteen seconds later, the chicken was finished writhing around, too. We put it in a pot of hot water, which makes it easier to pull the feathers out, and easier to strip the skin off the legs and feet. Mr Olinga's son and granddaughter finished cleaning and gutting it, and I walked home through the village with a whole raw chicken in a black plastic sack, salmonella probably festering in the 95 degree heat. I boiled the entire thing with I got home, for about an hour, and was proud while I ate an animal that had been alive an hour earlier and that I'd killed with my own hands (and a knife).

5: We're supposed to be at the tail-end of dry season right now, but it feels like we're still just right in the middle of it. It's been unbearably hot the last week or two, mid-nineties during the day, and not a whole lot cooler at night. My tap ran dry a few weeks ago, and stayed dry for about a week. I'd recently gotten an accidental buzzcut, though, and it proved to be the best accidental haircut I've ever gotten. It's much harder to tell that I haven't bathed in six days when my hair is only half-an-inch long. The smell is probably still there, but, hey, you get used to that. They've also started load-shedding again, which means they shut off power for any seemingly-random number of hours. This means that, without the fan on at night, I've taken to sleeping on my concrete floor. It's the only way that I can get moderately cool enough to actually get some sleep. We've been teased with rain over and over again, but I don't think it's rained for more than three hours total so far this year. I can't wait, though. It's like this, actually:

Sweet summer night and I'm stripped to my sheets, my forehead is leaking, the [fan] squeaks. A voice from the clock says 'You're not gonna get tired,' my bed is a pool, and the wall's on fire. Soak my head in the [basin] for a while, chills on my neck and it makes me smile, but my bones have to move and my skin's gotta breathe. Slide down the stairs to the heated street and the sun has left us with slippery feet. Rip off your sleeves, and I'll ditch my socks. We'll dance to the songs from the cars as they pass, weave through the cardboard, smell that trash. Walking around in our summertime clothes, nowhere to go while our bodies glow. And we'll greet the dawn in its morning blues, with purple yawn we'll be sleeping soon. When the sun goes down, we'll go out again. When the sun goes down, we'll go out again … Let's leave the sound of the heat for the sound of the rain. It's easy to sleep when it wets my brain. It covers my rest with a saccharine sheen, kissing the wind through my window screen.

6: I also recently saw a baby monkey drink beer out of a guy's mouth. Africa!

I Guess I'd Need a Flight Suit, Too

The other day, not long after my What Am I Doing Here moment, one of my HIV counsellors came into my office to drop off her notebook -- the ones that I gave everyone during the training, in which they're recording their visits to the various 'clients' (as we call them; Ugandans loving formalities as they do) in their communities. Her name is Atai Deborah. She's in her sixties; her CD4 count (the measure of the number of white blood cells in a person's body and a measure of how severely they've been affected by HIV, basically, as it attacks white blood cells) was once below 100 --a healthy, HIV-negative adult usually has a CD4 count of at least 800-- but now she's sturdy and strong; she's the chairperson of a committee that advocates for people with HIV/AIDS throughout the district; soft-spoken and intelligent and dedicated, and, well, the words that are coming to mind are wry and wizened, both of which, I think, work.

She sat down across from me. We went through the formalities of greeting. Then she told me a few stories from her recent client visits: someone had died; someone had gone for treatment and was getting healthier; someone else was sick; everyone was poor; there was one husband who works in Kampala, his wife lives here, she was pregnant and found out she was HIV+ when she went in for antenatal care but was afraid to tell her husband, afraid he'd beat her or leave her or beat her and then leave her, but then he came back from Kampala and tearfully admitted to her that he had recently found out that he was HIV+, at which point she disclosed her status to him, and they agreed to stay together, to stay healthy together; their baby was born, tested after three months, and was negative. Good things, bad things, the sorts of things that are all so unfortunately typical and expected that they just leave you feeling ... kind of ... neutral. Things are getting better for some people, things are getting worse for some people, and you just get used to it. Such as it is.

Amidst all of that, though, she tossed in one story. Not even a story, really: it was just a couple sentences, flowing out from a single line, that she tossed out there like no big deal. But it made me feel all sorts of good. Or, well, at least it tipped the meter slightly in the feeling good direction, at least for a while.

She said: And one man thanked me for saving his life.

It's not a quantifiable success. I didn't alleviate poverty, or help this man start a successful Income Generating Activity, or put his kids through school. (I mean, shoot: I didn't actually do anything. Though that's probably the best part. Theoretically. She had counselled him on the importance of Antiretroviral Therapy, etc. etc., and he had taken her up on her advice, decided to turn his life around, stop drinking alcohol and start living positively, as they say.) There aren't any numbers or data to prove anything really happened, apart from this throwaway line she dropped into the middle of series of stories. It's not a concrete success, really, that I can point to and say, This is what I did/built/achieved during my Peace Corps service: see how successful I was?, and it's only one man, and who knows what's going to happen in a week or year or the rest of his life. But. Even so, even though it's not something that I can touch and take pictures of and prove to everyone, and even if there's nothing else, nothing real, no sustainable or empowering or whatever success, nothing before that and nothing from here on out --though, ok, I know there were a few things before that, and I remain confident that there will be a few more things from here on out-- at least there's that, and I'll take it, and keep it and be proud of it.

My next project, I guess, building off of that, is to convince President Museveni that he needs (for the MiG fighter jets he spent 1,700,000,000,000 shillings on) an aircraft carrier in Lake Victoria.  

Because where else am I going to hang my giant Mission Accomplished banner?

One Year Wonder

I have been at site for over a year now.

Wait. No. That's not quite right.

I have been at site for over a year now!!!

That's better.

Seriously though. I can't quite believe it. I'm not sure where the last year (or 15 months, really, since we got here in August) has gone. Sometimes I feel like I haven't done anything important, haven't made a significant impact for the last 15 months, but sometimes I think I'm just too harsh on myself: living in rural Africa for a year by myself is kind of an accomplishment of its own, I guess, and if I'm honest, I know I've done some good work, even if it's still a little fewer and farther between that I want. But I'm working on that. At the very, very least, I've done a few things –

1: Made some of the best friends I've ever had, people that I'll know for the rest of my life.

2: Done and seen things that will make great stories to impress girls everyone with when I come home.

3: Not died.

– so really, all in all, even at the very, very least: success.

Here are some other things from a year in Ngora.

Favourite Thing I've Done in Ngora (Work Category): This is obviously the training of the HIV/AIDS counsellors. It was the first, so far only, really big project that I've pulled off on my own, and at least the training part went as well as I could've hoped. They're starting now to bring in their notebooks they've been documenting client visits in so that we can review them, and I'll write more about that later, but some of them really seem to be making an impact and that is awesome. I'm proud of this one, proud of the volunteers and the community for coming together on it. The runner-up is my life-skills club, which is also obvious.

Favourite Thing I've Done / Do in Ngora (Non-Work Category): Narrowing it down to a short list– Climbing rocks outside of town with monkeys and finding a place to sit by myself and watch the town for a while. Being made Chairman of a set of Peace Talks, a code name for getting together to eat delicious and illegal roast pork. Playing football with neighbour kids. Sunset bike rides.

The Most Frustrating Thing (Work Category): Still struggling with my organisation to figure out why they wanted me and what work they think I should be doing vis-a-vis the work they have for me or don't have for me; the fact that they simply seem to want me to be a secretary and type things because I'm a faster typer than anyone else.

