Hello Everyone,Apologies for not writing anything up here ever and a big "Thanks!"

for all the Birthday messages. I just wanted to quickly write that my

homecoming (to Seattle) is set to be:

9th November at 11:20am

And after a quick week to start settling in, I plan to head home to

Spokane for a couple weeks. Southern Thailand is quite beautiful and

sends it's love, but I am So looking forward to seeing everyone in a

little over a week!-Ryan

Hey everyone,

First please be advised that my pushing back of my arrival date does not mean I don't want to come home -- quite the contrary. This is officially my last night in Africa, although being at a backpackers with free internet is blowing my mind and really doesn't feel like Africa anyway. We (Kendra and I) are currently in Jo-burg, South Africa and there is no need to worry for our safety in a notoriously crimey city because we've taken every precaution and we are staying in our hostel until the shuttle takes us to the airport tomorrow, and the plane will take us on to Thailand! (by way of Abu Dhabi, UAE)

Anyway, not much time now, here are a few pictures from our last leg in Africa. Thank you to Kendra for being a good photographer (I never takes pictures unless I see a cool bug or a cool cloud):

* The sun sets beautifully off of Chizumulu Island, Malawi. (we got "stuck" there for longer than we expected--hard not to really)

* We spent two nights at the luxurious Nkwichi lodge on the Mozambique side of the Lake Malawi (a.k.a. Niassa). It was expensive for the delicious food, but worth it to pamper ourselves.

* Another picture of the white sand at Nkwichi, which means "It squeaks" in the local language, because that's exactly what the sand does when you walk across it.

* The coolest most disturbingly majestic trees I've ever seen, Baobabs are everywhere. The reason is that their wood is porous so bad for firewood and making things so local peoples haven't chopped them down yet. (Fun cartoon trivia for 10 pts: which movie trapped the villain in a baobab?)

* Me and Kendra enjoying yet another beach.

* A picture of me sneaking around the corner of the fort on Ilha de Mozambique. There was a gorgeous church on the point that you had to climb a bit to get to.

* A cool picture of Tofo/Tofinho in Mozambique. This is where we planned to surf and dive. Unfortunately I got sick so all I could do was a silly Ocean Safari where I went snorkeling with 20 foot Whale Sharks (the biggest fish in the world) and manta rays? I know, big deal right?

Loves and misses you all, will be home before too long.

I'm still alive, no worries. Spent a lot more time than we thought around Lake Malawi (beautiful and amazing). Will write more later. Currently in Cuamba, Mozambique.

Cheers,

Ryan

God Pose on the top of Mount Hanang, Tanzania's 4th highest peak. It was a lot of fun to visit Tara in her village, pick up a few words in Swahili and also have her accompany us on our ascent.

A wide angle view of beautiful snorkeling off of Pemba, Zanzibar Archipelago's northern island.

Nungwi beach on "Zanzibar" island. A little touristy, but an amazing place to relax and spend a few days being a beach bum.

Happily wiling away the hours on the beach with $5 of collective sunglassware.

Tropical sunset from Pemba.

Also check out, Kendra's Blog. She's better at writing stuff than me.

I don't have a lot of time to write now (I'm hoping to write some new posts on the long bus rides we're expecting on our way South), so here's just a few pictures to tide you over until then.

In the last week before leaving my site I had two major parties. One was a bit more formal and put together by the teachers, PTA, and SMC (School Management Committee). With a number of speeches, some music, and a feast afterwards I felt very filled up by all of the wonderful thanks that I had received.

Official Farwell Party

This looks like the more serious section of my speech which Yeko was nice enough to help me translate.

Arthur (my official counterpart), myself, and student-teacher Everlyne looking smart.

This is me being congratulated by Madame Nampa (the new "principal" at my school). As a going away gift they had bought me a very nice suit and were overjoyed to see me "put on" and looking so smart. As you may notice from mine and a few other suits, Ugandans tend to prefer oversized suits, don't worry that I've gotten smaller over here.

On my very last night in Kayonza I decided to make a smaller, informal party featuring Hamburgers and a big gift exchange. Both were thoroughly enjoyed by myself and Ugandans. It turned out to be an excellent way to distribute the miscellanea of my taken-apart household and also send one last big thank you to a community that has welcomed and "kept" me so well over these last two years.

Informal Going Away/Hamburger/Give Away Everything in Ryan's House Party

Here (right to left) Maama1 Gobi, Maama Joann, Betty, and Annet bite down and enjoy the all-american, hand-held icon of deliciousness that is the hamburger (or as is often echoed "hamburg"). I was really glad I could cook for these ladies, because the two on the right served me quick, cheap, and delicious meals on about every other day at the local restaurant in town. Betty was a similarly amazing (although somewhat procrastinative) tailor who helped me make my two Halloween costumes as well as adjustments and what what.

Wasswa showing off his haul of jerry cans, cups, and bath towel. Afterwards, Yeko and Wasswa said that they enjoyed the idea of a gift exchange so much that they would try to do it again at the end of the year party.

All the smiling children's faces who I'll miss seeing every day.

Hope you are all well and looking forward to seeing you soon. I'll be off on my travelling adventure soon, and with luck will keep you all updated.

Stay Well,

Jones (or Ryan, but sadly no longer Migadde)

1 - An interesting albeit difficult-to-understand-by-Americans custom is that mothers are very often called by their children's names with the prefix of Maama. To translate, you would see my mom on the street and try to get here attention with "Oh, Momma Ryan! Momma Ryan!" Wasswa has even told me a story where he called a parent by her name and she said he had bad manners. When he asked what she would like to be called she responded with "Maama Rechel." People are proud of parenthood, and it's quite the truth that I don't know these ladies' real names. I find that sad, but I don't think they do.

Sorry to have been so quiet on the blog. To tell the truth, not too much is going on. The term has started so I've transitioned from digging in the morning and teaching computer classes in the afternoons/evenings, to doing random work in the mornings and teaching computer classes in the afternoons/evenings. Good ol' same ol'. The extra time to give trainings, add resources to the computers, and lock them down as much as possible has been good and we're transitioning towards a time when I won't be here to manage it.

So, things are going well, and there's definitely a sense of my upcoming departure. The computer lab is functioning well and getting lots of use, which is all we can really ask/hope for. I have yet to organize the Thank You DVD of pictures and videos and what, but I hope to have that finished and sent out sometime early next month. Also, some more serious thoughts of the future and job and transitioning back into normal American life are beginning to grumble up into consciousness a bit too.

The only other news I have is that there's an All Volunteer Conference (AVC) coming up at the end of the month. It's really awesome that we're having one this year as this volunteer-work-sharing-get-together had been indefinitley cancelled due to budget concerns by the previous Uganda director. The new director, Dr. J. Larry Brown, however, agreed with volunteers that if it's taken seriously and we share and network, there's a lot that we can learn from each other and different ways that we can work together. As volunteers who come into country in fairly large groups we tend to network very well within our training class, but inter-class communication isn't as good as it could be, and it's always better to tell someone how to make a wheel instead of them having to reinvent it (which seems to happen all too often in "development").

Travel Plans!

Beyond that I wanted to give a heads up and say that I'm planning on travelling around a bit before heading back--I'm already on this side of the world, might as well look around a bit over here before I come back right? Actually, as far as international travelling goes, it seems like I've done a lot less than a lot of my fellow (and now returned PCVs) who have been to Kenya and Tanzania and Malawi and Ethiopia and Rwanda and Egypt and wherever. So far, I've only made it to Kenya for a week. But no longer will I have to be on the listening end of the traveler's story. The plan is for Kendra and me to:

Travel down to Tanzania and hit up Zanzibar for a few days.

Continue down to Mozambique1 and stay there for a week or two

Then keep on truckin' down to South Africa from where...

...we plane it over to Thailand!

After a few weeks there we'll fly back to home2, possibly stopping in Hawaii on the way (Kendra did her graduate studies there).

As we're planning to nail some of this down a little more clearly this weekend and the vicissitudes of travel demand that plans change, this is just a brief sketch, but the upshot of it is that it looks more like I'll be home at the beginning of October. I sincerely apologize if this throws a wrench into anyone's plans, I really should've mentioned all this a bit sooner--my bad!

That's it for now, loves and misses you all, and looking eagerly forward to the not-too-distant time when I will see you all again.

Cheers!

Footnotes

1 - I'm planning to brush up on my Spanish a little bit and then pronounce it with a Frenchish accent, but that's pretty lame replacement for real Portugues so if anyone wants to send me any resources on studying up that'd be sweet! (**ahem** Jay! Actually, is Fernanda still at times going there? Is there any chance that she would be there in late August?)

2 - That's right! Around the world! Actually, I once figured that the exact other side of the world from Seattle is somewhere in the lower Indian Ocean, so beyond being in Madagascar or some islands off the West Coast of Australia I'm pretty darn close to that right here. Why not go back the other way?

Letters & packages

[received] from Michelle: A wonderful friend-montage calendar and a "Webale" card expressing just how awesome and supportive a group of friends I have back home.

[received] from Brett Bell: Perfect package of goodies and reading materials. I definitely was confused at first by the People magazine until I read that it was for TJ. It was also perfect timing because it came right before I had some PCTs visit, so I didn't have to just feed them local food. You gotta treat the PCTs right, right?

>[received] from Allie: Yet another amazing package and utterly delicious. Ditto on the good timing with PCTs.

Lastly, a quick apology that I haven't sent out more letters recently. Most of my other PCV friends are in a flurry of packing up and getting ready to head out, so I've been writing a fair number of in-country letters and going to visit (and party) with them on weekends. It'll be very quiet around here after about Mid-May and they will be missed.

Below are some long awaited pictures of the computer lab in place and being used:

Madame Quilina (pr. "Kee-lee-nah") reviews parts of a computer with P1 (Kindergarten) students.

This is ideally what a computer lesson looks like.

But it more often than not it looks like this.

(For any teachers out there, we have a number of pretty big classes - how would you like ~150 3rd graders?)

Or this.

(Painted walls = fun physicalish work for me, I also painted the shutters and Mr. Onyango complimented me, saying, "Jones, did you train for that work?" I guess it's just in my blood, right Grandpa Dick?)

Yeko, teaching some P7s (6th graders) where to put your hands for touch typing. (We hope to have a competition with prizes for the fastest, most-accurate typer in the near future.)

Madame Negesa helps a student who's learning to use the mouse.

This isn't really related to the computer lab at all, it was just unbearably cute to pass the store room and see this kid curled up, deep asleep, in a wheel barrow.

So, as you may be able to see, things are going pretty well. Classes are coming in regularly to use the computers to practice math and other subjects. I'm working to make sure the computers have lots of content for teaching, are working, and are locked down (which is more important than it sounds).

Plans are in the works to have a Computer Lab Opening Day sometime soonish. It should be quite the celebration with the hopeful guest of a Member of Parliament (Congress-person), a band, a choir, and presentations by all the classes. I'm planning to record as much of it as possible to share back at home.

That's all for now, Peace.

This is just a short blog first to say that---

COMPUTERS ARE HERE!!!

Of course there are many problems to trouble-shoot and continued improvements to be made to the lab, but as of this last week pupils and teachers began to use the computers. We are just beginning slowly, with the hope of beginning full lessons in the lab sson, much of which will be based off the open-source educational software, GCompris. In addition to helping teachers teach and manage classes in the computer lab and teaching computer classes to teachers and community members on the side, I'd like to continue adding resources to the computers. But, there's a bit of a problem: the internet here isn't lightning, and although I know there are many many resources available, I often just don't have the time to go sifting through looking for gems. So, if you have the time, you have the connection, and you have the will, you too can help. Both downloading stuff for us, or just finding good resources that I can get from here would be excellent.

