At War

There is a gaggle pack pride group of bodaboda drivers who loiter around and play pool table right down the street from where I work. I pass them twice (at least) a day and always refuse their offers of "Tugende?" We go?

No. We don't go.

Sivuga bodaboda. Njagala okutambula buli lunaku. I don't ride bodaboda. I like to walk every day.

While I wish, every freaking day during my 45 minute walk to work and my 45 minute walk home, that I rode bodas, I can't. It's against Peace Corps policy for volunteers to ride motorcycles. Too dangerous (says Peace Corps). From what I understand, it's Peace Corps policy worldwide that volunteers are not allowed to ride bodas. In the past, like when our country director Ted Mooney served, volunteers were issued their own motorcycles, but no longer. Too many volunteer deaths lead to a worldwide ban on motorcycles. So I walk. A lot. Everywhere.

The boda drivers in town have certainly noticed. While they've slowly started to realize that I don't take bodas, they now pester me about my "fear" of them.

"Why do you fear them?"

"You don't know how to ride boda?"

*sigh*


The other day my co-workers went out for lunch because the girl who cooks didn't come to work that day. As we walked past the group of boda guys my supervisor overheard them talking.

Supervisor: *laughing*
Me: What?
Supervisor: The boda drivers. Did you hear what they said?
Me: No. What'd they say?
Supervisor: They said you've launched a war against them. They're trying to figure out what they did.
Me: Oh.

So apparently I'm At War. Never knew.

I'm determined to be nicer to the boda guys from now on, even though they make me so very angry during each encounter. The harassment female volunteers get from boda guys is intense. Kissy-kissy noises, whistles, "hey sexy momma," yelling at me in a weirdly high-pitched voice "Muzungu we go?". There's no end to the harassment from boda guys every day. They find immense pleasure in making white girls uncomfortable. And they do it well.

I guess that's all on that subject for now.

I'm going to post some pictures from Christmas now. They're in Reverse Order because I uploaded them wrong. So you can start from the bottom and work your way up and it'll probably be more right, time-wise.

My Christmas was spent in a small town about 40k from me at an orphanage. There's a Peace Corps volunteer that works at the orphanage and school who invited anyone who wanted to to spend the holiday with the kiddos. It was a nice way to spend my first Christmas away from home. We made dinner the night before and a Christmas lunch of chicken, meat, rice, beans, spaghetti, irish potatoes, matooke, a bean/maize salad (really good), some type of slaw, and other stuff I've forgotten about.

Grasshopper Season

First of all, I know all of you have been waiting for my new address so here it is:

(my name)
P.O. Box 972
Masaka, Uganda


Well I finally moved into my new house. It took nearly a month, but I'm moved in and almost settled. It's a small two room place with a bathing area and flush latrine (!) accessible by outside doors. I'll try to post something visual once I get it all set up. My organization is supposed to provide me with a bed frame, table and chair, but so far they've only given me a bed frame (I bought the mattress myself), so my house is fairly bare. I'm slowly acquiring some shelving, etc and it's slowly becoming a home. I'm planning on planting some sunflowers that grow insanely big in front of my bathing area so it provides some sort of fence to the house. I'm also planing on planting a small area of herbs sometime this week too. It'll be nice to be able to cook with some fresh herbs again! Also this week I'm going to try making my own yogurt. It's supposed to be really easy and I can make a small amount each afternoon and it'll be ready in the morning! I'm hoping it works well and I don't make myself really sick. :)

So like the title says, grasshopper season has begun. I was thinking grasshopper season was in December, so it snuck up on me a little! The grasshoppers here are bigger than they are in the States, but slower, I think. All the little kids at the center (where I work) run around with grasshoppers in their hands, torturing the poor little bugs. They throw them up in the air and try to catch them as they fall back to the ground. The impact when they hit the ground stuns the grasshoppers a little so they kind of flop around a little, just slow enough for the kids to grab hold of them again. They inevitably lose legs, wings, etc and die a slow death....I'm not much of a fan of this activity...can you tell? ha

I really like the way they catch grasshoppers here. They set up a bunch of metal barrels with long lengths of metal siding sticking out of the barrels. They then hook up lights above the barrels so that the light shines on the metal siding and attracts the grasshoppers. When the grasshoppers see the light they fly into the metal siding and, I guess stun themselves, so they fall in the barrels and can't get out again.

