Hey Everybody!

We can't believe it is already almost June! Where has the time gone!

Things are continuing on here in Uganda. I feel like we aren't posting as much recently, although I'm sure that's really common for PCVs in their second year. Life goes on, day to day, and not as much seems as noteworthy. But, at the same time, we are always trying to live in the moment here, enjoy the little things, and try to really "suck the marrow" out of our life here in Uganda. (Anyone love Thorough as much as I do?!) Time is flying and we know before long we will wonder where our two years spent in Uganda have gone!

A few updates - today starts the second term here at BPTC. If you remember last year, around this time, we were forced to send our students away after receiving only about 66% of the budget needed to run the college. Well, this year we only received 33% from the Ministry, so the principals got together and decided to postpone the beginning of term until more funds came. We thought it would be two weeks or more, but after only a week delay, the students *should* arrive today! So far we've only seen two, but we'll remain optimistic until at least lunchtime :-)

We are excited to get going on another new term! Term 2 at the PTC is the heavy teaching/extracurricular term. Since there is no school practice with child study and student teaching, the students are physically here at the college the entire time. So, it should be a great term for getting teaching done, having lots of great club activities, and helping out with other extracurricular (sports and games, music dance and drama maybe?) like last year.

I'm also very excited to begin/expand a girls empowerment project that began on a small scale in the girls club I was working with last term. The project involves teaching about women's health and the creation of reusable menstrual pads. Since pads are very expensive here, many young women resort to using uncomfortable, unhygienic options (feathers, rags, leaves, etc.) rather that purchasing them. Others skip school for the entire duration of their periods, and still others resort to selling sex to get money for pads and other necessary items. It's a little thing that can make a big difference for the girls. So, I'm using a model a PCV created a couple of years ago to use local materials to make washable, hygienic and very inexpensive pads. The other component of the program is education related - teaching about the menstrual cycle, female anatomy, family planning, and offering a question and answer session. The idea is that I will lead an example workshop for the girls at the college, then support them to lead similar, age appropriate workshops for the upper primary girls they work with during third term school practice. I'm currently working on the printing of 280 manuals providing information for leading the workshops. Next up - buying and cutting materials for 280 reusable pad "kits." I am very, very excited about the scope and significance of this project, and will definitely update as the work progresses!

Another neat event we are looking forward to this term is a collaboration with Silent Voices, a local NGO working with the parents of deaf children. Ryan and I will be working with them on their (somehow) annual activity day - a day to bring deaf children from all over the region of Bushenyi together for a day of fun and games at the college. I'll be recruiting students to help run games and "make the day colorful" as they say here, as well as practice what I've been teaching them the last year in my Special Education classes. Since students with special needs are often stigmatized and isolated, the day is a neat chance to bring together children with similar special needs - to realize that they are not alone, and just have fun! We're hoping to bring back some of the successful games from the CarniBull we did last fall, and are really looking forward to it!

And...of course other things will come up, others will delay, and others won't happen at all! But we're excited for a new term to start. It's crazy to think that a year ago we were beginning our first term here at the college. And next year at this time we'll be on the job hunt back in America! I am thankful every day for this crazy ride that is the Peace Corps, the adventure of a lifetime with my best friend. Here goes another term!

Love and miss you all,

~emily~

Well our anticipation grew and our hearts were broken once again by the coming and going of my parents this time. My parents flew in a couple of weeks ago, for the trip of a lifetime!! Their first trip off the continent, first trip to Africa, and most definitely first time to a crazy place like Uganda. They were no doubt in for a treat!

We started our time in Entebbe staying at a nice little guesthouse near the airport, that we had also stayed at with Emily’s parents. Being in Entebbe allowed us a nice chance to catch up, walk to the botanical gardens, and eat good western style meals. Then after a day in Entebbe they got their first chance to see what sarcastically became their favorite part of Uganda, Transportation! You will have to ask them in person why they loved it so much, but I think they got close to the full experience by the time they left.

When we got back to our site we got a chance to show them what our everyday life looks like, from washing clothes by hand to cooking absolutely everything you plan to meet (no buying a bag of tortilla chips here). We got to spend some time gardening with them. I think my dad was a bit surprised when I told him we were going to get manure for fertilizer, and we literally just walked into the field and starting picking up pies. But time at site was quiet and relaxing.

While they were here we had to give them the full African experience so we took them to the National Park near us (Queen Elizabeth National Park). We had a good time staying at a local lodge, and enjoying the views overlooking the park. Then we got up early to go on a game drive. We had much better luck then the first time Emily and I went to QENP. On the drive we saw elephants, kob, waterbuck, warthog, baboon, monkeys, LION, and more that I can no longer think of. Then we went on a boat trip on the Kazinga Channel. We got to see hippos and Nile crocodiles, as well as a ton of amazing birds. Queen Elizabeth was a great experience overall and we had great luck. On another day we tried to push our luck at tracking chimps but our luck had run out.

The final experience that we had with my parents was some time in Jinja, which is a fun place to spend a few days. We got a chance to ride horses by the Nile, and take a boat trip on the Nile as well. We stayed in fun tents that overlooked the river, and was a peaceful conclusion to the end of our trip. I think I can say that my parents had a true Africa experience. From hippos and elephants, to hand washing clothes, to seeing the Nile, to hordes of Ugandan children yelling Mazungu at them, to riding on Uganda’s wonderful transportation system. I loved having them here and it was hard to see them go. If you want to see pictures from our time the link is: HERE.

Ryan

First of all, I added some new pictures to my day to day album on facebook! Click Here if you'd like to check them out!

In other news, we had our Peace Corps Mid-service conference this week! It was a great time to getting together with the other 42 volunteers we traveled to Uganda with (we are all *still* here 14 months from when we arrived!!!) and getting some training to help us continue to serve effectively at site. Although the training was mainly idea sharing and trouble shooting, the best part by far was seeing our friends and fellow volunteers from all over the country. While sitting in a discussion group with the other 8 or so volunteers placed at PTCs, it was amazing to hear their struggles and successes and realize that we are not alone in the challenges we have at site. What a great perspective to be given! At one point we made posters to visually describe our year at site. It's crazy to think back on all of the details last year - friendships made, discouragements weathered, new things learned, successes celebrated - all the day to day ups and downs of life as a PCV. I have to say, though, at the end of it all, I'm really happy with where we are at, and also really happy to know that in less than a year we will be home!

We also got checked out by our medical unit, and had our first visit to a Ugandan dentist's office. We are both foot fungus and cavity free (sort of funny the things they check for!) and survived both visits without too much pain! :-)

And, Ryan's parents flew in yesterday!!! So, the Johnsons and Kjesbo-Johnsons will be enjoying Uganda together this week! Also, Mom just booked tickets to come in June, and Bryan and Jen will be here in August! We have a great few months ahead of us!

Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Let me start by saying - "don't fear" - as they say here in Uganda! This isn't going to be a bummer of a blog post! Things aren't falling apart for us here in Uganda! But I recently finished reading Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe with some of my students and wanted to tell you about it!

Things Fall Apart was one of the books we chose to read with the book clubs that we began this term. It was one of the two clubs that actually survived the entire term, and although only seven students were involved we had a wonderful time reading, discussing and sharing ideas!

The basic story told in Things Fall Apart is about a village leader of a tribe in Nigeria, the culture of the people there, and the things that happened to him that ultimately led to his demise (no big surprise there, I hope, given the title!). The book was written in 1959, and tells stories both about the village and the coming of missionaries to the region. (apologetic note: for the literary folks out there, I realize that I have just grossly oversimplified one of the most famous pieces of African literature, but you'll have to forgive me) Although I wasn't sure if the reading level would be appropriate for the students here, I thought it would be neat to read an African author with them. That, and the fact that the library had about 30 copies, was the reason that the eight of us embarked on one of the most famous novels to come out of Africa in the mid 20th century.

Crazy chocolate cake and a good book!Let me first say, I didn't love the book. But, I loved loved LOVED what came out of reading the book with seven of our students here. They thought it made perfect sense while I was confused, they found parts hilarious that I completely overlooked, they related to the stories and characters in ways that I never could! Over the course of the last eight weeks, I watched them completely come out of their shells! What began as timid and tentative more or less question and answer session truly became discussion somewhere near part 2 of the story! By the end, there were even some heated arguments and strong opinions on some of (what I think are) the book's major themes - colonialism/missionaries, male/female relationships, the clash of modernization and new ideas in a traditional society, the role of individuals and dissenting ideas in a tribal culture, etc. Reading the book together also gave us the chance to talk about English vocabulary that was brand new to them, and gave me a chance to practice some of the things I learned in my literacy classes during grad school (thanks Hamline) and the intentional focus my last job had on promoting literacy (thanks Harding)!

page corner bookmarks for each kid!

Last Wednesday I had all the students from the club over to my place for our final meeting and discussion of the end of the book. I made them my gradma's recipe for "crazy chocolate cake" and make each of them a book mark with their name on it. They were in the midst of studying for exams, so I didn't expect them to stay long. But we got to talking and before I knew it we had spent over an hour eating cake and discussing the demise of Okonkwo. As I sat back and watched them discussing (and at points arguing), I thought to myself - this is it! Sucess!!!

Although it might not seem like a huge deal, the club feels like a big success for a few unique reasons. One is that there is absolutely no culture of reading here. In fact, out of the seven students involved in the club, not a single one had ever read a book before on their own outside of school. One girl even described how she used to see books that looked big and thought she'd never be able to read one, but now that she has finished this book she knows that she can. All of the students loved this book, and successfully starting, finishing, and understanding it gave them a huge boost of confidence and a new interest in reading.

Another reason this just feels huge, is that discussion isn't really encouraged here. Despite the fact that teachers know in theory that discussion is good, in Uganda there tends to always be a right and wrong answer (and the wrong answer almost always leads to some level of humiliation for the unfortunate pupil who put it out there). It's a test focused culture, and creative thought is really, really not valued. Young people aren't valued for having a different view, and most aren't willing to offer up their ideas on anything for fear of making a mistake. For example, during one of the first meetings of the club, two of the students had a small disagreement about a character's motivation for doing something. It wasn't explicitly spelled out in the book, and it was really anyone's guess as to why the character did what they did. But, in the middle of the discussion, one of the girls turned to me, exasperated, and said, "but MADAM! Tell us the answer!!!" I tried to explain that there isn't a right answer this time - that part of the joy of reading is putting yourself in the shoes of the character and forming your own ideas. Yet, 8 weeks later, nobody felt the need to "but MADAM" me - they were all more than content to argue out their perspectives and really stand up for the ideas they had about the novels content. This, to me, is big! Not only having the comprehension to form an opinion about the book, but having the confidence to defend their idea, even as they consider the ideas of their fellow group members - a big deal for Ugandan students.

Next term we plan to read Chinua Achebe's followup novel, No Longer At Ease, and hope to see if we can't get a few more students excited about reading. (The principal has made broad public statements that all 500 students should be involved, but we'll be satisfied with something in the middle!) We also hope to have some times that the reading club members can bring children's books from the library to the primary school across the street and read aloud to them. I'm excited by the enthusiasm of these seven, and really hope that we can see more good things come out of the book club in the terms to come!

In Peace Corps, we're always talking about sustainability. So, I have to ask myself - will the book club continue next year when I'm back at home? Probably not. But, will at least seven students have a new passion for reading and a new confidence that they can do it? I think so! Through reading Things Fall Apart, I saw lots of "things coming together" for seven special kids! Success!

Love and miss you all,

~emily~

As I write this we have been in Uganda for 422 days, 1 hour, 55 minutes. The past year or so has been many things and until recently none of those things were busy. But as I speak I am sitting typing this blog during my third week of evening lab times, piloting a lab assistants program. Emily and I have been overwhelmed by all the initiatives and clubs we are trying to start that are actually working. We knew that if we were going to get clubs, and study session times off the ground we would have to do it this term. So, going into the latter half of Term 1 this year we find ourselves cautiously optimistic about the next year! The Primary Teachers’ College schedule is hard to navigate for anyone; much less overly excited Peace Corps Volunteers. Therefore, we kept asking if we should start clubs now or wait, and the answer was always to “Start Now.” So we would try to start and fail because of any number of things, including slashing, games/sports, worship, school practice, impromptu school breaks, and many other things. So we thought that with a new school year and new students we would try out our ideas. So, during the orientation week with 1st years we plugged so many things it sort of felt like we were introducing a new club everyday. We have started about 5 book clubs, 3 of which have been successful. Emily has started a Girl’s Life Skills group, where she has so far covered HIV/AIDS, Reproductive Health, and other important life skills. She has also started back up her math help time in the evenings. And I have started a Computer club made up of about 16 students who will be helping in the computer lab during class time and evening sessions. In addition I have been co-teaching this term and it has been really rewarding. The coming year will definitely be busy if these things continue and grow when the second years come back. As we look ahead to the coming year we are cautiously optimistic about more than just our work at the PTC. We are optimistic that our original VSLA and second one started recently with staff at the PTC will be successful and no problems will arise. We are optimistic that relationships that we have built in our first year at site will continue to flourish and open new doors in discussing culture with our Ugandan neighbors. We are optimistic that our garden will continue to thrive as we transition back into a dry season in about a month. We are optimistic that our bikes will be able to be ridden multiple times. Our time in Uganda is going great but as with most peoples Peace Corps experience we are optimistic that the next year will fly by and we will be returning to 819 Edmund before we know it. We are so excited to have so many extra things this coming year too. In May my parents will be here for a couple of weeks to get the full Uganda Peace Corps experience (well maybe not the full one). Then in June Emily’s mom is going to be visiting us again as she travels to Kenya to teach at the theological seminary there. Then we are super excited about a trip we just planned to Italy, France, and Spain in August. It will be our first time out of Africa since we arrived, our first time in that part of Europe, and my first time in Europe at all. It is a once in a lifetime trip, and it will feel exponentially (Can you tell I was just doing my college algebra homework online?) more rewarding and lavish coming from Uganda. Then finally in December/January we will get to visit America, and see what has changed before we come back for good. Those are all the things that are happening for sure, in addition to a few more possibilities in the works. So far it seems that our school time will be busy, and our breaks will be just as busy. We hope those things combined will make my cautious optimism about the next year flying by a reality. Our first year at site has been so rewarding in so many ways, and makes me excited for what year two will offer. In the next couple of weeks we have to say good-bye to some of our better Peace Corps friends from the area, Jean and Hayley. Jean has been practically our next-door neighbor for the last year, and we can’t believe that our year with her is over. We have shared so many experiences with one another, and we will miss seeing her multiple times a week. Our Peace Corps friends are such a valuable support to us, and we will miss those who are leaving. The first year at site would also not have been possible without the support of our family and friends at home. I say this while eating Starburst Jelly Beans sent in one of many care packages that our family at home has sent us. We can not describe all the ways that the support of family and friends at home has helped us get through hard times and also allowed us to share victories. Well with that all said we cannot wait to continue to share the next 365 or so days with ya! We will try to make sure that we keep you updated on our blog/vlogs, and by talking to you all. We hope that everyone had a great Easter weekend! We love and miss ya, Ryan KJ

Hey everyone,

I made a part II to my life in Bushenyi album and added some new pictures! Click here! We had a great time hiking in Rubirizi district this weekend, and also added some other pics of what we've been up to.

Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Hey Everyone,

Here is some videos that we have been saving and decided to make a quick Vlog for you to see what we have been up to the last couple of months.

Hi everyone! Hope you are all well! We hear that temps are warming up in the midwest these days! Hope you’re enjoying the warmer weather and maybe enjoying thinking about getting gardens going! We are certainly enjoying the luxury of gardening year round, but will be happy to get back to our backyard garden in MN next spring all the same!

Things at the college are continuing to progress. We sent our second year students off yesterday for their semi final school practice. Throughout the next four weeks they will be getting their first shot as full time classroom teachers, and we’ll be going out as staff to observe them and offer feedback. It’s always fun to get out and see the schools and visit the students while they’re teaching. I think many of the schools we are going to this term will be even more rural, village schools than ones we visited during term three, so it should be interesting to see them. Ryan and I are quite an attraction for the kiddos, so it’s fun to surprise them with our runyankore, even though the constant staring does tend to get old.

