Recent Photos

Waiting to go pick up my mom at the airport (she lands in an hour!) and our super-nice hotel has super-fast internet, so I'll upload some pics I've been meaning to for a long time:

Mural painted at the Peace Corps 50th Celebration

Queen Elizabeth National Park

Lioness, Queen Elizabeth National Park

Elephant with the Rwenzori Mountains, Queen Elizabeth National Park

Peace Garden - our team's project at the Peace Corps 50th

Children dancing in my village

Kibo

a HUGE puff adder at the agricultural college where I've been teaching (it's dead)

The kids at the Epicenter nursery school

My supervisor, James (left), with our Epicenter chairman at his matooke plantation

Women weighing their babies at our monthly immunization day

Banywani na Nshonga

PCVs currently serving have all heard stories of how rattling reverse culture shock can really be. Reverse culture shock refers to returning to your home country/culture after spending time abroad and finding that you don’t quite fit in as well as you used to, at least at first, and that the way Americans do things is actually now shocking to you. I’ve heard stories of RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) breaking down in the cereal aisle, amazed by the ridiculously huge variety before them. Others have become “that weird guy who greets everyone” because in many of the cultures where PCVs serve, greeting neighbors or even people you don’t know on the street is just what you do. I was watching God Grew Tired of Us, a documentary about refugees from Sudan who are relocated to the U.S., and I felt so bad for them when they went up to people’s houses just to greet them and ask about the neighborhood, and the homeowners were so nervous they called the police. Whenever a group of PCVs gets together at someone’s house, we spend hours raving if that person has a toilet and running water (I’ve even heard rumors that a few lucky PCVs even have things like ovens and one person has a fireplace?!), so I wonder how long I will marvel at modern conveniences when I get home – at our house we have three toilets, three hot showers, a refrigerator, a microwave, an oven, several TVs, heat, air conditioning, a fireplace, fast internet… even the thought of all those luxuries is overwhelming right now. It’s hard to say what will cause me to break down, but a cry fest at the grocery store or Target (another PCV and I have a specific fantasy – driving to Target in our own car while drinking a Starbucks latte) doesn’t scare me as much as the idea that I will be some kind of weird maladjusted citizen who doesn’t fit in.

Kibo is doing great – she’s now 8 months old and pretty big! I was worried about whether I’d be able to take her back to the U.S. because of how nervous she gets around new places and strangers, but I’ve discovered a few important things. First of all, she’s racist (lol). She is super afraid of Ugandan men she doesn’t know (barks her head off then runs away when they get too close), is curious about Ugandan women she doesn’t know, but she almost instantly loves any white PCV that comes to visit, man or woman, and is all over them right away! She’s already very affectionate with people she is familiar with, Ugandan or American, man or woman. And I think her anxiety with new places or walking through the trading center is the number of strange Ugandan men that she doesn’t know. I’ve been taking her on walks up little paths, between farms and where there aren’t too many people, and as soon as we’re away from the main road she visibly relaxes, becomes her happy-go-lucky self, and has a great time running around. The other evening we took a long walk and somehow picked up a caboose of 5 or 6 small children walking with us for over an hour. They didn’t say much but mostly just giggled at Kibo and ran away screaming if she tried to play with them. Definitely an “I live in Africa” moment when you walk through the village with a bunch of kids. Plus, I just don’t think I have the heart to leave Kibo here when I go back to the U.S. – she’s sometimes a piece of work but I love her and she’s coming home with me.

In my village, my best friend is probably my next-door neighbor, Gertrude, who is one of the nurses at the health center. She speaks the best English, understands most of my jokes and just seems to get me more than most Ugandans. She has a 10-month-old daughter named Amanya Ruth, and she is soooo cute! I’ve never watched a baby grow up like this, as I’ve seen her almost every day since she was 3 months old, and it’s so cool to watch her learn to stand, start to say words, learn how to smile, etc.

I was recently traveling by taxi (aka crowded minibus) to my friend’s site in the central region near Kampala. The woman sitting very close beside me kept nodding off to sleep, and every time her head thunked into my shoulder (not just brushed by actually head-butted me), she wouldn’t exactly pull away and would sometimes linger there. I know she was aware of what was happening, and was astonished because I know that I would be mortified if my sleepy head kept landing on a stranger’s shoulder. So I decided to start shoving my shoulder back into her head every time she lingered for more than a few seconds. Well, the ladies in the row behind me noticed it and burst into laughter every time I bonked the lady’s head away from me, and pretty soon my friend and I were also laughing hysterically. It was a very happy moment after a rough week – despite the fact that I didn’t want the lady to actually be sleeping on me, the fact that I had a moment with some Ugandan women without saying a word – a completely cross-cultural, all-humans-are-the-same moment – just made me so happy that I can’t describe it in words. It’s little moments like that, usually a shared laugh, that help put things in perspective and see the goodness in people, despite all the frustrations that naturally arise when two cultures collide.