The Most Frustrating Thing (Non-Work Category): My housing situation still is a bit of a source of frustration. The house itself is great, you've seen pictures. The issue is that, well, I don't have anywhere to be at home where I can just sit and relax by myself and not be surrounded by people other than inside. If I had a place to sit outside, a bit of a view maybe, and just relax, it would do wonders for my general contentment at site. Instead, I have neighbours immediately connected to my place who are always outside –I know I can't begrudge them that– and even if I were able to just sit out there, the view is of an empty lot across the street and a drinking circle a few hundred feet away. A small issue in the whole scheme of things, but still, I would die for just like a semi-secluded patio with just a view of a grass and trees.

The Funniest Thing That's Happened to Me: I can think of three– The cow that was eating my laundry. The small boy who attacked me with nun-chucks. Busting the crotch of my pants open at the market.

Weirdest Things I've Eaten: Termites. White ants. Offals.

Number of Haircuts I've Had: 3– count 'em, including the one I just got right before mid-service, the first one I'd had since early May; I could put my hair in a ponytail and that's a sign.

Number of Books I've Read: 68– count 'em (that's 1.2 books/week, just, ya know, FYI).

Number of Parasites I've Had in my Body: 2– I think malaria is technically a parasite, and schistosomiasis, aka bilharzia.

Number of Times I've Had Diarrhoea: 0– my immune system is awesome (and even the Peace Corps nurse during my mid-service medical exam was impressed).

Number of Times I've Been Called 'Amusugut': What's a number bigger than a bajillion but slightly smaller than infinity?

Number of Dead Mice I've Had in my House: 3– two dead in traps, one of mysterious circumstances.

Number of Goals I've Scored in Football Games: 3– two headers off of corner-kicks, one beaut that I arced perfectly over the head of the goalkeeper and just under the crossbar and I'm still proud of it.

Number of Tomatoes I've Eaten: 963, approximately– I eat a lot of tomatoes: on average, five every two days x 55 weeks = 963 tomatoes.

Number of Packages I've Gotten: 14– and thank you, everyone!

Best Item in a Package: Velveeta cheese. New music. Trader Joe's trail mix with Craisins and wasabi peas, mmmmmm. A 38 ounce bag of peanut butter M&Ms. Starbucks Via Instant Iced Coffee, which is delicious even when you can't get cold water, let alone ice. Books.

Most-Played Songs on my iTunes: Top five, not including the new Fleet Foxes album, which I listened to pretty much non-stop for a month or two and now takes up six of the top ten spots– 1: 'Summertime Clothes' by Animal Collective. 2: 'Knotty Pine' by Dirty Projectors & David Byrne. 3: 'This Must Be the Place [Naïve Melody]' by Talking Heads. 4: 'Daisy' by Fang Island. 5: 'Cold War (Nice Clean Fight)' by the Morning Benders.

Most Embarrassing Song on the Most Played List on my iTunes: 'Bad Romance' by Lady Gaga.

The Best Thing I've Done Outside of Ngora: Sipi Falls on Christmas Day. Rafting the Nile. Hiking in the Impenetrable Forest. Horseback riding in Lake Mburo National Park.

Longest I've Been in Ngora Without Leaving: Seven weeks– that's basically 49 days by myself within a few kilometre radius in rural Africa. I feel pretty good about that one. (And it's a funny thing, what that does to you, the way you completely forget –most of the time, until you're reminded by an amusugut-screaming child– that you don't resemble anyone else here.)

Longest I've Gone Without Speaking to Another White Person (except text messages): Eleven days– which is either pretty cool or means I have no friends, depending on how you look at it.

Favourite Thing About Site: It's my home. When I'm away for a while, it's always nice to be back in my own town and my own place.

Ugandan Quirks I've Picked Up in the Last Year: The quick raise-and-lower of both eyebrows to signal yes, and also instead of saying 'yes,' saying 'ehh' (like a long 'a'). Instead of saying 'uh-huh' like to show you're listening when someone's talking to you, saying 'mmm.' The two-handed wave in greeting – both hands held in front of you, chest level, like you're holding a grapefruit, kind of. Crossing my legs like a girl and/or British man, because the other way is kind of rude, I guess.

Things I'd Never Done Before This Last Year (since that last six-months update): Had a cow try to eat –or at least suck on– my laundry. Bought avocados / made guacamole. Torn up newspaper to use when I've run out of TP, routinely. Dislocated my shoulder playing cricket (cricket!). Commandeered two different boats, one on Lake Victoria, one on the Nile. Been to a burial ceremony. Debated the fact that Obama is not Muslim and was not born in Kenya. Chased rats around my house with a machete and a can of insecticide. Had to clean up a decomposing animal inside my house. Crossed the equator overland. Been a part of (or at least witness to) a cattle-sale. Been running on horseback alongside darting tophi ten metres off to the right and twenty galloping zebra ten metres off to the left. Gotten malaria. Spent a full year out of the States. Spent a full year in Africa and still had another year here.

Work

So they usually say that after a year at site, you finally start to get busy. I haven't been at site for quite a full year yet – though I have been, and it's hard to believe, in Uganda for thirteen months now – and I'm still not quite as consistently busy as I want to be, but it feels good to have had some real work recently.

So, I mentioned before about training forty people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) to act as home-based counsellors for others with HIV/AIDS. After the whole fiasco with my organisation and the other local organisation that originally wanted me to do this project with them, after writing a lengthy grant proposal, after meeting with the HIV counsellors at the Counselling and Testing Centre at Freda Carr (the local hospital) and other community members and the LC5 Chairman (the highest government official in the district), after leaving site for ten days, and after scheduling and then having to reschedule the training – after all that, it finally happened.

Here's a little bit more of a background (from the Statement of Need in my grant proposal):

Ngora District was formed in early 2010 when it was separated from Kumi District. When the two districts split, Ngora was left with an estimated population of roughly 142,000. With this separation and the changes in leadership and government funding and programmes, the home-based HIV/AIDS counsellor project which had been well received in Kumi District was not brought over to Ngora. This left all counselling, testing, and antiretroviral therapy services to the CTS Centre at Freda Carr Hospital, near the district headquarters. There was no longer a system in place to get services and support to people in the outer reaches of the district.

Now, with only a few volunteer counsellors on staff at the CTS Centre, not only do many people have to travel ten or more kilometres for services, but they then have to wait a couple hours or more before they are able to spend a few brief moments with one of the counsellors. It should be noted that this should not reflect negatively on the staff at the CTS Centre who are committed and hard-working but, simply, a bit overwhelmed by the nearly 100 people who come for services each day the Centre is open. There are 2,504 HIV-positive individuals registered with the CTS Centre, 691 of who are on Antiretroviral Therapy (ART). However, there are many other individuals who have been tested through mobile outreaches or community testing days but are not registered with the CTS Centre. Using a lower estimate that has 6% of the total population living with HIV/AIDS, there are an estimated total of over 8,520 HIV-positive individuals in the district. There are, then, more than 6,000 PLWHA who are not accessing any services or counselling, not receiving any sort of adequate support, have not been well-educated on HIV/AIDS, and a number of them likely need to be started on ART. So the effects of all of these issues are felt by many individuals and families across the district. There is, then, an obvious need to increase the accessibility of services for PLWHA and a large, pre-existing client base. While it may not be within our power to expand testing sites and ART distribution points, one area we can build the capacity of the district is in the support of PLWHA, specifically with home-based counselling.

So, that's why we – the community, me – felt like this project would be a good idea, and why we felt like it could be a success. And here are the cool things about the rest how the training came to be and then how it went:

1: I had started trying to get my volunteer counsellors by going to Freda Carr on Mondays and Fridays, the days that people come to pick up their ARVs and get counselling, and giving a short little spiel about the project, then leaving a sign-up sheet for whoever was interested, planning on then, after a month (so that I'd hopefully give the spiel to everyone who comes for ARVs), doing a little interview or whatever to pick who I thought was really committed and would be good counsellors. When I went to do that for, maybe, the third time, I found out that the community members had already figured out who they wanted to be counsellors. They wanted this, they had people who they knew would be committed and would make good counsellors, and that made me happy. (And that after the whole original idea came from the community in the first place.)

