erin.

On March 3rd, 2007, I posted these words, from Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex.  And now here they are again.

“Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. I can’t just sit back and watch from a distance anymore.”

The last time I posted this excerpt was when I was getting ready to come to Uganda.  Now I am closing my Peace Corps service in an overwhelming flood of “complicated hybrid emotions.

In the last weeks and days, I have come to appreciate on an entirely different level what this experience has meant- and will continue to mean- for myself and those who have been a part of it.  I am sure that this is just the beginning of a continuous process of understanding and taking hold of these years and always keeping them alive in a meaningful way.

I was reading in my journal the other day, which long ago fell into disuse.  In one of my early days in Uganda, March 11th, 2007, I wrote, “Some days are just incredibly intense.  It’s hard to imagine being able to keep up the stamina for this as a constant.  It sure is interesting pretty much all the time.”

Somewhere along the way, life in Uganda started feeling different.  Yes, it still is interesting pretty much all the time.  However, I can’t pinpoint it, but at some point, life here became just that: life.  A very full life.  I have had a taste of a very rare kind of happiness: to have meaningful, challenging, rewarding work while surrounded, both near and far, by remarkable people who fill my life with laughter and love and learning.  People who have supported and changed me.  I have not endured my Peace Corps service, as if it has been some sort of sacrifice or struggle to be here.  I have lived it.  Like anything, this has had its challenges, but I would not give them up for the 1000 hot American showers I could have had instead.  I will always think of this time in this place with incredible appreciation for the privilege of opportunity.  It has been a joy.

“Ends and beginnings — there are no such things. There are only middles.”  -Robert Frost

A few months back, I heard about AppLab Uganda at a conference. It’s a pretty neat concept. They’re basically creating mobile phone applications that will help ordinary Ugandans who don’t have access to a lot of up-to-the-minute, accurate information about important topics that affect their lives (aside from perhaps radio).

Considering the increasing popularity of cell phones, even in the most rural areas, they are a great way to reach people with helpful information about almost anything- agricultural methods, weather, health information, marketing information.

I just came across a short article about this work in the NY Times: In Rural Africa, a Fertile Market for Mobile Phones.

Dialing for Answers Where Web Can’t Reach is another Times article about how an information hotline is being used to get people without internet access answers to their questions.

And some more on the transformational potential of cell phones here, from The Economist.  Cool stuff.

Yesterday was our first book day, and it was a huge success.  It is really fun to see kids who have never owned a book before get excited about reading!

Thank you all for your contributions to the Malaba Youth Center library.  You have made a difference.