Trained, Sworn In, and On My Own (well, sort of)

I’m sitting in my bedroom typing this after my first weekend at my now-official Ugandan home in the town of Kalisizo (in case you missed it before, that’s in Rakai District, near the Tanzanian border and Lake Victoria…you can see it on the Uganda map).  A lot happened last week to get me to this point, so I’ll start at the beginning.

Me and Hosea in my room at homestay

Last Monday (by the way, in Uganda, it’s generally accepted that the week starts on Monday) was the day before we left Wakiso town (our training site) to go to Kampala.  Since we needed to get up really early on Tuesday to leave, I said my good byes to my host mom and dad, and their little grandchild (Hosea, made internationally famous a few blog posts ago).  They were all very excited about the presents I had brought for them.  For Hosea, there were four picture books that I had already started going through with him a few weeks before, including “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” “The Grouchy Ladybug,” “The Tiny Seed,” and “Goodnight Moon.”  They’re trying to teach him English, and he was getting pretty good at picking out some of the different pictures in the books and saying their names (tree, flower, bug, leaf, sun, moon, etc.).  Just about every day after I’d get home, Hosea would follow me into my room and would start leafing through those books, pointing at the pictures and telling me what they were.  So, I’m thinking he liked his gifts.  I also gave a nice set of three kitchen knives to my parents, along with a book full of pictures of Pennsylvania, to give them some idea of what my state looks like.  (It’s hard enough to say “Pennsylvania,” let alone finding it on a map or knowing how it looks.)  Anyway, it was a lot of fun explaining some of the pictures in the book, because they were photos of trees, mountains, rivers, etc., all grouped by season.  So, I got to explain winter, spring, summer, and autumn, and I got to see their expressions when we got to the pictures full of snow and ice (it starts to get “cold” here when the sun goes behind a cloud and the temperature drops below 80).  I also gave them a really nice note that my parents had written (okay, they had written an email and I handwrote it), thanking my homestay parents for taking care of me over the past few months.  I read the whole letter to them, and there were many, many expressions of gratitude and appreciation from my host parents.  Unfortunately, the power went out just as I was finishing reading the note, and so it was too dark to figure out how to take any pictures.  But, there is a pretty nice one of me and Hosea in my room from a week or so ago…

So, on Tuesday morning, we left Wakiso town early in the morning to head into Kampala.  We spent the morning at the US Embassy, meeting with the Deputy Ambassador, the USAID Director in Uganda, and a few others.  I actually really enjoyed listening to all of the things that are going on in this country.  After that, we headed over to the Peace Corps office to have lunch (subs from a deli called Quality Cuts…very yummy), sign some forms, tour the office, and find out how we did on the language interviews.  And…I passed, with an Intermediate Mid score, which I was pretty happy about.  (Although I’m trying to think of this as a starting point, rather than an ending point…because I need to keep getting better.)  And, finally, we went to a hotel just outside of the city, where we would spend the next couple of days, having a workshop with our Ugandan supervisors.  Actually, my supervisor couldn’t come, so Peruth, one of my counterparts, came and represented Positive Planet at the workshop.

This hotel was really nice, by the way.  Once again, the rooms had hot showers, comfy beds, and nice, flush toilets (which came in handy as I dealt with another wonderful bout of diarrhea…our group has had quite a few cases of this nice little ailment, enough that it has been given a nickname…pee-butt.  Perhaps that was extra information you didn’t need).  Anyway, it was very nice, and the food was delicious…sort of Americanized Ugandan cuisine.

