And so it is tonight – fickle.  Having been without Umeme, for two days, sweltering in the night because of the unseasonable heat (did I mentioned in the last post about it pegging 117 degrees last week?) we were gifted two days with power.  No doubt because it would be bad form to mark the 50th anniversary of Uganda’s independence with noooooo electricity for celebrations.  But – since it IS the big five-0, all of the local area officials are in Kampala at the huge do-das there.  So the date of our parade, etc. is “to be determined.”    Still – I have the week off – a totally unexpected vacation.  And wait! There’s a flash of light!   OH-MY Umeme is baaaaack.  Whee – I have to go blow out a house full of candles…       I’ve learned to always keep some sort of tap light or candle and lighter nearby.  When it’s dark here it is really dark. 

Monday night, Independence Day eve – Diana Gardens, the club in my front yard, had a big event.  They began tuning up for this around three in the afternoon and my doors and windows were rattling. There is a true obsession with “loud” here.  I don’t get it and I especially don’t get how people can still hear.  Why is “noise induced hearing loss” not rampant?  People are still engaged in whispered greetings  a 20 paces while walking away from each other.  And they hear it!  Well – not this Muzungu.  After putting wads of toilet paper around every  iron bolt,  in all the doors and windows I foolishly asked if they might turn the volume down just a smidge – you know to maybe an intimate 130 decibels.  No way – they were just getting warmed up.

The party got started in earnest about 9PM after a good rain and continued until 4AM without so much as a pause for breath.   Sleep was not to be had, with or without earplugs.  I practically had to hold on to the bed to keep from being vibrated out – OK a slight exaggeration.  So I finished book #92 somewhere around 3:45AM.

And speaking of vibrations,  we had a little mini-earthquake last Friday night.  The  earth moved – and for all the wrong reasons.  I would have thought it was a train going by – but – oh yeah – I forgot – we don’t HAVE trains up here. (Museveni destroyed all the tracks for fear of invasions.)   Lasted about 5 seconds.  I would have dismissed it as imagination had not Jenna texted me from the States that Gulu had an earthquake.   Now how did she know that?  Face Book no doubt – and then it was confirmed by a Ugandan friend.   UFOs, earthquakes – this is feeling like California.

Mid-service is almost here!  And the Ethiopia trip has been approved except for traveling in the south.  Seems Al Shabab is lurking, having come over the borders of Sudan and Somalia.  Turns out that the oldest physical evidence of a humanoid remains (3.5 Million years old) was discovered there and the Arc of the Covenant is said to still be enshrined in a temple at Axum.  Should make for an interesting trip.  And any country settled in part by the Portuguese and Italians has gotta have good food.   Even tho the Brits got there later, the good food habit was already established.  Can’t wait – three weeks of adventure and culinary bliss.

Yin-kitty  (of the Yin/Yang duo) becomes more and more tame, still being trailed by her sole remaining calico kitten.  Somehow, having an almost-pet makes life feel more normal.  On a purely Peace Corps note, a friend whose project is helping to raise pigs in a village that’s damn near impossible to get to is playing nursemaid to several baby piglets.  The mama died and the other new mama won’t suckle them.  Soooo, she is tasked with finding a bottle to feed said piglets.  But – she ran out of propane and in addition to not being able to cook, she can’t HEAT THE MILK for the little oinkers.    Just about the time life becomes mundane, there’s another story around the corner.  Stay tuned.

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I know it sounds perverse, but it was very gratifying and concrete.     So much of what we do on a daily basis is “seed planting,” both literally and metaphorically. It’s often frustrating because it may be years (if ever) before our labor or indeed our contributions  bear fruit. We may never know the results and many of the benefits are not measurable or tangible.  But – as I said,  this was concrete work:  before – chaos, after – order and function.    Also, in our daily work, there is little feedback or gratitude expressed.  Not that that’s a requirement or even why we came, but it does feel good on those rare occasions when our work is acknowledged (as opposed to people just wanting more…) And the work seems to have been deeply appreciated, so, it was a real boost to my mood and sense of accomplishment.  This is work I’m not known for here, so it’s nice to have it discovered and be relevant after all.