2: I knew these people would know more about, or at least be way more – for obvious reasons – experienced with HIV/AIDS than I would, and so I went into the training planning on basically just running a discussion, bringing all of their knowledge and experiences together so that we could be standardized, so that they could all be using the same information when they were counselling people. And it worked perfectly. We covered about fifteen or so topics surrounding HIV/AIDS and counselling. They were more than happy to discuss, more than happy to share experiences and testimonies – to the point where I had to cut some discussions short in the interest of getting to all of the topics we wanted to get to – and they were all just as knowledgeable, maybe even more so, than I'd expected them to be.

3: At the beginning of the training, we went over the goals and objectives of the project: to increase availability and accessibility of quality counselling services, and so on. One of the objectives, the main one, actually, was that each of them would provide counselling to at least forty individuals within the first quarter of the project, or by the end of October. I had wavered on this number before the training, not wanting to ask too much of them, to tax their health and energy, especially since they were doing this voluntarily, and so when we were going over the objectives, I asked them, 'Does forty sound like a reasonable number? Or is that too many?' The question was translated for those who couldn't understand me – most of them can understand at least some English, but I always find myself speaking too fast, in too American of an accent, when I'm talking in front of a bunch of people, so some of them found it hard to understand me, or, as they say, they weren't 'picking' me – and immediately everyone started talking – sounding, to me, like, 'Rabble rabble rabble!' – and so I was worried that I'd set the bar too high. Martin translated their consensus back to me: of course we can reach forty people by the end of October, and not only that but we could even do more, why, just last week I talked to ten different people about their HIV tests, forty is no problem at all. I couldn't help breaking out in a big stupid grin.

4: People here – and I honestly don't think this is a reflection of people's attitudes or anything, but is a reflection of the foreign-aid-and-NGO-ification of everything in Africa – generally expect to receive some form of compensation for, well, a lot. Like coming to one of the sensitisations that my org puts on in the villages to teach people about family planning and reproductive health. People come – usually within their own village, not far – knowing that, at the very least, they'll get a soda. And it inexplicably extends to, like, conferences for NGO staff: a per diem allowance is expected; as in, I'm coming to learn new things that can either A: help people in my area, or B: help my organisation perform better, and, yes, I expect to be compensated for learning these things. Without going off on too much of a tangent... that's how it is, and there's really no getting around it. So I made it clear – in the few spiels I gave at the hospital, in the letter I wrote to the volunteers thanking them for being a part of the project before the training – that, while I would provide tea, lunch, and soda during the training, along with a small transportation refund – and I feel like this is understandable; I'm expecting them to come to me and to be there all day, so, ok, I'll pay for that – I would not be paying them any sort of monthly stipend for their work, I would not be buying them a soda each day they went to do counselling with people, I would not be buying them bicycles or t-shirts or messenger bags. It was a concern: I was worried people wouldn't want to do it for free – and maybe that makes me cynical, but I can at least say that it doesn't make me cynical about Ugandans or Africans or whatever, it just makes me cynical about, like I said, the foreign-aid-and-NGO-ification of everything in Africa – and I was told by the counsellor at Freda Carr that when they had a similar program, the one from when Ngora was a part of Kumi, the 'volunteer' counsellors were paid 50,000UGX per month (a number I laughed out loud at when he asked if I'd be paying my volunteers – no quotes – something like that). So, at the beginning of the training, right after going over the objectives, we went over their questions and concerns about the training and, natch, the issue of idiboro – literally a little something in Ateso – came up. And so I made it clear again: I really, really wish that I could pay you for this work, I wish that I could buy you bicycles to help you reach more people, all because I believe in you all and in the work you'll be doing, but, simply, the money isn't there, not only am I on a shoe-string budget here, but I'm actually over budget, and, I don't want to get too serious, but if you're here to get a monthly stipend or a bicycle or whatever then, well, you probably shouldn't be here. I said that last part haltingly, wanting to get the point across without myself coming across as a jerk. But, once it was translated, I was met by nods of agreement, or, if not agreement, then at least understanding, from all across the room. I was also met by, the rest of that day and the next two days of the training, engaged and active and – yes, it's true! – on time volunteers, all of them. This put another big stupid grin on my face.

And so, overall, success.

At the end, I told them how much I appreciated them agreeing to work with me, told them that the success of the whole thing was up to them, told them how much I believed in them, and how big of an impact they could make in the lives of the friends and neighbours. And then I blasted 'Eye of the Tiger' from a boombox and made them run up a huge flight of stairs, pumping their fists in the air.

Ok, just kidding. But only because we don't have any stairs here.

A few weeks ago, I was in Gulu, in the North, for Peace Camp. Peace Camp was a week-long pseudo-summer-camp started by a few PCVs from the north for teenagers, fifteen to nineteen years old (and one thirteen year old girl who lied her way into the camp, which is kind of awesome), who were affected by the war with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). It was a great thing to get to be a part of.

The LRA is the rebel group who terrorised northern and eastern Uganda for over twenty years (though now they've been pushed into the DRC). They abducted children and forced them to be soldiers or wives for the commanders, they forced them to kill their families, they raped them, they forced them to carry massively heavy supplies for days on end with no rest and no food. Those are the basics. The actual stories are worse.

I got to spend the week with eighty kids who were just awesome people, happy, assertive, intelligent, resilient. I helped to run the Life-Skills sessions of the camp, doing stuff on resisting peer pressure, but when I wasn't doing that, I got to hang out with the kids, play football, have a dance party, watch them perform skits and traditional folk songs and dances from their tribes, go to a ropes course where they all did a zip-line and were stoked about 'flying,' listen to them, watch them grow and develop – and I really believe a lot of them did – and impress me – like I knew they would – and just generally be a part of something that was, can continue to be, really good for the kids who were there and for their communities when they bring back everything they learned and accomplished.

Another reason I was looking forward to the camp was because kids from Teso were there, too. Along with all of the youth from the North, these kids were equally affected by the war, but haven't gotten the assistance and recognition that the Acholi, Lango, and other Northern tribes – though, really, mainly the Acholi – have.

We met with one of the local counterparts from Amuria at the weekend training we had a couple weeks before the actual camp, and he talked about how the fighting in the East has just literally never been documented. I read a book recently about the kids who were affected by the war. Near the beginning of the book, the author said, 'The South and West of Uganda are the tourist destinations; the North is a warzone.' There was no mention of the East, not only as being affected by the war, but as, like, existing. Butt kids there were forced to kill their families and become soldiers, they were raped and forced to become wives, they were orphaned and traumatised, just like the kids in the North. I almost feel like this sounds like I'm belittling the horrible experiences of the kids from the North. I'm not, obviously. It's just that there was never an Invisible Children for the kids from Teso; it's just that there aren't dozens of NGOs in Teso dedicated – regardless of their success or the way they go about fulfilling their missions – to helping these kids; it's just that, yeah, when people think of Uganda, they think of the gorillas and the amazing national parks in the South and West, and they think of the war in the North, and they don't think of the East. But, about five years ago, the LRA made it as far down as Soroti. There were tanks in the streets of the town 50km to the north of me. My counterpart has talked about driving around doing work in the villages and being constantly on the lookout for rebels. At one of the sub-county headquarters in my district, the walls of one of the buildings are covered in charcoal graffiti about the Arrow Boys, the – basically – civilian militia from Teso that fought against and, eventually, drove back the LRA. So, I'm really glad that kids from Teso got to participate in the camp.

