Ohhh, so THIS is Peace Corps

Many years ago, on my sixth grade field trip I found myself stuck in the middle of a crude and ritualistic rite of passage. With no more direction than a point of the finger, I, a boy whose only exposure to nature had been forging the river on the Oregon Trail computer game (by help of a Native-American guide I may add), had been expected to traverse a stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a Tennesse forest preserve…by myself. To say the least, I was pretty terrified. Images were rushing through my head of hanging onto the lone splintering root of a tree suspended hundreds of feet in the air over a cliff certain to cause my imminent free fall and death. What possibly could these teachers be thinking I thought, were they really ready to explain to my parents how I came down with small pox AND dysentery…it seemed so easy to catch it on the Oregon Trail. It was my turn to go. I looked back saying my goodbyes to friends and the life I had known. I took my first few steps and turned the corner, looking back but seeing nothing familiar.

Twelve years later, I’d find myself on a plane to East Africa where I’d live for the next 27 months as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

I’ve been in Uganda now for just short of three months. I was officially sworn in as a volunteer three weeks ago in Kampala after a training program where 26 like-minded Americans learned languages they had never heard of before, ate strange things like “matoke” (steamed bananas) and the “rolex,” (an omelet wrapped up in a chapati) and slowly weened themselves off of flush toilets, hot showers, and fast internet. We had also started getting used to be calling Muzungu. Muzungu is a term derived from a Swahili word that means “to pace.” Apparently, one of the first white people in the area was pacing around one day and the locals decided to start calling him “one that paces.” The term now has come to basically mean foreigner and you can hear the shrill shriek of children miles away shouting this anytime you walk outside. The training program was a pretty sheltered lifestyle. We mostly stayed in groups, either for the company or for the assurance that if one of our Peace Corps issued bicycles decided to self-destruct (which they did on many occasions) we could lend each other a helping hand. We lived with Ugandan families, tried and failed to “correctly” wash our own laundry (it seems that there is only one way to wash clothing in Uganda, and for me it involved bloody knuckles), and every now and then would get together over beers to talk about ridiculous things we had been encountering. At the time we all thought that training was a waste of time, but looking back I think it was critical to our adjustment here in Uganda. It also was a time where everlasting friends were born, and after three weeks in the village I find myself quite nostalgic of the days playing soccer at lunch break with a whole cohort of Americans. I have been putting this blog off for way too long and I think it fit to concentrate on my first 3 weeks alone at site–the true experience of Peace Corps.

The night before swearing in we all were staying at a hotel on the outskirts of Kampala. The day before we had spent the day at the Deputy Ambassadors housing swimming, eating cheeseburgers, and playing volleyball on the lawn. We all knew that we are about to head off to our sites, and it was a time for reflection on the past few months in Uganda. Before going out to dinner, I stood on my balcony right at sunset smelling the now familiar scent of burning trash and looking over the rolling hills that make up the city limits of the capital city. Cars were honking, radios were blaring, and motorcycles were tearing through the streets with reckless abandon. I peered through the haze into the absolute chaos that was Kampala and I loved it. I had no idea what any of the signs or billboards said, I had no idea what people were saying and oddly I felt totally at home. The guts, grit, and grime of the city pulled me in, and reveled in the thought the next two years would be one of discovery not only into the lives and culture of people of Uganda, but discovery into myself and the person I would become two years from then. I kept my smile on the rest of the night despite knowing that I would have to say goodbye to 22 friends the very next day (3 people early terminated or “ET’d” from their Peace Corps service during training). Greg and Zach, two of my close friends here, and I scoured through a Ugandan tour book to find a good place to have a last supper with the group before we left. It was an Indian food restaurant in downtown Kampala, we have to somehow manage to flag town a matatu (a 14 seat taxi that regularly holds up to 20 people). The trip to the restaurant was one of the most memorable car rides in my life. Kampala at night, and pretty much every other capital city in a developing country I imagine, is absolutely surreal and chaotic–exactly the thing that I love. Shops the size of closets were brimming with activity under the light of a hanging bulb or burning candle. People were hawking giant slabs of cow and god knows what other pieces of animal. Every few stores you’d hear a new song blaring from the oversized industrial speakers. There was neon light, there was yelling, there were bananas, and there was laughter. As the taxi jockeyed for position, narrowly missing a camel who decided to take a break in the middle of the road, I looked out the steamy windows out onto the world that had now become my home. For the first time, I felt an uneasiness escape me and felt comfortable at the prospects of learning to adjust to this foreign and chaotic world. Screaming above the volume of the ambient level of sound woke me from my alternate state of introspection; a thief had just stolen a purse from a woman and was running on the sidewalk next to the taxi. Our speed matched his speed, and for 30 seconds a taxi full of Americans traded glances back and forth with the thief. Home sweet home. Merrill, a journalist in the group that reported on the drug war in South America said that the whole experience felt like an LSD trip. At the Indian Restaurant each of us ordered a dish, and we spent the next 2 hours talking, reminiscing, and laughing all the while the plates kept in constant rotation amongst the long table. It was one of the better meals in my life.