The clubs we’ve been working on with first year students are getting off the ground....sort of....Here’s the update:

The reading clubs have been an interesting lesson in mathematics - exponential decline! When we originally offered the clubs, a surprising 120 kids signed up! Ryan and I were a bit overwhelmed, but happy with the interest. So, we picked out 8 books that we offered to read with the kids. The plan was that we’d read a few chapters of the book each week, and meet to discuss them in small groups. Since reading (for enjoyment) is such a foreign concept and discussion is often difficult here, we figured it would be better to discuss a few chapters at a time rather than the whole book like a traditional book club. So, in the next step, the kids signed up for the specific books they wanted to read. After that, we had only 60 on our roster. We were actually a bit pleased because we thought 120 was really too much, and we hoped that the 60 who stuck around would be those who were really interested in reading and not those who had just felt pressured because everyone else was doing it. So, we cut the books to be read down to 4 (about 15 per reading group) and have been working on meeting for the last two weeks. During week one, not a single student showed up. Luckily there’s a ping pong table in the room that we were waiting for them, so Ryan and I kept ourselves busy as we watched the clock tick by with no students showing up. (Just between us, I think Ryan’s been quite surprised by my mad ping pong skills!) Throughout the week, we made more announcements, tried to involve student leaders in reminding first years, posted signs, spoke with each class stream, and hoped that during week two turn out would be better. Now, at the end of week two, 9 students total have shown up for the clubs: 1 for Magic with Everything, 3 for Things Fall Apart, 2 for Mine Boy, and 3 for Treasure Island. So....it’s definitely a small number! But, the kids who have come are very excited about reading and discussing, and who knows how the clubs will catch on over time. I think the benefit of developing relationships is so important, so even if that’s all that comes out of this club I believe we can consider it a success.

I’ve only had one meeting of the girls club so far, and it was excellent! Over thirty girls came! I was actually texting Ryan while I waited for them (“how long do you think I should wait before I give up?”) and looked up to see a mass of girls moving towards me! They were so happy to have a place just for them (no boys allowed!), and their excitement was evident, even through their shyness. During our first meeting, we made introductions, talked about what we hope to get out of the club, and played a couple of getting to know you games. At each meeting, I’ll bring a “question box” where the girls can write anonymous questions about anything on their mind and we will discuss them the following week. It caught on right away - there were already four or five questions by the end of our first meeting. Since most of them had to do with reproductive health issues, this week I’m going to give an overview of female reproductive anatomy and talk about the menstrual cycle. Teaching “sex ed” is brand new to me, but I’m excited to be able to share knowledge of women’s issues to interested young women. We’ll see how it goes!

I’ve also floated the idea with them of making reusable menstrual pads and they are really interested. Some volunteers over the past couple of years have created a project that uses local materials to make resuable pad “kits” at an extremely low cost. For about 75 American cents, each girl can make their own kit - with 2 pads and 3 cotton towel inserts. (1 pack of purchased disposable pads currently costs about $1.50) So, if there’s enough interest, this week at the market I’ll pick up yards of fabric, cotton towels, buttons, needles, and thread and we’ll start making them together next week.

Ryan has been working with his counterpart Patrick to co-teach ICT classes for first years. Since there are four first year streams, they take turns being the lead teacher and play off one another really well. Ryan is really excited by the partnership. He feels that they are both learning lots from each other and building a great cross cultural relationship. We think it’s really the best of what a Peace Corps education position can be - truly working together to share ideas and improve instruction in a sustainable way. The students are very excited to be learning computers. When Ryan asked how many had used a computer before, only about 15 of the 200 had raised their hands. So, they’re starting at the beginning - turning the computer on and off - and working from there. It’s going well!

Our community VSLA is doing great! We met with them last night and they are all so excited about their progress! They have saved three million shillings as a group (about $1,500) and have loaned out almost all of it! The loans are getting paid back in plenty of time (and early!) and everyone is quite pleased with how the group is changing their culture of saving and giving them the opportunity to take loans. Last night some of the members brought up the idea of helping one another think of ways to use the money effectively, so it looks like our next step with the group will include introducing some income generating activities and helping the members consider how getting a loan from the group could help them create even more income.

We’ve also offered to start another VSLA with staff from the college who are interested. At this point 15 have signed up, so we’re trying to work to schedule a preliminary meeting with them this week. We’ll keep you up to date!

So, we’re excited about the progress that’s been made in the term so far, but continue to be amazed at how difficult and slow going it is. There are so many unplanned activities and unexpected changes of plans that get in the way of things happening like they are supposed to. It’s a lot of hurry up and wait as we are trying so hard to get everything off the ground. There are also plenty of cultural confusions to complicate things as well. But, I really think optimism and patience will pay off! We’ll keep hanging in there and hope that even when successes are small, they’re enough to make what we are doing here worthwhile!

Even in the midst of the constant ups and downs of service, there are plenty of moments that just make you want to laugh! Although we’re getting less and less surprised by the funny day-to-day things that happen, we still try to note them for “a chuckle of the day” as my grandma would say. :-)

One funny moment occurred last week when I was in a matatu headed to Kasese for a meeting with some other volunteers. I had picked up a paperback from the Peace Corps library specifically to read in transit (I can’t tell you the number of Kindles that have been crushed and smushed courtesy of Uganda’s public transport system!). So, as I sat with four others in the first row of the matatu (intended for 3), I was enjoying an easy read murder mystery about a polygamous mormon cult in Utah (scintillating topic!). I began to notice that the young man next to me seemed interested in what I was reading. I smiled and just kept flipping through the book. Eventually I noticed that his hand was now helping me support the left side of the book, while my hand was holding on to the right. Without saying anything, he gently pulled the book towards him so that we were sharing it in between us. And, for the next half hour we sat like that - silently sharing the book between the two of us. As I would turn a page, he’d adjust his hand and continue reading with me. I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed by the needlessly dramatic content of the story I was reading, of just amused that here I was in extremely close quarters, sharing a cheesy book with a total stranger! Despite all the funny transport happenings we have experienced, that was a new one!

So, there’s your “chuckle for the day!” Thanks for reading and keeping in touch. We love and miss you all!

~emily!

Here is a vlog that Ryan made from our time at Camp BUILD back in December. Better late than never! It's a bit long for uploading so we broke it into two parts. Enjoy!!

~emily & ryan~

Hi Everyone!

Today (March 8) is international women's day! Uganda celebrates this holiday with a public holiday (no school, businesses closed, etc.) and lots of community celebrations! We took part in the BPTC celebration and had a really great day!

While Ryan was running some errands this morning he heard an announcement on the local radio. It said something about how today is a day for celebrating women - thanking them for building up the men of the country. Because *behind* every great man is a women. Later this afternoon while talking to a neighbor, he asked Ryan what I had done for him today, being that today is women's day. He suggested that I slaughter and prepare a he-goat for him.....Charming! (And we'll be making pizza tonight instead of he-goat to celebrate!) So, although clearly not all the "kinks" are worked out of the system (at least not in Uganda), it's an attempt to bring awareness to women's issues, and celebrate the women in the community.

The PTC had a unique celebration planned by the student minister of women's affairs. It included a full morning of sports - men's and women's football (soccer) and volleyball. Ryan and I joined in the non-rotating, non-scorekeeping, volleyball games for a while. There was an awful lot of kicking going in in them as well! (Is serving by kicking legal?!) :-) Then we watched as the first year students took on the second years in a game of football. It was a fun morning with lots of activity and a nice break from the academic aspect of the term.

In the afternoon the students organized what I can best describe as a talent show. It included singing, dancing, joke telling, and a debate. Most of the performances had religious themes (if you move your bible to the back of your taxi, it's likely you'll get in an accident), or themes about avoiding AIDS (Life these days is very delicate, as one song said). At the end tutors were invited to speak so, in true Uganda fashion, I jumped up and took the stage. I talked (briefly) about how important it is for the women of Uganda to take action to fight the issues facing them, as well as how men need to partner with women and work to change their own attitudes as men as well. I thought it was fitting for the day, despite my lack of including comments about respecting the bible or trying not to get AIDS. :-) The students were all very happy with the day - pleased to have a holiday and (I hope) get a chance to think some about women in Uganda.

The day ended on a great personal note for me. I've been working since the beginning of term to get a girl's empowerment club started. I'm hoping to work with girls on lifeskills important to young women, as well as equip them to similarly educate their future students. There has been lots of interested students, and today I was able to talk with a great secretary at the college who committed to facilitating the club with me! She is spunky and blunt and will be absolutely fabulous for it! So, that's good news. We anticipate the club will start next week, so I'll keep you posted with details!

So - Happy Women's Day everyone! I must say I'm thankful to have grown up in a country like America when I think about women's rights and issues. But, I'm also thankful for the opportunity to work with some of Uganda's young women to help them discuss the issues they are facing, and maybe help them think of how to go about changing attitudes and practices that negatively impact their lives as women.

Love and miss you all,

~emily~

Hi Guys!

How is there? (As they say in Uganda) We are doing well here in Bushenyi - slowly slowly seeing the new term into reality. I posted about ten new photos in my "Life in Bushenyi" facebook album, and thought I'd let ya'll know! Click here if you're interested! The new pics are at the end of the album.

We'll be sure to write more with Bushenyi happenings and updates again soon!

Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Things are getting started again here at Busheyni PTC! As February starts a new year in the Uganda school system, we are beginning a new school year now with our old 1st year students moving up to year 2, and brand new 1st year students coming in from O level. Technically, the new term started 2 weeks ago but, as they say here, things are moving mpora mpora - slowly slowly!

Week one of the term we were completely studentless, since the exams that determine a students’ possibility to continue at the school (which they took last November) had not yet been marked. So, we spent the week in workshops with some of the other tutors, reflecting on the last year and making vague and ambitious plans for the year ahead.

Then, last Monday all of our returning 2nd year students were supposed to arrive. They began trickling in on Monday, but now (almost a full week later) less than half of them have returned. We tried to have some lessons last week, but attendance and motivation was really lacking from both students and tutors, as it didn’t really feel like things were starting “for real” yet. So, tomorrow begins week 3 of the term, and we are hoping that things will really get started at this point.

In the coming week, we will have a workshop with students to prepare them for their upcoming semifinal school practice - their first 4 week shot at student teaching (final school practice occurs in term 3). Various tutors will cover topics like using instructional materials, lesson planning and scheming, and demonstrating well planned lessons. I will be shaking things up with a paper mache demo - teaching our students the wonders of newspaper, flour and water for making all sorts of great stuff! Count on me to bring the messy fun of paper mache to Uganda!

After this week, our brand new first year students should arrive. Currently our administrators are out “selecting” these future students. From what it sounds like, they go to schools and check out various students’ scores and resumes, then “select” ones who fit our application standards. I have never heard mention of a students’ interest in attending BPTC as a part of this process, and to me it sort of resembles how I picture trading in professional sports. You don’t really get to choose what team you play for, right? Well, these students don’t appear to have a whole lot of say in the education/school that they are heading for. The administrators even “sell” or pass off students that they don’t think are good enough to schools who are less selective or have fewer interested applicants. Like the NFL or what?! It will be interesting to see who this process brings to us!

Once the first years arrive, they will be in “regular” classes for most of the term. They will follow the time table and take classes in all the subjects. Our second years will leave in mid March for their semifinal school practice and won’t return until the end of the term in late April. While they are out practice teaching the tutors will all take turns going out to supervise them and offer feedback. This process is very similar to what we did during 3rd term last year, although I suspect it is somehow less serious since this is only “semifinal.”

So, that’s what we are expecting for the general flow of the term to come. I’m probably jinxing myself to assume that I have a sense of what to expect, but maybe a year of riding things out will finally be coming to an end. Or, maybe I’ll write again tomorrow to say that plans have changed and nothing is what we expected! :-) Oh, the ride that is Peace Corps!

But, we are looking forward to the term. On top of the regular teaching/tutor responsibilities, Ryan and I are looking forward to some extra projects that we will be taking on this year. These include:

Clubs: Ryan and I hope to start clubs in the coming year. I’ll be working with a girls empowerment club to talk about issues facing young women in Uganda, and Ryan will start a similar club with the boys of the campus.Books: We’ve been asked to help develop the “reading culture” of the campus, as so many students struggle with writing in and expressing themselves in English. So, we’re going to work on getting our students reading to primary school kiddos, attempt to start a book club to discuss different books, and work on getting the kids reading and talking in English.Computer/Math Time: Since we’re here in the evenings, we’ll be making ourselves more available to students during that evening free time. Ryan plans to open the lab for free computer time 4 evenings a week, and have brief “extracurricular” lessons available to interested students. I’ll be available for math tutoring 4 evenings a week, and will eventually work to create a peer tutoring program between 1st and 2nd year students.IGA project ideas: We’re working on thinking of ideas for income generating activities (IGAs) to expose our students to through workshops on the weekends. We hear so often about how the salary for teachers is so minimal that it’s difficult to sustain as a career. So, we thought if we can expose our students to some IGA options before they leave here, maybe they will be more likely to be able to continue teaching with a little extra income on the side.

VSLA: We’ll be continuing with our community microfinance group that we wrote about a while back. Things are going so well with them that we are excited to continue with their progress! At this point, they have been saving for about 10 weeks, saved over 2 million schillings (which is super incredible considering most of the 13 members in the group make less than 300,000 schillings per month), and have loaned every cent out to members of the group. So, all that saved up money is now generating interest, as well as enabling some of our members to undertake projects or purchases that they might not be able to otherwise afford. It is incredible seeing their excitement in realizing their ability to save, and using the group’s collective savings to help meet personal goals. A success so far to be sure! We're also going to offer our staff the chance to be trained in the VSLA model, so we'll see if there is interest for them to get saving and loaning as well!Gardening and Chickens: This is just for fun! :-) We’re currently getting 2 eggs a day from Pinto and Voldemort, and enjoying watching the chicks growing up. Everyone is free range and comes home every night! In the garden, rainy season is starting once again! We’re working on growing strawberries, pole beans, cauliflower, carrots, basil, parsley, sage, cilantro, onions, bell peppers, and lots of flowers. We are astonishing our Ugandan neighbors and friends by the fact that white people can get their hands dirty and have some agricultural know-how. (We were recently told that we were working like Africans! A funny complement of sorts!)

So, we’ve got big hopes for the coming year and the coming term. We will be sure to keep you updated as things progress, mpora mpora, more likely than not.

Thanks for reading - we love and miss you all!

~emily~

Hi Everybody! Hope you are all doing well! I wanted to share about the last three weeks for us here in Uganda. If you missed my earlier post, feel free to check out the significantly less wordy account of our trip - pictures! But, if you are okay with a potentially largeish nutshell version of the last month or so, read on!

Our first visitors - my mom and dad - arrived in Uganda on January 17. We had been looking forward to their visit for months, and were so excited that they were finally going to be in Uganda with us! They arrived without much trouble, and actually flew to Uganda with the sister of another PCV.

It’s hard to describe the emotions of seeing family for the first time after almost a year! We waited with so much excitement to see them come out of customs and as they walked through we all just ran towards each other and hugged and cried and hugged some more! It was really amazing! We were just so overjoyed to be together and know we’d be spending the next two weeks in the same country!

After the initial excitement of having them here (I think we were up until after 2 the first night!), we spent some time relaxing and catching up in Entebbe, then headed out on our first adventure - Murchison Falls National Park. We had hired a private car and driver/guide to try to make transport a bit simpler, ensure safe travel of all of our luggage, and try to cut down on Mom’s chances of getting car sick. It seemed like such a good idea....Long story short, we had a flat tire, breakdown in the middle of the game park, drove off the road in an attack of tsetse flies, and spent the entire trip back to Kampala going about half the speed of the cars flying by us. In the middle of the ride back, our driver calmly pulled over, walked behind the car, dialed a number on his cell phone, and started yelling (literally!) at the guy on the other end. It went something like this: “You STUPID man, STUPID!!! You sold us a FAKE CAR! Why have you sold us a FAKE CAR?! You STUPID, STUPID man...” And on and on....On top of all of that, it was dry season and dusty was everywhere! The car, luggage, and every inch of our skin and clothes were absolutely covered in dirt! I honestly don’t know if I have ever been so dirty!!! Luckily we all found the adventure more funny than frustrating, and everyone had a good attitude about it!