I needed something to help me feel good about Ugandans and my life here, and remind me of the positive side of things. This last week was very rough because of so many different thing adding up to frustrate me. First of all, my counterpart and supervisor haven't informed me of very important things (such as not being able to translate for a women's health workshop or that the new country director was coming to visit). I bought a new lock for our rainwater tank (which is finally full! no more going to the stream for me for a while) and gave keys to my neighbor and the maintenance man, who sometimes does his laundry here, and who I thought I could trust, and found out that he had given more than 5 people full jerrycans of water without asking us about it (and most of the people who received water were young pretty girls...). The word on the street was that Kahinda was now giving everyone free water from the tank. I felt like my trust had been so betrayed and I was irate. Finally, I had already had greediness, etc. on my mind (see my previous post), so when an NGO came to build two 20,000 liter rainwater tanks for the community's use and asked people to help haul lumber and water for construction, and people were refusing to help without payment, I had just about had it. The community is getting a free source of safe water and they won't give up 10 minutes of their time to help?? And I gave up 2 years of my life (and delayed vet school by 3) to volunteer to help these same people? Ugh! I've rarely been so frustrated and fed up. This week was when I most seriously considered ETing (early termination - quitting) because of how frustrated I was by how irresponsible/selfish/whatever people were being. However, I'm happy to report that spending a few days with PCV friends has drastically improved my mood, so I won't be quitting anytime soon. It was just one of those weeks - they happen to everyone here.

And another mood booster - my mom is flying in today and I am soooo excited!! I’ll pick her up in Entebbe this afternoon and then head to my village with her tomorrow. Updates on our adventures together in a few weeks!

Foreign Aid, Dependency, and Corruption

Being here in Uganda, I have lost a great deal of faith in large NGOs and foreign aid. While I am still (and always will be) learning about international development, my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer has helped me to see the harm which can come from international donors, and has me questioning almost every type of foreign assistance currently being provided. I apologize if this post comes across as overly negative, but this is a huge problem here and I can’t emphasize the importance of how these issues are impacting Uganda’s future.

One of the biggest problems I see is the mentality of people here in regards to how they see themselves and their communities, which I believe mostly stems from the large influx of foreign aid into Uganda. The mindset is one of powerlessness and dependency. Whenever I make a suggestion on a different way of doing things (like that the community work together to conserve their water supplies for the dry season, or even simple requests like starting a meeting on time) people say things like, “We Africans can’t do that. Black people don’t behave that way. Our problem is…” For instance, many of the most successful and lucrative small businesses, such as supermarkets, are owned by Indians, which many Ugandans chalk up to Indians being “business people” and alluding to the idea that Africans lack some natural ability to run good businesses. I don’t know if this mindset is a product of lack of education, foreign aid providing everything, having the perception that all white people are rich and all black people are poor, being told they are “poor uneducated Africans” making them believe themselves to be at the lowest rung of society’s ladder, or a combination of a variety of factors, but this mentality is very troubling. In fact, I would hazard to guess that this is a major reason the much of Africa continues to lag behind most other parts of the world in terms of development (the word “development” has a different definition for everyone, and there are countless books that try to define exactly what “development” is, but here I use it to refer to indicators of human rights and quality of life, such as life expectancy, access to health care and prevalence of communicable diseases, literacy and education rates, access to clean water, etc.). Rather than trying to solve problems themselves, Africans have been told they are poor, they are uneducated, they need the help of Westerners to make their lives better, etc. so many don’t even try to improve their lives without outside help. Many even describe an epidemic of laziness stemming from being given so much from outside. Why would anyone work to improve their lives when they can just get a handout? As several people have pointed out, Uganda (and many other African countries) has plenty of natural resources, land for cultivating, enough rainfall, good soil, mineral wealth, etc. but yet people go hungry and live in poverty. One Indian man who has been living here for 5 years boiled it all down to laziness.

