Murora People with Disabilities is a community based organization that serves the Murora Sub-County of Kisoro District. Established as the number of disabilities drastically rose following the incursion of rebels from the Rwandan genocide, the group aims to offer support to families struggling to make ends meet. Already the group has undertaken many successful ventures such as the training of members to become mechanics, carpenters, and tailors. By themselves they have initiated a successful savings and loan program that has given low interest loans to members that choose to undertake small businesses. They have also formed animal co-ops among members to share livestock as a way to boost monthly income. 220 people pay monthly dues to be a part of the organization, and all say they would have it no other way; the group offers a forum for support both financial and emotional.

Yet with all the success, the members still find it difficult to pay for school fees or afford simple things like house repair or transportation. To these ends, the group has undertaken extensive efforts to perform needs and asset based assessments to see what can be done. During my work here as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I have been impressed with their motivation, hard work, and willingness to contribute themselves fully to their project goals. These are not people looking for a handout, just a start. Already they have raised nearly $1,000 to start a project that will have an everlasting impact for generations to come.

The project they have developed utilizes local resources and individual assets. It draws on skills that members have been trained in, and strengthens local knowledge and traditions. It builds on the capacity of the work they know and love, and will continue to be sustainable as the level of ownership is high.

The group aims to establish two community centers that will give their small community organization a base to initiate income generating projects. With the provision of land, they will build training centers that will provide trainings in the following work: carpentry, show making, handicraft, poultry raising, pig rearing, sewing, and improved/modern farming techniques. Because Kisoro is a land of many hills, the group wishes to build two centers as those that live in the highlands are unable to move down to the valley on a regular basis.

Furthermore, the community centers will serve as storehouses for farming co-ops. They will store seeds for the next planting season. The buildings also will have many income generating opportunities such as starting  small shops, providing a workshop to create disability aids such as canes, crutches, and walkers. It will also be a venue to sell product made by the group to the community. It will also boost group morale as it will give the group a place to meet and call home.

Disability sadly is still a stigmatized condition in Uganda. However, with your support the people of my community can be empowered to improve their lives and be and example to all Ugandans what hard work and determination can bring.

Please stay tuned to see what the group does!

Crafts have emerged as an undeniable industry in many communities in the developing world fuelled by a surge in interest by outside markets that reward producers with handsome profits that far surpass the feeble monetary reward of a days work in the field. The craft industry tags items with such buzzwords as “empowerment,” “fair-trade,” and “sustainability.” However, we must ask ourselves at what price do communities pay for using crafts as a tool for development? Are crafts really empowering communities to become economically sustainable? Crafts and the much larger movement to develop poor communities through philanthropic consumerism from the West instead reinforce economic dependency that further exposes poor communities to the tastes, trends, and whims of wealthy outsiders. As advocates for the poor, we cannot let this same old story play itself out.

Many see crafts as any other good in the global marketplace: local communities have a comparative advantage in creating items in high demand by outside markets and should be awarded with profit. So why should we advise against such work? Craft projects do not work to reverse the role of the poor in the global power paradigm. Self-direction, reliance, and capacity of the poor are caste aside to cater to the demands of outsiders. The wealthy and powerful import ideas for the poor to process into products that they can buy, in other words the poor continue to do what the rich want. This model has grave implications that manifest through out the society. It reinforces a hierarchy in which societies continue to look to the West and ignore local knowledge in favor of outside plans. It stifles self agency and the creation of local solutions to local problems. Can we really continue down this road if we ever intend on reaching our vision of a world free of poverty, disease, and inequality? 

I am not denying that crafts can generate significant amounts of money; there are proven stories of profit right here in Uganda. However, any efforts to develop crafts as an enterprise must pursue local and stable markets to prevent harmful dependent relationships to form. What happens if Uganda falls into political turmoil and tourism dries up? What happens if crafts go out of vogue in the West? What if large manufacturers offer consumers cheaper and better made crafts?

For the Peace Corps community (with magazines, craft fairs, and newsletter attachments) to pursue craft projects as a development strategy flies directly and obscenely in the face of its stated goals. As an organization that strives to promote the core values of America such as freedom, independence, and self-reliance should we really be supporting such projects? Can we continue to import outside solutions instead of building on local ideas? The over emphasis on craft projects as a solution to poverty in the development field is an extremely significant misstep off the path to a better, more equal world.

Craft projects designed specifically for outside markets hurt the communities they were designed to assist. Other alternatives (and there are always alternatives, just ask and listen to your community!) should be pursued to support self directed development.

I came here for a challenge, and damn it looks like I got one. A few months ago I was on the verge of throwing in the towel. The most productive thing I felt I did was wiping my ass. I’d go to work and stare at walls for hours at a time. I felt utterly paralyzed by inaction and the inability to help those in need. I spoke with a deaf girl who was raped and impregnated at the age of 15, I locked eyes with a man hunched over in excruciating pain that would die of dysentery hours later, I tried to comfort a boy having a severe asthma attack. Suffering was all around me. What did I want to do? Everything. What was I doing? Nothing. I was pulling out my hair, grinding my teeth, and afraid of my community. With no exaggeration whatsoever, for a good 6 months after arriving at site I felt I had done absolutely nothing. Yet I surprised myself by continuing to show up. In my journal I wrote, “I feel lost and found all at the same time, like a sailor who calls his ship home but sails without a compass.” Man, do I have a flair for the melodramatic. So what kept me going? The community. It sounds a tad bit self-righteous and cheesy, but I stayed for the people I had made a promise to the day I moved in. It wasn’t any sense of morality that kept me going, or any feeling of burden. To me staying was just some ordinary duty I had to fill. I came to the realization that to challenge others I had to first challenge myself.

Before arriving at site, I was told that the experience and guidance I had was the only way I could help my community. I was trained to plan. I was shown the right way and the wrong way. I knew how to make log frames, SMART objectives, and sound proposals. I was comfortably nestled into a comfy pillow of theoretical academia. Then it hit me. I knew jack shit. I couldn’t do anything. I had no idea what to do. I sat in my office alone trying to plan my way out of it. The harder I tried, the worse I felt stuck. I blamed my community, and my co-workers. I told myself that I needed to book a one way ticket out of there to a place that could utilize all the valuable skills I had. Then something unexpected happened. It’s too early to speculate on exactly just what it was but broke down and beat to pieces, I began to embrace the error. I began to unlearn everything I thought I knew. I relaxed. I had fun. I talked to people not like they were objects for development but rather allies in a struggle. I laughed more and appreciated more. I was true to myself, and true to my community. I jumped off the pedestal that was separating me from my community. And then it started. Tiny victories, small successes, and a vision of the previously unimaginable. As Robert Chambers would say, “I was handing over the stick” and letting communities direct my work. It was incredibly empowering. I stayed in the village and will never forget why. I cannot thank Jenna, Peace Corps staff, friends and family for standing by my side through all the ups and downs.