For those of you willing to accept the challenge, here are a couple details you want to keep in mind.

Most of the users are kids (like K-6) who's first language is not English. Although teachers and high-school kids should have access as well. So...

...they tend to like what kids like--fun sounds, pictures, interactive games. But, of course it's always better if these are somehow related to learning and education (but that's not a strict requirement :).

If you find software, it should be compatible for Linux. For programs you usually have to look for this explicitly, but content (e.g. pictures, documents, web-sites, movies, sounds) will all be directly viewable/playable on Linux (we even already have a nice assortment of Bill Nye and School House Rock thanks to another volunteer (Thanks Thomas!!!))

I'm able to download whole websites using a program called Httrack, so even suggestions of really cool websites is good.

If you decided to be an angel and download big things for me, you can just pop them on a cd, and pop them in an envelope, and pop them to my via my normal address

Here's a couple things that I know I want to do, but haven't been able to get to yet:

We would like a decent encyclopedia, but there aren't many (as in none) that I could find that are made to also work on Linux. So, I have a small version of Wikipedia, but I've found a larger, DVD-size version here Wikipedia for Schools. Being big, however, is also preventing me from getting it.

There seem to be a lot of resources available at UNESCO Open Training, but I haven't had time to look through many of these and it often seems an extra step to carry out an order for most things. If you feel like digging through this and happen upon something cool, feel free to have it sent straight to me and just let me know, so I can compliment you on how awesome you are.

Here's a list of English-learning sites, of which I'd like to pick one or two to download:

http://eslus.com/dailylesson.htm

http://www.englishpage.com/index.html

http://www.eslgold.com/grammar/explanations.html

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/

http://vlc.polyu.edu.hk/

Lastly, I've been looking into "Kensington" locks which would allow us to lock the computers to the desks and greatly hinder any thief that might want to try and take them (which is quite a big concern here). I've found them in Kampala for about $20 each, but if you can find them for cheaper (like free), it would greatly reduce worries over here. (Just as a side note, the computers are currently being kept in my house at night until we get a night watchman -- bit annoying to pack and unpack them every day, so security really matters quite a bit).

So, that's that. My eternal gratefulness and that of Ugandan children can be yours for the price of a few hours of goofing around on the internet.

I hope to put pictures of the lab up soon. Know that I am missing you all,

~Ryan

If you happen to visit Uganda1, you might experience a (mis-)conversation like this one:

Ugandan: Do you know how to dig?

YOU: [with slightly narrowed eyes] Yes[?].

Ugandan: Sure? ... What do you dig?

YOU: Usually just holes.

Ugandan: ...

Ugandan: What do you dig with?

YOU: A shovel.

Ugandan: Sure? Not with a hoe?

Most Ugandans can dig, ya dig? "Digging" is Uganglish for gardening or farming, which most people (something like 80% of the population) use as a primary mode of survival. The hoe2 is really central to most people's lives. Now, it's important to understand that digging is hard work; especially consider that people don't plow here. Yes, there are cows, but it is a rare thing to even hear of someone using them to turn up the earth. Every piece of land that is "reclaimed from the bush" had to be fought for: cut down, cleared, and broken up with a hoe in hard hands.

Up until about three weeks ago I was pretty useless with a hoe, but as I was pretty bored while school was out I invited myself to go out and dig with my neighbor Yeko3. Part of this was to match up my current thoughts on exercise4 with an attempt to connect more with Ugandans. Before I go on talking too much, here's some pictures:

Sowing Beans

Just today, I learned how to sow beans. Two beans in a hole. Cover it up with your foot.5 Move on. Easy and nicely Zen. Juliet, niece to Yeko, is in the background and in the far background you can see a lot of people at the borehole.

Ms. Nakajje in traditional digging attire

Yeko, Smiling, scoops out little holes for beans

A poem to end:

They ask "To dig, do you know?"

sillily I reply "yes,"

and invite myself to join Yeko.

In the garden I do my best,

but somehow manage to hit my toe.

Besides that little mishap,

I enjoy digging, Yeko calls me a pro.

Productive exercise spent with friends,

who knew how far, with digging, I'd go?

Peace Out Bruthas (and Sistas and Muthas, etc.),

Jones

Footnotes

0 - This is the first of a few little blogs in which I want to focus on Ugandan life and take the opportunity to post more pictures than I usually do. Upcoming topics are likely to be: THE BOREHOLE, MY FAVORITE "RESTAURANT", and others (suggestions welcome).

1 - Which you should. It's beautiful, the people are nice, even if they point out your whiteness a bit too much. And I'm still around for some time...

2 - 10 points to whoever can come up with the best "hoe" joke. GO!

3 - Note that this sentence with a bit of selective editing could easily guarantee that I'll never become president and simultaneously win 10 points.

4 - I had recently rationalized to myself that exercise -- the willful wasting of energy -- is just silly. Why not do something with that energy? Something productive, or at the very least something fun. This comes after my failed attempts to train for a marathon. Running is not fun. For me anyway. (Uncle Ken,if you're reading this, you are totally right.) So, some things I decided to do more of or start doing are 1) digging, 2) pumping at borehole (in next feature blog), 3) playing with kids (frisbee, hacky sack, juggling, handstands & cartwheels), 4) chopping wood (strangely I do find this fun). What's been especially awesome about this is that I've felt a lot better in the last few weeks and have also gotten a lot more contact with Ugandans.

5 - I had to be a bit careful as on my second day of digging I managed to catch myself in the big toe and about half my toenail is hanging on by a flap. Shoe goo came in handy to secure after bending it a bit today -- don't know why it hadn't occured to me before.

As has been pointed out to me, it's been far too long since I updated this blog. Partly because I haven't been to the internet in almost 2 weeks and partly because my computer time is often being eaten by other, more nerdly pursuits (see Christmas below). I'm planning a couple more interesting blog posts, with pictures (if the internet gods allow) and as a lot and a little has transpired in the last month and a half I'm just gonna hit some big bullet points.

Happenings:

Kenya week-long vacation: Please refer to the blog of Ms. Brett, my travel companion

Christmas_time = 'non-event' + ' programing in Python to pass time' + ' reading interesting stuff' # On interesting reading, if you thought that my emotional graph was cool, you should check out a guy named Seth Roberts who has been doing serious and insight-lucrative self research for years.2

P2 Thematic Curriculum Training: A whirlwind 6-day workshop co-facilitated with my new counterpart, Arthur. In a word: harrowing. But, I felt quite accomplished afterward, and learned some things about working with Ugandans and people in general. Here's a picture of our participants packed into one of the school classrooms (sorry, internet's slow, no pictures:

Paranoid Post3 International4

(Sent & Received)

From Ken, Tracy, & Boys: Got the awesome book Black Swan and card you sent. To them, "Thank You So Much! " and a short letter is on the way back. To others, you should read this book if you get a chance - I'll put up a goodreads review in a bit, but as of now I'm planning on giving it *****.

To Patty: a short letter of thanks and information digging.

To Grandpa Dick: a photocopy of a photocopy of the letter that seems to have gotten lost.

These Already Mentioned?

To Nicole: longish mess of rambling resembling a letter.

Footnotes

1 - At first annoying, this commonly used Ugandanism has become part of my vocabulary along with the incorrect use of "somehow" and the ever-present-and-ever-loved "mmmm." It's usually used to be a showing of empathy about misfortune, about the closest we have is "man, that sucks" or on a lighter occasion, "oops."

2 - By-the-by I am serious, you should check it out, it's really cool. I'll even email you the major article he wrote about it for the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences if you request.

3 - I decided "Letters" was dull and need some jazzing up. It's "paranoid", because I want to know if things I send get there--for example, my mom received only the front of the envelope of a short letter I sent (and unfortunately forgot to photocopy)--and also so you know the wonderful things you send me have been received exuberantly.

4 - I say "International" because I've been sending some letters and Cds back and forth with other volunteers recently. This has been a fun way to trade music and other ideas that often get glazed over with a little too much beer at PCV get-togethers. All of these people are amazing--I just wished they lived closer, same as you all.

* - Actually, that's not exactly true, there is one big piece of news for you diligent footnote readers. Although, I've been thinking about extending my service for a while now, I haven't been talking about it much because it was still a big question-mark on the horizon. Well, now it's more of a period. I'm here an extra three months until about Mid-August, which'll put me back stateside around September if I do a little traveling. There will be more explanation to appear on the computer lab site in a bit.

Letters & packages

[sent]Grandpa Kinney: Just sent a letter thanking you for all the cards and family history. Also, included a little design (Mom, can you tell Grandpa?)

[sent]Nicolee: Random Letter

(Michelle: I have a good start on a letter that'll probably be pretty long, I should send it out by the weekend)

[received] from Biff-Dad & Patty: Package brought Christmas to me when I was feeling most like it was not around. Currently sharing all the wonderful candy and good call on the pliers, Dad. My leatherman was misplaced somehow and I've really been missing it. Thanks so much! Merry Christmas

The last few weeks have been quiet. School's out, the computers are ordered (thanks in no small part to both my mom and Michelle and friends) and on their way, and because of a short week-trip to Kenya (will post about that later, with pictures) I've had no money for the month and was just chillin' at site. Which can be fun, but mostly just self-entertainment fun: reading, cleaning, organizing received & responding to letters, and teaching myself to program in a computer language called python (which I might also post about because I've gotten a bit addicted to it and have been impressed by how easy and flexible the code is). Anyway, I just wanted to quickly say that I'm still alive, Christmas was good if kinda non-descript and I'll try to put up a more substantial post soon (or maybe a lot of little posts). Loves you all and missing you during the holidays.

~Ryan

P.S. There should be an update about the computer lab soon at UgandaJones

I know I promised I'd write something more substantial, but I instead wrote an article on moral philosophy for my friends' communal blog. Here's a link (it should be posted soon) if you're interested:

Seattlife

Letters+ Received

Michelle: amalgamation of friends' b-day messages. The prayer flag Rocks and I often find myself contemplating it, although I can't firgure out what the blue world map(?), or heart(?) thing is - story behind that?

Dave: New music cd is sweet! I've been listening almost non-stop to M.I.A. and also am really digging MGMT and Keane.

James: I almost have "The Senator" memorized. My neighbors undoubtedly think I'm insane laughing to myself in my house.

Lawrence: No aplogies necessary, I love hand-made cards. Also, I haven't really noticed the financial crisis so much over here -- village life just plods slowly (very slowly) on.

Amy & Jack: Thanks so much for the card and the pictures, my favorite is where Amy is surrounded by her posse of dashing and deadly body-guard-bridesboys.

Mom & Grandpa: Card was cool, I'd never heard the hippie saying, "You can't trust anyone over 25." Also, tell Grandpa "thanks" for the card and small letter he sent. I'm planning to write something longer to him soon.

"Things" Sent

A little photographic media with descriptions to: Mom, Allie, and Michelle.

Preliminary Thank You cards have been sent to computer lab donors, they should arrive with luck in about 3 weeks.

Cheers!

Funding Almost Complete

This is just a very quick post to first of all pass on the good news that the Kayonza contribution has reached 710,000 UgSh of our goal of 735,000! We are very close to completing the funds and are very excited to see the vision of a computer lab here at Kayonza Primary.