When we weren’t busy dealing with car trouble, our time in the park was great! Murchison is a huge park with lots and lots of the classic safari animals. We managed to see most of them! We started with a boat trip on the Nile, headed towards the base of the Murchison Falls. Along the way we saw tons of birds, crocodiles, hippos, Ugandan kob, bushbuck, waterbuck, colobus monkeys, baboons, warthogs, buffalos, and my favorite - elephants!!! We had some incredible moments along the boat ride - crocodiles suddenly charging our boat, birds in the hundreds taking off in flight, and an elephant who had waded out to the middle of the river and walked back to the other side just yards from our boat. He was very old, and very huge and totally breathtaking!

The boat tour took us to the base of the falls, which was a great view. Then, we headed back downstream to the dock, seeing many of the animals again along the way. It was a truly unforgettable ride. Disney Jungle Cruise - you’ve got nothing on us!!

In the evening we headed out on ridiculous roads to see the top of Murchison Falls. The roads in the park are so bad it honestly feels like you’re on a really poorly done simulator! I kid you not. Thank God for 4 wheel drive! Anyhow, the top of the falls were really spectacular! Standing on the top and looking out, you get soaked by the spary and the power of all that water is truly amazing! Pictures don’t do it justice! But, we enjoyed the view as the sun set over the park.

We spent the night at a rest camp overlooking the river and woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of hippos crunching the grass outside our bandas. We had a short night in order to start the game drive early the next day.

Our game drive was good, though probably not the highlight of the park for any of us! (The boat trip was a hard act to follow!) We were able to see a gorgeous sunrise, giraffe, warthog, baboons, lots of deerish animals, and even two young lions. Although we didn’t get a great view of the lions, it was super interesting to watch all of the animals react as they knew that they were on the prowl! After we’d seen what we could, we made the long trip back south!

Back in Bushenyi, Mom and Dad enjoyed seeing where we live, meeting our friends, neighbors, and coworkers, walking to town and around our village, doing their wash by hand, and cooking peace corps style! We also played lots of games and of course talked and talked and talked! Mom and Dad also gave us an enormous stocking full of belated Christmas gifts each day - calling it the 12 days of Christmas! They were so generous in restocking our supply of American toiletries and giving us so many incredible, practical, and fun gifts - pam cooking spray, chocolate chips, American sweets, new clothes, yoga mats, puppets to play with the kiddos, etc. It made for a wonderfully festive belated Christmas celebration!

While in Bushenyi we also had the chance to track Chimpanzees in the nearby Kalinzu Forest Reserve, and visit a neat lodge on the escarpment overlooking Queen Elizabeth National Park. Chimp tracking was a crazy adventure. We hiked (and hacked) our way through an incredibly dense rainforest and were able to see chimpanzees, three different monkey species, and lots of really interesting plants. It was a national geographic worthy day!

Last but not least, we had the opportunity to head to Rwanda and spend a weekend in Kigali. Mom and Dad got the authentic public transport experience on this trip - overcrowding, delays, breakdowns, and even (almost) fistfights! One of the funniest public transport moments of the trip was when we had 10 people in a car the size of a Toyota Camry. All four of us and one (lucky) Ugandan were crammed into the backseat of the car. The driver was trying to get the door shut and just kept slamming it into Dad’s hip. The Ugandan tries to grab Dad around the shoulders and pull him in, the driver is shoving him from the outside with all his might, and Dad just can’t stop giggling! We all laughed a lot, and I had to try to explain to the four passengers sharing the front seats that we don’t really travel like this in America!!!

But, Rwanda was lovely - so clean and organized! We were able to stay with a relative in Kigali who was lived there as a missionary for the last 26 years! He experienced the genocide there in 1994, as well as the aftermath that followed, and was able to share many really interesting perspectives and experiences, having been in Rwanda (and East Africa) for such a long time. While in Rwanda we were also able to see the Hotel Des Milles Collines (the hotel from Hotel Rwanda), and a really beautiful, but really sobering genocide memorial. It was a really great trip - fun, interesting, and poignant too.

Then, last Thursday we sent Mom and Dad off again. They insisted on braving public transport alone (earning major kudos from our Peace Corps friends!) and flew out later in the evening. The time flew by, but we really loved every minute and are so thankful for the time we were able to spend with family.

Now...back to reality! Although the term technically started yesterday, our returning students are waiting for their exams to be marked (exams they took in November), and as such are not back yet. Since the government won’t pay for students to repeat a year at the PTC, they must first know whether or not they passed year one in order to determine if they should come back to school. So, they’re scattered all around, listening to the radio, and we hope that they will be here before too much time has passed!

We’ve been joining the staff for beginning of term meetings (3 days of meetings, to be precise) and been reminded of some of the frustrations of service that we managed to ignore for the last couple of months - poor timekeeping, low attendance, and a very different style of “running” a meeting. But, we are excited for the term and year to come. We have lots of new ideas and big plans, and we will be sure to keep the blog posted as the term goes on!

For now, thanks so much for reading! Thanks for your thoughts and prayers, and know that we love and miss you all very much!

Much love,

~emily~

PS - February 11 marks the anniversary of our arrival in Uganda and the end of our first year as PCVs! We can’t believe it’s already been an entire year!!!

Yikes - it's been almost a month since we've written! The beginning of January was slow, but since then we have had an incredible couple of weeks! My parents arrived on the 17th and we had an absolutely fantastic time traveling together and just spending time in the same country! I have so much more to tell you, but for now let me give you all a much less wordy account of our last few weeks - pictures! CLICK HERE for a link to our facebook album from the week! I will be sure to write about it in more detail in the next couple of days!

Thanks for reading! Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Well the New Year has brought a whole new experience for Emily and me. That is raising a flock of chickens. By flock I mean six which every Ugandan feels is quite insignificant, and thinks we should have 200 to make it worth our while. We had wanted to get chickens in St. Paul before we left, but knew it not wise since we would be moving so soon. We didn’t think it fair to leave chickens with are renters, or send a bunch of chickens and a dog to Sioux Falls with Emily’s parents. But one day near the end of the term we just thought why don’t we give it a shot in Ugandan, where everyone knows (or thinks they know) how to raise chickens. So we asked our neighbor, “Is it easy to raise chickens?” His reply was, “It is basically the easiest thing in the world.” Well if it is the easiest thing in the world I guess we have to do it! In early December before we left for Camp Build I went to Menards to buy all the lumber. Oh wait that wasn’t Menards that was a forest. It was quite a different experience purchasing lumber here. I basically chose the tree that my wood would come from, and then they cut the wood by hand. Then I had to find a way to transport my wood from the forest, and in a couple short days my lumber was cut and ready. Now one of the predominant beliefs it seems about White people in Uganda is that we can not do anything by hand. Every time we garden, dig, slash grass, light a charcoal stove, or basically anything else they thank us for what we are doing and comment that they didn’t think we could. Where we have always found that in general a middle class Ugandan does much fewer things for themselves then the families we grew up in, in middle class America. So of course building a chicken house they had the same belief. We had many offers of people who would build the house for us, and we just kept saying that we would build it ourselves. After Camp Build we did just that! We built the chicken house in mid-December after acquiring the absolute necessary supplies and tools to complete the task. Overall the house went up pretty well. The tools we had consisted of a level, hammer, saw, post hole-digger/spear, and a machete. All the tools served some purpose, especially the machete. Emily said later while I was building us a compost bin from the left over chicken wire, “I think you just like the excuse to be able to cut things with a machete, instead of a saw.” I am not going to lie it is quite fun, and it is Uganda so exactness is not necessary. Now that the house was built the next task was finding chickens. There is much debate here between local breeds of chickens (which roam around free range and are less prone to disease) or exotic/English/hybrid chickens (which must stay indoors but lay more chickens). Everyone was sure to give us their opinion, which it seemed like people’s opinions would change every other day. But eventually we decided on local chicken so we wouldn’t have to feed them if we didn’t want too. Then we had to find where to buy the chickens. When we asked where you buy the local chickens the response was always unequivocally the same, “the village.” The village is Ugandans catch all term for any place more then 1 km off the main road and not in a large city. So we just had to start spreading the word that we were looking for chickens, and then hurry up and wait. Wait we did. We must have waited for about four months…oh wait it was more like a week but it felt like forever. But then all at once everyone in about two days found us chickens. So in the end we have ended up with a flock of six, where I think we are stopping. As any good white person in Uganda (that didn’t grow on a farm) does we named them all, so I will introduce them to you: Chickpea/Garbanzo - They are our youngest chickens at about a month to a month and half, and we got them first. Garbanzo likes us quite a bit, but Chickpea still is the most leery of us. They need to stay in the chicken house most of the time so predatory birds don’t take them. Thelma/Louise – They are about a month older then C & G. They are the last two chickens that we got. Voldemort – Her name originated due to her mean nature towards C & G at first. We were going to change her name in time, but it has stuck. She likes us the most and we often hold her. Pinto – She spends most of her time walking the campus with the principal’s roosters. She is not a big fan of us yet though, but we will win her over in time. Well those are our chickens. We have been enjoying them quite a bit, and we will tell you more updates on this adventure in the future. Hope you are all doing well back in the US. For those in the Midwest I hope preparing your gardens this spring is going well. :-)

Love, Ryan

Hey Everyone!

I added a few more pics to our "Life in Bushenyi" facebook album. A few pics from Christmas and our garden, and some of our new adventures with Chickens (with Ryan promises a blog about soon!)

They are at the end of this album if you're interested!

Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Happy New Year everyone! 2012 will be our only full year spent in the Peace Corps and we are looking forward to it! We celebrated the new year by having a few friends over for a nice dinner and dessert, playing cards, and watching a movie. We watched the clock for the arrival of the new year, even though we weren't able to watch a ball drop since it was still the afternoon in NYC. :-) As we waited for midnight (champagne poised and ready), the power suddenly went out at about 11:55. We scrambled to light candles so we wouldn't miss the arrival of 2012, but at about 11:58 the power came back on and we were able to beckon the new year in with light! Only in Uganda! :-) We toasted the new year, (I got a little ahead of myself, saying "To 2013!!") and looked forward for the year to come.

2011 has been a good year for us, filled with both lots of challenges and lots of great adventures. We are excited for the new year in here in Uganda - we look forward to new project ideas we have for the new school year, are excited about the visit of both of our families, as well as some additional travel in Uganda and other countries (America included!).

There's a New Year's quote from a poem I like. Even though this year was a happy one, I like the hope it gives all the same as I think about the coming year:

"Hope

Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,

Whispering 'it will be happier'..."

~Alfred Lord Tennyson

So - we wish you all the happiest and most hope-filled of New Years. Thank you for keeping in touch and following our adventures here in Uganda.

All the best! We love and miss you all dearly!!

~emily~

PS - I got an email that a picture I had submitted to Peace Corps is being featured on their main web page. I'm not sure how long it will be there, but if you're interested, check out the rolling banner at PeaceCorps.gov. :-)

Merry *belated* Christmas everyone! Although this year our Christmas was very different than any other either of us have ever had, it was a good one! And though we haven’t been celebrating for exactly 12 days, we have managed to pack a lot of holiday spirit in despite our distance from home and everything “traditionally” Christmas!

Our first Christmas package arrived in early November - way to go for my thoughtful mom who plans so far in advance and a surprisingly dependable mail system! So, we decked our house out with Christmas lights, candles, ornaments, and mini stockings the weekend after Thanksgiving. We also started our ipod playing a shuffled Christmas playlist (consisting of Frank Sinatra, James Taylor, Michael Buble, and Sara Groves, among others) and made a schedule for ourselves to watch every Christmas movie we had at our disposal (starting with Elf at the beginning of the month and ending with It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas night)! We were determined to make it feel like Christmas despite the lack of snow!

This year we managed to have both American style celebrations, and some Ugandan ones as well. Although the American ones definitely felt more like what we think of as Christmas, it was good for us to experience both.

For our American Christmas fixes, we had a Christmas cookie baking party at our place the weekend before Christmas and also ate a special Christmas Eve lunch at a fellow PCVs house. Our christmas cookies *slowly* baked in our dutch oven over our charcoal stove (about six hours of baking for about three dozen cookies!) and we had a great time with other volunteers from the area cooking, decorating, talking, listening to Christmas music, and of course eating lots of cookie dough! Then, we had a Christmas eve feast at a nearby volunteer’s house. Her mom was visiting for Christmas and had brought tons of decorations as well as lots of traditional goodies - chocolate chips for cookies, canned green beans for casserole, etc. It was great to have time with our Ugandan family of PCVs and do things that made us feel Christmasy!

Now, for our Ugandan Christmas....

Christmas is undoubtably the biggest holiday in Uganda, but it manifests itself much differently than Christmas at home! It began for us almost exactly twelve days before Christmas, when we were in Kampala heading home after Camp BUILD. We had stopped by a big supermarket there (Kampala is the only place in the country with supermarkets that feel anything like shopping home!) and were stunned by what we walked into. We felt like we had walked into a Target in December at home - Christmas decorations everywhere, music playing, gift wrap for sale - it was crazy! It was a very strange experience to our senses - experiencing something that felt so much like shopping at home, yet being so far from home! This turned out to be an exclusively Kampala thing though, as no stores near us have had anything even remotely close, but it was fun (and a bit unusual)!

Once we got back to our village, rural Southwest Uganda was much the same as it had been in November. Barely anybody decorates for Christmas and, if they do, it’s done on Christmas eve! (Our favorite duka across the street had a christmas banner and one string of Christmas lights that went up for the day!). The biggest changes in the community start happening about four days before Christmas. All of a sudden, the price of everything skyrockets! When buying tomatoes at our weekly market, the woman gave us four small tomatoes for the price we usually get five large tomatoes for! When I asked why, she just shrugged, “Christmas!” Cost of transportation also goes through the roof. A trip to Kampala from our area that usually costs 20,000 schillings (about ten bucks) jumps up to 70,000 schillings (about $35!) It’s insane! But, it’s a must that everyone in the country goes “to the village,” so people just deal with the crazy week of inflation (with a lot of complaining, that is!) and head to their families and homes nonetheless. Some people even choose to bundle up their small motor cycles with their whole family and belongings and make the trip on the terrible roads cross country that way!

On Christmas eve morning we went out to the main road in front of our site, and were shocked by the bustle of activity. People were selling all sorts of vegetables, and there must have been more than a dozen carcasses of meat hanging around (where usually there are only scraggly parts of one or two cows). There were tables set up with scales for weighing the meat and with intestines and other various parts of the animal displayed for purchase. Everyone looks forward to eating meat at Christmas. For some, it’s the only time all year that they will have it! When I asked a local shopkeeper what he’d be doing to celebrate Christmas, he pointed out of the front of his duka to a goat, tied to a post chewing on some grass - an oblivious Christmas goat to be eaten in celebration. Our neighbor PCV who has a slaughterhouse in her “backyard” told us that over thirty people were in line with their animals there, with more waiting at the other end for their meat. Interestingly enough, the district neighboring ours to the east is having a meatless Christmas this year and everyone is very sad about it - there was an outbreak of anthrax in the livestock a few weeks back and as a result there is a three month ban on selling meat! In conversation about it, people seemed more disappointed about a meatless Christmas than the concern of anthrax in their community.

On Christmas Eve evening, we headed to the home of our college principal to celebrate Christmas with his family. They live in a village about an hour from where we live, and the principal has a small hotel business there. So, we met lots of family, ate lots of traditional food, tried our best to maintain conversations in local language, and practiced our perfection of the Ugandan “art of sitting.” We spent the night in his hotel on Christmas eve - a simple, yet very nice hotel. (The bathroom was outfitted with a sink, hot/cold shower, and a toilet, but no running water as of yet so a number of jerry cans as well!).

On Christmas morning we had breakfast with the family and prepared ourselves for the morning at church. The service supposedly started at 10 am, we left the hotel around 10:30, and it didn’t actually start until after 11. After we took our seats with the family, we were asked to move to a (more visible) spot near the front. We sat with our principal, who everyone in the church and family (including his wife) simply refer to as “The Principal.” Thus began the over four hour service, not a word of it in English! There was lots of singing with drums (none of the traditional songs we are used to at Christmas), lots of offerings (I lost count at the eighth but there were more!), lots of noting and celebrating people’s birthdays and other events, and about eight baptisms. Everyone was dressed to the nines - lots of sequence, plaiting, and flashy shoes! During one of the offerings, not only money, but mushrooms, pumpkins, tomatoes, a live rooster, and a live goat were brought up the aisle to the offering plate! That was a new one for us! The goat and chicken simply hung out on the stage for the remaining hour or so of the service (the whole time of which I was silently praying that they wouldn’t be slaughtered right in front of us!), then at the end of the service the items were auctioned off for the church.

