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!