Oh, THERE you are, Africa!

My first two weeks in country were...surreal. I ate well (mostly). I slept well (mostly). The only insects I saw were outside (mostly) where they belong. Everything ran like clockwork (mostly). The temperature was lovely and breezy (mostly). There was time to relax (mostly). There was electricity (mostly). There were flush toilets and running water (always). And the whole time, I kept thinking, "Wow! Uganda is so different from Ghana! I barely recognize this continent!"

And then, my friends, the third week came. We moved from our little training sanctuary to a Primary Teacher's College a couple of hours away. We are here to apply the teaching skills we acquired in training. We teach at either the teacher's college or the nearby primary school (elementary school) every day from about 7:30-1:00, We then we come "home," eat lunch, have training sessions in the afternoon, meet with mentor groups, eat dinner, and prepare to teach the next day.

It's hot here. It's, "Oh, yeah, I live on the equator" hot. The water only works every other day or so, which makes bathing and flushing tricky/non-existent. The toilets where we sleep are Turkish (squat toilets) and the toilets during the day at the school are pit latrines (a cement hole in the ground). The schedule is, well, on Ugandan time. Meals are sometimes an hour late and quite a bit short of food. The little things in life that I took for granted at our last locale, like the ability to put salt on our food, are gone. Instead of one roommate, I have six. All of us share one outlet, and sleeping has become a difficult endeavor. The other day, a cockroach fell from the table and onto my lap. I'm one of the lucky few who does not have cockroaches and/or ants crawling all over the clothes in
my closet.

There's been an emotional shift this week as well. I've been teaching in a P2 classroom, which means teaching students who are at the end of first grade. Typically, students in Uganda don't learn English until the fourth grade. Luckily, these students are advanced and understand some of what I've been saying, but it has definitely been a challenge. The days have been long and exhausting. Another one of us chose to go home this week.

It's been a hard week. I've found myself chuckling and saying, "Oh, THERE you are, Africa!" I knew it couldn't hide for long.

Help Wanted!

So, here’s a crazy statistic for you: 83% of Ugandans are under the age of 30. Translation: there are a TON of kids here! With the staggering number of children and the problems this country is facing, it’s no wonder they’ve requested help from the Peace Corps! In a nutshell, this is my general job description…

1) To promote world peace.
2) To share U.S. culture with Ugandans, and Ugandan culture with U.S. citizens.
3) To do at least 16 hours of in-service trainings with teachers every 3 months (to improve teaching practices).
4) To create a school library.
5) To do reading intervention with fourth grade students (remediation for students who aren’t yet reading on grade level).
6) To promote and participate in extra-curricular activities (not sure what this will look like yet, though my little heart is dreaming of a Scrabble club, which is apparently popular here).
7) To implement positive behavior systems in my school. (Caning students is still widely practiced here, though it has been outlawed. Teachers need help in knowing what to do instead of caning to manage student behavior.)
8) Submit reports, participate in a national Drop Everything and Read day (DEAR), and prepare students for a national spelling bee. What a great job I'm about to begin! 

Gryffindor!

I am really lucky to be in Peace Corps Uganda! One perk to serving in my country is that we get to bid on our site. This means that, 1) we get a say in what our job will be, and 2) we get a say in where we live and what school we will teach in.

Basically, there are two jobs available in the education sector in Uganda. There are PTC teachers and literacy specialists. The PTC teachers teach content and typically have regular classes teaching math, science, or computers. They also train teachers in how to teach literacy across subjects and work with 17 and 18 year old students who are training to become teachers.

Literacy specialists work in elementary schools and focus on doing reading intervention with fourth grade students. They also train current teachers on how to teach literacy. I asked to be a literacy specialist.

I also got to list my top 3 choices for schools and my bottom 3 choices for schools in which to be placed after reading descriptions about each one. The descriptions included what the general living conditions are like (water sources, how far from town they were, etc.), what region of the country they are in, and specifics about the job at that school. PC reviews your requests, interviews you, and looks at your resume when deciding where to place you.

At the end of the day on Friday, PC said they were going to announce what our sites were "Harry Potter style." I literally squealed with delight at this announcement and exclaimed, "The sorting hat!" It. Was. Awesome. We were called up to the front of the room one at a time and sat on a chair. A hat was placed on our head, there was dramatic music in the background (okay, it was from The Lion King), and the hat told me what language group I belong to and what school I was assigned to (okay, okay, it was a person, but still!). I was assigned to learn one of about 50 languages spoken in Uganda called Lusogo. My assigned school was my first choice, so basically, I’m in the Gryffindor house! I’ll be living and teaching in the eastern region of the country. I’ll be paired up with a nearby PTC teacher and be able to collaborate with at least 2 other volunteers. I’m so excited!

