I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack

Ok, i'll admit it - as they say in Uganda, "I have been lost". SERIOUSLY lost actually. Just looked at the last time I posted (something fulfilling at least) and realized it was almost 5 months ago! Hopefully there are still people reading this thing. To those who have been patient, thank you, and sorry for the delay....i'll do better from here on out.

I've contemplated trying to update on everything (or at least major things) that's happened since my last update, but I get overwhelmed just thinking about it and fail to post anything, hence the 5 month hiatus. So instead of drawing out ridiculously long rambles, here's a pictorial update of my life in last 5 months. I think when we last met I was preparing for my aerofoil competition...so we'll start from there, enjoy...



Aerofoil competition was a success (somehow). I like to look at it from this angle...90 Senior 3 students worked in teams of 3 to develop a solution for a practical problem (make something that can fly using a strict set of materials). A great "stretching" exercise for brains which are usually asked only to memorize and regurgitate info. The teams each developed a plan complete with a blueprint, built their apparatuses, and flew them. They saw it through to the end, they applied themselves to a problem. Great.

Downside: Winning team flew 90cm. Yep, thats less than a meter...from about 40 feet up in the air. But I can take some blame as my launcher was less than ideal.
(Next term we're egg-dropping!)


Senior 3 Class was crowned inter-class champions in the annual competition, which has now been moved to third term to allow our football team to better prepare for their season (first term of the following year).


Goat slaughter #1. An overdue feast with the teachers at Kelly's school. I have really grown to enjoy goat meat (sorry Anne, but whats else is a man to do with no crabs?) One minute your shaking the leg of the little fella and then next your eating him on a stick. (ok that was low....but i could have gone much more graphic....your welcome.)



BTW, just as a sidenote: goat is extremely popular here and a lot of people even prefer it to beef. Easier to raise them on a limited plot of land, and many prefer the taste. In case you were wondering...



Bringing football (yeah, the real one) to Uganda. We put the footballs we received in a care package to good use with some of the kids in Kel's village. I found quarterback, a wide receiver and a running back. Only problem is you have to hand the ball to the RB and then chase him to make him start running the direction you want, but nothing wrong with his endzone celebration (below). Oh and the above picture is a boy....the dress is for errr easy access to relieve himself?



I got a proper thanksgiving, thanks in no small part to kel's efforts and a few well-timed care packages from the states...



Attended a wedding ceremony just before Christmas for the Director of Studies at my school. Fairly similar ceremony to ours at home. One difference that sticks out is that they put these sort of sparkler type candles on the wedding cake. Definitely a bit more exciting than ours, but seems like something I saw on funniest home videos. Also lots of food....for everyone. And eeeeeveryone comes. The custom is to ask for donations from friends/family to help pay for the costs, but even with these it is quite an undertaking by the family. I believe it is the groom's family who foots the bill, but i'm not positive. Here is me and my parish priest Father Moses in our traditional kanzu's prior to the ceremony.



Christmas. Spent the holiday at my site with the fathers and two volunteers (Kel and Margaret) - the fathers really enjoyed that we were there and all around a very memorable Christmas was had by all.



Christmas morning we exchanged presents (10,000 shilling limit - that's about 5 bucks). I got a battery operated rickshaw, a bottle of whiskey, and a spiderman kite. All smiles. We cooked a big breakfast of passion fruit pancakes - which you'll just have to take my word for - amazing, then I took advantage of a windy 85 degree Christmas afternoon to fly spiderman with Margaret.



Christmas eve (i know i'm out of order, but I wanted to get the pleasantries out first) was spent on goat slaughter #2. This time I took hold of the machete and did the deed....



Zanzibar!! Wow, what a new years. For those who don't know, and I didn't before Jack Black, this is a small island off the cost of Tanzania in the Indian Ocean and is absolute visual overload. We had some issues with our hotel, but hey this is africa. Check the old twitter messages for the details. On the upside our cottage was about 10 yards from the water...at least during high tide. The tidal changes in the portion of the island we were on were unbelievable. High tide was essentially at our doorstep and during low tide the water was beyond the horizon...about a 15 minute walk straight out across the sand. The picture below was taken at low tide looking straight out into the ocean. At high tide I would have been completely submerged standing in the same spot.