When a Western donor comes to visit to check things out, the local branches of the organization he/she is funding of course rave about their work and make it sound like they’re doing amazing things, sometimes even lying about activities – and it makes sense when you realize that the very well-paid jobs held by staff members of these organizations would be jeopardized if the donors realized how ineffective many of their donations have truly been. Yes, we always talk about ourselves and our work in the best way possible (I’m also guilty there), but it is commonplace for NGOs to blatantly lie about programs they have been conducting so that the aid money keeps coming. A lot of money seems to be spent on paying a driver to lug around “field officers” in a shining white SUV, spending an exorbitant amount of money on a vehicle and fuel that could be instead shunted to community projects. For example, my organization drives for hours every day to conduct field work because the staff members live in a major urban center more than 1 hour away from the catchment area of their projects.

I also feel that foreign aid contributes to corruption, even down to the level of the individual within society, due to the huge influx of money that everyone wants to get their hands on. Community members sometimes don’t attend educational events hosted by my organization, such as workshops about HIV or malaria, if they know they won’t receive something tangible (a soda, lunch, or just plain money) in return, and villagers know how to beef up a budget proposal for their community-based organization (CBO) to get more money than they actually need for their operations – some of which ends up spent on new clothes, alcohol, school fees, soda or street food, etc. While things like school fees and clothing are needed by the local people, it doesn’t mean that lying about the allocation of funds, and thus using corrupt practices, is acceptable. Several Peace Corps Volunteers who are working for NGOs have complained that budget proposals sent to international donors are blatant lies or include figures which the organization has purposely padded and made no attempt to make cost-effective. For example, we asked some community members to draft a proposal for funding a fruit demonstration garden. Their original proposal suggested far more plants than could fit on the land where they want to grow them, budgeted about $350 to transport seedlings from Mbarara when we already have most of the seedlings in our nursery bed here, and asked for a very large salary when these workers are volunteers and are working for their own benefit and the improvement of their own community. Their original proposal called for $4,677, while my supervisor figured we could meet all our objects for about $1,200 (which is probably still more than is necessary).

A lot of community projects fail because when a project is started to generate income for the community/NGO, someone ends up pocketing at least some portion of it. Maybe it’s impossible for me to understand the type of desperation that comes from poverty due to lack of personal experience, but the level of dishonesty when it comes to money in almost every situation in Uganda astounds me. We’re currently trying to come up with some income-generating activities that the community can do to continue The Hunger Project’s programs after we pull out (each Epicenter is only supposed to receive 5 years of external support before being self-sufficient) but I’m realizing that there is absolutely no way to prevent the committee leaders for our programs from pocketing any income for themselves – and based on what has happened at other Epicenters, this is exactly what has happened. I simply don’t know how to function in a system with such an overwhelming level of corruption from top to bottom. Yes, there’s corruption in the U.S., but not nearly to this extent.

African society is considered more community-oriented than in the U.S., yet a lot of the things I see happen are very individualistic. For example, we have tried to start a vegetable demonstration garden at our Epicenter before but people have always stolen the vegetables. Taxi drivers and shop owners are always trying to rip people off, and not just the muzungu who they assume is rich – fellow Ugandans, too – and they can do it because there are few price tags here, you just ask how much something costs and have to know whether it’s a fair price or not. Theft is very common here, and one house in my village was violently broken into during the night when the thieves knew the homeowner had sold cattle that day and had 1.5 million shillings (about $650) in his house. He and his wife were beaten badly and took a long time to recover. I can’t even leave things like my buckets or towels outside overnight because someone is likely to take them. There are certainly aspects of society that demonstrate how much Ugandans care about the greater community – people greet everyone, my neighbors get worried if I don’t come out of my house all day, and I recently attended a funeral where well over 500 people were in attendance because everyone attends, not just the people who knew the deceased. However, a lot of what I see is counterintuitive to what I would expect to see in a community-oriented society.

Another thing I don’t really understand (and that is not completely related but I want to discuss it) is poor job performance. When it comes to government “public servant” jobs, there is no accountability because everyone is on a permanent pension and virtually nobody gets fired. Another Peace Corps Volunteer works at the District Health Office, and a co-worker of his remarked that in 16 years of working for the Ministry of Health, they’ve never known a single person to get fired. Thus, poor job performance is rampant, not only among health care workers, but in every position in Ugandan society. Nurses show up to work hours late and leave hours early, forcing patients to wait a long time for health care, sometimes until the following day. Secretaries fail to deliver important messages. Groundskeepers simply don’t show up for work, yet are still somehow paid. I continue to be amazed at the quality of “customer service” here – almost all shopkeepers, hotel staff, waiters, etc. give off the attitude that you, the customer, are bothering them and they wished you would just go away so they can get back to their nap. Such job performance would never be tolerated in the U.S., so I simply can’t wrap my head around why in Uganda, where the unemployment rate is astronomically higher, employers continue to put up with this when so many other people would be available to fill the position. A big part of the equation is low salaries, but with the level of poverty here, even a low salary is something worth working for.