As a result, work has been exciting and fantastic. I’ve got my hands full and love it. Yes, there are still the hurdles and some of the same problems, but they don’t look insurmountable anymore. My work revolves around 6 core areas: Malaria, Hygiene and Sanitation, HIV/AIDS Education, Health System Strengthening, and work with two local community based organizations: a HIV support group and a People with Disabilities Group. Here is a quick summary of some of the things we are doing…

Malaria

-The catchment area of the health center surrounds an area of marshland and swamp. With the rains come epidemics of malaria. Mosquito net use is very low, especially among the most at-risk groups: children under 5, pregnant women, and the elderly. There are many in the field of public health that feel that mosquito nets should be distributed for free (Jeffrey Sachs-Bono for example) However, ownership and proper net usage remains low (around 40%). Everywhere there are stories of nets being made into curtains, fishing nets, wedding gowns, or sold back to the black market. Even more disturbing is how the nets are being distributed. Sub-contracts are rapidly taking hold in the development world. USAID may contract an NGO to distribute nets. This NGO will then sub-contract a regional NGO to do distribution that will then sub-sub-contract people (usually not an NGO) to do the actual distribution. By the time it reaches the village level the distribution is no better than throwing nets out the back of a truck. At every level in the chain money is taken out and accountability is lessened. Who knows how much the money that brought 1,000 nets to a community could have really purchased if the distribution channel cut out all the middle men. It also seems that the 40% ownership estimation is too high. When nets reach the village level, the sub-sub-contractors use local leaders to identify households to distribute to. These local leaders, I have been told, take payment for these nets even though they should be free. Because people are actually paying for these free nets, ownership rates will be skewed; they’d be much lower if everyone played according to the Sachs/UN master plan.

-To solve this problem the Health Center is pursuing a sustainable net distribution plan that will have nets available for sale to the community. Drawing on the pioneering work of PSI, nets will be distributed to community health workers and village health teams. For every net sold these distributors will make a small commission. The principle amount invested in a lot of nets (we will start with 2,000) will then be reinvested to buy another stock. We will be planning this distribution at the same time as the bean harvest so people will have extra pocket money to buy the nets. The nets each will be sold for about $1, with distributors making about $.30 on every net. Poor people can easily afford to buy nets and coupled with education it can eradicate the dependency that continues to make no progress in the fight against Malaria.

Hygiene and Sanitation

-The Health Center has been conducting demonstrations on the construction of hand washing stations to be built outside of latrines. Hand washing facility coverage in the sub-county currently stands around 2.4% of households. We have set up demonstrations at many local primary schools. So far the demonstrations are working quite well, and the students have been washing their hands after the latrine and before eating.

-Because of the volcanic rock in the area pit latrines cannot be built very deep in my community. Eco-San latrines present an alternative; they are built above ground with collection chambers that store human waste. The user alternates using different chambers every 3 months. After 3 months the human waste is turned into safe fertilizer that can be used for farming. Urine is also separated and can be collected in a container and used for fertilizer. Eco-San latrines also present an income generating opportunity as this fertilizer can be sold to neighboring farmers. We are debating whether to build demonstrations at local village centers. 1 latrine with 2 chambers costs about $90 to construct.

HIV/AIDS Education

-On the surface HIV is not a problem in my community; however, the health center has begun to analyze data and found that women test more than men at a ratio of 5 to 1. This is because women are basically required to test during their antenatal care visits. Their husbands then use the wife’s test result as a proxy indicator for their own status. Couples can live together for years and not transmit HIV to their partners. In order to get a better picture of HIV in the community we need to raise HIV testing amongst males.

-We have begun a weekly education program on Fridays about HIV that equips women attending antenatal care with knowledge and power to prevent HIV.

-We have conducted outreaches in village meetings about HIV, including condom demonstrations (one of which was in a church…the one thing that I was sure would get me booted out of my community)

-We have initiated a Sports for Life course at the local secondary school that involves juniors and seniors in games and activities that turn their extensive knowledge about HIV into practical action. Gender communication, dealing with peer pressure, and self-esteem are all topics included in the program. The course will happen every Friday afternoon, be co-taught with school teachers, and will be eventually taken over by seniors who will teach juniors next year.

Health System Strengthening

-Thanks to a grant from Peace Corps, the health center was able to buy some fantastic education materials and visual aides that have been translated into the local language by a team of staff and have been used quite successfully in outreach settings. We are now in the process of training the extensive network of community health workers on the use of these materials. The materials will be put in a library of sorts in which the community health workers can check out to use in local meetings, functions, and events. This builds capacity in the health system with no extra burden on health center employees.

- Recently the health center got the good fortune to receive a donated laptop from a very generous group of people from Norway and Canada. I have been conducting computer trainings for all interested staff and have been working closely with my supervisor on using excel to make reports and analyze the extensive collection of data that is collected every day. He is a really quick learner and figured out the formula function in no time (keep in mind he didn’t know how to turn the computer on a few weeks ago). He loves analyzing the data and making graphs where he can see the performance of the health centers work first hand. Many times his eyes light up and you can just see this expression of
“a-ha!” on his face.

- I continue on working on improving the data collection methods and surveillance techniques that the health center uses. We have changed our targets in line with the financial year, so we can adjust our budget in certain areas according to how we are performing. We have begun to map our community, something that has never been done before so that we know where disease and outbreaks come from and direct outreaches accordingly. I have also worked with my supervisor on forming concrete goals, objectives, and activity plans. We will form a strategic vision  the financial year at the end of this month.

- I have stumbled across something amazing. Health workers in developing countries are ruled by regulations, targets, and orders by centralized branches of the district and Ministry of Health. Inside the health center their work is redundant, boring, and unchangeable. However, the health center is free to do whatever wants outside the gates and in the community. I have found this extremely refreshing and motivating to many staff. I have used this as an empowerment tool to form leaders in health extension among the staff. The other day I went up to one of the nurses and said, “I think the women who come for antenatal care on Fridays want to hear information about HIV so that they can protect their families. Every Friday you should run the show. Do it any way you want, you are in charge.” Her eyes lit up, the very next week she held a fantastic session and ever since the women have been getting knowledge and skills to prevent HIV. My counterpart has been fantastic. He takes preparing for outreaches even more serious than I do, and we go over everything many times before going out into the field. He also works on these things when I’m not around, and not looking.

HIV Support Group

-The group is about to collect contributions to buy sheep co-funded by a Peace Corps grant. Every member will pay 20% of the cost of two sheep. The sheep will be female and old enough to begin producing offspring. Members will share the male sheep they have among them to fertilize the females. So why sheep? Because they wanted them! Who the hell am I to tell them what animal they should have. They know how to take care of them, how to treat them for disease, and know the local market for sheep. I could do all the research on the world on animals and force the group to buy something, but it would most likely fall flat on its face. Sheep produce 1-2 babies every 4 months and can be sold for a nice profit 4 months after that. Their manure is also fantastic for farming, something really exciting since they want to start their own kitchen gardens to promote nutrition. The contributions collected will also pay for two female pigs to be kept at a member’s house that has quite a bit of knowledge about their care. Pigs produce 6-8 offspring twice a year. The offspring will be given out to group members, and will be used to start their own pig projects. This represents a significant sustainable contribution to their income. When I first got to the group the thing they wanted most were donations and sponsorships from America. In one of the most incredible things I have heard since being here the group now says that the pigs and sheep will produce enough money to send their kids to school and for them to buy seeds to start gardens. They are taking charge of their own destiny, not waiting around, and coming up with solutions to their problems.

-We are also trying to market the group to the community. There are many HIV positive people that live in the community but are not in the group. The group now has 10 people but by years end we hope to have 20. One way we came up with to publicize our efforts is to buy custom T-shirts. The shirts will be purchased in time so that the members can all wear them as they go to the livestock market to buy the sheep and pigs. As the members walk back to their houses wearing t-shirts, sheep in hand, word will spread like wildfire and people will want to join. Or at least that’s what we are hoping.

-ARVs are about to arrive at the health center. I am hoping that once they do, and the support group starts some good projects going testing rates will increase. I have been told that many people did not want to test because nothing would change if they knew their status. They’d get no treatment and no help and have to suffer the stigma that goes along with a HIV+ test.

People with Disabilities Group

-The group consists of 220 members spread over the entire sub-county. Disabilities range from amputations caused by landmines, to polio, to blindness, to mental retardation. We are working together to identify and prioritize needs and come up with a project that could address these issues. So far the group says they would like to start a piggery, and a sewing and carpentry workshop. We have conducted a needs assessment for the number of wheelchairs, crutches, and canes needed and I will be looking for assistance to have these items donated. The most valuable thing to a rural poor person is their human bodies. Their strength and labor in the field is the only thing that can bring them an income. People with disabilities are more at risk for extreme poverty because they can not rely on their bodies.