The news is also good on the US side with a combined contribution of $4200 of the $4500 goal, but unfortunately this has increased a bit to $4600 with the fluctuations in the world financial system. So, that means that we have $400 to go and we are asking for your help in finishing up by making small donations or by passing along the cause to others who could contribute even a little. An Obama-esque landslide of $5 and $10 is exactly what we need in order to reach our goal by the deadline of December 4th. (see UgandaJones Fundraiser Website for more info.)

Also, preliminary "thank yous" are in the works and should be sent out by this weekend, when there will also be a more substantial post. Thanks to everyone for your support, your letters, your cards, and well ... everything.

It's been a little while since I've updated, so first let me say what's going on with work. I've listed things in order of effort and excitement, so if they start to get boring, well, you passed all the "good" stuff so just scroll down to the picture:

Computer Training & Lab

The computer lab is well on its way. For a while we were hung up on the fact that the parents were not well informed, and frustratingly, the PTA meeting kept being delayed1. However, when we finally did meet, I gave a presentation answering the five questions, "Why? What? Who? How? When?", explaining different aspects of our computer lab project to a double roomful (~150) parents. The presentation went well and directly afterwards we voted in an 11-member Management Committee to deliberate and decide on the details of the lab.

Meeting for the first time a couple rainy days ago, the management committee has already proved itself to be autonomous and dedicated. I prepared a little presentation and then was a bit bummed when it started raining pretty decently at 3:50pm before our 4pm meeting. As I set up the room I began writing this update in my head beginning like this:

Unfortunately, the management committee didn't meet because it was raining. In Uganda pretty much everything stops when it rains and you can expect people to meet up with you hours late (which is also normal for good weather) if they manage to show up at all.

This group of 11 people defied my Ugandan reality by showing up on-time, or at most, a half an hour late and then taking the discussions and decisions directly into their own hands. I was practically bubbling with praise at the end, and still it deserves saying that I was impressed by Uganda and Ugandans that day. As I post this, the committee will be having a meeting with all the pupils to inform them about the computer lab, and send home children who's parents haven't yet added their 1500 UGX contribution2.

As for a current funds update, please refer to this lovely graph:

I have a very similar analog version of this graph up in the school's office to track donations. For the last two weeks it's required updating every other day because of the speed that the Kayonza contribution side, which is heartening. Also, we've stalled on the American base donations, so if you know someone that might be interested in giving a few bucks (less likely in the current economic climate, but still) please pass on this link: Uganda Jones - helping to build a computer lab in rural Africa. I've recently updated the text with some alluring sentence structure, although I may have broken parts of the page with my wordiness. Anyway, we hope to complete all our funds by the end of November, place the order at the beginning of December, which should allow the computers to get here by February and leave us with three more months to set up and smooth things out while I'm still around. Much to do, but it's seeming more and more doable.

In other computer news, training of teachers is continuing with Yeko and Wasswa producing some valuable work. They've been creating score-sheets for the P7 (read 6th grade) pupils based on mock exams so we can analyze what their performance is likely to be on the PLE (Primary Leaving Exam)3. Before it used to take four days to compile, score, convert, and find the position numbers of the pupils, now it can be done (with a snazzy printed final document) in a couple hours. Although I'm wary to use this loaded term, here goes... DEVELOPMENT! FTW!

Reading ClubAfter using a US Embassy program to get 20 copies of Freak the Mighty (about a 5th grade level chapter book), I have been holding regular classes to read it with the S3s and S4s (~Freshmen & ~Sophomores) at Nalinya Secondary. This mini-project alternates between crazy frustrating when the students are goofing off, or not responding, or just plain not trying very hard to understand the story; to really fun and rewarding as we act out different parts of the story or different vocab that they don't know yet. As it's written from the perspective of a 6th grader, vocab has been a lot of, "Oh, moron is just another abuse that means stupid person, similar to butthead, goon,doofus,etc."

Also, we were very lucky to be visited by the Ambassador's wife, Susan Browning. She not only discussed the book with the students, she and her crew also brought all this fancy equipment (which looked really out of place in the dusty, brick/tin village classroom) and showed a number of little video snippets about the changes in US elections as the internet and youth start having more influence. It was actually really cool for me to see because I've been so removed from the election-ballyhoo over here and hadn't heard of the whole "Macaca" thing or numerous other big pieces of news. But, it's kind of nice to have a little distance from the overzealousness of the US media. But, (I know, two sentences beginning with "But"?!) trying to decide who to vote for was especially difficult without internet.

VSLA4

Both of my VSLAs are going well. The one with Kayonza teachers has been operating well by itself for the last two months and they've decided they'd like to share out (divide up all the assets saved in a metal box and begin again), which will be nice because I thought they may have to do this alone after I left. My other VSLA, among mostly poorer women farmers in another town, is doing well and will begin giving out loans in a couple weeks.

Teaching Teachers Music

Last Saturday, I began teaching our PTE student teachers in Music, a subject many of them have said they struggle with. As we don't have any books or even old tests on music, my first lesson came completely from memory (Mom, piano lessons finally paid off). I taught them the notes, and how to write them (and memorize the lines) of the bass and treble clef. I really do need a resource, though, so I don't keep drawing my bass clef signs backwards and beginning the lesson by saying there's 8 notes, when there's only 7. Stupid octave, throwing me off.

In related news, a new tutor (teacher trainer and my counterpart) has been placed at my school, Arthur. So far, he's been great. He's a bit younger, he's dedicated, and wonderfully, he communicates with me. Although I'm busy with a lot of other projects, he's a major improvement on my old (now retired?) counterpart and I look forward to working more with him in the future.

PLAY

And, just to make sure that you don't worry I'm working too much, here's a photo from an annual PCV get together called Goat Stock. It's our Halloween-ish type get together and I'm only going to give you one Clue as to what we're dressed up as.

Letters/Packages Sent/Received

To Jay: a pen pal letter from Mukhama Godfrey.

To Michelle: an overdue reply, but I think a decent one. ps, I forgot to make a photocopy of it, so I'll likely forget everything that I said by the time I get your reply...still.

From Allie: two amazing and huge packages filled with goodies: candy, beef jerky, more candy, a soccer ball, a shirt, and some lovely postcards about the beautiful Finger Lakes region and, of course, Canandaigua. YOU ARE A-MAZING!

Really sleepy now5, Loves to all,

Jones6

Footnotes

1 - I'm not sure how transfers work in the U.S. for principals, but here they're a bit annoying. There's this thing called a "hand-over" which is where the old and new headmaster get together and sign some documents, especially things like the assets of the school and stuff. I don't know exactly what the problem was, but it took 3 weeks for this to happen. I think it had to do with the schedule of my old headmaster (thankfully, the new headmaster, John Bwire, seems to be very much more on-top-of-things). So, that's three weeks where I was getting more and more nervous that we didn't have any money from the Kayonza side. Three weeks where nothing was moving except the deadlines drawing near.

2 - The exchange rate is about 1600UGX per dollar, so the contribution we're asking for each child is about that. Sounds like too little? Consider that most parents here would easily fall under the poverty definition of living on less than a dollar a day. So, to compare to US standards, a person making $30,000 per year lives on about ($30,000/365)=>$82 a day. So, in rough equivalency terms that's like paying $82 per child, which can be pretty steep considering that many parents have at least three kids at school.

3 - Here's an "expensive" spreadsheet IF function I helped them write to give scores for certain grade ranges (they don't use A,B,C,D,F or the 4.0 scale): =if(C2

I've been back from "the future" (a.k.a. the states) for about a week and a half now and thought I'd take this opportunity to point out a few of the wonderous things that I always used to take for granted:

Water that comes from the wall, and it's even drinkable (faucets, drinking fountains, hot reliable showers, toilets that flush, plumbing truly is amazing).

FREE water with ICE at restaurants coupled with good service.

Wearing shorts outside and even no shirt at the lake.

Lines painted on beautiful roads, with sidewalks and relatively orderly traffic.

Cleanliness - because it's not crazy dusty, even though you can take a shower ever day, you don't really need to.

Fast Internet

Washing machines (do you know how much time this saves - holy gosh!)

FOOD. All types. All flavors. (esp. Subway & BBQ)

and last, but not least Awesome Friends and Amazing Family.

Three weeks was too short, and although I was afraid that home wouldn't feel like home when I got back, I had a ridiculously awesome time (and I must apologize to the Wheelers that "awesome" is my adjective of choice, it's just the most apt ;).

On the subject of Amazing Family, I want to thank the enormous efforts of my mom, Linda Zeringer, who as a surprise raised over $1500 towards my computer lab project!!! She, without any of my knowledge, colluded (how's that for vocab) with my brother-in-law, Jason, to create a website to raise money and surprised me on my trip home. The website is fairly easy as it's the same address as this blog minus ".blogspot":

The Uganda Jones Fundraiser - http://ugandajones.com

This site will be updated with the status of the project soon and even a graph (you know how I love 'em), although, I'll probably give lengthier discussions of what's going on here.

As of now, there's enough money (with the $600 I've managed to save from my monthly stipend) to buy the first half of the lab! However, I'm unsure as to the status of money raised here in Uganda among the community (remember they must match by 10%) beyond the fact that all parents were asked to donate in recent progress reports sent home. It's currently a break between terms (like a mini-summer break), so few people are around the school. When we restart I hope to be meeting more with the school administration and parents to setup a management committee and hopefully order the first shipment of computers!

Besides that, being back has been good, but a bit boring. I am utterly amazed at the ability of American children to get bored - with all of the books, fast internet, public transport, accessible and nearby parks and public places and frisbees, games, etc. How could it ever get boring? A village in Uganda (and probably most developing nations) has surprisingly little to do. There's work (gardening with a hoe, washing clothes by hand, etc.) of course -- and the kids get plenty of that, but when that's done (sometimes it never is, especially the girls work so hard). There's not much to do except sit, or maybe borrow a radio or kick around a soccer ball made from plastic bags. Coming from the a land of constant entertainment I get bored really easy and have been reading an almost unhealthy amount. I've read 3 or 4 books in the last week and a half, and sometimes have even resorted to just sitting. Well, sitting and chatting with neighbors anyway, which is not time wasted.

Lest you think that I'm doing nothing, I still have to cook, bathe, and wash clothes (all of which take a much larger chunk of time to do than you'd think), and I've been teaching small, fun computer classes to the P7 kids (6th graders) in the mornings. I also just started a reading club with 20 copies of Freak the Mighty with the local upper-secondary students. It's a cute little book written for roughly American 5th graders which means lots of explanations of "freak" "doofus" "butthead" "moron" in addition to all the other words they don't know (weird, cellar, casual, tugged, ...). It was almost a joke as they would bring up a word and I'd have to say, "Ah, it's another abuse" (meaning a derogatory word) and try to translate it or act it out. Lots of fun.

Some other little projects are going, but that's good for now. It was wonderful seeing everyone I saw, although too short -- sorry to those I missed. Thank you so much to all those who have (or will) donate.

-Uganda Jones

So, I feel a bit silly even doing this, and many of you know that one of the things I really dislike talking about, let alone "asking" for, is money. That most evil of evils, the root, yet makes the world go 'round with all of its greed and dreams and stuff. Anyway, the exciting part of this blog is that my school, especially the headmaster (principal), has become excited about the computer lab project and especially making it a decent size and with good computers. Our vision is to put in a lab of EIGHT Inveneo computers! I've done a good budget on the project and this is going to cost about $4834 dollars.