Add caption

One Potato, Two Potato...

What’s the food like in Uganda, you ask? It’s a lot of pretty good, albeit bland, carbohydrates. A typical day (at least in training) goes something like this:

Breakfast: a hard-boiled egg, a piece of bread with honey or ground nut paste (peanut butter) or jam that tastes like beets, and some fruit (usually watermelon or mangoes or pineapple).

Tea Break: Ugandans have tea twice a day that is served with a snack. The snacks today were doughnuts for morning tea and popcorn for afternoon tea. Sometimes the snacks are little cookies or meat pies.
Lunch: at least three carbohydrates such as rice, matooke (plantains), plain noodles, potatoes, ground millet (brown paste), or posho (white paste). Also, there’s some protein like goat or catfish and there’s almost always beans or bean paste. I’ve chosen to turn my wannabe vegetarianism into actual vegetarianism here, so I don’t partake of the meat. Lunch is served with some bitter greens or a cucumber and tomato salad or squash or (once) eggplant. It also comes with some fruit, usually watermelon.

Mango, pineapple, and...carrots.

　
Dinner: see lunch.
Are you beginning to see why women PCVs tend to gain weight here? Other than the carbs, the only problem I’m having with the food is the lack of variety. Before I left, I was cooking 5 meals a week and I didn’t make the same thing twice in over 2 months. That’s how much I love variety! Some days I think, "I’d rather go hungry than eat rice again"…and then I serve myself up some rice. Some things here are extra tasty, like chapatti (a homemade tortilla) and the famed rolex (I haven’t tasted it yet, but it’s legendary). I’m sure new food adventures are coming soon when I move in with my host family!

Fun Fact: both the pumpkin and the orange are green here.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

 The Good

Who do you picture (besides me) when you hear about Peace Corps volunteers? I had always pictured a bunch of 22 year old hippies who dressed in hemp clothing and talked about recycling (or something). The reality is much different. Basically, Peace Corps volunteers (PCVs) are a really diverse group of people. There are 22 year olds, but only about 6 of the 44 in my group graduated in the last year. There are old volunteers and young volunteers and everyone in between. PCVs are also come from a variety of cultural and religious backgrounds and are a wide variety of ethnicities.

We do, however, have a lot in common. For one, we are a very well-traveled group of people. Many of us have lived abroad before and almost everyone has traveled. Collectively, I think we’ve seen the majority of the world. We are also a well-educated and ambitious bunch of people. There are a surprising number of engineers in my group. And we have dreams, people. Big dreams. PCVs also tend to be idealistic do-gooders. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been talking to a fellow PCV and he/she says something like, "I just want to do MORE. I want to look back on my life and feel like I’ve done something meaningful." It’s weird to hear my thoughts coming out of someone else’s mouth. Lastly, PCVs are nerds. I mean hard core (corps?) nerds. I fit right in.

After training every day, we play volleyball and ultimate Frisbee. We do yoga. We jog. We play Bananagrams and Settlers and Hearts. We watch The Lion King. We have talent shows and trivia nights and dance parties. For someone like me, it’s a dream come true.

Training is long and intense, but usually informative and helpful. We learn about cultural norms and the politics, geography, climate, and monetary system of Uganda. We also learn what to expect when we get into the field physically, psychologically, emotionally and in every other way. We practice washing clothes by hand with a bar of soap. We watch (clothed) demonstrations of how to go to the bathroom in a pit latrine. We learn how to use a charcoal stove.

Johnson demonstrating how to take a bucket bath.

Susan showing us how to use a charcoal stove.

The Bad

There’s only one thing on my bad list so far. Mefloquine. It’s the Malaria prevention medication I opted to take. The problem is that I reacted badly to it. Very badly. I had horrible, vivid nightmares and woke myself up screaming. I felt restless and anxious for no reason. I just didn’t feel like myself. Rest assured (?) that these side effects are normal for this medication. After taking it, I found out that it has been "black boxed," that the military stopped using it, that the FDA says it shouldn’t be taken for more than 2 months, that, basically, it’s bad news. A PCV that’s been here awhile said that while on the drug, he vividly dreamt that he beat his mother to death. Another PCV woke up choking herself. A staff member came to check on me after I had fallen asleep one night, and it took me awhile to stop screaming when she woke me up. Yikes! Needless to say, I am off that medication! Never again, my friends. Never again.

The Ugly

Fun Fact: Did you know that Ugandans (and PCVs who live here) need to iron all of their clothes so that mango flies that get on the clothing while it’s drying don’t burrow into their skin?