Are YOU Ready for CHOGM?

I have been a bit out of touch lately, mostly due to the fact that our office has undergone some technical upgrades. I am happy to report that we now have a very sophisticated internet connection and office network that will allow me to better keep up with this blogging business.

This week is a big week for Uganda on the international scene. The State House is hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala starting on Friday, of which the Queen of England will be attending. Thus, Uganda has undergone some heavy duty beautification projects over the last few months in preparation for her arrival. I can remember talks of CHOGM on the radio and in the paper since I arrived in country in March. From what I can gather, the Queen had boycotted coming to Uganda since the time of Idi Amin due to some unfriendly comments the former dictator had to say about her and her country. Therefore, the government of Uganda has been bending over backwards to welcome her after so many years. I have to admit, Uganda is looking quite fabulous for Her Majesty!

"Are you ready for CHOGM?" has been the slogan of the event and its plastered all over taxi buses, billboards, posters, and newspapers throughout the country. It is an international forum of the 'voluntary association of independent sovereign states, consulting and co-operating in the common interests of their peoples and in the promotion of international understanding and world peace.' The sovereign state is represented by the heads of government of the UK as well as the heads of government of the former colonies. The Queen will arrive on Friday, yet many heads of state have already arrived as they are having meetings to discuss better collaboration between the commonwealth countries as well as having a people's forum to discuss issues pertinent to the Ugandan people. CHOGM is held once every two years, with the venue changing every time. The president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, made a speech last night that expressed his devotion to Ugandan development and environmental conservation. I hope that many good things come out of the meeting and that Uganda does committ itself to increasing efforts towards protecting the natural beauty of this country.

For more CHOGM info, check out http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1007029393672

Baby Steps

So, I have been driving myself and Christopher crazy lately. Due to the recent theft of my phone along with the insufficient funds to purchase another one, I am left with a lot of time to think. As a result of all this brain activity, I have since become frustrated with myself and my work.
I have been trying to develop a gender-based violence program here in the Town Council, yet during my meetings with the deputy of police and the family protection unit, a few "issues" have come up. First, in discussing the need to protect women's rights, as many times they do not have equal say in their relationship, the response to my question of "would you like to become involved in the project with me?" has normally been: "Yes, but why are you only focusing on women, the men will feel left out." And this is a women's rights project. Secondly, and this one is quite ironic. I have been going to the police station a lot, in hopes to get their advice and support in starting up this program as well as a substance-abuse program in town, yet there is a particular police officer that seems to always know where I am or will be. When I see him he consistently asks to give my father 6 cows for my hand in marriage (to be his 3rd wife, mind you). I continue telling him to leave me alone and that I am happily married already (quick, someone send me a fake wedding ring). Despite the sheer notion that its creepy that he is Weirdo McStalker, doesn't it defeat the entire purpose of me trying to get the police to help me out with my women's rights project to stalk me?!? Thirdly, I want to hold a refresher course for our home-based care volunteers so that if they come across a client who is a victim of domestic violence or have a family member with a substance abuse problem, they will know how to handle it and where to refer the family should they request help. I was in the process of renting a meeting place, organizing the volunteers, and getting the training agenda worked out when my supervisor informed me that I must inform the district government that I want to hold a training, they must approve it, be invited, and appoint the trainer. This is fine, I don't mind if they must know everything, I just got frustrated that I had no idea I needed to do all of that and now the training is pushed back indefinetly.
I had a Peace Corps In-Service Training last week in Kampala. It was wonderful to see my friends and my Christopher. I ate a ceasar salad and had a steak. Amazing. I had forgotten what good food really was like. The training was great, my APCD did an amazing job coming up with activity planning worksheets and helpful ways of putting plans into action. I learned so much. Yet here's where the frustration kicks in: Day 2, the hotel, housing all of the volunteers in my group (48) and most of our supervisors and counterparts (a lot) runs out of water. No showers, no toilets, no brushing your teeth. We asked them to give us jerri cans of water (big containers), yet to no avail. We asked them to show us where the latrines are, wouldn't let us. I will leave the rest of the story to your own imagination, just remember to think about 48 dirty Peace Corps volunteers and our respective stomach issues. On that note, frustration number 2 of last week. A buffet of straight Ugandan food 5 times a day. Now, I have no issue with Ugandan food, even though it is pretty bland it is pretty good. I just haven't been eating it as much as I was in training now that I am at my site, since I cook for myself. The Ugandan diet is based mainly on tons of starch - white rice, plaintains, plaintains mashed up (matoke), posho (white, gluey corn meal), and potatoes are a staple of almost every meal (even breakfast sometimes). So by day 3 and lots of starch...well let just say maybe I got lucky since couldn't use the toilets that didn't work or the unavailable latrines for 2 days.
Lastly, I returned to my house over the weekend to find that my basil plant (which I have been baby-ing like crazy) got all shriveled up in the heat and may be a lost cause. I also discovered that although I eradicated the ants that are slowly eating away at the insides of my living room and kitchen, they have beaten me once again by moving into my bathroom.
So I have decided, on Christopher's insistence, that I have to do more yoga and more consistently, make small goals for myself each day to feel somewhat accomplished, and pour myself into finding ways of integrating into my community a little better. My goals for October so far are as follows:
1. Furnish my second bedroom
2. Learn to kill a chicken (funny I know, but hey this is Africa)
3. Keep my basil alive
4. More yoga
5. Cook Canadian Thanksgiving dinner

