Waging War

I've officially been sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and I'm finally getting to work in what will be my home and place of employment for the next two years!

Getting the house in a clean, livable condition was hard work! I no longer find the Ugandan custom of thanking everyone you run into on the street for their work strange. I used to think, "Why are you thanking me, I haven't done anything." I don't think that anymore. Now I think, "I HAVE worked hard today. I've worked really, really hard! Thank you for acknowledging and appreciating that!" Daily living here is a sweaty, back-breaking venture. It takes hours to haul water, wash clothes by hand, boil drinking water, buy the things you need (one day I spent nearly 3 hours trying to find a nail--a single, solitary nail), and do every other chore that's (comparatively) a breeze at home.

Part of cleaning up the house was waging an all-out war against giant cockroaches, who came as soon as the food arrived in my kitchen. I don't think I can express in words how ferociously I detest cockroaches. They remind me of a time in my life that was full of poverty and sadness. I have a very unhealthy, irrational fear of them. My list of irrational fears used to be quite a bit longer, but cockroaches are the only thing that remain. I guess it's time to cross them off the list.

In addition to scrubbing, I've spent many fruitless hours trying to plug all of the holes that enable them to just waltz right in to my house. The one inch gap under my kitchen door. The huge gaps in between the wooden panels on my window shutters. The hole in the bathroom that leads straight outside. All of the places where the windows don't quite meet the frames. The house was designed, or has devolved, into a mecca for creatures of all shapes and sizes. "Come right in," cries the house, "let me roll out the red carpet!" And so, I pulled out the duct tape and the weathering strips, the Magic Erasers (to which I could write many a love song to), the caulk, the Doom!, and every other weapon of war I brought with me or had sent from home. And I fought, my friends. I fought. And every day I would think that this time I had won the war, and every night the cockroaches would come out to taunt me. I would chase them, kill them (the big ones are dumber and slower than their smaller cousins), and literally scream things like, "WHO'S NEXT?!?" I went quite batty for awhile.

I fought in other ways too. I fought against my brain. I did countless Google searches entitled, "What's good about cockroaches?" and, "Why cockroaches are good for the environment." I imagined many a children's story about a girl coming upon a cockroach laying helpless on its back and choosing to save it. I watched "Wall-E" and tried to see his little cockroach friend as "cute." (Please note that it's very unlike me to want to kill anything. I scoot spiders aside and relocate beetles. I don't feel comfortable killing an ant.) I have tried to love cockroaches. I really, really have. It hasn't worked. I finally had to get to that place I keep coming back to, again and again...that place of accepting what I cannot change. I can't change the fact that my house is overrun by giant cockroaches. I have to accept it. And so, I've begun the slow return to sanity.

Speaking of things I cannot control, school started this week. In Uganda, school starting means that some of the teachers and a few of the students start showing up, slowly by slowly. By the end of the week, the classes were still only half full. I'm told that the children are needed at home for chores or that they just don't want to come to school yet. Matters are complicated by the fact that teachers still don't know if they're getting transferred or not, and all week, they've been waiting with baited breath to see if they will be relocated to a new school next week. Since the school typically provides housing for its teachers, being transferred also means having to move. Very stressful. They also haven't been paid yet, and they don't know when they will be paid. In the meantime, they are expected to pay school fees for their own children to attend school but can't afford them.

The other problem with the first week at my school is that there was no food. The teachers went two days without any breakfast or lunch (keep in mind that the school day for my teachers is from 8:30 A.M. until 6:00 P.M.). Worse, there was no breakfast or lunch for any of the students the entire week. These children are very often poor. Many only come to school because they get a meal, and this week they got nothing. I heard it was because the cook was sick, but I'm really not sure the reason. And so the students who came to school sat all day in hot classrooms, often without a teacher, and without food or drink. It was hard to watch. Who can blame them for staying home?

Fun Fact:
My school has a unit for the deaf and disabled. They are far and away my favorite group of people at the school.

What I'm Reading:
The Princess and the Goblins (MacDonald)****
The Princess and Curdie (MacDonald)***
Mere Christianity (Lewis)****
White Fang (London)***

Slowly by Slowly

So, I know that I'm far, far away from adjusting to living here on any kind of meaningful level. It has, after all, only been two months, and the entire two months have been in training so my "real" life hasn't even started yet. Still, with at least the surface stuff, I see myself taking baby steps toward adjustment. Here are some signs that I'm adjusting, slowly by slowly.

1. I say, "slowly by slowly." 
2. I manage to rinse the shampoo out of my hair while bucket bathing with cold water 7 out of 10 times (this is trickier than it sounds).
3. I consider the apple the exotic delicacy it is.
4. I can understand about 1/3 of what a local 3-year-old says to me in Lusoga.
5. I have accepted the fact that my feet will always be dirty here.
6. I have accepted the fact that there will always be dirt under my fingernails here.
7. A cockroach (my mortal enemy) ran onto my plate while I was eating and I didn't scream.
8. A cockroach wandered past my big toe while I was in the pit latrine and I didn't scream.
9. A cockroach ran across my sheet while I was in bed and I didn't scream.
10. I can manage to sleep while literally dripping with sweat.
11. I can cook on a small charcoal stove called a sigiri and only burn my food half of the time.
12. I am only slightly embarrassed to be walking around in the sunshine with an open umbrella.
13. My urine hits the 2"x 4" hole in the pit latrine most of the time.
14. I dropped my toothbrush on the ground then picked it up and used it.
15. I know two tricks for getting the black stuff on matooke (plantains) off of my hands: rub them with cooking oil and rub a plastic bag on them.
16. I can look at my water bottle, see lots of particles floating in it, observe it's milky coloring, and then drink it anyway.

