October 15, 2009
It was 8:30 at night when I first arrived at my site. There wasn't an electric light in over 10 miles in any direction, and I was exhausted after my first 8-hour African bus trip. When I got off the bus I was met by a group of teenagers whose faces I could hardly see from the small torch on my cell phone. They picked my suitcases, giggling, and started walking away from the road, presumably toward my house. I was soon met by some other people who eagerly introduced themselves and shook my hand. I was so turned around their names were forgotten as soon as they were spoken. We went through a field and a short distance beyond I was met by some more people hanging around an old concrete house. The teens giggled and talked amongst themselves in a language I couldn't begin to comprehend.
Welcome home. Two candles lit inside greeted me by casting eerie shadows on the poorly pained walls. The ceiling looked as if it had burn marks across it, the depths of the discoloration accentuated in the candlelight. Soon people began to leave, giving me time to settle in. My counterpart brought me a kerosene stove and a pot so I could boil water, gave me some chapati and a liter of coca-cola.
When everyone finally left, I sat on the concrete floor, alone, uncomfortable in my new surroundings. I ate the chapati, drank the coke, and tried to sleep on a half-made bed with an eye open for cockroaches and mice. Unable to get the kerosene stove to boil anything, I lived on 4 chapati and a second liter of coke for the next three days.
March 24, 2011
Peace Corps came at 10am to load my things and move me to my new site. (It's incredible how much crap you accumulate after a year!) By 10:30 we were finished and ready to go, but when it came time to hand over the keys, a fist fight broke out between my counterpart and my neighbor. Soon the students from the vocational school were there, and word spread through the coconut telegraph so fast that before long villagers from the nearby trading center started filtering in to watch and partake in the chaos. My program manager told me to get the keys, which I did, then we left the brawl behind. A village problem now, not in my control and not my worry, but it was pathetic to watch the people I've lived and worked with for the past year and a half become so petty and greedy and unable to work out their festering issues.
Later that afternoon I rolled into Kazingo, my new village at the base of the Rwenzori Mountains. Now a professional at Peace Corps living, my bed was made and stove hooked up in less than an hour. After Peace Corps left I made mashed potatoes with beef jerky (thanks mom), my stand-in for steak. I met some villagers and settled in for my last six months in Uganda.
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