Despite all this, I still believe that people have a moral obligation to help other human beings who are suffering or in need. So how do we help developing countries without squandering money in ways that are ineffective and actually create problems of their own, like dependence on outside resources? One way is investment. If foreign investors spent their money on rewarding good Ugandan businesses and encouraging entrepreneurship, rather than just donating things and money, we would get past a huge host of the current problems, including fostering creative approaches to ending one’s one poverty rather than waiting for an outside handout, and creating a sustainable way to boost the local economy. However, as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I’m struggling with what kinds of solutions I can bring to the table as just one person (along with other PCVs and my community).

Like I mentioned earlier, I am still learning and am trying to get my hands on books such as Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo. Friends have raved about this book and I’m hoping to read it soon, as well as similar books, to help flesh out my new perspective on foreign aid.

Amagara ni Marungi (Life is Good)

I spent Easter in my village and went to church with my neighbors. The service was long but had music and dancing. The best part was that they had a translator so most of the service was given in both Runyankore and English – otherwise, it would have been a painful 2.5 to 3 hours of not understanding much at all. A young woman from the area was launching an album so gave a “concert”. The music and dancing were good but the girl needs to learn how to lip synch better – it was very obvious she wasn’t singing. I entertained everyone during one song by getting up and joining the dancers on stage. Afterwards, we came home and I ate lots of local foods with my neighbors for dinner (matooke, sweet potatoes, millet, and some very tough beef. Even Gertrude, my neighbor, said the beef was tough, and when a Ugandan comments on the toughness of the meat, you know it’s really tough. And they wonder why I rarely buy meat in this country…).

Villagers buying beef the day before Easter. They slaughtered 4 cows that day, and they sell the meat by the kilo by just hacking away with a machete – no such thing as real cuts like sirloin or T-bone steaks here.

Easter church service with music and dancing. Even the pastor gets into it.

A couple of weeks ago, we hosted a World Malaria Day event at my site. 5 other Peace Corps Volunteers came to help out, and the day included music to draw people to the event, lessons about malaria transmission, prevention, and treatment (some of which was taught by yours truly), speeches by local government officials, a youth poster contest, and a raffle for several mosquito nets and a bottle of insect repellant. Although I had worked hard preparing for the event, I decided that morning to have no expectations so as not to be disappointed if we had a low turn-up (a survival mechanism I’m learning to have in Uganda – be pleasantly surprised if things work out) but was very happy when over 225 people showed up for the event. The District Health Officer was our guest of honor, and he was very impressed by the size of the crowd and wants to help us do more health events like this around the district. The event lasted far longer than I ever anticipated – speeches from every local government official imaginable, guest speakers showing up 3 hours late, etc. – but everyone deemed the event a huge success. While I really enjoyed planning and hosting the event, and acting as the country coordinator for all the Peace Corps events for World Malaria Day in Uganda, I was very glad it was over because of how much work and time it had taken to prepare for the day.

A representative of the District Chairman addressing the crowd at World Malaria Day

The next day was my birthday, April 28. The actual day was spent in the village, and was lazy in a wonderful way. Some of my Peace Corps friends were still at my house (including my friend Jesse, whose birthday is also April 28!), so we had French toast, watched a movie, then just chilled all day. For dinner, my friends Gertrude and Janephur cooked us millet, posho, and g-nut (peanut) sauce. The food was nothing out of the ordinary but the gesture was so nice. The following day, I went to Mbarara for the weekend to meet new PCVs, who had just finished training and moved to their sites around the southwest, and to celebrate my birthday. I enjoyed a few days of eating good food, watching the royal wedding (everything looks even fancier when you live in an African village), lounging at the pool, getting a full-body massage, buying a ton of clothes at a big weekly market (4 skirts, 2 shirts, and a cardigan for about $11), and dancing with friends at a popular nightclub, Heat, which is outdoors and has fire pits and music videos playing on big screens.

The weekly market in Mbarara where I bought way too many clothes. Shirts go for 20 to 50 cents, so a shopping spree here isn’t quite as expensive as in the U.S., and since Ugandans don’t know the good American brand names, you find shirts from The North Face or Banana Republic for the same price as everything else.

