My colleague, Justus, attended a meeting of our beekeeping/savings group to understand the challenges they are facing in the field. I would’ve gone with him, but I was, at the time, face down in a coffee plantation bordering a piggery which is located, unfortunately, on a slippery hill. Slippery due to mud…or pig droppings? It’s [...]
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It has struck me recently that I am beginning to behave differently than a few months ago. Then it struck me that this is perhaps my own fault. Then I decided, no, I am perfectly normal. Then I realized I was having this debate out loud…with myself. Then I knew I had to make this [...]
The other day I was walking with a community member for a few kilometers through a nearby village and, somewhere between tripping over every imaginable loose stone and sweating out approximately 8.5 L of body fluids, I managed to compensate for my remarkable lack of social grace with a pleasant demeanor and polite greetings to [...]
To access internet here in rural Uganda, I have a personal modem, similar in size and form to a flash drive, which plugs into my USB port and connects to the great-world-beyond via the mystical airwaves of the mobile phone carrier of my choice. Well, I live in a swamp, so I don’t get a [...]
In honor of fighting off his second bout of malaria within this year, and my undying love for the child who will eventually be the reason I’m in jail (kidnapping)…some new photos of Baby Isaac! The happiest baby in Uganda (when parasites aren’t eating his brain). - - - - - - - I know, [...]
Ladies and gentlemen, readjustment to American life after Peace Corps is not pretty. Consider this desperate and disturbing excerpt which reached my inbox from a returned PCV this very morning. People here are way too nice and overly considerate. It irritates me when people stop ten feet before a crosswalk to let me cross the [...]
Due to what I consider my obviously vast experience in interior design (what?) I have been requested to design ‘thematic concepts’ for 4-8 exclusive private apartments to host visitors inside Queen Elizabeth National Park, near Mweya Safari Lodge. Or perhaps I am just helping them to cut corners on their design budget. But I can [...]
Things at Christmastime in Uganda don’t so much “wind down” as they “grind to a 3-week halt”. Grasping at straws to convince myself that I’m still a productive enough human being to re-enter the American workforce in a few months, I decided to use my holiday time putting together a training manual for the local [...]
One day, approximately a year and a half ago, after a lonely weekend and in the 4th or 5th hour of rain-induced weekday house arrest, and under the influence of a crippling paranoia that I may never experience social kinship or intellectual stimulation ever again….I decorated my house. By which I mean I hung various [...]
Sometimes I want to hug strangers. More about that in the next (last? Blogs are confusing) entry. But I wanted to talk about one stranger in particular. They call him….”The Belt”. Okay, they actually call him “Orukoba” (the Belt), but it doesn’t exactly carry the same mystique and impact in Runyankore. To be honest, even [...]
Sometimes I want to quit my community. As a PCV, you don’t so much have a job as you have a community. And sometimes mine really stinks. We got a grant to help fund expert beekeeping training, for which a very friendly, professional, and BUSY man travels from an hour away to come and teach. [...]
Another PCV listed the books she’s read while here and I thought that was a fun idea. Also, I like copying people. Go ahead—take a peek at the night life of a single 25-year-old coed in Uganda! Anyway, at least it’s better than my Wish List page which I last updated around….oh, August 2009. You’re [...]
All in a day’s work. Just a few snaps taken after our staff meeting….. – – – Smug teenager! –
Let’s be clear that I am NOT making fun of people who speak/write English as a second language. I AM making fun of the promotions department of the African continent’s leading telecommunications provider. Yet again, a winning message from MTN which is, apparently, reading into the fact that my phone only rings an average of [...]
Um….yes. Sometimes I think the WordPress automatic blog idea-prompter hasn’t read the name of my blog. Also, here’s a photo.
Christmas comes but once a year….unless you live in Uganda and your mom has to send packages months in advance to reach you and, by some weird chance, they DO actually reach you, and even early…..then Christmas happens mid-November! I couldn’t resist opening. And I can’t resist saying that….I have the best mom ever!!!
Unlike previous trips to Kasese, yesterday’s taxi ride did not require passing through the quite literal center of a raging wildfire. Nor did yesterday’s trip encounter swarms of locusts (though it is grasshopper season) or a rampant pestilence (typhoid has been going around….). Basically, all of my expectations to experience the full force of Biblical [...]
“Small, small” “Slowly, slowly” “We are just there” “We are trying” “A bit” “Somehow” All phrases heard on a daily basis in Uganda, from the smiling mouths of a generally disappointed public. Also, from the appreciative mouth of a volunteer who relishes the opportunity to live life in a hazy cloud of vague abstractions. An [...]
