All the World's a Metaphor

25 September 2016

When I was little, I played piano a lot.  Like every day a lot.  There was this one song I remember that was like the music you’d hear at a big horse race.  It was like “dun dun nun nun dun dun nun nun dun dun dun dun duuuuuuun.  That doesn’t translate well over text.  Oh well.  Each time I practiced it, I’d play it faster and faster like the horses were running faster in the song.  I think I was convinced that the faster and louder I could play, the better I was at piano.  At least that’s what made sense in my head.  That’s probably why in high school band I would always associate slower with softer.  Or softer with slower...I don't remember.  Either way, Rizzo and Saylor would always yell “Slow doesn’t mean soft!” or vice versa.  Anyway, the song I played as a kid had text along with it like “And they’re off!” or “...rounding the bend,” and “And the winner is…!”  Stuff like that.  The faster I played it, the worse I was at it, missing notes and hitting the wrong chords and the like.  But as an aspiring 5^th grade pianist, I didn’t really care.  The song just kept going faster until the big black horse won it (that’s what the text said at the end of the page).  Well here’s my big metaphor, because this week was that song, minus the piano.  And horses.

Let’s back up, first.  The weeks following the tea party were full of speed bumps.  First, I call the grant coordinator, Jenny, to ask where in the world is this grant money, it’s only been, you know, four months.  She checks online and says it looks like my grant was never submitted.  Say whaaaa?  I got confirmation emails that it was; I even got the Country Director’s approval email.  I sent all of those to her, and she calls HQ in D.C.  I’m trying not to sob uncontrollably on the phone.  Don’t tell me that after all this fundraising and work we did, that I’m the one coming up short on my end of the deal.  Jenny says she sorted it out and I should be getting the money within a week or two.  Whew, OK.  But then I tell all of this to Steven and he tells me that his uncle, my beloved carpenter with whom I had this whole elaborate plan, budget, and shelf measurements, has moved to Kampala.  And isn’t coming back.  Cue hyperventilating.  I was expecting setbacks, but not two in two days.  At least MST was the next week, and I could get some time to recoup with other PCVs.

    MST came and went with wonderful friends and foods, I took a girls weekend up to Sipi and went chasing waterfalls, Nyege Nyege Music Fest in Jinja happened with more wild rumpus-ing, and then I had 2 quiet, boring, sickly, uneventful weeks back at site (I was stricken down with flu and was cooped up for a while).  But this week.  The week of beginnings!  My grant money finally finally FINALLY came in last Friday, and I pulled all it out of the bank, into strategically marked envelopes, and now it’s dwindling but for a good reason.  Work has officially begun on the library!  And we found a new carpenter that agreed to do all the work for the same price as the last one!  I’m imagining everyone throwing their hands up in the air and fist pumping silently as they read this because that’s the level of excited I was, as you should all be.

Cue Monday:  Meet with the Parish Priest to tell him to call the brand new carpenter we found to give him the OK to start on the work.  He beat me to it, and said he already told the guy to begin and can we get a deposit on his labor pay?  I love this priest guy, he’s one step ahead of me, and I’m thankful for it. 
Call my electrician.  Turns out he’s too busy and can’t do the work anymore.  OK.  Fine.  I’m good at setbacks by this point.  Steven said he had a friend who is just finishing his last year of electrician school and that he could do it.  Enter Sharif. Sharif was my saving grace.  He came promptly, checked out the place, I gave the guys the money budgeted for installation, they went and bought the supplies and would be back the next day.  We’re off to the races.

Cue Tuesday:  Sharif meets me early at the school with his official orange hardhat.  I got to wear it.  For him to install electricity in the library, he says he has to connect the power from the office, to the staff room, and then into the library.  It was an all-day job.  We broke for lunch for maybe 20 minutes, so not what I’m used to, and kept at it.  While Sharif was up in the rafters giving me a heart attack, I was busy taking inventory of the books that already in the room.  We have a lot of text books, primers, and readers!  More than I had originally thought.  I started putting the same books together just so we can see what we have when the new shelves come in.  When Sharif was all done, we turned the main power switch back on, tried the lights in the library…and nothing.  Nada.  God said let there be light, and decided nahh not today.  But once they messed around with the main switch, everything was up and working and God was happy, too.  We had working sockets and bulbs in the staff room and library and all was well.  So the staff room unexpectedly got power too!  The teachers were just OVERJOYED.  They kept saying how they wish they had a place other than the classrooms to charge their phones, and now they do.  Pretty sure they liked that more than the power in the library.

Cue Wednesday:  The chainsaw guys who were supposed to come and cut down the trees for the timber for the shelves and such didn’t show, they had another gig.  I organized another bookshelf in the library and did prep work for the girls’ club next week.  I can’t actually remember if I did more than that, I was super tired; those books are heavy and I’m constantly covered in dust.  Eggs!  I bought eggs that day.

Cue Thursday:  The parish priest wasn’t kidding when he said the chainsaw guys would be there at 8AM.  8:15 he calls, wondering where I am.  Thursday also decided to be the day where we thought it was going to rain all day, but then decided to snub us and just be thick and hot…all day.  Poor chainsaw guys.  So we settle on a cutting fee, and I’m moving back and forth all day to check on them.  Kind of paranoid about someone stealing the cut timber, but I brought them protein bars so I don’t think they’d let that happen.  Got laundry done.  Evening comes and Steven helps load the cut timber planks onto his boda and slowly slowly transports them 9 or 10 at a time.  I’m waiting for him in the storage room where we unload all these planks.  They’re heavy.  We stop at around 70 something.  Carrying splintery wood planks make me tired.  And dusty.  I was Miles Davis jazzed for bathing all this week.

Cue Friday.  The chainsaw guys are back!  I go to Masaka, get some errands done, pick up two wonderful boxes of completed RUMPs from Calvary Church (yinz are the BEST, they are BEAUTIFUL and in time for my workshop next Wednesday!).  Come home to pick up the rest of the timber, but Steven has football practice so we had to move it in the dark and it felt like we were on a secret mission since no one was around. 

Cue Saturday:  Meet Teacher Tophil in the library to move all the excess stuffs that didn’t belong there to the storage room.  He brought students to help, but they didn’t go to Biikira Girls so they didn’t know me, and all they did was gawk.  But the things were moved out, the room was swept, and it’s really starting to look good.  Next week is for scrubbing the bits of paper stuck on the walls from old posters to prep them for painting.

So that was my week.  My schedule here is either binge watch grey’s anatomy and nap, or work my butt off all week.  Never anything in between.  I'm just continually riding that peace corps roller coaster; the highest highs, the lowest lows.  And I’m really living up to my status as a health volunteer with all this education work, huh?  I’m starting to regret giving the health staff my whatsapp because now all the message I get are “we haven’t seen you,” or “you’ve been lost.”  I’ll try harder next week.

That’s all that’s going on here.  Got a few welcome weekends for the new cohort coming up.  Oh!  Big news.  At the end of October, I’ll be going to Zambia with another PCV for the HIV/AIDS Boot Camp!  Super excited to meet other PCVs from other African posts and to learn more about the movements and projects going on for the fight against AIDS.  Keep fist pumping, all.

Coming home for Christmas this year and would love to see as many as your faces as possible.  Drop me a line if you’ll be around the Indy/Pitt area around the end of December!

All’s well here,
Bisous,
Kelly

"My cat's really cute, wanna see a picture??"