Suggestions are (as we say in Uganda) most welcome.

On Saturday, Sept 8, I attended the Uganda v. Niger football game in Namboole Stadium, Kampala. The Ugandan Cranes are vying for a spor in the African Cup in Ghana 2008. I travelled on Saturday morning, only to arrive in Kampala amongst all the game day chaos! There were taxis everywhere with people hanging out the windows yelling, holding flags, trumpets, branches and leaves! I still don't understand the leaves part. We arrived at the staduim and I bought some corny Uganda flare, only to meet up with my friends and discover I looked normal. Some of the other muzungus were painted head to toe in the colors of Uganda (red, black and yellow). The game started off well, with Uganda scoring its first goal in the first minute. The stadium went nuts. I have never been to a soccer game before, so it was a fun experience for me. The noise of all the people blowing their trumpets created this buzzing noise through the whole game, sounded like swarming bees. The crowd was cheering, Oh yee, oh yee, Uganda Cranes oh yee! We joined in, must have looked pretty silly. I heard from my friends in Busia when I returned that they put us on tv. We were that much of a spectacle, ha! In the end, the Cranes won, 3-0. and have qualified again for Ghana. Since soccer depends on the points you have, not the process of elimination, Uganda must beat Zambia in the points ranking to go, so cross your fingers! Uganda Cranes oh yee!

the hizzouse

So I am a spoiled brat. I have a new house, running water, a toilet and a flippin shower, electricity and a sweet compound. I realize that many of you are wondering what my place looks like, envisioning me in a grass thatched hut or a bush or something. Well kids, I won't hold out on you anymore. Here she is, home sweet home. There are more and I will supplement them at some time. Seeing as how it has taking me this long to put these up, I wouldn't hold your breath for new ones soon. As mentioned in my emails, I have waged a battle on the ants who seem hella determined to take over Oliviaville, yet they shalt not conquer as I am a formidable opponent to those tiny little pests. And yes, my field mouse is still around eating my tomatoes. He's cute I can't kill him, what do you want from me? He has stayed away of late due to the presence of another voracious beast in my house (more to come on this subject in a later post). I am happy to report that I now have living room furniture as well as a kitchen table. I have experienced some "difficulty" with the carpenters in my town. Let's just say that if my daddy was here, he'd have opened a can already. So after about a month of threatening the police if they didn't just paint the damn shelf brown, I finally have furniture in the house. I have cement floors, which is great because you can't see the red dust all over it that well, and they are easy to clean. And yes ma, I clean my floors once a week. I have an extra bedroom that right now holds only my clothesline for hanging up my wet clothes, but I am thinking of maybe puting a bed in there and a bunch of art supplies to help me pass the time. I will let ya'll know. Alright um, yeah I don't have much else to say about my house...more pictures will follow, I promise.