The next day we all took our oaths to the American government, and were sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers. Immediately following the ceremony, people started to leave. This was it. This was when Peace Corps really started. This is when I had to turn the corner and not look back. What the next two years had in store I had no idea, but I knew it would affect me a lot more than any hike in the woods ever could.

My site, my home for the next two years is in the very Southwestern corner of Uganda outside of a town called Kisoro. I’m not allowed to tell you exactly where I am (Peace Corps takes our security very seriously), but I can tell you I can see both Rwanda and Congo from my house. In fact, I could probably throw a rock from my front door and it would land in Rwanda. Minutes from my house are beautiful lakes that lay in front of a chain of volcanoes that just a few years ago erupted and covered an entire town with lava. It really is the Africa that I had dreams about as a kid, and I rather not be in any other place in Uganda. Everything from the temperature, to the location fits me perfectly. I came with 2 others to this district and we represent the first Peace Corps volunteers here since 1991. Kisoro, 16 km away from my site, has a decidedly touristy feel as it is one of the only places in the world where you can hike with gorillas. This is the place where a few years back Diane Fossey researched gorilla habitats and which the documentary “Gorillas in the Mist” was filmed about. The two volunteers stay in town (one of whom, Ryan, I have to thank for this awesome blog name), and I’m sure we will all struggle to separate ourselves from the tourists that are in constant rotation from town buying crafts, and taking pictures of the local tribe of Batwa pygmies.

I work at a 19-bed Health Center that serves 36 villages in 2 parishes primarily working in antenatal care, immunization, and malaria treatment. Over half of the cases that come to the Health Center are malaria related. The Health Center is supposed to be staffed with 38 people, but currently there are only 13. There is no electricity or running water. The only mode of transport to Kisoro is by bicycle or motorcycle, the latter of which is forbidden for use as a Peace Corps Volunteer. My role as a volunteer will to be expand the public health function of the facility by working with local leaders, health center staff, and the community. I just arrived, and by no means have developed a solid work plan but I’m sure most of my energy will be implementing projects toward reducing the incidence of malaria in the area. Having a strong concentration on HIV/AIDS in my work and academic experience, I was surprised to find HIV is really not a problem nor a concern in the area. I am told that no cases of malnutrition are reported in the district as the local diet relies heavily on food filled with iron and protein. There also seems to be an abundant source of food agriculture is the main if only enterprise in the area although I have seen quite a bit of goiters which is due to the unavailability of iodized salt in the area. Linguistically and ethnically, the villages in the area identify more closely with those in Rwanda. The language I am learning (Rufumbira) is spoken all through out Rwanda.

I’m not going to lie, my first few days in my house (owned by a very generous doctor at the CDC) were very tough. The house is quite nice, much nicer than anything I had expected being a volunteer. I have 3 bedrooms, a dining room, a living room, and 2 toilets. Of course the house has no furniture whatsoever, and I flush the toilet by filling up the reservoir with water that I get in the rain tank in the back but still it’s pretty nice. I had no way to charge my cell phone, and refill the money required to send text messages to my friends in the country. I all of a sudden was ripped from everything I was becoming familiar with and in a place that felt like an inescapable cell of isolation. I spent the first week eating nothing more than salted rice and plain spaghetti for every meal, and hiding behind the giant steel bars that enclose the windows and doors of my house. In short, I was experience severe culture shock. I was now a villager and I had to start living that way. Since then, things are a lot better. I find it almost enjoyable to read next to the lantern at night, and I have been keeping myself busy with small little projects around the house. Things move a lot slower in the village, something that I still need adjusting too.

