The Roller Coaster that is MY LIFE!
10 Sep 2011 Leave a Comment
Hey Peeps! Long time no blog! I feel like I’ve been super-Uganda-confined for the past month or two, but I now need to make and online comeback! Especially because I’ve been in Uganda for 400 days now! And it’s crazy to think I’ve now celebrated two birthdays in Uganda and that I spend my entire 23rd year of my life living in this country! And that I’ll be living in Kamuli for 1 year exactly on October 23rd.. which is comforting. Because I’m about halfway done with my service now.. but I really have Sn’t gone over the 1 year at site hump yet which means it’s all downhill from there. Which is when I’ll be starting some more new projects and then ensuring the sustainability of them after my departure and hoping that I made a difference in at least one person’s life – which I sure hope that I did.
As I walked to work this morning, I saw a brown cow (most common kind here) and it made me think of the Ice Cream Desert and I never understood or knew that there was brown cows until I came here! I thought they were all black and white and didn’t have horns like the ones here (Personally, I think the cows here are ugly and malnourished). But that made me come to the realization that living anywhere in Uganda is like living on a farm and I would never want to own a farm after living here! I despise / hate the roosters call every morning as you already know, but once one rooster in the area sets off even at 3 am when it’s dark out.. it sets a chair reaction to all roosters in the area that it’s time to wake up and crow. But I walk by chickens about 20 times a day. I was just think about how in the US, you can go years without seeing a live cow/chicken/pig etc. But here I doubt you can even go a few hours. Today, just on my way to work I saw about 30 chickens, 10 cows, 2 goats, and 4 ducks just roaming freely about the town. And there’s about 10 little baby chicks that I hear outside of my window right now. It just weird seeing the levels of development, but yet everything still looks like shit here. There’s litter all over the place and plenty of garbage that people just burn themselves or just leave on the ground near a dumpster. It’s a shame how littered this beautiful country is. And how odd it is here — people live in mud huts — with satellite TV. People have the crappiest cars but a touch screen radio console. They have blackberry phones which they use to make short phone calls only.
Plus, the fact that people wake up at the crack of dawn, bathe every single morning first thing and the clothes line is always full by the time I wake up at 8:30 and walk out the door, people have already done half their chores for the day. And the fires/ charcoal is already burning for boiling the morning milk for tea. It’s crazy. Thank god for washing machines and that they come standard in most houses in the US lol or we just go to the Laundromat. I bet that would be a really great business idea! Creating a Laundromat – good thinking Dan! It would save people so much time and effort.. Washing clothes is hard. I have to wash my own underwear, but it’s considered rude to give underwear to someone who washes your clothes. Whenever I do that, all of my neighbors just watch and stare at me because I’m so bad at doing it. What are you gonna do? That’s camping life here in Uganda.
Plus, I’d like to start doing my lightning project. It seems that people are very interested in this project and they’ve been taking the packets / brochures about lightning safety that I’ve been passing out and setting in different places at the checkout counter. I’m going to start by doing it between schools and see how that works out before I go out into random villages for education purposes, to teach parents and then to give their children shoes. Even my co workers are excited about it. Next week, I will meet with the headmaster of the school to make plans for me to deliver the shoes and teach the students about Lightning Strike Prevention.. And what size shoes are the class. Once I’m there I can get the #s for the rest of the classes up to P7 – and that’s where I’ll need your help
Anyways thanks everyone for the birthday wishes! I feel like now that I’m so far away less people forgot to wish me a happy birthday than when I’m actually around in the US lol! And thank god for facebook or else I would forget many people’s birthdays, especially out here when I generally don’t even know the date!
So I just celebrated my birthday a week early before the all volunteer conference. And I’ve been out of touch since then. I spent some time in Jinja and saw my friends there. And then we traveled to the All-Volunteer conference which is just outside of Kampala in Seeta. That was fun and cool because it was run by only volunteers, and volunteers know what works and what doesn’t and they know how to train other volunteers without boring them. Plus, I got to meet a lot of people from other groups that came before and after my group of 45 (who are all still here! We’re so strong!) and network with them to see what kind of projects they are working on and learn about different sorts of training ideas for our sites. Plus, I got to hang out with people from my group who I haven’t seen in a while. And then we had a rubix cube dance party which turned into a crazy drunken mess of bazungu dancing around switching clothing.