Our man from Amuria also talked about how people in Teso often think that the LRA is the Acholi and the Acholi are the LRA, and having those kids come to the camp will help to break that misunderstanding. Some people were worried about the kids coming up to Gulu because of this belief, and hopefully, after the camp, some of that will change. One night at the camp, there was a forgiveness and reconciliation ceremony. The kids wrote down forgiveness messages – to the rebels, the government soldiers, whoever they felt like they needed to forgive – and burned them, symbolically releasing those things they've been carrying with them. After that, they had the kids from each of the four tribes – Acholi, Lango, Iteso, and Alur – forgive each other. There were a lot of tears and – seemingly – flashbacks, one girl fainted, it was all very intense for all of them, but we hope it was worth it.

We hope they'll bring that back to their communities, to the other youth affected by the war, to their families and neighbours and friends, and foster forgiveness and reconciliation in their towns and villages. And though we recognize that maybe that's a lot to ask of 15-19 year-olds, we hope that it really did mean something, something other than simply scratching at wounds that time had allowed to become scabs or scars until they bled again and then leaving them with no bandages to help the wounds re-heal after they left the camp. But I think these kids are resilient and brave enough to make it, regardless; I think they've proven that already. And a lot of them were already excited to go home, back to school or back to the village, wherever, and share with everyone there, start Peace Clubs with other youth, become leaders among their peers and communities. Awesome.

A couple other quick highlights from the camp:

Monica's goal: one of the days, we had some free time, and I was playing football with a group of the boys. Mostly boys, I should say. There were one or two girls on each team, and after twenty minutes or so, the game was mostly bogged down in the midfield, no goals yet, not really any real chances. Then one girl, Monica – a tall, confident, sassy (in a good, hilarious way) girl from my friend Sandi's school in Pader, east of Gulu – jogged onto the field, picked a team, and, about ten seconds later, ripped a shot from thirty yards out, a serious rocket, a low line-drive that the keeper had no chance of stopping, didn't even try to stop, a goal that – and this was the best part, really – none of the boys could be able to top, before or after, all week. (And, for the record, it was the best goal I can remember seeing in a game that I've actually been a part of. Seriously awesome.) We'll call that 'Breaking Gender Stereotypes,' or, maybe more accurately, 'Showing the Boys What's Up.'

The traditional dances: all of the tribes were great, it was great to see how excited they got about getting to perform their songs and dances in front of everyone, they were proud and enthusiastic and talented. But, at least for me, the Langi were especially impressive. Thirty kids (I think), spears, feathered headdresses, the girls in matching skirts, the boys with ash rubbed on their faces, two of them wailed away on drums while the others were chanting, jumping, moving both aggressively and gracefully, circling the drummers. Hard to describe, very cool to watch, very cool, also, just to see how pumped they were to be up there, doing their thing, representing their tribe, especially in front of one of their tribal leaders (because we had a leader from each of the tribes come and address the kids).

The, let's call it, solidarity: we had several deaf campers in two of the camper groups, with a couple of the local counterparts translating everything from English to sign and back. It was, first of all, cool to see them interacting with all of the other kids. There weren't any cliques that developed – which was actually true for everyone, and was really nice – and none of the separation between hearing and hearing-impaired that you might expect. The highlight, though, was during one of the group reflection sessions. A Ugandan woman from an NGO in Gulu was leading the session, and, at one point, she asked for a boy and a girl to come up and do a short skit. Two of the deaf kids immediately raised their hands, stood up to go up to the front, when the woman running the session stopped them, saying, 'No, no, we need someone who can talk.' (To be fair to her, I certainly don't think this was malicious or intentional. I think it just came out without her thinking about it.) We PCVs, sitting in the back of the room, immediately looked at each other, shaking our heads, disbelieving, but almost before it even registered, the kids started murmuring, shaking their heads, then calling out, 'No! They can talk! Let them do it!' The facilitator, embarrassed and realizing what she'd said, let them do it, while giant smiles broke out across all of our faces in the back of the room, goosebumps spreading across our arms. Just eighty really, really good kids in that room.

So that was Peace Camp. An awesome week, a great job by everyone who put it all together, a great job by everyone who was there. And, most of all, the kids who came – and those who couldn't come, but are no less amazing than the ones who could; one of the other PCVs who was there said that some kids in her town couldn't come, knew they couldn't, and were still almost unable to control their excitement for the ones who could – and were, are, just generally pretty amazing human beings: what is there to say?

(Oh, one last thing: the movie War Dance. You should all go rent it, Netflix it, do whatever crazy new technology there is now that I don't know about. It's about a group of primary school students from Pader, all, like our campers, affected by the war in one way or another or many, and they tell their stories while it also follows them practising and performing in a music and dance competition in Kampala. It's beautifully shot and, well, just watch it. You'll cry. And, though Pader isn't what I would call exactly close to Ngora – maybe 200-ish km away – it looks pretty similar, so you can, sort of, see what it looks like where I live.)

"Work"

I think it's probably time to let everyone know about the "work" that I've been doing here. And about the work that I've been doing here.

I'm calling it "work" because, so far, it's been a little hard to come by, and work -- actually doing things where I feel useful and busy -- has been a lot less common than "work" -- where I do useless and frustrating things like going out into the community with my counterpart when she asks me to present some information on some topic like reproductive health or early childhood development which she will then translate, which then ends up meaning that I talk for a couple minutes, stop to let her translate, and she talks for twenty or thirty minutes about I have no idea what.

But, in the last couple weeks, I've started to have slightly more work and slightly less "work".

A while ago, I wrote about how I was going to be doing some work with another community-based organization (CBO) in the district. They had some people who were acting as home-based counselors for people living with HIV/AIDS (or PLWHA, as the acronym goes here), but who'd never actually been trained on what it meant to act as a home-based counselor for PLWHA. So I was going to train them, using only my bare hands, the little bit of knowledge that I have, and a lot of notes from a lot of different books and manuals. I was excited. It was going to be work, not "work", and it was going to keep me busy for a while, and, also, had the potential to turn into a lot of other things -- HIV support groups that I could meet with to talk about income-generating activities (IGAs) or village savings and loans associations (VSLAs) or planting a simple garden to grow some food that is more nutritious than cassava. Work! Exciting!

And then I got back from IST in January, all ready to start doing some work. I called Okello Moses, the director of the CBO when I got back, and we set up a time to have a meeting to discuss the training. We met one day when he came to meet me at the office of the organization I'm placed with (Vision Teso Rural Development Organization, or Vision TERDUO, because acronyms, or VT, if you want an acronym inside another acronym), and then we went to the office of his CBO. There I met with him and a couple of the guys who were acting as the counselors. We talked about what they were doing now, what they felt like they needed training on, and what they felt like the needs of PLWHA in the community were. Moses said they were going to mobilize resources (NGO-speak for getting money) for the training and then we could set a date and get going. So it all went really well, and I was, again, excited.

About a week later, I still hadn't heard from Moses, so I gave him a call: Moses, how are you, blah blah blah, let's set a date for the training, let's do this thing. Yes, ok, he said, but there's been a problem. And he asked if anyone at my organization had talked to me. They hadn't. I asked why. And then Moses went on to tell me that after we had met that first time, my supervisor (at VT, not the Peace Corps) and the executive director of our organization had called Moses into the ED's office, and proceeded basically to verbally harass him, asking him what he thought he was doing working with me, why he thought he could just come in here and work with me, and on and on, to the point where they were, Moses told me, threatening him and his organization if he continued to try to work with me. And so, Moses said, thanks for the offer, but no thanks.