By far my favorite memory of zanzibar was the boys from the village and their sailboats. As soon as the tide went out in the morning the village kids came out and gathered around small pools of water and sailed their homemade sailboats (called dows in swahili). They were made of local plants and sticks, plus garbage from the beach (flipflops, plastic bags, etc). All day you would hear them cheering for their boats as they raced them from one side of the pool to the other.



I confess this trip needs a more thorough post. I'll try to get to it...

Then there was the time earlier this year that I found red bananas...



Who knew?

Was fortunate enough to spend Valentine's Day with Kel at an amazing resort overlooking Queen Elizabeth National Park. Can't beat dinner overlooking an elephant savanna. Spent two days here relaxing and swimming.



Got a chance to volunteer helping a group of medical students from America run an impromptu clinic in the bush. My language and cultural knowledge gave me an advantage of being able to talk to the villagers and play a sort of crowd control role for the day, freeing them up to just concentrate on treatment.



Spent Easter weekend in the extreme southwestern portion of the country. Did some hiking on a volcano which stradles the Uganda/Rwanda border and rises to about 15000 feet.



(We had to hike w/an armed guard btw...breath mom, it was for animals...i think)



And the rest of the weekend relaxing on a beautiful lake nearby.



And welcome to today!

I'm sitting here in Kampala for a mid-service training (yep, I'm halfway done! a scary thought) on wireless internet catching you up on the last half year of my life. This weekend I am heading to Fort Portal to coach my school's first ever girl's football team through the national tournament (my boy's got knocked out of the district tournament a couple weeks back, more on that later).

I have acquired 2 new toys to keep me entertained the next few months - a mountain bike and a mandolin. We'll see which one gets more use.

And I am extremely happy to say that my family will be here in less than a month! We are all very excited to welcome them to Uganda, and I hope they are ready for a whirlwind 10 days in the motherland. Can't wait to see you all!!! Have fun with your shots! If it makes you feel better I got a bitter flu shot and tb test today, so stop your whining.

Hopefully this sufficiently satisfies everyone's appetites out there and helps to relieve your curiosity of what exactly I am doing out here these days. Please let me know if anyone has issues with this entry loading - i know its a big one with a tons of pictures but I think we all deserve it :)

Also, if anyone is interested in helping Kelly cement her school's classrooms you will be ensuring that her kids no longer have to do this:


(Every little bit helps) Find out the details about the project and how you can help here:

And stay tuned for upcoming news on my library which is in the pipeline.

Love and miss you all,
Eric

Merry Christmas!

I know I won't get anything up before Christmas besides this one so let me wish everyone an extremely Merry (and cold!) Christmas! It's in the 90's here today (again) and extremely dusty. The dry-season-dust-allergy I acquired in Africa is in full swing. I'll be spending Christmas at my new home with the Fathers, Kelly, Margo (another volunteer), and several other guests of the parish. I'll put up a more detailed post after the festivities. It sounds like it will quite a bloody event - the morning of Christmas eve is spent slaughtering goats, cows and chickens and is, as the Fathers say, "a very dark day for animals in Uganda".

I'll be sure to twitter some messages until I can get something substantial (and overdue) up here.

Hope everyone has a great holiday!

My love to Mom, Dad, and Jason...I'll miss you all very much this week.

Love and miss you all,
Eric.

Another update (not post)

Still no update on what I'm actually doing here....not much you nee to know except that i'm just counting the days till we're sitting on white beaches in Zanzibar (11 btw).

In the meantime I've changed somethings up here. The twitter messages mentioned in the last post are above now, and i'll work on limiting my sms's to 140characters so you can see them all here. I've also put the pictures back up here, theres a link on the right sidebar (happy flaunty? love you.)

Also, below each post you can now give me your anonymous and honest feedback....and hopefully keep me in line if i become too idealistic :)

That's it.

Take care,
love and miss you all.

I'm twittering....

Ok, so I definitely owe you all a good healthy update. Be patient. In the meantime, I've added a new gadget (from twitter.com) to the sidebar...just there ----->

This little sucker will allow me to update my blog via my cell phone here! Not much..just short text message length updates...but it should make things interesting and give you something to chew on until I write a larger update (which I am also in the process of doing but won't be able to post today). It would be sweet if I had a picture phone, but I make 200 dollars a month, so what can you do.