It is with my head hung low and my heart beating fast that I once again find myself questioning…is it a good thing or a bad thing that, when I find a 3-inch cockroach crawling on me and I break a coffee mug while screaming “OH MY GOD!” at supersonic decibels, no less than 4 [...]
I was researching a bunch of hotel/accommodation options for a friend and ran across this little gem on one of their Web pages, thought you might enjoy: Camping site : we have a beautiful camping site which is fenced to keep the rhino out. You may see rangers with guns passing on their bicycles on [...]
Hurrah! Our Administrative Officer is just like Santa Claus. If Santa had a dry sense of humor and a secret stash of Slim Jims in his bottom drawer. Due to runaway inflation and, presumably, the terrifying price of beer these days, Peace Corps Uganda volunteers just got a raise! $38/month. or…approximately $0.24/hour That actually goes [...]
I love getting letters from the community. Sometimes people are just trying their luck (can you pay my school fees? Can you sponsor me to get an American visa? Will you please attend my (a stranger) father’s cousin’s first-born’s baptism party?). Sometimes they are writing under the clouds of a vast misunderstanding of my personal [...]
A week ago I got to something really fun (tiring) and healthy (pretty tiring)! I love exercise (being tired)! I don’t know if you were able to read between the lines there, but I’m not in very good shape. It turns out that running home in the rain and sloshing back plastic sachets of Ugandan [...]
Guess which country the popular guidebook series “Lonely Planet” picked as their Number ONE Best Travel Destination for 2012? I’d give you three guesses but I hope you only need one. See what they say about us and check out the other top 9 destinations of 2012 (but remember, they’re not Number ONE!) http://www.lonelyplanet.com/europe/travel-tips-and-articles/76856 What [...]
Introduction to Scamming 101: Uganda Style (tagline: so nonsensical you almost buy it because, hey, it’s Uganda!) I get a call from a private number. Him: Your Airtel internet modem number has been selected to win a prize! Me: This is not my modem number, this is my phone number. Him: (silence) Me: You know, [...]
I just wanted to prove that, in the rich volcanic soils of our Eden-like slice of equatorial Uganda, we can grow anyTHING, anyWHERE. COVOID has tomatoes growing out of its roof.
Sargent Shriver once said, “Peace requires the simple but powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us.” I was recently invited to a small party/talent show at Unique High School, in my local town council, that brought this message home in a small [...]
I think this story is best told similarly as it was told to my friend Cormac—slowly unfolding via successive text messages. Let’s review. (10:19am): In a taxi to Bushenyi to see Jean- yeah!! Have a great day! (10:31am): Have stopped to pick up passengers (already 21 ppl!) but the door is seriously stuck shut. [...]
Here are a few cool videos that you should definitely check out if you’re trying to fill that last hour of work on a Friday. Or watching your iPhone in church. Sinners! But really, take a look! 1) A video made by my friend/former PCV Jennifer about the Rwenzori Marathon that we volunteered at (a [...]
There are really only 7 or 8 distinct types of shops in Uganda, and they are usually called something really distinguishing like “Supermarket”, “Mechanic”, or “Yogurt”. Among the ones who do break the mold, there seems to be a tie between names evoking God and names evoking Obama. (That man hasn’t had any issues with [...]
- Thanks to my good friend Jennifer and a particular proclivity to just say “yes” to everything, I participated in one of the COOLEST things I think I have experienced in Uganda. I never thought I would call marathon runners pansies but, PANSIES! You have not run the Rwenzori Ultra-Sky Marathon!! To be fair, it [...]
I was awoken around 6am this morning to the frantic sounds of a struggling insect. What sounded like a LARGE struggling insect. I’m a quick-draw with the headlamp, but it took a few good sweeps of the room in my confused and sleepy state to find what was REALLY going on. I think I would [...]
I got the best surprise the other day! Back in the days of old (are you allowed to have ‘days of old’ when you’re 25?), I had a fabulous 5th grade teacher. Let’s call her Miss H. who, by now, is Mrs. G.—ooh the mystery created by protecting identities! Mrs. G. and her 8-year-old daughter [...]
Just a few cool snaps of bees. The first one is a group of bees gathering on the outside of a modern hive. The second is of me and a beekeeper with a swarm of bees between us. If you snip the wings of the queen, you can basically get bees to swarm anywhere you [...]
I can’t believe it–the other night someone stole a computer monitor out of COVOID’s office….through the window!! There are iron bars on the window, all doors were found locked, but we found the shutters open, monitor gone, and 2 giant sticks and a piece of twine left inside by the capers! I would be a [...]
