There and Back Again

9 January 2017

New year, same(ish) me.  I’ve been MIA for a while for lots of reasons: no power, no motivation, too busy with work, traveling across God’s green earth, and going home for the holidays.  It’s really been a whirlwind and in some ways, the wind is picking up, and I’m just trying to stay on my feet.

I’m back sitting in my Ugandan house trying to readjust to being covered in mosquito bites and sweating most times during the day after being home in Western PA for nearly 3 weeks.  I didn’t think it’d be such a change, but when I was home and forgot that we owned a dish washer and blankly stared at all the Tupperware in my fridge not remembering why I opened it in the first place, coming back was harder than I thought it’d be.  Also, I forgot the local radio stations, I thought that was weird.  Also again: driving through the Pittsburgh tunnels is anxiety inducing when all I can think is “Holy crap, we’re all really close to each other going really fast and this is how Princess Di died.”  Things that were familiar were my mom’s hugs, Yuengling beer, and flannel sheets on my old bed.  Didn’t hurt that mom recorded a bunch of Jeopardy! episodes for us to watch with tea and peppermint sticks.  Being home was pretty blissful.

Don’t get me wrong, I love not having to shake from the cold that I’m no longer used to in this endless summer land in which I live, but my house seems extra empty even with cuddles from Bilbo after being in PA for a while.  I have approximately 7 months left (OK, more like 6 and a little) to be done mid-July to be home in time for Dan’s wedding, and I’m sure the time here will fly just like the last 19 months did.

 

It's time to start pulling up my tough-girl pants and getting to work.  I have a library to finish.  Mom sent me off with old materials from IUP library like those checking-books-out cards and a stamper thing and a 3-hole punch to prep the books for a legitimate cataloging system at Biikira Girls.  All the teachers are receiving training on how to be a school librarian since the school can’t afford to bring someone in full-time.  It’s time for painting and making sure the shelves are finished and closing the grant and cleaning and making a new sign above the door and maybe a new door or at least curtains. 

It’s time to start meetings up again with the PEARLS.  I have hopes of bringing in a teacher from the school to co-facilitate lessons with me.  I’m hoping there will be a central training for the DREAMS project to which I can bring this teacher, get her certified in running a club, and have her start teaching health topics.  If that can happen, I can slowly back out and let the teacher run the meetings from now on instead of me.  That way, when I leave, the club can continue and more girls can come in as others graduate, and it’ll be a super cool time.

First group of graduated PEARLS members with their certificates

It's time to finish training the health staff on the necessary computer skills needed for creating and sending reports to Medical Access.  They’re doing so well and really picking up on everything quickly, so I’m not worried.  It’s not just me anymore teaching computer lessons.  The staffers who are trained are working with those who aren’t on their own time to make sure the work gets done.

And it’s time to start thinking about the next step.  After working with my counterpart, Sylivia, and with the others at the HIV clinic, I’m really inspired to go back and study nursing.  I’d love to become an RN someday (you know, have an actual job) to eventually travel again around the world (in smaller time stints than Peace Corps) with Doctors without Borders.  Being a health PCV is great, but I’m only a mobilizer and peer educator.  I want to travel with more experience to actually treat those in medical need.  When I first got here, almost everyone thought I was a super qualified nurse/nursing instructor.  It was a shock when I told them I didn’t even know how to put an IV in someone’s arm.  So that’s the next step.  I’m currently taking some pre-req classes online to knock out some of the classes I would need to get into nursing program (it’s not like I ever needed MircoBio as a French major).  It’s going to be a challenge what with my fickle power and other work I’m already doing, but I’m up for it.

Things to look forward to: Linda!  Linda is coming out to visit at the end of the month for just over a week to gallivant across Uganda with me.  I’ve hung out with her extended family and her mom when she’s here, so it’s her time to come and eat matooke with the rest of us.
COS (close of service) conference is just around the corner in April, and then it’s 3 months to finish out my projects, close my grant, close my suitcase, kiss my cat goodbye, and start the next part.  I’m excited, and I’m ready for it. 

Thanks for sticking with me even through my hiatus.  This crazy marathon is almost done.  Kind of bittersweet how much I wish I was home since I just came back from a Christmas visit, but I know I’ll miss this place something fierce when it’s all over.  Until then, check in when you get a chance.  Write me a letter.  I love mail.

Bisous,
Kelly and Bilbo

Unimpressed by my homegrown lettuce

Trying to study for the GRE, Bo

Someone didn't want me to go home

P.S. In November, I was selected along with another PCV to represent Uganda at the second HIV Boot Camp in Lusaka Zambia!  It was an amazing weeklong conference funded by PEPFAR (the Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and we had sessions led by them and USAID all fighting the AIDS epidemic in southern and eastern Africa.  PCVs from other posts were there as well.  It was great to see their methods and strategies in their countries to combat HIV and I’m hoping to put that knowledge I’ve learned into practice here.  Oh, and I jumped off a bridge after the conference just to make my mom’s life a bit harder.  Still alive, so it was worth it.

Victoria Falls...in the dry season

Denis, Hope, and Me at the HIV Boot Camp

About to jump off a bridge

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??"

 

Tea for Twenty

12 August 2016

This blog post is kind of difficult to write.  Not because it’s super emotional or traumatic but because I’m a super klutz and spilled my entire cup of tea over the keyboard and now the keys are kind of sticky even after sitting in rice overnight.  C’est la vie.  I apologize now for any horrible spelling errors; the P and Y keys are really tough.