Needless to say, 1: my organization had not mentioned this to me, despite the fact that I had told everyone that I would be doing this training, despite the fact that I had told everyone that I was working on material for this training since that meeting, despite the fact that my counterpart and supervisor were both at Peace Corps trainings where the topic of secondary projects -- projects that PCVs do outside of their organization, projects that PCVs do with other organizations or community groups in the area, projects that PCVs are strongly encouraged, almost required to do -- was brought up more than once or twice, and 2: I was pissed. It was early afternoon when I called Moses, and I was at the office, and I hung up the phone, thought, Expletive, expletive, expletive, picked up my things, went home so that I wouldn't tell my supervisor and counterpart and the ED what I really wanted to tell them, and called another PCV friend to rant.

Because not only had my organization ruined what was, really, the only work I had so far lined up, and taken away an opportunity for PLWHA in the community to (hopefully) improve their quality of life, but they also hadn't, themselves, given me any work to do; they had only given me "work."

So the next week, I sat down with my supervisor and counterpart and we talked about secondary projects. I said, PCVs are placed with an organization, but they don't belong to that organization, blah blah blah, our responsibility is ultimately with the community we're placed in and the Peace Corps, blah blah blah, secondary projects, blah blah blah. They said, ok. And I said, I'm going to do a training with another CBO. And they said, ok.

So I called Moses back: Moses, how are you, blah blah blah, I've talked to the people here, and I'm sorry for what happened, but, in reality, I'm a Peace Corps volunteer, and not a Vision TERUDO volunteer, and I'm supposed to work in the community, not just in the organization, blah blah blah, so let's set that date, let's do this thing. And Moses said, again, Thanks, but no thanks.

And that was that. No more work. Back to it only being "work".

So then, a week or two ago, after numerous other organization-related frustrations, and wondering if it was, in the long run, going to work out with VT or if I'd have to try and change organizations, wondering who else VT had told not to work with me and wondering how that was making me look in the community, and talking about the whole situation with my program coordinator at the Peace Corps office, I sat down, again, with my counterpart and supervisor to talk about work versus "work".

I said, I feel like I haven't been given any real work, blah blah blah, the project that the health program is working on is totally covered and doesn't need my help, blah blah blah, I want responsibility, and work, and things that I can be in charge of on my own, and I think what I'm going to do is make a couple project designs, things that I can be in charge of and responsible for, that can still be done under the auspices of VT since you don't want me out of your site ever, not even for a minute, and then we can go over them together and see where we can go from there. They said, ok. (They also said that when they first found out they'd be getting a PCV, they thought that their PCV, AKA me, would be writing grant proposals and mobilizing resources, which, like I said, means getting money, to which I said, Yeah, no. But that could be an entirely different rant than this one, and I'm kinda on a roll here.)

Then my supervisor said, Aren't you doing that training with that other CBO? And I said, Ha.. ha.. yeah, about that.. That's.. um.. not going to be happening, because now he's.. um.. refusing to work with me, because.. well.. someone here told him that he wasn't allowed to. And I stopped there and looked at them, and they didn't look at me, and they didn't react at all. So I guess that's that.

And, so, here we are.

All in all, despite all that, I feel pretty good about where things are right now, and where they could, if VT doesn't try to take everything over and destroy it all, go from here. I'm working on a couple project designs -- the same training for HIV counselors, so that I can get them the information even if their CBO doesn't want to work directly with me; and a peer educator program for a secondary school in town, where a select group of students will be trained to basically be available for questions and issues the other students in the school have, about HIV or social issues or pregnancy or peer pressure or whatever, and also lead some sessions on all that stuff at all-school assemblies, and all that good stuff; and the one project that I most want to do, which I'm not ready to share with my organization yet, until I can be sure that they're going to let me do things how I want to do things, which is a soccer league for boys, probably ten to fifteen years old, who aren't in school, where the league will run, over the course of ten to twelve weeks, in a tournament style, while also incorporating life-skills sessions.

And so I've given these work-plans, or project designs, to my counterpart and supervisor to review, and we should be able to meet at the end of the week, or the beginning of next week to discuss details and hopefully get started.

So I feel good.

Other than that, on the work side of the "work"-work divide, I've started an after-school Life-Skills Club at a secondary school in town. And, so far, it's been awesome.

The school, called Light College, is not a college, is small, about 120 students total, spread across four grades, Senior 1 through Senior 4 -- basically like high school in the States, S1 being Freshmen. It's one building, rough, unfinished brick walls and a tin roof, one classroom for each grade, students dressed in blue pants or skirts and white button-down shirts cramming into desks that are one wooden slab for sitting on attached to another wooden slab for writing on, the teachers dictating lessons with the use of cracking blackboards that never really seem to get clean and caning students with a long wooden switch when the students -- actually I don't know why; there's no reason for that.

There are about 35 students in the club, some from each grade, and I love them. Silent at first, they had trouble understanding my English either because of the accent or because I was talking to fast and were simply not used to participating in class or being asked to ask questions or speak out or do anything besides copy notes from the board, now they're energetic, charismatic, funny, engaged, intelligent, and eager to learn. This is the first term of the school year (though it's ending this week), so I'm looking forward to meeting with the kids in the club once a week, each term after this.

The Life-Skills Program is used by PCVs worldwide, and the PC has a great manual with lessons and topics, warm-ups and games to play. Life-skills are basically, how should I put this, skills that you use in life. Some of the skills you use in life, anyway. Minus basic karate skills or speed-boat driving skills, the life-skills we're working on are along the lines of self-esteem building, communication skills, responding to peer pressure, assertiveness vs aggressiveness vs passiveness, decision-making skills, along with more informational sessions on things like the facts and myths of HIV/AIDS, and sessions that open debates and new lines of thought on issues like gender roles.

So the first week of the Life-Skills Club was a little rough. I think the students had a really hard time understanding me, we weren't doing the most exciting things -- we just reviewed the basics; set up some club rules like being respectful, giving me the Time-Out signal (hands in a T-shape) when they can't understand me, and so on; voted on peer educators, six students that would help me out by leading small groups and helping to lead sessions as well as being available for questions from other students; and intoduced the Question Box, where they could drop questions, written down, that they didn't feel comfortable asking in front of the whole group -- and so it wasn't the most fun forty minutes any of us had spent.

The next week, worried that they'd be worried that every week would be like the first one, I decided not to do anything relating to learning or sitting in their desks where they'd been sitting all day, so we just played games. We did creative thinking games, we jumped around, we made an African version of Simon Says. They all laughed, tried to think and approach things with different perspectives (something they're never asked to do in school), jumped, had a lot of fun, and I did too. And they talked more and started to open up more and, I think, realized that it wasn't just going to be me lecturing at them every week, because I don't want to do that either.

The week after that, they split into small groups, led by my awesome peer educators, to prepare role plays that they'd perform the following week. They were to make a short drama about a risk situation that young people might typically face, where the characters in the drama engaged in the risk behavior because they were missing some of those important life-skills. I didn't give them examples of risk situations or behaviors, because I wanted them to have to be creative and didn't want each group to end up doing the same thing, and, when they performed the role plays the next week, they were creative, they didn't all do the same thing, they had assigned roles, memorized lines, brought their own props, and practiced during the week.

We had fifteen year-old girls getting pregnant, people getting HIV after having unprotected sex, everyone seemed to be stealing school fees from their parents and skipping school to go drink instead, someone got run over by a car for some reason, someone brought a flat-brimmed, fitted baseball cap with the hologram sticker on it that was worn by the "bad" boys in the dramas. But each role play was funny and insightful and creative, and the kids were really excited to do them. And I was excited about it too.

The best part, so far, is that they've started asking questions too, and they seem like they've started to feel like they can use me as a resource for those questions. And their questions have been direct, topical, frank, and bold. One boy asked, in a country where you can be stoned to death for being rumored to be gay, "These Europeans who are practicing homosexuality -- is that a good thing or a bad thing?" And so I told him what I thought and that it was a really good question, because it was. And then he followed it up with, "So if I'm infected [with HIV] and I take this boy as my sexual partner, will he also get the disease?" And so I explained the four fluids that transmit HIV and how they can transmit the virus between two men too, not just between a man and a woman, and I told him that it was a really good question, because it was. And someone else told me that they have a friend, a boy, who has a girlfriend who is pressuring him into having sex with her though he doesn't want to, he's still in school, he wants to finish, but he does love her (apparently, in the way that 15 year-old kids can love each other), and her family is rich and his is poor, so she's buying him things and keeps pressuring him, and so my student told his friend that he would ask me what my advice was on what he should say to her to get her to stop pressuring him. And so I told him what I thought and that it was a really good question, because it was, and I told them all that I'd always be available for more. (And I will be, I want to be that resource, because they will have more questions -- the Question Box, before it was stolen by some little kids who climbed in through the windows over one weekend, was full of questions, which will, hopefully, be put into the new Question Box, which will, hopefully, not be stolen.)

And so, when I'd gone to the last couple meetings feeling a little unenthusiastic, a little tired, or a little distracted, within a couple minutes of being there I was happy, energized by their enthusiasm, and I'd forgotten about the things that were distracting me before.

I felt useful, like I was doing even the smallest bit of something good, and I was happy to be doing that work, the kind with no quotation marks around it.

Six Months Update

As of last week, I've been in Uganda for six months.

Does that sound insane to anyone else?

And, I know what you're thinking, because I'm thinking it too: Just what, exactly, have I been doing this whole time? So here's just a little update with a bunch of random things from the last half-year. Which might, somehow, answer that question (although I can tell you now that the answer is either Not a whole lot, you lazy jerk, or, That's a lot of cool stuff, you lazy jerk, depending on how much you like me).

Places in Uganda I've been: Wakiso. Kampala. Gulu. Pader. Entebbe. Ngora. Kumi. Soroti. Ngai. Mbale. Masindi. Lira. Budadiri. Jinja. Iganga.

Books that I've read: 21 (and a half) -- but I won't list them all. My favorites though: 1 Let the Great World Spin. 2 White Teeth. 3 A Fraction of the Whole. 4 The Satanic Verses. 5a Interpreter of Maladies. 5b A Fine Balance. 5c The Lizard Cage. And I reread You Shall Know Our Velocity! before giving it as a birthday present, but that's in a category of its own.

Most played songs (of the last six months) on my iTunes: 1 "Knotty Pine" by Dirty Projectors & David Byrne. 2 "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" by Talking Heads. 3 "Fools" by The Dodos. 4 "Romance is Boring" by Los Campesinos!. 5 "Surprise Hotel" by Fools Gold.

Things that I'd never done before these last six months: 1 --------. 2 --------. (Censored. You'll just have to ask me in person if you want to know what these ones are. Gotta get you guys to talk to me somehow.) 3 Seen a pineapple plant. 4 Danced until 4am. 5 Eaten offals (surprisingly good!).
6 Eaten chicken gizzards (unsurprisingly terrible!). 7 Eaten jackfruit, passionfruit, liver, matooke, and drank ajon (all surprisingly or unsurprisingly mediocre!). 8 --------. (Again: ask if you need to know.) 9 Waited out a thunderstorm inside a mud hut. 10 Been in one country abroad for this long. 11 Been out of the States for this long at one time. 12 Hand-washed a whole load of laundry (and then started paying someone to do it for me). 13 Seen the heads of cows, recently removed from their bodies, lying in the dirt on the street, and the head of a goat, recently removed from its body, nailed to a tree by the ear. 14 Seen birds the size of the maribou storks. 15 Scored goals in a soccer game (and yeah, ok, sure it was against tiny orphan children, but I still feel good about it, ok?). 16 Seen so many guns so often and so casually. 17 Thought brownies could taste so good.
18 Killed so many cockroaches. 19 Heard the footsteps of thousands of termites. 20 Seen over a dozen cockroaches crawl out of the hole of the pit latrine to crawl around the floor at my feet and up the walls by my head. 21 Seen, up close, the effects of a recent war. 22 Used a machete, for any reason, or, more specifically, to chop up bricks into smaller bricks. 23 Thought insects could taste as good as fried termites. 24 Stood ankle-deep in the Nile River and watched the sunrise.
25 Celebrated Christmas and rang in the New Year in Africa. 26 Had a baby named after me.
27 Had to chase away goats so they didn't eat the laundry. 28 Seen mob-justice in action (though, fortunately, not with fatal results; which is a story to come soon). 29 Had a crowd of forty-ish kids in the village come just to look at me and mistake me for Wayne Rooney. 30 Gotten water from a borehole (which is another story to come soon).  31 Seen so many boobs much breastfeeding.
32 Ridden twelve hours in six taxis across almost an entire country in one day to see the people I like the most.

In the manuals the Peace Corps gave us for our Phase II assignments (that we completed the first three months at site), one suggestion was that, since the first few weeks at site can be stressful, we should make a list of all the things here that make us happy. I read that, laughed at how cheesy it sounded, and then did it anyway, not out of stress but out of just the fact that it was something to do one afternoon when there was nothing else to do. Here are some of those things: 1 Walking home with the sun setting in my eyes and the acrid smell of the smoke from cooking fires in my nose and kids running along by my side. 2 Cheese, brownies, real coffee, pizza (all at the same time even, I don't even care!). 3 Two dicks, vertical (--that one's just for you, Dan). 4 Pineapple trees. 5 The sound of heavy rain on my tin roof. 6 Lightning in the distance at night when it's not raining and it colors the clouds purple-black. 7 Open-back lorries packed with cows with curving, pointed, three-foot long horns. 8 Traveling: the hours of stories when I'm sitting next to a friend on the bus, or spacing out while staring out the window, buying meat on a stick when the bus or the taxi stops, and knowing that I'm on my way to see people I like or on my way home feeling refreshed and ready to work after spending time with those same people. 9 Telling people my name and having them understand me. 10 When a new person in town, who I haven't introduced myself to, somehow, one random day, knows my name. 11 The guy with the upside-down bicycle who pedals backwards to sharpen knives and machetes on the wheel, sending sparks flying, orange and bright. 12 Old women riding bicycles in traditional dresses, garishly and synthetically colored, with conical shoulder-pads. 13 The goats that, for some reason, love standing on top of four foot high anthills. 14 Falling asleep crammed into the backseat of a taxi with three other adults and three little kids and having it be the best nap I've gotten in months (because when you wake up and realize your head was resting on a stranger's head, you've taken napping to a whole 'nother level). 15 Cows, five feet from my door, cutting the grass. 16 Free mangoes. 17 Lying in bed, early morning, while monkeys climb the walls (outside, un?fortunately) and jump on the roof. 18 Sitting outside, early morning, with samosas and coffee for breakfast. 19 Packages from home. 20 Finding good, fulfilling, challenging work, which, really, just means feeling useful, or, at least, good, fulfilled, and challenged.

So there ya go. Six months. All right there in just a couple paragraphs.

I guess that answers that question.