In a few weeks I will be making myself a demonstration farmer for rabbits. I will construct my own hutch and start breeding rabbits in my backyard. Rabbits have sex like, uh, rabbits and are a very cheap source of protein. They take very little upkeep and a project can be started at very little cost. You feed them grass clippings and leftover food. My hope, besides some delicious rabbit stew, is to show how easy it is to run a rabbit project so that the groups I work with will build their own hutches. I will provide interested people with an initial breeding stock of 1 male and 2 females and training on hutch construction. Their contribution will be building materials and peer education to neighbors and friends. 1 lucky male, and 2 busy female rabbits can produce 75 rabbits in one year.  This will dramatically increase protein consumption and gives a steady and significant income to families with little effort. Rabbits are in high demand, and the local market cannot supply enough. I had no idea that one year ago I’d be working with rabbits, sheep, and pigs so much.

As you can see my hands are quite full and I’ve been pretty damn busy. But I’ve still managed to have quite a bit of fun since being here. A VSO volunteer in town, Craig, and I have become good friends. Even though his organization is a low-grade knock off of Peace Corps with silly ideas, I don’t hold it against him. He’s a pretty cool guy and has influenced the way I think about my time and work here. I stay with him from time to time on weekends and we always seem to find ourselves in interesting situations. Here are just two:

1) One night Craig and I met up with a British tourist that he had met the day before. Both Craig and I felt motivated to show this guy the real Kisoro, get him outside the artificial tourist stuff. This guy was fresh, much like I was when I first arrived here. It was really interesting to see all the familiar mannerisms of a person that has just found himself in the middle of Africa. He took pictures of black kids with bloated bellies, ate goat meat with a fork and knife, and seemed extraordinarily uncomfortable anytime a Ugandan talked to him. After dinner we walked to a section of town notorious for small little holes in the wall where boos and hookers are the order of the day. We were in search of gwar-gwar, otherwise known as banana moonshine. We walked past the road and went into the most ramshackle shelter (it was not a building) that Craig and I found earlier that day. When we entered two small boys no bigger than a yardstick were sharing a bowl of potatoes. “Ufite ubusherra cyangwa gwar gwar?” They did not, but led us to a bar a few doors down. I walked in first and greeted the small group of men that had assembled inside around a small dilapidated table. It was night and 1 candle on the top of a shelf dancing in front of a tattered election poster for President Museveni was the only light provided. We began speaking with the other customers. We were served a liter of the brew and damn did it taste nasty. Mix 1 and a half parts rotting banana, 2 parts backwash, a splash of pond water, and garnishes of dirt and dead spiders for good measure and you’ll have yourself a pretty good approximation of what gwar-gwar tastes like. We spent the first thirty minutes explaining that although we were all white, we were all from different countries. The more we talked, the more the gwar gwar came. We talked about a lot of things, and the more we talked the more we departed from the usual “your culture is so beautiful, the landscape is gorgeous” that although true, is bullshit filler. We had genuine exchanges talking about the poor and underserved in our countries, and how they are similar to the problems here. Every now and then a very large, and vocal woman would pop in and declare her love for our British visitor and fresh fish. She then demanded a cup of gwar-gwar saying she had no money. Instinctually, I responded, “Ndikumenya ngo ufite isenti”- “I know that you have money” and shook the pocked of her second hand Patagonia fleece. It rattled with enough coins to make a Coinstar machine blush. The bar erupted in laughter, and so did she. We had passed some sort of tourist/outsider test. She ended up buying us drinks. We knew Kisoro, and were were talking like we were one of them. The cups continued, Craig then went out for a “short call” (local term for taking a piss). Within a few seconds half of the men ran out, and the street erupted in yelling and shouting. The men of our bar were standing between Craig and some very angry and drunk soldiers. They pulled Craig back into the bar, 2 soldiers were fighting over a prostitute, which led to them beating her in the middle of the street. Craig and his Scottish balls decided to break up the fight until our bar pulled him back. It was a bittersweet moment; the fact that a woman was getting beat and that our new friends protected us. When I had to make a short call, Christmas (the name of the bartender) escorted me to the side of the shack and stood inches behind me. Although awkward, it was nice. When we left, our bodies overflowing with fermented banana juice, everyone wished us a very fond farewell. It wasn’t said explicitly, but we got the feeling that it meant a lot to them that 3 muzungus would sit around a table of drinks not lecturing them about their problems, telling them what to do, but just talking about life, laughing, and sharing stories. I have really discovered the value of keeping it real. People are not stupid and see right through the song and dance bullshit and are just as happy to give it back to you. When artificial talking points are thrown out and people truly to talk to another real things can get done. They didn’t let us pay one shilling for all the drinks. We have gone back many times.

2) One lazy Saturday afternoon Craig and I were sitting around his place waiting for hours for a YouTube video to load. We got a call from a friend who said that Chameleon was playing in the next town. Chameleon is probably East Africa’s biggest rap star. His songs and videos are absolutely everywhere. It was getting late, and the town is about 2 and half hours away. We told him we’d think about it. Craig, being an over-analytical nerd, descended on his laptop and began to formulate a pro and cons list. He will tell you a different story, but don’t listen to him. After much deliberation we thought it’d make for a good story if we went. We ran outside to try to catch our friend’s vehicle but couldn’t find him. The only option was to hitch a ride on one of the buses headed for Kampala. The last one was about to leave. We ran about half a mile to catch it. We got on board until Craig said he was very weak and needed something to drink. Being the nice guy I am I kindly decided to help him out and get off the bus and search for provisions. He will tell you a different story, but don’t listen to him. I ran around from store to store but couldn’t find anything. Finally I got what we needed. When I returned to the station the bus was gone. I saw the dim red taillights of the bus half way down the road on its way. Craig decided to stay on the bus despite my compassionate efforts to help him. I ran after the bus. Someone running in town makes a pretty big site, a muzungu running is right up there with the second coming. As I ran, people on the sides of streets yelling and cheering, I hoped my “friend” had not forgotten me. I finally caught up to the bus and sat down. Two hours later I was in the middle of an outdoor concert dancing to music. 30 minutes later I would find myself pulled on stage. 5 minutes later I’d catch someone pick pocketing me. 1 hour later I’d be backstage acting as a bouncer as I talked to Chameleon about Ugandan politics. Never mind that he called me Peter, I spent the whole night  clubbing with Chameleon and his entourage drinking Johnny Walker and playing pool. It was pretty surreal. Good thing we- I mean – Craig made that pro and cons list.

During trips to Kampala for training, my friends and I get together, talk about site, and do some fun things. There is a small little informal initiation within Peace Corps Uganda that has been passed down from group to group over many years. Outside of Kampala at the end of a crowded maze of alleys lined with chickens and used shoe sales man lie a culinary miracle. We had heard of “The Pork Joint” that served better sausages than any Oktoberfest could. They said they brought platters the size of trash can lids full of mountains of ribs, meat, sausages, avocado, etc. We were also told that the only way to find it was with assistance from a volunteer that had been there before. The restaurant, what I eventually learned was just a collection of benches around a communal table had no name. It was loud, hot, smoky, and chaotic. It was the type of place that would make Anthony Bourdain aroused. We sat down and immediately ordered what sounded like two and half pigs. A gentleman next to us who called himself “Animal” bought 18 beers for our table. This was my kind of place. The food was absolutely amazing. It was the type of food that has been known to cause some tongues to abandon ship and dance on the floors in search of scraps long after you’ve left. Some of us, faces gleaming with grease stood up and danced with the staff while others provided a steady beat on the wooden table. If any of you come to Uganda come with an empty stomach and maybe a blood pressure cuff and we’ll go to this place as often as possible. Thanks to my new found belly caused by this dinner I was able to stay afloat through the massive rapids of the Nile River when our group went rafting later that week.

