New Home New Oven

It’s been a long time since we updated the blog.  As they say here in Uganda, “soddy, soddy, soddy” which means sorry.  A lot has changed in our life since we last updated.  So here it goes:

I’m sitting here listening to the Nebraska football game on a Saturday night with Patrick and Russ. As you may or may not know, we moved from Namokora to Kitgum town (about 1.5 hours away). That means that now every weekend from Friday at 5 to Monday morning we have another roommate, Russ, aka…Patrick’s husband. Russ also lives in Kitgum, about a 30 minute walk away and is an Econ Development volunteer at a school for kids with disabilities. Essentially Russ and Patrick spend the weekend talking about foreign policy, drinking Ugandan beer, and listening to bluegrass music with the occasional “flat footing.”  You can imagine how exciting that is for me.  That being said…unfortunately Russ is leaving us soon.  He recently was accepted into the Foreign Service, which is impressively hard to get into.  We are hoping he gets placed in Southeast Asia so we can visit him on the way home.  I guess I will have to start participating in these bluegrass music weekends now that Russ is gone.

Our new neighbors Tony and Kim.  They love to sit and watch.

 We’ve been living here in Kitgum for about a month now. One could say we “moved up” in the world. When we lived in Namokora, we would travel to Kitgum to stock up on food.  They have a decent outdoor market that always has onions, potatoes, garlic, and tomatoes.  They also have an Indian restaurant and a few places for pork and chips (fries).  It’s nice to now have most things around if you need them…no cheese though L. AND we have a toilet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Who knew that running water could make you so happy…and make life SO much easier.  We actually have a sink in our bathroom, shower (no hot water though), and also another sink in our “kitchen” for doing the dishes.  Our new house is pretty darn charming. It’s in a compound with a couple of other families and its not pure concrete like our other house. There is actually grass when you walk outside. It’s nice. Mercy Corps moved us because it didn’t make sense for us to stay in hotels in Kitgum about 2 weekends/month for meetings and other things when they could spend less money on rent per month. We do really miss the people we met in Namokora but work/life is much easier in Kitgum town. The village was nice for a year but we are pretty excited about our new house. 

About 2 weeks in, Patrick decided that he was sick of the terrible bread here so he wanted to build an oven. So we recruited some of our friends to come and help build an oven in return for some actual, REAL bread. Look up cob ovens on Youtube. The oven is made out of termite mud, sand, bricks, rocks, clay we dug up, straw, and cow manure….yes…. manure. It works perfectly and it turned out to be only about $20 to make! Here is how it turned out:

Russ and Patrick leveling the sand on the pedestol for the oven.

Our fellow PCV Erin Morrison and I "exfoliating" our feet while mixing the cob,
which is made of clay, sand, and straw

Muddy hand print Sneak attack on Russ' short shorts.

Working with cow manure!

Patrick utilizing the "professionally" welded pizza peel!

You have to burn a fire for 2 hours in the oven to get it extremely hot.  The layers of cob insulation then hold in heat for about 8-12 hours.  It can get up to 700 degrees!  Perfect for pizza!

Rain cover still under construction

So far we have baked bread, banana bread, coffee cake, breakfast casserole, baked ziti, pizzas (when we have cheese), and cinnamon rolls. Nothing has failed us yet…fingers crossed. AND GUESS WHAT?! It wasn’t just Patrick who made all of these things! I am actually cooking J! Crazy…I know.

Anyway, since our last post I also had the amazing opportunity to take part in Peace Camp. It is a camp for youth affected by the 20 years of war in Northern Uganda. If you haven’t read it already read the poem in my previous post from one of my campers. I don’t feel comfortable telling their stories on our blog but will gladly talk about it in person when we return.  I actually learned a lot from this camp too…about the power of forgiveness, faith, and how resilient people can be. The people in this part of the country are some of the nicest, most welcoming people I have ever met and it is still hard to believe something so terrible happened here not too long ago. We just watched War Dance, a documentary on the war in Northern Uganda and this group of primary school kids who go to a dance competition. I think everyone should watch it. Patrick says it is on Netflix. It takes place not too far from us and it gives a great look into where we live (the first shot of the movie is in our original village) and what the people here have been through. They speak Acholi (the language we also speak…somewhat J) in the movie. There is also some awesome dancing in the movie, which the kids here have tried to teach me how to do here but I’m convinced our bodies are made differently. They dance “The Bwola” dance which we have actually seen in person on several occasions!

Drinking Nile beer on the Nile River.

