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.