Now, ideally I should write a grant to get this money, but from looking into grants, I've found that the lowest community contribution1 is 20%. Usually, Peace Corps volunteers shimmy around this a bit by having "in kind" contributions where the community does a bunch of work for free and that's included to cover a large part of the contribution. The problem is, that's difficult to do when nearly all of the costs are monetary for buying the computer equipment. The other option was to get fewer, or lower quality computers that would just crap out in a couple years anyway. So, I've offered to try and raise money informally among family and friends and ask instead for a 10% community contribution2. In addition to this, I've been saving from my own Peace Corps stipend3 for about 5 months and have saved $520 towards the project.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I want to gauge interest in donations from home. To do this I've put an anonymous vote on the right side of this blog. Please note that this is in no way a commitment to contribute, but rather to give me an idea of whether this method would work. I appreciate all truthful responses, and send lots of love to everyone.

Jones out.

Footnotes

1 - This is the amount of "money" put forward by the community to pay for the project. The grant puts up the rest of the money.

2 - Of course, in addition to this, most grants ask a lot of questions about plans for sustainability, which I also plan on developing with the community. I've begun training a few teachers to be computer administrators and know some things about managing programs and viruses (although we shouldn't have many problems with the latter due to our reliance on Linux-based OSs). The next thing I want to get started soon is some type of committee to get things moving and spread the word.

3 - This would probably be considered pretty meager by US standards. To give you an idea, but not the actual amount, if the poverty level were set at $5000 dollars income per year I would fall a healthy margin below that. However, it's still about triple what teachers here get, who are doing quite a bit better than the average Ugandan. At times it has seemed ironic that I'm a volunteer and making so much more above the average of the people. I've run out of money before (partly due to banking errors) and had to live for a week on about a dollar and left-over food, which is probably a more realistic experience. So, to feel a little better about myself I've been using good amounts of this money to improve the resource room, or in saving towards this project, or buying materials for the savings groups.

Just a quick note here. Not much is new, still doing the same things, but might be expanding the VSLA (savings groups) to some poorer parents. Yesterday I had my first meeting under a tree where the participants were mostly sitting on the ground--I felt very Peace Corps.

My counterpart, Yeko, has expressed interest in having a pen pal in the US. Is anybody interested in that? If so, just send me an email with your address and I'll have him write you a letter. If I get a lot of responses I'll look for other people here that might want to have a pen-pal.

Peace out.

It's been a while. To reward all you diligent checkers of my blog, here's some pictures (there's some cool bugs too):

Introduction Ceremony

I managed to invite myself to an introduction ceremony1, which was pretty cool, although mostly what I'd expected from other volunteers' descriptions.

The spoils of having a daughter (and these are just the stocking stuffers):

Wasswa2 (left, spitting out chicken bone --flattering, no?) and me feasting with nature's fork:

Visiting Joe and Bird "Watching"3

left to right: Rustum (finished and soon to be heading back to grad school is physics, there's more nerds out here than you think), Joe (crossword guru who just put up a basketball hoop at his site in the middle of nowhere, and general cool guy), Jenna (behind, short-term volunteer, who may have mentioned that Peace Corps Costa Rica is way better), Rishi with the "isn't that the rare ___?" look (the bird "watching" organizer and source/go-to-man for many fun events -- check out his blog), and a Ugandan man nice enough to put up with us and paddle us around the lake.

Rustum and I chilling on the very top of a big rock outcrop that we camped on.

Bugs

Dedicated to Amy G. & Tara (now in PC Madagascar!), ladies of biology.

These first two beetles were about the size of a chapstick tube and each one managed to make enough noise in my room to wake me up. You could hear the jaws of the second one clack, it could probably take a finger off. This spider could win a staring contest with two people.

What I'm doin'...

I've finally gotten busy and feel like I have enough (not yet too much) work to do. I know, it took a year?! What have I been up to this whole time? Well let's just say I was doing good things at times, but now I'm doing good things that 1) I care about and motivate me and 2) others care about and motivate them:

Co-teaching P7 (6th grade) math at my school. This can be both a lot of fun (like starting a group clap for an impromptu music lesson) and frustrating (to mark pupil's work who have trouble adding when they're supposed to know some algebra). Because of the latter aspect I've mostly become the "remedial" math teacher, going over topics that they should know already. This last week we covered the multiplication table, with an emphasis on having it memorized4 and receiving a sweetie (candy) for reward.

Teaching the "Computa" to Teachers at my school. With a "theory" lesson every week on word processing and spreadsheet programs5, a recent typing test, and continuing practice sessions 3X per day on my laptop, the teachers at my school are slowly becoming a bit more conversant with the digital world. It's heartening. It's also painfully slow, but teaching anyone to use the computer from scratch when you've been using one since 3rd grade could cause a little frustration.

Starting a Village Savings and Loan group among my teachers. This is a cool program created by a group called VSL Associates which allows people to create their own savings group with minimal materials (basically a metal box with three locks). To illustrate why this is valuable it takes me about $7 and a whole day to get to a bank where I can withdraw money. So, my teachers can get together every few weeks, put money in a box, then after a couple meetings start giving loans to themselves (and thus sharing the interest at the end rather than losing it to a bank). That all makes it sound easy-as-pie and informal, but there's quite a bit of detail including writing a Constitution and stuff. We've done two of the nine 2-hour sessions and it seems like it's going well. If this works out I might try to start some more outside my school5

(Computer Lab). Made a budget for this, but it's on the backburner until VSLA is mostly done. + other little projects.

Well, that's all I have time/energy to write today. Know that I miss you all.

Loves,

Ryan

Footnotes

1 An Introduction Ceremony is an important aspect of marriage here, it's more important than the actual wedding. The idea of it is that the family of the bride and the family of the groom get together and have a big conversation about these two people getting married and then the groom's family brings a whole bunch of presents on top of which they give the dowry, which is usually something like a few cows and can be refused by the bride's family. I've been told that "Here in Uganda it's the man that marries, and the woman that is married." Hmmm.

2 Wasswa is the teacher that I'm co-teaching P7 math with. He usually dresses very "smart" and will often be wearing a tie just for fun. He's also one of the teachers I'm giving extra computer training to, so that they can run the computer lab (whenever that gets moving).

3 "Looking for" may have been more appropriate because we were canoeing on this lake to find the elusive (and frankly quite ugly) shoebill. However, few birds were seen, but much fun was had.

4 One thing I've discovered here in Uganda is that my memory sucks. It's probably partly the Emerson aspect that if a man gets a watch he loses the ability to tell time by the sun--so I've lived in America where reminders abound and have lost the ability to remember :). The value of memorizing important or often-used things has also come up quite a bit. Memorizing names, or memorizing basic concepts saves so much time in the end. Memorization is also a big part of the VSL&A system which makes it transparent. Then again, memorization can be overdone at the expense of understanding, and sometimes there's just too much crap to remember--I still suck at crosswords and may never know who "Poet St. Vincent Millay" is.

5 I didn't say "Word" and "Excel", because we're running Ubuntu-Linux here. None of that Microsoft junk, only Abiword and Gnumeric, and Open Office, yo. Actually, beyond that nerdly fervor, I would suggest that people check out Open Office. It works on pretty much all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, etc.), is free, and does pretty much everything that Microsoft Office does, and probably more.

6 VSL&A is designed for the poorest of people, many of whom may be illiterate. Although my teachers should benefit from it, they are better off than many of the completely subsistence farmers in the area. That's one thing that's a bit sad about doing work here: you can see a lot of people that need help, but it's also very difficult for you to go out and help them if you feel so much like an outsider. This is the main reason why pretty much all my work has been at my school. I feel like I belong here and am accepted and don't have to worry about being called "muzungu" or constantly asked inane questions about Barack Obama or whatever. I've also travelled to some places that could really use a Peace Corps volunteer (or just some dedicated teachers), but they're so "deep" that no one wants to live there--no electricity, small dirt road impassable most of the year, and practically no goods available. Then again, I know some volunteers in "deep" places like that, who are struggling to find ways they can help. < /random_musings_on_development>

Just another small blog post here, mostly due to the fact that I've been receiving a lot of awesome letters and really need to get my butt in gear to reply to all of them.

Letters Received

Mom: Cute card. Gyebaleko (trans. nice work!) on hosting Eraetu.

Grandpa Dick: Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted. Something small coming your way soon.

Michelle: Awesome pictures & beautiful letter. Like some of the past ones it's a work of art that should be displayed rather than put on the shelf, I haven't figured out a good way to do it yet though.

Amy Nicholas: Laughed my butt off, even the blueprints on the back (no carpet in the collection center ;).

Dave: I've been listening non-stop to the new music. Thanks for taking the time during busy finals week to make those. I just recently got some ugandan music on my computer. I'll try to organize it a bit and repay the favor.

Also, I managed to lose the letters I got from Tara and Lizzy (I know, it was lost once and now again -- MADNESS!). But I have your addresses so I'll just write/draw some random things for you.

Lastly, I've been keeping track of my emotional state by drawing in my planner smiley, frowny, and blandy faces, respectively :) :( :|. And I assigned them numbers from -2 to 2 with blandy at 0 and made a graph. Here it is:

Note that the mean (orange line) is above 0, and that March was very manic depressive. Things seem to be smoothing out though, which is good.

AWESOME NEWS! I'M COMING HOME!

It just so happens that I am DEFINITELY coming home August. I'll be flying in on the 6th and then heading out the 25th. WOOT! TWO AND A HALF WEEKS OF AWESOMENESS!!!

Please put in your orders for cool african things, drums, games, carvings, whatever. More to come.

Adios,

The Jonesinator

Just a quick post here to announce that my major project for the 2nd half of my service will be trying to put in a small (probably 2 or 3) computer lab at my center school. The computer training that I've done with my teachers just using my laptop has been a lot of fun and has felt like something valuable that I can bring to the table, which I really needed.

Anyway, I'm planning to get some Inveneo Computing Stations, which are pretty sweet. They're resistant to dust (because they don't have fans and use flash memory) and use extremely low power (22 watts, about a third of an incandescent light bulb), which is important because we'll be running them straight off 12V DC deep-cycle batteries (think car batteryPLUS).

So mainly, I just wanted to share that with you. You can also check out these cool little laptops designed for kids. I've played around with one and they're really neat.

Loves & misses you all,

Jonesy

Just thought I'd put up this cool shot that Brad got of me at the bottom of Sipi Falls. This is dedicated to all you Radiohead fans (Jay, Dave, etc.), you don't have to just listen to In Rainbows, you can live it. For all of you interested in physics and things that are pretty, usually with a rainbow what you're seeing is light reflected & refracted in water droplets which divides the "white" sunlight into its spectrum. This happens at a certain angle from the sun and so usually we see a rainbow, which is half or a smaller arc of a circle. At bottom of this waterfall you could see the rainbow in a full circle. BTW: it was awesome!

Hey all, just a quick post here to assure you all that I'm alive and well despite the relative silence on the blog.

Letters ReceivedLizzy: Turns out that my friend who I used to share a P.O. Box accidentally lost this amid some papers so this I just got this letter from September.

Tara: From Madagascar - Rock on fellow PCV!Now that the term is out until next month I should have some extra time to write back to those above, and those who wrote before.

Beyond that, below are some lovely (altho sadly a bit pixellated) images from a nice corner of Uganda.

Shout Out: Amy Nicholas & Jack are getting married in August!0Letters1

Brandi (about 3 weeks ago)

Grandpa Dick (about 3 weeks ago)

On the subject of letters, it turns out that Peace Corps doesn't want anything sent to their P.O. Box in Kampala unless you're in training, so everything should be sent to my personal P.O. Box.

