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Friday, December 25, 2015

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Merry Christmas from Uganda! I have put up posts!!! (I’ll put pictures up when I actually get wifi....)
I have been with my homestay family for a week today, and it’s going well. I absolutely adore language training! I wish we could have it all day instead of having culture sessions in the afternoon. Whoops, there’s my linguistic nerd coming out. The only thing I am really struggling with is getting out of my comfort zone and speaking Runyoro-Rutooro. The people in town are very good about speaking with us when we go for lunch, and I greet nearly everyone I see on the way to and from training.
Yesterday I helped to slaughter our Christmas chicken, and we decorated the living room. The “Christmas season” here is quite a bit shorter than it is at home, especially for me. I’ve been so busy with training, though, I hardly noticed. I just can’t wait for next year when I can start decorating my house WHENEVER I WANT. Maybe I’ll just leave my Christmas decorations up allllllllll year loooonnnnggggg! This morning we went to church and we’ll eat lunch soon, hopefully. I think later we’re going swimming!
As great as Christmas is here, I’m seriously missing home. This is the most homesick I’ve been since getting here, perhaps ever. It helps that since everyone is on break I’ve been able to talk to them more, but it doesn’t cure it. I love what I’m doing here so much, but I wish I had my own TARDIS so I could pop home and then pop back without even being noticed. Maybe my TARDIS would be in the shape of a banana tree. Or a chicken or small child….

From across the Atlantic, I wish you the warmest Christmas you’ve ever had (pun intended for those at home…).





EDIT: I did indeed get to swim, although in a somewhat questionable pool! Then we went to a dance party late into the night. Pictures below!!!



"I have seen they do this in America."











One of my fellow trainee's host cousins took my glasses and looked super cute!

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Transportation

So you may be wondering how I’m getting around the country. Transportation here is surprisingly sophisticated while the actual vehicles themselves are, well, not particularly good quality.

The Ugandan public transport system consists of:
~Boda bodas: Motorcycle (or rarely bicycle – legal for PCVs) taxis which PCVs are NOT allowed to ride but that are the fastest and most common mode of transportation
~Taxis: Mini-bus vehicles which are the most common for PCVs to use. These can be short distance or long distance, but be ready to squish! Legal capacity may only be 14, but many times they are far over legal capacity.
~Busses: Only used for long distance travel, these are the slowest but perhaps the most comfortable mode of transportation, especially from Fort Portal to Kampala (about a 5-6 hour trip on a bus).

Private transport consists of:
~Private hires: Usually vans or mini-busses which can be hired for long or short distances. These are significantly more expensive than taxis, but they will take you anywhere. Usually PCVs only use these when they are in a rather sizeable group because of the cost.
~Personal bicycles, boda bodas and cars: Vehicles that are not for hire are very much so a sign of wealth here.


And of course you can walk anywhere you’re willing to take the time to walk to….

How's Your Site?

I’M AT MY SITE!!!!!!! I am so close to Fort Portal; I know I’m going to be there every weekend. My house is huge! Seriously, if it had a water heater, finished floors, and a bit better kitchen, it would be an American quality two-bedroom apartment. I am pretty close to one of my fellow volunteers, we’re calling each other our site mates: about a 20 minute ride by car or a 1.5 hour walk. There is a market on Wednesdays that is only about a 20 minute walk, and the demonstration school, which has a boarding center for children with disabilities, is only about 5 minutes from my house. I’m out in the middle of nowhere, but not really. The only unfortunate thing is trying to find data signal. I’ll figure it out.

This visit is to give us a taste of how we’re going to be living, and also to give us an opportunity to begin forming relationships with our communities. My supervisor is not here, but I am working with our principal, and he is a very kind man. Quiet, but kind. The college driver has been taking me around, showing me where things are in the car, and helping me to really get acquainted with my surroundings. I’m so glad he’s here to help me out. He even dropped me off in and picked me up from Fort Portal today, where I spent the day with a couple of volunteers, INCLUDING MY WONDERFUL MENTOR!!!


Tomorrow I will be driven into Fort Portal with my site mate to catch a public taxi to the town where we will be staying next, about an hour from Fort Portal, with our HOST FAMILIES!! WHOO!

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Bye Bye Technical Training!!

I should really be packing right now, but I can’t think about that right now. It is our last day at Shimoni, and as strange as it is, I will miss this place. Our time here has been bittersweet. The beds were not exactly comfortable, many of our meals were late, and the water ran out most days, but the hospitality of Shimoni was undeniable. More than once, I had things carried for me, small things like my water bottle. Throughout, I was called madam, Teacher, or Tutor. I never once felt disrespected or unsafe. I have gotten to know so many students in such a short time. My 50+ students have absolutely stolen my heart.

The first week of bootcamp was intense. I was constantly being critiqued for things I simply didn’t know. It’s not like those giving feedback were trying to be mean, but it is hard to constantly hear all the things you’re doing wrong. It was difficult to get to know the students at first, and I was having serious problems understanding their Ugandlish. My lessons were absolutely not what I wanted to be teaching. But somehow I made it through with a positive view of my experience to come. Without the first week, I would not have been able to build the relationships that were so important to my overall experience.

