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!