Patrick’s turn to write:

We just had our mid service training, which means we are now in our final phase of Peace Corps.  We've been here a total of sixteen months here and eleven more to go.  Our mid service training didn't teach us much, but it did help us reflect on the past 16 months and look to the future.  It was great to see our cohort of volunteers.   We started with 46 and have now dropped to 35.  Some folks have been sent home for breaking rules (mainly riding motorcycles), the rest have either gone home for medical reasons (plenty of strange diseases here), and others have chosen to leave.  We started a betting pool on how many we will remain with at the end of service.  My birthday was at MST and Aubrey surprised me by packing all 35 people into a small hotel room fully decorated for my birthday.  It was an impressive surprise and a better present then the live chicken I received for my birthday last year.  There was plenty of Ugandan “Bond 7” whiskey, balloons, and these weird creepy masks.  I think if someone had of told me a few years ago that I would celebrate my 26^th birthday in a cramped hotel room in Uganda with a bunch of folks from all over the U.S. while drinking the worst whiskey ever…I most certainly would have been psyched!  Also, we are 8 hours ahead here so I spent the morning of my birthday watching polling results which was fun.

Creepy masks for Patrick's birthday and the world famous Bond 7.

Reflecting on the past year has been beneficial. I can tell you that we have accomplished some important things that are hard to convey without experiencing them yourself.  It is hard to talk of tangible outcomes, which has been a struggle for me.  I like having projects that have an end goal that is visible.  Development doesn't always work like that, yet most organizations attempt to work that way.  They focus on how many dollars are spent, how many training's are giving, how many water wells are put in place.  These are realistic quantifiable inputs, but they don’t properly measure outcomes.  In all honesty, this is a drastic improvement from the hand out development mentality that existed for such a long time.    Our organization has done a good job of changing the culture of typical development work, which has been a beneficial experience for us to be a part of.  But I am tired of talking about the short-comings of development work.  I have come to realize that international development is not the field for me.  I think that in itself is a valuable outcome of Peace Corps.  I have come to accept that learning what I don’t want to do with my life is just as valuable as learning what I want to do.  This is in no way a negative assessment of development as a whole; it is just where my head is at right now.

On to the future of our Peace Corps experience!  In the last 11 months we have here we fully intend to enjoy ourselves and worry less about outcomes of projects that are out of our reach.  We certainly intend to continue to work hard (we do have some great projects going on), but we will get less bogged down in the politics of development work.  We have made some amazing Peace Corps friends that will most certainly last us a lifetime.  We intend to enjoy our time with them in this beautiful country and focus less on the things we miss and more on the opportunities in front of us.  There are aspects of Peace Corps life that we will not experience anywhere else.  Sure the transport and food can be terrible, but we get to raft down the Nile River anytime we want (considered the best rafting in the world).  We get to fly to Zanzibar for Christmas with friends.  We go on safaris in our backyard.  Things could be worse.  So although we have had ups and downs, and miss family, friends, and America in general…we are trying our best in the last year to cherish the fun we can have here.  We can’t wait for people to visit! 

Mid-service reunion with PCV's

Before our mid service training, we went rafting on the Nile. The next blog post (which I promise will be soon) will include lots of pictures from this amazing near death experience J. 

aubrey and patrick

New address

I know...its been awhile. Sorry to make a lame, not exciting post about our new address. I promise there will be a long overdue blog post soon. We were having issues with receiving packages at the Kampala address so this one will be much easier to get to and we will get things faster:

Aubrey and Patrick Woodson

P.O. Box 326

Kitgum, Uganda

Thank you to all of the AMAZING people that have sent us things (packages, cards, letters, etc)!!!!

Peace

We have been fortunate to grow up in an environment where people can argue about politics, the validity of eating at Chik-fil-A, Kony 2012…etc. None of them matter without peace. I know my campers learned a lot this week at Peace Camp but I also learned a lot from them about the power of forgiveness. It was truly inspirational to see the resilience of the youth, who have been through so much, and their willingness to learn about living in peace with themselves and with one another. I will post more later on my experience at camp but for now here is an amazing poem from one of my campers at Peace Camp 2012:

Peace Peace Peace

Who are you?

Where do you stay?

Where were you born?

Who has ever seen you?

Some people say that

you are love and joy.

Others say that you are happiness.

Others describe you as unity and respect.

To those who have read extensively

and widely, they think of you as a situation

or a period of time where there is

no war in a country. Yet others think of you

as a state of living in friendship with somebody.

How special are you?

You are too unique.

You are needed in our world now.

People are suffering and crying because you are not there.

Armies are fighting because you are not there.

Police are deployed where you are absent.

In the Greater North, many people were killed,

burnt, hammered and hung because you were absent.

Our children of this generation don’t know you.