All the people I talk to here (including most Muzungus [foreigners - usually white people, all Asians are called "Chinese"]) really love them. I'm not sure how much I'll enjoy them, but I'm determined to try one. The idea of eating a bug really grosses me out, but if I can get past that, I think I'll actually enjoy them.

I stole this picture from someone else's site:

Pictures from my site visit/language immersion week

Swearing In and Post-Swearing In Pictures (there's more on the right under "photo album")

Why you should always wear sunscreen in Africa.

















My Luganda language class (we were split into two groups). Top row: Jon; middle row: Zach and Courtney; bottom row: Me and Mary
















The entire Luganda group. Jon, Colin, Heidi, Courtney, Mary Amber, Zach, me, and Khrissee.















My counterpart (Roy) and my supervisor (Achilles) after swearing in












Jon's Obama pants....I had to take a picture :)












From left to right: MJ, Lizz, Matt and me after swearing-in












The new Country Director, Ted Mooney, and me after swearing in.













My language teacher Ven and me after swearing in.





















Why you should always use a mosquito net when you're staying the night at a friend's house who lives in a swampy area. *smacks head*

I'm a bad blogger :(

So it's been quite a while since I've blogged. I wanted to do a weekly entry, but that's obviously not happened. I hope to be blogging more since I've found an awesome internet place in my new town (more on that later...), so I hope you'll forgive me!

So what's happened these last few weeks?

LPI. Every trainee in each country where the Peace Corps works has to pass a language exam before they are sworn in, or if they don't pass, by three months after swearing in. A passing score is Intermediate Low level. (See what this means here) I was really worried that I wouldn't be able to pass the test on the first go. We took a mock LPI about two weeks prior and I scored two levels below Intermediate Low at Novice Mid. I only had two weeks to bump up my score; I was determined to pass the LPI before swearing in. Our teacher, Ven, was really helpful in those last few weeks preparing us for the final LPI. She showed us what we needed to improve on to get better scores and how to construct simple paragraphs instead of simple sentences. After I took the LPI I didn't think I passed. BUT I DID! I scored Intermediate Low! Actually I think my teacher might have just felt sorry for me...but who knows :)

Homestay Thank You Celebration. About a week before we left our homestays we had a celebration to thank them for hosting us. Each language group gave a presentation and the new Country Director gave a speech, as did several volunteers. Since the majority of families speak Luganda, my group gave two presentations instead of only one. Our first presentation was a skit showing what we did every day at training. One thing I've learned since I've been here is that Ugandans really love skits. REALLY REALLY love skits. They loved ours :) Our second presentation was the traditional Buganda dance. It's kind of hard to describe and I wish I had a picture or video of it (since I totally ROCKED at it). Here's a video from YouTube that kind of shows the dance: VIDEO.

Site Announcement. Our sites were announced in the last week of training. I'm placed in the Masaka district (south of Kampala bordering Lake Victoria) with an organization that works with children. They're partnered with Compassion International so it's a pretty religious organization. I've mostly been doing office work and no outreach so far, but it's only been two weeks and we'll see how things go in the next few months. My housing fell through on the taxi ride down here so I've been staying with a family since arriving at site. The husband is on the board of the organization and they're really nice. I pretty much have my own "studio" apartment with a shared bathroom and bathing area. They've been really helpful too. I'm not sure when I'll be getting into my own house, but I hope it's soon! I really want to settle in and start living in my own place!

Well that's it for now. I'm going to try to upload some pictures here so you can see some stuff easily. Also, I've finally uploaded all my pictures so far in my Picasa albums (which you can find links to at the right of the page) or here: training & service.