erin.

happy christmas & a merry new year!

Since I’m flying home this Sunday, I thought I’d write an entry summing up what I’ve been up to here in Uganda. My writings about work have been few and far between, but I really have been working a lot, and on a lot of different projects. So, here’s the summary:

I do a bunch of HIV/AIDS-related work with youth in the border town of Malaba. One of the most fun activities I get to witness is magnet theater, an interactive form of community performance in which performers drum, dance, sing and act while encouraging audience members to participate in discussions on particular issues. The youth I work with use magnet theater in community outreaches in Malaba to communicate behavior change messages, raise taboo topics for discussion and stimulate debate on HIV/AIDS matters in their high-risk, border community. In addition to this, I do other HIV/AIDS work, both in Malaba but also throughout Tororo district. Some of the things I do include counseling clients for voluntary counseling and testing (I was national certified as an HIV counselor in September), training youth in life skills and peer education, mobilizing resources for a resource room at the Malaba youth center, supporting vocational training of vulnerable street children, and teaching HIV/AIDS information sessions for social workers and community members.

I’m technically a community health volunteer, so HIV/AIDS-related work makes up a major part of my work. However, it is impossible to look at health as an issue separate from others, like poverty and education, so I end up lending a hand on all sorts of projects that I think have potential to improve lives. As far as economic strengthening goes, I have trained several groups in Village Savings and Loan and trained a number of trainers who will go out to pass along the VSLA message and start up groups in rural areas. In addition, I have worked with my host organization in Tororo to start up two income generating projects, a poultry and a grinding mill. The poultry project took about a year to get off the ground but not has over 1000 chicks which we expect to begin laying eggs in the new year. Profits will be used to send needy children to school and provide them with other basic needs. Funding to start up a grinding mill came through last month (our application was one of only four chosen in all of Uganda). When complete, the mill will help guardians of orphans to generate income that will allow them to send their children to school.

Another major part of my work over the past year and a half has been training local organizations in organizational development and activity design. I have trained over 40 community organizations, typically in five-day workshops, leading participants through a process of developing organizational vision, mission, goals, and objectives as well as practicing the steps necessary for thorough planning of a project, from budgeting to monitoring and evaluation. This work is tedious, but can make an extraordinary difference. I have seen this training push small, struggling organizations to realize the need for better management and administration for improved service delivery to the community. I have been here long enough to see several of the trained organizations achieve considerable growth since the workshop, including several which have been able to independently attract donors with improved organizational profiles and project proposals.

So when I think of my work-work, I can say those are the things I do. But there are several other things that are part of the 24/7 life-work Peace Corps volunteers sign on for, things that do not fit into a neat little box on my quarterly reporting forms. Some of these things feel more like work than others:

• I hand wash my laundry then iron it all, both for “smartness” and to kill any potential fly larvae wanting to take up residence under my skin.
• I lend books to my 14-year-old neighbor and let her use my electricity to study in the evenings because she does not have access to either at home.
• I speak Dhopadhola. I try to speak a little Luganda- greetings at least. I would like to learn some Kiswahili too for my work at the border.
• I teach Ugandan friends how to bake using their charcoal stoves.
• I ride my bicycle while onlookers scream surprised greetings, brash demands for money, and misguided marriage proposals.
• I update my blog when I can, to try to fulfill Peace Corps’ third goal (to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans) and let family and friends know I’m alive.
• I discuss American history and politics with complete strangers.
• I have passionate debates about gender-based and sexual violence with people who will never agree with me.
• I have passionate debates about corporal punishment with people who will never agree with me
• I wait on overloaded taxis with chickens pecking at my feet.  Then I travel in them over large series of potholes, either barreling at unsafe speeds or crawling along because the vehicle is too decrepit to be on the road.
• I scrub the caked dirt from my feet every night, only for it to return 5 minutes after I’ve left my house the next morning.
• I have entire conversations with people who do not share any common language with me. There is a lot of sign language involved.
• I answer the question “What are you doing in Uganda?” at least once per day.
• I attend functions, which typically consist of long speeches, many-layered outfits, deafening sound systems, and massive quantities of boiled bananas. When called upon, I assist in the ceremony, at times by carrying baskets on my head, others by making absurd, improvised speeches.
• I counsel friends who face difficult situations that at one point would have been beyond my imagination.
• I carry all my belongings on my back. And sometimes front. And sometimes head.
• I bargain. For everything.