This past week I had the good fortune of welcoming my dad out the village to stay for one week. I picked him up from Kigali, Rwanda which is much closer to me than Kampala. Before picking him up I went to the genocide museum with my counterpart and friend Kwizera. I had known about the genocide and the politics around it. What I realized after leaving was that there was not just simply a genocide in Rwanda, but 1 million of individual acts of murder. Too often we lose site of the sheer disaster of tragedies when their tolls exact an epic number of deaths, but what the museum made me realize was just how every one of those murders are still affecting people to this day. The thing that effected me most was leaving the museum and seeing all the people around that are still there. Everyone over a certain age lived through it, and it wasn’t long ago that dead bodies paved the streets. At the museum I ran in to two US Senators, Bob Corker (TN) and Johnny Isakson (GA).You would have never guessed that there was genocide 15 years ago. The city is immaculate. The roads are amazingly smooth. The infrastructure is on par with South Africa. It’s amazing what the country has accomplished in such a short time. Many buildings and signs read, “Shira hamwe,” “Stick together.” Being from Kisoro a town mostly populated with people of Rwandan heritage I thought there wouldn’t be much difference. But walking around Kigali was very different. People do not greet each other, I saw people pointing at me with angry looks on their faces. Many Rwandans understandably are angry with the West for not intervening, and in the case of France for partly the cause of the genocide. When I spoke the language to a person from Rwanda on a street (Kisoro and Rwanda share the same language) she said, “Habyarimana trained them well,” in reference to one of the architects of the genocide and France’s training of the Interhamwe militia that carried out the genocide. Rwanda has accomplished a lot but it still needs time to heal.

It was great having my dad around. I showed him my work, and the local area. He met with the health center staff, the HIV Support Group, the Disability Group, and came to the secondary school where my counterpart and I tried to do an activity about delaying sex with a group of 300 kids (when we played a game that involved running I thought it was the start Armageddon, so much chaos). The first day he was here my septic tank clogged, and sparing you the details, he and I spent the next 30 minutes “manually” clearing the clog. Welcome to Africa pops. I cooked him the local food, and tried to give him a real look at what life is like here outside the cities, in the villages, and away from song and dance routines of development. My hope was to show him the good and the bad, the hurdles, and the promise that “handing over the stick” can bring.

Things around the house are good. I’ve been slowly changing my diet to more local food. I’ve been staying in the village for longer periods of time. My beard is getting long, maybe too long. I’ve been making a giant collage on one of my walls with pictures from magazines sent from America. All of your emails, text messages, packages, and calls mean the world to me. I can’t believe I’ve been away for 10 months. I’m already getting scared to leave. In a few weeks Jana will be arriving in Uganda to work with me on projects (thanks Jana for agreeing to do all the dishes and laundry, that’s really sweet of you). A few months later I’ll take a vacation with Jenna for two weeks around East Africa (I can’t wait to see her!), and after that Declan will be around (how do you feel about making methane generators powered from pig manure Declan?). Please let me know how all of you are doing back home!

Talk to you soon (much sooner than I said last time).

Peace Corps Volunteer Handbook, Peace Corps Mission, 2nd Page, 2nd Bullet: “Goal 2: to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of peoples served.”

Here goes nothing I thought to myself; my heart’s desires had given written documentation to my brain’s better judgement. I walked slowly to the entrance as giving my mind time to boot up for the barrage of Rufumbira that was about to be peppered on me. I whispered under my breath, “Wiriweho, Umez Ute, Hamakuru, Habomorugo Bameze Bate, Hano Hameze Hate” to make sure I had dependable, if rehearsed, conversation starters (I’m still working on the translations of “you come here often?” and “so a rabbi, priest, and monk walked into a bar…”). I would have liked to say that I burst in the door with reckless abandon, but considering that the similar effect of a jack-in-the-box has brought me post-traumatic stress to this day, I figured it best to enter at a more reserved pace. Upon passing under door’s frame, the convention of cattle hearders stopped drinking their warm beer, the bartender halted cupping local brew from the hole in the ground next to the bar made of cardboard, and even the anopheles mosquitoes resting on the walls ready to start their house party that night seemed to take pause that I had come in to a place where a person of my skin color had probably never set foot in before. I gave my verbal offering and was given a seat. I ordered a beer and shot the shit with people in the bar the best I could. One of the men in the bar had a crude instrument made out of string and a calabash gourd. I tried to find the rhythm in his playing but had no luck. My dancing looked just as uncoordinated and awkward to his melody, although I still spasm more than dance back in the U S of A. After a few beers greased my inhibitions, and the mood struck me, I decided to hold a small little informal malaria prevention outreach. Many prevention activities in Uganda are delivered through antenatal care not only out of convenience, but because it is one of the few services that are well attended (relatively speaking of course). Unfortunately, this tends to only reach women who have little decision making power. Men therefore hear prevention messages through their wives if they hear them at all. With a beer in one hand, and an open hand to shake hands with someone every time I pronounced a sentence half way decent I launched into a small talk on how to prevent malaria. Luckily I didn’t make any of the mistakes I had made in the past few weeks; confusing the verb for going home and having diarrhoea was one such unfortunate mistake (ironically both verbs were appropriate in that case). I was pretty happy how the talk went; people seemed to break into small conversations discussing how they could better manage environmental factors around there house that contribute to mosquito breeding. I left the bar no worse for wear, a little drunk, and once again reminded by the power of jumping in head first.

Like I’ve said before, the work here is really 24 hours, 7 days a week. The work at the health center is much more predictable than my encounters in the community, but nonetheless trying. I’m working to implement a Village Savings and Loan Program with the HIV Post Test groups and other community associations in the area but it’s almost impossible to do without a translator. I think the project would be extremely effective and sustainable years after I leave. The start ups costs are significant, but reinforces and engrains a sense of self-sufficiency and “we did this ourselves” feeling. In other news from work, the health center was brought a new microscope in hopes to increase TB detection in the area. The ones previously used had to be retrofitted* for use with no electricity by installing* a mirror that would reflect sunlight from the window it was positioned near. Kisoro, however, is the Seattle of Uganda so many times the lab technician didn’t have enough light to see malaria, TB, stool cultures, etc. Like trying to avoid stubbing your toe while looking for your keys in the dark, the lab was pretty ineffective at diagnosing cases. The new microscope came w/ a rechargeable battery (where it will be charged I have no idea, but it’s a start) allowing greater light and therefore detection. Quote from journal: “It’s raining like hell right now. There are 8– no, 10– no, 11 holes leaking from the ceiling of the office.” It’s amazing how things not working has become totally normal and expected since my time here. The other day when I saw a triumvirate of convicts hauling ass from the prison, it was more of an “oh, that’s interesting” moment than “they’re going to kill us all!”
*These terms far overestimate the technical expertise that was exacted on said objects

For some reason I feel it necessary to report on the food I am eating every time I update this blog. This past week my gas tank ran out of juice, and the closest place to refill it is in a town 3 hours away. I decided to give a charcoal stove a try (called a sigiri). My friends, there are only a few things that I’ve done that have been harder to light that damn thing. The first couple days I was forced to use it I subsisted on an exclusive diet of cheese, apples, peanut butter, and chocolate (the only things in my house that don’t require cooking). It brought back stirring memories of my first week here when I lived off of salted rice and plain pasta. Despite having neighbors and friends show me how to light the damn thing (I will refer to it as this from now on) I just couldn’t do it. I discovered that I bought the wrong kind of damn thing at the market; it had no ventillation holes. I was basically trying to light a fire under water. Luckily, I soon discovered that copious amounts of kerosene and plastic grocery bags do the trick quite well (my apologies to Vice-President Gore) even though I feel like I smoked 5 packs of unfiltered, extra long, ultra-carcinogenic cigarettes after each attempt to light the damn thing. Any who, it is quite nice to have beans cook for 4 or 5 hours on it. They literally melt in my mouth, and make for excellent burritos. Even when I have the gas tank back I’ll continue to use the damn thing (that is with a more eco-green-save the planet-save the whales-sign the Kyoto-brought to you by NBC sigiri). I’ve been making some awesome coconut curries, occasionally adding eggplant if I can find them at the market.

