Pre-Christmas Blog
29 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
Blog for Monday, December 20, 2010 — stay tuned for an after Christmas blog in about an hour.
Hey everyone!
So I wrote this blog on Monday, December 20, 2010, at the current moment, I have no internet. So I probably won’t be posting this until before or after Christmas time. By then, I will probably have written another blog about my Christmas experience in Nkokonjeru, about an hour or two away from Kampala at my friend Anna’s house.
So I’ve been in Kamuli, it seems, for about 2 months now. And things are moving quickly, though there’s a lot to look forward to in the next month. But I think after that time will start moving a bit slower. I’ve got Christmas coming up this weekend. Then, the next weekend I will be spending 4 days in Jinja for New Year’s where I’ve heard there will be fireworks. Then, on the 13th of January I will be traveling to Kampala (or somewhere shortly outside of Kampala, for our first IST (In-Service Training). This will be half Language Training and updating our language skills and checking out where we are at with our language instructors from the first 3 months in Uganda during our training. Which should always be interesting. My language teacher Dan is awesome, funny and easily divertible to the silly topics that I am usually the one to initiate. And I get to spend a lot of time with the Lusoga Group [Lisa, Rashida, me, Nick and Christy] who have become my really good friends since they are the closest volunteers to me and because we spend so much time with each other during daily language classes [2-4 hours]. And when I meant closest, I mean minimum of 2 ½ hours matatu ride to them. I think at the current moment, I’m the farthest volunteer from all other volunteers in the country [not just from my group, including the other 150 people not in my training group of 45].
Then, after that is our Technical training where we will probably split up into Community Health and Economic Development [me], where we will have some extra training and re-application of Peace Corps tools. And I think it is at this time that my counterpart [Isaac] and my supervisor [Edith] will be joining us for this. This time it will be especially less awkward, because the last time when I met them for a training, it was my second time of meeting them, I was trying to savor every moment of being together with my fellow Americans, while balancing out spending time with them and Americans, and running to my room during every break to smoke a cigarette, without them knowing of course. Cigarettes are 75 cents here, btw.
Enough about that, always ups and downs here. Some days are fantastic some days are horrible and I really miss home, and I question why I am here. The kids that live around me have recently taken a liking to me. Especially after I gave a bunch of them lollipops and two little girls asked me why there was a pencil in my window, I said I don’t know and told them they could have it. Now, at least once to four or five times a day I get kids at my front door or back window coming to greet me, watch what I’m doing, or go “Mpa sweeties” Give me sweets or “Mpa pen-eee” Give me a pen. That’s the word they use for pens and pencils in Lusoga, obviously adopted from English; almost all words adopted from English end with and ‘I’ or ‘eee’ or ‘aaa’, for example in the matatu Deeerriiiivaaaa = Driver and Condactaaa = Conductor, Dan-ee = Dan and they like many other cultures can’t make the ‘aeh’ sound, so Dan sounds like Don or Daaan, cat sounds like cot. Needless to say, I’m going to chill out on giving these little kids things, not because I don’t like to, but because once you give them something, they will never ever forget it and they expect you to give them things whenever you see them. Which is not good for A. future white people that come here and B. my sanity.
We are almost finished with the budget at work for 2011, which has been the main thing that we’ve been working on right now. We’ve been coming in at around 7:30 am every morning and looking at 2009, 2010 estimates and actuals, trying to estimate for 2011 what the costs will be. I try to participate wherever possible, but they know about the budget better than I do and what they need. So I generally let them do it, and I type up the explanation and put it on excel for them. Next year, after we hire a cashier [the second round of interviews are going on right now] I’m going to train Isaac or Julius on excel so they can do it themselves. We will present this to the board on Wednesday and I will be leaving for Christmas on the 24th. This has been the main project and it makes me especially tired to get up that early in the morning. This Sunday I woke up at 11 after catching up on all the sleep missed.
Well, hope all is well at home and you have/had a Merry Christmas. Thanks to everyone who sent packages! I’m checking several times a week for them but I expect that Kampala is especially busy with packages and all packages have to go through there to get here. So, I will let you know when they arrive! Weeraba [bye] for now!
Love,
Dan
P.S. Here are some similarities and differences about Uganda and America.
Differences:
-You say goodbye, I say hello.
-Paradise Hotel is no where near paradise, in room conditions and just not near a paradise. The first thing I did when I entered my room for 26,000 shillings (12 dollars, not bad though, right?) is kill a cockroach that was wandering around the room.
-Everything takes time here, and many people cannot keep time here. So people are always late to everything. Sometimes it’s their fault, but many times it just takes longer to do anything. I wanted to withdraw money from the bank yesterday but there were about 60 people in line for the ATM – no way Jose. So, I went inside and I was inside waiting behind about 20 people for 1 ½ hours before I even reached the teller.
- Primary School = Elementary School, and some of Middle School. Secondary School/College = High School, University = College/University
- People are always skeptical of why I want to take a photo of them.
Similarities:
- It’s hard for everyone in the world to get out of bed in the morning. And everyone knows what a “snooze” button is.
- Everyone loves 10 o’clock tea/coffee time from work.
- Indians own all of the convenience stores / supermarkets.
- American Media is all over the place, especially all the rap that you hear on the mainstream radio stations. It’s nice when I can walk down the streets of Uganda and hear Usher or Rihanna playing in the distance.
- Spider Solitaire – On my last taxi ride, they driver had a nice radio installed, so the people on the radio were listening to music and talking and every few minutes you could hear over the music the dj dealing a new round of cards. He was just too lazy to turn the sound off. Everyone likes Spider Solitaire.
- We have the same kind of bugs, but they’re bigger and more gross looking here.
- Kids love candy.
- If you do something that a kid likes [like dancing, or playing games with them, throwing them in the pool, etc.] they’ll want you to do it over and over and over again.
- Christmas songs are the same, even though they may be in different languages and sound different when it’s 80 degrees out.