- - -] - Kids are kids! Mweya Safari Lodge, one of the highest luxury lodges around, and the only one inside Queen Elizabeth National Park, is doing a Corporate Responsibility Project by charging each guest $1 per stay to go toward this primary school in Kazinga fishing village, near to the lodge. Hopefully, [...]
I admit that this may reveal a side of me that could be described as unbecoming. Indecorous? Possibly…weird? BUT. I consider it a public service announcement to all single white ladies out there, trying to survive public transportation in rural Africa, not just physically, but with some remaining threads of emotional stability. We all know [...]
Dear Anne(ybody who will listen), Consider this a dramatic way of throwing my frustrated hands up to the blogosphere. Please, someone, out there, tell me…why, WHY, does my 2-year-old, 2-burner gas stove now refuse to light its flames upward, toward the cooking pots, in favor of lighting downward, toward my table. My wooden table. My [...]
In a country where people rarely remember their own birthdays, my two-year anniversary of Peace Corps service in Nyakasharu, SW Uganda slipped by unnoticed by all of my Ugandan friends. Always eager for a good ego-deflation, I reflected on the remote possibility that the mere fact that I have survived in their generations-long homeland for [...]
What do you get when you mix frequent evening power outages and a gigantic nerd? I authored (cruciverbalized?) my very first crossword puzzle! I’m a beginner, so give me a bit of a break and, while you’re at it, a bit of feedback. First person to email me a photo of their finished grid wins [...]
Elephant Poo Power Electrifies Zoo. http://edition.cnn.com/2011/10/10/world/europe/elephant-dung-biogas-munich/index.html?&hpt=hp_c2 Well, see, now I’m torn. We have the bees to keep elephants OUT of the village. BUT, if we kept the elephants IN the village…maybe we could finally get power??? Especially if we put bees everywhere ELSE in the park, thereby directing all of the elephants TO our village [...]
A few weeks back, baby Isaac (featured here in a basin…) caught and survived his very first bout of malaria—quite a milestone! Especially for a 9-month-old. Malaria is the leading killer of kids under 5 in Uganda so we don’t joke around. When I got word that he was okay, I was in Kampala so [...]
I traveled with my friend Benjamin to Kampala in preparation for his trip to Mexico for the YouthActionNet Global Fellowship retreat. We met up with his extended family who live in Nansana outside the city and all escorted him through some of the gnarliest city traffic I’ve seen (thank God for driving on sidewalks!) to [...]
My friend and co-worker Benjamin was featured in one of Uganda’s top 2 national newspapers! I assume you take me at my word, and the link makes my claim pretty legit, but if you don’t believe me or, if I may be so daring to presume, you’re actually interested in reading it—be my guest! http://www.newvision.co.ug/detail.php?newsCategoryId=220&newsId=763958 [...]
It’s been awhile since I lasted posted a random photo collage. Who doesn’t love a random photo collage? Well, speak for yourself, because I like them. Sure, it may have something to do with how they allow me to nurture my twin acute cases of blog-procrastination and blog-ambiguity (haven’t posted for awhile…I took all these [...]
Have you ever heard of the book Where There is No Doctor (a village health care handbook)? It’s a godsend. Everything’s in there, man! Okay, not everything. On this very strange Sunday night I was in need of a book called Where There is No Doctor (and no village health care handbook with relevant sections [...]
Sometimes the phone companies here, okay really just MTN, send out mass text messages which I can only assume are for my personal entertainment. Possibly to make some sort of profit, but mostly the other thing. Here is one, grammar included, I received from mysterious (but friendly!) “145″: “Friends are like melons because To find [...]
I recently posted an article to my blog and, after clicking “publish”, it always opens a new page congratulating me, in ever-cuter terms, for succeeding in that endeavor. “Hurray you posted!” “A pat on the ol’ back, thanks for posting.” “Your 229th post! Slick!” I don’t know what it says about bloggers that we need [...]
I’ve been doing some basic internet lessons with my friend Benjamin lately, to better prepare him for his upcoming fellowship, which will largely be done over the net. He’s used a computer plenty of times before, but it’s far from second-nature and the internet is still a very new tool. It’s so interesting to help [...]
Some things translate into every culture. Such as: kids say the darndest things! Or, in the case of non-speaking 8-month-olds…kids laugh at the darndest things! Well I have discovered the two keys to making a crying Isaac giggle again – 1) play the “why are you hitting yourself?” game, 2) pretend like I’m going to [...]
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