Although we were actually much closer to a large town than we are in Bushenyi, people in the village were very astounded and interested to have Abazungu (white people) with them for Christmas. Although we enjoyed meeting new people and working on our local language, we were called out a lot, stared at a lot, and laughed at a lot. To be honest, it’s the kind of thing we experience almost every day we’re out and about in Uganda, yet it just is not fun on Christmas! The true light skinned American Christmas experience in Uganda....

After church we went to the “village” home of the principal, a nice plot of land with his first house, current house, mother’s house, brothers house, and banana plantation. The principal’s father was a local leader and husband to two wives, so a very respected and “fruitful” man. The principal had inherited the land when his father passed and had made a very nice home there. We ate a huge lunch: spaghetti, karo (a doughy breadish dish made from millet flour), matooke (mashed bananas), eggplant, pumpkin, chapatti (flatbread), rice, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, chicken, goat, beef, peanut sauce, beans, fruit, and peas with sodas to wash it all down! We had brought avocados from our tree and Lefse (a norwegian treat that Ryan and I successfully attempted with basically none of the tools!) to share. People at first thought the Lefse it was chapatti gone wrong, but once they realized that it was never meant to be chapatti, they really enjoyed it! :-) It was a crazy amount of food. Talking while eating isn’t really culturally acceptable, and each member of the family ate in a different place. So, it was a quiet Christmas lunch, but very nice and clearly a lot of effort to prepare! The principal and his family were very thoughtful hosts, and we really appreciated being able to spend the holiday with them!

After lunch we headed with the family to a party thrown by the family of one of the baptized babies. They had decked out their lawn with tents, ribbons, and (not just for weddings) wedding cakes. (So far we’ve seen the exact same cakes be used for weddings, baptisms, birthdays, and priesthood celebrations!) On the way we inquired when we would be driven back to Bushenyi, as we had been invited for “one” night and were prepared to stay for exactly that. The principal was very surprised, saying he’d planned us to stay another day or more at least. He said we must not have understood that in Uganda “one night” actually means many. So, there was some confusion but we made it home at the end of it!

Having survived our Ugandan Christmas, we ended the evening at home watching It’s A Wonderful Life and drinking hot chocolate! And thus wrapped up our 12ish days of Christmas in Uganda! A Christmas to remember no doubt!

Love and miss you all - especially at Christmas!

~emily~

PS - We’ve been told that now begins a full week of drinking and “merry making” until new years, at the end of which everyone is so hurting for money that they sell all sorts of stuff. As a result, we’re hoping the next week we’ll be buying six hens (a new adventure we're embarking on that Ryan will have to write a post about soon)! The absurdly loud music into the morning hours started last night, so we’ll keep ya posted on how our resulting Hen acquirement goes! Happy New Years!

Merry *belated* Christmas everyone! Although this year our Christmas was very different than any other either of us have ever had, it was a good one! And though we haven’t been celebrating for exactly 12 days, we have managed to pack a lot of holiday spirit in despite our distance from home and everything “traditionally” Christmas!

Our first Christmas package arrived in early November - way to go for my thoughtful mom who plans so far in advance and a surprisingly dependable mail system! So, we decked our house out with Christmas lights, candles, ornaments, and mini stockings the weekend after Thanksgiving. We also started our ipod playing a shuffled Christmas playlist (consisting of Frank Sinatra, James Taylor, Michael Buble, and Sara Groves, among others) and made a schedule for ourselves to watch every Christmas movie we had at our disposal (starting with Elf at the beginning of the month and ending with It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas night)! We were determined to make it feel like Christmas despite the lack of snow!

This year we managed to have both American style celebrations, and some Ugandan ones as well. Although the American ones definitely felt more like what we think of as Christmas, it was good for us to experience both.

For our American Christmas fixes, we had a Christmas cookie baking party at our place the weekend before Christmas and also ate a special Christmas Eve lunch at a fellow PCVs house. Our christmas cookies *slowly* baked in our dutch oven over our charcoal stove (about six hours of baking for about three dozen cookies!) and we had a great time with other volunteers from the area cooking, decorating, talking, listening to Christmas music, and of course eating lots of cookie dough! Then, we had a Christmas eve feast at a nearby volunteer’s house. Her mom was visiting for Christmas and had brought tons of decorations as well as lots of traditional goodies - chocolate chips for cookies, canned green beans for casserole, etc. It was great to have time with our Ugandan family of PCVs and do things that made us feel Christmasy! We also did some traditional family baking - Lefse for Ryan and Wild Rice Soup and Pizza (with EVERYTHING from scratch) for me!

Now, for our Ugandan Christmas....

Christmas is undoubtably the biggest holiday in Uganda, but it manifests itself much differently than Christmas at home! It began for us almost exactly twelve days before Christmas, when we were in Kampala heading home after Camp BUILD. We had stopped by a big supermarket there (Kampala is the only place in the country with supermarkets that feel anything like shopping home!) and were stunned by what we walked into. We felt like we had walked into a Target in December at home - Christmas decorations everywhere, music playing, gift wrap for sale - it was crazy! It was a very strange experience to our senses - experiencing something that felt so much like shopping at home, yet being so far from home! This turned out to be an exclusively Kampala thing though, as no stores near us have had anything even remotely close, but it was fun (and a bit unusual)!

Once we got back to our village, rural Southwest Uganda was much the same as it had been in November. Barely anybody decorates for Christmas and, if they do, it’s done on Christmas eve! (Our favorite duka across the street had a christmas banner and one string of Christmas lights that went up for the day!). The biggest changes in the community start happening about four days before Christmas. All of a sudden, the price of everything skyrockets! When buying tomatoes at our weekly market, the woman gave us four small tomatoes for the price we usually get five large tomatoes for! When I asked why, she just shrugged, “Christmas!” Cost of transportation also goes through the roof. A trip to Kampala from our area that usually costs 20,000 schillings (about ten bucks) jumps up to 70,000 schillings (about $35!) It’s insane! But, it’s a must that everyone in the country goes “to the village,” so people just deal with the crazy week of inflation (with a lot of complaining, that is!) and head to their families and homes nonetheless. Some people even choose to bundle up their small motor cycles with their whole family and belongings and make the trip on the terrible roads cross country that way!

On Christmas eve morning we went out to the main road in front of our site, and were shocked by the bustle of activity. People were selling all sorts of vegetables, and there must have been more than a dozen carcasses of meat hanging around (where usually there are only scraggly parts of one or two cows). There were tables set up with scales for weighing the meat and with intestines and other various parts of the animal displayed for purchase. Everyone looks forward to eating meat at Christmas. For some, it’s the only time all year that they will have it! When I asked a local shopkeeper what he’d be doing to celebrate Christmas, he pointed out of the front of his duka to a goat, tied to a post chewing on some grass - an oblivious Christmas goat to be eaten in celebration. Our neighbor PCV who has a slaughterhouse in her “backyard” told us that over thirty people were in line with their animals there, with more waiting at the other end for their meat. Interestingly enough, the district neighboring ours to the east is having a meatless Christmas this year and everyone is very sad about it - there was an outbreak of anthrax in the livestock a few weeks back and as a result there is a three month ban on selling meat! In conversation about it, people seemed more disappointed about a meatless Christmas than the concern of anthrax in their community.

On Christmas Eve evening, we headed to the home of our college principal to celebrate Christmas with his family. They live in a village about an hour from where we live, and the principal has a small hotel business there. So, we met lots of family, ate lots of traditional food, tried our best to maintain conversations in local language, and practiced our perfection of the Ugandan “art of sitting.” We spent the night in his hotel on Christmas eve - a simple, yet very nice hotel. (The bathroom was outfitted with a sink, hot/cold shower, and a toilet, but no running water as of yet so a number of jerry cans as well!).

On Christmas morning we had breakfast with the family and prepared ourselves for the morning at church. The service supposedly started at 10 am, we left the hotel around 10:30, and it didn’t actually start until after 11. After we took our seats with the family, we were asked to move to a (more visible) spot near the front. We sat with our principal, who everyone in the church and family (including his wife) simply refer to as “The Principal.” Thus began the over four hour service, not a word of it in English! There was lots of singing with drums (none of the traditional songs we are used to at Christmas), lots of offerings (I lost count at the eighth but there were more!), lots of noting and celebrating people’s birthdays and other events, and about eight baptisms. Everyone was dressed to the nines - lots of sequence, plaiting, and flashy shoes! During one of the offerings, not only money, but mushrooms, pumpkins, tomatoes, a live rooster, and a live goat were brought up the aisle to the offering plate! That was a new one for us! The goat and chicken simply hung out on the stage for the remaining hour or so of the service (the whole time of which I was silently praying that they wouldn’t be slaughtered right in front of us!), then at the end of the service the items were auctioned off for the church.

Although we were actually much closer to a large town than we are in Bushenyi, people in the village were very astounded and interested to have Abazungu (white people) with them for Christmas. Although we enjoyed meeting new people and working on our local language, we were called out a lot, stared at a lot, and laughed at a lot. To be honest, it’s the kind of thing we experience almost every day we’re out and about in Uganda, yet it just is not fun on Christmas! The true light skinned American Christmas experience in Uganda....

After church we went to the “village” home of the principal, a nice plot of land with his first house, current house, mother’s house, brothers house, and banana plantation. The principal’s father was a local leader and husband to two wives, so a very respected and “fruitful” man. The principal had inherited the land when his father passed and had made a very nice home there. We ate a huge lunch: spaghetti, karo (a doughy breadish dish made from millet flour), matooke (mashed bananas), eggplant, pumpkin, chapatti (flatbread), rice, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, chicken, goat, beef, peanut sauce, beans, fruit, and peas with sodas to wash it all down! We had brought avocados from our tree and Lefse (a norwegian treat that Ryan and I successfully attempted with basically none of the tools!) to share. People at first thought the Lefse it was chapatti gone wrong, but once they realized that it was never meant to be chapatti, they really enjoyed it! :-) It was a crazy amount of food. Talking while eating isn’t really culturally acceptable, and each member of the family ate in a different place. So, it was a quiet Christmas lunch, but very nice and clearly a lot of effort to prepare! The principal and his family were very thoughtful hosts, and we really appreciated being able to spend the holiday with them!

After lunch we headed with the family to a party thrown by the family of one of the baptized babies. They had decked out their lawn with tents, ribbons, and (not just for weddings) wedding cakes. (So far we’ve seen the exact same cakes be used for weddings, baptisms, birthdays, and priesthood celebrations!) On the way we inquired when we would be driven back to Bushenyi, as we had been invited for “one” night and were prepared to stay for exactly that. The principal was very surprised, saying he’d planned us to stay another day or more at least. He said we must not have understood that in Uganda “one night” actually means many. So, there was some confusion but we made it home at the end of it!

Having survived our Ugandan Christmas, we ended the evening at home watching It’s A Wonderful Life and drinking hot chocolate! And thus wrapped up our 12ish days of Christmas in Uganda! A Christmas to remember no doubt!

Love and miss you all - especially at Christmas!

~emily~

PS - We’ve been told that now begins a full week of drinking and “merry making” until new years, at the end of which everyone is so hurting for money that they sell all sorts of stuff. As a result, we’re hoping the next week we’ll be buying six hens (a new adventure we're embarking on that Ryan will have to write a post about soon)! The absurdly loud music into the morning hours started last night, so we’ll keep ya posted on how our resulting Hen acquirement goes! Happy New Years!

Hi Everyone!

I uploaded a few more pics of what we've been up to to our facebook album. Click Here! The new ones are at the end of the album. A little holiday goodies and a new project we've been working on! (More on that later!)

And....MERRY CHRISTMAS! It's so hard to be away from family and friends this time of year, but thanks for keeping in touch and know that we are thinking of you and missing ya'll lots and lots!

~emily~

It seemed only fitting that as the snow has started falling in the Minnesota (sort of), we set-up our Christmas decorations, and the year draws to a close that we counsel at a summer camp. Well it was not exactly a summer camp, rather a holiday camp. A few days ago we wrapped up Camp BUILD. BUILD standing for Boys of Uganda in Leadership Development. The camp was organized and primarily supported by Peace Corps volunteers. It was the first time this camp has happened and it was run concurrently to Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World). The camp focused on how to prepare the boys of Uganda to be effective and promising leaders for the future of this country. There were 137 boys from all over the country at the camp. Conveniently, because they were from all over the country their common language was English. For many of the boys it was their first time being at a camp, learning in more unique ways then just chalk-and-talk, and meeting boys from other parts of the country. Both Emily and I were counselors for about 9 campers each. We greatly enjoyed working with the boys who were all between the ages of 12 and 15. I personally was never a huge fan of summer camps, and as such was nervous about being a counselor. But everyday I felt excited by the campers and energized by their spirit. Emily had two campers in her group that had impairments to their vision, which added some thought provoking challenges to planning activities that included all group members. So Emily had the pleasure of leading the Great Grey Tigers, whose group song went to the theme song “We are the Titans.” My group which for all intensive purposes was better then Emily’s group, she may not admit to this, was called the Super Eagles. The week had five themes so I will tell you a bit more about each day. The theme for Day 1 was Building Yourself. Each day they had breakfast, then three sessions during the day, and then they did sports and other activities in the evenings. The first session on building yourself was about Self Esteem and Self Awareness. We talked about what each of them perceived as their strengths, and what things about themselves they like. The next session was about alcohol/drugs & debate. The campers learned the value of debating ideas with one another, and how this can make you a good leader. Finally, the last session of the day was a scavenger hunt and session on what makes a good leader. Day 2 had the theme building your community. The first two sessions of the day were on domestic violence and violence in your school. We have had opportunities in the past to talk about domestic violence and caning in schools with Ugandans, but it is always eye opening to hear some of their perspectives. The biggest thing that I really tried to get across to my boys is to realize the future that they will lead does not and should not be the same as their parents. It is hard to get them to realize this sometimes when one person has lead your country for 25 years, but it was fun to get them to think about. Then in the afternoon there were two sessions on conflict resolution. Emily and I ran one of the sessions about techniques to avoid getting into harmful conflict, and what it means to build good conflict resolution. We also gave each group a scenario and had them make a skit to show both good and bad conflict resolution. The third day’s theme was Build your Health. The first session of the day was on HIV/AIDS and Malaria. They were taught the facts about these diseases that are some of the leading causes of death in Uganda. The second session of the day was on water sanitation. During the water session they learned how to make a device called a tippy tap to wash your hands, and also how toilets work. The final session of the day was on reproductive health, hygiene, and condoms. Campers were glued to this presentation and had many questions about sex, condoms, and other similar issues. It was also really well set-up allowing each of the campers to try putting a condom on a fake penis. Emily talked about how this was especially helpful for campers who were blind. This session also opened up some good later discussions about sex and relationships. It always feels good to dispel some of the sex myths in Uganda (i.e. If you don’t have sex five times a week with your wife your penis will explode). Day 4 was about Building your Environment. The day had two main activities. The first activity was to go to a Demonstration Farm, which was a PCV’s site. Here the students learned about how they could farm in ways that both help the environment and help them either health wise or in income generation. We learned about the value of having cows not graze (the cows might not agree), using organic methods to dispel pests, and how to conserve water and use drip irrigation. I learned a lot at the farm and it was probably the most exciting session for me, and I think the campers really found it informative as well. Then each of the groups got to walk to Lake Victoria. Very few of the campers had ever seen Lake Victoria before; many had never even left their home district before camp. So many just gazed out over the lake. One of Emily’s campers said, “It is the first lake I have seen with my own two eyes!” The rest of the day was restful after our long walk but we enjoyed watching a couple planet earth videos. A couple of evenings during the week we also watched a couple of American Boyhood favorites, that went a little over the heads of the Ugandans, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars IV. The final day’s theme was Building Uganda. The day started with a sports day with Camp GLOW. Each boy group got teamed with a girl group to compete with. Overall the day was incredibly fun, and as Ugandans would put it, “It was very colorful.” We played tug-of-war, kickball, sack races, obstacle course, and maybe a few other things. People were very excited, both campers and counselors a like. After the events were over we had some speeches by the Camp GLOW director, PC Uganda Country Director, and the American Ambassador in Uganda. So the kids got a kick out of knowing that the Ambassador was the most important American in Uganda. When we returned back to Camp Build, which was just down the street at a Secondary school from GLOW, we enjoyed a final relaxing day. A couple volunteers lead a session on how you will become a successful leader. Then in the evening we had presentations of certificates (Ugandans live for their certificates) and also presentations of projects the students had been working on all week. Some of the activities that they did (which you will get to enjoy in our forthcoming vlog) were in drama, dance, music, creative writing, building (they built trebuchets), and art. The final thing that we did on Friday was a dance party, which the campers loved. The second the music starts they are streaming onto the dance floor, it was a cute final thing. In the morning we all bid each other farewell, and boarded are buses. Overall we both really enjoyed the week, and I think it has lead us to being worn out since we returned on Saturday. But we found the camp to be one of the most exciting things we had done yet in our Peace Corps experience! Happy Christmas/Summer Camp Season! Ryan P.S. Here are a couple links for Camp Build:Our Camp BUILD pics - a link to our facebook album from the week

Official Camp BUILD blog- a link to the blog that was put together before and during the week by the "media" staff from camp BUILD

Official Camp BUILD photos - a link to the "official" camp BUILD pics from the week, from the same people

If you're interested, click here!