Remember how I talked about a big working tea fundraiser that would bring in beaucoup bucks to the library renovation fund?  Well, it happened!  I spent the week leading up to it in a permanent frenzy trying to make sure that donors were informed, the staff were ready, and the venue and supplies would be sufficient.  Three days before the event, Brother Patrick and I met with the chairman.  Originally, the party was to be held at Kyotera Stirling, remember?  The town hall-esque place that the chairman owned and would lend us the space, chairs, tables, cups, thermoses, for free?  Yeah, well, three days before the event, doesn’t he say “wouldn’t it make sense to have the tea party at the school?  Let’s do that.”  And yes, it definitely would make more sense to have it there, but it’s in..you know…three days.  He tells me not to worry, we’ll inform everyone, he has all their contacts.  I wasn’t so sure.  I tend to spaz a bit (ok more than a bit) when things change so suddenly, but my friends kept reminding me that in Uganda, things work out.  Maybe not how you’re expecting them to, but they always work out.

So the three days before the party were spent collecting supplies, like tea, and making sure the staff knew of the change.  The day of, we secure a chapati guy, all the needed materials, I buy milk, and everything was in motion.  I show up about an hour beforehand and the P7 room is all set up.  The sisters from the church came and helped put it all together.  There’s a table in the front of the room covered in a beautiful cloth, chairs set up for the special guests, tables in the back set up all nicely decorated for tea, and even a TV in the front of the room playing music videos from a DVD (we don’t want the guests to be bored while they wait).  To top it off, an artist from the PTC stopped by to draw some welcome signs on the front chalkboard.  Everything was coming together.  Except one thing:  we were planning for maximum 50 guests.  I bought tea and bananas and coffee and bread and butter and chapatti and milk for 50 guests.  The room is set up for approx. 50 guests.  The number or people who show up? Not including staff, maybe 13.  My heart kind of sunk when we began, I couldn’t believe how few people had come.  But then again I wonder if it really would’ve been a bigger turnout at the former location. 

"Enjoy Da Day!"

The work tea went really well, though.  We had a schedule and everything.  Opened with prayer of course, thanked everyone for coming, the chairman made opening remarks about the library, kind of took a detour with his own agenda and how he’s raising money for cancer research (ok, let’s get back on track, now), and we had a library tour…in the dark.  The sun had long gone down and we don’t have electricity in the library room YET.  We will.  After the tour, we came back and took tea and people came up one by one, made a little speech, and dropped some cash in the donation box.  Everyone was in good spirits, enjoying the tea, socializing, donating money, it was an all-around good time.  My favorite part though was looking outside during the speeches.  We had left the library door open and some students had come back and snagged some books from inside.  They plopped themselves down outside the security light and were pouring over the books, taking turns reading out loud and having a great time.  That was really the moment that stuck with me.  It was nice having people come and donate, but it’s really the students that matter most here.  I want to finish this project more than ever now.  It’s a slow job, but if students are able to have a free space to come and read different books, then I’ll feel accomplished.  Libraries are kind of in my blood; I’m channeling mom’s mojo into this one.

 

After all the donations, cash and pledges, we had raised over half a million shillings!! WOW!  From the few donors that came, they were extremely generous.  We’re only about 150k off of our community donation requirement.  I’m so proud of the library committee team, they’ve even pledged to donate 80k shillings!  It’s a great feeling to see something finally start coming together.  Now all I need is the grant money to come in and we can start on constructing the shelves and tables.  After the term is over, I want to start cleaning out the room, organizing the books that are already in there, and maybe even begin painting.  It’ll happen slowly slowly, but it’ll happen.  Goals are accomplished with patience.  I learned that when I mended my first mosquito net during training, and I’m learning it now.

In other news, remember all those RUMPs kits I got?  Well the PEARLS put their sewing skills to use and at the end of the menstruation lesson, each girl got to make their own reusable pad.  They loved them!  They can make them, they can sell them, they can use them, all good things for girls and menstruation.  Let’s work together to talk about it and kill the taboos. Check out the pictures:

Dorah using her killer sewing skills

Reticia

Gladys 

Jane and Angella

Olivia and Jane

This is where I stop for now.  It’s been a busy two weeks filled with meeting the new country director, having technical immersion where 3 PCTs stayed at my house for training for a whole week, PEARLS club meeting and prep, having my solar lights kick the dust, having my solar lights replaced, figuring out how to pay for those solar lights, getting other electric fix ups done around my house, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, washing A LOT, having Medical Access come to train us on yet another computer program that we are to start utilizing immediately (yeah ok, we’ll see), and constant running around the towns for printing, shopping, meeting, greeting, etc.  I was glad that this past week was a bit more relaxed.  Mid-Service Training is coming up at the end of the month; it’ll be great to see the whole cohort together again.

I can’t remember if I wrote this before, but I’ve stopped counting water stations.  (As I write it, I feel like I’ve already said it.  Oh well, I’ll say it again) At the beginning I was going from point to point, water station to water station, counting down the days to the next break, the next vacation, the next…whatever.  Counting down the days until Peace Corps is over.  I don’t want to do that anymore.  It’ll be over before I know it, and I’m going to wish I would’ve been more present in the everyday challenges and accomplishments.  So no more counting down.  No more water stations.  I have a year left to experience this wonderful place and a year to make lasting memories and relationships.  I’m not counting down those gifts I've been given. 

All is well.
Until next time,
Kelly

Wait, hold up, I forgot the cat.  We like to take snapchat selfies: