Into Africa: One year and one month

5 July 2016

There’s something almost therapeutic about walking into my house after a long day and hearing the gentle hum of the electricity. It makes it easier to scoop some natural peanut butter and homemade granola (yeah, I made something) into the yogurt I just bought from town and plop down on my front step to watch the kids come home from school. Just like Guys and Dolls, my time of day is the golden hour: right between 6 and 7 when the heat is gone and the sun starts to set over my health center. All that’s missing today is my crazy cat romping around. He’ll be back within the hour for dinner and he’ll need brushed to get all the woods crap out of his fur. These are the quiet nights in the village that I love.

RUMPS Kits!

Not sure if you’ve noticed or not, but I’m long past the one-year in country marker. Before I start belching out a RENT song about how I measure a year, I’d like to just say thanks for the constant support I’ve received from friends and family back home. I’ve long since run out of room to hang up cards and letters (but keep sending them!!), and the texts and skype calls I’ve gotten are the extra push that helps me get out the door every day.

Speaking of saying thanks, a big shout out goes to the Missions team at Calvary church back home!! I told mom how I was struggling teaching RUMPS since I couldn’t keep spending my minimal living stipend on supplies to make kits. So she sent out the call, the troops were rallied, and last week I picked up four boxes from the post office chock full of absolutely BEAUTIFUL RUMPS kits! Each one has two towels, cut pad shapes, needles and pins, a button, ribbons, and a little instruction sheet with a diagram if my words don’t translate well. Thank you THANK YOU for the generous donation and support you’ve shown me from 7,000 miles away. These kits won’t be wasted.

A recap of what’s been going on: I’m back from Europe! The trip was a short one but a needed one. It was great to see everyone, to drink draft beer, to get gelato randomly, and to be annoying tourists wherever we went. Plus, the broski decided to FINALLY pop the question and I’m getting a new sister next August! All is well on the home front. Counting down to Christmas now.

The Biikira Girls Primary School Library renovation is coming along slowly slowly, but it is definitely coming along. I am constantly blown away by the teamwork and support the library committee shows into really making this a worthwhile project. Head teacher Teddy and Brother Patrick are always willing to make time for meetings and negotiations. Just recently we’ve met with the Parish Priest of Biikira and he has very generously agreed to donate all of the necessary timber we need for new shelves and tables!! That saves us near a million shillings for other supplies for like you know, books. I love how everyone is so involved, even Sampson, our local carpenter, is the sweetest for riding out to the school on his pedal bike just to have a meeting with the priest and discuss proper timber cutting wood things. I backed off and let them handle that stuff. I have the planning down; they can talk carpenter logistics all they want. Plus! We met with the chairman of the Biikira Boys and Girls schools for a meeting last week as well. He was so into the project that he is going to help mobilize various donors around the area. I’ve printed pledge cards encouraging people to donate, and he’ll pass those out and invite them to a tea party at the end of the month! In Kyotera, he owns a gathering place thing where people hold meetings, performances, nighttime drinking and socializing…what’s that called. A social…club? Social space? You get it. It’s an open – EVENT HALL. Think event hall. That’s the word I wanted. Anyway he’s letting us have the tea party there free of charge so all the donors can come, hear more about the project and why it’s so important to invest in a girl’s education, and then donate all at once. I’m pretty sure he said, “It’ll be an easy way to get a lot of money very quickly.” You go, chairman.

Sampson and the Priest looking over the timber

Bro. Patrick, Teddy, and Chairman Joseph after our meeting

I’m also collecting donations from the kiddos, too. I think I said that in the last post? Not a lot, just like 100 shillings, 200 shillings, whatever they can give. I’m trying out different forms of rewards. Like short term reward: donate in your class’s tin, get a sweetie. Then medium term reward: the class which raises the most money at the end of the school term wins a super awesome super cool ice cream party! And then of course the long term reward being a brand new bright and colorful library. Everybody wins.

Brick by Brick, a company in Masaka, has a program specifically for libraries. They aim at holding trainings for teachers on how to maintain and preserve libraries for the long term. We’re talking sustainability, people! This is what Peace Corps is all about! So I’ve signed up my school and we’re set to receive a free training on how to catalog, keep track of borrowers, preserve books, how to treat books, etc. I am so freaking excited. It’s really rewarding to see this team with me on this project. Plus, it really helps to have a project that’s moving along instead of twiddling my thumbs in my office all day, counting how many people do a double take or even back up when they pass my office to look at me again.

Also news: I kept going on and on about a girls’ health club that I wanted to start. I think it was just anxiety and fear of failure that stopped me from actually doing it. But I finally put on my big girl pants, marched into the admin office at St. Agnes vo-tech school, and talked with Father John Mary about Uganda’s PEARLS Girls’ Club. These girls will be:
Powerful
Enthusiastic
Aware
Refined
Ladies.

Uganda is the pearl of Africa. Get it?

Our first meeting is this week and I am super pumped. I have team building stuff to do, snacks and sodas, games, etc. I need to channel my camp counselor skills into this one. I want it to be fun and educating, but I also want it to be a safe space where girls can ask those really tough questions and feel at ease among their peers. It’ll take a lot of work, but I’m up for it.

So I think it took about a year, but I’m feeling like I really love this place. Uganda has welcomed me with open arms. My community has the biggest arms of all, really. Never do they laugh at me, ask if I know Luganda, or point or tease me, unless it’s the nice kind of teasing. That’s not to say there are things I also really don’t love about this place either. It’s easy to get caught up in the bad. The harassment on the street, being surrounded and bombarded in taxi parks, how I can never find a printer, the fact that it hasn’t rained since before I came back from my trip and I’m nervous about there not being enough water, or being laughed at every time I speak Luganda. That last one gets old really quick. But besides all that, there’s so much more about this country that I love. I love my quiet village and the kids who watch me play ukulele after school. I love feeling safe in my house, having my solar lights working again. I love being included in meetings with my staff and being valued as an instructor who has something to offer (at least on the computer). I love being able to meet up with other PCVs on the weekends and celebrating things like our one-year anniversary or the 4^th of July. I love that everyone at my local trading center knows my name and when someone calls me mzungu, they are quickly corrected. Things are hard here, sure, and things move more slowly here definitely. But I’m thankful that I was randomly (or maybe no so randomly) placed in Peace Corps Uganda. And I’m more thankful that I have another year here to solidify the friendships and connections I’ve made and to finish the work I’ve started.