Cat!I got one. He is named Katogo2. He's a good little kitty when he's not being bad. Here are some pics:

Footnotes

0 There is a possibility of me coming back, nothing for sure yet though (hint hint, Mom, offer still stands?).

1 I just wanted to start mentioning when I've sent out a letter, just to double check that people are getting them. I have a suspicion that some never arrived.

2 This the name of a mixed bean & cassava dish I like, it also means little papyrus or swamp. It also sounds a bit like the spanish "gato" and like "cat go."

(internet is being a bit crappy, sorry if the formatting's messed up

So, I'm not usually much of one for anniversaries and dates and

things, but one year seems like a bit of a milestone I can't ignore.

And, to be perfectly honest can't help celebrating a little. Instead

of a long eloquent expose on my current state of consciousness (I

kinda did that in the last entry) I decided that I'd revisit my

exact1 first impressions of Uganda

recorded in my journal:

7th March 2007

So far it's been pretty awesome here in Uganda. We've gone through

a lot of seminars (i.e. been talked at), but this country is beautiful

and the Ugandans I've met so far are extremely nice. They tend to be

somewhat shy and polite, but this may be because much of them are

workers at this "retreat," Banana Village.

When we were driving here around midnight right after stepping off

the plane I remember feeling so elated, with such a sense of wonder

coursing through me. My nose was twitching2 and my eyes roamed from my seat

at the very front of the bus. [...] I really marveled at the

beauty of the full moon, hanging in the sky with whisps of cloud to

keep it company. [...] My eyes roamed in wonder, but this was

interrupted for a time by the thought that this elation would not

last.3 That at some point I would undoubtedly be frustrated abnd depressed in this country. It kinda brought me down a bit and then I realized I was being dumb and should strive to enjoy the feeling while it lasted.

On the first night I couldn't sleep. There were so many new

noises: crickets, frogs, owls(?), monkeys(?). Their short calls or

incessant droning rhythm came into my dormitory in stereo and tickled

my excited ears under my mosquito net. With the comforter bunched up at the baseboard 4and my lumpy pillow at the head forced me ito curl up on my bowl-shaped cot. I tapped my feet and vibrated a little, at times trying futilely to fall asleep, at others just zenning out on the night sounds or the colors5 of the darkness around me.

At about 5 o'clock, two hours before breakfast, I decided to give up trying to sleep and walk around the Banana Village compound to take in as much as I could in the darkness. I slipped on some pants and my faux-Teva sandals6 and slipped out the door. I moved slowly without a light, strolling and stopping for noises in the bush and once to look at the moon. Not more than a couple minutes into my stroll I gelt a prick on my foot--and then another. I was confused at first and suddenly the prospect of chiggers in the grass hit me as the pains came more frequently. I ran down to the porch of my dormitory, flopping along and hoping not to wake anybody up. I sat down quickly throwing off my sandals and hurriedly brushing off the little bastards. I crushed a few of the stragglers and went to take one of the colder showers of my life before laying back down to wait for the others to wake up. Back in bed, I chuckled to myself about my first little adventure with the local wildlife.

So, that was my first night in Uganda. Loves and misses you all. Weeraba.

Footnotes

1 Well, actually, I corrected grammar a bit and

changed a couple words, but you can tell if you look at the

formatting. And, added the ever-popular footnotes.

2 It's interesting how much your state of mind

can influence the way that you remember things, especially your

sense-memory of it. I said "my nose twitching," which is a bit inane,

but I was just trying to stress that what I remembered most from my

first impressions were specific senses rather than huge thoughts, like

how the air of Uganda felt -- like Arkansas, warm and close

how clear and bright the moon and stars were -- bright blue while below in Uganda most was dark or lit by dim orange light

how Uganda smelled -- like something burning, sometimes plastic, sometimes brush, it brought me back to my time in Brazil when we saw people burning things on the side of the road (garbage cans, let alone garbage collection are about as rare here as ice)

3 Echo Metallica -- "Sad but True"

4 I almost always go to sleep without a blanket at first -- it's just too damn hot. But around 4am or so it gets cold enough (Dad & Jason would probably say, "It finally gets to a tolerable level of 'hot'.") that covering up is necessary now that I've adapted. I'm officially a cold-weather-wuss and put on long sleeves in 70 degree weather. I guess it makes sense considering that in 90+ heat I'm used to wearing pants because that's the culture.

5 No need to worry, I'm not writing about how I went crazy the first night in Uganda. I'm just talking about the colors and patterns you see when you close your eyes. If I try hard I can usually see neon green, red, and purple, but only one at a time. I believe this is called an entoptic phenomenon, which I think are really neat. Another one that you can look up is called blue field entoptic phenomenon -- if you look at the sky in a certain way you can see these bright little motes whizzing around, which are appparently the white blood cells whizzing around in the veins of your retina. Pretty sweet, huh! I'm pretty sure these are the "stars" you see when you stand up to quick or your brother-in-law gives you a good one-two to the dome. I've seen some other things like this, but barring research or corroboration I plead the 5th in order to not be labeled loony (alliteration, lules!).

6 These are my staple-shoes. They are often dirty, a little ragged, a little too big, and not exactly what you'd call "prfessional." Beyond that they are beautiful, wonderous, and superb in this damn hot country. I put on a polo shirt, tuck in my shirt, and wear a belt, but damnit the shoes are mine! Adaptation is never absolute, sometimes you gotta make a stand for comfort and sanity.

WARNING!: This is a long post. Read at a leisurely pace. Preferrably in little sections interrupted by catnaps or mindless perusing of the internet.

Today, I just heard from two other volunteers that someone1,2 in my group will be ETing (Early Termination - a.k.a going home without completing service) at the end of the month. And that's cool. Her reasons make sense and it seems like the right decision. One of the volunteers I was talking with, however, said something to the effect of,"She's lucky, I'm jealous. I want to go home" and I replied, "I would have said the same thing yesterday. But, today, strangely enough, I really wanna stay." So, I thought the last couple days might be a good way to illustrate the ups and downs of my life here and also update my blog which has been much too neglected. So, here we go:

The "Bad"19 Day

Yesterday started out pretty okay. The night before I'd prepared a couple graphs on flipchart paper to present at the first staff meeting of Kayonza Primary (see example below).

3

The meeting went well, I presented my graphs and also talked about other things like the bars that I've put in the windows of the resource room to make it secure and stuff. So, here's where I'm going to talk about how my day easily turns shitty. Afer the meeting I got some lunch, washed some clothes which I would need for today and headed off to Kitimbwato get:

11, 38.5 inch bars to finish securing Resource Room

Airtime (read: cell phone minutes)

G-nuts4, raw, for roasting as a snack

Miscellaneous vegetables

Pretty straightforward, right? Wrong. Airtime was got with only 10 mins waiting - no problem. Then I went to get bars from a hardware shop from which I've already bought quite a bit, including metal bars for the windows and paint. Now 20 feet costs 12,000 shillings[]. I wanted to buy 38 feet. Let's do the math:

12,000 [UgSh] / 20 [feet] = 600 [UgSh/foot]

600 [UgSh/foot] * 38 [feet] = 22,800 [UgSh]

Yet, this guy was charging me 25,000 shillings, even after we did the calculation above together, and I explained that if I buy more of something it should be cheaper than if I buy less. I was asking for him to come down to 23,0005, really, a piddling reduction considering the above and all I've bought from him. So, with a simmering rage I gave into frustration and just walked away.

Okay, next item is g-nuts. Went to the dukka6, and greeted the man, asked for the nuts, he begins measuring out a kilo for me (internal dialogue: "good, okay, at least something is going right"). Then up walks this guy, clearly drunk (at 3 pm), who flops his hand out in front of me and says, "you give me 100"8. Already, pissed off, I say in Luganda9, "no, I'm not going to give you anything," then I change my mind and say, "okay, if you can answer this question I will give you 100." "What is the square root of 2?" (accepted answer 1.41). Clearly he couldn't answer it and asked me a few more times why I wasn't going to give him money and said, "so you are very sober" and I replied, "yes, and you are very not sober." So, not exactly putting me in a great mood, at least this was entertaining to the people around, who were chuckling at the mzungu and the drunkard.

On to miscellaneous vegetables. I move on to find that the lady I usually buy green peppers and cabbage and stuff from has almost nothing on her table. Bouncing around a few times, "where can I find green peppers?" (they point, I go there). Greet the man with vegebles on a small table, and notice the green peppers are small and shriveled due to age, so I figure that the normal price of 100 is a bit too high and ask for a reduction. He says, "No" giving some excuse about sunshine and whatever, then I say, "okay, how 'bout 3 for 200?" again he says "No" with more excuses about travel costs whatever. Okay, fine. Now I point to the heads of cabbage which are respectively 300 and 200, and small enough to be 200 and 100. I ask for a reduction. "No." "Okay, how 'bout you give me this larger (orig. 300) lettuce, with these three peppers (orig. 300), for 50010?" "No." Flaring nostrils and having thoughts of grabbing a machete and going Hotel Rwanda on this guy, I buy two peppers and walk away swearing under my breath before an internally roiling bike ride home. A few things to notice here:

Look how ridiculously hard it is for me to buy a few simple things for the correct price,

Notice how small small obstacles continue to accumulate, wearing down my overall

demeanor until,

I very quickly explode into a murderous rage, that, as we're about to see ruins my whole day.

So, I go home and want to do some repetitive work in a quiet place to cool myself down. I go to sweep the Resource Room. The well-meaning, but thoroughly loud and obnoxious kids that live near me notice my return and come to play in the room. I yell at them. A lot. "Stop sweeping, I don't want help." "Get out of the way." "I'm mad, if you're going to be in here I want you to be quiet." "Get out of the way." "Shut up!" "Get out of the way." "Okay, get out of the room." And eventually I close the door to keep them out and send the message with finality that I don't want to be bothered. After that, the sweeping does calm me down some.

I go back to my house where many kids are playing noisily on the swing I put up in the backyard11. Now, I've been trying to be outside my house more,12 and the hammock brought by Dad and Jason has been a godsend (THANK YOU!) not only in relaxing, but in being more comfortable among the kids of my immediate community. Anyway, I'm still mad, but want to do a bit of reading and relaxing in the hammock and I think I can ignore all the noise the swinging kids are making. I notice that one girl who is sitting near the hammock is staring at me. I get stared at a lot. A lot a lot. And it's unnerving, especially when all of your nerves are already gone. So, I ask the girl, "please stop looking at me so much" and all of the 15 or so kids that are back there have frozen and are all staring at me. And it is too much. I go inside and study stuff on the computer13. A little while later, the power goes out while I'm cooking and I think I should enjoy the dark night so I get my hammock time in with the stars14.

The "Good"19 Day

(I'm a bit tired from writing out my whole "Bad"19 day, so for now I'm going to be lazy and just write what my good day was like in outline format.)Abstract: Went to Kayunga mainly to observe the "Science Caravan" that's put on by the JICA15 volunteers at Katherine's Youth Center16. Wanted to do some other errands too.

Woke up to a cute text from a cute girl17.

Rode through a nice fog to Kayunga. Good for keeping cool. Bad for keeping clean.

After bathing18, managed to go get metal bars for

cheaper (19,000) as well as cut into pieces for less than half the previous price.

Found out Internet wasn't working (two times).

Nina (bottom left in pic) was upset with me for not preparing a math presentation.

