Ayaa & Okeny

Fall is our most favorite time of year so we hope you all are enjoying it for us! Don’t be jealous of us missing winter, we will at the same time probably be waking up sweating. Hoping we survive the northern Uganda dry season. We have a fan that works so I think we will!  Guarantee we will come back cold intolerant. I would pay a lot of shillings for a caramel apple right now! They eat pumpkin here and we would have carved one but we don’t want people to think we are witches! And that my friends…would probably happen.

So we were officially volunteers as of October 14^th! We had our swearing in ceremony at the deputy ambassador’s house, which was by the way amazing. We were all definitely excited to move on but sad to leave each other! Here are some pictures from our final days as trainees and from the ceremony:

Our last walk to training!

 

Enjoying our last night in a hotel

Before the swearing in ceremony

Becoming official volunteers!

My Acholi language trainer Moses. Apwoyo matek! (Thank you very much!)

Our counterparts in our organization, Mercy Corps

The whole group!

 We have Acholi names! The Acholi people have a very interesting way of naming their children. All of their names have meaning for what describes them or what is going around them at the time the child is born. To get our Acholi names we had to give a brief summary about ourselves and our lives. They found it fitting to call me Ayaa, meaning a woman among men, because I am the only girl with two brothers. Patrick is Okeny (pronounced Oken), meaning a man among women, because of course that he is the only boy with two sisters. 

So it’s a very weird feeling to go back to the basics like how do I get water? How do I not get giardia from the water I just got? How do I cook food here? Where can I buy ANY food? How will I make something edible out of what you just sold me? What do I do with my trash?  There is a very small market in our town but luckily in Kitgum an hour away, there is a small grocery store and a large market where women sell okra, roma tomatoes, eggplant, bitter oranges, dodo (a leafy green that tastes like eating grass), potatoes (which they call Irish), tiny green peppers, onions, rice, beans, peas, sesame, peanuts, and my personal favorite: SILVER FISH.  Silver fish are tiny fish that have been dried in the sun and are eaten like popcorn…and are absolutely disgusting.  They smell exactly what you think a fish dried in the sun would smell like and the market is filled with them.  We will be finding our protein elsewhere.  Our town actually has tons of pigs running around so we were wondering when and where their little lives came to an end. Then…one day we heard squealing. Mmmmm. We bought the pork, roasted it and it…was…delicious:

Mmmmmm

          I think that surprisingly will be the only meat we will eat in our town. Aubrey and I both are essentially vegetarians by default…except when there is pork…and when we are in Kampala. There are butchers everywhere but sanitation is not their top priority, nor is cutting meat properly.  They kill cows when they are really old and sick, so you can imagine how delicious they are.  Also, they just hack at the meat hanging on a meat hook in order to cut you pieces, thus you end up with massive chunks of bone and fat.  We have resorted to eating lots of beans and peanuts. Apparently edible rat season is coming up so everyone is getting pumped. In the south they eat grasshoppers and termites, which we still have yet to eat but I’m sure we will by the end of two years. In the North they eat what they call edible rats, or Anyire. I don’t know if rat is the right term. I think rodent is more accurate. I have seen a picture of these suckers and they are HUGE. When dry season rolls around and the tall grass clears, the hunting begins. All of the people we work with are looking forward to watching us try it. We look forward to posting pictures of one of us getting sick over the occasion. I will bet 10,000 shillings it’s me, Aubrey. Can’t wait. By the way that’s about $5.

Fruits are unfortunately seasonal…Uganda isn’t into that whole “the world is flat” globalization kick.  Pineapple/avocado season is over. There are still bananas but you can only eat so many bananas before you never visit the latrine. Sounds like a good thing but its definitely not. Mango season is early next year, which we have mixed feelings about. We looove mangoes but we hear that you eat them until you literally can’t bring yourself to eat anymore…and we don’t want to ruin our love for mangoes. Also, mango season coincides with diarrhea season.  I think there is some correlation between rotting mangoes falling on the ground and sickness.  Just a theory.  Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised with the market…but we have Mefloquine dreams (our malaria meds give us wild, vivid dreams) about Whole Foods.

I keep losing weight (Patrick).  Nearly 20 lbs now.  It didn’t help that I had 2 bouts with giardia just during training. We have to treat all of our water by boiling it or running it through a porcelain filter and putting bleach in it.  Somehow I manage to always get bad water and Aubrey doesn’t.  I am doing better though. Peace Corps has an excellent medical staff that takes great care of us…and I have Aubrey who is a wonderful nurse when I am actually sick.  She was never very sympathetic for me on Saturdays and/or Sundays in the states for some reason (too many visits to the black sparrow?) but now she is taking care of me.