Story Time

I just got home to Ngora a few days ago from Kampala, where we had our three-month In-Service Training (IST) and where I went to get my glasses fixed and pack on a few pounds' worth of pizza, brownies, and (believe it!) awesome Mexican food with a pitcher of sangria, and from Jinja, where 30 some-odd PCVs from my group relaxed, went on a sunset cruise, and did some intense whitewater rafting on the Nile River. A pretty awesome trip, needless to say (but I said it anyway). I hadn't seen most of the other volunteers in the three months since coming to site so it was really good to catch up with them, and it was really good to get hot showers, tons of good food, and more than a couple dips in the Nile (while somehow mostly avoiding sunburns and completely avoiding crocodiles).

So, I figure it's time for some more random stories from the last few weeks. And here we go.


I want to start with a story about work, since I haven't talked about that much, and just to prove that I'm not, as a friend from home (ahem, Rory) put it, on a long, government-funded vacation. I was sitting at the office of my organization one morning, a few days before leaving for IST, waiting for my counterpart, Mary Margaret (or MM, as she likes to be called) and unsure where she had gone off to. So, twiddling my thumbs (figuratively -- I've never actually found that to be a very good way of passing the time), when another Ugandan man who I had never met came in and said that he was here to see my counterpart. I told him that she was probably around somewhere and would probably be back soon and he was welcome to wait.
So we got to talking and I asked him what he did for work. He told me that he was the director of a small community-based organization (CBO) a little bit outside of town. They're still relatively new and trying to partner with other, more established organizations in the area in order to mobilize resources and really get off the ground, which was why he was here to talk to MM. In answer to my question of what his CBO does, he started to explain. Agroforestry. (Eh.) Agriculture. (Eh.) HIV/AIDS counseling. (Cool.) I'm also interested in HIV/AIDS counseling, I told him. What are they doing for that? Not much, yet, he told me. They had some volunteers acting as counselors who were going from home to home doing counseling, but there was a problem with that. Whenever they would find someone who was HIV+ and open to counseling, the volunteers would inevitably be asked if they, too, had HIV. None of them did, and that's where the program stalled out. People living with HIV/AIDS want to talk to and/or be counseled by other people who are living with HIV/AIDS. Fortunately, he went on, he had found some HIV+ community members who were willing to and interested in acting as counselors. Unfortunately, he went on again, none of them had ever been trained as counselors, and his little CBO didn't have the information or resources to train them.
So that's when I got excited (since I've been wanting and trying to find work outside of my organization -- though my organization is great -- that I could do and plan and carry out on my own). Maybe that's something that I could help you with, I told him. He seemed excited about it too.
Though I don't have much direct experience with it, I really do think that I have, at least, the resources available to be able to plan and run a multi-day training session on the best strategies and practices for counseling and specifically for counseling people living with HIV/AIDS.
And while it'll only be starting with meeting the people who want to become counselors and running the training session, it definitely has the possibility of moving on to a lot more from that. There will be follow-up and monitoring as the newly-trained counselors go out into the community and start meeting with other HIV+ individuals, and there could be other HIV support and meeting groups to come out of it, and on and on.
So we exchanged phone numbers and he assured me that, while I was gone, he'd meet with the potential counselors and get them interested and mobilized for when I got back.
And he called me while I was in Kampala to find out when I'd be back in Ngora, so he sounds serious.
I'm excited.

Also along the work side of things, the school term is going to be starting up again soon here, and I've already discussed with a couple people the possibility of me teaching some life-skills classes at one or two of the schools around here. (Life-Skills is a program that looks, essentially, at positive living -- self-esteem, decision-making, assertiveness, positive role models, etc -- which is lacking in a lot of Ugandan youth.)
And, recently, I've been kicking around the idea of starting up a Boy Scout troop. Because Uganda has Boy Scouts, it's true.

And that's work, for now. It'll be picking up soon, and I'm really looking forward to it.


The presidential elections here are coming up quickly, as voting starts on February 18. President Museveni is looking to extend his 26 year term, while the challengers talk about it being time for change and a new face and claiming that, "We are the ones we have been waiting for."
The main opposition opponent in this election, as in the last two, is Kizza Besigye, Museveni's former personal physician, and the leader of the FDC party. He had a rally in Ngora recently, giving a speech to a massive (for Ngora) crowd at the primary school across the street from my organization. I listened from outside our offices, not wanting to be in the middle of the crowd since we're not supposed to take part in any sort of political action or activism as volunteers, as the person who was introducing Besigye got the crowd (even more) excited. Crackling over the speakers: "Ngora, oh yeah!" (Crowd cheers.) "FDC, oh yeah!" (Crowd cheers.) "Kizza Besigye, oh yeah!" (Crowd cheers.) And then to more cheers, Besigye took the stand, but most of his speech, though it was in English and then translated, didn't make it from the speakers over the crowd and cars and cows and bristling hot air to where I was standing. But the people who could hear him apparently thought it was quite the speech.
And then, when he was finished, we watched as he drove through the throngs of supporters, standing out of the sunroof of a shiny, late-model SUV, both arms outstretched, looking (unintentionally, I'm sure) very Nixon-esque, as he waved both hands in the signal of the FDC, the peace sign.
And as I watched the crowd disperse (to wherever they came from, because it was definitely more people than the town's population), jubilantly walking away on foot, or hopping onto open-back lorries blasting music, or cramming into cars that then almost ran over a small herd of cows, I had to wonder if he really stood a chance.
It's hard to tell from what people here tell me. Some people say he does have a chance, some say he doesn't. Some say that he'll win, in the vote total, but that it won't matter anyway because Museveni will win, in reality. Some people say that there will be violence and rioting if he wins, some say there will be violence and rioting if he loses, some say there won't be violence or rioting either way (and I probably agree with that last group). Someone told me that the Indian supermarket owners in Soroti weren't fully stocking their shelves because they're worried about rioting, someone else told me that they were fully stocking their shelves because they weren't worried at all (and I don't get up there enough to be able to tell the difference -- there's still more stuff than in the shops here and that's what really matters to me). Peace Corps is still bringing in the newest group of volunteers in a week or ten days or something, so they must not think there are going to be any major issues either, although they do also have us going on Standfast from February 11-25, meaning that, for safety and security reasons, we're all to stay at site that entire time.
But, two things, regardless of what happens -- 1: I can't wait for the elections to be over so that the campaign lorries that blast obscenely loud music and drive around town will (hopefully) stop doing that. And, 2: It's an interesting time to be in Africa. Ivory Coast. South Sudan. Egypt. And now Uganda, which hopefully goes more smoothly than all of those. And I think it will. I'm not worried, just interested.


I came home the other day and one of my neighbors, nowhere to be seen, had their dirty laundry sitting outside in basins ready to be washed. They must have gone back inside for something, because it was left up to me to chase away the goats that were getting ready to eat their clothes.


Sitting outside on my front step the other day, I watch as a kid comes around the corner of the half-constructed house near mine. Looking behind him to make sure he hasn't been spotted, he doesn't notice me either. Thinking he's in the clear, he starts to squat and drop his shorts. That's right. To poop in the grass, not twenty feet from my door. Halfway into his squat, he looks up and sees me, half-surprised, half-trying-not-to-laugh. He pauses, slowly hikes his shorts back up, and tiptoes back around the corner out of my line of sight. Two seconds later, he comes back, shorts pulled up, looks at me, and says, "Ejai emopiira?" -- "Do you have a football?"
Yeah. Let's just move on. Pretend like you weren't just about to do what I saw you about to do.
And no, I don't have a football.


Ugandan quote of the week, to me: "Most Americans are big and strong. I don't know why you are so short and thin." It wasn't meant to be an insult, just pure confusion, and I had no answer for him.


