Update on my hut roommate: the Ugandan Raven (rat from the toilet) is dead and buried (and just for good measure, I poured some Clorox over the grave), but unfortunately, his bushy-tailed rat cousin has replaced him in the rafters and has a bit more of a vicious attitude (I have now established 2 allies in this battle against rodents: a woman in the market who sells me the little fish and another at the pharmacy who sells me the poison and I even know a choice Acholi phrase: Amito matek ka neko oyo (I want very much to kill a rat)). Since I last wrote, I experience a week of terrible sickness from a bacterial infection in the intestine (if you’re medically inclined and want more details, feel free to email me, but for now, children might be reading this blog and I don’t want to give them nightmares). This lovely experience was followed a week of being on duty. Each week, three teachers are on duty which means that they are solely in charge of the school: discipline, general cleaning, uniforms, greeting visitors some of whom don’t speak any English… So for a week, I spent my days calling delinquent girls out of classes to clean and do landscaping as I stood there supervising…did I mention that we don’t have any grounds or cleaning staff here? so every girl has to do her part and believe me, they don’t enjoy it. In between these two unexciting weeks my school hosted a track and field championship meet for all the schools in the surrounding area. I dragged myself out of sickbed to go and see our awesome girls totally kick butt and win first place (see picture of team, the coaches, my head teacher and her deputy)! However, the track meet itself was a tribute to the crazy variety of clothes you can find in the markets here and what unusual fashion trends evolve from this variety. The girls mainly ran in short skirts, but on top they’d be wearing something like a tank top or halter top. The boys though took the cake: in women’s bathing suits, speedos, underwear, basketball shorts, spandex unis…and of course most everyone was running barefoot…I feel like no track and field event is complete without such a fashion show. Meanwhile, my exercise consists of digging, weeding, biking to town on my fancy new bike (see picture and note that the brand is Phoenix—totally unintentional purchase, because I planned to get a bike called “Kal amara” or “My husband loves me (and so he bought me this bike),” but they didn’t have it…much like how I don’t have a husband—those of you who know my from College know that I gained a strong appreciation for Phoenixes through my involvement in a tutoring/mentoring group called Project Phoenix, and so truly, I believe that buying this bike was fate), play sword fighting with the local children (I’m so close to asking them to call me Zorro…but with no “z” in the alphabet, I wonder how it will work out), and chasing after trespassing goats, roosters, and chicken with a machete (I had my revenge on the chicken race yesterday…I’ll go into more detail in a bit). During the World Cup, I spent almost every evening until about 1130pm watching the games with the some of the staff in the staffroom with the exception of the Ghana-American game when I felt that for my own safety, I’d best find other Americans in town to watch on a big screen in town (safety in numbers…)—unfortunately, we were still greatly outnumbered by Ugandans and when Ghana won…we sat there a bit saddened surrounded by jumping and screaming Ugandans. Unfortunately, I have never seen so many hearts break at once as when Ghana later lost, but the excitement of the finals helped each of us get over it and choose a new team to root for (in the blog is a picture of the staffroom at half-time for the final match). I truly recommend being in a country that is a bit obsessed with soccer during the World Cup: every play, call, and goal has an emotional and loud response that I like can only be matched by the best and brightest sports bars of America. I reunited with the Americans (3 Peace Corps volunteers and some IRC interns--see picture, the guys are PC, the girls are IRC) in town for a 4th of July dinner party, complete with pizza, mac and cheese (there’s a severe lack of cheese in Uganda compared to America so we decided to go big or go home), boxed wine, anthem singing, red, white, and blue sugar cookies and a watermelon from the market. I spent much of the night explaining to the Ugandans present why some of those present were getting so emotional about certain Bruce Springsteen songs etc., trying my best to be a good cultural ambassador. I brought the celebration home the next day in the staff room and we all bonded over Uganda and America’s common fight against English rule (although for the Ugandans, gaining independence was a peaceful and highly ceremonial event). Other notable events include being told “Aber, there’s a (white) man who is asking for you” to which I responded “My goodness, let me call my mother,” the first of hopefully many debate events at the school, and the acquiring of a gas regulator so that my hut doesn’t burst into flames…which brings me to my first Uganda Hut Dinner Party. Celebrating my inner Indian identity, I invited some Americans and Ugandans over for a big Indian meal including curry, lentils, chickpeas, naan, devil’s food cake (from scratch) and chicken…Two chickens were kindly delivered to me by a motorcycling friend yesterday morning and as I said earlier, proved to be my revenge on the flock of chickens here who believe they own my hut and garden (let’s just say they are keeping their distance now)—if you’re a veggie, small child, or a bit skwimish, please skip the next 3 sentences. To those of you who have not killed, plucked, and deboned live chickens before, I will not give you details, I’ll just say that I took them out back (gangster movie style) and then opened the bible to ask forgiveness for breaking the commandment “Thou shall not kill.” Let’s just say I felt a sudden strong connection to Lady Macbeth and her “Out damn spot” speech. I’ve never been closer to becoming a vegetarian and now have an immense amount of respect for poultry farmers and love for packages of boneless and skinless chicken breasts at your local grocery store. The dinner was an immense success and made having to wake up this morning at 5am to grade math homework by light of a kerosene lamp for the 70 girls I was to teach at 8am totally worth it. I thought I would tell you a little bit about the class that I have pictured (I’ll upload pictures of my other classes in later blogs). This is my Senior 2 Biology class and they are what I’d like to call a hoot (very energetic and improving so much on their exams as we go on!). I meet with these 70 or so lovely ladies twice a week and each day I have a little theme to help them do better and to start thinking outside the box a bit. On Mondays, we have a short quiz that is not for a grade, but instead for a prize to be awarded this coming Wednesday to the top 5 cumulative scorers and on Wednesdays, we go over a “why?” question: for instance: why can insects walk on water like Jesus? Why is the sky blue? Why do we have hiccups? (hopefully, this will eventually get them a bit excited over time about how science can explain the world around us, but for right now, it’s just a lot of fun to escape from lecturing and to have them brainstorm). On a sad note, we have lost 2 girls here at YY Okot and both were Senior 1 students (so around 13 years old)—one died from a lack of platelets in her blood stream and the other has now been dismissed because she is pregnant. Its hard to remember when surrounded by 900 laughing and happy girls, but there is a harsh reality to the limits of the Ugandan health system and health education (soon I’ll be traveling to talk to some young women about such issues because the pressure on girls to not get pregnant in order to stay in school has led to illegal and very dangerous abortion procedures). As for the recent bombings in Uganda: while I live far from Kampala and so these acts of terrorism don’t affect me directly, it is quite sad and frightening to see how it is potentially escalating, but I am quite confident that Peace Corps is at least doing its best to ensure the safety of all volunteers (thank you for your concern though). I hope all is well at home. I think of you all often and would love to hear any updates (especially now that you’ve read the novel I just wrote).