Everything else is going great. We finished the last term of the school year and are on a 2 month holiday.

17 days till we leave for ZANZIBAR!

Love you all

Zebra's, Hippos, and Lost Ballots

I'm still here...

Once again a big gap between my last post so I'll try to catch you up on the happenings since I last updated, as well as stuff this entry with pictures. After my first ballot was lost in the mail (along with all other peace corps uganda ballots) and some legwork from my mom (thank you) I have finally printed a valid ballot and just waiting to find a fax machine that can fax trans-atlantic. I'm told they will be open tomorrow, so we'll see. Nothing like bringing it down to the wire...but this is Africa, where nothing is accomplished in a timely manner.

In other news, my football team is coming together slowly. Considering the first practice I had to teach them how to stretch before training and why it was important, i'd say its quite an accomplishment. We are currently playing an inter-class tournament, the St. Adolf Champions Cup, and are midway through the 4-week tournament. Next friday we are playing a friendly match with the neighboring school, so we'll see if the training has paid off.

The school term is once again coming to a close, and this is the last term of the year...so I am approaching a nice long 2 month break which will give me lots of time to catch up on lesson, football, and newspaper planning. I attempted to put together a science fair with my S2 physics class but in the interest of time we scrapped it for this year and will plan on doing one next school year. (Pictured below is a hand full of them...btw: the second from the right is my goalkeeper Arthur - our ticket to the national competition next year ;). Instead we are conducting an aerofoil competition. After some laborious explanations on the process I think they are finally understanding what we're doing. The competition is scheduled for next week (monday or tuesday depending on the wind and rain). I split the classes (2 classes of 60) into groups of three students. Each team was given various materials I had a surplus of (4 q-tips, 2 paper clips, length of string, scotch tape, 2 sheets of paper) and also allowed to use sticks and anything taken from a banana tree (leaves, banana fibers, etc). Their objective was to construct some type of airplane with these materials that we will launch from the top of a large boulder (20-30 feet high) and measure the length it travels. I'm giving each member of the winning team a textbook, pen, and small notebook, and some small prizes for 2nd and 3rd. I have refused to give an example to hopefully open up their (small) creative abilities. I'll take some pictures and let you know how it turns out....keep your fingers crossed.

On the personal side I recently took a trip to Lake Mburo national park with Kelly and some other volunteers. This park is one of two in Uganda with a large zebra population, which was incredible to see so many in the wild. In addition, we took a boat trip around the lake and were chased by a dominant male hippo when our boat approached a little too close to his family. His attacking strategy was to dive down under water and swim towards our boat and then pop up several meters closer and blow water out of his snout at us. Here he is on once such surprise attack: We also saw lots of small crocodiles on the lake and one that was quite large and luckily viewed from a considerable distance. I was however able to get a good picture of him just before he slipped into the water: In addition I also learned that the vervet monkeys (most common type here have a somewhat strange color combination, especially in the uh, lower regions. This little fella here proceeded to sit up on the railing to scope out our plates during dinner, then slowly crept up behind me and snatched a boiled potato from my plate while I was turned the other way. This is just before the strike...

In village news I recently acquired a new appreciation for ants...a valuable source of protein where matooke rules all meals. A P7 student Ahebwa (Ah-hay-bwa) who lives just near the parish to the liberty of introducing me to the wonders of fresh ants. I've mentioned these in a previous entry when I watched two young boys catch them coming out of the anthill. This time we just found a spot on the ground where they were flying up around dusk and caught them with our hands and chowed down. They've got a juicy back section with some flavor, but you have to spit the wings out as you're chewing (apologies to queezy stomachs). Even the dog joined in. We also had a new addition to the cattle herd, and this one Kelly and I were able to watch the birth throughout the day. So again, a cow for rosie...this is just a few hours after the birth, mom was still cleaning the new one off.

That's it for now. Hope everyone is doing well back home...don't worry, just a couple days and Palin's political career will fizzle out with a whimper as children everywhere sleep soundly once again (oops), and you wont have to hear the word "election" for a while (hopefully).

