I got nothing but pictures

So not much of an update...yet again, been playing a lot of yahtzee this weekend. I'm trying to get into a habit of posting something whenever i'm at an internet cafe....so here's some more pics for your viewing pleasure.

I did recently have a "madman" (which the father likes to refer to the drunks as) come up on my porch in the middle of the night. He pushed over anything that was sitting on my window sill (my window was cracked open) and also dragged my stool to the other side of the porch and sat there and drank my jerry can of water. I didn't hear anything but woke up the next morning to find my stool arranged next to the empty jerry can and a few things on the floor that had been on my window sill the previous night. The father informed me of the happenings of the night.

anyway, here's some pics.

this is a street on one of the many hills in Kampala, this one is a residential section. Actually just down the street from the vice president's residence. on the opposite hill on the left is a school for deaf children....very cool location and architecture

bowling in Kampala...we had to buy the red socks since we both had sandals.

....she beat me

...painting windows in Kampala

...class at Kitebi Secondary School (my original site in Kampala), not sure where the teacher is....you can see the netball goal to the left (basketball hoop with no backboard) this is a game played by the girls and is similar to basketball but has rules kind of like ultimate frisbee instead of dribbling

...fellow PCV's prior to swearing in ceremony. From left: sabrina, melissa, baxter, kel, me, and sunshine. (i'm in a kanzu which is a traditional formal wear for the buganda tribe)

stay tuned....
love and miss everyone,
eric

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy mother's day to my mom, grandma mag's and helen, and any other mom's reading this blog!!

Not much update from here as of yet. We are wrapping up the holiday term with the S4's this week, and I have gained an english class and a physics class. So I am now teaching 3 physics classes (same class but 3 80 min sessions), a biology class, and 2 english classes. So needless to say I am staying quite busy during this "holiday". The Senior 4's (equivalent to sophomore's in high school) have stayed around school for extra classes as they prepare for their national O-level exams this october. The rest of the school (S1-S3) will begin classes on the 26th of may. I am not sure what my schedule will be like, as the timetable has not been decided on, but I'm sure I'll be extra busy with more classes for the term. I'm excited to start teaching the S1's and S2's, as these are a little younger kids and will be excited to have me teaching no doubt.

Things are going well at the parish, I have a new PO box! which I've added to the right. So anyone holding a sweet care package, wait no more :) In all seriousness thank you all for these, I have not received any yet (although there is one in Kampala waiting for me to pick up at the office) but I have heard of many being prepared or sent....so thank you from the bottom of my heart. It means a lot to me knowing you all are thinking about me and will surely be an exciting day when I get them!

Also thank you to anyone who has sent emails. I am trying hard to respond to them as quickly as I can....I have found a new internet cafe in Fort Portal which is substantially faster...which is where I am blogging from now....(btw, there is a american pop country song playing on their radio right now...kinda strange...made even stranger by the ugandan who is running the cafe singing along to it ;) never a dull moment.

btw, this picture to the left is from the end of training. We did a Homestay Family Thank You Day, where our language groups put together skits and local dances for the families that hosted us during training. This is the Luganda group doing a traditional dance. From left is Vance, Tim, Me, and my adopted peace corps dad John (who also served in Malawi and who I traveled with for our PCV visits during training). We were dancing for the country director (in pink at the table), some other peace corps staff, and the Local Council Charmain for Luwero district....who later joined us. There's a video of this to :)

And speaking of non-dull moments, since I don't have much as far as news from here i'll give a few of the more non-dull ones i've had recently:

1) washing clothes at the parish...which I do by hand in wash basins...and am not very good at. They have this stuff called omo here, which is like a laundry detergent with a really strong stain removing chemical in it...which wreaks havoc on my hands if i don't wash it off soon after...so i know its strong. My strategy is to soak the clothes in a bucket of water and omo over night to lift out the stains, and then i rinse a couple times in different basins of water. If need be i'll scrub a little if the stains are taken care of by omo. So one day i was washing clothes and I went to hang up a shirt on the line which is nearby and when i turned around the calf that likes to graze in my backyard has proceeded to empty both of my basins in two big slurps. Probably not the best water for a cow to drink, but it gave me a laugh, and i had to drag him by his rope out further into the yard. (this sequence of events was repeated several times until i finally dragged him to the other side of the house). Like i needed anymore challenges while washing my clothes.