Speaking of burning…I have been burning some music (sometimes Shakespeare couldn’t hold a candle to my literary muscle) from my friends computers in town and it’s been nice to have a reprieve from the local Kisoro radio station. The station is terribly awful and magnificently comical at the same time. To give you an idea: the same three commercials have been used for the last month and a half and play about 100 times a day. Songs never last longer than a minute, and it is a requirement for all the songs to include the lyrics of, “Baby I need you,” or “I need the emotion.” Ace of Base (or Bass?) gets more play than a Republican in a public restroom (of course you can tap your feet to both). Excuse my tired, expired jokes, I have been gone a while now. The local music that I have been able to catch on shortwave radio is absolutely fantastic. I think if I have time when I’m in town I’ll stop by a music studio (a place where you can pick music to be burned to a cd) and ask for some local music. I can only imagine my flawless Rufumbira now, “You make CD. I want music from here. I don’t want Jay-Z, Celine Dion, Kenny Rogers, Chris Brown, or Usher. I want music to dance. I want music to be happy. You make. I buy. How much? …No that is muzungu price.” I really speak like a 1st grader. I often find myself saying totally absurd things to people, “You are riding a bicycle!” “I am sitting!,” “We are eating potatoes!” I can only imagine what people say about me.

This past Friday was a pretty interesting day. I was having a rough patch of days after returning from the land of internet, cold beer, English also known as town. I woke up still feeling full from an awesome meal I had made the night before (I am sure having lighted the damn thing in less than 45 minutes had to do something with it). Soon after I heard a knock on my gate, it was a family member of the chairman of the HIV Post-Test Group delivering a note telling me to meet her at the sub-county office. No big deal I thought, it’d be nice to go for a little cycle down the road. Once I arrived I greeted the policemen, the Local Chairman, and the sub-county chief. Greetings are one of the most important things here…that and polished shoes. No sign of the Post-Test Group chairman. I sat and read the Village Savings and Loan Manual I had recently got my hands on. Slowly, people started filtering into the building, all of them particularly well dressed. I saw one of my friends and she said that they were having visitors today. No big deal I thought, I was here for something else. I continued reading. Then all of a sudden I heard the distant roar of vehicles (the noise of a purring engine is quite distinct, every time a vehicle goes by in the village is an event in itself. I’ve gone a week without seeing a car before). I kept reading, no big deal I thought, just a car. Then a convoy of 4 brand new army green pick up trucks pulled up; their flatbeds filled with military personnel all carrying guns bigger than me. One guy even had a gun that looked like it came from the set of Saving Private Ryan, fubar and all. Closely following them were a collection of motorcycles, land rovers, and a minibus filled with more military officers. The scene would have been perfect with “Ride of the Valkeryie” playing in the background. My mind was thinking, “What the #@$@#%,” but my mouth uttered, “Excuse, are these the visitors you were talking about?” The soldiers jumped out of the trucks and set up a perimeter, all to the amusement of the villagers digging the fields for Irish potatoes. The high ranking officers sauntered out of the land rovers every other one having a gold watch and a pocket sized digital camera. I soon learned that these were representatives from the President’s Office coming to check up on the local government agricultural initiatives. What guns and beans have in common I’m still unsure. I shook hands with most everyone, and soon realized that the English of the high ranking officers was probably among the best I’ve heard since being in Uganda. As the saying goes around here, “these were big men.” The chairman of the Post Test Group still had not shown up, so I decided it wouldn’t be right of me to pass up the opportunity to go around with these guys. I got in the back of the truck (back seat I should say, don’t worry Peace Corps I haven’t forgotten), wedged a small brigade of soldiers on our way to a farm. As I sat in the back every now and then the barrel of a Soviet-era Kalashnikov would bump my left cheek, while the butt of the gun to the left rubbed against my thigh. The rocky, volcanic road that the truck navigated through made me thankful for the safety switch. I spoke with the soldiers, even correcting their Rufumbira (most were from Uganda’s central region); what gave me the courage to correct someone with a gun I’m still not sure. Maybe it was the Language In-Service Training the week before. We arrived at a small house to visit a chicken farmer that had gotten support from an agricultural initiative started by the government that provided him with roosters and chicken feed. I still was not sure why a big group of soldiers came from all over Uganda to see these chickens. The man thanked the government and dropped hints and requests for more help. The visitors were more than willing to agree with him. I was amazed there was no talk of sustainability and self-sufficiency. Despite my venture into courage in the truck, I didn’t think it was my place to bring up the issue here. After our short visit with the farmer, we boarded the vehicles. I picked the one with the most soldiers–the one I thought was going back to the sub-county. One of the soldiers who had remembered my name congratulated me on having a new president. Shortly thereafter the carload of camo was embroiled in a political discussion of whom they had supported. “I was for Clinton,” “I was 100% for McCain,” “You just like Obama because he is black” were some of the comments I heard. Reminder: I’m in the back of a tin-foil passenger van with a lawnmower engine bumpin through a village in rural Uganda wedged between a good portion of the Ugandan military talking about Hilary, Barack, and John. If Dennis Kucinich was mentioned I think a parrallel dimension probably would have opened up and swallowed the car. I then realized that we were in fact not going back to the subcounty, but were headed to town. I promptly told the driver to stop, said my farewell to the military and began footing back to the sub-county a good 10k away. I decided to take a short cut in the direction that I thought was right. I meandered through farms, small paths, over hills, and through people’s compounds. It was a great way to see the countryside, and once again a cool feeling to set foot somewhere no other American had before. I knew the rain was coming; it’s amazing how perceptive I’ve become of local weather patterns. The rain started with a Reagan trickle (that is to say very very little, almost non-existent). I took cover under a small tree next to a small house. The trickle picked up (Milton Friedman would not pleased) and turned into a pretty heavy downpour. For a moment I thought I was going to have to re-enact the scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo and Sam hide from those crazy ghosts on horses to avoid the rain (I think they are called Ring-Wraths; sorry I’m not as ner–I MEAN–informed as some of you that read this blog. Still got that map Nate?). Most likely prompted by the calls of “muzungu, muzungu” that are ever present in the hills of Kisoro, a woman came out of the small house and motioned me to come into her house. Upon entering soaking wet, she was dusting off the only chair in the one room mud house. The chair was small and delicate; it would have made perfect kindling for lighting the damn thing. I sat there as she got back to sorting the handful of beans she was preparing for who knows how many mouths. Her child was standing inches from me looking at me with his crossed eyes utterly stunned. We talked for a little bit, her not knowing a word of English, me not knowing how to correctly pronounce a word in Rufumbira. It was the type of cross cultural experience I read about in the books that made me want to join Peace Corps in the first place. Not once did she ask for money, and continued thanking me for my work. It was an incredibly humbling and motivating experience.