Now that we have finally figured out the basics we are settling in our house. We are slowly making it our own. We found paint and we have painted our three rooms that favorite Woodson beige/brown color.  We figured that it might remind us of home a bit.  We also have a carpenter making us a coffee table and a kitchen counter.  We are going to post some before and after pictures for our house once we are done which hopefully will be soon. The adventures to the pit latrine are interesting.  The latrine is surrounded by brightly colored lizards that might as well be small dinosaurs. Aubrey is convinced one of the small dinosaurs tried to attack her. Apparently it jumped on her head as she walked in. She came out yelling, “Is there a lizard on me?!?! IS THERE A LIZARD ON ME?!?!” Its not the best latrine in Uganda that’s for sure but its definitely not the worst. Lets just say we are not taking my time to read the newspaper in the latrine for the next two years. You will 100% for sure find the worst latrines in Uganda/possibly East Africa/maybe even the world near the taxi park in Kampala. I wouldn’t wish the taxi park upon my worst enemy let alone the latrines in the taxi park.  As a friend told us the other day, “you know its bad when you walk into the latrine and your eyes start burning.” Anyway…as far as bucket bathing….not as bad as we thought it would be. Its hot here therefore we do not want to bath in hot water. Easy fix to that problem.  And it gets you pretty clean. I, Aubrey, was however a little disappointed to find that I was sharing our outdoor concrete slab we like to call a bathing area with a family of cochroaches the other day. I thought we had a mutual understanding to stay away from each other but I guess not. These guys are big too. Like 3-4 inches big…and they fly. At least they don’t bite I guess. I really wish there was something we could do to get rid of them but I think we are just going to have to tolerate each other for the next 2 years.

So for cooking, all of the volunteers bought gas stoves which are realllllly nice to have…the alternative is a “sigiri” which is a clay pot filled with charcoal. We had to wait for our stove to come the first week because our organization forgot to send our belongings from the capital city to our town so we cooked on charcoal for the first week.  Not fun. Its doable and im sure we could do it for two years if we had to but one week was definitely enough for me.  We put in our time cooking on charcoal:

Our first meal at site: mac n cheese cooked over charcoal...what else would it be?

Not going to lie, don’t know what I’d do without Patrick here. We are pretty limited with our food choices but he makes some good food. Then again, im sure my standards have changed within the past 3 months. Anyways our town is great. The people here are amazing. Some speak English but most speak only Acholi so unlike a lot of our other PC friends, we actually have to learn our language. We apparently are picking it up pretty quick though. When they see us they expect us to say “hello” or “how are you” but when we speak to them in their language their eyes just light up. Its pretty funny. Wapwonyo leb Acholi manok.  (We speak a little Acholi). They try to tell you that you are fluent which leads us to believe they have a hearing problem.

            Mom and Dad you will think this one is funny. I, Aubrey, was out in the field today with my counterpart who is absolutely hilarious and very inquisitive. He was talking about women getting married in their culture and turned to me and said, “What do men offer in America?” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “What do they do to marry women? What did Patrick pay for your dowry?” I then went on to tell him that that doesn’t happen but he was not having it. He said he is determined that he is going to make Patrick send cows back to America for my dowry to make our marriage official. He said, “You are a well educated woman! You are worth many cows! Patrick needs to send some back to your family!” Don’t be surprised if there is something on your doorstep. At least don’t be surprised if Patrick brings at least something back with him in two years…seriously this man will not let it go! We then brainstormed for about 15 minutes about how to get chickens on the plane to take home. He also turned to me during the same car ride and said, “You and Patrick need to have 6 kids! 3 boys and 3 girls!” I literally lost it for about 20 minutes and then told him that if I told Patrick that he would have a heart attack.