However, that Friday also marked the biggest riot that has occurred since demonstrations began in Kampala and other cities several weeks ago for the “Walk to Work Campaign”, which the opposition is heading to protest rising fuel and food prices. Downtown Kampala had tires burning in the streets and riot police everywhere. One of my Peace Corps friends was on a bus in central Kampala during the riots and described a scene of pure chaos, saying that no vehicles were entering the city and taxis and buses were all heading away from downtown as fast as possible, even without passengers. A man almost threw a brick at his bus until the driver made a pro-opposition hand gesture. Despite this major riot, during which time the main opposition leader, Dr. Kizza Besigye, was seriously injured by police and has been recovering at a hospital in Kenya, things have been fairly peaceful since, and all PCVs are safe.

I’ve continued teaching at Kyera Agricultural Teaching College, and last week was my lesson on goats and sheep. When I asked the students what a female sheep is called, they said “Eee-way”. I wrote “ewe” on the board and explained that it is pronounced “you”, but only later realized the irony – the word for “you” in Runyankore is “iwe”, which is how they were pronouncing the word for a female sheep. Maybe they’re right after all. Also, although I regularly watch movies with Ugandans, probably the most entertaining movie-watching experience happened when Jesse and I showed the college staff two extreme sports videos. The first was of our training group’s white water rafting trip on the Nile. Whenever a boat flipped, they would matter-of-factly exclaim, “And now you die!” with the typical Ugandan noise of disbelief and amazement “Eh eh eh eh eh eh…” They just couldn’t believe people actually do such things on “water which is like smoke.” Hilarious and made me realize how crazy white people really do look sometimes. We followed that with a video of really extreme skiing that even amazed me, which produced many more hilarious comments from the Ugandans.

My house has suddenly been raided by mosquitoes and is a buzzing hotbed of the bloodsuckers every night. I’ve taken to walking around my house for a good 20 minutes or so before going to bed just killing mosquitoes by clapping my hands together or slapping them against the walls. Kibo watches me while this happens with wide eyes and a confused expression, and I can tell I look crazy and slightly disturbed during this now-nightly ritual. I’m hoping that the coming dry season, my recently-cleared compound (it had tall grasses before which can harbor mosquitoes), and the fact that I now kill 5-20 mosquitoes every night will soon get rid of my problem.

I’ve started calling everyone who calls me muzungu either black guy or omweraguju, which means black person in Runyankore. A lot of times they don’t really know how to react and are stunned into silence, but others around them always laugh. It’s difficult to explain to people that where I come from, it is racist to call someone by the color of their skin, so if they don’t like being called “black guy”, they shouldn’t call me muzungu. I also made an entire taxi full of people laugh (again – this always happens), but this time because the driver tried to get me to take aboda boda (motorcycle taxi) past a police checkpoint because I had been sharing the front seat with another woman and it is illegal to have two passengers in the front seat (even though they often squeeze in three). People laughed when I vehemently refused and told the driver I would not help him do something illegal, but if all passengers would refuse illegal practices, the roads here would be so much safer – however, nobody ever seems to stand up against overcrowding or bad driving.

I began a health education series for mothers at our child immunization outreaches. Our first session discussed family planning options, including a condom demonstration using matooke (a green banana/plantain) which always makes everyone laugh. The lesson was only about 15-20 minutes but I feel it was effective, and afterwards at least one woman asked for a Depo Provera injection. Feels good to see results from my work! I’m also planning on doing a women’s health day next week with information about family planning, HIV and STIs, pregnancy and breastfeeding, and menstruation, including selling Afripads, a low-cost reusable menstrual pad that saves girls and women a lot of money, keeps girls in school (many stay at home during their periods because of embarrassment from using towels, rags, feathers, etc. when they are unable to afford a pack of Always), and is environmentally friendly.

I officially ate the first thing I have grown myself – green beans from my garden! Amazingly fresh and delicious, and 100% organic. Maybe I’ll continue a garden back in the U.S.?

Finally, one last interesting anecdote. I knew before that the people in my region, the Banyankore, are split into two ethnic groups, the Bahima, who are the prestigious minority who have traditionally been the cattle owners and therefore the group with money and power, and the Bairu, who were traditionally the agriculturalists and lower in society than the Bahima. President Museveni himself is Bahima. The two groups often look physically different, with Bahima people known for lighter skin and thinner noses (also, Bahima women tend to be very large! People say it’s all the milk they drink). However, what I was recently told is that these two groups are actually the same ethnic groups as the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda, who are now famous for being the focus of the Rwandan genocide. The Bahima are essentially Tutsis, and the Bairu are Hutus, the difference being that they are now part of different language groups so have different names.