Love you and miss you all!

~emily~

Thursday we had a great opportunity to take part in a World AIDS Day Celebration! We traveled to Bukedea, in Eastern Uganda, and joined with three other PCVs there to help bring awareness about AIDS to the community.

In Uganda, AIDS is still a big problem. Although the prevalence among youth is decreasing, the disease is increasing among married couples. Additionally, despite the dramatic decrease in prevalence a few years ago, AIDS is once again on the rise in Uganda. The main reason for the rise in prevalence is multiple sexual partners and people not knowing their HIV status. So, all over the country, people were encouraged to know their status and practice the ABCs of AIDS prevention - Abstinence, Being faithful, and Condom use.

One of the PCVs in Bukedea had recieved a grant to faciliate the day and had lots of great activities planned. The day started (in typical Ugandan fashion - three hours late!) with a parade through town to mobilize the community! (We have never seen a parade in Uganda, so this was hugely exciting for us - let alone all the community members!) There is a youth band in the Bukedea community that led the parade through town marching and playing music. While we marched through town students handed out red ribbons and pamphlets of information about AIDS. People joined in and followed the parade to the site of the rest of the events. By the time we got to the event site, the crowd was huge - probably over three hundred people! And at one point, there were over a hundred children running along with the parade - so excited! Ryan and I couldn't stop smiling! :-)

Once we got back to the district office building, where the rest of the event was held, there was a program that included drama put on by local students, speeches by district officials and community members, music from a post-test club, and a condom demonstration by one of the local PCVs. The Ugandan theme for the 2011 World AIDS Day was "Reengaging leaders in the prevention of HIV." So, many of the local leaders spoke - urging their fellow community members to get tested and advocating for everyone's role in preventing the spread of AIDS. It was a full day of celebrating with the Bukedea community and bringing education and awareness to preventing a disease that has affected so many families in Uganda and around the world.

We enjoyed the chance to see another part of the country and partner with PCVs in this great event! We took lots of pictures and videos, and when we get home we'll be sure to upload them to share with everyone!

Today begins Peace Corps Volunteer led Camp BUILD (Boys of Uganda in Leadership and Development) and Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) in Entebbe. Ryan and I will be helping counsel at the Boy's camp all week and will certianly keep everyone posted on the exciting week when we get home!

We love and miss you all!

~emily & ryan~

Hey Everyone!

Better late than never! Here's some videos of our sweet CarniBull day at the college! (For more info on the big event, check out this post!). Enjoy!

Also - I added a few more pics to our day to day album on Facebook. Click here if you're interested!

~ryan & emily~

Serving in another culture really is the best of times and the worst of times. One of our volunteer friends says that every day is a roller coaster, and we have come to see that as truth! Though this week has definitely had some "worst of times" moments, today was the best of times! One of those - "THIS is why I'm here!" kind of days!

It has been an average, everyday kind of day - nothing too special. But we've had so many little moments that just affirmed our integration into the community and our purpose for being here that it just felt great! While we were in Bushenyi doing some shopping we had some great conversations with the shopkeepers in the local language. We didn't get called mzungus at all! The often rude Boda drivers were just funny and friendly today. We had a great time chatting at the market. We've had great conversations with our neighbors and college staff about some projects we are working on around the house. We had our counterpart and dear friend over for dinner and had a great couple hours of just talking and sharing with one another. It was a perfect day!

So, although we go through our ups and downs, and the blog sees lots of them both, just wanted to say that today was one of the best of times! You never know what a day will hold, but today was a great one! During college, I wrote this quote on my bed as the first thing I would see in the morning: "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson. And I guess today was a reminder that despite yesterdays downs, today could and will be a great day!

Thanks for reading. Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Hey everyone! Me again!

So this Friday is the big black Friday shopping event, right? Well if you're looking for an alternative for some neat holiday gifts, here's an idea!

www.twerwaneho.etsy.com

This is an etsy site that was created by another PCV in Uganda. She works with orphans and vulnerable children to make crafts, and all proceeds go towards continuing this work. Here's what she says in her bio:

I am a current volunteer in Uganda and am constantly learning from the amazing women around me and am happy to share with you what I have learned. My crafts are made of of beads, natural materials such as banana or palm fibers and seeds and upcycled fabrics.

Twerwaneho Orphans Community Initiative (TOCI) is located in Fort Portal, Uganda, and dedicated to helping orphaned children and children with special needs. Twerwaneho (pronounced "Twer-wan-eh-ho") means to work hard for ourselves and that is what I hope to teach the children here in Uganda, to work hard for themselves and then to help others. Each of the pieces of jewelry and craft are designed and handcrafted with love and made to help raise money for the children. I am happy to do special colors and custom orders.

All proceeds go directly to TOCI to support the orphans, vulnerable children and those with special needs.

She hopes to add more to the site in the weeks to come, but it might be a good place to look for a unique gift that will make a difference this season!

Love and miss you all,

~emily~

Hey Everybody!

Hope all is well with you! Happy Thanksgiving! We are sad to be away from home on one of our favorite holidays, but hope that everyone has a wonderful time being together and celebrating the holiday! We are having some PCV neighbors over Thursday and plan to make mashed potatoes, vegetarian gravy, soy chunks (taste better than they sound!), bread, green beans, and pumpkin cake! So, it should be a good time, even though we can’t be home and celebrating with family there!

Things at the college are winding up for the year! First year students begin their exams in just a couple of days, and two weeks from now the year will be finished! We will be helping “invigilate” the exams for the first year students (3 days of exams, 6 hours of testing each day!), then our work at the college for the year will really come to a close! Outside testers are coming for invigilating the second year exams, and all marking of the exams is done outside of the college at a national marking center. Hard to believe we’ve basically finished our second of a total of 6 terms here at the college!

Even as things are winding up for the year on our primary projects, we’ve started another really exciting secondary project! We are working with thirteen local businesspeople and community members to set up a VSLA (village savings and loan association), and we are so excited about it!

In Uganda, a very small percentage of people use banks. They have high fees and are inaccessible for much of the population. As a result, microfinance is big. There are microfinance institutions in every town we’ve visited and many people use them to take out loans. However, even microfinance doesn’t work for most lower class businesspeople and community members, as many people don’t have much credit or “reliability” from a traditional banking standpoint, and again interest rates and fees are high.

The VSLA is a response to all of this. It’s an opportunity for community members to come together to save with one another each week, and grant out loans to one another each month. It’s wonderful because all of the money comes from the people in the group and stays within the people in the group. Interest is charged on the loans, but is payed back into the group so that at the end of the saving cycle (about a year) whatever interest has accumulated on the loans is paid back to the members based on the percentage of the total that they have saved. It’s a really exciting model that encourages sustainability and community togetherness, and doesn’t rely on outside grants or mzungu money! :-) So, we’re in the midst of the beginnings of our first group. So far the group has gotten organized, elected leaders, written an constitution, and collected all of the necessary supplies. The plan is that the group will begin saving with one another in the next week or two.

The VSLA model was started by an NGO in Uganda and has now expanded into other countries as a banking option for poor communities. So far it seems to be exactly what Uganda needs and we really hope that it can fill the need for savings and accessible loans in many of our community member’s lives. There is a great manual that’s walking us through as facilitators and tons of details about the VSLA project that I won’t bore everyone with here! But, if you’re interested you should google VSLA or check out vsla.net. It’s a really exciting opportunity and we think it has great potential for communities like ours in Uganda and other countries in similar savings/loans positions.

So, that’s something we’ve been excited about in the last few weeks and will definitely keep you posted about in the weeks and months to come!

Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Hi Everyone,

I added a couple of pictures to our "Life In Bushenyi" album. Nothin' too special, but check them out if you like! Click Here!

Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Hey Everybody!

November at home means crisp leaves, cold air, football games, and upcoming holidays! We’re still in the heart of the rainy season these days in Uganda, but we’re also heading into two other exciting Ugandan seasons - exam season and grasshopper season!

First - the lighter of the two - it’s grasshopper season in Uganda! Just to be perfectly clear, grasshopper season means the season for eating grasshoppers! It’s a time of year literally everyone looks forward to! In certain parts of the country grasshoppers are jumping around everywhere in plague-like proportions and people have set up lights to attract the grasshoppers and enormous bins underneath the lights to collect them. The collected grasshoppers are then delegged, salted, and deep fried. They are sold in markets and on the bus for about 20 cents per bag. This weekend while traveling back from Kampala, the bus merchants usually selling meat on a stick, grilled bananas, and sodas had bags and bags of deep fried grasshoppers as well! Ryan was brave enough to try them, but I was not (I prefer grasshopper mint cookies!!). He ate the whole bag (probably more than 50 of the little guys!) like it was no big deal while I watched, totally grossed out!!! When I asked him if he’d get them again his response was short and sweet - “definitely!” So, with another exciting food under his belt, my dear husband can say he has tried a Ugandan favorite snack food! I am, however, still blissfully ignorant of the crunch of the grasshopper! :-)

The other big season that everyone is obsessing about right now is the big exam season. Exams are HUGE in Uganda, and the entire country takes the same standardized exams at the same time. The Ugandan school year runs from February to December, so exams are all beginning now that we are in the final month! The exams started in the last couple weeks and everyone, including our students, are all abuzz about them!

Ugandan students take a number of exams throughout their schooling years. At the end of each year of school there is a big promotional exam that determines their ability to pass to the next level of schooling. Beyond the promotional exams, students also take a number of really large exams that to a certain degree determine their future possibilities and thus have a lot of importance! Those “biggies” are the PLE, the UCE, and the UACE.

At the end of primary school in P. 7 (like our 6th grade) they take their PLE (primary leaving exam) to assess their primary learning and determine their further schooling options. If they go on to secondary school, they take another big exam (the Ugandan Certificate of Education exam) after completing their first four years (O level). (Most of our PTC students come to us after completing this level). But, if that goes well and they have the funds to continue with secondary school they move on to A level and finish their two years there with the Ugandan Advanced Certificate of Education exam. With a population of 32 million people and half under the age of 15, you can imagine just how many Ugandan kiddos are stressing about exams as we move into November.

As you move around the villages and towns, signs posted everywhere ask for silence because exams are in progress. Radios are talking about the exams. Strangers in taxis are all talking about them - it really is a phenomenon!

And, the exam frenzy has not passed by the Bushenyi PTC students. The last few weeks have been a time for a great deal of studying (or revising, as they call it!) and much talk about what the exams will hold. Our first year students are gearing up for the promotional exams that will determine if they can return to school in February, and our second years are working on the big ones - their final Grade III Teacher Certification Exams. From what we can figure out, the exams will start in about two weeks, and by the first weekend in December everything should be completed. Results come out in late January or early February, after which those passing students can begin work as primary teachers, or return to school for their second year of PTC studies.

The whole exam craziness is a bit of a stressor for us to. It’s hard to know how to help our students be prepared, but still work to develop critical thinking skills in the midst of it. Many of our students only want us to tell them past exam questions and answers, and absolutely refuse to do any higher level review. (i.e. the discussion groups I tried to facilitate today were an absolute disaster!!) It’s also hard because many tutors aren’t going to classes, and the ones that are seem to be teaching a quicker version of everything they have taught over the entire year. Even considering “cultural sensitivity,” I simply can’t bring myself to do this! I’ve had a lot of time thinking about this working in Title One schools in the states, and my philosophy is that the time before a test should be more of a spruce up on things that should already be known, and not a mad blitz to reteach everything in a shallow and test-focused manner. I know it’s the same debate that goes on in America - should we teach to the test or trust that the good teaching we’ve been doing all year will by its very nature prepare our students. Add to it the “only one right answer” mentality of so many Ugandans and its a bit of a mess.

Then, there’s the discouragement I know every teacher faces at one point or another in realizing that all the work they have done appears to be a complete loss and nobody seems to have gotten anything from it! An example - today I went to teach my Special Needs Education classes and tried to foster some reflection on what they had learned about SNE and what they thought about the current status of SNE in Uganda. I got very few people to give me any sort of inkling that they had learned a thing from me all term, and the most enthusiastic students could only come up with this: they think teachers who teach children with disabilities should be paid extra salary and should not have to work with them if they do not want to. (Thus, completely going against everything have tried to help them understand over the past six months!) So...it’s a bit of a challenge.

Then, there’s the aspect of the scores. According to the university that regulates the exams, a student can pass and become a primary teacher by achieving a minimum score of 50% in each of the examinable subjects. This means that we are passing students who may know exactly HALF of what they should know! It’s especially alarming because every bit of content on these exams is covered through teaching the national syllabus, so in theory it would be possible and even reasonable for students to get very high scores! It’s hard to see a lot of hope for a struggling educational system when we begin to understand the cycle of poor teaching and unprepared teachers.

But, in all of it, we’re doing what we can. I keep trying to remember “We Are Marshall” and trusting that more got through to the students than they are letting me see on the surface. There’s a wonderful sustainability in teaching in that even if few people actually learned, more than just cramming for exams, those few people could actually reach hundreds, or thousands of kids during their time as a teacher. So, it’s good to keep that in mind as the exam craziness threatens to make us feel a little down about our work here so far.

So, that’s what’s on our minds these days - salty grasshoppers and stressed out students! Hope you are all well and enjoying the final days of fall! We love and miss you all!

~emily~

We have just finished a crazy fun day at Bushenyi PTC! We are really exhausted and sunburned, but happy! I want to tell you all about it!

First, a little background...this is the final term in the Ugandan school year, and our PTC students will take their final teacher exams in about a month. Our second year students just returned from their final student teaching practice and now are focused on preparing for their pen and paper exams. Their final score is a combination of the practical (student teaching) and theoretical (pen and paper exam) scores. The students last year passed at a rate of over 99% - a real victory for the college! Before they took their exams last year, the principal had promised them a bull if they received great scores. (Seriously - a real bull - to be slaughtered, chopped up, and eaten). However, once the scores were published the students had already “graduated,” gotten jobs, and dispersed. So, alas, no bull to be had.

So, this year the principal decided that he would preemptively offer the students a bull in anticipation of their great scores. So, he proposed we create a day to celebrate them and have them all commit to getting a great score on the upcoming exams. We both thought this was a fabulous idea, as the students here don’t seem to get celebrated enough! So - we were all in for the event! And...I got put on the committee for planning it!

Being on a committee in Uganda is not as glamorous as it sounds. More often than not, the committee never meets, and when it comes up in conversation later, those who have been assigned to it usually have forgotten all about it. As Uganda has turned me into a vegetarian, I wasn’t super excited about helping out with the slaughter and butchering of a bull. I had a feeling nobody else would participate in the planning, so I decided to try to take matters into my own hands.

After a little brainstorming with Ryan and our PCV neighbor Jean, I decided it would be fun to have a carnival type of event with games to enjoy rather than spending a day watching a bull die and listening to incredibly long speeches! So, I wrote up a little proposal and submitted it. About a three weeks later (after multiple rescheduling!), the committee finally met and we discussed the plan for the day. Although, as it turns out, there was still a bull slaughtered and plenty of long speeches, we also had a morning of carnival games, a “drive in movie” outside after dinner, and a lot of fun!

Since the day was all about the “bull,” I thought it would be cute to try to organize my carnival games around the bull theme - a carniBULL! The play on words didn’t pan out too well, as carnival is not a word that Ugandans know, but I enjoyed thinking of my cleverness throughout the day and I think my fellow Americans thought it was funny too (Thanks Jean and Ryan)!

Our “carnibull” turned out to be a sort of cross between a carnival, elementary school field day, and a seven year old’s birthday party. We had to work with a really limited budget, local materials, short prep time (by the time everything got approved we only had about 4 days to get it all put together!) and the reality of trying to explain each new game to our large amount of students. So - simple, cheap, and fun was in order! We decided on pin the tail on the bull, “bullseye” bean bag toss, 3 legged race, waterballoon toss, musical chairs, human tic tac toe, and a “bottle” race for the events of the day. And, since we weren’t sure of how engaged the students would be, we decided to make the day into a sort of competition between classes. We even made a paper mache bull pinata to be given to the winning class! Almost all of the games were completely new to our students and they absolutely LOVED them! We were a little worried, since nobody in America over the age of seven would be interested in playing games like pin the tail on the bull and musical chairs, but there was no need for us to worry! The fact that the games were new and fun was enough to keep the students excited and interested! There was so much laughing and cheering (and a surprising amount of competitiveness considering the caliber of the games!) - it was a complete blast!

It was also a fair amount of craziness, despite Ryan and my best efforts to be our organized and punctual American selves. We ran the carnival for 460+ people almost completely by ourselves! The microphone that was promised to come never did, the tutors who had volunteered to help didn’t show up, the deputy principal in charge of overseeing the whole event was MIA all day, we had to start about 45 minutes late because protocol requires that no event can begin without an opening word from the “big man,” and the language barrier all created for somewhat difficult communication. But, the kids loved it, and Ryan and I learned another lesson in our continuing Ugandan education on flexibility and going with the flow! When I began to get stressed with the details of it all and my disappointment in the lack of involvement from my fellow Ugandan staff members, all I had to do was look around and see the incredible amount of joy on the students’ faces, and it was all absolutely worth it. It was a great success!!!

In the afternoon we ate a big traditional lunch, had singing and speeches, and had all the students sign their commitment to working for success on banners I had made. There was a brief “social hour” (dance!) before dinner, and a “drive in” movie showing of Invictus in the evening (for those of you who don’t know me well - I LOVE outdoor in movies! So....given the chance I had to introduce them to my students in Uganda!!). All in all, I think the students were excited and felt celebrated, and we were happy to be a part of it all!

We know the students had a blast during the event, and we’re also hoping it gave them ideas that they can take into their primary schools when they are teachers. We wanted to give them some creative ideas how with basically no money and limited supplies, lots of fun can be had! And - I think that came through too!

Although I’ve written all about the day, I think that the pictures and videos from the event really do a better job than my words! So, here’s a link to my facebook album from the day (CLICK HERE!), and a carnibull video blog is in the works! Enjoy!

Thanks for reading! We love and miss you all!

~emily~

Our portable hard drive has proved to be one of the best things we brought with us to Uganda. The dozens of movies and TV shows we brought or acquired since we've been in country have been an absolute gift on nights when we just felt like vegging out and watching something. Since the sun sets every night around seven and we aren't supposed to be out after dark, some nights get long with not a lot to do! While we love reading, playing games, cooking, and talking, sometimes it's just nice to have a movie and popcorn! Thanks to our hard drive, we've seen some great new TV shows (Modern Family!) and movies, and loved watching some classics as well! (Sound of Music last week!)

Last night we scoured the hard drive and chose a movie that Ryan had seen before coming to Uganda, but I had not - We Are Marshall. While I am not a huge sports movie fan, I do enjoy a "feel good underdog" movie every now and then. Before watching the movie, I actually had no idea even the basic premise of the movie. (As evidenced by the fact that as the football team got on the plane that would ultimately crash and result in everyone's death, I was talking about how exciting it must have been to get to take a plane trip with all your friends and teammates! Ryan looked at me and said, "Do you not know what this movie is about?!" Ooops!) But, as it went on, I thought I had a pretty good idea of how the movie would progress: tragedy hits small town, unlikely coach steps up to lead a ragtag group of players, despite adversity they succeed with unprecented sucess, and all live happily ever after. I realize this may be an oversimplified view, but it's the jist of movies like this, right?

We Are Marshall surprised me though! Although it had some of the typical twists and turns I have come to expect (and, in all honesty, really enjoy!) of such movies, the end was a surprise. For those of you who haven't seen the movie recently, it ends with a back and forth game that results in a crazy pass and the first win of the season for the team. The town rallies behind them and different characters come to terms with their grief from the tragedies they have suffered. It's a good ending! But, before the credits roll, a bit more information is shared about the Marshall University Thundering Herd's success that year. After the exciting win that ends the movie, the team went one to win.....drumroll please....only one more game! No big championship, no great victory, just one more win. In fact, they didn't become a very notable team until more than a decade later. By that time, the coaches who had led the return of the Marshall Football program were long gone, the players had all graduated, and the town had moved on from the shadow of the 1970 plane crash.

So...it got me thinking about Peace Corps. While I think many volunteers hope that as they move around the world to serve communities in need, they will indeed have an experience worthy of a "feel good underdog" movie. And, undoubtedly, some of them do! But, for the majority of us, our service may only result in one or two wins - no great championships, no shiny trophies. But, I think it's important for us to remember that those one or two wins really are huge! Just as the Marshall Football team cherished those two wins as a chance to get their football program back on its feet and help a town recover from tragedy, our one or two "small" Peace Corps wins might make a world of difference to the people we live and work around, and to our lives as well!

The coach of the new Thundering Herd football team, Jack Lengyel, only coached at Marshall from 1971-1974. In that time, he racked up a 9-33 record. Now, I'm no football whiz, but that's not a great record. Yet, he laid a foundation that would ultimately lead the team to greater victories many years later.

We will be Peace Corps volunteers from 2011-2013. Who knows what our win-loss record will be by the time we will leave. I guess we will have to hope for those one or two wins, and realize that after we head home we may leave behind the foundation for greater things in years to come. It's comforting to know that even if our service doesn't result in a "feel good underdog movie," we can still have confidence that we're doing good work that will have an impact, despite its challenges.

So...after finishing We Are Marshall last night, I felt inspired! And I thought I'd share some of that inspiration with you!

Thanks for reading! Love and miss you all!

~emily~

Well Term III in the Primary Teachers College world is full of many turns which we are finding as they seem to happen. The latest has been school practice, or student teaching. It started basically last Friday. They had planned a “brief”ing (can it still be called brief if it goes over 3 hours) to happen on school practice. So we waited all day for this briefing to happen and then at about 5 a student came to inform us it would be at 8 in the evening. The briefing was basically last minute do’s and don’ts to the students. It is interesting because the tutors seem to think that they need to give the students an answer for every single question they may have out in the field. Rather then just teaching them critical thinking skills to find their own answers to questions. So we went over seating arrangements, learning aids, proper PE uniforms (for the majority of the briefing), how to write capital and lower case letters, and many other things. Every tutor had to be sure to include his or her input (even if their input was the same as the last tutors). Emily talked about how these students had the ability to change the teaching profession, and not just reciprocate what their teachers were like. So if their teachers were not on time, they could be. If their teachers caned them, they do not need to cane. If their teachers humiliated them they did not have to do the same to their students. They were all very excited and encouraged by what she said, especially since most of them were asleep before she came up. The next day the students were ready to leave by 7 am for the schools. They slowly trickled out throughout the day, and the last group left around dinnertime. The schools do not provide anything for them so they have to take it all with them. When I say all that consists of: their boxes for clothes, mattresses, flour (for Posho and Porridge), beans, paraffin, and wood for cooking with. They loaded everything up and off they went. This week we have been getting to observe them out at their primary schools, which has been really fun. So each morning we pile into the school truck and get dropped off at the various primary schools. Emily and I have been getting to go together, which it has been nice to bounce ideas off of one another. Each day we get there basically right as the school day is starting and make a plan with the 10 to 12 second year students that we will observe. Then most of the day is spent sitting in the back of the classroom watch how they do and looking through their lesson plans. Then after we are done observing the student teach a 30 to 40 minute class we meet with them to discuss our observations, and their reactions. So far we have loved getting to build more one-on-one relationships with the students that can often be hard to do when they are all at the college. Some of the common mistakes or areas of concern we have seen are: not knowing effective alternative discipline techniques, variety in teaching methods, and not engaging students very effectively in the classroom. The things that we find the find most hopeful for our students are that they are excited to teach, their classrooms are very well organized, and almost all seem to really enjoy their students. So overall we have been very encouraged with were are students are at, and really enjoy getting to see them teach. We were a little worried that two mzungus (white people) would cause a huge disturbance at these primary schools, and most of the time it doesn’t. You always have at least a couple students looking at you in class, but usually they are not always the same students. But our students always come right up to us when we get there and greet us and that makes us feel right at home. We have about 2 or 3 more weeks of school practice, and then the students will get graded by the national moderators for school practice. So hopefully these weeks of teaching will get them confident going into teaching jobs in just a few more months (some could have jobs as soon as February)! Well I hope you all are doing well back in the US, and we hope that you are enjoying your fall! Love, Ryan

Cooking in Uganda is a lot more work than at home! At least, it is if you want to eat things other than Ugandan food every meal of every day. One of the things I had a hard time believing when I first got to Uganda was that most Ugandans eat the *exact* same meal every meal of every day from the time they are babies until the time they die! They can’t fathom that when they ask us what Americans eat we have a hard time giving them a short and concise answer! A Ugandan meal generally consists of 2-3 starchy things like matookye (cooked, mashed bananas that are not yet sweet), posho (flour and water made into a sort of dough and cooked), or karo (millet flour mixed with water) and some sort of sauce - usually either beans, peanut sauce, or meat. Although it maybe sounds interesting as I describe it, imagine never having any variety! Needless to say, Ryan and I and our American appetites for variety were more than ready to get cooking for ourselves once we got to site!

And, it’s been an adventure. Despite not having an oven, microwave, dishwasher, kitchen aid mixer (i miss you...), blender, (you get the picture) we’ve managed to make some really great dishes! Deep dish chicago style pizza, fresh french bread, falafel, and more!

But I will say, there are a lot of differences between cooking here and at home! The first is the ingredients available. By far my favorite part of being in Uganda so far is going to the market. I love the community feeling there, talking with my favorite vendors, and seeing all the great veggies and fruits! Every week we stock up on fresh, locally grown tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, green peppers (apparently nobody has yet realized they will change colors if you leave them on the plant!), potatoes, passionfruit, pineapple, and bananas. I absolutely love it! If you want to eat meat you either have to be okay with the giant carcasses hanging around, or kill the thing yourself, so we’ve been eating vegetarian since we’ve been at site! So, there is an endless supply of great vegetables, but no HyVee to stock up on other “necessities.” For example, just to get cheese we have to travel 2 hours round trip, pay about $10 in transport, and spend more on the cheese than we spend on any other item in our kitchen! (It should be said, however, that these hurdles can’t keep us from our monthly cheese splurge!!! I am my Wisconsinite father’s daughter!)

Another challenge we have succeeded in overcoming is adapting to not having an oven. We have been able to improvise pretty well with a dutch oven - 2 big pots on top of each other on top of our charcoal stove (sigeeri). Although it takes longer and there is minimal temperature control, it works! We’ve made fresh breads, cakes, brownies, and even chicago style deep dish pizza (everything - sauce, dough, cheese - from scratch!!!) It’s pretty nifty and we hope to show some of our neighbors all the neat things they can make with their very own dutch oven! Here's a picture of Ryan with our dutch oven and a pizza inside!

Another fun aspect of cooking here is the unanticipated surprises that can be hiding in your food and beverages! Because of different bacterias and parasites, we only drink boiled water. Each day when our milk comes, it gets boiled too. And we are not supposed to eat any vegetables without first thoroughly cooking them. Needless to say, there is no such thing as “fast” food here!

So, we can easily spend an entire afternoon or more working on dinner for the evening! Take, for example, a simple bean and vegetable chili and side of bread. Because the beans are not sorted, you first have to sort through each and every bean to get rid of the grass, sticks, rocks, and other strange things that come along with your beans when you buy a kilo of them at the market. In this picture, you can see the amount of strange nonedible objects in a cup of dried beans. Unless fresh beans are in season, you have to soak the beans overnight so they are ready to use. When it comes time to add the veggies, everything is fresh. At home we’d often resort to canned veggies with our busy schedules, but here we chop up all of our fresh veggies by hand! Then, since we usually like to have some sort of bread product as a side, that gets made from scratch too. The only bread products around here are really dry gross loaves of bread that I would never eat at home! So, we often make homemade pitas or fresh bread to accompany our meals. And, since there’s no rapid rise yeast here, anything we make takes at least 4 hours from the time we start it to the time it comes out of our dutch oven! Luckily, the 40+ hour work week hasn’t yet arrived in Uganda, so we have time to enjoy cooking and savoring all the different steps that go into making a great meal!

I regularly look at those really neat recipe blogs to get good ideas of vegetarian meals for us to eat, and while it’s inspiring, it can also be discouraging! There are so many more ingredients available and nifty kitchen gadgets that we just don’t have! So, we improvise and pretty much anything we come up with is a huge improvement from Ugandan cuisine 24-7.

So, I’m going to try to take an attempt on a one time recipe blog - Bushenyi style! So, here’s one of our favorite semi-Ugandan recipes and how to make it! Incidentally, the stew is also what my Mom served at our going away party! So, enjoy!

Ugandan Groundnut Stew and Homemade Pita Bread (serves 4 hungry PCVs)

Groundnut Stew:

Ingredients:

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed

4-5 medium tomatoes, diced

2 small carrots, chopped

1-2 large green pepper, chopped

5 medium potatoes, diced

1 tsp. red pepper flakes (more if you like some heat!)

1/2 c. peanut butter (or, if you’re adventurous, 3/4 cup roasted peanuts, crushed)

2 cups of water or broth

1 tsp salt, or to taste

Directions:

Add everything to a large pot and stir! Let simmer about one hour, or until veggies are soft and stew is desired consistency.

Homemade Pita Bread

Ingredients

- 1 1/2 t. regular yeast

- 7 oz. of warm water

- 3 t. sugar

- 1 t. salt

- 2 1/2 c. of flour, as needed

Directions

Proof yeast by dissolving yeast and sugar in warm water. Let sit until bubbly (should bubble in less than ten minutes). Add salt and flour, mixing slowly until most flour is incorporated. Turn dough into floured surface and knead for 10-12 minutes. Add more flour whenever the dough becomes too sticky to handle. Oil a bowl, cover dough, and let rise until doubled, about an hour. After first rising, punch down dough and divide into eight golf ball sized balls. Let rise again, 45 minutes or until doubled. After doubled, roll each ball into a flat round. Fry on a dry griddle until bubbles form, flip, fry until browned. Serve hot.

Bon Appetit

~emily~

A few weekends ago Ryan and I had the opportunity to go to our first Ugandan wedding! I put a few little clips of the reception in our most recent video blog, but I thought it would be fun to tell you a little bit about it as well.

We were invited to this wedding because the groom was a nephew of the family we lived with during our PST near Kampala. So, while we were back visit our host family during our IST training, we found out about the big event. There was a big extended family get together that we were a part of, and one of the brothers of the groom showed up with a plastic shopping bag chock full of invitations. He started writing them out on the spot to everyone - even people who weren’t related. Ugandan weddings are a big, the more the merrier type of event. So, we said we would be there! We were excited to be seeing our host family again so soon, and to be able to be a part of our first weddign in Uganda! When I asked my host sister what is usually worn to the wedding this was her response, “It really doesn’t matter, but you have to look fabulous!!!”