Anyway, Uganda has vastly different landscapes and gorgeous scenery that is very different from the typical image of the African Savannah; However, basically our back yard looks like its straight out of the Lion King, except for the whole cartoon thing. I think we saw Pride Rock the other day. “Everything the light touches is our kingdom, Mufasa.”  I say that a lot to Aubrey.  Hasn’t gotten old yet.  So we are quite the spectacle in our town. Especially when we decide to go running. Some kids stopped us the other day and said, “What are you running from?”  The children also love to see who can get the closest to us without getting scared and running away.  It is pretty entertaining. We are definitely still in the awkward stages of people literally gawking at us as we walk by though.  We have also made several children cry because they are not used to seeing white people haha. Its nice though because where we were for training the kids were NUTS. We are “Mzungus” there, and we are “Munus” up North, which means white people and they would run up to you, scream, and go crazy. It was cute at first but after awhile walking down the street was exhausting. Fortunately, the town we are in is a great opportunity for us to not only work with the Mercy Corps program but to do many other things as well. There is a primary and vocational school here that we would love to get involved with.  There is also a health center here too that Doctors Without Borders works at, which will be great for Aubrey.

In our ample amount of free time we have both been reading a lot.  I just finished my 18^th book since I have been here.  The titles have ranged from “Guns, germs, and steel” to “If I did it” by O.J. Simpson.  Go ahead and never read that book.  What a piece of terrible writing.  I read it…on a Friday night. In one sitting.  We are definitely glad we brought lots of games and a hard drive for movies and TV shows. The battleship score is Aubrey: 1 Patrick: 0. We have a tally on our wall and will keep you updated on the score over the next two years.

Our new address is...

Aubrey and Patrick Woodson

Mercy Corps Kitgum

P.O. Box 32021

Clock Tower, Kampala

Uganda

This address is the best way to get stuff safely to us in one piece. Tape it up very well! It will go to the capital city then from there it will come directly to us. We are so thankful to have family and friends thinking about us and wanting to send us things! We will be ecstatic to get it! It will be really nice to have something little to remind us of home when we need it. Many people have been asking for ideas of what to send us. Our self control with candy is slim to none and we can’t get fruit here most months of the year unless we go to town to get bananas so any healthy snack is good! Some candy is definitely ok though! Patrick really likes Mounds and Reeses. My favorites are Reisens, Turtles, Reeses, and Peanut M&Ms but please don’t send many Reeses because we would both eat them all in one sitting without thinking twice. Not even joking. It wouldn’t be a pretty site. We leave for the field right when the car gets here so we often have to run out the door without breakfast/lunch which can take awhile to cook so its nice to have something to grab on the way out. So can pretty much get the basics here but here is a list of things that would make us very happy:

Granola bars!!!!! (Luna, Cliff, Kashi, etc.)

Any sort of breakfast bar

A data CD with new music/new movies (We watch A LOT of movies!)

Pictures 

Seasonings

Parmesan cheese

Trail Mix

Nuts (other than peanuts, there are a lot here)

Oatmeal

Brownie mix…. Mmmm

Anything from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods

Tuna or Chicken packets

“Pasta/Rice Sides”

Magazines (Patrick likes the Economist/Newsweek, I like the opposite of course)

Starbucks Via

Anything that even remotely tastes/smells like Chik-fil-a

If you feel so inclined to send us Mac n Cheese, kindly remove the macaroni and just send the cheese packet…please and thank you!

Anything you think will make our house homier

Any fun games for 2 or more people (we already have cards, battleship, chess, and scrabble slam)

…and a note from you tell us how much you love and miss us!

We also love emails! Please email us:

Aubrey: aubs872706@yahoo.com

Patrick: patrick.woodson@gmail.com

2 Aubreys in our town? I think so...

We have been at our site for one week! We had swearing in last Thursday then we left with our supervisors on Friday. We have loved our homestay but we were most definitely ready to be kicked out of the nest. We are excited to be cooking for ourselves for sure. I have many more pictures from training to post on here so here we go.

Mud Stove Building:
One Saturday we went to a PCV’s site to learn how to build mud stoves. Who knew! Apparently these things last for like 5 years and it has been a huge success at a lot of sites. All you need is termite mud (which is unfortunately always easy to find), about 100 bricks (which a lot of people make here), some parts of a banana tree, time to let it dry, and wood to burn to make the fire and you can have a fully functional mud stove. Here is what the process looks like:

stomping on the anthill mud!

Technical Immersion:
Week 8, I spent the week in Bushenyi which is in southwest Uganda. My friend Holly who lives in California was comparing southwest Uganda to Napa Valley and Hawaii. It is gorgeous. Just huge rolling hills of nothing but green. So there were 6 of us that went to Bushenyi to learn about how Village Health Teams (VHTs) work in the district and how they prevent malaria. It was nice to finally get out and do something that we know we will be doing once at site.

meeting with the Village Health Teams

One of the sites we visited was in Queen Elizabeth National Park where they have safaris. We saw this walking across the road:

It's an elephant!!!