I am going to try to write more frequent, shorter blog entries to make it easier on my readers. It doesn’t feel like very much happens here on a daily basis but when I sit down to write a blog post it always gets so long!

It's a Weird, Weird World

The other night, I’m watching Legends of the Fall and suddenly realize that the way the soldiers stare at Brad Pitt when he rides back into the WWI camp, his dead brother’s blood smeared in war paint on his face and a necklace made of German scalps around his neck, is the way that Ugandans often stare at me – a sense of wonder, confusion, and a hint of unsettled, disapproving curiosity, like they’ve never seen something as crazy-weird as you. I first laughed at the realization, then was depressed by the fact that for two years, I’m looked at in the way that one might look at a person who has brutally chopped apart bodies, isn’t exactly mentally stable, and is no longer recognizable as a civilized human being and needs psychiatric counseling.

I really need to learn not to give any contact information to Ugandan men, period. I thought I was being sneaky by giving out my e-mail rather than my phone number, but a) I forgot that I have an automatic e-mail signature with my phone number in it, and b) I just received an e-mail from one of my students at the agricultural college saying, “your are my fiance i like you from bottom of my heart and i like you with my soul heart i would request you to be my best Friend What about you dear?” All other differences in culture and wifely expectations aside, I prefer dating guys who understand the definition of “fiancé” and realize it’s not a term that means “The girl I find pretty who I would like to be friends with.” Unless we begin with that type of understanding, I really can’t see this working out, fellas. Additionally, crying, “I love you!” to a Western woman with whom you’ve literally never spoken one word is a sure way to get her to run immediately in the opposite direction. It doesn’t help that the local language has no distinction between “like,” “desire,” and “love,” but given the other problems I’ve encountered with men being extremely forward with what they say and vocabulary confusion about words like “fiancé”, I doubt it makes a huge difference. In a relationship in the U.S., if you say “I love you,” too soon (for some this means after the first few dates, for others it means months or years), it’s a sure sign that you’ve just made things too awkward to continue. Just watch the pilot episode of How I Met Your Mother, a TV show that is becoming an obsession in certain Peace Corps circles – it proves my point. One of my best friends, Andrea, is in Peace Corps Paraguay, and while Latin American cultures are widely known for their machismo culture, I think Uganda should qualify as another flag-bearer for ridiculous male declarations of love.

ATTENTION all lazy and/or eccentrically-dressed people: come to Uganda. Here, one of the common greetings is, “Gyebale!” or “Webale/yebare emirimo!” which both mean “Thank you for your work!” This is a very nice sentiment, to thank everyone you meet for just doing what they do, and speaks highly on how Ugandans value other people, but using this as a standard greeting could very well (and often does) mean thanking people for sitting and drinking a beer, walking down the road, or taking a nap. People recently thanked me when I bought a sofa set. If your goals in life are less than overachieving, or you’ve had too few people appreciate all your hard work, Uganda could be good for you, or at least make you feel good about yourself. Additionally, just about any time I wear a new outfit, I am told by someone, “You are very smart!” meaning well-dressed. One day I was wearing a black tank top with a pair of brown capris, which are actually getting pretty washed-out, stained, and gross-looking (and by mixing black and brown I broke one of those fashion rules which someone once created but probably doesn’t actually apply anymore, like the whole “white after Labor Day” thing) but someone still said, “Eh! You are so smart.” I think this is partially due to the fact that I rarely wear pants in my village, but regardless, if you wear some type of clothing a Ugandan has infrequently seen, is very unique (also sometimes known as “really weird”), or has bright colors, you will be complimented on your wardrobe.

However, other compliments here I can go without, namely any remark about my body. In Africa, being called ‘fat’ is a good thing, similar to being called beautiful, and people will sometimes say, “You are growing fat!” to mean that you are looking rich and healthy. Unfortunately, Ugandans do not understand that such comments have been known to cause eating disorders in Western women, who are bombarded with images of celebrities and models with long, lean figures. For instance, when I first arrived at site I was chatting with some women in the village who were saying, “Oh you are so pretty! Your nose is small! Your face is nice! And you have a great figure!” Just when I was about to be flattered, they added, “You have big legs!” It was in that moment that I realized I never want a Ugandan to honestly compliment my body because of their preferences for junk-in-the-trunk and everything that jiggles.