Many people have lost their lives in the process of searching for you.

Many are still in the bush looking for you.

Many weapons were made to bring you back.

Married men and women have separated because you are nowhere to be seen.

Nobody can be comfortable without you.

It seems love is your father.

Happiness is your mother.

Joy, unity, and respect are you relatives.

Confusion and fighting are your greatest enemies.

Killing can chase you out of a country.

We cry, pray, and request

you humbly to stay in the

Greater North of our country

forever and ever.

-Omodo Boniface 

Back to living the Ugandan dream!

Oh America…It was fun.  And we miss you.  But now we are back in Uganda after a month long trip back home to the wonderful States.  We got to see many friends and spend plenty of time with family.  We celebrated my sister Samantha’s wedding in Chicago, which was a great time.  The Woodson’s always know how to throw a big party.  Samantha did a phenomenal job of making us feel at home…she had the wedding at the zoo.  Both Aubrey and I gorged ourselves on the wonderful food and enjoyed plentiful amounts of cold drinks with real ice cubes in them.  We got to see both the Wynne family and the Woodson’s, including my grandma, who just turned 80!  It was a great time! 

We enjoyed time in Indianapolis with Aubrey’s family and ate plenty of Aubrey’s mothers lasagna…I gained 15 lbs.  Seriously, I weighed myself when we landed and the day we left.  A full 15 lbs…It was all worth it.  I also got to work on my hop farm with Aubrey’s dad that will be fully in bloom by the time we return.  We also were fortunate to have a wonderful lunch in Avon with Aubrey’s grandma…a cook rivaled by no one! I also got to drink several of my high gravity homebrew beers that I had been aging in my parents basement (A huge contributor to the 15 lbs I gained).  I even got to drive a Uhaul across country for 13 hours (your welcome Chloe).  Good times were had and we fully miss everyone…but we are happy to be working again.  We have grown to love our friends we’ve made here, Namokora, and our work.  At times it is frustrating but it always seems to be rewarding in the end.  So…now on to all the fun we have had in the past month and a half back in Uganda!

When we arrived back in Namokora we found our garden was fully stocked with arugala and cabbage.  I was excited about the arugala...but now I am sick of it!  We need some lettuce!

I realize this photo is sideways but it took forever to upload so you are gonna have to deal with it.  We had a lovely package upon our arrival back in Uganda from my good friend Dave Vetraino.  He sent us homemade granola with a hand drawn photo referring to us as the "dream team."  Really good granola...until the ants got it.

We got back to find everything just as we had left it…except everything was flooded.  The rainy season is intense in Northern Uganda.  From late November to late March it is completely dry and the average temperature is around 90 degrees F.  The rest of the time it rains excessively.  It usually downpours for at least a few hours twice a day.  This means little work is completed during the rainy hours.  Most Ugandan’s utilize this time to nap.  Many bridges have been flooded over for brief periods of time.  Fortunately, Mercy Corps vehicles are equipped with snorkels so we are able to travel to most areas and get home fine. 

This is the first broken borehole we fixed with out handpumps.  It took several mercy corps WASH employees and my friend Jake Carpentar to get our PVC pipe 40 meters deep. 

A successful handpump installation

I have recently started a large pilot project for Mercy Corps.  With the help of a fellow PCV I have started the preliminary research on creating a manual borehole drilling business.  In a previous post I mentioned this project.  It has finally fully come to fruition and we are under way with our feasibility study.  This mainly has consisted of traveling to various extremely rural areas, finding broken down wells (there are thousands), and testing our homemade pumps on them.  Thus far, we have had great results with our technology and terrible results with Northern Ugandan weather (torrential downpours constantly). In the past month I was fortunate enough to attend a valuable training on manual borehole drilling and hand pump fabrication.  The training was hosted by World Vision, a large scale NGO that operates all over the world.  The training focused on teaching hand pump mechanics and interested entrepreneurs how to utilize these simple technologies.  My fellow PCV Jake was there.  He is an engineer currently pursuing his M.S. from USF.  I have been assisting him in his M.S. research and he has been helping out with my pilot project feasibility study.  Things are going well and the project is keeping me extremely busy, which is a nice change!  A few photos are posted below:

Aubrey and I were amazed with this local harp.  The body of it is an USAID vegetable oil jar made in INDIANA!  The kids are creative here

Aubrey has recently traveled to Gulu where she has worked as a camp counselor for Peace Camp.  This is a camp run by PCV’s that works as a leadership development and peace and reconciliation camp for former victims of the Northern War, as well as former child soldiers.  Pretty heavy stuff!  I am sure she will post about it soon with photos! 

On another note, we are moving!  Our time in Namokora has been wonderful but it is coming to an end.  We have made great friends in the village and thoroughly enjoyed the peacefulness and absolute quite of our small town.  Mercy Corps has decided to relocate us to Kitgum town so we can be closer to their main office.   This will increase our efficiency and ability to work within a greater number of areas.  We are excited about the move but it is a bit bittersweet to leave the small place we have made a home.  

Cow crossing all the time...

Local kid with a slingshot made out of condoms...Not sure what to say about this?

Our local cheerleader!  This kid followed us for two days straight sporting his nice looking cheerleader sweatshirt in 95 degree heat!

real life Frogger

Although we enjoy a lot of things here in Uganda, there are quite a few things that are not enjoyable no matter how hard we try. Here are a few examples:

·      #1 = food poisoning when all you have is a latrine. Probably the most unfun 5 experiences in my lifetime. Yes that’s Right...5. Food in Uganda hates me. What did I eat? Well, it could’ve been anything but I think I know at least 3 of them. An apple, a chapati (a tortilla like thing they sell everywhere here), and a tomato. My first case was at homestay during the first month we were even here and was by far the sickest I have ever been in my life. Not fun but I’m glad I had Patrick there to take care of me. Brave soul. I’m pretty sure there is an image of me burned in his memory that he will never forget. Bambi (Ugandans say that when they feel bad for someone…its like saying “you poor thing”).

·      Giardia. A little parasite that loves to hang out in water. This and “tropical spores” are Patrick’s sicknesses of choice. It causes stomach issues. I’ve had giardia a couple of times. It sucks. End of story. Patrick’s claim to fame is that he was the first PCV to be diagnosed with tropical spores.  He didn’t enjoy it but he eventually beat it with heavy doses of antibiotics and beer. Typical.

·      There are many things that exist only in my nightmares….and in Uganda. Fortunately, we have not had the pleasure of contracting any of these yet:

o   Mango flies- (many PCVs get them regularly) Flies that lay their eggs on your wet hanging clothes and then the worms burrow under your skin. The only way to get them out is to plug up the hole in the blister on your skin until the worm needs to come out for air and then you get it out with tweezers. Lovely.

o   Nairobi flies- Flies that if you smack them when they land on you give you a 2^nd degree burn with their acid that splatters.

o   Schistosomyasis- this is a parasite carried by snails that only hang out in water.  You basically wind up with worms in your lungs.  Awesome.  I think over 50% of PCVs that go swimming here wind up with it. Yea, not doing that, don’t worry.

o   Worms of all shapes and sizes- I guarantee we will get them at least once. Everyone deworms after a year though. At least guinea worm is eradicated here…if you don’t know what that is, look it up. If it was still here I’m positive I would not be here right now.

o   Ttese flies- Carry sleeping sickness and they bite HARD.  The ones around our house don’t carry the sickness though so no worries! They are just reallllllly annoying and mean. 

·      Anything with more than 4 legs here makes me want to go home. It’s like they are on steroids. We have flying cockroaches in our latrines and spiders that could probably take out a chicken. I would not be upset if cockroaches were extinct. I just hate how they love to ruin your day. Our bathing area is outdoors, which presents many challenges.  One day while finishing up an exceptionally cleansing bucket bath, I was struck by a cockroach running across my feet.  REALLY?! UGH.

·      One of our friends that lives near us found 2 scorpions in her house the day she moved in. FAIL. Fortunately we have not experienced any scorpions or snakes of our own.  We did just recently find a bug in our rain-water tank that was the size of a softball.  It had claws.  Some sort of water monster. We asked our coworkers if it would bite you and they said, “Oh yes! Do NOT touch it.”

·      Public transport. Guaranteed to break down or make you vomit with every ride.  Patrick and I rode in the front of the bus one day and promptly decided to never do that again. You can see the speedometer in the front…you don’t want to do that.  You also get to see all the goats, pigs, and chickens get sucked under the bus.  The road from Gulu to Kitgum is the worst. It’s of course a dirt road but its amazing because the drivers of the buses love to hug one side of the road that is basically curved like a half circle.  So, at many points in the journey, the bus is at a 45 degree angle. Good thing they are bottom heavy, I guess. Often times the bus is completely full so people stand in the isles or children sit on the floor.  You almost always have a puker and at least 5 butts in your face. Many times we’ve been in the back with vomit at our feet. Smells like roses.

·      Don’t even get me started on bridges in this country. I’ll put it this way…the bridge from Gulu to Kitgum washes away every rainy season. Recently, my friends and I needed to get into town while it was raining.  We caught a ride with an employee of the school we were working at. We get in the car and  start going down the road at about 20-30 km/hr when out of nowhere the entire left front wheel falls completely off and flies into a nearby trading center. Woops. He had just gotten the car worked on and they forgot to tighten the lug nuts. Yea, we found another ride.

·      Stuffing small cars with 13 people is not the way I like to spend my days. I had a two hour ride to Kitgum the other day with 13 people in the car, 5 chickens at my feet, and a pony sized goat screaming on the top. They also have these small vans/buses that can (if there is one person to a seat) fit 16 people but usually fits about 25, sometimes more.

·      To go along with transportation, traveling by any other means is not fun here. I feel like I’m in a real life game of Frogger everytime I cross the street in Kampala. I was always pretty decent at Frogger though. I guess those hours and hours of playing Frogger with Jessica in middle school finally paid off. Sidewalks are definitely not the safest here either. I was walking down the sidewalk once when 10 motorcycles came right for me and had to dodge them.  Also, to keep you on your toes, there are massive holes in the streets and sidewalks that are there for who knows what reason. They are definitely large enough to fall in, about 4-5 feet deep, and always filled with trash and other miscellaneous things that I don’t even want to know about. There have been some horror stories of PCVs falling into them. Yikes. Walking around Kampala during the day is scary, so good luck at night. Here they are:

·      Dry Season. Easily the most lame part of the year. Dust. To. The. Face. Buy a bus ticket and get a free spray tan. I think with the mix between the dry season and Kampala’s diesel filled air, our lungs are working overtime. The dry season is also charming because it turns our house into an oven. Our walls trap heat so it doesn’t cool down in our house until around 3 am. I read on our alarm clock/temperature gauge that one night around midnight that it was 94 degrees in our room with the fan on. The good thing about having solar lights during the dry season though it that due to the beaming sun all day, we usually have power all night…usually. Two more good things about dry season = your clothes dry in 15 minutes and its only exceptionally awful January-April.

·      Dry season also brings bush fires and bush fires bring black snow. The grasses are burned so farmers can hunt the edible rat with their bows and arrows…not even kidding. So the grass burns and floats in the air like long pieces of black snow. And if your washing your clothes you are guaranteed a few black ash spots if they are burning the bush nearby.  It’s ok though because they probably still weren’t clean anyway.

·      It is amazing the things we will now pick out of our food before we eat it. Before we came here it was typical of me to yell at Patrick for cutting the mold off the strawberries, but now I’m right there with him. Weevils, little mini caterpillar like things, usually find their way into your food somehow. Especially in beans. I’ve probably eaten hundreds of weevils by now…inevitable. Oh and ants…brush em off. We also have a mouse that likes to make his appearance every night around 8 pm when our window is open. He apparently just likes to hang out without eating our food though. We actually don’t mind our new roommate since he doesn’t really bother us. We named him Mouserson. I think we got lucky because we have heard some pretty bad stories about PCVs having tons of mice in their house.

·      Bees right at the hole of the latrine are definitely not funny. I don’t even want to think about how that could end up. I’d have a one way ticket home that’s for sure. Usually, the latrines on the way when traveling are the worst. You know it’s bad when your eyes start to burn. One of our friends in our group got locked in his homestay family’s latrine once. The kids thought it would be funny to lock him in from the outside. He then had to climb his way up and over the (spider infested) small opening between the 2 latrines to get out on the other side. Bambi.

·      Not funny = multiple people in the village telling me I will have twins one day.

I’m sure I could think of some more but I will save them for when we come back to America in TWO DAYS!!!!!!!!

To leave on a funny note: Patrick, our friend, and I are staying at the Entebbe Zoo near the airport. They have small places to stay inside that give you free access to the zoo at all hours. Needless to say, it has provided us with much entertainment. They have camels you can ride and when the camels aren’t at work they roam around the zoo causing trouble. We were walking down this small path and a HUGE camel turns the corner and starts walking towards us. We thought we could peacefully pass each other without making eye contact but we thought wrong. He went straight for us. We promptly turned and starting briskly walking the other direction. Luckily, a worker was nearby to corral the beast back in an enclosed space. Ha!

Other adventures at the zoo thus far include petting/feeding the rhinos and feeding (definitely not petting) the lions with the workers. Probably top 5 most intense things ever is standing about 10 feet from a huge male lion and hyena fighting about meat through a fence. There will most definitely be pictures soon. While taking a picture with the rhino, Patrick apparently got a bit too close and the rhino was about 3 inches away from spearing Patrick’s bum. It was the hardest I have laughed in a long, long time. Trust me, he learned his lesson.

Tomorrow, we fly to London where we have an overnight layover. Fish, chips, and good beer here we come! Then, the next day we head to Raleigh, then Indy. We are SO excited to see everyone at home! See you soon!

Our next blog will be about camp. It was AMAZING! I've never met a group of girl more determined to have a successful future. Truly Inspiring. Here is a video of the girls singing our camp song!

Oh the joys...

So I think the most important thing we brought from home is a sense of humor. Patrick and I think this country is just hilarious sometimes.  About once a day we stop and think about how living here is so random and unpredictable. I will say though that some experiences are definitely funnier than others. Here are some of the things that make us laugh:

·      We often find ourselves sitting on our compound’s ”porch” laughing from people/animal watching. Pigs might as well run this town. The pigs like to get their exercise by sprinting back and forth between huts chasing children around the village, which is always funny to see.  Also, if it sounds like a person dying outside, don’t fear, its probably just a goat…and if its really loud, its probably getting strapped to the back of a motorcycle or being slaughtered. The other day we were watching this group of 5-6 year old boys chase after this cow while all of them were yelling and smacking it with a stick. The cow was probably walking as slow as it could and was not phased in the slightest. It was pretty entertaining.

·      The kids are amazing here because they can entertain themselves with anything. A popular game here is rolling an old bicycle tire with a stick.  And by popular, I mean that every kid does it.  Also, another toy that is hot on the streets is a milk carton tied to a string.  Hours of entertainment.  I am a good source of entertainment for them also. When I stick my tongue out at them they go wild. They act like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen.

·      So I work with village health team members and one of them decided to get me a chicken, which was very nice of him. He said, ”A white chicken for a white person…its good luck”. We kept it in our compound for about a week and it would occasionally disappear then reappear in the morning. One day we walked outside and found it strutting around with a male chicken being scandalous.  There was no way we were going to chase a chicken down the street because we already seem crazy as it is and that would not help the cause.  So after its evening strolls it would walk right into the compound like nothing happened.  After a week we decided it was time for a chicken dinner and I killed it! I was a bit nervous as im sure you can imagine so our coworkers made me pray for it before I killed it. They insisted that I learn how to kill a chicken for when I go home. You know, since we have to kill so many chickens back in the states. It was quite the experience that hopefully won’t happen again. Anyway, they were so proud of me. I told my counterpart I killed a chicken and he ran up to Patrick and told him to add more cows to my dowry that he has to send back to the states since I know how to kill a chicken now.  Also that same counterpart just came back from paternity leave. I said to him ”Oh you have a daughter now? What is her name?” He said ”Well it’s kind of like Aubrey! I named her Audrey.” A couple weeks later he was talking to me and kept accidently calling me Audrey. I thought that was pretty funny. I thought the Aubrey/Audrey confusion would stop here but I guess I thought wrong.

·      Speaking of names…the names of children here are quite interesting. Here are some examples;

o   Immaculate

o   Nighty

o   Innocent

o   Obama

o   Beyonce

o   Amato Sunday (literally translating to…I drink on Sunday)

o   …and my personal favorite: Helen Kella…not even a joke

·      The t-shirts they wear here are even funnier. For some reason it’s just hilarious to see someone wear a shirt when they probably have no idea what it means or it makes absolutely no sense. Just like im sure when people wear shirts with Chinese writing its probably says something totally random.  We saw a drunk guy stumbling around our town the other day wearing an IU shirt. He must know what happens during Little 5!   These ones have been my favorite:

o   “Party till your homeless”…whhhat does that even mean?!

o   ”Put on your big girl panties and deal with it” –worn by a man

o   ”0 to bitch in 0.2 seconds” –also worn by a man

o   ”Save Indiana jobs”

o   …and others that are not appropriate to put on here :)

I guess it’s appropriate here to wear a shirt with the four-letter word beginning with f on it but its inappropriate to show your knees in a skirt. A popular shirt I have also seen in the village is mesh and see through. I might be missing something but who knows.  

·      Another thing we have to laugh about (or we would go crazy) are the meetings. Patrick was recently at a meeting where they spent 4 hours going over the minutes from the last meeting leaving 1 hour for the real meeting. Im sure you could imagine how his tolerance for anything the rest of the day was nonexistent. The meetings are also very predictable. No matter how small the meeting, it begins with a prayer and there has to be a clear agenda with someone appointed as the chairperson, spiritual leader, welfare, timekeeper, and minutes secretary. Then about an hour is spent on rules, expectations, and fears for the meeting. You know that book “If you give a mouse a cookie”? Well, if you give a Ugandan a microphone…they will talk for hours. Patrick had the pleasure of attending our organization’s Christmas party (that I conveniently was away at a training for) and he called me at 11 and said they still hadn’t eaten dinner yet because all 80 employees had to open their secret Santa gift one at a time and thank the person who gave it to them…on the microphone.