I had brought SET to teach to the JICA volunteers. So, I told her about that, that I'd had a shitty day yesterday and hadn't felt like preparing anything, and that I would go get stamps made of the SET shapes, so that pirate versions could be more easily made (I'd been meaning to do this for a while). That way, if the JICA volunteers, who are all math & science teachers,liked the game they could make it themselves. Getting stamps made was a success and under my planned budget of 5,000. Watched and participated in JICA science presentation, which included:

A cardboard box, air vortexer (ARYA!!!!! like you're gun, but lower tech, still

worked well though.)

A number of neat magic tricks by Kimuli (next to Nina, with the crazy shirt)

A hot air balloon made from old plastic shopping bags

An experiment with cup telephones for the participants to do

Some cool exploding things

A bottle rocket using air pressure, some water, and a pump. One of the JICA volunteers was struggling a bit with the explanation, so I came up to help and showed off some skillz by explaining the physics of it mostly in Luganda. Yes. I am that cool.(Ego up.) Yes. That is maybe the nerdliest thing to be cool about. (And back down.)

Taught SET to a number of the youths that stayed after the science presentation.

Rode home toting iron bars. Was tired. But was happy.

Final product of the day: the shining blog entry before you.

Also, if you followed my advice, now is a good time to come back to 19. For the rest of you that already read it, I bet you're those same breed of masochists that like to read the last page of a book first aren't you? But, I'm sure that's no one I know ;).

Loving and missing you all,

Ryan

1 Note that I'm trying to keep these people relatively anonymous. No judging allowed!

2 Also, I'm learning a bit of html and these footnotes are now linked. Please appreciate accordingly. If I get ambitious, I'll go back and link the footnotes in my last big post.

3 These are PLE (Primary Leaving Exam) Results for P7 (~7th grade students). You can think of (Division 1)=(A), (Div 2)=(B), 3=C, 4=D, U=F, and X=absent. Notice difference in achievement by genders (sorry for stereotypical pink=girls, blue=boys coloring).

4 This is short for Ground Nuts, and they're pretty much exactly like peanuts, except that the little red paper thing on the inside tends to stay on a lot better.

5 Note that the difference of our prices is about the same as the difference between $14.71 and $13.53 (exchange rate of 1700 [UgSh/$]).

6 This is the Luganda word for "run," but also happens to mean a small store. Many words in Luganda mean many different things, example: omukka n. 1. breath, 2. smoke, 3. fog. Luckily the meanings tend to be related. 10 points for the person that can think of some words like this in English. All that comes to my mind is "too," "to," "two," but those aren't very fun.

7 I deleted this footnote later one, but I don't know regular expressions well enough yet to reorder the ones below without spending forever, so I'm leavingit.

8 Okay, test time, how many $ is 100 UgSh worth?

9 After this point, things said in English will be normal type face and things said in Luganda will be italicized.

10 Mathematical minds will notice the difference is 100 [UgSh], which, if you passed the test from above is about $0.06. So, I'm asking for old and small vegetables to be reduced from $0.35 to $0.29 - which I think is reasonable.

11 Note that this swing has already broken. After I fix it, it will be part of the next post I'm planning about shit that breaks. I built the swing after they had broken my hammock (which I repaired).

12 It's really amazing how easy it is to become a hermit here. When you are so different and constantly bombarded by kids calling you "Mzungu" it's an easy escape to just hide in your house. There are nice books there which bring you back to America where you are, if not normal, then at least accepted. At the very least more than a circus freak.

13 Which was surprisingly calming in a kind of zombifying way. I've been trying to decide whether it was good for my service that my computer came, because I've been spending a decent amount of time with it, but I think net effect is positive.

14 This was actually a superb idea (sorry 'bout the self-congratulation). My hammock is placed below a tree somewhat skimpily clad in leaves and most of the amazing number of stars were very brightly lit behind it's pitch dark boughs. I had the thought that it was really cool that the actual sky I could see was so much brighter than the dark branches and leaves of the tree and as I swung back and forth the stars moved (due to parallax) in and out, as if the whole world was swinging in the cradle of the sky. It was very beautiful, very relaxing, very deep. I recommend.

15 read: Japanese Peace Corps.

16 The Youth Center is where Katherine, one of my closest volunteers, works as the boss. She's had me come to teach mathematics and tries to hold events for kids as well as always being open with pool (billiards that is), ping pong, a little library, a TV + DVD player, a nice field, etc. Clearly, her organization has money. This is weird in Peace Corps. But, it's also really nice.

17 Although only occuring once, I can definitely say that this is the best way to start my day in the village. I even came up with a funny story as a reply. BTW: lest you all think that I'm some lecherous Romeo over here, please note that girls, in general, for me, have been more problems than they're worth here in Uganda.

18 22 [km road] + speeding trucks/cars + sweat + dust = a very dirty Ryan. Katherine and Amy let me use their facilities to bucket bathe. I appreciate.

19 you should probably read this last, even though it is referenced near the top. Okay, so I wanted to explain why I put "good" and "bad" days in quotes. It's not because I don't want to be judgemental and say all days are created equal. They're not. Some days are shit. Some days rock. What I want to point out here is how even the bad day had some rays of goodness: having a successful meeting where I was well appreciated and presented valuable information, a beautiful hammock-time under the stars. And even the best day had some smears of crappiness: making Nina upset for not having prepared, finding the internet down many times, probably being overcharged for the stamps, being called"mzungu" for about two hours straight on the ride to and from Kayunga. In the end, the difference between a good day and a bad is not just the things that happen, but how you react to them, how you let them affect the course of your actions from bad things to bed time. You can get pissed and take it out on others or you can turn around and say, "I can make this right, it'll just take a bit of work on my part." I'm sure some writer for SCRUBS has already put this idea much more eloquently at the end of episode #whatever, but hey, I'm a physics major right? : )

Just a quick post here. My computer now has an operating system - Ubuntu! The excitement comes from the fact that despite the limited functionality from running an OS from a Cd I've been able to do a lot more responding to emails and blog posting. Now, I'll be able to do more responding, more pictures and if I get real bored, audio and video too. And, magically, being able to do more writing on a comfortable digital platform has seemed to keep me more sane (notice the change to "Nerd" in blog title). That's it, here's a picture I promised Michelle:

I've decided to move my P.O. Box closer to home in Kayunga, because I don't go to Jinja very often. Here's the new address (mainly for letters):

H. Ryan "Migadde" Jones, PCV

P.O. Box 18279

Kayunga

UGANDA

However, if you want to send semi-important packages, I would still suggest using the address that goes to the Peace Corps office in Kampala.

Lastly, I just wanted to let you all know that I've signed up to a website called GoodReads. Now you can see what I'm reading and what I think of it (also see "widget" in the sidebar at right).

Letters

Thinking back, there were a couple letters I sent out that I wasn't sure if they had arrived, so I decided to put a list of some that I haven't heard back from. Also, after the first few that I wrote I started making photocopies - sooo, if it actually didn't arrive, I can send along another copy upon request:

Nicole, I sent you a letter back May in response to the frisbees and stuff (which I greatly appreciated), but Jason seemed to think that you never got it.

G'ma & G'pa, Pug & Jug, sent a little aerogram back in about Aug/Sept. It had a nice graph of my emotional state :)

Aunt Tracy, Thanks a lot for sending Ender's Game. It's already gone through the hands of a number of the volunteers. I sent you a brief letter of thanks in August with a lot of questions in it about what's going on.

James, sent something in July with many footnotes and a couple doodles.

Now a few of you may be wondering if I ever got things from you, and hopefully I'll get off my butt soon and write back:

Patty Finally got the duct tape and candy - what more do you need in life?

Sara, just got the amazing package of kid's books. Can't wait to put them in the resource room and start sharing them with the neighbor kids when they get back after the holidays. There's also quite a few that I haven't read yet - soon to be remedied. You Rock, you!!!

Michelle & Brandi, Will write soon. Awesome pictures, etc received and appreciated. You are missed.

Collete, see above.

Matt, have read most of the poetry and will be writing some responses soon.

Let me know if I missed anyone there.

The Whirlwind Tour of Uganda

So, as most of you probably know, Biff-Dad and Jason-Bro came to visit for 15 days at the end of Nov & beginning of Dec. Which was awesome! It was really great to see some faces from home and also to get a fresher perspective on Uganda. The joke (reality?) around here is that as long-term volunteers, many of us get very "jaded." For a good while near the beginning in training and a little beyond everything is new and exciting, and it's just so much fun to be in a new place so different from home. After a while things start to drag. The constant barrage of "Muzungu" from the local kids, the staring, your co-workers forever being 1+ hours late to everything or not telling you about this meeting or that, and how everything breakable seems to break and everything going wrong always does -- it starts to wear on you. And eventually, you kind of start to hate the world. To hate Uganda. And the worst part of it is that it becomes reflex. Now, you are jaded. In fact, I often will say that Uganda has taught me how to be angry. Anyway, to get back on subject, it was especially awesome that Dad and Jason were able to indirectly show me how much of a rut I was in, how much that reflexive anger was just unproductively bringing me down and isolating me . Both Dad and Jason were having a grand old time just hanging out with people (esp. kids) in my village. I remember Jason teaching Jason-Fu to Kenneth as well as learning the local card game, "Matatu"@. All the kids thought Dad was a riot, with his weird noises and by village standards absolutely alien looks -- I don't think we could count on both hands how many times a kid would see Dad and just burst out crying : ). We had some pretty good times in the village, and even got some good work done on my resource center and house as well.

Each day was a new adventure for us, and as Dad said, it's not really possible to sit down and tell the story of everything that happened. There's so much to tell. So, I'm not really going to try. Suffice it to say, we had an awesome time, and maybe if we're lucky Dad and/or Jason will write a little something that I'll post here as a guest portion of the blog. Also, as soon as I get a workable operating system on my laptop, I'll put together a post with some pictures so you can see what it was all about.

Christmas & New Year's

I remember seeing a news story a few years ago showing footage of a shirtless Santa paddling to the shore of one of the Hawaiian islands. In reaction I just shrugged and said "that's weird" thinking nothing of it. Well, I had no idea how weird it actually is -- frickin' weird. I've remarked before on the strangeness brought about by days having the exact same length$, everyday, a Groundhog-Day-effect of sorts. Along with the lengthening of the day to signal oncoming summer, the shortening of the day was always the precursor to the holiday season. But as the same day comes, 80 85 90o F, even though Christmas music is playing, it still feels more like it's about 4th of July. It was especially strange because the major PCV get together in Kampala was a barbeque. Also, I've gotten pretty used to the go-home-to-Spokane, catch-up-with-friends-you-haven't-seen-in-a-while, laze-around-and-do-jack-nothing-at-the-p's-house routine. Which was nice. Comfortable, even. Instead there's a training right up to a few days before Christmas#, I get to hang out with familiar friends, and actually had a nice Christmas Eve dinner of salad and pumpkin soup%. It was cool, it was fun, it was pretty alright. But, it wasn't really Christmas.

Actually, it was a lot closer to Christmas when Dad & Jason came. Really, it was like six Christmases rolled into one with all of the stuff they brought for me&, and of course just to see them was a lot closer to a Christmas feel than I felt on the 25th. Near the Eve many of the PCV conversations turned to "what does your family do on Christmas?" and we all wistfully shared our stories. Mine were about decorating the tree, twice-baked potatoes, getting a little tipsy off rum & coke (just the one time), and the plastic-toy-gun wars on Christmas morning among others. It was kind of cool to hear how everyone's family celebrated differently. It was also kind of sad. Ooh, that's kind of a bad place to end this blurb. Oh, well*.