One fashion trend that I really don’t get is that men here sometimes wear ridiculously short ties. While most Ugandan men adopt a typical Western suit for work or special occasions, including a tie of normal length, you occasionally see a man wearing a short, fat tie stretching down no further than where I imagine his nipples would be. I’m not sure if the actual tie is shorter or they just tie the knot differently, but the effect, at least from my perspective, is probably not what the wearer was going for. I was at a hotel with another PCV once when our waiter had a tie that extended literally only 3 inches past the knot. She and I couldn’t help but bust into hysterics every time he came to refill our drinks or bring our food. It just looks so strange and comical, as if someone stepped into a futuristic machine that makes you bigger (whatever the opposite of a shrink-ray is) and everything got 5 times larger except for the tie. If a man wears shorts in this culture he’s considered to be dressing like a young boy, but apparently wearing a tie that is meant to be on someone standing no more than 3 feet tall is a fashion statement.

If you put an American kid within 3 miles of a puppy, he/she will find that puppy, play with it, squeeze it half to death, and cry out, “Mom, can we keep it, please?! I promise I’ll take care of it,” and other similar pleas to keep the good, cute and furry times rolling. If you put a puppy near a Ugandan child, the kid will scream bloody murder and run away crying, as if he or she is being chased by an 800-pound Grizzly bear (or for an African example, a pride of hungry lions) rather than a 4-pound hairball of joy. Ugandans are not dog lovers, and I realize this, but it still never ceases to amaze me how absolutely terrified of dogs, and especially puppies, Ugandan children are. Kibo has lately taken up the hobby of terrorizing small children on their way to fetch water by charging at them at full speed. I think she knows they don’t want to play, but despite their screams, their tears making channels in the dirt on their cheeks and snot bubbling out of their noses, they still run away and provide something to chase, so the game is still fun for her. Dogs here are for security purposes only, so most Ugandans are raised to fear dogs as much as American children are raised to fear strangers offering them candy or… a cute puppy. Huh. Maybe these cultures are more similar than we think.

Speaking of similarities, at the Easter service at one of the local churches, the LC1 Chairman (basically the village mayor), an older gentleman, was giving a speech and addressed the children, telling them to appreciate their education and study hard. At one point, he actually said something like, “I used to have to walk for miles to reach school,” (which I would like to point out that some of these children still do) then said something about how kids these days have it easy and they should appreciate what they have. I didn’t hear anything about walking uphill both ways in three feet of snow, but the correlation to those stereotypical stories we all heard from our grandparents was not lost on me. Maybe Uganda and the U.S. are more alike than meets the eye.

Live Like a PCV!

I highly encourage everyone to take part in this challenge - Live Like a PCV. It's designed to give you a taste of what life is like for PCVs (and most other people) in the developing world. It's actually pretty hilarious for me to read the criteria (extremely true!) and I would absolutely love to hear stories of any of you who attempt the challenge! I suggest trying the set of rules for Kenya as it's probably most similar to my situation in Uganda.

http://www.livelikeapcv.org/

Happy 50th Birthday, Peace Corps!

Time here seems frozen. Yes, there is some seasonality between rainy and dry seasons, but for the most part the weather is constant. It feels like spring or summer all year. Being on the Equator, the day length doesn’t change – the sun comes up and sets at almost the same time every day. I can’t decide if life in the U.S. seems like just yesterday or a million years ago, a distant memory that could have been a dream, one which stills seems real when you first wake up.

Speaking of the passage of time, this past weekend, many volunteers attended a service day to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps. We did lots of projects at a primary school near Kampala, including creating a ‘peace garden’ (which was my group’s project), rehabilitating the rainwater collecting system, painting classrooms, collecting trash, painting a mural, teaching life skills, etc. It was a lot of fun, and I got to see lots of great friends and meet many new people, both PCVs already in the field and trainees in the newest group that arrived in February. Although some of the work was outside the ideology of Peace Corps (which emphasizes building capacity and empowering people, not doing things for them like painting schools and building water systems), it felt good to actually do something with a visible, tangible, almost instant result. That evening, we had a super fancy reception – we arrived to big band Frank Sinatra-style music while everyone was having drinks on the lawn, then had dinner and watched films/listened to speeches about Peace Corps under some fancy tents while seated on chairs with chair covers. Super swanky. Kudos to the planning team! Then we danced and danced and danced…. I don’t think I sat down for 4 hours. You can see the video we watched at the reception featuring PCVs and staff in Uganda and what Peace Corps means to us (include a short quip by yours truly) here on Facebook.