Wrapping up, the rebel leader Nkunda has been “captured,” some refugees are going home from the nearby camp, and Kisoro remains oddly unaffected by the whole ordeal. At the end of February I’ll be going to Kampala for our 6 month In-Service Training. It’ll be the first time I will have been there since swearing-in in early October. It’ll be really interesting to see my reaction to the big city. It’ll be fun to see everyone’s tans, beards, buzzed heads and weight loss. Today is Museveni Day in Uganda (I forgot the official name). Some volunteers are thinking about celebrating by throwing their opponents in jail, rigging elections, and not caring about the north. We’ll see I might just buy a coke.

Nzavuze ubundi. Talk to you another time. Thanks for all the emails, packages, facebook messages, calls, and texts. They keep me going.

I must say that it is nice to work at a health center. Without a doubt people are getting help here. There are semblances of structure, and it is nice from a research standpoint to have a giant, if extremely unorganized and unreadable, stack of records tucked away in a filing cabinet. The people I work with are fantastic. My counterpart, insists, “I must work hard because all of these people are my uncles, cousins, and family.” Although the work is slow and irregular I have had times where I have felt productive. There is no doubt a ton of opportunity for great projects that I think could really make a difference. The Post-Test Group will begin a microfinance program this January, and I am hoping to implement an income generation activity/mosquito net distribution program and home based care program with them shortly thereafter. I have begun to organize some of the hospital data into meaningful and useful information to direct outreaches. After a painstaking process of going through hospital records to organize malaria cases by village I found that outreaches were being conducted in some of the less malaria prone areas instead of areas producing an overwhelming majority of cases. Although it’s hard to make conclusions without census data, I think it’s still a step in the right direction. I worked with my colleagues to produce a 2009 work plan for outreaches, and we have begun a monitoring and evaluation system for the health center’s public health and prevention activities. Probably the easiest and most successful thing I have done since being here is training villages to make hand washing stations (Tippy Taps). I plan on mobilizing support from school officials, and local leaders to make this a sub-county wide program. If nothing else I’ll leave here having helped to make hundreds of these little contraptions made of 4 sticks, a meter of rope, and an old vegetable oil can. I’ve also tried to boost strategic planning within the health center to forecast potential epidemic months of malaria and direct outreach campaigns accordingly, and to initiate action plans for accomplishing goals. We’ll see if it catches on, but I’m in the process of making action plans for the prevention of the three of the diseases that I am focused on: Malaria, Diarrhea, and HIV. Many projects, including mosquito net distribution, will require funding and it’s been extremely hard for me to see where it will come from. Since there is no electricity (and internet) in the village, it makes my time for searching grants wedged between riding my bike to town and buying food for the week all in an internet cafe that loses connection every 10 minutes. The grants I have found related to the projects usually have applications about 60-70 pages long (which would costs 35,000 shillings to print…roughly 1/5 of a nursing assistants monthly salary at the health center) and are directed more for organizations looking for millions not hundreds of dollars.

Things at home are good. I have started falling into some routines, and slowly it is beginning to feel like home. To give you an idea of an average day: I wake up every morning around 7, do a little reading, collect water, wash a few clothes, turn on the BBC to hear news, heat up some milk, make breakfast, play soduku while I eat, shine my shoes, dress, off to work by 9. Once at work I greet all the staff, make some jokes with friends, greet some patients, and then go off to the office to do whatever. I usually go back home to make lunch around 1230 and immediately start cooking since it usually take a good hour and a half. I read while food is cooking (I’ve been doing a ton of reading here). Then I eat, read for a little bit and go back to work around 230-3. Yes I know a 2 and half hour lunch break sounds long, but it is the norm here and I wouldn’t be able to eat if I was expected back in 30 minutes. In the afternoons I’ll usually go on outreaches, have meetings with the Post-Test Group, or study language. I usually leave work around 5-6, sometimes I play soccer, other times I have a tutoring session. I’ll start making dinner around sun down (730), light my lantern, wait for the milk man shortly after, lock up the gate, eat, boil water for drinking the next day, bathe, and off to bed just in time for more reading. I have 1 CD of music and every now and then I’ll play a song, but that’s a treat. The other day “Sexual Healing” came on Voice of America and I don’t remember dancing or singing so much (thankfully it was raining so no one could hear me over the extremely loud noise that rain makes when it hits an iron sheet roof). I mentioned shining shoes. For some reason this practice is extremely important. Every small store in the village will have shoe polish, even if they don’t have anything else. A man wearing scraps for clothing will have polished shoes. Oddly the exercise of polishing shoes is quite soothing and rewarding and has become a pretty good coping mechanism for me out here.

I am really beginning to bond with my coworkers and have really good discussions with them after work. We talk about everything and anything; from local politics, to interesting patients, to why Americans eat snails and frogs. One of my coworkers one day started telling the group of a movie she just saw– Home Alone. It was amazing to see how enthralled the group was about her story, that a child so young could have done all those things. One even proclaimed in America we start everything very young because we are very smart, and declared that we begin driving at the age of 4. I dispelled the myth. One of my main jobs here is dispel alot of theories about muzungus and Americans. The one that never fails to astonish people here is that, yes, America does have people living on streets, people that go hungry, people dying from HIV/AIDS. It has become a cliché among the volunteers here but Peace Corps is a job you work 24 hours a day 7 days a week and it’s hard as hell. Just when you think you can relax or just be another person in the community someone comes to you asking if you would give them ten cows in return for their daughter (thankfully I’ve only had to deal with this situation once). One day I was going for a walk not thinking I had anything to do, but was soon approached by a man asking for help. I followed him to the health center where he told me a story in Rufumbira of which I could only understand bits and pieces. I learned his wife was in the hospital and that he wanted her to be treated and go home. I asked my supervisor what was going on and it turns out that he had bitten and beat his wife in a drunken rampage. He has 11 children and lives in a one room house and was angry that he could no longer have sex with his wife when he pleased because there were too many children in the house (is that irony or illogical?). Unfortunately abuse is not uncommon here. A child came in a few weeks ago that was beaten by a machete because he told his father not to have any more wives. Despite many similarities in the culture here, things are very different. One time when I was speaking with a colleague I was surprised how similar American and Bafumbira culture was; just then I heard three booms coming form the distance. I had heard the noise before but just attributed it to thunder. She said, “That’s the fifth one this week,” the fifth what I asked. “Bomb blast from Congo.” I don’t want to worry anyone because I really am in no danger whatsoever but I think things like that should be known. Not only am I far away from any sort of rebel activity but the rebel leader Nkunda is well liked in the area, and actually has a lot of family around (I’ve been told that he often stops in for tea). Besides in Africa, today’s rebel is tomorrow’s President.

In the middle of January we have our first in service training. I’ll be going to Kisoro for a week to get additional language training from Peace Corps. It’ll be nice to stay at a place with a hot shower. I hope all of you had good holidays and that 2009 brings you peace and happiness. On New Years I’ll be able to say “I’m coming back next year.” If any of you have Skype it’s pretty cheap to call me if you wish. The time difference is 11 hours from the West Coast. My number is +256779304568. I really hope I don’t regret making my telephone number available to the whole of the internet. Talk to you later.

