Just a glimpse of village life on my short walk to the internet cafe this morning:
On the one-lane dusty dirt road, I had to move way over to the left-hand side to allow a small herd of cattle (with giant horns) pass. I said hello to the cattle driver.
A storm was kicking up, blowing dust everywhere, conjuring images of a dust storm blowing through an old town in the wild west. There are storm gutters on each side of the road going through town, about 3 feet deep and 2.5 feet wide. Wooden planks and small logs strewn over the ravine make the crossing hastle-free. But in town, just 20 or 30 feet from the main intersection, someone was burning their garbage in the ditch, sending grey smoke through town. Also, a few grazing goats slid down into the ditch and got stuck at another spot.
This morning was my first attempt at doing the laundry in the developing world. It wasn't too bad, but I feel like a smuck when I have to tell them we usually use machines to do it. "A machine for everything" was the reponse. Then I put some clothes up on a line to dry, and the grandmother came out and told me I was doing it wrong (well, I only understood what she was saying when she took my clothes down and hung them up differently).
Inside-out to dry... I'll remember that for next time. I think I will save some money and hire someone to do my laundry when I get to my site - it's a lot of effort! And I haven't even ironed them yet (everything has to be ironed - when air-drying they can get a parasite so you have to iron to kill it).
Yesterday we finished our first full week of training at a training centre in the Wakiso district outside of Kampala. A lot has happened in the past week, so I'll try to summarize chronologically.
First, on Monday, we departed our initial training site in Leweeza and came to the training site here (which will be our permanant home for the next few months). We met up with our host families and were taken to our new homes! My familiy is generally bit wealthier (the father has a doctorate in fisheries, and the monther has an agricultural business in Kampala). By "wealthier," I mean that we usually have electricity, and we have running water. Still, there is no shower, and it's a continual effort to master the bucket bath. I haven't tried my hand at cooking on a propane stove yet, and my mother said that she will teach me how to do laundry this weekend (yet, in a bucket, after boiling the water).
Class itself has centered on language learning (roughly 2-4 hours/day, and I'm in the Runyoro/Runtoro group, which is in Mid-Western Uganda near Lake Albert on the Congo border, which means that is where I'll be going!). We also got some shots (Hep, Yellow Fever, Rabies), learned about diarrhea and other illnesses and how not to get them, did some team building work, and are learning about the Ugandan government, health, and education systems.
I was called today by PC Headquarters and they want to change my assignment because apparantly they were having difficulties finding water & sanitation placements. So, now I'm an economic development volunteer, and next week we begin business classes which will be interesting because the only business class I took was personal finance... and got a C.
The internet is sparce in this village, and slow is an understatement. It literally took 4 minutes to load the main GMail page, so if I don't get a personal email out to you, please don't hold that against me. I'll try stop in one or two times a week to give periodic updates, and some insight on training and culture.
After language we have tea for a well-deserved half-hour. Afterwards we have a tech session. On this particular day we were learning how to garden and compost. I can be seen dutifuly taking notes on proper dung rotation:
Training is exhausting, and sometimes it's difficult to keep up with all the gossip. So, afterwards we usually get together to decompress and find out details of peoples' lives:
We also play with the local kids, like this day when we got together with a current PCV and played soccer games. I played with the 3-year-olds because it best fit my age-group. Here, Sandi and Nicol stand in while I take a picture of the fun:
