We have almost hit the 4 month (at site) mark! I would like to describe our first first month as relaxing yet awkward. Month two was busy and less awkward. Month three was just busy. Hopefully it will become less and less awkward as the months go on. With being out of training, we finally have had the time to just sit down and breath The awkward part occurs whenever we are anywhere but inside our compound. Everyone stares at us until we greet them in Acholi. It’s a village but its not that small! That is a lot of people to greet to get them to stop staring at you. We have a carpenter in town that has slowly been making furniture for our house. When we came here we already had a bed, a couch, and two chairs. Now we have a coffee table, kitchen table, and a place to put our gas stove on in the making. Here are some before pictures. After pictures will be posted soon since it is still a work in progress.
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| Our part of the compound |
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| Right when we moved in. Messy room! |
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| Kitchen? |
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| "Kitchen"...don't worry...work in progress |
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| Thought I would be creative...Zig is Madagascar! These are our painted wall...more after pictures to come! |
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| Sitting Room | | | | | |
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| Our always lovely high class latrines and bathing areas...3 latrines on the right and the 2 bathing areas on the left |
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| fancy signs for the bathing room/slab of concrete...whatever you want to call it |
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| door #1 is always sketchy...#2 is usually doable....#3 sketchy as well (always some sort of creature lurking behind the door) |
Here are some of our friends that live with us…outside:
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| Straight from the Lion King...I thought I heard a bat flying but nope... |
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| Dinosaurs DO exist! This big guy ate the beast above...its like watching live Animal Planet |
So...it’s starting to feel like home every time we bring more things back from our weekends in Kitgum. Lately we have been spending our weekends there because we have had meetings for our organizations and also holidays/get togethers to meet the other volunteers. Spending the weekend here is definitely quiet since there is no one in our compound during the week/barely anyone in the whole town. Plus you can’t get anything cold here so it’s nice to head up to Kitgum to get at least something cold (hintbeerhint). We also do all of our food shopping in Kitgum too since it tends to have larger vegetables for some reason. The tomatoes and onions in our town are the size of quarters. And those are the only veggies we can buy here along with okra….lots of okra. Random? Yes. I have never really eaten okra before we came here but I have a feeling Im going to eat a lot of it in the next two years.
Patrick found a soccer team to play with. The kids from the secondary and vocational schools get together everyday and play. Its pretty funny to see him out there being the only white guy with a bunch of SUPER tall Africans. They are realllly tall here. The people up in Northern Ugandan/Sudan got the tall genes for sure. They are also really fast. Even the kids. Its pretty funny when we run in the morning sometimes we pass kids on their way to school and they start running with us. They of course are faster than me but they definitely catch up with Patrick.
For Patrick’s birthday, I decided to buy him at chicken. We kept it for about 2 weeks. It’s name was Gobbles. We decided that it was probably the first and last chicken we would have/name. The two days leading up to us eating it, it crowed for 2 hours straight from 6-8 am…not a smart chicken...that’s just asking for it. I thought that at least helping to slaughter a chicken would make us want to be vegetarians but nope. It didn’t. It was delicious. It took us about 20 minutes to catch it! He was a fast little guy!
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| Patrick sweeping his birthday present out of the house |
Thanksgiving:
We went to Gulu for Thanksgiving. There were about 30 of us volunteers celebrating together. An Ethiopian restaurant that we frequent in Gulu let us all borrow their kitchen for the day. Interesting decision on their part. Probably not a good one. It think it was probably the closest thing to Thanksgiving Uganda has ever seen. A friend of ours slaughtered a turkey which was definitely awesome to have. There was also stuffing, green beans, and pumpkin pie! MMMmmmm. Also, exciting news for northern Uganda…the new Uchumi opened in Gulu! Big deal! Uchumi is a pretty awesome grocery store that sells actual CHEESE! Woohoo! That weekend I also went to this awesome craft co-op where they make all kinds of things like paper bead necklaces, fabric, banana fiber cards/purses, etc. It is a co-op for single mothers, people affected with HIV/AIDS, people with disabilites, and people affected by the war. They gave us a tour of the place before we did some shopping:
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| making paper bead jewelry |
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| weaving ammmazing fabrics |
We have both been going out into the field about 3-4 days a week for the past two months just to see the different projects that Mercy Corps has going on. Of course Patrick goes to the Agriculture related field sites and I go to the Health field sites. I think we are both ready to be fluent in Acholi and wish that it would just come to us overnight. The language barrier is definitely frustrating. I sat through two trainings to teach Village Health Teams and Mother Care Groups how to give health messages through music, dance, and drama….8 hours X 2 days…allllll in Acholi. I definitely left with a headache trying to understand so much Acholi. It was an awesome training though! Here are some pictures:
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| singing and dancing |
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| and drama |
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| at one of our food distribution sites...the picture doesn't do it justice, its gorgeous! |
Our first Ugandan wedding:
So…our language teacher’s parents got married a couple of weeks ago and we were invited to the wedding. It was a very interesting experience. We were told the date of the wedding but not the time so we call our teacher the day of the wedding around 10:15 am. She said well the prayer is supposed to start at 10 am but people are just now going to the church. We rush around trying to get there, show up at 11 and in typical Ugandan fashion the ceremony didn’t start until 1. Also in typical Ugandan fashion it didn’t end until 5 pm. Little did we know it was a double wedding. I brought my camera to the ceremony without the battery but I did get pictures of the “reception”:
Christmas and New years were pretty awesome. We will be at site again until our in service training where we get together with all of the other volunteers. The date for it got postponed so we will probably have it sometime around February/March. Then we come back soon for Samantha's wedding! We are so excited! Everything seems like it's moving so fast. Patrick started a countdown that is pretty interesting. So by Christmas we were at 144 days. We have 659 days (or so) before our service is up. 18% of our service is completed having 82% left. We have been here 5 months with 22 left, here 21 weeks with 94 left. 160 days until we come back for Samantha’s wedding. Last but most certainly not least, 393 days until we go to Zanzibar for our 3rd Anniversary! Yea…we like numbers…and Excel. It’s fine we already know we are weird.
Also, unfortunately future blog posts will have far less pictures if we want them to happen more often. I have sooo many pictures I wish I could post on here/facebook but don't have the time or patience. There is a faster modem which we can't buy because the signal doesn't reach our town. Bummer. I had an unusually fast internet connection this time around so it was easier (not easy) to post this one. Pictures will appear whenever I can get them here...we promise!
Merry Christmas and Happy 2012! We love and miss everyone!