Re-entry to Gulu was difficult.  After enjoying a week of water (and power)-on-demand (mostly, except for drinking water, which still has to be purchased) and electricity around the clock, it was a rude awakening to come back to discover that “power-is-finished and a house full of bugs, mouse/rat droppings, rotten food and mold. The geckos and lizards can stay, except for the big buggers known to arch their backs and hiss when confronted…   The up-side was “water is there.”  

Two trips to Umeme (power company – an oxymoron because there is seldom power) and I perhaps will get some response.  In addition to the usual lack of and off-and-on nature of power, it seems I have an intermittent problem with electricity EVEN when “It is there.”  As we were bumbling around in the dark, the tenant house in back had power.  Equally as often, we will be sitting with power in the evenings and it is all of a sudden “not there.”  We scramble for some form of light: a match, a phone, computer screen – something to go dig around and light a candle.  The flip side of that is sitting in the dark, reading by candlelight and the power comes on.  Everyone jumps up with shrieks of delight, plugs stuff in and 30 seconds later – power is gone – for the night.    To exacerbate a nasty mood, the other tenants have water at their outside tap, when – because of water pressure issues, we will have no water in the house. Such are the vagaries of daily life in Uganda. In that case we trek a couple of blocks up the dirt road and haul water back in the ubiquitous jerrycans.  The only plus to that  (diggin’ deep here) is that I’m usually greeted with big smiles of surprise at the sight of a Mzungu hauling water.    

That is life in Uganda and it seriously interferes with getting anything done – even the most basic tasks.  For example: finally, our organization received approval for the funds to buy fuel for the generator, desperately needed to accommodate the nearly total lack of power during the workday for days on end. The generator didn’t work and was repaired Friday.  Little power over the weekend at the house meant that I arrived at work with two dead computer batteries and anticipated being able to plug in.   That was before realizing that, over the weekend, someone broke a panel in the glass door and cut the cord off the generator!  Still – some movement does happen against all odds and here are some of the projects that are are taking form. somehow. For those of you who wonder what I really DO here other than haul water and gripe, here is an update. I hope I don’t bore you to death – read at your own risk.  

• I do a lot of Organizational Development work:  looking at systems – when there are systems – and determining what’s working and what’s not,  then devise procedures and documents with the goal of creating order out of chaos.  (I’m an optimist). It’s basically what I’ve done for years with clients, but at an entirely different level.  PC has a term for this approach and it’s called a SWOT analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.    Who knew there was an acronym for what I’ve been doing all these years.  Gratifying in some ways.   Thus far, I’ve created Asset and Inventory  
• Tracking Spreadsheets, Vehicle Tracking Systems, Excel spread sheets out the wazoo for Project Monitoring and Evaluation (big deal here for funding purposes) and various and sundry other documents and processes.

Much of this starts and ends at my desk (below) in the corner of a room shared with my Counterpart Geoffrey.

• Office organization: analyzing, organizing and purging thousands of documents, creating a filing system, etc. ad infinitum,  and in the process doing inventory to enter into the Inventory System.
• Website editing and content creation is ongoing.

• Writing books for use in the Mother Tongue Language program. To date, I’ve written two children’s books: one on Malaria for which we went to the field to take pictures of important elements to prevent malaria.  Included in those were photos of water collection and garbage management. Another book targeted sanitation (building a hand-washing station for the village to cut down on intestinal maladies).  The next is one on nutrition.  Right now they are in the draft stages, but the Malaria book is taking off and soon I will go to the field to participate in trainings and the collection of pictures for the book.