2) I broke my matatu record recently. I talked about the minibuses in an earlier post, which are supposed to carry up to 14 passengers. On one of my trips to Ft. Portal we hit 28 people! now granted, 3 were babies, and a couple of younger kids also made up the total, but I still don't see how this one is going to be broken. On my row there were me and 3 adults across the seat, then 3 babies in laps, then the conductor was standing (essentially was in my lap) in front of me and leaned over the seat back in front of us so he could fit under the ceiling.

3) Not as lighthearted of an event, but definitely not dull, and gives me a chance to outline one of the struggles the Ugandan's face...and reasons they say "we are living on borrowed time". The other night a house near the parish caught fire. The "house" was a small building which was rented as apartments, much like the parish i am staying in, and apparently a candle had caught fire in one of the rooms. Now, there is absolutely no form of a fire department in the country, and very few people have fire extinguishers, and this house didn't even have any running water. So about 10 people from the community were helping empty all of the furniture from the apartments in order to salvage what they could, and remove any fuel for the fire (ie: mattresses and wooden furniture). There were also about 10 people helping to carry basins of water from a nearby shop to extinguish the flames. 2 bodas (motorcycles) positioned themselves on the street and shone their headlights on the house to give the people some light. And then about 40 or so onlookers (including me) watched and speculated as to what had happened. Very sad, luckily no one was hurt, and although I didn't stick around to see, I am told the fire was put out after a couple hours. The police never showed up while I was there, but supposedly were coming sometime to investigate the cause. It is a very tough life here sometimes, and they truly are "living on borrowed time"

a sidenote to this: one of my immediate projects, in light of this event and the recent fire at Budo Primary School in Kampala which ripped through the dormitory and killed many students (20 or so), is to get fire extinguishers and bells for the two dormitories at our school. I am currently writing a grant that will be presented to the Rotary Club in Ft. Portal to hopefully get the funding for this. I'll let you all know how that turns out. Oh and the picture below here is of my other project. This is the exam room during one of the many gorgeous sunsets i get at the parish. I was told it was hard to see this building in the previous post's picture, so i'm hoping this is better. My real project is a library for the kids, but the exam room has to be completed first, and still needs a roof and a lot of other work to it. I'm finding out the total estimated costs soon, and have a few ideas for fund raising but am most definitely open to suggestions.


Also, I'll mention one thing about how my life has gotten a bit more challenging since moving here, just to give you some perspective. Now, this is not even close to the same category as the fire, but has been something I've had to get used to. The parish has solar power, which is used to run the lights in the apartments at night, but that is all the batteries can handle. And they actually don't work in my room, so I used kerosene (parrafin as its called here) lanterns at night. So one of my activities about ever other day or so is to take the 5 km walk into town and drop off my cell phone and ipod at the "charging store". There is no electricity in our town, but they have certain shops that use generators and about 15 surge protectors (talk about a fire hazard) and you pay 500 shillings to have them charge the batteries in cell phone and other electronics. So i bring my ipod (which the guys are finally understanding what it does....or at least they remember its called an ipod and plays music somehow) and 2 cell phone batteries and drop them off. I usually hang around town and go have a soda or beer and 3 hours later pick up my fully charged toys, then make the 5km walk back to the parish. So when you plug your cell phone in tonight in the kitchen or next to your bed, think about how convenient that is and how lucky we are in the states to have such crazy things like home electricity.

I think that's about it from here for now. I'll keep the updates coming, and keep your comments and emails coming my way, it really brightens my days to hear from you all.

Love and miss everyone.
Thank you moms!
-Eric

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)