And we also saw these hanging out on the side of the road:

  

And we also had time to hang out on the equator:

The tech immersion crew

Patrick’s Technical Immersion was in Karumba, which is in western Uganda. Karumba is located in the Rwenzori mountains. The village is located in a valley surrounded by terraced mountains filled with coffee trees. It took forever to get there. After 8 hours in a coach bus we were dropped in a small town called Kasesse, where we promptly argued with a taxi driver for an hour in the rain. In rural Uganda taxis will only go places if they are completely filled, which is fine and actually an environmentally friendly approach; however, a taxi being filled in Uganda=20 people stuffed into a Toyota Corrola. It isn’t pleasant…and definitely smells. So we eventually convinced the driver that 10 was plenty and we left. I sat on a seat belt in between the driver and my friend Russ. The stick shift was awfully close to areas it shouldn’t be. BUT…we made it there eventually! I miss my Honda and smooth roads lined with Wendy’s drive thrus. Chicken nuggets without bones in them AND you don’t have to kill yourself…mmmmm. BUT I DIGRESS…There are over 3,000 families in the area who all have 1-2 acres. They grow coffee as their cash crop and cassava and beans for sustenance. All the farmers in the area were part of a coffee co-op that is doing amazing things. The co-op does farm extension work to help improve growing techniques. They also work on social behavior to help decrease domestic abuse and alcoholism (both serious issues in Uganda). The coffee in this area was recently cupped (fancy coffee snobbery term meaning “rated”) in the high 80’s out of 100. That means it is damn good coffee that you are likely buying from different high-end coffee companies in America. Coffee is grown and sold as green beans in whole-sale markets and then shipped to the buyer, which generally roasts and packages on premise in whatever country it will be sold in. We got to drink lots of coffee at the co-op, which was delicious. Considering I had Giardia (Patrick) during tech immersion, I drank a lot of coffee and no food. I was wired…and pooping a lot. ☺ Needless to say, the Rwenzori mountains are gorgeous and the co-op was an amazing example of successful development and how it can improve the lives of small farmers and their families. 

Pizza Re-creation:
We tried to recreate the pizza that we made during our language group cooking day for our homestay family. There is hope knowing that the ingredients for pizza exist in Uganda even though cheese is hard to find and you don’t need an oven. Come to find out Ugandans definitely don’t like cheese as much as we do. Can you believe that?! I guess if you are not used to eating it I understand. I think we definitely enjoyed the pizza more than they did. Either way it was pretty delicious. Here is the end result:

Mmmmmm

Also, you can definitely make cookies here too. You better believe I will make some (or try) and post some pictures. Our site it going very well! We are getting settled in, venturing out to meet people in our community, and learning more Acholi everyday. Everyone is extremely friendly so we are looking forward to working with them. It’s a town of probably 500-600 people. They loooove when we try to speak the language. We sound pretty funny. We moved in to just three bare rooms so we are getting some paint and furniture made to make it feel more like home. Pictures from our site will be uploaded in about a week hopefully. Our internet at site it like 1990’s dial up. We go to Kitgum town to stock up on food, hang out with friends, and use that good “high speed” internet on the weekends so there will be another post next week! See you then!

 

This one's for you grandma! Now, they love playing Uno!

One more funny story: There is definitely a one week old baby girl in our town named Aubrey! Our security guard on our compound just had a baby girl and the mother liked my name! Haaaaha! There is two Aubrey's here and that never happens!!! Woohoo!

Good Morning South Sudan

Yes…we can see South Sudan from our new house but more on that later. A lot of things have happened since our last post. I also apologize because I haven’t been taking very many pictures, especially of our site because I had to wait for my smaller camera to be shipped but I have it now so there will be lots of more pictures to come!

We have been living with our homestay families while going to training Monday-Saturday which is definitely easier said than done. So…mid training just when we needed a break Peace Corps was nice enough to take us to a “zoo”.  

Pleasantly surprised to see this sign

The animals have plenty of room to roam in their confined areas…but they don’t cage the monkeys (the monkeys aren’t part of the zoo, they are freeloaders that show up and pillage on the unsuspecting mzungus).  We were harassed by monkeys the whole time.  Those little guys are vicious…and yes they are cute at first but don’t fall for their adorable act because they will steal your popcorn and eat your soul before you even blink.  Vicious monkeys.

Also…spiders that were not actually part of the zoo:

YUCK!

I don't know if you can see but all of the black dots are those huge spiders!