The second week we taught content instead of literacy. Of course, all of our lessons had to include literacy, but since I will be teaching science and ICT, these lessons were much more aligned with what I’m going to be doing. We had more freedom in how we were teaching. Also, we really got to learn about the students, their dreams, and most of all, their senses of humor. For example, I tried to make a joke that I weigh 1, 000, 000 kg, and I was the only one laughing…. Live and learn, right?


Now we are getting ready to move into homestay. I am so excited to be learning the language!! My only worry is that I’m going to have a hard time being away from the people I have gotten so close to….

Friday, December 4, 2015

Change in Plans

It is election season here in Uganda. Usually, this means simply that we muzungus need to remember not to give a thumbs up or a peace sign to accidentally show our support for different political parties. It can also mean you are stuck in traffic due to a rally where people are dancing and singing in the street.

Sometimes, though, it can lead to civil unrest. Peace Corps Uganda has done a wonderful job of being transparent with us during our training. There has not been much civil unrest, but they are keeping a close eye on it along with the US embassy. Even the Ugandan government is concerned about this. Due to the possibility for unrest, the Ministry of Education has pushed the beginning of the school year back from the beginning of February to the end of February.

In light of all this information, the decision has been made to push back Cohort 4's Swearing In. It was originally planned for January 21. Now we will be with our home stay families for a few weeks longer, get to go to an All-Volunteer conference before we're even technically volunteers, and swear in during February.

Although I am sad that we will not officially be PCVs until February, I am grateful for Peace Corps's watchful eye on the situation and realization that even if we were sworn in, we wouldn't have anything to do at our sites for a month. It is said all the time at training, but it really is true: our safety is their number one priority.

Monday, November 23, 2015

Thanksgiving



Today is Thanksgiving! Well, "Thanksgiving." We are at the PC office today, hence all my posts. Good food, great company, and wifi! :)



In other, less thankful news, it has been incredibly difficult to get my posts up with all of these pictures, so you will probably be seeing a lot less pictures from here on out. I hate to do this, as I know pictures are a huge part of a successful blog, but I promise I will go back and add pictures when I have reliable wifi!

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Cooking/Food

Today one of our lovely trainers gave us a demonstration on how to cook on a sigiri, a charcoal stove used by Ugandans. She cooked all kinds of wonderful food, which was DELICIOUS, all bought from the local market. It was almost like watching a TV show, she did so wonderfully!!





Friday, November 20, 2015

Construction in Uganda

On the way to the PTC we visited, we had to take a road that is under construction. It was even more stressful than construction is in the US. There were several times I thought we were going to get stuck, and once I even thought the bus was going to tip over. But, we got there and back safely! This road is going to provide a paved road between Entebbe and the Kampala-Jinja road which bypasses Kampala on the way to Jinja. It is a five year project, one year in, but once it's done, it will be great for Uganda.





PTC Field Trip!!

It has been such a long week of technical training. We have learned all about literacy and the basics of what our positions really mean in practice. Today we split up by Teacher Trainers and Literacy Specialists, and we took field trips to a PTC and to a primary school. Obviously I went to the PTC.

We went to one of our trainer’s sites, a PTC that was only supposed to be 45 minutes to an hour away, but because of construction, it took almost an hour and a half to get there.  (More on this in another blog post). When we got there, we watched our trainer give a lesson on Alphabetic Principle and Phonemic Awareness, which is exactly what we’ve been learning about this week. It was fabulous to be able to see him teach a lesson I’m going to have to teach in a couple of weeks. Throughout the lesson, he was also modelling the use of positive behavior systems, so he gave the class tally marks for behaving well. They were working to us doing a dance for them, something he definitely didn’t run by us beforehand. We’re all pretty laidback people, though, so when they had earned all five tallies by the end of class, we did the best rendition of the Cha Cha Slide in the history of Uganda. Unfortunately, no one recorded it.

Of course, they also danced for us, and I did get that on tape! I also took video of the activity our trainer had his students do. Hopefully I can upload it!
























Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Well....

So, I thoroughly intended to blog tonight, but then I accidentally volunteered my computer so that we could watch a movie. I don't want to leave you all wondering, though, so.... I'm alive! For now, enjoy this picture of the cutest kitten on our compound. :)

Derp face!

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Kampala

Today was…intense…and…stressful. We went on a tour of Kampala today. Thankfully, current PCVs were showing us where to go, how to navigate the safety concerns, and just there for us. I already do not like big cities, but Kampala was a whole other beast. I do not have very many pictures, as we were trying not to look like tourists to avoid being targets of crime.

The first thing we did was find where the post office is. Apparently, when the mail runs, you can take the postal bus to your closest town (city… more on this in another blog), literally riding into town with the mail. The upside of this method of travel is that it leaves at a set time and, more or less, arrives at a set time. Unfortunately, it leaves really early in the morning, and for my region, it takes ALL day instead of just most of the day.

