Pictures!

As promised, here are some pics from the new site. Home sweet home until 2010.

This is the school i'll be working at (As a biology teacher btw...should be interesting). The building to the left is the dorms for the girls (about 27 boarders stay there). To the right of that is one of the two blocks with classrooms. There are 3 classrooms in that building, each seating about 70 students. The little building to the right of that is the "kitchen", essentially a mud hut with a firepit for cooking the staff lunch and supper for the boarders. To the right of that is the new building they are constructing. It has walls but no roof yet as they are about 20 million shillings short on funding. This is the exam room mentioned before. Then to the right of that (notpictured) is the library and lab i will be focusing on. Right now all it has is one row of bricks on the ground, which is the "foundation". The rwenzori's are in the background but it was a bit cloudy so its hard to see them.

This is my porch looking southeast. we have a nice backyard, then a cow pasture, then some hills with tea plantations and then further out would be the mountains if the weather were a bit clearer.

And finally auntie chris with some of the neighborhood kids. I don't think they had any clue what was going on here but were nice enough to play along and hold the picture while i snapped away. They like to congregate at the backdoor of my sitting room, like they are here, and pretty much watch anything i do. "So what'd you do today?" "well we watched the muzungu sweep his floor, and then he made a sandwich, and then he yelled at us and locked the door."

jk, i havent snapped on them yet.

love you all, more to come.

-eric

So long Kampala, thanks for all the stress

So in my last post I talked about how "non-peace corps" my living situation was. well have no fear, I am now living the dream. My site assignment has been switched, and I have absolutely no complaints. I am now residing in the west of the country near Ft. Portal, which sits at the base of the Rwenzori mountains ("mountains of the moon"), which also means my blog title now makes more sense and is a little more appropriate.

I have sacrificed some of the privacy I would of had in the two bedroom apartment, as I am now living on a catholic parrish with 3 priests. They are absolutely great guys and very generous and welcoming. My school is located in a small village and has about 400 students. It is a high school, which differs from a normal secondary school here in that it only serves O (ordinary) level students, which is senior one - senior 4. For the remaining two years, or A (advanced) level, the students must go on to a different school.

The campus is absolutely gorgeous. It sits on top of a hill on the parrish land overlooking rolling hills of tea plantations and on a clear day the northern portion of the Rwenzori mountains (pronounced wen-zory) can be seen towering in the distance. I will try to get some pictures up this weekend....unfortunetely the camera bit the dust, but I am borrowing another pcv's digi for the week to take some pics of the new site. But I don't have her cable to load the pics up today.

So the priests have been nice enough to offer me two rooms at the parrish house, which is a long block divided into 4 "apartments". So I get a bedroom with a sink, and a sitting room. There is an entrance on either side, one into the bedroom which you enter from the courtyard, and the outside door from the sitting room opens up to a nice cement porch with a backyard. Beyond the backyard it runs down through a cow pasture and then back up the hill. Sitting on my back porch I have a sweet view west of the mountains and tea fields. I have already logged many hours sitting on the porch or laying in my hammock in the backyard. A far cry from the apt in Kampala, and I'm feeling much more relaxed and in my comfort zone.

The school, just like the one in Kampala, has a lot of needs. It is only 3 years young, and currently has about 5 classrooms for the kids. They are about halfway through the construction of an exam room (for the national exams they have to take after each term). They also have the foundation built for a library/computer/and science laboratory. This will be my main focus for a secondary project to work on getting some funding for the construction of the building and then getting the kids some books to stock the shelves with. They are in desperate need of this facility, and many of the kids who live around the school walk up to 15km a day to attend school at another secondary school in town which is able to offer these facilities to them. That is a main reason why enrollment at my school is so low.

I will be working up some figures and ideas in the coming months on how to get these projects underway. The next term starts on the 25th of may, so the next month will be spent making lesson plans for my classes. I will be teaching biology mostly, with some physics classes as well. So I also need to peel through the biology books in the next month so i'll be ready for them. I'm siked to be getting down to business and have tons of ideas for the kids that I am ready to follow through on.

We are very close to Kabale National Forest, which has one of the biggest primate populations in the country. Chimps, monkeys, baboons, the works. It is high on my list of things to do. Theres also a collection of crater lakes near the forest, and hiking and camping in the Rwenzori's. So the options are unlimited for days trips and such and exploration of this beautiful country.

