It is December 7, 2009, about 4 pm. It is bright and sunny out, a comfortable 80-ish degrees Fahrenheit, and I am listening to Christmas music, which is the only reminder of where I am in my yearly calendar. There is no falling of the leaves, no crisp cool air, no apple picking, no first frost, no snow here, and apart from my friends and family (that means you, if you’re reading this), that’s what I miss most. There will be no surprisingly warm February mid-afternoons where I can venture outside in just a sweater. There will be no fires in the living room stove. There will be no emerging green-ness in March. There will be no unseasonable heat come summer. It is always the same, and I’m bored of it.
I’ve been at my site for nearly 2 months now, and life is…slow. Slow is the best word to describe it. It is also good, and I’m largely content (with the absence of the 3 things above), but slowness is the theme of my life for now, and I’m learning from it. My first three weeks were a very slow introduction to my organization-daily introductions, reading documents, visiting projects, but not doing any real work. The next three weeks were spent away from site building a rainwater tank 50km away (more about that later). Only this week am I starting to really integrate into the organization, and take on a role.
Life simply moves at a different pace. When it rains-which is now-nothing happens. Nobody goes to work, no shops are open, no one is moving around. It’s basically like a snooze button-when I wake up in the morning and its raining, I simply go back to sleep. Sometimes it rains all morning and into the mid-afternoon, sometimes it just rains for a few minutes. There are other days when the weather may cooperate, but there is simply nothing for me to do. I’ll go into the office, and my boss is away on a business meeting in the next town over. My counterparts may like to show me a project, but there are no funds for transport. The administrative staff is in the office, but not working because the power is out. And so they may teach me some Luganda or play cards or just chat, and I stop by the market (food is dirt cheap; a week’s worth of rice and vegetables, virtually my entire diet, is maybe 4 dollars) and I’m home by 1 or 2 pm. And that’s ok! At least, I’m learning that its ok. I’m told that frequently Peace Corps volunteers do absolutely nothing for the first 3 months at site-so I’m grateful that I’ve been involved with some work that interests me and is relevant to my education. I know that’s all fairly vague, but its an important window into my life right now. More details a little later, but first I want to bring you all up to speed on the last 2-ish months of my life.
This is the US ambassador to Uganda on the left, and our new country director on the right, at our swearing in ceremony.
Also at swearing in, my fellow volunteer Caleb had a very classy tie.
4 of the Masters International volunteers in our training group: Me, Steve Wright from Michigan Tech, Stever Worrell from USF, and Colin Casey of Michigan Tech.
My good friend Zach Bagley and I at swearing in. He's wearing a kanzu, the formal mens garment of Uganda.
My home stay family: from left to right, Gerald, Frank, Gideon and Margaret.
Colin found this great shirt in a market. He's also from Madison, WI.
So, I’ve replaced a Peace Corps volunteer who left in May, which is nice because my organization is already familiar with working with a Peace Corps Volunteer, so a lot of the preliminary feeling out of my role is a lot easier. That is to say, I don't need to convince them that I don't have money to simply give them, which is a fairly frequent issue with organizations no matter how hard Peace Corps works to vet them beforehand. I work for Open Palm/COWESER (COWESER stands for Community Welfare Service), which is a fairly well established in Kalisizo, about 30 mins south on the main road from the large town of Masaka. It’s a fairly large village, and I have electricity, running water, a flush toilet, and internet: pretty posh, as far as Peace Corps experiences go, but still very different from home. It makes me thankful for little things, like an entire day without a power outage, a fully charged batteries on all my electronics, and when my internet speed hits 20 kilobytes per second.
Kalisizo is much like any other town in Uganda. The shops are an array of supermarkets all selling the same bread, detergent, and rice; video stores selling pirated DVD’s; hardware stores selling the same equipment and plastic buckets. I guarantee there are only 5 different kinds of stores, and of each variety there are 5 or 10 identical shops in Kalisizo.
I’ve befriended a lady at the market named Eudaya, so that’s a near daily opportunity to practice my Luganda. She always slips me an extra tomato too, J I live in the compound owned by my supervisor, Joseph Mubiru. There’s an extra set of quarters in the back, separated from his house by a small courtyard where laundry and dishes are done, but enclosed by the same exterior wall. I have two rooms-my bedroom and a kitchen, two decent sized rooms with a toilet and a shower that doesn’t work (which is fine-the water would be cold, so I prefer bucket baths). None of the rooms are connected, so I have to go out into the hall to go from room to room.
Joseph and his wife Regina both work full time, so there’s a young woman named Angela who lives with them who cooks and cleans and helps watch the kids. Lynn and Fiona (fee-on-a) are the 2 youngest, both sons, and the only kids living at home. Their 4 daughters aged 8-17ish are all at boarding school, but are currently home on holiday. Besides Lynn and Fiona, neighbor kids Diana, and twins Wasswa and Nakato (boy and girl respectively) are over all the time. They all call me “Uncle Jon”. Fiona is the whiniest 2-ish year old kid I’ve ever seen (I’ve heard him wail and throw a tantrum 10 times in 2 hours), and he rarely wears pants. He knows enough not to defecate inside the house, so he just walks outside and squats-on the patio, in the courtyard, wherever-but apparently hasn’t yet been taught to go to the latrine, which is a little gross, but Angela’s quick to clean up usually and its not in my living area. The kids love when I swing them around by their arms or let them climb all over me. Wasswa is particularly cuddly, and enjoys climbing into my lap-even when I’m trying to do dishes or laundry.
My first few weeks at site were spent being familiarized with my org's past work. Here's a rope pump that the previous volunteer helped build.
The view from the front of our office.
Here's the majority of the space in our office. Also the reason we're moving to a newly constructed office soon-there's very little space.
The new office also has housing for me, so I'll move in to the adjacent apartment. This is my new spacious bathroom-prior to the toilet being installed.
This next set of pictures deals with a visit by President Museveni to my town.
We had a number of Zaccheus's who decided the view from the trees was best.
50% of the population of Uganda is under the age of 14. We got there several hours before Museveni was scheduled to arrive, and it was fun to watch thousands of school children jostle for position. There was a kind of amphitheater set up - people performing dances and drumming in the middle, with a small stage behind. On one side was a tent for VIPS (I was in the second row of the tent with representatives from my organization). The other two sides were slowly being enclosed by masses of kids, all in their uniforms of their respective schools.
As you can see, 3000+ kids are quite a lot. All of them wanted to be as close as possible, so they packed close together to get to the front. Security had a hard time keeping them static, as the lines kept creeping closer and closer to the point where we supposed the President would speak.
Once thousands of kids had lined up, a parade started with hundreds more, including this marching band. The line stretched to the end of the street, and all the way back. I don't think I've ever seen so many kids in one place.
The president was late, as usual, so we just watched for 2 hours as the kids jostled for position, pushing to get just a little closer, to have a good vantage point.
And then it started to rain. Slowly at first-slow enough for this group to produce a tarp to cover themselves with. But it started to downpour, and there was pandemonium as thousands of people ran for cover. It was mildly amusing, watching from my shelter, to watch all the careful positioning ruined by the rain as everyone abandoned their precious positions and took cover.
The rain only lasted a few mins, but lots of people were pretty soaked.
So after the rain, someone grabbed the mic and informed us that the President was getting closer and he would arrive soon. Then another guy informed us that actually the President wasn't really going to stop, but just pass through, so we needed to move the entire event over to the road. So we moved. This is my counterpart, Max Sennyonga, guiding me to the front of the crowd to see better. But the sad hilarity of the event struck me: we had been waiting for hours, taking careful positions. The VIP's had been seated, the children had paraded, the rain had ruined all efforts and then positions were re-established, and at the last minute some person decided to move the entire event. It was by far the worst organized political event I've ever been to- and I've been to events of America's Democratic Party, so that's saying a lot.
Here's another part of the large crowd now on both sides of the main road waiting for the President to arrive.
This picture has a story behind it. So I'm the only white person in a crowd of 6000+, waiting to see the President, and I have my camera out - obviously. I'm taking the pictures you've seen already, and I plan to take several of the President. Well a man walks up to me- dressed as every other man in the crowd is, somewhat professional in a collared shirt - and says "Give me your camera!" in a fairly authoritative tone. Taken aback, I replied simply "No. It is mine", and he repeated his demand. At this point, my counterpart steps in and recognizes that the man is presidential security. The man asks if I've been invited (which is a joke: as if all 6000 ppl here were personally invited to this "event". Also, I'm standing by the side of the road, not like I snuck on to private property). Anyway, Max cools things down and assures the guy that I work and live here. The man wants my camera to be examined-presumably to make sure its not a gun-so I'm sent to a vehicle with soldiers in it down the road. They're not in the least interested in examining my camera, and send me back. We get back to the man, and he asks me to take a picture to prove its a camera. So I took one of him and showed it to him, which wasn't enough, so I gave him the camera to take a picture for himself, and he took this one of me.
And eventually, President Museveni showed up, in all of his funny-looking hat glory. He wears this hat all the time-rarely is there a public appearance where he isn't wearing it. It's highly comical.
Students going back to school after the President's visit. I thought the uniforms were colorful.
My organization has a fairly broad focus and a decently large staff- 12 people, I think. Some do HIV sensitizations, some are community mobilizers, some accounting and office staff. One of the projects they are in the final phase of is a rainwater harvesting project, building 250 tanks in two sub-counties of Rakai District. This is the kind of water source we're hoping to replace.
And this is the kind of tank we build. We build 6000 liter tanks for houses, and 10,000 liter tanks for institutions like schools. I'm hoping to find ways to bring the costs down, produce them with more local materials, and expand the program to other areas. But thats just an idea at this point.
In order to learn more about the tanks, my org sent me to help build one of them for 3 weeks. This is the place where we were going to build it.
You start by tying wire mesh together until its big enough to roll into a cylinder. We're building a 10,000ish liter tank, about 2 meters tall.
Then you roll it up and tie the ends together.
Next, dig yourself a hole. We just needed to clear away the topsoil until we reached the harder layer underneath-only a foot or so down.
It's hard work. We were slowing them down more than helping, so we let them do most of it.
Next, fill with large rocks, or "hard core" as its called here.
Lay wire mesh circle on top, and site your pipes.
Mix sand, cement, and small stones and start pouring the foundation.
Almost done with the foundation. Here's david, one of the masons, making it level.
You make this circle a little smaller than your wire mesh cage, because the next thing you do is place it around this foundation...
Like so.
Next, place your concrete mix around the perimeter, making sure the mesh is tied to the mesh floor and well embedded in the concrete.
Wrap with cloth or a tarp and wrap ropes around that. Make sure the walls are perfectly vertical with wires and stakes.
Push mortar into the wire mesh, filling the space between it and the cloth backing. This is a good inch thick layer.
Proceed in strips, balancing them on opposite sides of the tank so the weight doesn't cause the tank to bend in one direction.
When you've got one layer complete, add another. Total of 3 on the inside.
Inside complete.
Add 2 layers to the outside and you're almost done.
All you need is the waterproof coating on the inside, above, and the roof, which we didn't get to observe. And thats a rainwater tank! Install a rudimentary filter (sand and gravel) and gutters and you're ready for a rainy season.
While in Rakai to build the tank, we saw a big hill...
So naturally we had to go to the top.
Here's a solitary fisherman far below.
Wider view of the lake.
And now a few more random pictures from my travels/life.
Looking south toward Tanzania, which is only about 5 km away.
Cattle on the road. Happens all the time.
We drove by a guy with a pregnant goat, so my supervisor decided to buy it. We drove home (which took 2 hours) with it in the trunk. The goat was not happy, and frequently informed us of that fact at high volume.
I love the contrast between the deep red roads, the lush green vegetation, and the blue/gray skies. Lots of gorgeous views out in the field.
Clouds and their shadows across the valley below.
This is Christie, our accountant, accompanying us on a trip into the field.
This goat had an exceptionally long beard, so i took a picture.
Remember how 50% of the population is under the age of 14? Well, that means that the cute kid index is off the scale, so here's a sampling of some of them.
This kid must like this position. I took this from the window of our office. The next day he was sitting in the exact same position in the same chair.
Friendly girl at the school we were building the tank at.
Boys enjoying watching us build from across the fence.
I made a cuddly friend while we were having lunch one day.
Adorable!
Not so happy, this one.
This is my little friend Maria. Sometimes the ladies at my org watch her when her mom is sick or is busy or something, so I enjoy those days. She's young enough not to be afraid of me cuz I'm white (which is pretty frequent. I'd say 1 in 5 kids just runs away from me and won't let me near them). Maria's 6 months old, and loves my beard and my glasses.
Another cute kid next door from my office. I took Maria over to say hi, and they started chewing on each others fingers. It was hilarious.
Everywhere I go I have a crowd following me. I kind of feel like a rock star. Its not always pleasant.
This one's a little shy, but I managed to snag a picture.
Saw this kids shirt and knew I had to take a picture. Funniest thing I'd seen in a while.
This is my friend Marvin. He hangs around the office, and we play all the time. Took me a while to befriend him, but I won him over. He's a lot of fun.
Little girl at Museveni's visit.
This is Fiona (fee-on-a), wearing his dad's tie.
Well thats about it for now. Hope you enjoy the pictures-it was a long and tedious process to upload them. I love you all and hope to hear from you. Please say something in the comments! It is a simple joy that lights up my day to hear from you. Oh, and please sign with your first and last name so I know who you are.