And an adorable otter:

And his adorable otter friend:

And we got to see a bunch on chimpanzee’s fight.  One chimpanzee took another by the leg and threw it into a pond. It was epic. They are really mean to each other but they are confined to their area by a mote.  They are hairy and loud and remind me of Snookie.  But better than reality TV. 

It was almost like watching Jersey Shore...but way better.

One Saturday we had a cooking day where each language group got together at one of the homestay house and cooked lunch. Patrick’s language group decided to make chicken fajitas. Where do you get the chicken you say? You buy it at the market and kill it yourself. Yuck. Luckily I wasn’t there to see this. After cutting the throat, de-feathering it, chopping it, gutting it, boiling it, then cooking it…you get edible chicken. I have a funny feeling we are not going to be eating meat for the next two years. Our group decided to make pizza (meatless). Definitely not the easiest thing to make without an oven though! We got cheese from Kampala (the capital city) and made the dough and sauce from scratch. Then the real trick was to cook it. We put sand in the bottom of a large pot, heat it up and put the pizza in the bottom of another pot on top of the sand. This cooked similar to an oven and it was oh SO good.  I am very surprised we got it right on the first time. Here is how it turned out:

Mmmmmmmmmmm

The day before leaving for our language immersion and future site visit in week 5/10 of training, we had site announcements where every volunteer finally found out what organization they would be working for and what district they would live in. We knew we would be in the “Acholi” speaking northern region but we weren’t sure what district. Uganda is a country split into districts kind of like how the US is split into states. We also did not know how far from civilization we would be until we started driving to our site…more on that later as well. We will both working with Mercy Corps (google it) and will be living at the field office. They have agriculture, health, and water sanitation sectors in Uganda. Mercy Corps is actually based out of Portland, Oregon and they do work all over the world. We got really lucky with our organization because they do exactly what we wanted to be doing in Peace Corps and are very well established. I could go on for days about the health topics that Mercy Corps covers but basically I will be traveling daily to different villages to teach/assess/refer issues having to deal with malnutrition. I will also be helping to train village health teams that travel around each village to assess and refer people to get further care on a variety of health issues like malaria/HIV/nutrition/etc. Mercy Corps also has what they call mother care groups where they teach pregnant mothers about nutrition while they are pregnant and also until the baby is around 5 years old. I will most likely be doing a lot of teaching of teachers also know by the fun term of “capacity building”. It’s a development catch-all phrase that basically means we will help you to help yourself to help others. You can give a give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him how to fish and he eats for a lifetime kind of thing. Peace Corps wants us to leave behind something sustainable since we are only here for 2 years. Patrick will be working with women’s farmer groups.  Women tend to do the majority of hard labor in Uganda so he will be working with several co-ops of women farmers to help them improve their techniques.  A big emphasis will be put on post-harvest handling and better farm to market techniques.  During our site visit we went to two of the woman gardening groups and we never walked away empty handed. It was hilarious because we were at each site for maybe 10 minutes and the farmers just loaded us up with food. We ended up with 1 massive carrot and 3 huge 10 pound cabbages bigger than my head. It is disrespectful to refuse a gift, so we got lots of cabbage. Anyways, He will also be working with water sanitation projects and stove/oven building that minimizes excess use of firewood and charcoal.  Deforestation is a huge issue here.  That among many other projects will be our next two years in a nutshell.

So, then we were off to language immersion to practice our language skills or lack there of on native speakers. We are going to be speaking Acholi most of the time at our site (or trying to) which is an interesting language. Patrick claims that it sounds like a mix between Vietnamese and Arabic? I don’t know but I can tell you that it is not a “romantics” language by any means. Our first 2 days of language immersion were spent in Gulu aka NGO city. Two words: cheeseburgers and pizza. There are enough white people that live in Gulu to put a pizza/cheeseburger place in business. Jackpot! Only problem is that we don’t live there. Our future home is in a small village an hour from Kitgum town which is in Kitgum district in the northeastern part of Uganda bordering the brand new South Sudan. Kitgum town is a 3 hour MISERABLE bus ride from Gulu. Good thing Patrick and I are two of the most motion sick people I’ve known. I had to ask this poor old woman if I could switch her seats so I could puke out the window. FAIL. This was after the kid next to me sitting on the bus floor puked everywhere. Luckily being by a window prevented me from actually getting sick. African public transport = fail of epic proportions/terrifying. We definitely took for granted those good ole American roads even with the occasional pothole.  Moral of the story is that we have to go through hell and back just to get a cheeseburger…send Dramamine if you love us so we can have American food every once in awhile. On a happy note, there is “cheese” in Kitgum. On a sad note, there is nothing in our town (except spaghetti noodles). Our town probably has about 400 people in it. All of whom I’m sure we will know very well by the end of 2 years. But really…there are probably more goats than people. We are also the first white people to actually live there. Our counterparts from our organization found it hysterical that we were “breaking a record”.  They said that they will probably name a road after us, or should I say “the” road. We were walking in our town past this large group of people and we were talking to one of the councilmen and he decided to introduce us and proceded to tell the large crowd of like 100 people that we will be living here for the next two years and we need food so that they should bring us chickens. This was all in Acholi so we just smiled and nodded.  Woops. We will see what happens. On an awesome note, we live about an hour away from the best game park in Uganda. They have elephants, lions, cheetahs, antelope, zebras, rhinos, and maybe giraffes. Don’t worry mom…no hippos. On a crappy note: we are not allowed to go due to Peace Corps policy (for good reason)L. Lame! Maybe a friendly elephant will wander its way into our backyard. Found my new ride into Gulu! The drive to our site is absolutely gorgeous. Most of Uganda is rolling green hills. Towards the south it is very green and mountainous. Up north it’s flat and dry, more like the stereotypical African savannah…but a bit more greenery. We are far enough North that there start to be huge mountains in the distance. And yes, one of those mountains seen from our site is actually in South Sudan. On the drive to our site there are also tons of sunflower fields (used for their oil). Its amazing. But… It. Is. Hot. The one night we stayed there it was 90 at midnight. Yikes but we hear you get used to it.  We live at the Mercy Corps field site in a compound with the workers while they are there for the week. We have 3 small rooms to ourselves with no running water, a pit latrine, and SOLAR ELECTRICITY! SCORE! And by that we mean we can run a fan, have lights, and charge a computer! WOOHOO!!! We will probably not have internet very often though because our village is small enough that the internet company’s tower shuts off half the time. We do have some other volunteer friends staying in Kitgum town and we can go to their houses sometimes on the weekends to use their internet (and toilet J).

Peace Corps has officially been around for 50 years. No better excuse to have a party! The US embassy made the mistake of inviting over 150 starving Peace Corps volunteers and trainees to the 50^th anniversary party. Not all went but since we are all in training, all 46 of us went. This was about week 7 and by this time we were all really needing some good free American food/drinks. They had hors d’ouvres that they were trying to pass around but once we saw them we swarmed the servers without even thinking twice. They started getting tricky and walking around our crowd but we were definitely all about ready to just tackle the servers and steal trays at a time. I’m pretty sure the Embassy workers will think twice before they decide to invite 150 starving Peace Corps Volunteers to any event now J. In Uganglish (Ugandan English): “Soddy…” aka Sorry.

As of now we have one more week of homestay! We leave homestay, swear in at the Embassy, then stay in a hotel for a couple of days before we are all off to our sites! In the meantime we are studying for our language! Another blog about training will be up soon now that we have internet again. We will let you know how our language test goes…wish we actually knew Acholi! Wish us luck! 

Our homestay brothers and sisters

Hanging out with Joy

    

PS… I buzzed Patrick’s hair today! Muahaha

Uganda be in Africa...

Uganda be in Africa if you wake up to birds that sound like pterodactyls every morning.  Seriously…prehistoric storks wake us up every morning.  They are louder than the roosters.  They are terrifying, but pretty awesome. 

We finally moved from Banana village and are now in a suburb of Kampala staying with a family.  We currently are living in a small village with a family of seven.  Ruth 12, Joel 10, Grace 6, Jessie 4, Joy 3 months.  That is a small family in Uganda.  They love to have lots of children here.  Large families are considered wealthy.  Culture.  It’s wild.

Jesse

The family is great.  Good thing Aubdawg is great with kids…I apparently need some work.  I did let them beat me in soccer yesterday, twice.  Now anytime I walk in the room I get taunted for losing in soccer.  Don’t worry; I’ll bend it like Beckham next time.  The 3 month old has got nothing on my skills.  Also, they have a big avocado tree in their yard.  Their Avocados are massive compared to the ones you get at the grocery in the US.  Take that. 

Football under the avocado tree

After beating me in Football

We are training 6 days a week from 8-5 but we have an hour-long walk every morning and evening.  Occasionally we ride PC bikes.  We are the only people out of 46 that ride bikes to training.  There are serious dirt roads that people are scared of.  It’s a good work out.  We are in the raining season, which results in potholes and ditches that are massive. 

It is going well, but we definitely are ready to get out into Ugandan society and do what we came for.  Aubrey is training in public/community health, which has a focus on HIV/AIDS education.  I am training in economic development, which can range from ecotourism to agriculture.  The climate and soil are perfect for grapes to grow…Maybe I’ll start a vineyard?  Economic development viticulture style!

The weather has been amazing.  Ranging from 65-85 every day.  We are currently in the raining season, which makes it hard to successfully dry your hand washed clothes at anytime.  We definitely have some learning to do in the laundry department.   We have been laughed at by several Ugandans for our lack of laundry skills. 

The food is interesting.  They eat a lot of starch.  It is not uncommon to have 5 starches in one meal on one plate.  A 6 year old kid could eat me under the table in Posho (corn meal paste/tasteless white thing) and Mattoke (Green bananas mashed and steamed for 12 hours).  Mattoke is the national dish.  It is interesting.  It’s not bad if you smother It in G-nut sauce, which is not to be confused with G-Unit sauce, which is very different indeed.  Dairy and meat have been completely cut out of our diet…so I went down a belt size already, which is a good thing because the  PC nurse told me I needed to lose 10 lbs.  That’s right.  I was told that I should lose 10 lbs.  NO ONE ELSE WAS TOLD THIS.  I am now known as fat Pat by my fellow trainees. Also Pretty Patty, but that is a different story for another blog on another day. 

All is well in Uganda.  Send us chocolate.  And Hops.  And a wheel of cheese.

Uganda but not forgotten!

So we made it to Uganda! After a 3 hour bus trip to New York, a 7 hour flight to Brussels, and then a 10 hour flight to Entebbe, Uganda we finally made it. We watched the sun set, rise, set, and rise again through the window. We were greeted by the Country Director and Peace Corps staff at about 11:30 pm and they took us to Banana Village where we will spend the next week and a half learning about our projects, Uganda itself, and each other. It is basically a small motel like living situation with little grass-thatched huts as rooms. It is pretty nice actually. I think they are trying to ease us in very slowly. We were woken up our first morning in Uganda by tons of birds, a rooster that apparently didn’t know when to stop its wake up call, and monkeys. Monkeys in this village are EVERYWHERE…and they do nothing but cause trouble. The 2^nd day there a friend had put a banana on a ledge to eat for later and it snuck up behind her and stole it! That’s not stereotypical at all. 

Also….a random camel to confuse you about the area of Africa we are in…

We have 46 volunteers altogether. We found out that 14 of the volunteers are actually over the age of 50, which is a record number for PC Uganda.  We all get along so well it’s hard to believe that we haven’t even known each other for one week.  Since arrival we have been learning about the culture, safety and security, and basically how we will be able to meet basic needs while in homestay. We have all been learning survival Luganda which is the language spoken other than English in Kampala (the capital city) and our homestay families. And by English I mean Uganglish which might as well be a different language.

On Sunday we had a fieldtrip to Kampala to “get to know” the city and exchange money/get phones. “Get to know” more or less means become confused and overwhelmed. Kampala is famous for having the worst taxi park in the world.  In an attempt to alleviate this situation they built a brand new one.  Now they have the two worst taxi parks in the world. I have never seen anything like it.

Ok so Africans are OBSESSED with Barack Obama. While in the bank exchanging money we couldn’t help but crack up because there was a huge Barack Obama plaque with this long paragraph about how the prophecy was fulfilled. Ha! But really they are obsessed. There is a girl in my group named Michelle and she has already been bombarded with people loving her because she has the first lady’s name. Walking down the streets of Kampala was interesting. Everyone looks at you and little kids run at you, wave, and scream “Mzungu!” which means white person. They are absolutely adorable. What I did not expect to see were the kids sitting on the side of the street begging for money, sometimes looking younger than 5. Patrick and I definitely had not prepared ourselves for that. Only until did they inform us that there were actually multiple organizations/orphanages that house these kids and sometimes they can be a trap to tourists. Regardless, their situation is heartbreaking. So we spent about 2 hours weaving in and out of bus/taxi parks trying to navigate the city. I felt like I was sitting on the street directly behind an exhaust on a car for 2 hours. YUCK. Other than that, the city itself is awesome. Walking through Kampala definitely felt like we were in Africa, a whole other world. Then we went to Garden City which might as well be an American mall which was a very good change of pace. We got our phones there and then proceeded to buy our SIM cards for our phones in the median of the busy road. Random.  We were also instructed to buy a “night bucket” in Kampala. You ask what is a night bucket?  WELL, our homestay families will have a latrine (hole in the ground) outside. You can’t go outside after dark due to the guard dog being out there and the fact that they lock the place up like Fort Knox. So……… I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination. Good thing Patrick and I think it is absolutely hilarious because if we haven’t had humor in this experience so far we would be in trouble for sure.

well...here we go!