I have been spending most of my work so far looking at old health center records trying to evaluate whether a mosquito net distribution program was effective in 2007. It has been pretty dull looking through the pages and pages of numbers and spreadsheets but I am fully aware that things will start slow and pick up in a few months. About to go on a tour of the village the health center staff and I see a group of ten people running with a stretcher on their shoulders. Plans canceled, this obviously was more important. She came in looking pretty much dead. Her feet were covered in dirt and encircled by flies– she probably had been farming. My supervisor ran to get something– the keys for the surgical wing that I had never seen the inside of. The young woman was lifted onto the operating table with her 10 layers of clothing. What looked like a trash bag was placed under her. She was bleeding; more blood than I had ever seen come from a person. I ran to get the IV stand from the maternity ward still not fully knowing what was going on. She kept bleeding. Three bottles of saline where put into here before she began to move, she was in serious shock. The blankets, robes, and towels, were uncovered from her as the staff looked closer to see what was happening. It was hard to see since there is no electricity and the sun was starting to go down. The table screeched as it was dragged closer to to opaque windows, the only source of light in the stark room. My body started to get warm, my palms clammy, and my head light as I saw the blood run out of her. Her legs were put into the stirrups, the trash bag draped to the floor to channel the blood into a small tin container. The staff repeated, “Umez ute?” “How are you?”, “Wowe ari he?” “Where are you”. She struggled to answer even incoherently. This was progress though. The staff prepared strips of gauze as the in-charge prepared the limited surgical tools available. The in-charge bringing out what I thought were clots but turned out to be pieces of placenta and fetus. I watched him as he pulled out piece by piece dropping it onto the trash bag and watch it run slowly down to the tin container. The bleeding was subsiding now and the staff began talking about other things. She was shivering, “she has malaria” one of the staff informed me. All this could have been prevented with a $3 piece of mesh hanging over here bed. I had spent two day of reviewing old hospital records. Frustrated by the faulty record keeping, inconsistent numbers, basic math errors, I didn’t know what I was doing. I had reviewed years of data on malaria and pregnant mothers and felt like it was going to lead to nothing. On top of that I had a shell of a house, and no connection to the outside world. Then she came. She was one of the entries I had read in one of the books. This was no error, no misclassification. She had malaria, and she lost her child because of it. This was my first wake up call. She ended up leaving the health center a few hours later so she could probably get home to cook dinner and farm in the morning. Most likely, she’ll conceive another child in the next month or so. Going through records the past few days hasn’t been as bad since. In fact, I have found some really interesting combination of diagnoses in some of the patients. My favorite? Malaria-Urinary Tract Infection – Human Bite.

My house is surrounded by a giant volcanic rock fense with an Iron gate rattles like nothing else. The roof is aluminum so is always making noise. There are sounds all around me that I have never heard that at night, frankly, scare the shit out of me. That night, there was a loud banging at the front gate that shot up my adrenaline. Was it the rebels coming to get the muzungu? Somehow I worked up the courage to go to the gate to investigate, and it was a liter of milk from the leader of a local community group. I need to relax a little bit, no one was after me. The next day I was invited to play soccer with some kids from the primary and secondary school. It was right before sunset and being able to have fun with these kids despite the language barrier on the doorstop of a volcano was a really special experience. I went home that night my feet covered in cow patties knowing that I was going to make it. The worst was over. There still is the issue of food. It seems as though to get food I’ll have to bike into Kisoro every week on market days to buy food. I hopped on the back of a bike to see how the trip would be. Riding on the back of a bicycle on a volcanic rock road is not something I recommend doing very often if you plan on having kids. It is however a great opportunity to practice the language because you can say whatever you want and be off the scene within seconds. It’s gotta blow your mind to see someone that looks totally different from you fly by on the back of a bike speaking your native language. I still need a lot more language practice though, even though I passed the language interview at the end of training. In fact, I just asked the lady at the internet cafe, “Woman, tell me the time!” I hope she wasn’t offended. The trip takes about an hour or so, but it’ll interesting to see what happens when I get a bike and try to find my way back from town. Hopefully, I’ll have battery in my cell phone.

There’s so much more to say, and I don’t think there will ever be enough space on here for me to write everything. I’ll try to update fairly regularly (maybe twice monthly?). I’ll also start putting up pictures and add my twitter account so you can see what I’m up to that day. I hope everyone is well, and I love getting emails from you! Thanks for all of your support, love, and friendship. Time to discover the unknown!