Finally, Thursday was the big day.  After lunch, we all piled into buses on last time together to head for the Deputy Ambassador’s house, where we would be sworn in (officially changing designation from Peace Corps trainees to Peace Corps volunteers).  It was a very nice ceremony (and an incredibly nice house, by the way…no bucket baths or pit latrines there), with some guest speakers from the Ugandan government, speeches from the Peace Corps country director, the PC program managers for Community Health and Economic Development, and three representatives from our training group, and a song from one of the language trainers.  There was a little food afterwards, and some time for pictures, and then we headed back to the hotel for one more night, which was definitely bittersweet.  We were all very happy to be done with training and to be getting out into the field, but that also meant that we would need to say goodbye to a bunch of people who we had just lived with for the past 10 weeks.  Let me tell you, 10 weeks does not really seem like a long time, but, when you spend almost every waking minute with people, you can get pretty close to them pretty quickly.  And it was kind of tough as the people who needed to leave really early on Friday morning went to bed, and, after being one of the last five people sitting by the pool, I eventually said good night and went up to bed myself.  I did get to see a bunch of people the next morning, as we were waiting for our rides to our sites.  I’m lucky in the fact that I’ve got about six other people who are stationed within an hour or so of me, so we had all went in together to hire a big coaster (one of the larger mini-buses) that could carry us and all of our stuff.  So, when that finally arrived, there were a bunch of people who I didn’t yet have to say goodbye to.  It was still tough saying bye to the others, though.  But, it’s going to be okay, because we will all see each other again soon enough.  There are plans in the works for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, etc., and, in January, we have our three-month In-Service Training, when we’ll all definitely be together again.

Luganda Language Group at Swearing-In with our two wonderful teachers, Herbert and Ven

After leaving the hotel, we made pretty good time getting to my site (I was the first stop), and I had about a half an hour before a Skype meeting with Peruth and Marc, the director of Positive Planet, who lives in New York.  So, let’s just say I had tons of time to settle in…or, I plopped all of my bags down in the middle of my main room, found the computer, sat down, turned it on, skimmed through the meeting agenda, and started talking to Marc and Peruth.  On Saturday, I had yet another Skype meeting, this time with Marc and Max, my other counterpart.  Needless to say, we’re kind of jumping headfirst into this.  Basically, we talked about where things were currently, and how I should sit down with both Max and Peruth over the next week and come up with a work plan for the next few months.  Okay, it doesn’t sound like we talked about that much when I write it like that, but there was actually a bunch of important stuff.  In the free time between meetings, I tried to unpack and organize as much as possible, pick up food in town so that I wouldn’t starve, and buy a few more things that I needed in my house, like small buckets for food and a mattress for the bed.  Oh, and the water tap in my compound wasn’t working, and I needed some more water for washing dishes and things like that, so I decided to take a big 20 liter jerry can outside and find a well or something.  I ran into a guy and asked him where I could find some water, and he agreed to show me, and carry my jerry can there and back, all for the equivalent of like 35 cents.  Anyway, we descended this long set of steps (the elevation change had to be at least a couple hundred feet) and came to some pretty disgusting-looking pools of water at the bottom.  Some kids were filling their containers up there, but the guy I was withed went past these and stopped at another pool, with much clearer water.  At some point in the near future, I need to figure out where that water’s coming from (natural spring, runoff, etc.), but anyway, after this very helpful man had filled my container, he said, “Not for drinking.”  Yeah, no kidding.  That decision had been made long ago in my head.  Luckily, I had enough water left over from the trip to hold me for a few days as I figure out a treatment scheme for drinking water.

On Sunday, I spent the morning doing some work, writing up a summary of the meeting between me, Max, and Marc, and coming up with a list of the “next steps” for the coming weeks.  Then, in the afternoon, I headed to Masaka (a big town about 30 kilometers north of Kalisizo), where five of the new volunteers in the area were meeting one of the volunteer’s American supervisors for lunch.  We went to her house, where we had some really good burgers and brownies (hard life, right?).  She and her partner had been living in Uganda for several years, and they had started a business focused on making and distributing “Afri-pads,” which are washable and reusable feminine hygiene products.  They had seen a need when they discovered the large number of girls who were frequently missing school because they didn’t have something affordable, and this product is something that can meet that need.  They’re really great people, and it was really nice spending the afternoon with them.  By the way, they also have a very nice house, and a wonderful view.  If I haven’t said it yet, this area is really beautiful, and their house is up on top of a hill, with a great view of a valley and more hills beyond.

So, now, my first “work week” starts tomorrow morning (even though I’ve spent the weekend doing some work already), and I’m definitely excited to really get going.  I think I’m working with good people, and there are several friends who are relatively close by.  Yeah, I feel pretty fortunate at this point, considering everything.  What’s coming next?  I’m not sure, at this point.  But the real “Peace Corps experience” starts now…