thoughts on life in Uganda thus far

Hi all,
Time to update my blog. It's hard to pick out individual stories -
life is so structured right now that there aren't a lot of notable
individual stories to pass on, so I thought I'd talk about a few
different realms of life you might be interested.

Internet: I was using an internet cafe, which was dreadfully slow.
But I invested in a USB modem, with improved results - but not
enough. Internet cafe gave me about 3 kb/s, and my modem gives me
maybe 30 kb/s, but I got in order to be able to video chat over skype,
which I was not able to do. So I'll be selling my modem to another
Peace Corps volunteer who doesn't need as much bandwidth as I do and
trying another one. I'm told that other networks ( I'm on MTN right
now) are less congested, and that you can buy more expensive modems
that are faster. One of the other trainees brought a blackberry that
has a built in modem, and he gets 400 kb/s and does video chat all the
time, so I'm hoping for that kind of performance eventually, but we'll
see what I can dig up. I'll be doing some research in Kampala on
Monday as I head out for a week. Which brings me to:

Language Immersion/Peace Corps Volunteer Shadowing: Monday through
Saturday this coming week all the individual language groups will
visit a current Peace Corps volunteer in their area. We'll be staying
in hotels ( hot showers! woohoo!), but shadowing the volunteer to see
what their life is like, as well as doing intensive language
training. Should be an exciting time - I'm not allowed to tell you
where I'm going for safety reasons, but I'll talk more about what it
was like when I get back.

Food: Pretty plain. Every meal consists of "food" ( or a starch of
some kind - matooke (boiled, mashed non-sweet bananas), or irish
potatoes, or rice) plus "sauce", which could be beans, or groundnuts
and the like. Occasionally we get meat, but that's rare. I'd say I'm
a vegetarian 3 to 4 days a week. Also, I've been realizing how
desensitized and distant from our food we are in America. I'm used to
buying chicken breasts, or ground beef in the supermarket and cooking
it, no problem. But the meat here is largely in stew form - a boiled
pot, where the meat is largely bone and gristle. I was a little
surprised when my host brothers greeting me, smiling, one saturday
morning with "Jonathan, would you like to slaughter a hen?". I
passed, but observed as they stepped on the chicken's wings and feet
and cut its head off with a dull knife. (Good kitchen knives are hard
to come by here). The dying chicken writhed and shook for several
minutes - I'm quite certain it would have run quite a distance if it
hadn't been constrained. Anyway, I miss really processed, ready to
eat, meat.

Church: Hard to adjust to. I've gone to two pentecostal churches,
and one anglican today. Several things in common: "Praise the Lord"
is the omni-present catchphrase, used as "do you agree with me?" as
well as "you're not singing loud enough" or "you need to wake up and
be excited" - not a shibboleth I'm a fan of. Growing up in a
Presbyterian church (God's frozen chosen!), I thrive on a certain
level of solemnity in my worship. If someone insists I become excited
and jump up and down, I rapidly look for something else to do or
somewhere else to be. "Clap for Jesus" is also a big thing here -
after every song, or scripture reading. Likewise, not a fan. It's
been generally a hard adjustment - the preaching lacks the intellect I
need to be fed. Mostly it winds up being a restatement ( or even
quasi-dramatic reenactment) of the scripture text, with a bare minimum
of application. I imagine that's a consequence of the lack of formal
theological training, but I'm still looking for a good preacher.
Energy is certainly not lacking - I love the drums- and harmony seems
quite natural to all the congregations, so some of the singing is
quite beautiful. We even sang "Guide Me, Oh Thou Great Jehovah"
today, which was excellent. Todays service was mostly english with a
couple Luganda songs, while the other churches have been largely
Luganda with English translation during the sermon. Also noteworthy
was a hilarious bumper sticker on a motorcycle outside church today:
"The Lord is my Refugee" - supposed to be "refuge", but the extra "e"
was quite hilarious.

That's all for now. While I have decent internet, I'll also throw up
a couple pictures in a few minutes. And I appreciate all your comments!