Love and miss you all,
Eric.

***oh and i've put a new PO Box address in the sidebar, yet again. Don't worry if something is already in transit. I can still access mail received at the Kampala and Kyenjojo addresses. I've had issues with getting a new key to replace the one the fathers lost for the Kyenjojo box, so my new neighbor and I are sharing a box in Fort Portal now instead.

Quick Post

Not much to update since I just posted the two massive ones. I do want to update two things.

#1: A big thank you to all those who donated money towards the UNEB exam kits for the S4 students at my school. I made a trip to Kampala this weekend to put the money to use. After a long discussion with my Deputy Headmaster we decided that in order to ensure your contributions benefitted as many students as possible and would last for many years to come we decided on the following. Instead of calculators for the kids to use on the exams (as most of them actually have calculators or access to one) we decided to use the money to purchase books. Thanks to your generosity I was able to acquire 23 books for the school that the students (and teachers) will have access to and be able to check out from the headmaster's office for up to a week at a time. Here's the breakdown of the books by subject:

Chemistry -
3 UNEB question and answer books (questions from past 10 years' exams)
1 UNEB practical guide (experiment guide) with answers
1 OXFORD course summary for the syllabus with review questions and answers
1 Teacher's guide with 25 quiz's to use in classes

Biology -
3 UNEB question and answer books (questions from past 10 years' exams)
1 UNEB practical guide (experiment guide) with answers
1 OXFORD course summary for the syllabus with review questions and answers
1 Teacher's guide with 25 quiz's to use in classes

Physics -
3 UNEB question and answer books (questions from past 10 years' exams)
1 UNEB practical guide (experiment guide) - no answers
1 OXFORD course summary for the syllabus with review questions and answers
1 Teacher's guide with 25 quiz's to use in classes

Math -
3 UNEB question and answer books (questions from past 10 years' exams)
1 OXFORD course summary for the syllabus with review questions and answers
1 Teacher's guide with 25 quiz's to use in classes

I am taking the books back with me today on the bus and will be giving them to the school tomorrow and informing the students on how they can access them. These books will be a tremendous help to the current S4's (especially the UNEB question and answer books) as they have 3 weeks to cram. They will also continue to offer support to many students in the future, and serve as the foundation of our future library! Thank you Thank you Thank you. Pictures to come.

#2: Please welcome a beautiful new soul into the world. Cassidy Lynn Ross, born on the 23rd of September to Terence and Melissa Ross. Congratulations on your new addition. She will no doubt be as kind as you both.

What else i've been doing

So aside from the introduction ceremony (previous post) here's what else i've been up to lately:

Just before the schools let out for holiday the primary school on the parish hosted the regional music and dance competition. This brought together about 6 primary schools who had each won their district competition to compete for a chance to go to the national competition in Kampala. These kids were amazing. I watched a few of the events and immediately decided i needed to go get whatever i could to record them. SO i went back and grabbed the camera and my tape recorder. I got video of lots of the dances and also some cassette tapes of the music. I'll try to get the video up sometime so you can see that, but here's a couple pictures for the mean time.

From Uganda

Above is a picture from the traditional dance done by the kids from Kasese. They were really interesting because they are from a different tribe than all of the other schools. Kasese borders the Congo, so these kids speak a Congolese language and their dances and culture are heavily influenced by the Congo.

From Uganda

This one is another traditional dance from a school in Masindi, which lies in the northern part of the country. They ended up placing in the top 3 and went on to compete at the nationals (with the Kasese school above, and another)

All together there were 6 or so events, including lots of dances, music, a play, and others. I was completely blown away by how talented the kids were. Comparing what i was seeing to performances by elementary schools in the states just doesn't work. And thats taking nothing away from our kids. There's just some things Africa does extremely well, and this is one.

So that was all before the schools let out for holiday. Luckily it all took place (over two days) right on the parish so i had no excuse not to go. During the holiday we had a week long training in Kampala with our entire group as well as each of our counterparts from our organizations. It was a little overwhelming to say the least, compared to living in the village where I am the only white person (until now) within 30 km's or so. It was good to see everyone though, and i got some great ideas for projects that i can replicate. Also, hearing of failed projects and hardships people were having made me feel a little better about my situation and the problems i've had spinning wheels on several projects.