Maybe it's just be easier to say

that Christmas gave me a rain-check this year.

But, I want you all to know

that I miss you much, loves you dear.

Hope Christmas was Merry~,

and have a Happy New Year.

Loves,

Uganda-Jones

footnotes

! As Dad & Jason brought my laptop, I now have the ability to take more time to compose blog posts while I'm sitting around with nothing to do in the village. This is the first. Sadly I don't exactly have an operating system and I can't include pictures from my camera. You can be the judge of whether quality has improved, although I must say I do enjoy footnotes (who was it that sent The Mezzanine, Amy N.? P.S. I love you.).

@ As Kenneth doesn't speak much English, Jason had to pretty much learn this card game with hand gestures and Kenneth saying, "I win" to signal that Jason had come out poorly. This was especially hilarious as Jason kept losing and began to suspect that Kenneth was just making up rules to win : ).

$ Plus or minus ~7 minutes. Someday when I'm bored I might figure out exactly what the time difference is at this latitude. All I need is the radius of the Earth, the declination of the Earth's axis, and my latitude (handily got from GPS), and to assume the Earth is a sphere. I remember doing it once riding with Lee & Nancy on the way back to Spokane. Man I'm a nerd.

# Which was made infinitely better by the hotel we stayed at having a pool. For swimming. And volleyball. And general awesome enjoyitude.

% Unorthodox? -- Yes. Delicious? -- Quite. It's amazing how refreshing and mouth-wateringly good a salad can taste. It's also amazing how silly somewhat-deprived PCV's can get over simple things.

& Much of which was brought from a variety of sources, which all deserve a huge "THANK YOU SO MUCH! LOVES YOU LOTS!" -- you know who you are.

* I actually didn't mean to make a little poem here, I just noticed that the last few lines had some rhymes and couldn't help myself.

~ And in the case of Arya and Larry-Dad, I hope you both had a really good birthday.

Thanksgiving

Here's a picture of the amazing Thanksgiving Feast we had at Amy's new house in Kayunga, with Amy (one of the Top Chef's along with Brett) proudly smiling in front. She appears a bit damp because it decided to downpour for a little bit right as we were finishing the preparations, but supposedly that's good luck here in Uganda. I ate two heaping plates of food and was full until lunch the next day.

Pictures from the 100 KM Day

At one point in attempting to visit all 64 schools in my cachement area I had to head, as they say, "deep deep" and took a long bike ride. Luckily, I brought my camera along with me, here are a few pictures from the trip:

This is a Jones-eye view on a typical day while going out to visit schools. Almost endless dirt "roads," but lots of good exercise and sun. And look! I have a little bell!

These cool cactus trees are not rare, but not common either. They look like they should be in the desert rather than the tropics and they can grow to be pretty huge. I've been wanting to get a picture of one for a while and got this nice shot against the blue of the sky.

Awesome birds are everywhere. Here's some of the kind that have this amazing crimson underbelly.

SWAMP! (notice cool little lily things) This, I think, is a finger off of Sezibwa "river," which is a branch off the Nile. My district, Kayunga, is placed right between Sezibwa and the Nile, with Lake Kyoga to the north. So, it's like I'm on a little island, unfortunately sometimes it feels like it.

Clouds & Trees

I like them. Hope you do too:

A neat UFO cloud. I think this is caused by a thermal, which happens to push up beyond the dew point another, more humid, layer of air. There's a name for this. I don't know what it is, but I do know that it happens around mountains a lot.

There was one weekend where I went a bit crazy. Literally. Anyway, I'm okay now, but one of the days after having realized I was going a bit crazy I decided to take a morning and bike to the Nile. I found it and here's a picture of the morning dew drops - it was awesome and I felt a lot better. Also talked with the ferry man that was waiting for passengers about how I missed things like mountains and water and stuff.

About a month ago I went to a really cool little rainforest where a JICA volunteer is posted (in Nepoleon Dynamite voice, "Lucky!") for a rave (yes, a rave), and a nice hike through the woods. Here are some green shoots growing on a log. P.S. I forgot the name of the forest. Sorry.

There were some huge spider nests in {pick your own name} Forest.

A really neat tree that I found on a hike while in Sipi Falls a while back. Reminds me of the show Six Feet Under, anyone? anyone? (Nathaniel?)

RANDOM

This is a bat. I have a lot that live in my roof. I don't know why this one was crawling instead of flying. Sometimes I find them in my house. If I'm feeling mean I kill it with a flip flop (the same flip flop as for cockroaches) and then I throw it outside (where the chickens will eat it in the morning - Yes! chickens eat bats, and frogs, and even rats - whole). If I'm feeling nice I try to kindly usher it outside with my broom.

(Really old pic back from In-Service Training) Derek likes his bi-coffee.

There was a man selling apples at 500 /= a go in the taxi park - I bought the whole bag. And don't they look dashing in my neat wicker basket-thingys? Very Zen. And with that, I'm out.

Peace,

Jones

Hey there,

A couple people have asked me if I (or my schools) want anything for Christmas. I'm having trouble thinking of anything - which means I'm probably pretty good. A good book, or a cartoon you doodled on a restaurant napkin, or pictures are always welcome and I love to get them. If you can think of cool little toys / games / oddities that village children would like and would entertain them for a long time (a.k.a. must be durable and not require things like batteries - and, of course, this is a school so it's better if it can make them think) that would be really cool too. I've been trying to find a good level book to have them read, but their English (+ reading) is so poor, they probably couldn't read anything beyond Dr. Seuss (which some might like).

As before, remember that anything that more closely approximates a letter (e.g. a padded envelope versus a box), it will travel amazingly faster.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy CHOGM! (google it if you don't know what that is)

Loves you all,

Jones out

I just got a package from Michelle, with the most awesome Birthday gifts: Pictures of everyone with messages on the back – Thanks so much to: Dave, Arya, James, Amy, Tara, Andy, Lindsay, Parker, Raz, Jesse, Lizzy, Anna, Sarah, Brandi, and of course Michelle (and thanks for the XKCD & card too). Also, a shot out to Collette, with the most randomly awesome package with magazines, playing cards (how did you know?!), and other goodies.

So, I’m doing pretty well, I just spent last night in Jinja winning 50,000 /= (which is about $30) at the Casino, before going out dancing. We may be volunteers working against disease, ignorance, and poverty during the week, but we know how to party on the weekends. And some of that money will probably go to improving my resource center – I’m pretty sure no money will be coming from the college to fix it, and grant writing seems pretty daunting especially considering that the amounts are so small ($5 here, $20 there).

Well, I think that I’ve just recently cleared a hump that I knew I was stuck on. It seemed like every day I was getting mad at kids calling me “Mzungu” every where I went and taxi drivers trying to overcharge me (by like 25 cents, but it’s the principle), and I was spending an increasing amount of my time at site just reading and being by myself. Angry + Lonely – Good Friends & Familycloseby = Sad Jones. Anyway, I think what really helped was reading a book called Blue Like Jazz. It’s actually a book about one man’s search to be Christian in the modern world, so there were some parts about loving Jesus and whatnot that didn’t exactly speak to me. However, at the end there were some chapters where he talked about Living in Community, which really struck a chord with me. I’m really used to living with people (and if I can brag a bit, really awesome people), and here, by definition, I must live alone. The only problem with that is that it gets lonely. Anyway, there were also another few chapters at the end of Blue where the author talked a lot about just “loving” other people, randomly, and unconditionally. This idea echoed what I read about Paul Farmer in Mountains Beyond Mountains (thanks Michelle), and I think it’s really an essential part of living a happy life. It’s also something I’m not very good at. But, over the last week, by just looking at the kids yelling “Mzungu” and dancing and going crazy, and laughing at them instead of scowling, I’ve felt a lot better. Looking around with a smile and approval of those around you has helped me very much to be happier. It’s true, things are annoying here. But it is infinitely easier to deal with them if you take them with acceptance and a smile than if you battle them. Anyway, that seems to be going well and I hope I can keep it up.

As far as work is concerned, things are going well. I’m almost finished visiting all 65 of my schools – there are only two left to go! Some of the ones I’ve already gone to were really “deep deep” in the bush. One day I visited three of the more remote schools and logged just under 100 Km on my bike mileage meter – which to brag a bit, is not too bad, especially on potholed, muddy, dusty, swampy, windy and sometimes maze-like “roads” and footpaths. It’s also amazing how much work it is to do things that seem so simple. I only visited 3 schools in one day. Three pages of basic information collected from a long hard day of riding. In the states, with a car, on good roads I could probably visit 12 schools in a day and be done with this tour in a week, rather than taking about 2 months just to visit each one for half an hour. Anyway, now that I have most of the data I’m starting to analyze it to figure out which schools are doing the best, and especially which schools are doing the best with the fewest resources. This will be a bit of a challenge as I’ll be working pretty much exclusively in Excel (oh, what I wouldn’t give for a nice copy of Matlab – never thought I’d miss that). Hopefully, I’ll have some type of report before the new term in Feb. 2008

Here’s a quick update of what’s coming up in my life:

* Dad and Jason coming to visit (Nov. 27th – Dec. 13th) WOOOT!

* Training of Facilitators (of which I’ll be one) for the Thematic Curriculum for P2 (2nd grade) teachers. This is a new project that Uganda is phasing in where the material to be taught isn’t strictly placed in subjects as much as themes and is supposed to integrate things better. It also focuses on giving pupils (they almost never call them “students” here) a more fluent base in their local language (in my area, that’s Luganda). I think in theory it sounds like a good program, but as I’ve seen in some of the P1 classes while I’ve been here, actually doing it is a bit rocky.

* Life Skills & HIV/AIDS training (almost right up to X-mas) for a week in Kampala. I’m still not exactly sure what this “life skills” thing is – something like teaching kids to stand up for themselves so they can make good decisions and not get AIDS (most kids [and women] here are very deferent to anyone older and I bet this gets abused all too often).

* A nice break – no Christmas plans yet. It’ll be weird to be away from home.

* Then actually doing the training for the P2 teachers in my catchment area in January.

Alright, that’s it for me – Peace out!

Loves,

Ryan

Just a quick note here: Biff-Dad & Jason Bro are coming on November 26th (contact them if you want to send anything along with them -- hint hint, wink wink).

Things are going alright here, still bouncing up and down emotionally, but staying strong. Laters.

So, I think I last left off saying that I was going through a few tough times (which have continued off & on), but that I was looking forward to having some work to do over the next term. I guess that's pretty much come true, I have been working quite a bit. Most of what I've been doing is riding my bike around to different schools with student teachers, watching them teach a lesson (~45 minutes) and then talking with them about the good and bad things I saw and wrote down on their supervision form. At first I didn't really want to do this because it seems so hypocritical. I've never been a primary school teacher, what do I know about teaching, and what gives me the right to criticize these teachers? So, the solution to this dilemma was to rationalize. 1) I've been through a lot of school and I could tell which teachers were good for me and which ones were not. 2) Many times what follows a supervision is not just a criticism, but a conversation about how the lesson went, and a bouncing back and forth of ideas for making the lesson better (not every time, but one every few). 3) Many times I am the first person to ever watch them teach and try to give them some pointers on what they are doing well and what new methods would be good to try. With these rationalizations in mind I can definitely say that supervision seems helpful in the long run. As I was riding along one day I realized that it is almost definitely not the best use of the skills I have (which is largely in solving mathematical problems and using computers), but it's not bad either. I think that may many times be what Peace Corps is about -- Adaptation. Not only trying to fit yourself into a new culture, but to do work that you never really would've considered doing before. To try to fit your square-pegged self into a circle-shaped hole and then come out of it with some rounded edges and the ability to fit better everywhere.