·      Each month we have a market day, also called auction day. It essentially operates like a traveling circus.  What can often be purchased at market day includes used clothes (probably ones you may have donated that weren’t bought at Goodwill) and shoes made out of tires, plastic dishes, vegetables, and homemade booze.  Whenever we walk through the market I tell Patrick just to imagine it as a farmer’s market…never really works.  After market day is a huge party. HUGE. They bring in the generator from out of town to blast music until 8 in the morning. When we wake up music is always still blaring. Also, Mercy Corps can’t plan anything for the day after market day because people are so hungover they wont show up.

·      The US military here calls Peace Corps volunteers “dirty feet”. Why? Because it’s true. I sometimes wonder if our feet will ever be clean.

·      People in the village tell us “If you stay here long enough you will have black skin like us!” I smile and tell them that I don’t think it works that way.

·      Ugandans are OBSESSED with Obama yet when we introduce our African American friend Mikael to Ugandans they say, “A black American? Are you sure?”….yup…we’re sure.

·      At first seeing children riding on the front of motorcycles was quite a shock now it is pretty hilarious watching them as they drive by. Patrick always points out kids on motorcycles because their faces are just great. They are absolutely ecstatic.

·      When I came here I hated cassava…now I have cassava cravings. I know in my heart cassava is tasteless and has a weird texture. What is happening to me?

·      We have gotten chocolate in our care packages (thank you!) and it refuses to solidify in our house during the dry season…mmmm but messy.

·      We underestimated how sad of a day it would be when we ran out of Taco Bell sauce. We were pretty distraught.

o   We also will have no shame in making some stops when we come home in May at each and every Taco Bell/Chik-fil-a and asking for sauces.

·      Several people have called Peace Corps medical with sprains and strains (fortunately not us) and they tell them to put some ice on it....excuse me?!  Ice does not exist here.

·      When we lived with a Ugandan family during training I asked the kids if I could ride my bike in pants (since skirts are mostly worn and more appropriate). Little did I know in Uganda underwear is called “pants“ and pants are called “trousers“…woops. That caused a good 30 minute laugh.

·      We recently went to a movie in Kampala, which was amazing. It was almost like an American theater. It is the only public place in this country that ive seen with air conditioning. I have no idea what happened during the first 15 minutes of the movie because I was so excited. There were probably 10 of us that went and we tried to stay until the credits were over but they kicked us out.

·      We met a lady the other day at the post office in Kampala who said she studied in Pennsylvania during college. She said the three things she misses most from America are dollar stores, Walmart, and ranch dressing…awesome.

·      Patrick’s causal conversation with the shop keeper across the street when buying a small flask-sized bottle of Waragi (Ugandan gin) for a wild Friday night in Namokora:

Shopkeeper: How many of these can you take?

Patrick: I’m not sure. I usually just take one.

Shopkeeper: Oh. I can take 6 or 7 if I start in the morning.

Patrick: Well...that’s just impressive.

Next blog post will include not so funny experiences… 

...i'll leave you with an adorable picture of baby Aubrey and Gabby. Gabby is our compound roommate. She my counterpart's daughter who lives with us in our compound and she never stops smiling!

baby Aubrey on the left and Gabby on the right

My turn to write a blog…

Time for Patrick to finally write a blog post!  Aubrey has been the main author of our previous blog entries and although I have contributed a bit…I prefer to bottle all of my cross-cultural experiences inside and suppress the insanity.  That seems healthy, right?  But seriously…here are some thoughts from the field…

Aubrey has spent almost a month straight at sight and is starting to lose it.  She has gone “native” on us.  A month in Namokora is quite an achievement.  That means a month straight of no cold drinks, no running water, and constant dust/heat.  Impressive.  Fortunately, I traveled to the capitol for a week to do some work for Mercy Corps.  The capitol is a terribly congested mess of crazy motorcycle drivers, taxis, and intense smog.  But it also has cheese and running water and hot showers and meat that hasn’t been killed with a bow and arrow in your back yard.  During her time alone at sight she has perfected the art of daydreaming.  I have perfected this on our many long bus rides.  It is amazing the amount of things one can think about on a 12-hour bus ride/sauna ride.  Did I mention it is hot?  Aubrey yelled at me yesterday because she realized everything I touch is coated in a lovely layer of sweat. 