Speaking of food, my menu and waistline has thankfully been growing over the past few weeks. For a while there I was worried. At one point I had dropped to 167 lbs, meaning I had lost 20 lbs since coming here. Enter the many uses of the flour tortilla. With a little more here, a little less there a flour tortilla can go from being the perfect wrapping to a delectable set of Mexican inspired ingredients, to the moist floor of a cheesy pizza, to the cozy and gooey envelope of a calzone. What’s that ran out of garlic for the calzone?; BAM, put some chili powder in and you have a quesadilla. I figured out how to stave off wasting, now I’ll have to focus on not developing diabetes. The Peace Corps supplied us with a cook book developed from volunteers in the years past, and there are some really awesome meals in there. The food is not only pretty damn good, but it takes a hell of a long time to cook which has been nice to pass the time, but also really makes you appreciate what you are eating (paging Michael Pollan). I was even able to capture yeast from the air, and make some pretty edible bread. I’m trying to perfect cinnamon-raisin English muffins, I’ll keep you updated (all this is without an oven mind you). It is also grasshopper season in Kisoro and there are literally billions of them flying through the sky. They are good eaten, but pretty fatty. Invariably I end up using the word “Village” as a modifier when describing my food: “Yeah I made some kick-ass Village Burritos last night,” “The Village Pasta was quite delectable with notes of garlic and with a pleasant bouquet of oregano,” “Damn Mark, this Village Frittata is the best breakfast I’ve ever had.” (Alright, I admit that last one was made up).However, what first started as a joke between me and me (there are a lot of those here in Peace Corps) got me thinking…

…that it’s not such a bad description of life in Uganda. No, your not always going to have all the ingredients, or bicycle parts, or medical supplies that you need to do something right, but it’s amazing what you can do with creativity and ingenuity in low resource settings. Since coming here I have come accustomed to not having everything I need to do something; in fact when I do it almost feels odd. All around the village people are using what little they have to the maximum use possible to get by. Although it’s disheartening to see many in the community in such poor conditions it is truly inspirational to see how they get through day to day life. I think the capacity for ingenuity on the local level in Africa has been underestimated for far too long.

Recently things have been somewhat uneventful at work, although there have been small and notable successes. My counterpart Kwizera and I trained a village committee on the construction of a Tippy Tap Hand washing stations which they appreciated very much. One woman in the audience even thanked us by giving us two very large banana stalks, each carrying about 30 bananas. Kwizera is excellent at engaging the audience, something which sadly is not common here in Uganda from my experience. A lot of the local government officials are very impressed by the “technology” and want to start a wide reaching campaign to the sub-county. I have been working extensively with the Post Test Group for the sub-county trying to clarify their goals and direct this into a strategic plan for the next few months. At first they expected immediate donors and sponsors from the US, but “buhuro buhuro” (slowly, slowly) we are shifting this focus to initiate income generating activities such as poultry keeping and mushroom growing in partnership with available government grants. I am also trying to coordinate with other agencies to provide the group of 11 with “positive living” kits that include mosquito nets and water treatment supplies. Hopefully these activities will motivate more HIV positive people to join the group. All but two of the group members are not receiving ARVs as transport to town is too expensive and takes away too much time from farming. Half of those not receiving ART have CD4 counts below 200. Malaria still remains the biggest problem at the health center and it’s been hard for me what my role in prevention activities can be. I cannot speak the language to give outreach information, nor can I supply the money for an extensive mosquito net distribution which the community sorely needs. I am thinking of applying for a grant to get the Post Test Group enough money to buy about 300 mosquito nets which they can sell at a small profit to people in the community. The way I see it will help them to generate income, help the community prevent malaria, help group member get trained in financial bookkeeping and management, as well as honing there health education skills. It will also set up social networks that they can later tap for other income generating activities. We’ll see, the mosquito nets may have to be paid in installments. As of right now I am working on a community mapping program to try to focus outreach efforts to see which of the 26 villages the health center serves are being hardest hit by malaria and diarrhea disease. The nice thing about working in the MOH is that there is a plethora of records that a small start up NGO would not have. From there, I hope to mobilize local leaders in government, schools, and religion to encourage healthy behaviors that can prevent malaria in the absence of bed-nets. Hopefully, we’ll be able to form committees that give prevention messages to families. Alot of my plans revolve around the use of social marketing and peer teaching to spread outreach messages, since the villages are too many and the health center staff too few to do continuous educational outreaches.

Over the past few weeks I have really begun to start to feel part of the community and more at home. Kwizera and my supervisor Nzima have really been fantastic in helping me fit in and understand the community better. Kwizera and some of my neighbors have even been bringing me bags of potatoes, beans, bananas, and bottles of milk. Every day when I walk around the community I greet as many people as I can and I can see there faces light up in astonishment. Some say “Orokoze kuza” (thank you for coming,” others say “Alalucy Rufumbira” (He knows Rufumbira!), and one local chairman even bought me a Coke in gratitude for coming to his village on an outreach. The language is still difficult, but I’m still trying to learn. I made and memorized 100 flash cards this week and hope to do that many each week until I can start putting some more complex sentences together. I am also working with Kwizera to write up prevention messages in the Rufumbira so I can pass them along when needed. All in all I really like being so isolated. Although there are some times I don’t feel like being the local celebrity, at other times it has oddly made me feel more welcome and at home. Yes there is the occasional language or cultural mistake. Last week when in town I wanted to find a basket for putting on the back of Freedom 1.5 to bring food back to the village. I also wanted a small straw mat for my house. After I had bought both I found that everywhere I went people were staring at me and laughing asking me things I did not understand. Finally, I found out that the basket I bought is culturally for women only (in the American context I was carrying around a purse) and the mat I bought was one that men buy for their soon to be brides. I still have much to learn. There is one particular cultural experience which I really love and that is drinking “ubusherra.” Ubusherra is a local drink made from sorghum that is served in giant rotund one liter metal cups and usually shared between two people. There are ubusherra taverns everywhere here. For me there is nothing more “Peace Corps” than rolling up to an ubusherra tavern in a ragged bicycle, sitting down, ordering in the local language, and laughing with people of the community. I’m not ashamed of my praise for Peace Corps as being a fantastic avenue for diplomacy and cross-cultural understanding. There are some things I may never get used to thought. Stand up. Yes, you the reader, stand up. I’m waiting…okay, now walk 10 feet as slow as you can. Now imagine walking half that speed. This is how fast some people walk here. Being a fast walker even by American standers, I have found myself many times in conversations with people only to find them a few yards behind. Learning a walk and a new language may just be too much for me to handle. There definitely is something to appreciate about the pace of life here. Sometimes I think as Americans we do need to slow down a little bit.

Many have you been continuing to follow the events in the South East of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Although there is a cease fire things still sound like they are going from bad to worse. Every time I go to Kisoro I see more UNHCR and Red Cross trucks, and the refugee camp close to my village continues to add more tents and shelters. With the violence so close there is little talk of it here in the village. The village has had it’s own experiences with conflict, namely the Rwandan genocide in 1994. All around you can see scarred faces from machetes, amputees from landmine victims, and I am told that the beautiful lakes that surround the village are filled with unexploded grenades and missiles. There goes the beach party idea. Although I feel completely safe, the activities of the rebels are apparently on my mind enough to end up in my Mefloquine dreams. Mefloquine is the malaria prophylaxis given to us by the Peace Corps. Depending on your point of view the drug has the awesome/terrible side-effect of giving hyper-lucid, extremely vivid dreams. I have had dreams about everything from the rebels, to the volcanoes by my house erupting, to surfing a giant wave on the moon. I am beginning to wonder if Mefloquine is ever taken recreationally by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers.

There is a lot of free time in Peace Corps despite it being a 24 hour a day, 7 day a week job. I have been spending some of that time reflecting on the experience of Peace Corps and what it really means to me. Obviously I don’t know the answer, and even if I did it would be different from everyone of the 8,000 other volunteers serving worldwide. I can only define Peace Corps from my narrow point of few and explain it through the experiences I have had in this tiny corner of Uganda. From what I have seen so far, Peace Corps has given me a lot of R & R – resilliency and resolve. There has been more than one time since being here that I’ve considered taking my free ticket back to the states and giving up. There have been times where I sit in my house and question how the hell I’m going to do this for two years. But everytime I make it through those times, I am more determined and more motivated to do this. For me, Peace Corps is about valuing the times where the static on the radio is low, and the water in the bathing basin is warm. It’s about working hard for that conversation every now and then where you really connected with the other person in their language. It’s about seeing the old man, with the torn pants, and walking stick who has lived through years of colonialism, poverty, and Idi Amin to see an American live in the same community he does and (try to) speak the same language he does. So far everything I have done here has been far outweighed by the impact that the small day to day interactions between two seemingly different people coming to understand each other and that we are one people all with desires for long, happy, and healthy lives. But at the same time, I know nothing about Peace Corps; after all I still have a little less than 2 years here…

I hope all of you had a fantastic Thanksgiving. Missing you all! Talk to you in a few weeks. PS sorry for the grammar errors, was in a hurry today.