Liza, a PCV from my training group who lives in the next village over, is applying for a grant to start a goat project, so she and I would be working together if we get the money. I would teach the recipients about goat care, and she would teach them about financial management and help them to open an account at the Farmers SACCO (microfinance bank) where she works. Keep your fingers crossed that the money pulls through!

I will soon be teaching at an agricultural training college (Kyera Farm) near Mbarara with Jesse, another PCV from my training group. He’s teaching a permaculture class, while I get to teach various animal husbandry topics. This term, I’m in charge of teaching a class on pig, small ruminant, and rabbit production (which is good since I’m also helping other PCVs with goat and rabbit projects – it will help me brush up on what I know). Next term, I could be teaching dairy and beef production. I’m so excited since this is more what I envisioned for myself in Peace Corps than what I have been doing so far, and I also think this might make me a professor. The staff members at Kyera are also really nice, fun people. When I was there last time, one of the veterinarians, who is also a lecturer, was showing the students how to treat pigs for mange – man was it loud! If you’ve never heard a pig scream, your eardrums are thanking you. My first class is on Monday (currently preparing my swine lessons, hahaha) – wish me luck!

I recently received FOUR packages from home, including such wonders as JIF peanut butter, granola bars, Velveeta Mac & Cheese, a ton of issues of The Horse magazine, scented candles, a solar shower, a can of baked beans, Valentine’s Day candy, white-chocolate covered Oreos (unbelievable!), and Eat, Pray, Love on DVD. I also got a big bundle of holiday cards made by Betsy (my niece)’s classroom, with whom I am corresponding through the Peace Corps World Wise Schools Correspondence Program. I should have video-taped myself opening the packages, I was so excited. A big thanks to Mom, Dad, Joy, Sean, and Betsy’s classroom!

Also, the bats in my ceiling/attic are GONE! All it took was to wait for the bats to leave at dusk one evening, and then my neighbor climbed up in the ceiling and stuffed thorny branches into the holes where the bats enter and exit. Now nights are nice and quiet – no more squeaks, creaks, feet scratching on the ceiling tiles, and very-loud thuds when the bats re-enter and jump onto the ceiling from above. If I had known it was this easy, I would have done this months ago – they were so loud they would wake me up at night, and my first few nights at site (and a few select times since then) I literally thought someone was breaking into my kitchen. However, there is now a rat/mouse that sneaks into my kitchen every night and wreaks havoc on my food stores and any level of cleanliness I had managed to create. Might be time to set some traps.

Lately, whenever I’ve been away from site, I get easily frustrated by the actions of people around me (mostly due to impersonal shouts of “Muzungu!”, creepy men, people just trying to rip me off, and another level of annoyedness that I can’t explain) and it’s a huge relief to get home. This manifestation is probably not healthy overall, but I think it speaks volumes to how integrated I feel at site and how kind the people in my village are towards me. When I’m having a bad day, I’m reminded of a quote from a PCV in Peru in one of our reference books:

“There comes a day when all this suddenly becomes apparent, all at once. Things are no longer picturesque; they are dirty. No longer quaint but furiously frustrating. And you want like crazy to just get out of there, to go home.”

When I was traveling in Africa in 2008, things were picturesque, villages were quaint, people were fascinating, and life was an adventure. Life is still an adventure, but in different ways than I could have anticipated (but isn’t it always that way?) but of course I’m still enjoying the ride. I’m learning how to deal with frustrations, and I’m trying to perfect the art of turning the other cheek and of not sweating the small stuff (which is difficult when being cat-called on the street or when a bus company openly admits they have ripped you off and are refusing to give your money back). I also want to show some Ugandan men what a determined, independent woman looks like and what happens when you try to mess with her (it’s not pretty. Ask some of my friends who have been around when someone tries to rip me off or does something really rude). I do wonder how things will be when I get back to the U.S., because reverse culture shock can sometimes be the hardest adjustment of all. Will I actually find things about this culture and way of life that I miss? I’m sure there will be a few, like how people value greeting each other here and take time for their families, and even the fact that I stand out so much will probably be partly missed (I’ll be wondering where my celebrity status went once I get home). Other things, like the treatment of women or open corruption in society, will not.

As a fun addendum to lighten the mood, I just bought a zebra print soft set and will post pictures when I get it delivered to my house. I’ve kinda wanted one ever since I saw one from a bus window a few months ago. When else in my life can I have a zebra print couch without looking completely insane except when I live in Africa? All the couches in Uganda are ugly, anyways (no seriously, they’re REALLY ugly) – might as well get one with some flair!