Before the big weekend came, we realized we would need to figure out a gift for the couple. Not knowing them at all, and having no Target registry to fall back on, we asked some of our coworkers at the college what kinds of gifts are traditionally given. Surprisingly, the first answer each of them gave was “glasses.” So, we wandered into a duka that seemed to have a lot of glasses and asked what a nice wedding present would be. We ended up picking out a tea set for two and were able to get it wrapped for about twenty five cents right then and there! Gift shopping - done!

When we arrived at what we thought was the church, we didn’t see anyone we knew. Our host family had planned to rent a bus (seriously) to drive them all from Kampala to Mbarara for the big event, but apparently they had not yet arrived. As we walked tentatively towards the church, we saw that there was a wedding already in progress. Having never seen the bride and groom before, we figured the wedding we were attending must have already started, despite the time the invitation had stated (time is so relative here!). As we began to walk into the sanctuary, someone asked us who’s wedding we were trying to attend. When we told them the names, they ushered us back out of the church and told us that that wedding was the next one in line. So, the current bride and groom processed out, and a few minutes later our wedding started! And, shortly after our bride and groom walked down the aisle another bride and groom were waiting for their ceremony to start! Our host aunt told us that no weddings occur during lent because it is supposed to be a period of mourning, so the rest of the year is chock full of weddings. She said some churches will have four or five weddings in them in one Saturday!!!

Ugandans have two events related to the wedding and each is a little different. The first is called an introduction ceremony. This takes place before the wedding and is hosted by the family of the bride. It’s a really cultural event where everyone wears the traditional dress, gives gifts like cattle and goats (and even houses sometimes!) and it goes on literally ALL day. This ceremony is the time when the bride is “introduced” to the grooms family, and culturally, the bride and groom are committed to one another. We haven’t been to one of these yet.

Then, the later event is the actual wedding. The wedding is hosted completely by the groom’s family. This was what we went to that weekend. I was surprised how similar it was to a traditional American wedding. They had five bridesmaids and groomsmen decked out in gowns and tuxes, the bride wore a white dress and veil, they did the vows, the rings, the readings, etc. They had a crazy photographer and crazy videographer who were all over the place taking pictures and distracting the guests from the real event. If it weren’t for the lack of English being spoken we might have thought we were at a wedding at home! The only really big differences we saw were 1) they took an offering, 2) There were a couple of pews worth of “mothers” and “fathers” who all were seen as the responsible party in raising the children to be married (it takes a village!), and 3) the bride and groom never kissed. Public displays of affection between couples are really frowned upon here, I guess to the extent that even the newlyweds shouldn’t be seen kissing in public!

After the wedding we headed to a huge reception at the home of a friend of the family. Their backyard was completely decked out with a stage, tents, ribbons, archways, flowers, etc. It was a sight! We started with eating (we were told by an aunt that the Ankole people always eat first!). On the menu: the traditional special occasion Ugandan meal - Matookye (mashed ripe bananas), groundnut (peanut) sauce, rice, meat, cabbage, beans, and fruit. Everyone got a soda, and there were jerrycans full of local brew waragi every where. Then, while everyone ate, traditional dancers entertained us. The bride and groom processed in and danced around a bit. Various family members from the crowd jumped on stage and joined in the dancing. There were lots of speeches, and a big cake cutting! After the cake was cut, the bridal party walked around with huge platters with chunks of cake (not pieces, chunks!) and everyone just grabbed one with their fingers. Another funny aspect was that as the reception was going on, the photographers walked around selling photos they had just taken of the bride and groom at the wedding and before hand. So, no favors but if you wanted you could leave the reception with your very own wedding photos!

All in all, it was a great big event with lots of joy and celebrating! One aspect of Ugandan culture that has been clear to us right from the beginning is the importance of family. This wedding definitely confirmed it - the whole entire extended family rallies around to celebrate and support the union of the bride and groom. It was a great event and a great time to be a part of our Ugandan family!

Thanks for reading!

~emily~

Today was one of those no-good-very-bad days. It didn’t involve getting stuck with the blue pair of shoes (is that how the story goes?), but it was something of a crummy day nonetheless. I woke up with what felt like a big cold coming on - sore throat, stuffy nose, you know how it is. I wanted to stay in bed, but instead had to proctor a three hour mock exam for our second year students. (Incidentally, instead of the word proctor, they use the word “invigilate” here - sounds way more exciting than it is!). Then, while at home making lunch, our gas tank ran out. This meant that: 1) we had to eat a flavorless lunch of posho and beans again and 2) we would have to pay 90,000 schillings (about $40) to get a new one and carry the super heavy tank to the petrol station and back. After walking to the petrol station we found that they had increased the price of a gas refill and we didn’t have enough money to buy the refill. So, I rushed back home to get more cash and, in my rush, I slipped and covered my favorite pair of birkenstock sandals in thick, nasty, mud. Back at home, some men appeared in our backyard to let us know that they were disconnecting our water due to nonpayment of our bills. As it turns out, the college has not delivered any of our water bills to us and, subsequently, the water at our home has not been paid for in over four months. Oops! We hoped to relax and get some things done around the house in the afternoon, but instead I got called in to invigilate yet another exam for a tutor who, for whatever reason, didn’t show up to do his job. This meant that in the last two days I had “invigilated” (aka watched with overpowering boredom) twelve hours of mock exams!

But, then, in the midst of small talk with one of my Ugandan coworkers I was forced to think about my situation in a whole new light. I asked if he had gotten his children off to school for the new term, but he said that he had not. Unfortunately, he could not send them back to school because he did not have the money to afford school fees. The reason he could not afford school fees was that his salary from working at the college had not been paid since April. APRIL! He has been getting by, supporting a family, with absolutely no income for over four months!!!

It’s amazing how a five minute chat can make a no-good-very-bad day seem like nothing to complain about at all. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective...

~emily~

Today I turned 26! It was my first birthday in Africa, and one of the first holidays (do birthdays count as holidays?!) we've experienced since we've been away from home. (Ryan lost quite a few hours of his birthday this year, as we were flying from NYC to Johannesburg for most of it, so this is the first chance we've had to celebrate a birthday actually in country!)

Although I don't really think of myself as a huge let-me-wallow-in-the-joy-of-my-birthday person, it's amazing how times like this make you miss home and want to have some semblance of normal life! I had lots of warm wishes both in Uganda and from home, and I was surprised to find myself realizing just how much they all meant to me. Since when did I care so much about birthdays? Since I moved to Uganda, I guess! :-)

Our day started out sorta rocky, although in one sense I guess I got my first present of the day pretty early! A parasitic disease! I found out through a visit to our medical office that while rafting on the Nile I (and Ryan too!) contracted Bilharzia, the dreaded fresh water disease of Peace Corps Uganda. It's treatable and not a big concern to me, and actually kind of nice to know why I've been feeling so crummy lately! Happy birthday to me!

From there, the day took a big up turn! Since we were in Kampala for medical, we got to take full advantage of the city for a really special day! Ryan took me out to *real* mexican food (cheese enchiladas!! chips and salsa!), we ate soft serve ice cream (our first soft serve in over six months!!), and we even saw a movie at one of the two movie theaters Uganda has to offer. It was a really wonderful day and I found myself feeling thoroughly celebrated and happy! (And, we'll be sure to make the classic Muir Crazy Chocolate Cake when we get home to make it a *real* celebration!) Like I said, I wouldn't normally make such a big deal out of a birthday, but it just felt so wonderful to be doing things that felt *somewhat* like we were back home!

Thanks to everyone for the birthday calls, kind thoughts, and facebook messages. They mean a lot always, but especially when we are so far from so many people we love! Thanks for thinking of me today, and helping me celebrate my first birthday in Africa!

Much love!

~emily~

...Who are you and what have you done with Uganda?

We visited Jinja this past weekend and this was the thought that kept going through my head! Although we had an absolutely incredible weekend, it felt as if we’d suddenly left the Uganda we have come to know and love and were plopped into another world! It was a crazy feeling!

This trip was our first time traveling East of Kampala. We have a number of PCV friends in the area, and they had organized a trip out East during the time between our IST and upcoming all volunteer conference in Kampala. So we got to see another part of the country, hang out with friends, and take advantage of one of the big draws of the region - the Nile River!!! We had a really incredible time!!!

On Saturday morning we headed out early for a day of white water rafting on the White Nile. The company we rafted with took us on an all day trip, ending in a river side BBQ at the end of the day! It was such a great time to see a beautiful river and hang out with friends. The guides were great, the river was beautiful, the food was delicious! And, of course...the rafting was absolutely amazing! There is no feeling like it! The rapids on this section of the nile are known to be some of the wildest in the world, so it was a pretty high adrenaline, extreme experience! Some of the rafts in our group flipped at almost every rapid! So it was super exciting, super thrilling, and - SO MUCH FUN! At the end of the day they showed us a video of what we had just done, and I could not believe some of the rapids we all went through!!!! It was such a crazy experience. We loved it!

Then, Sunday evening we took a mellower route out on the river. We went on a two hour “sunset cruise” with drinks, appetizers, music, and great views! Although it was a lot less adventurous, it was a lot of fun!

Being in Jinja we got to see a completely different side of Uganda - a successful tourism industry! This was why our experience in Jinja felt so different than our day to day Uganda in Bushenyi! In our part of the country there is very little tourism, so being in an area that has built itself up on the tourism industry was quite remarkable! In Jinja there are local craft stores, a grid layout to the streets, and a number of restaurants that serve super good *nonlocal* food! While we were eating lunch at one of these establishments (Naan and hummus with feta cheese for me, a burger for Ryan! So not Ugandan food!), I looked around and realized there was not a single Ugandan eating in restaurant! It was a weird experience! Just because of where we are in the rural Southwest, this is a situation that would never happen to us at site! So, it was strange! But we really loved being tourists for the day! Because we don’t know Lusoga (the local language there) we really felt like foreigners, which I guess we are! It was just a strange feeling to be in the country I now call home and feel so much like a visitor. But, we enjoyed the brief hiatus as tourists and seeing a great town in Eastern Uganda.

So...next up is the All Volunteer conference (all 200 or so volunteers together sharing ideas, networking, making friends!) an appointment with PC medical (do I have a parasite?) and then home sweet home (at last!) Our next term at Bushenyi PTC starts the moment we get back, so we’ll hit the ground running (or as much as anyone runs in Uganda!)

Love and miss you all!

Take care and keep in touch!

~emily~

Hey Everyone!

Hope you are all well! We are doing okay here!

We've been away from home now what feels like a very long time! We left almost three weeks ago for our IST (in-service training) near Kampala, and haven’t been back yet. IST is a ten day training that takes place for all volunteers after they have been at site for about three months. We started with a training refresher on language and retake LPI test for those who needed it. Then, our community counterparts joined us and the rest of the time was spent training on Lifeskills (decision making, HIV/AIDS education, girls empowerment, self esteem, etc.) and tech training for the Education sector. It was also an awesome chance to connect with the other 42 volunteers who arrived in Uganda with us and have since scattered all over the country.

The experience was interesting. Although the organization of the training started off a bit rough, it got a lot better in the end. We left with some great ideas for HIV/AIDS projects at our site, lots of great ideas for working on lifeskills with youth, as well as new ideas for the classroom and potential secondary projects. We also participated in activities like capture the flag and trivia with our Ugandan counterparts, which was a lot of fun!

However, IST also had its challenges... For one thing, it was a little hard to be sitting still all day for ten days after keeping a somewhat flexible schedule these last few months at site. For another, we spent the training back at the conference center where we did our initial PST. Although the place is nice (and chock full of monkeys!!!) by the end of our 2 week standfast and 10 week training there we were ready to get out of there. Incidentally, because we were staying in close quarters in the dorms, some crazy sicknesses ended up getting passed around and I think about half of our group (myself included) got to experience the joy of that! So, venue was not a big plus in most of our opinions!

Then, there were the cross cultural challenges, though I think we can all be sure they will be an ongoing challenge throughout our service! Primarily, being with all of the community counterparts reminded me just how different perspectives can be at times between PCVs and their community counterparts. I think as a PCV you get used to the perspectives and ideas of those working around you in the villages (whether you agree with them or not!) and being with all of these different, new people with their unique views and ideas was at times really shocking. We had some heated debates about gender, religion, corporal punishment/child abuse, etc. that brought up some pretty strong opinions. I can try to give an example: at one point, we were divided into groups talking about women’s health issues and HIV. In the scenario my group was discussing, a woman goes out to a bar and ends up getting raped. Women drinking is a pretty big taboo here, and many Ugandans are quick to place the blame on women for anything related to their consumption of alcohol. The counterpart I was sitting with said something along the lines of, “If a woman chooses to drink, to talk to men at bars, then of course at the end of the day she will get HIV/AIDS!” He then implied that the men in the scenario who raped her and passed on the virus are not at fault, as she was the one who “brought it upon herself.” Yikes! So, there were many times when I felt myself biting my tongue and trying to stay cool when in my head I just wanted to scream! But....that’s being in another culture for you, eh?

A few of the nights we escaped to Entebbe, the nearest town for some “mzungu” food and time away from the training center. On the way back one evening with five or six other PCVs, we realized we were driving down the same road we first drove down together when we arrived in Uganda, at about the same time in the evening. We had a great time reminiscing on what we remembered from that first drive - sights, smells, and feelings! It was crazy to think back on what we were experiencing on that first drive, and how much we’ve all already grown in our first six months in country.

All in all, IST was a great time to connect with our PCV friends, eat some good Entebbe food (brick oven pizza! Thai food!), and get some new skills and knowledge!

Love and miss you all! Keep in touch,

~emily~

Hi Everyone!

Hope this finds you well! Ryan and I just got back from a wonderful vacation to celebrate our 2nd anniversary (Aug 15)! We had a great time seeing more of Uganda and relaxing with each other! I thought I'd write a little about it and also share a link of pictures from our trip.

All in all our trip went off pretty much without a hitch, but we did have some good adventures to share! We decided to travel further into Southwest Uganda to visit Kabale and nearby Lake Bunyonyi. On our way to Mbarara to catch the Kabale bus our taxi driver had a flat tire. That's never happened to us but we were amazed at how quickly he put on a new tire and went on our way. Even with the flat it was probably the most comfortable and efficient taxi ride we've ever had in Uganda! Then, we waited a good two hours for the bus to arrive in the Mbarara bus park. The conductors were making everyone buy their tickets in advance. (This is a little scary because you really have no reason to believe that they bus will actually arrive!) But it did show up, we got seats, and left without much more delay.

We spent our first night at a hostel in Kabale. It's a really neat place that has a hostel (maybe 7 rooms in all!), open air "nest" restaurant, and cultural museum. There's also lots of western travelers, students, and ngo workers, so we had some great conversations with some other "mzungus" while we hung out. We actually planned to spend the night at another nearby guesthouse, but the room we had reserved looked out onto a courtyard where there would be loud, Ugandan music played all night (thank goodness they let us know in advance). Our only other option was to squeeze into a *tiny* single room at the nearby hostel. We weighed our options and decided to squish for the night.

So, the hostel was really nice but this room was seriously tiny! It was in the shape of a triangle and was so small that the single bed wouldn't even fit normally and had to be squished sideways against a window. To make matters even more exciting, Ryan was chatting with his family while the power was out at the hostel and noticed that there was a mouse also sharing our tiny room! He tried to search for it in the dark, while holding a cell phone, flashlight, and weapon (plastic water bottle). When I came down later he was pretty sure it was gone. So I was sitting on the bed while we were talking and Ryan suddenly says, very calmly, "Emily...you should get off the bed. Seriously, get off the bed!" Turns out the mouse had popped up onto the bed with me and was about to run across my lap! So we had an adventure trying to get the mouse out of our room! In the morning we got to eat doughnuts at a real bakery (first bakery we've seen in Uganda!) and found a taxi that could take us to the lake.

I discovered our lake accommodations from some other PCVs who spent new years there last year. So, I blindly booked three nights on the island (only about $12 a night!) without having a very good idea what to expect! It turned out to be absolutely wonderful! There is a man who owns the island and has developed it for visitors, but chooses not to advertise. So, we were the only guests on the island! We had the company of 2 Ugandan workers who didn't speak a word of English, and 3 large Ankole cattle! Pretty exclusive, eh?