The plan is to just keep on doing as I'm doing. John, my counterpart, has been a bit absent due to family obligations in Mbale (weddings and funerals), but I'm hoping he will come back soon to help me (with 30 students and a goal of 8 supervisions each over the next two months, I know I can't do it alone - and furthermore I shouldn't have to). Also, CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting) is coming up next month, which to my understanding will just involve a lot of people coming from different countries that used to be under British rule to visit and talk in Uganda. This seems to be a pretty big deal over here and all the talk is about "Are you ready for CHOGM?" which has really become more of a joke as it seems they really aren't. You can often go into an empty restaurant, sit down and look at the menu, and find that they don't have anything on the menu except matooke and beans - if they aren't ready for normal customers, then how will they deal with an influx of hungry foreigners who want some services? I've been hearing through the Peace Corps grapevine that CHOGM will cause all of the schools to get out early, which would be silly, but would give me a huge hunk of time from the end November through January in which I won't have any official work. I'm actually a little afraid of that time, although Dad and Jason will be visiting (ROCK!), the rest of the time I'm going to have to find things to do to keep from going crazy.

Changing Gears: Here's some pictures from Sipi falls. I'm just on my way back from there, where most of the volunteers congregated for Goatstock, our Halloween celebration (and yes it does involve the killing and eating of goats. I got to see / participate in the slaughter of one of them, which was fairly interesting. I'll spare the details for all you vegetarians out there : ). Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of costumes, I didn't have my camera out, but I plan on stealing some tonight from Allie, to be posted next time:

A few of us on the cliffs near the top of the upper falls. From left to right: half of our guide, Christina (PEPFAR group of 2006), Marcus (2nd-year PCV), Becky (Crisis Corps Volunteer). P.S. Sorry that this picture is crooked, I just realized that the horizon isn't straight and don't have photoshop to fix it - ah well. Still a beautiful view.

Here's a view of the upper falls We climbed to the bottom first and got completely drenched in the powerful spray that explodes outward from the bottom like a perpetual hurricane. In other words, it's really awesome.

Just some trees on the top of a cliff overlooking the upper falls

That's it for now. As always, loves you all and hope to hear from you now and then.

Sorry for being so quiet over here, but there's not a terrible lot that's new. I've just finished my 3 (well three and a half) month In-Service Training (IST). It was a week long, and as was advertised by Jeffrey (one of our program directors) it is most commonly THE low point for most volunteers. I'm not exactly sure, but I think I actually had my low point last week sometime and I'm definitely not as happy-go-lucky optimisitc as when I stepped off the plane. But, I just wrote a pretty big letter about that so I think I'll leave that alone for now - I'm really trying to look forward to this next term.

Here's my baby (Jesse, I wish I'd listened to you earlier about solar stoves, but I was too excited making other plans). Probably the only really productive thing I've done in the last few weeks while school has been on break. I'm really quite proud of it even though it only makes water REALLY hot, and not yet "boiling" :) . But, in my defense, I'm pretty sure it'll boil like a champ as soon as I get some black paint for my kettle, because at the moment the silvery surface is just reflecting off a lot of the light. For a quick description of what you're seeing, I used a design I found from a "solar cooker"-search on Wikipedia . It's just a big piece of cardboard (about 1.2 m X 1 m), I cut a couple slits in it and made a few folds, then I taped/glued aluminum foil to all the main reflecting services, last is a little green-house-effect transparent-plastic cover thing and there ya go, Free Energy. My neighbors, and some other teachers that had walked by showed a lot of interest, so maybe this'll become more than a backyard project.

Also, here's a picture of some JIKA volunteers (it's almost exactly Japanese Peace Corps), who came to visit my house briefly. You may notice that I no longer have any hair - and also that the line dividing my forehead from my lack of hair is amazingly straight. Yes, I know it's fairly hideous and as another volunteer has described "Putin-esque," but the Ugandans have all told me how "smart" I look and there's not that many mirrors here anyway. My barber had never done Mzungu hair before (he buzzed downwards for about 20 minutes before Amy showed him that you have to go against the grain to really get the hair) and started making some very straight lines before I could stop him. You should see the sides, they're like ladder steps. Anyway...

So, I'm looking forward to this next term and I have a fair amount of plans:

1) Continue supervising in-service student-teachers: This seemed very productive last term and I really enjoy watching the teachers teach and they seem to appreciate the feedback afterwards.

2) Teaching Math to student-teachers: I noticed during my supervisions last term that many of my teachers use "guided discussion" and "chalk-and-talk" and left it at that. So I'd like to teach them some math each week (because most nearly failed math, on their promotional exams the average was 47% - because 35% is set as passing, although it probably shouldn't be, because except for log properties the test wasn't THAT hard), but using more methods like groupwork, and games, and mini-projects so that they can get the math skills and maybe also see some alternative methods in practice.

3) Visit all 65 of my schools: This might be a bit ambitious, but I'd like to go to all of the schools in my catchment area this next term which will partly be in an effort to collect information and see which schools are doing the best (and worst) and why. The plan is to rank the schools visibly so that H/T's have an idea of how they are doing (and hopefully will have some social pressure to do school improvement, or at least to be at their schools {abesenteeism is a fairly big problem}), and also to inform some future projects. One of the main lessons that I did get from this workshop is that improvement in education happens at the school level versus at the level of individual teachers (Jeffery told me that many studies have backed this up, which I'd like to read if anyone maybe wants to do a bit of digging for scholarly papers? ; ), so maybe after this study I'll pick a few schools to start working more closely with.

4) And other smaller plans -> Look into making our Resource Center secure (it currently has nothing in it, because things would just be stolen/destroyed) -> Ramp down the Physics/Math at the secondary school to be just a once-a-week study center deal ->some other things I can't remember, but thankfully wrote down somewhere.

One last note in response to Ludan's comment asking about the weather here: Yes, it pretty much is summer all of the time, except that there's very often explosive thunderstorms, especially in the rainy season (I think it's partly due to the migration of the ITCZ-InterTropical Convergence Zone). It's amazing to see the sky darken and a good wind whip up a storm and then hurl down big crocodile tears (none of that Seattle mist-rain crap), all in 20 minutes. Also, it was a bit strange coming here because when I left (March), we were near the equinox, so the length of the day in America was about 12 hours which +/- 7 mins is the exact length of the day here. This means that it was very easy to transition to the day's length, but when the days never got longer it felt as if time had stopped. No new season was coming. Half light - half night -- DAY after DAY. I think I'm pretty much used to it now, but it'll be interesting to see what it feels like going the other way.

Alright, that's all I have time for now. Sorry for being a stranger. Letters shall be written. Loves all you all and hope to hear from you soon.

First a quick shot out to Michelle and Brandi (letters will be forthcoming) and Aunt Tracy (letter has been sent) for the excellent reading materials and Biff-Dad for many comfort / happiness essentials.

So, there’s been both a lot, and not much going on lately. I’m just on my way back from four days of language training in Mukono, which was nice. I really enjoy Luganda, and I’m starting to get into a little bit more of the meat with more complex conjugations (never and still and things), and the vocab is growing steadily (I have a little floss-box-turned flashcard holder that I carry around and try to go through about every other day). Actually, I may have been nearly the only one really looking forward to the language component of language training – it’s a little isolating to like learning the language so much when it seems most other volunteers aren’t really that interested. Beyond that, it was really nice to have a change of pace and some more American influence (and partying ; ).

Actually, it was my second “change of pace” in the last two weeks because I just went up to Mbale to help train some of the CCT’s (Coordinating Center Tutors, who are the teacher trainers and our counterparts / colleagues) in using computers. For one, Mbale is really beautiful (see picture below), and it has something to look at on the horizon – it’s amazing how much I really miss having mountains / hills around*. For two, it was a bit silly how unprepared they were to receive us – they didn’t have any place for us to stay the first night and the lack of electricity made it harder to find some makeshift accommodations. For three, they really weren’t prepared to use what they had, which was four (Me, Amy, Allie, and Fred – who lives near the college there) computer literate and willing teachers. Much of the time we just sat around playing on the computers (I discovered Spider Solitaire, which I’ll probably have to remove from my laptop when it comes with Dad & Jason in December), and when some of the tutors did come we mostly just introduced them to a program that helps them learn how to touch type. That actually seems to be a big theme here, when there are a lot of really good resources (whether that be money, or books, or trained people), the resources are either plundered (there’s quite a bit of theft here), squandered, or ignored. This is probably a big over-generalization, but it seems to happen WAY too much (and quite especially with USAID money too). It’s hard to tell why exactly it happens though – what do Ugandans want? Where do they want to go? Tiradein the CC aside, it was a good trip and had some nice time with computers and visiting people and cooking and things too.

Right before I left for Mbale, I had a couple days with not much to do, so I decided to look through a lot of the files (Coordinating Center) office at the school I’m posted at. I’d been feeling like I really wasn’t up to speed on a lot of the details of what was going on and it was nice to just sit and do office work for a while and start thinking about things I’d like to accomplish next term. I’d like to stick a little bit closer to the Primary Schools and the student teachers, which is really what I should be doing, over tutoring at the secondary schools. I’m making a map of all the schools in my cachement area (I think there’s 65), and I’d like to try to visit them all at least once this next term. There’s also a lot of materials in the storage of my Resource Center that are just sitting and gathering dust, but that’s mainly because the classroom where they’re supposed to be displayed isn’t secure enough and villagers and children often come into open classrooms and wreck things if they’re not well locked up (I don’t understand why).

Also, here’s a picture from a cool Japanese – Ugandan Culture day I got to attend. It was a lot of fun and enlightening for me to see the things that were similar between the US and Japan (like good time management, and not needing to look “smart” all the time), didn’t seem like there were many differences.

Well, that’s about it. Bit confused at times, but surviving thanks to good books, letters / emails from home, and Ugandan friends here.

Loves you all

* On a side note, one day when I was in Mukono I decided to walk up to the top of one of the hills nearby. I ended up meeting a nice Burundese (spelling?) man, many other nice people / children, and seeing a lot of the countryside after walking down and then around the hill. And I was thinking during the walk that mountains seem like a philosophical necessity for me (people in general?). There’re something there, something new, something big, an entity to be explored, and even more than that it seems like they just draw you to explore. At my site everything is flat and I haven’t really gone out exploring around much besides finding my way to schools I’ve never been to before. On the “horizon” there’s just not anything to look at besides sky, over there just seems to be the same as right here. But, if there’s a mountain, it seems to beckon. To draw one towards it, if for nothing else than an excellent view of what could be beyond. It’s a big dangling question mark, a challenge with the promise of novelty. Anyway, I miss ‘em, maybe I should head over sometime I’m free and walk up Elgon or something – you down Bro?

Sorry this note will be pretty short - I'm actually using most of this internet time to catch up on my guilty-pleasure reading of the infinitely nerdy, but also deep web-comic xkcd.

Things have quieted down over here as the term is nearing it's end. I'm getting ready to head to a town called "Nyondo" near Mbale to help with a computer training. It should be fun.

The week after that is language training in Mukono (which it seems I alone of my entire training group am looking forward too - yeah, I know I's a nerd).

And then there is a training from the Ministry for the next week.

And then there's In-Service-Training.

So, I'll be all over the place I guess.

Take Care all.

P.S. Biff-Dad - Where are you? I've sent you a few emails and text messages - are you okay?