Yea, so the group before us had planned/invented this rubix cube Dance-Party to be held at the All Volunteer Conference, which was fun. Probably one of the best nights I’ve had at one of the Trainings. It’s where each person at the dance party wearing all six colors from the rubix cube.. And during your dance party the goal is to eventually get all of your clothes the same color by trading accessories, shirts, pants, socks, hats, dresses, wristbands, etc. And as we all started to get fairly tipsy and having a great time dancing – it turned out that we ended up just trading clothes on the dance-floor without any color-coordination. At first I thought it was weird, but then after a while it was fun and seeing other people wearing your clothes is funny.
I don’t know why but my birthday reminded me of Burlington and about how much I loved that town and miss it! I miss the cold weather and being all bundled up and taking a walk through town, seeing college friends, and the food!!! The food in Burlington is the best in the world! And it just sucks because it’s a college town and all my friends are long gone, the town will never be the same to live in unless you’re a college student. I miss going to the lake and walking on the ice and under the dock with Tom and Faith and I miss going down to Jill’s rock with Jess and just watching the sun go down on a warm spring evening when everyone’s coming out of their seasonal depression. And I miss going to North Beach in the summer and spending the day getting drunk on the beach with hundreds of [good looking, mostly] college students! Going to UVM was probably the best decision I’ve ever made, and I wonder what I would’ve turned out like if I hadn’t gone there.. Would I like psytrance (I’d like to think so)? But if I didn’t go to UVM, and I never went to that first rave that happened to be a psytrance party in Montreal, would I have gotten into psytrance when I did and then would I have introduced it to Lexi, and would she have met and gotten married to Dimitri [whom we met at a psytrance festival]? Would I be a semi-hippie like character? Would I have joined the Peace Corps? It’s crazy to think that that decision that I made to go to UVM could’ve affected other people’s lives so drastically.
American Flatbread, Penny Cluse, Sneakers, Wings over Burlington, Domino’s, Friendly’s, the mall food court for Saturday hungover Taco Bell runs as a group of 10, Manhattan Pizza, Ali Baba’s, Bruegger’s Bagels, Fcuk-Aid. I miss you B-Town – I wouldn’t be the same person today without you!
Funny Story: Today on my walk to work I was thinking about the lightning project and that I needed to email my Aunt Sharon and this boy stopped me who I had no idea who he was.. and he said, “Dan, how is your Aunt?” “My Aunt?” “Yes your Aunt in America?” “She’s Okay” “Okay good” And then we departed, it was so weird! I don’t know how he knew my Aunt Sharon and it’s funny he didn’t even ask how I was, and the fact that I was thinking about her at that very second. Maybe he can read minds – or the more likely case is that he works at Starlight Primary School – which my Aunt corresponds with. Apparently, my Aunt Sharon is well known in Kamuli and I’m well known at North Brunswick Elementary School even though none of us have ever met (besides my Aunt and me haha)!
Wish List:
- DDR Max or latest DDR game for the computer.
- Candy – especially chewy stuff like skittles, hot tamales, sour punch straws*, sour punch strips, jolly ranchers..
- Sauces and dressings that are free from McD’s (all sauces for dipping chicken – Honey Mustard, Ranch, Chipotle BBQ, Tangy BBQ, Sweet n Sour, etc.) or Burger King (Zesty Onion Ring Sauce) or Taco Bell (Mild, Hot, Fire) You have no idea how much I miss fast food and condiments!!
- Good Beef Jerky (not slim jims)
- Slim Jims
- Pictures, Notes, Letters, Memories from home
- Books / DVD TV shows / Movies
- Love!
- A call on the phone!
- Money!
Thanks for listening! I’ll be posting my lightning strike prevention proposal sometime tomorrow – provided that we have power. And then next week I can begin after I receive some donations (from you amazing, kind, and wonderful people in America!) Even just two dollars would help – and you would know in your heart that you put shoes on two children’s feet during my stay in Africa – which is better than caving in to those sketchy donation commercials that try and make you feel guilty by showing pictures of sad African children. A pair of shoes is approximately equivalent to 1 dollar. I’ll be posting a link to my paypal tomorrow with the written proposal! Thanks guys!
Love you if you’re still reading this,
Dan