• Early Childhood Reading Program: With the goal of contributing to developing a reading culture in Northern Uganda, I’ve spear-headed a local reading Program where we’ll do a much-publicized  story-hour with activities, games and reading aloud to give children the experience that reading can be fun.  Most have never held a book or seen a book with beautiful pictures.  To date we have over 200 hundred books, wonderful puzzles, art supplies etc.  to use in the program. (Thank you again everyone!)

One phase of this will be a lending library, but first the kids will be read to and get some instruction on how to care for a book.   When they are ready, books will be loaned for a week or two, and picked up later.  Think Mobile Library for people who have no hope of ever getting to a real one.  There is a library in Gulu and it has a good collection of children’s books but they are mixed in with adult history, law and accounting books!  The first step is to organize that collection and I’ll start that project in a few weeks.  I have to have permission from the Town Clerk even to volunteer…   and checking out books will be another hurdle.

• Pillow-case Dress Project: about 160  Pillow Cases have been donated (thanks to Welches Elementary School in Welches Oregon for 150 of those!) for a project that will feature teaching village women and women in prison how to sew.  Pillow Case dresses are easy to make (relatively) and will not only provide clothing for little girls (many of whom wear rags), but also teach a skill (sewing) which might be turned into what PC likes to call an Income Generating Activity (IGA).      In the process of instruction, self-esteem is boosted and they will get practice in reading, following directions, numeracy and other aspects of functional literacy. 

• I am also participating in the training of the 46 new PC Trainees that arrived last Friday.  My sessions will be Marketing, Monitoring and Evaluation and a voluntary course that’s all my own called:  Keeping Sane in Peace Corps:  Boundary Setting and Survival Strategies.   (Fellow PCVs might take issue with the implication that I am sane however).  It’ve been requested to offer at at the All-Vol Gathering in August as well.  Now I’m having fun… 8.  Going back to Kampala in June to continue and wrap up the putting-in-order of PC HQ.

I walk to and from work everyday and home for lunch, walking a total of 4 – 6 miles every day.  Good exercise and another opportunity to “greet people”  and frustrate the Boda drivers.  Each day I walk by a group of Boda  drivers who know I don’t ride Bodas.  At first they were downright hostile about a Mzungu who refused to support their business.  Now, it’s become a good-natured joke and as I pass they all laugh and wave – shouting Boda-Boda?  Followed by Woto madwii-dwii  (walk fast-fast).  I guess you’d have to be here to appreciate it. 

Work starts at about 8:30 and come home at about 5:00.  It’s pretty much a typical work day, except we seldom have power at the office. and that makes it anything but typical from the  U.S. perspective.  On those days I escape to work where there is Power and Internet:  the Coffee Hut.  They make a LOT of money from the Munu (Mzungu) population here.   Weekends are spent washing clothes, shopping at the local market for veggies, etc and collapsing on the couch reading and hopefully seeing some friends. 

 I’m keeping a tally of books read thus far:  55 to date ;-0   I’m not doing much travel to interesting places, though I hope that changes.  There’s just not a lot of energy left over at the end of a day or at the end of a week.  Our stipend translates to about  $300/month and Gulu is an expensive place to live in Uganda compared to other locations.   

Public transportation chews up a lot of time and even more energy. Usually, one goes to a bus park, finds the right bus or taxi (matatu) in the middle of unbelievable chaos,  gets a seat and waits until the bus fills.  Sometimes that’s a 4 hour wait.  There is ONE bus company that leaves on time in all of Uganda and it is run by the Post Office.  It also has the distinction of not allowing live goats or chickens in the passenger section, although they can and do ride in the luggage compartment under the bus.    Luggage has come out covered with chicken droppings and Goat  piss.   One more reason to pack light and make it a carry on.

And on that happy note, I’m headed for lunch. Looking forward to an actual tuna sandwich from Travis’ incredible stock of foil packed tuna. I’ve even located pickle relish and sometimes I have Mayonnaise (which has not tunred to Ptomaine paste with lack of refrigeration. Yum.

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