I am getting a PO Box in Ft. Portal hopefully on friday, so I will have a new address for all those sweet care packages ;)

I hope everything stateside is going well.
Love and miss you all,
Eric

Random Thoughts on Life in Uganda

So we are just wrapping up a few days of visiting our future sites. I will post more about my site when I am able to put some pictures of it up, but as of right now my camera is not cooperating (ie: turning on), so i can't put up any that i took this week of my house and school. I've added a couple of older pics from the first month here. To the left is me goofing off with another PCT's 8 y/o homestay brother Jordan.

I will say this much...my expectations of life in Africa were completely wrong. As with anything in the peace corps, expect the unexpected - case in point: I will be living in a two bedroom, 1 bath apartment just outside Kampala with a toilet, shower, kitchen sink, gas stove, 13 ft ceilings, tile floors throughout, electricity, etc, etc. Essentially everything I has in the states, save hot water and television. On the flip side, one of the other volunteers Kelly (who is from montana and is a total goober) will be living in a shack in the middle of the mountains with concrete floors, pit latrine, no running water, no electricity, and will have a 4km walk up a mountain to her house from where the taxi drops her off - but has avacado tree and amazing view of rolling mountains in her backyard. So there are definitely completely different experiences to be had in this country, which remember: is about the size of oregon.

Now for some tidbits:

The taxis....So in and around Kampala there are these taxis (matatous..sp?) which can take you anywhere in the city and out into the country for a fairly cheap price. In the picture they are the two vans with blue checkers on them. They are usually nissan vans, circa 1988-1992 about, which are imported from asia. They are total pieces of junk which probably shouldn't be running anymore, but somehow they are able to squeeze 3 or 4 more years out of them. so for about 4000 shillings (aout 2 dollars) you can go 100km's or so out of the city. that's the good news. the bad news is they pack anywhere from 14-20 people into these things. if you have a chance, google "taxi park kampala uganda" for a picture of where you have to go to get one of these to take you out of the city. there are two parks in kampala and they are an absolute zoo.

One of the taxi's we got in the park was unable to start once they got it loaded up with about 15 people. somehow the driver was able to pop the clutch with only about 3 ft of space in front and behind him + the help of 5 or 6 ugandans rocking the van back and forth. another one that i took from the north eastern part of the city back down to the taxi park (about 500 shillings) was barely able to run. The driver kept cranking the engine (as we're riding through the city mind you) but it wouldn't turn over, and even when he did get it started it would die about 2 mins later. luckily the whole way to the taxi park was downhill, otherwise i don't think we would have ever made it. i've also been in these things when they are: driving on sidewalks, fitting into spaces i wouldnt think a civic could, have no cushions on the seats just metal bars, hit countless boda's (motorcycles), passed trucks at 60km/hr going uphill with no idea what is coming at us at the top of the hill...and generally hoping just to make it wherever i want to go without much incident. but they are cheap, and quick to get from place to place, especially during busy times in the city.

staying healthy....

so one of the hardest things about living in africa in general,especially in a third world country, is staying healthy. I have been pretty good about this so far. I take malaria medication once a week, which strangely has a lot of side effects dealing with your central nervous system...ie: very vivid and weird dreams - especially the night or two after I take my dosage...and sleep under a mosquito net, and for most of the time I've been here I have been getting 2 vaccines a week for various things like rabies,yellow fever, tb, tetnis, etc etc. I think I am finally done with the shots, at least for a while...as you can see from the picture its a pretty efficient process of getting stabbed in both arms from the PC nurses (who are awesome btw). The one on the left is german and we've had many discussions about how great birkenstocks are. Some other things I do to stay healthy is use a lot of hand sanitizer, drink only bottled water (or boiled for 3 mins) and generally be very careful of any food bought in the markets (ie: soaking veggies in a bleach/water solution). All this has kept me pretty healthy, other than a few cases of some rough bowel movements and fun times in the pit latrines.

There are so many amazing an unbelievable things here, it is often hard to process it all and realize these things are actually happening. For example, below is a list of some random things i have seen being carried on bicycles (btw: these are usually 20 year old british bicycles, hero is the brand if you're google happy).