Also a while back I had the chance to attend my supervisor's (who is 50 or so) grandmother's 85th birthday celebration. There not really sure what her birthday is exactly, but they know its sometime in august, so they usually just pick a day to celebrate. Kelly came with me, and i think grandma was, to say the least, very happy to have two of us come out for the party. It was in my supervisors home village which is about 20km from my site. And when i say village i really mean it. We took a car from the parish out there and had to take a (barely) one lane road through dense dense bush for a few km's until we reached there. I wish i had a picture with me, i'll try to get one up of the route we took. It was really a footpath i think, with sugarcane plants that rose about 7 ft on either side of the road.
Once we arrived my supervisor took us around the village (village=4 or 5 houses near eachother) to show us some things he is working on there. He has a small fish hatchery as well as a couple pastures with cows. We also saw two kids catching white ants to cook for dinner. I have had the white ant sauce that comes out of this process but had never seen it done before. There are large anthills all over here, between 4 and 7 feet high usually, that are made by these white ants. They look like a normal ant but have 4 big wings on them. So to catch them you go out at night (when they usually come out) and put a blanket over the anthill. Where the blanket opens you have a little hole dug that collects them as they try to come out from under the blanket. Theres a picture on Kel's computer that i'll try to get up sometime. After catching them you pull the wings off and make a (quite delicous) sauce to put over matooke or millet....yum.
So after our tour we had dinner and a few drinks with the family before heading back home. Grandma didn't speak any english, and my rutoro is not nearly enough to hold any kind of conversation, so mostly my supervisor translated. Here's a picture of (l to r) kel, mom, grandma, me.

From Uganda

I think that about sums up my last few months here, or at least the major highlights. The new term started last week with beginning of term exams. I supervised about 5 of them throughout the week (3 were in a room with 130 kids!). Next week i'll start lecturing again, same classes i had before - 3 physics and 1 biology.

Oh i should make a note here of something i just realized. So some of the fam had made the comment to me about how it always seems like the school is on break, which is true, but there's good reason. The school calendar is based around the planting and harvesting seasons, which are based around the rains. Here's how it roughly breaks down: Jan-April= short rainy season and first term, May=holiday and harvest/planting, June-August=second term and dry season, Sept=planting and holiday, oct-dec=heavy rains and 3rd term, dec-jan=harvest and planting and holiday. And now you know.....

Also...HUUUUUGE thank you's are due. You all are absolutely amazing and make my time hear so much easier. My post office box has been quite busy lately thanks to you all. Here goes:

Giggles: awesome, this is a bit overdue. I got your package about a month ago i think. Thank you so much, especially for the things for school. I was trying to figure out what to do with the science magazines as i have 70 kids in my classes so instead of having them share, i've been kind of randomly giving the magazines to kids (my own and others in the village) that i meet. This, i've decided, is much better than giving out sweets and the kids are amazed every time that they can actually keep the magazine.

Jenny: Just got yours a week or two ago and was blown away. The photo album is amazing. I think i've looked through it at least 4 times since i got it. Eric i can't wait to hear the song, thank you so much for taking the time to do that. Also, the bag of peanut m&m's dropped both me and kelly's chins to the floor. you both are very much missed and loved, thank you.

the howards: holy cow, i had to send the box with one of the motorcycle taxi's to drop on my porch it was so big. I couldnt believe how much jerky was in there! I must say my favorites were the pictures of the girls. You both are quite lucky, they are cute as ever. One of the father's i live with was amazed at how much Chris and Savannah resemble one another..."right down to the chin dimple" he said. Miss you all, thank you for my card Kirstin! it's hanging in my room.

mom and dad: i've already told you how awesome yours was but i couldn't leave you off of my list here. My charging people will miss me now that i've got my own little solar power plant, which by the way amazes every one at the parish ("eh!...sure? you can charge from there?") love you both.

and thank you for your letter kelli! there are now children running around the village with spongebob stickers :) expect a response soon.

wew, i think thats it. I'm sure i'll get home and think of something or someone i forgot and feel guilty until next time im in fort. Love you all, take care.

-Eric

One more picture for good measure. A typical Kampala street:

From Uganda