Incidentally, when they were showing us around the island and we got to the swimming dock we discovered a little problem. One of the cows had wandered on to the dock and, because these cows are HUGE, had broken the dock and fallen in. The Ugandan workers tried to grab it by the horns and force it to get out of the water but had no luck. Eventually, one of the guys climbs into the lake with the cow and starts pushing it from behind (no small task!). So, with the one guy pulling the horns and the other literally shoving the cow onto the bank of the island, they managed to get the cow out of the water and back on solid ground!

Anyhow, they set us up with charcoal and sigeeris, and we got to do all our own cooking. We'd splurged on a block of gouda in Mbarara (cheese is hard to come by!) and planned out lots of cheesy meals! We had a great log cabin with a view of the lake from bed, a shower with only 3 walls so you can enjoy the lake view while showering (and hope nobody happens to walk past)! We got to take out a local dugout canoe and canoe around the lake and nearby islands! The lake is free from hippos, crocodiles, and other dangerous water and inhabitants and supposedly (we're crossing our fingers) it's also free from schisto and other sketchy diseases and bacterias that inhabit most Ugandan bodies of water. The island has no running water or electricity, so has something of a rustic, camping feel - so quiet and peaceful! So, we swam, hiked, cooked, played games, listened to music, talked and talked, and had a great getaway!

We're home for a few days now, and then early next week we head off to Kampala again (ugh! we don't love Kampala) for two and a half weeks of training! We have IST (in-service-training) with our training group for the first week and a half, and then a conference for all the volunteers in country after that. In between the trainings our group is planning to go whitewater rafting on the Nile river (how cool is that?!) and take a sunset Nile cruise. Should be a lot of fun!

Thanks for reading - we love and miss you all!

~emily~

Friday will mark the end of our first term here at Bushenyi PTC! The 11th of this month will make 6 months that we’ve been in Uganda, and a new group of Peace Corps Trainees arrives in country tomorrow! Seems like as good a time as any for some reflection!

On the whole, I think our first term here has been a success! It has certainly not been without challenges and frustrations, but there’s been a lot of joy too! I feel like we’re often on a roller coaster of feeling one day as if what we’re doing here is really significant and important, and the next feeling a little like we’re just hitting our heads against the wall! So, it’s good for us (especially on days like the latter) to consider all the great things that have happened this term, and maybe reframe the struggles into potential challenges that have a chance to be overcome! So...here are my thoughts!

Successes:

Moving into our home, making it our own, and finding our way around our new community (no street signs here!) Developing relationships with staff, students community members, and local kiddos (it makes my heart happy to hear “ay-mee-lee (emily)!!!” instead of “mzungu (white person)!!!” when we walk around the village!) Finding ourselves a spot on the time table and beginning to teach Laying the foundation for secondary projects (Math Power Hour, open computer lab time, drama clubs, water catchment systems, malaria projects!) Learning to enjoy running! Finding our rhythm with going to the market, being present at the college, and spending time with each other Navigating cross cultural communication (still a work in progress...) Supporting the BTPC kids at scouting and track and field competitions Living on a Peace Corps budget Investing in friendships with nearby PCVs Becoming “pros” at Ugandan public transportation! Expanding our job descriptions to include health projects, specifically malaria sensitization and prevention efforts Cooking - using the sigeeri (charcoal stove) and really taking advantage of all these great vegetables and fruits Seeing some more of this wonderful country - Mbarara, Rakai, Kasese, Fort Portal, and Queen Elizabeth Natl. Park! Going with the flow despite electricity outages, crazy rain storms, and “ugandan time”Challenges:

Hurtles to getting anything and everything started! (connecting problems with solutions) Insufficient language progress for engaging with staff when they choose to speak vernacular in the staff room, and with rural community members Being valued and taken seriously in a patriarchal society Missing home: family, friends, jobs (purpose!), and life in Minnesota! Keeping patient and trying to understand when decisions or actions in the college or community seem incredibly ridiculous or unjust to us! Having to work so hard to feel like we are contributing anything useful hereLots of times PCVs will tell us “the days drag on and on, but the weeks and months fly by.” I feel like that’s been the case for us too. It’s a little hard to believe we’ve already been in Uganda for half of a year, and at site for over 3 months! But, as I look at my list of successes and challenges, I think I can feel good about what we’ve started here! We always knew these first few months adjusting at site would be pretty challenging, but I think we’ve laid a good foundation to build off of when the students come back and we return from all of our August traveling.

Thanks for reading!

Love you and miss you all,

~emily~

PS - I uploaded some new pics to facebook today. If you're interested, click here!

Hi everyone!

I wanted to let ya'll know about some new pics I put up on facebook. Click here! I've been working for the last month or so on a secondary project of a drama club with some kiddos from a nearby primary school. (Loads of fun!) Anyhow, this week we were invited to their end of term program and asked to take pictures. As I say in the album, I think they're pretty much the cutest kids in Africa! :-) Enjoy,

~emily~

The last week has been a little bit of a change of pace for us. We thought that since we had taught for a good two straight weeks it was time for something different. ;-) So after classes on Monday we headed off to Mbarara for a training - Malaria Prevention and Control. The training was a result of Obama’s PMI (Presidential Malaria Initative), an effort to eradicate malaria in the countries being hit hardest by the disease. It was held at possibly the nicest hotel in this region of the country, Lakeview Resort Hotel (yes apparently it is both resort and hotel, one of those names didn’t suffice). We were joined at the training by our Director of Studies, Smith, who it turns out was already really interested in Malaria prevention. Most Peace Corps trainings will include your Ugandan community counterpart so that the impact of the training will outlast you, in theory. The training, as well as being interesting, was also a great chance to meet some more of the CHED (Community Health and Economic Development) volunteers primarily from the group that started sixth months before us. The majority of the week was spent learning more about the Malaria parasite, and the complexities of how it transmits through mosquitoes. We also learned some statistics about the extent of the malaria disease in Uganda, and around the world. Malaria annually affects 300 million people, and during that period results in about 1 to 3 million deaths. Most of the deaths occur among children under the age of 5 and pregnant mothers. Pregnant mothers are more likely to contract malaria because they have an increased body heat during pregnancy which attracts more mosquitoes. In Uganda, 25% of people going to hospitals are because of malaria. Finally, 20% of childhood deaths in Ugandan hospitals are due to malaria. The most surprising thing about malaria in Uganda, and maybe around the world, is that it is not a huge concern to the vast majority of the population. Because the people that it affects most fatally are those who don’t really have a voice in society, primarily children under 5. We also got the opportunity to go into the community around Mbarara to see how malaria plays out on a local level. The first place we visited was the Mbarara regional referral hospital. So any cases from the southwest region of Uganda which can not be dealt with at the local level are brought there, and it is also the local community hospital. We split up into four groups and we each visited a different area of the hospital. So I visited the records department (so exciting!) and Emily visited the OB-GYN section of the hospital (I don’t remember what the Ugandans call this section). Malaria can have many negative effects to pregnant women, including miscarriages (which Emily had the unfortunate opportunity to witness in the hallway). Being at the hospital was eye opening for many reasons. It was good to know about the quality of health care in Uganda, and the care our colleagues/students would receive if they needed it. It is interesting because public health care in Uganda is free to anyone who would use it, even just tourists passing through. But availability seems to also equal lack of quality. While we were there the aftermath from a Boda-Boda (motorcycles) accident came in, and it was insane to see the treatment of the people. One of the men was really rough and did not look alive but he had been wheeled around on a metal gurney for a good twenty minutes before anyone even checked his vital signs, to know that he was dead (and in the end it was the doctor touring us who checked this, and he didn’t even work there). The next day we got to visit a member of the Village Health Team. These are volunteers who work in the community to spread health messages from the local government. It was interesting hearing about the work that she does, even though we lost a bit in translation. So over all it was good to hear the facts and figures of malaria, and then go out to see it in the community. Finally, on the last day of the conference we made an action plan with our counterparts about how we will bring the knowledge back to our places of work. So we hope to be doing various things to educate the students at our PTC, and also to work on eliminating mosquito breeding grounds on the campus. The hardest thing about malaria prevention is that almost every Ugandan already knows how to prevent malaria, but prevention requires effort and money while the treatment once you get it is free. Another stumbling block is that the primary means of prevention, being mosquito nets, are hard to find affordable. But hopefully as the malaria initiative integrates into Uganda there will be a large influx of nets. Overall, the malaria workshop was very informative for many reasons, and hopefully we will have the knowledge to work on prevention at our school. The conference was also the longest we have been away from wonderful House 11 at Bushenyi PTC, and it was nice to be home again. We found out the day after we got home that the Boda drivers at the stop in front of our house are convinced that we had or got a kid while we were gone, and that was what was in our big green duffle bag. We found this out through our friend Jean, who was told by her co-worker (no secrets in Uganda!). So apparently everyone there is waiting in anticipation for when we reveal the child. The funny/scary thing was that this was the consensus of the group of about twenty people, and that having a child in a bag was plausible! Well that is all of our crazy adventures from the past week! Hope you are all doing well. Love, Ryan (and Emily)

Here is a video of some of the recent track competitions, scouting, and shopping at our local market. Enjoy!

In the last couple of weeks we got to participate as staff in a couple of events here at the college. The first was a regional scouting competition, where students of all ages came to the college for a 4 day scouting event. The students were scored on their campsites, setup and take down, cooking, building fires, singing songs, and all sort of scouty things. It was really fun to watch and cheer on our students.

Then, yesterday we participated in an all day interhouse (dormitory) track and field competition. We had been helping the students with their practices the last couple of weeks and yesterday was the big competition day. Ryan and I worked at the "technical table" determining points and making sure records were kept of all the events. It was a lot of fun and the kids did great.

Here's a link to my facebook album of the event, and we're also working on getting a new "vlog" out to you soon!

Much love,

~emily~

Hi Everyone!

It has been about a week and a half since we last wrote, but lots has happened! I wanted to blog to catch you all up. Brace yourself for a long post! :-)

First of all, happy late 4th of July! It might have been our most patriotic 4th of July ever! We celebrated by making dinner and fresh mozzarella cheese with our PCV neighbor Jean. We had cake decked out with an American flag and patriotic window clings on our windows (Thanks Mom and Dad for the package!!) During dinner we got into some great conversations about why we love America! Absence really does make the heart grow fonder I guess. So...Happy belated Independence Day you good ol' US of A, and know that I mean it when I say "We miss you!"

And...some wonderful news - THE STUDENTS RETURNED!!! We were so happy to see them start trickling back on campus last Wednesday (no meeting, no announcement, students just started showing up! Some strange Ugandan nonverbal communication?! We aren't sure...) The break ended up being about two weeks, so not nearly as long as it looked like it might be. We are really grateful, and the students seem to also be grateful! There are actually now only 3 more weeks of teaching, then mock exams, and then the term is over. Since this is supposed to be the "academic" term, we feel we are scrambling a little to get all the teaching done in the time that remains. To make matters worse, classes were canceled on Friday afternoon so the students could clean their dormitories (which were supposedly in a "shockingly" dirty state - one of the tutors reminded us in all seriousness that "cleanliness is only second to godliness!"), and a small group of students was forbidden from attending classes yesterday and today because they were late for the morning assembly. So, for so many reasons, it will be a challenge to cover all the material with students before the term slips away from us!

I also started a secondary project of sorts - a drama club at a local primary school! When I visited it a couple of weeks back, the principal shared with me his passion for including creativity in the school curriculum. This excited me greatly as, in the experiences I have had so far, creativity is generally not encouraged in the Ugandan school system. So, we decided I would work with the p4-p6 (3-5th grade) boarding students on Saturdays to lead some creative dramatic activities and maybe even create a play with them. So, I embarked last weekend with my trusty assistant Ryan ;-) and had a great time with the children. It was nice to have some creative time and wonderful to work with the children! When we arrived, they spent the first 30 minutes or so singing and dancing for us, then we got to work with them on the drama activities I had planned. It went pretty well, though was challenging to get the students to come up with original ideas and they much preferred to just copy the one brave student (often Ryan!) who came up with an idea. Not unexpected, but hopefully we can develop some imagination and a willingness to be creative in the kiddos! I'm really looking forward to it. (Incidentally, when I asked the children who could tell me what the word "imagination" meant, not a single child knew the word!!!)

Another project I am working on is getting a "Math Power Hour" set up for the PTC students in the evening. My idea is to have an informal time twice a week where students who are struggling with problems or topics can come for small group/individual help. The college is constantly expressing concern for the mathematical proficiency of the students, so I thought this could be a great way to help address that concern and hopefully build relationships with students in the process. It's been a mess of Ugandan red-tape to get it started, though. (Another one of those times where the need is there and solution seem so simple, yet I can't seem to find a way to connect the two!! There seems to be no lack of those situations here!)

My first step was to talk to our Director of Studies. Although I had an evening time slot in mind, he insisted we schedule it for 5:30-7:00 in the evening. Then, I had to get approval from the principal and the math department head. The math department head was not fond of the idea, yet later approached me with a "new idea" he had that was really just my idea in his words, and insisted that I should get it started. (So thankful that a man could help this "unknowledgeable" woman come up with something valuable! grr...) Anyhow, when I finally got it all approved, I showed up on Tuesday to find no students! After fifteen minutes of sitting by myself a thoughtful student arrived to tell me that nobody would be coming since there was compulsory sports and games every day from 5:30-7:00. Nice. So....I am working on getting a new time and working my way through all the protocol once again. If all goes well, it will start tonight! I'll keep you posted!

*Each night I am going to start with a critical thinking problem. Here's the one for this week, see how you do - "Use any mathematical symbols and the number eight eight times to create a mathematical expression that equals 1,000." Any ideas?

We've also volunteered to help out with the upcoming Track and Field competitions! Although this is certainly not my area of expertise, it should be a fun way to support the students and continue to be more involved with them. Yesterday we observed the practice time and both of us about freaked out seeing the students "high jump" head first into a (way too small!) pile of dead grass. Neck injury, anyone? They're also throwing javelin (really long sticks), running, triple jumping, long jumping, shot putting, as well as all those other track and field events that used to make me cringe in gym class! :-) But it should be fun now that I'm not being forced to compete! There are regional, then national competitions, but for now they are just getting themselves ready. I'm excited to get friendly with a stopwatch and be a cheerleader for our kids!

Ryan's been busy with his computer classes (despite super frequent power outages as of late) and running open lab hours in the evenings. He is looking for a way to get involved in an economic development secondary project and is thinking about the clubs he hopes to get going at the start of next term. He's also been doing research into grad programs that he might be interested in post Peace Corps, so that's pretty exciting.

And...though it might seem like no big deal, we started getting fresh milk delivered to our door every morning! If you know how much I love milk, you'll know how exciting this is for me! So, at about 7 am each day a man shows up (straight from milking the college cows) with about a liter of milk for Ryan and I! We have a milkman! I love it! And...the milk is absolutely delicious! I don't know that I've ever had milk straight from the cow, and it is so fresh and really fun to get.

So...that's what's been happening in our neck of the woods. As always, we love and miss you all and think of you often. Keep in touch,

~emily~

This weekend we took a little "safari" to Queen Elizabeth National Park. It's a big and really wonderful game park in the Western/Southwestern part of the country. The drive from Bushenyi up to Kasese is really beautiful too - the scenery changes from the hills of our district to the flatlands of the park, to the foothills of the Rwenzoris! Amazing country!

We had really hoped to see the tree climbing lions, and although they evaded us we did see a number of other really interesting animals: Kobs, Buffalos, Hyena, Birds, Hippos, Crocodiles, etc. We took a game drive and 6 am and then a boat ride on the Kazinga Channel in the afternoon. We had a great time with friends and exploring another part of this beautiful country!

Here's a link to my facebook album with some pictures from our adventure: click here

Hi Everyone,

No new news about students returning to the PTCs yet. But, this article was in a local newspaper and gives some extra information. Check it out if you are interested! :-)

While we wait for our students to return, Ryan is keeping busy with training the college tutors on computers and I've been visiting local primary schools to see what kinds of projects I might be able to initiate there. So, we're keeping busy but really hoping for quick resolution to the PTC problem! Thanks for all the kind thoughts and well wishes! :-)

~emily~