-a pay phone

-4 other people

-a janitors closet (ie: atleast 15 brooms, dustpans, and various other objects)

-atleast 60 bananas

-a trunk

-bread

-meat

-a mattress

-2x4's (12 of them, about 10 ft long)

-newspapers

-cooler

-truck tire

-potatos

-bladders of water

-3 ft tall milk jug

-80 lbs bag of rice

-garbage

-yams

-bundle of banana leaves

-strainer

-pineapple

-another bicycle

-and the staple: 2 jerry cans of water

-coffin

-chickens (hanging from the handlebars)

2 more weeks of training and then I will be at my site (with computer lab and internet...so expect much more regular posting). Hope you are all doing well.

btw: i've added some sweet stuff to my list of things to send...wink wink.

miss and love you all,

eric

An update from Kampala

Okay so my updates have been few, far between, and slim to no information. But things will improve, i promise. I am halfway through training in a small town near Kampala, which has one internet cafe - and it is gut wrenchingly slow. They also frequently lose their internet for various things like loss of power, losing connection, or my favorite - when someone steals their powerline during the night.

So thats the bad news. The good news is that I just got my site assignment for the next two years this week! I can't say exactly what village it is (peace corps policy) but it is essentially in the outskirts of Kampala. I went and checked it out today and the school is gorgeous. It is a secondary school with about 700 kids (s1-s6) which is about age 13-20. I will be teaching the younger ones (s1-s3) in physics and some other math classes. I will also probably be helping out at the primary school right across the street whenever I have time.

I will probably only have 4-5 classes a week, which will leave me time for other things. Oh, and the reason i say my communication will get better is that the school has a computer lab setup with internet! so no more 30 min sessions in the Kampala internet cafes (which take a dsl connection and run them through a switch to feed about 30 computers). So starting in mid april (when I swear in officially as a Peace Corps volunteer) I will then move to site - and will have about a month until the kids are back in school for their second term of the year.

Also....I found out that my house has a toilet, running water, electricity, and a privacy wall with a gate. So for peace corps standards I will be living pretty good. The toilet is a huge relief as my pit latrine squatting muscles (quads) are definitely not what they should be.

Another plus about my site is that being in Kampala I will be able to travel very easily - especially to the southwest towards rwanda and tanzania which is gorgeous and mountainous. The taxi parks (google Kampala taxi parks....its quite a site for american eyes) have small minivans (which i have seen up to 23 people piled into - me included, but i hear they can fit even more) that will take you essentially anywhere in the country for a resonable price. about 2 dollars per 100 km's....if my math is right. 4000 shillings can get me to my training site in 2 hours - and we're exchanging the dollar at about 1700 shillings right now.

so we have now entered the rainy season here....still on the front cusp - so we will continue to get more rain each day until it peaks in about a month, i think, then the rains will slow for about a month then another dry season. Right now we can pretty much count on a 3pm thunderstorm each day, which is great for cooling down the afternoons. Last few nights it has rained consistently throughout the night - i know this because i have no ceiling in my bedroom, just a tin roof. but i'm not complaining...its a great steady sound to sleep to.

so i'm down to 4 mins...i hope i have answered some questions and will try to get another update soon, with pictures! - forgot my camera cable today...doh. and if you're not satisfied...hold your britches...things will improve when i get to site as i will have much much more free time (pretty much have training from 8-5 mon-sat, then 2 hours before dark, which i am supposed to be home before....and i will have internet close by!

miss you all.

Much love from Africa,
Eric

Uganda!!

short on time, but here are a few pictures. Will post muuch much more later when i have a free moment and a fast internet connection (internet cafe's are horribly slow and costly).

3 of 7 of my homestay siblings. I have been living with them in luweero for about a week now. they are trying to fatten me up i think. feeding me lots of matoake (a very bland banana) and rice, beans, cabbage, beef, ground maize, spaghetti, etc etc etc. they are awesome and are teaching me lots of luganda (my local language)

this is the sunrise in kampala at the hotel we stayed at. sorry, wish i could show you more...stay tuned....love you all

tuna laba gana (we will meet again)

last night at home...

...popping the cork for the packing party (no, not andre...they splurged on me ;)



3 hours later...

....and many tough decisions (ie: washing hair and shaving with bar soap for the first 3 months) but i am a half a pound under the 80lbs peace corps limit! (does not include 25lbs carry on bookbag)

Packing...

So if you're wondering what one takes to africa for two years see below (there's another pile of clothes on the other side of the room):

p.s. - jenny: if you look center-top-right in the middle of the picture frame - that's the shamrock ;)