I recently bought a bike from Kisoro. It’s a single speed wonder made of black steel direct from India. It is held together quite precariously by exactly 52 screws and nuts (as you have probably guessed already, I have quite a bit of time on my hands). I have named it “Freedom 1″ because it allows me to get to town when I want to, as opposed to waiting for available transport. I have absolutely no faith in it’s durability, hence the “1″ in “Freedom 1.” I fully expect there to be a second, third, maybe even forth reincarnation of it. To illustrate my point, I have taken 3 trips so far with the bike, and it has broken every single time. Bike maintenance here is quite peculiar in the fact that the main tools used are blunt instruments for violent hammering. Never before did I think that a bike could be fixed with a hammer, rock, and a safety pin. On my trip to town this time, as I was riding down hill, quite fast I may add, the front brakes decided to fall off. I can only imagine what bystanders were thinking as they saw a Muzungu hurdling down a small mountain with nothing than a look of fear on his face. Minutes after affixing the brakes back in their proper position using a folded up piece of trash and banana leaf, the chain decided to snap in half. I walked into town the rest of the way. It is a common belief here that Westerners do not know how to ride bicycles since we all own 5 cars, a boat and an airplane. Alas, whenever I am found walking my bike instead of riding I here people yelling, “Muzungu, you can’t ride.” Which I respond with the only thing relent: “Npfuye” which literally translates to “I am broken/defeated.” Once I figure out subject prefixes, I’ll be able to say it better. Riding into town, despite this, is a really great experience. It’s a fantastic way to learn language, and meet the community. I often times feel like a a mid-nineteenth century politician on the back of a train campaigning through the Midwest. I probably greet close to 700 people each way, each person surprised as the next that I “know” Rufumbira. The greeting that always gets the most praise when I use it is “Amasho,” or “I wish you many cows.” When I leave I usually say, “Nzagaruka” or “I will return,” which when I think about it sounds pretty ridiculous– something a comic book super hero would say. Along the way, I also am invited quite often to drink “ubusherra” a drink made of millet that when fermented in the ground makes a pretty potent, and cheap, local brew. I have yet to take up anyone on their offer. Most of the questions revolve around asking me if I am lost, for money, or if I know people such as Barack Obama or Kenny Rogers.

My friends, it appears that I am developing quite the celebrity status here in the village. On more than one occasion, people have come up to me to verify stories that they have heard about me. “I heard that you escaped Kenya during the election riots, and have been on the run ever since;” “Someone told me that you are in charge of all the hospitals now;” “We heard that you rode a bike here from Kampala.” I find all of it fascinating, and must admit I have done little to discourage such mythologies. My barometer for the diffusion of information about me has been a recent development. A few weeks ago, I was riding to town on the back of a bicycle. It was about 11:30am, and I happened to call out to one person, at one trading center, “Waramse,” the morning greeting. However, as I would later find out, it usually goes out of use around 10am since everyone is up since the pre-dawn hours of the morning. Over the courses of the next few days I found that that people were shouting the morning greeting my way even in the afternoon and night followed by laughter. Slowly, the the people that did it expanded from this one trading center to a 5km radius. Using rough math, I’d estimate 15,000 people have heard the story about me using the morning greeting near noon and now believe it is the only word I know. They are quite astonished when I ask about their family and where they are coming from.

Work has been going pretty well. I have been campaigning local village leaders to begin a hand-washing campaign that involves the construction of “Tippy Taps,” which are basically hand washing stations made out of locally available materials and are operated by your feet. Diarrheal disease is quite a problem in the area. The volcanic soil and rock make it almost impossible to dig a deep pit latrine, so during the rainy season many of these latrines floods and get into water sources. A local NGO has been distributing tables with iron sheet tops where one places plastic bottles of dirty water which with a half a day of sun becomes clean through UV radiation. I still question how much of the plastic degrades and enters the water, but I guess it’s better than dying from cholera. I have also begun to work the HIV support group for the sub-county. Currently, there are only 10 members. All are widows and are taking care of orphans. Our first meeting lasted 6 hours, and was mostly devoted to requests that I provided sponsors for food, clothing, soap. It has been hard to establish my position here as someone who makes people self-reliant through sustainable, village directed programs. It seems there has been quite a bit of “donor abuse” in the area, to the point where people expect money just to come from large external organizations. I will be working to help the group identify challenges, and assisting them in developing strategies to face them. It seems we will need to develop some sort of income generation activity. I continue on insisting that it be accessible by all in the group (even for low-energy, low-health HIV positive persons) and that it doesn’t rely on dependent external relationships (I am talking here about making crafts for tourists in town). Slowly by slowly, I think the group will come to not see me as a potential donor or funding source but rather as a catalyst for positive, sustainable change. At least that is my hope.

Village life is going well. I have added Indian food to my menu at home, and soon will be cooking tortillas and making bean burritos. I also discovered that cheese can last much longer out of the refrigerator than you think, it lasted a whole week. I hope to make some panir, and cream cheese at some point if I can find a cheese cloth in town. It is grasshopper season, so I plan on setting up a trap to collect them daily for a nice protein source. I do need to learn how to remove their legs correctly, I am told that they can cause esophageal tears if not removed in a certain way. With the grasshoppers come the Nairobi Fly, an insect about the size of a clipped pinky toe nail. When it urinates on you it causes an intense allergic reaction of which can cause scarring, and if done on your face will cause irreversible blindness. I’ll be crossing my fingers. I bought some curtains, so I now have a little more privacy in my house. I’m still waiting on buying some furniture from the local carpenter. It astonishes me the second hand clothing that ends up here in the markets around here. You can find pretty much anything; everything from a Snohomish High School Volleyball shirt, to a sweet authentic Led Zeppelin concert shirt I snagged for 50 cents. My time here in Uganda will not be complete until I find a Kurt Rambis Lakers jersey. I know it exists somewhere here, and I am determined to find it. I’ll make sure to update you if I have any luck. As some of you may have heard there has been quite the conflict across the border in the Congo. From radio reports it sounds like it is getting worse and worse. Refugee camps have been cleared, and children have been kidnapped and enlisted in the army. About 5,000 refugees have to come to Uganda and are being temporarily housed in a village a few kilometers away. Every day I see UN cargo planes flying above, and UNHCR as well as other aid groups drive by in large white Land Rovers. None of the Ugandans I have talked to seem concerned, and I can assure you that I am completely safe. My purchase today of a machete is completely unrelated.

Thank you so much for your emails, comments, and well wishes. They mean the world to me. Remember you can always see what I’m up to at twitter.com/classicglassock

My mailing address here is:
Mark Glassock
P.O. Box 200
Kisoro, Uganda

I’d sweep, scrub, and mop your floor when I come back if any of you feel inclined to send me some mix CD’s of all the good music I am missing out on, or any good books you have read lately. I’ve gotten quite good at it, and I can assure you that it would be the cleanest your floor has ever been.

I have to be hittin’ up the market for food then the road back to the bush before the rains roll in, I hope all is well with you and that all of you are healthy and happy. Until next time, Good Morning.

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!