BUT….we are both excited about a new project we have been asked to participate in.  Each year Uganda Peace Corps holds a girls and boys camp.  The girls camp is called Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) and the boys camp is called Boys of Uganda in Leadership Development (BUILD).  Due to both our backgrounds in camps for kids we were asked to help co-direct these camps. I think it would be a stretch to say that I am an expert on camp activities…but I do bring a great knowledge of water balloons/water balloon catapult techniques/various ways to invent water balloon games in which counselors get to throw them at campers.  This is a talent I have perfected over the years.  We are very excited about the camps though.  There is one held nationally each year and we are hosting our very own specific to kids from Northern Uganda.  The age range will be from 15-21.  It should be a great opportunity to teach life skills, HIV/AIDS education, agriculture techniques, income generating activities, and all that other good development stuff!  The camp will be in late April, just before we come home in May for Samantha’s wedding.  Although we are enjoying our time here and working hard, we are definitely looking forward to seeing friends and family and America in general.  I miss air conditioning.  That is one hell of a machine.  

So a bit about our wonderful village.  Namokora is around 70 km from Kidepo national park and the border of South Sudan.  It is a small trading center that is a former sight of an Internally Displaced People camp from the war.  It is not very big at all…but we have grown to call it home.  Here are some photos so you can get an idea of the area we live in:

This is a photo of one of the water catchment systems I am working on.  The ground water table is very high in this area due to the hills.  The soil is amazing in this area and the group we are working with is able to continue growing in the dry season.  

We recently had a Northern volunteer conference to discuss everyone’s projects.  We still found time to drink warm beer and play some softball with a stick. AMERICA!

 

I feel like this photo should be an advertisement for Chaco’s.  This is what we like to call the African Chaco tan/dust line. 

 

  Watch out for goats.  They pretty much rule our town.  This is the road that heads towards Karamoja region…we aren’t allowed to go there.

 This is across the street from us.  We aren’t far from a large game park.  Too bad we aren’t allowed to go that far north.

Aubrey teaching under a mango tree.  The women love her…there are babies being named Aubrey left and right.  Still working on the getting a Patrick out there…

 

This is the famous Rat “Anyire” that they burn the fields to hunt for using bows and arrows.  They are a lot like a groundhog or prairie dog.  Haven’t tried them yet.

 
 

And now for an awesome photo of some water buffalo living near us…

We really do enjoy our village and feel very fortunate to be here as well as to be working with Mercy Corps.  Ugandan’s are an extremely welcoming people and they are even more so in the North.  We have been running a lot lately for exercise and we can’t go anywhere without children running after us yelling hello and our names.  We got them all to stop calling us “Munu” which means white person.  They all know our names now and we can’t go anywhere without hearing “Ayaa and Okeny!”  We feel lucky to have such friendly people because many other PC countries have different experiences. 

Aubrey has recently undertaken a new project of helping Mercy Corps monitor and evaluate the Mother Care Groups in order to make them sustainable.  Mercy Corps has done a very effective job of helping their beneficiaries here.  The Agriculture and Health field officers are very knowledgeable and have done an impressive job so both of us are focusing less on assisting them immediately in the field and more on the sustainability of their projects.  Mercy Corps project will be ending the same time that our Peace Corps duty is up, thus we are putting a huge focus on the longevity of our mutual impact.  Northern Uganda is effectively transitioning from a state of emergency to one of sustained economic development.  We hope that there will be a point when the NGO’s no longer need to operate in our community.   So from a sustainability standpoint much of our work is helping evaluate how effective certain programs are and how they may be improved and or supplemented.  I have recently started on an irrigation project.  The vast majority of Sub-Saharan Africa still relies upon rain-fed irrigation, which has been detrimentally hindered by the changing/unpredictable climate.  This has led to traditional agriculture techniques no longer working as effectively.  I recently traveled to Kampala to talk with several agriculture groups that have been working with irrigation systems in East Africa.  Many of these groups have done impressive work with very simple technology.  Often, agriculture can be improved drastically with very simple mechanization.  Many of these groups were effectively doing so…but they were relying on NGO’s entirely to fund the projects.  Unfortunately this is a completely unsustainable technique.  I thoroughly believe that for development to work properly the private sector needs to be involved.  This has only happened in the past in a way that has resulted in years of NGO’s and government paying astronomical fees to private companies.  The problem lies within the public sector blindly funding programs that give away items and services for next to nothing yet pay lots of money for.  Without buy-in from the beneficiaries there is little chance of sustainability, which just contributes to a continuous cycle of funding development without actually developing anything.  I am hoping to create a local company that will initially be backed with funding to help supplement start-up cost that will supply simple irrigation technology to farmers utilizing local materials.  Wish me luck in this Endeavor!