Dumpster Diving

On Friday, August 10 I helped in a Busia town clean-up event in one of the slums near the Kenyan border. The slum is called Marachi. I went with some of the other Peace Corps volunteers here in town along with the Busia Town Council, the Mayor and my friend Boris from the German Development Organization. Boris is working with the town council to promote water sanitation as well as community hygiene. Thankfully the sun held off to allow us to work without getting too sunburnt! It was such an eye-opening experience. The first site that we went to was completely overwhelming. It was a public dump site about the size of a basketball court. The trash had been collecting for 3 months. There were homes and stores and outdoor cooking areas surrounding the site, and children were running through the mud and trash in bare feet. The smell was enough to make us gag, but we all grabbed a shovel or a rake and got to work. We worked and worked making piles, lifting them onto empty rice sacks and then onto the back of a rented dump truck. My shoes got covered in God-knows-what. There must have been about 20 of us working, 5 being muzungus which drew all of the children in the slums out to watch the white people work.
About an hour in, the equivalent to a town crier with a megaphone started walking around us informing everyone who didn’t already see the muzungus digging to come and watch. While we worked we were constantly dodging chickens that were lavishing the freshly dug up cockroaches and beetles Even though the slum is about a 15 minute walk from my house, where most of my neighbors speak the Ugandan language I learned (Lusamia), all of the children looked confused this morning when we tried to speak with them. One of our Ugandan co-workers explained that most of the children spoke either Swahili or Karamojong. When I inquired as to the reason, he explained that nearly all of the inhabitants of the slum were either refugees from Somalia or internally-displaced people from Karamoja. There must have been at least 6 or 7 kids for every adult I saw today. So many children!! They were swarming around us, pinching our skin and staring from every direction. There was a steady trail of children behind us as we moved from site to site. Not only were there so many kids, but I was really disheartened at the amount of sick and dirty children I saw. As we were digging, the children were picking up pieces of trash to play with and putting them in their mouths. I started to get upset watching the kids and discovering that no matter how much we dug and raked and picked up, there were so many layers of trash underneath that I just couldn’t see any good in what we were doing. The soil seemed so inundated with waste that I felt we were barely scratching the surface. We dug up vegetables, egg shells, paper and other very biodegradable or compost-able waste, yet the amount of black plastic bags I found was really discouraging. The ground was covered in tons of plastic that will never decompose. It made me so sad to see it all. I can’t imagine how many layers of plastic were underneath us. With all the layers of trash, I cannot even begin to imagine what must be seeping into the groundwater. I became really scared, looking at all the little faces staring up at me with runny noses and eyes and thinking about what they must be ingesting when they drink untreated or non-boiled water.
Although I was initially discouraged and sad, by the end of the day I found solace in the fact that so many people turned out to help us. The town crier, who initially was announcing the spectacle of the labouring mizungus, eventually was able to rally many of the children and other community members to come and help clean up their neighbourhood. Seeing the way we all pulled together, I guess I realized that there is something good lying underneath the surface of my surroundings.

Raindrops keep fallin on my head

So it has been raining non-stop here for the last 3 days. I have had to wade through rapids to walk to work. Its an awesome feeling to step onto the dirt road outside my place and feel yourself sink 3 inches down into the mud. And what tickels my pickle is the fact that my water has been off the last two days? I would think with all of this rain that the reserves would be overflowing. I like the hour before it rains though: the sky gets this blue-gray haze as the clouds roll in, and then the breeze picks up, all the humidity is zapped from the air, the cows start lowing, and the goats all run towards and fight over who gets to stand on the biggest anthill. I think that is my favorite part: watching the goats headbut eachother over and over again trying to be the king of the muddy red anthill castle. The kids think that I am crazy when they see me walking with my umbrella to town. When it rains, the streets pretty much clear out, making me even more of a spectacle than usual as I carry my zebra print umbrella to town. They yell, Mizungu, mizungu, but it is raining! I smile, nod and keep walking briskly to town. The rain is nice because it keeps the ever-present dust down. With all of the petroleum trucks passing through on their way from Kenya, the dust is most of the time unavoidable. Covers everything. I have learned that wearing white is not the best idea, seeing as how I do all of my laundry by hand. Oh well, live and learn I guess! I just hope that it stops raining before my time at the internet cafe is up. I'm don't know how much I want to show off my rafting skills on my walk to the supermarket today.

Yet I still love technology

Today is a good internet day. I was able to actually sign into my email and that spawned the idea to create a blog. I hope that this blog will be used in correspondence with friends and family at home as well as with the class being taught by my good friend Rebecca Lowry. As it is always a gamble as to whether or not signing into gmail will make our server spontaneously combust, uploading pictures will most likely be a process. Stick with me as I discover more about myself and a little concept called "patience" while trying to update this blog as much as possible. There are so many little trials and tribulations that I am still getting used to here in Uganda, i.e. the slow speed or lack of internet, and all I can hear is my mother's voice saying, Olivia, patience is a virtue. If I learn nothing else over the next 2 years, please God let it be that.