Next, we walked down to the taxi park. To fully understand this, you first need to understand what a taxi is in Uganda. In the US, a taxi is a car or van that you and your party pay to take you to a specific place. In Uganda, this is called a private (taxi). Taxis, on the other hand, are mini-busses that go from one stage (stop) to another, in a similar-but-still-different way as busses do in big cities. Here, though, taxis can drive for hours and hours before they get to their destination, or they can just drive around the city you are in. These are the safest and most reliable form of travel for PCVs in Uganda, and so it is crucial we learn how to use them.

So back to the taxi park. Many towns have taxi parks where, literally, taxis drive to and park. So when you go to Kampala, unless you ask to be let off in a different place, you will arrive in the taxi park. This is the best way to pick up a taxi that is not just driving around the city. You can pick them up on the side of the road as well, but you are not guaranteed they will actually go as far as they say they will if you pick them up from the side of the road. In Kampala, there are actually two taxi parks because there are so many taxis going in and out of the city. Imagine a mall-sized parking lot full of taxis and people, and then add about twice the amount of people. That is a taxi park. The bus yard was similar, although there are not as many buses since they are not as common.

We walked from the post office, which is on the main drag through Kampala to the taxi parks, and we also passed through an open-air Sunday market on the way. Our first time in Kampala, and we are shoved into the most stressful part of Kampala within ten minutes of arriving. It was terrifying. It was definitely not comforting when our trainers informed us that Sunday is an exceptionally slow day, and that we could expect to see double or triple the amount of people on other days of the week. Talk about stressful.

In a taxi!
After we went through the taxi parks, we found a taxi up to one of the malls in town and stopped for lunch. We had to go through a metal detector in order to get to the mall, but other than that, it was a very western mall. The mall had wifi, and more importantly, a cell phone store! YAY I HAVE DATA!! Then we walked to a hostel in town that PCVs frequently stay at, and then to the PC office. The office is super cool, and the view was SPECTACULAR. I might even like it more than the view from the training center. Maybe not…

This is the view from the other side of the mall.
The mall is very nice, western even, but just across the street is regular old Uganda.
We got a private from the PC office to another mall in town, which is actually two malls right next to each other. We didn’t really have to go through security for these because our trainers were talking to the guards in Luganda, and they were laughing so hard that they just waved us on. (This is actually fairly common for some reason. I guess we just talk funny.) Here we go frozen yogurt, went to a legit western supermarket, and met a kid named Jerimiah.

Jerimiah’s English is fantastic. You can tell he is well educated. My first instinct when he came up was to ignore him, but one of the PCTs in our group started talking to him, and it was actually very interesting to talk to him. He is an orphan; his father died in a boda boda accident. He just finished the first level of secondary school, but he cannot afford the second level. His view on the world is very interesting. He holds the common view that everything is easy in the US, and he asked us to adopt him. We all knew from the beginning this was likely a scam, but regardless, I am glad we got to talk to Jerimiah. Although we do not know whether his story was true or not, I know there really are orphans out there who have no family to adopt them and cannot afford food, let alone school. It really makes me wonder what I can do in order to help them. When I get to my site, I will remember Jerimiah. I will see if there are orphans in my village that I can help with because it was heart wrenching to hear Jerimiah tell he his dad had died in a boda boda accident, reinforcing the statistic that ten people die on boda bodas EVERY DAY.

After this, we walked to another hostel PCVS like to stay at and caught a taxi home. Overall, it was a long, stressful day, but the second half of the day was much better than the first. 



Kampala

The highest speed limit sign I've seen so far is 70 KPH (~45 MPH).

These are boda boda drivers.
They are incredibly dangerous, and we're not allowed to ride with them!

Saturday, November 14, 2015

I'M A TEACHER TRAINER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HAVE MY SITE PLACEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Although I do not want to put specifics on here, I will be living in the West, near Fort Portal, working at a PTC!! This particular PTC has science labs that it would like to be better used, and so I am hoping to take on that challenge. It also has several primary schools which are part of an outreach program, and I am very, very excited about that. Although I was leaning toward being a Teacher Trainer, I do still really like kids, and I do want to help at the primary schools as much as I can. I’ll tell you more about it through my time working there!

Can I please just take a minute to give a shout-out to our trainers for being AWESOME?! We weren’t supposed to get out site placements until tomorrow morning, just before we go to Kampala, but they surprised us with them tonight, and they did so in an awesome way. Using our projector, we “watched some TV” all about our site placements. There was Jeopardy, Harry Potter, and SNL! Seriously, it was hilarious and amazing. The room was alive with anticipation. They finished our placements early, and they did all of this work so that we could sleep in an hour before going to Kampala.


I AM SO EXCITED THAT I AM GOING TO BE A TEACHER TRAINER NEAR FORT PORTAL!!!

Survival Skills

Today we learned some very important things. We learned how to use a pit latrine, how to take a bucket bath, how to start a sigiri (a small charcoal stove), and how to wash clothes by hand. This session could have definitely come sooner, especially considering my large pile of dirty clothes that are going to take FOREVER to do. (UPDATE: I still don’t have all of my clothes washed on the 20th, sooo…) The processes for these things are honestly rather self-explanatory, so I’m just going to let the pictures speak for themselves!