We leave for Uganda in the morning! AHHH! We are both anxious/excited/nervous. Saying goodbye to everyone was definitely harder than we expected, even thought we will be back in June for Samantha’s wedding. We are currently in Philadelphia at “staging”. Basically, they had to collect all of our paperwork, introduce us to Peace Corps, and introduce us to the 46 other volunteers we will be training with for the next 10 weeks.  Of the 46, there are 5 married couples.  Three of them are older, and then there is a younger couple as well as us.  We wake up early tomorrow and depart for NY via bus.  Then we fly to Brussels with a two hour layover, not nearly enough time for Patrick to ride a bike to every brewery like he has always wanted to.  We’ll be sure to visit again after Peace Corps.  We then fly to Rwanda for a brief stop and then on to Uganda.  A total of 22 hours of travel.  It’s hard to believe we will finally be there in two days.  We have definitely been savoring ice, flushable toilets, stable electricity, and American food for the past two weeks but we are so excited to be in a new environment.  We have been devouring cheeseburgers because we doubt we will be quite the meat eaters in Uganda. The first two weeks we will be out of contact with everyone.  So don’t expect to hear from us too soon.  Apparently, letters take three to five weeks to get to us and packages could take months.  Our address for the first 10 weeks with be:

Aubrey Woodson, PCT

P.O. Box 29348

Kampala, Uganda

We will be sure to post our next address soon after training!

Our 80 lbs

Random stuff we packed includes: good kitchen knives, camping French press (crucial), a hammock, solar power chargers, duct tape, floss for hanging pictures, 230948439 pictures of Zig, and tons of underwear because I guess it’s hard to find good ones there! In the taxi ride to the hotel I couldn’t help but laugh thinking how crazy it was that everything we wanted from home for the next two years was all in one small taxi trunk. We got 80 pounds each, which was really not too hard to abide by but we really couldn’t think of what else to bring except games and food.

When we received our invitation, we honestly had no idea where exactly Uganda was…so…. where is Uganda? Well folks…here it is:

the country's flag

It is conveniently located directly ON the equator on the eastern side of Africa. Don’t worry everyone, we get an endless amounts of bug spray and sunscreen. Language: English and Swahili! Patrick and I know one of those prettttty good.  Most of our training is for the local language. Our vague job descriptions include me (Aubrey) as a Community Health Volunteer and Patrick as an Economic Development Volunteer (with a focus in agriculture). There is a huge Malaria problem in Uganda, so I assume I will be working with that somehow. AKA we have absolutely no idea what we will be doing. We have 10 weeks of training to start out before they kick us out of the nest and we are on our own for two full years. Anyway, I can only imagine the dreadful travel/airport stories that will be in the next post. Just wish we could skip the flight and apparate to Uganda! We wont be able to call or have internet for the first 2 weeks so we will try to post again as soon as possible! Thank you to all of our family and friends who have supported us in our crazy ideas. We love you!

Our cake at our going away party

Bye Zig! Love you! Be back in 2 years!

So were joining the Peace Corps...

I, who is writing, am Aubrey. Patrick is my husband. We were married in September of 2010 and are both from the wonderful, fun, corn filled state of Indiana. Patrick loves to brew, read, and travel. I also love all of the above except brewing. I also love to paint when I have the time. We have a cat Ziggy who acts like a dog and is treated like a child. I graduated from IU School of Nursing and am now working at a hospital as an RN. Patrick is at Purdue finishing up his Masters in Ecological Science and Engineering. His undergrad is in Political Science and History at IU where we met.  We dated for 3 years...ish then decided to get married and do Peace Corps together. Sounds simple but that wild year and a half led us to this day where we find out where our next adventure will lead us. And that is Peace Corps in...UGANDA! So, Patrick and I aren't really the blogger type or the "hey here is what's going on in my life 24/7" type but here goes. We figured we could update this as often as we can for our family and friends while we are away in Uganda. Hi family and friends!!