One of the luxuries that my Peace Corps living allowance permits me is second-hand shopping. You may think that the bag of old clothes you donated last time you cleaned out your closet was given to a needy family. If so, you think wrong. I probably just bought your shirt for 2,000 Ugandan shillings ($1.00) in the Tororo market. Most of the clothing I wear I have bought from ladies who purchase it by weight in large grain sacks from Kenya or Kampala. If one has the energy for digging through it, the first world’s fashion detritus can be entertaining (sightings of long-dead trends that died for a reason and t-shirts with truly absurd slogans).

With the energy for bargaining, it can even be rewarding ($130 jeans for $4.50). I am quite fascinated at how used clothing makes its way from charity bins of America to being sold in Uganda. And quite amused that some will make it back to America with me. And someday, it may make the return trip again. I have had some fun/ny finds, including my nightmarish corpse bride Halloween costume:

In the same market, I visit a very friendly, talented tailor who can create clothes using colorful African fabrics if I go in and just draw a picture of what I want. The finished kitenges are especially good for wearing to Ugandan functions. You can guarantee that nearly every Ugandan you meet that day will inform you that “You are smart.”

Then there’s the traditional Ugandan gomesi, which is worn in the central and eastern regions of the country for the fanciest ceremonies and considered the dressiest option for ladies. I’m told the garment was the first imported clothing during the colonial era, representing a high-class alternative to attire made from bark cloth. The gomesi is composed of about six layers of fabric on top of another two layers of striped undergarments, all of which is quite sweaty when worn in equatorial sunshine. There are folds and flaps, buttons, a giant belt, and tall, pointy shoulders. I’m told that some ladies put extra layers as padding beneath everything to accentuate the size of their posterior. This outfit is one tradition that I cannot quite grow to appreciate. Some Ugandan ladies manage to make a gomesi look okay, but I just can’t wrap my head around how it is ever truly attractive or flattering.

Just goes to show how different standards of beauty can be from one culture to the next. I managed to avoid wearing a gomesi for nearly my entire Peace Corps service, wearing kitenge or the traditional dress from Western Uganda instead (which I think is much prettier).

But last weekend I was ambushed when attending a traditional marriage, and ended up walking in the ceremony, speaking Dhopadhola to a crowd of 500 people, and wearing a pink gomesi. The unsightly results are posted here for your entertainment:

For men, the traditional outfit is called a kanzu, which is a sort of Jesus-style robe under a suit coat.

We stay in only the finest hotels.

We drink superior quality millet-based local brew.

We’ll argue for an hour to save 500 shillings (25 cents).

We gather for dinner parties, at which we eat with our hands while crouching on a concrete floor.

We can always fit more passengers in the vehicle

We go camping on rock formations and the only sustenance anyone thinks to bring is two cases of beer.

We have a clause in our wiffleball rules for “if you hit the cow.”

We have excellent fashion sense.

We know that it’s possible to make a slip’n’slide out of local materials…even if it takes off a layer of skin.

We have lengthy and detailed discussions about latrines and our various bodily (dys)functions.

We slaughter our own Thanksgiving dinner. (I am not the one who actually killed it- Megan did the honors.)

PCVs are excellent.

I still get called muzungu and various other words for “white person” quite often.  Even after one and a half years, sometimes the word still feels like an epithet (even though I know it is rarely meant to be as offensive or irritating as it can feel).  So, I have enjoyed one pleasant side effect of November’s election.  Occasionally now, instead of shouting “muzungu” as I pass on the street, strangers call out, “Obama!”  This makes me smile.