I had my first Ugandan baby named after me. About a month or so ago, I was out with MM, driving around doing something, when she got a phone call that someone she knew was at one of the health centres near town, in labor, with complications. Since we were already in the car, and since she had to be transferred from the HC to one of the bigger hospitals in the area, we went and picked her up, went to the nearest hospital where they could help, in Kumi, 20km away, then found out, after some waiting around, that the doctor wasn't there, and, so, took off to the next closest hospital, probably at least 20km farther away, where we dropped her off, again, after not a little bit of waiting around. So basically, I had nothing to do with this, or with the delivery, but it was a healthy baby boy, and, since I was there, though not when he was actually born, they named him Daniel. Despite doing nothing to earn having the baby named after me, I still felt pretty good about it.
One reason I felt good about it was that, the vast majority of the time, when I tell Ugandans what my name is, they don't understand me at all. It usually goes like this -- Me: "Nice to meet you, my name is Daniel." Ugandan: "Channelrelyel...lel?" Me: "Good enough."
I tried introducing myself as Danny for a couple months, but that always came across as Tony. Which, I guess, is at least a real name, but still.
However, success of the day today, I introduced myself to someone while I was at the dairy buying a bag of freshly boiled whole milk, and, unbelievable as it sounds, he understood me. Blew my mind. And was almost as awesome as having that baby named after me.


I mentioned the "pterodactyl birds" in my last blog post. Unfortunately that's not their real name -- they're actually called maribou storks -- but it's a pretty good descriptor. Standing up, they probably come up at least to my elbow, are hideously ugly, with bald heads covered in places with a few stringy hairs and pink, rubbery waddles hanging from their necks and massive beaks that you can hear clopping together if you're close enough. There are, literally, flocks of them everywhere in Kampala. And they are easily the most hideous animal I've ever seen. Anyway. At IST, a friend and I were joking about running up to one and punching it. I said that I'd punch it right on the top of the head, while she thought it would be a better idea to go straight in with a gut-punch. We debated which was better, and after I helped her buy a bike later, we almost got to test those theories. We were walking the bike back past a flock of six or seven of them standing in the grass about a hundred feet away. We both looked at each other, looked at the birds, looked at the bike, and then I hopped on and started pedaling straight at them. Drive-by punch to the skull. Or that was the idea anyway. I sped closer and closer, they barely flinched, but I definitely did and veered away at the last second. No way I was actually going to touch one of those things. But it's the thought that counts.


I'm a terrible saver. I had an awesome package from home waiting for me when I got back from IST. Velveeta shells and cheese, caramel popcorn, a couple Clif Bars, instant oatmeal packets, water-flavoring packets, along with a couple books, crossword puzzles, my nice rain jacket, and a sweatshirt for whenever I go way down to the southwest or end up climbing Mt. Elgon. I opened the package as soon as I got home, and within less than 48 hours, had eaten the shells and cheese, all the caramel popcorn, both of the Clif Bars, several oatmeal packets, and several drink packets. And I don't feel bad about that at all.


I don't know if I've talked about the Rolex before, but it's long overdue, if I haven't. It's a popular Ugandan street food, where fried eggs are mixed with cabbage, tomatoes, and salt, and then wrapped in a chapati, like a delicious breakfast burrito. I was fortunate enough to have a Rolex Guy in Ngora, and I made sure he knew how happy I was about that by giving him lots and lots of business over the last few months. Until I got home from Christmas.
One night, a day or two after I got back, at about 8:00, I walked over into town to get a couple Rolexes. I was really excited about it. A good Rolex is a very, very good thing. It was pitch dark out, since there was no moon, but I managed to make it to where Rolex Guy always is with his stand. Or to where I thought he was. The broken-down lorry that had been sitting on blocks next to his Rolex stand since I got to Ngora (one of the biggest landmarks in town, especially when it's dark out) was gone, and Rolex Guy was replaced by the tenth Chicken-and-Chapati Guy in town. I couldn't believe it. I was actually so confused that I just stood there for about fifteen seconds, wondering where I was. But then I realized what had happened. Rolex Guy was gone. Devastating. (It might not sound like much to people back home, but, believe me: devastating. I might actually lose even more weight now.)


One of my favorite Ugandan-English phrases is "You were lost!" They say it to you when they first see you after you've just gotten back from any sort of extended trip. It's like you only meant to leave for a few minutes and then spent all the rest of that time trying to find your way back home. Or, maybe, it's like you left and when they realized that, they spent the entire time you were away searching everywhere for you. And now that they've found you, after all that desperate searching, the only thing to say is, "You were lost!" I like it.


I went to an introduction ceremony for a guy who works at my organization. The introduction ceremony is one step before marriage here, where the groom-to-be is "introduced" to the family of the bride-to-be, people give a lot of speeches that I can't understand, they figure out what the dowry is going to be, and then there's food and drink and dancing.
At this introduction, though, the negotiation of the dowry was taking forever. Usually the have a pretty good idea of what it's going to be coming in, so it's all just finishing up the details at that point. But after an hour had passed, during which time all the other guests and I (since the committee who negotiates the dowry does so in private) were just sitting around making small talk and waiting for dinner, I asked what was making this take so much longer than I had been told it would.
The bride-to-be got pregnant before the wedding, was the answer. And since the groom-to-be was the one to get her pregnant before the wedding, his family was going to have to pay more for the dowry.
But by "got pregnant before the wedding," I mean, "they have a three year-old daughter." So, it's like a shotgun wedding. It's just moving on African time.


Speaking of kids: As I left my house to go to work the other day, a little boy, maybe not even two years old, ran up to me, alone, grabbed my hand and started walking with me. We walked, super slowly because of his tiny-little-kid steps, for a good five minutes, while the neighbors laughed and asked where I got the kid (or something like that), and I kept waiting for him to realize that he was getting farther and farther from home (I assumed) and wondering what I was going to do with him when he ended up walking all the way across town with me because he definitely did look like he was planning on letting go any time soon, and we almost made it to the main road, when a woman, maybe his mom, maybe not, called to him and he looked at her, then looked at me, then ran off. It was pretty awesome. Mostly I just like it when kids aren't A: completely terrified of me, or B: asking me for money. The ones that just want to kick it make me happy.


Crazy newspaper story: 30 baboons were killed by a vermin control team in Luweero District last week after farmers were complaining that the baboons were destroying their crops and scaring women and children as they went for water. Crazy. But the best part is that the story said that the vermin control team attacked the baboons "at their hideout" like they were a posse of Wild West bandits, although, more than the Wild West, all I could think of was the movie Congo and gorillas with laser guns strapped to their backs. Crazy story, but awesome mental image.


One last story, that's not actually mine, but it's too good not to share. Another volunteer was in her room at home the other day, middle of the afternoon, she was lying in bed reading and dozed off for a minute, lying on her side, facing the wall. She woke up to a sort of shuffling sound, something moving around a little bit, but figured it was the neighbor girls in the next room over. Then she rolled over and found herself face-to-face with a massive cow that had walked into her bedroom. It was just standing there. Inches from her bed. Understandably surprised, she slapped the cow in the face with her book and it, since it was fully and entirely inside her bedroom, turned around and shuffled out. She had no idea how long it had been in there. That's got to be the quintessential living-in-rural-Africa story of the month. Awesome.


That's pretty much it for now.


Except for rafting. We spent the day on the Nile, charging over a bunch of Class 5 rapids (with Class 6 being the highest, and, also, being technically impassable), flipping the raft on a smaller one, falling out a few times even when the raft didn't flip, and getting out and floating down the river on the flat parts, balancing, for a while, pineapple slices on our chests like otters. It was my first time rafting and it will be pretty hard to top it. Just awesome all around. And this is what it looked like when we flipped (that's me in the middle in the blue shirt). Good. Times.