Fun Fact #1: The time in Uganda does not match its numbers. So 1:00 does not have the number 1 in it. The clock starts at the beginning of the day, or 7:00 A.M. This means that when it's 7:00 A.M., you use the Lusoga word for one, 8:00 A.M. is two, and so on.

Fun Fact #2: I described my mother's former profession as a "teacher of tomatoes" during language class and the instructors didn't even crack a smile. Professionalism!

Not-So-Fun-Fact: At sunset, cockroaches the size of small mice come out from the HOLE in the pit latrine, where they've been (presumably) eating the toilet paper, and hang out all over the walls and floor. Please read numbers 7-9 above again and be amazed.
 

Teacher Boot Camp...Check!

I finished teacher boot camp this week! Woo hoo! This past week, I was in a sixth grade classroom with about 75 students. They were very bright and a lot of fun to teach. My favorite lesson was one where I read a "big book" to them (made on grain sacks) about finding a quiet place. Afterwards, we went outside and they wrote about their own quiet place. Ugandan pupils rarely, if ever, get to do free writing or creative writing, so it was a real treat for them and for me. (Shout out to Monica Murdock who gave me this idea which I adapted!)

I am now making the transition into language training. I will be spending the next month or so learning to speak Lusoga, a Bantu language spoken in the eastern part of Uganda. My language classes are six days a week for about eight hours a day. Pretty intense! It's very early in the process, but I'm enjoying it so far. I absolutely love playing with language, and my brain is crazy-happy to have so much new material to play with. It's also nice to have something, anything, new to learn, since the great majority of what they taught in teacher boot camp I already knew from my experience and education.

In general, everything this week was much better than last week. I took a hard look at how I was feeling and why I was feeling that way and gained some good insight. I also realized that while on the surface I'm experiencing a lot of intense ups and downs, just under the surface I feel pretty steady and calm. Also, there's hot chocolate here! How have I not mentioned this yet? I drank great gallons of it before I left (and I have the hips to prove it!) thinking I was stocking up for two years. Yet, low and behold, I've been able to drink it twice a day! True, it's not my homemade recipe with heavy cream and dark Ghiradelli chocolate (think ganache), but it's still pretty darn good. The little things, people. It's all about the little things.


 

Home Stay

I've spent the past two weeks or so staying with a lovely Ugandan family. The family consists of two parents, three children ages three, six, and nine, three visiting aunts that are in their late teens to early twenties, and a sometimes visiting uncle who is an adult. The family is very kind and accommodating, each in their own way. My baaba (father) gives excellent Lusoga lessons and lectures on how to clean and purify the local water (he is a water quality control tester). My maama (mother)attempts to find vegetables for me and tries very hard to understand why I eat so little and have such strange food preferences. (No meat?!? Only one egg for breakfast?!? You don't like matooke?!?!?!?) My little sisters love to play with me and sing with me, and basically cling to me at all times. I love it. My aunties (who are younger than me) are endlessly entertaining. When the adults are out, we talk and laugh openly about their opinions of young Ugandan men, and I ask themfrank questions about the role of women in their society, what dating is like here, and what they think of their education system. With my uncle, I talk politics and education and current events all while he's constantly quizzing me on how to say things in Lusoga. I feel very lucky to have a little bit of everything in my temporary family.

While it's still very early to draw any conclusions about Ugandans in general, I will say that they seem extremely welcoming and hospitable. Taking the time to greet everyone you know at length as you walk through the town is of critical importance. One saying here that I love is, "Feel free," meaning, "Please, be at home."

While my evenings are spent with my home stay family, my days are filled with language learning. I have two fabulous instructors who are remarkably patient and good at what they do. They call themselves "sympathetic listeners," and that is exactly what they are. I'll be feeling pretty good about my meager language acquisition in class, thanks to my sympathetic listeners, and then I walk outside. Ha! I instantly remember that I am, in fact, in a foreign land and I do not understand a word anyone is saying to me. It's very frustrating until I recall that I have only had SIX days of language instruction! "Oh, yeah," I think, "it's probably normal not to speak the language yet."

Fun Fact: In Lusoga, there is a single word to say like, love, want, and prostitute.

What I'm Reading: I thought it might be fun (for me) to report on what I'm reading. Mainly, I just want a record of what I've read since my memory for that is poor. Who knows, maybe you're looking for a good book? Normally, I'll just write about one book, but I have some catching up to do...

1. The Rithmatist by Sanderson. * * Love this author, cool idea for a plot, but dumb dialogue and a dumb ending.
2. Allegiant by Roth. * Third book in a trilogy, didn't like it at all, worst ending ever.
3. Flora & Ulysses by DiCamillo. * * * * * (My highest rating!) Holy bagumba, was this a good book! It was surprising and funny and beautiful and full of truth. I loved it! Kate DiCamillo never disappoints.
4. The Tao of Travel by Theroux. * * * This isn't really a novel, but rather a collection of quotes and excerpts by various authors about different aspects of travel. It made me remember why I travel, and why I'm here now. "Travel is flight and pursuit in equal parts."
5. Language Manuals. Just kidding, but that's why I haven't done more reading. That and the fact that I somehow left my Kindle charger in Kampala. :(




 

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.