Lesson #3: Uganda Does Not Have a 4th Dimension

Hello everyone! Sorry it’s been a couple weeks since my last post. Work has officially kicked in to full gear, and the power has been out for going on 9 days now. Not super conducive to blogging, haha. The word for power here is “umeme”, so I find myself talking to light bulbs, begging for umeme to come back. (Signs you need to make more friends, haha.)  I feel like a lot has happened in the past 2 weeks, so I’m making two posts if that's ok; One talks more about day-to-day stuff and the other more about the culture. I was trying to combine the two posts as one, but the tone and lines of thoughts with each are pretty different. So be prepared for a mega post, and I thank you in advance for reading! 

Two weeks ago now, I found American heaven in Uganda, a coffee shop called Chat n’ Chino. Its located about an hour away in Mbale, which is the closest city to where I live. We got there by taking a taxi (picture a large 1970’s van rather than a yellow car) with more people than seats, and a slab of raw meat in a bag pushed under my seat bench in particular, haha. The roads are sometimes dusty and always pothole-y, but they take you through many small towns and beautiful countryside which I really enjoyed! It was cool to get to see my community of Kikholo in the context of the many communities surrounding us. The taxi dropped us off in the town, and we ended up eating lunch at Chat n’ Chino which has FREE unlimited wifi and GREAT American food. I had a PB&J, French fries, and a brownie, and could not have been more satisfied! Best $4 I’ve spent in a long time. Another exciting thing about this restaurant was the group of Peace Corp volunteers hanging out there. Excellent friend making opportunity :) I met up with some of them again this weekend, and it was really fun to hang out for a little while! I’m looking forward to getting to know them more in the coming months.

Another good thing that has happened in the past week or two is that several outreach projects are off and running, which in turn, has helped me develop a much better understanding of my job. In the beginning, I thought that I would be in charge of initiating outreach programs, but I’ve quickly realized that AAH already has so many projects going on. So instead, I think my job will more be to reign in, organize, and facilitate the projects that they already have. My main projects will be the rebuilding of a local elementary school, the distribution of practice PLE exams, and potentially, the distribution of TOMS shoes (depending on when they are released from customs). In addition, I will serve as a liaison/consultant between AAH and our outreach schools, as well as a couple independent community organizations. Not gonna lie, I still feel very much in the fake it til you make it phase. But everyday feels like a huge learning experience, and the pieces are coming together slowly but surely.

I’m sure I’ll touch on these projects more in later posts, but I did want to share some pictures from the local elementary school that is being rebuilt. It is called Bulobi Primary School, and AAH has a grant to renovate it by adding on 8 new classrooms and a kitchen. Right now, the students do not receive a school lunch, so we are really hoping the kitchen will help segway into a school feeding program down the road. Here are some of the before and after pictures on the progress that has been made during the pas couple weeks.

Former school classroom building, which is currently still the principal's office.

Obviously in need of some love.

One of the new classroom buildings being built through the grant.

Foundation for the kitchen. You can see what they were using

formerly as the kitchen in the background.

New kitchen built over the past 2 weeks.

In Math class, I always learned that time is considered to be the 4^th dimension. That concept did NOT originate in Uganda, haha. The concept of time, or lack thereof, is a funny thing here. I’ve been in meetings most days over the past two weeks, and the shortest of those meetings was 2 ½ hours. The longest of those meetings was 5 HOURS LONG, and just so happened to start at 4 pm, haha. My American ADD was going crazy. Another example, the other day at school, Caiti and I were helping some kids fill out profile questionnaires, which relay information about the student to their sponsor in the United States. One of the questions was, “How long does it take you to walk to school?” Simple, right? But we helped probably 8 or 9 kids fill out profiles, and literally none of them could answer this questions, haha. They would read it and then look to me for explanation, so I’d say, “does it take you five minutes to walk from your house to AAH?” and they would nod “yes”. Then, I would follow up with, “or does it take you an hour to walk from your house to AAH?” and they would nod “yes”. It’s interesting because the student’s arrive to school on time for classes, but I’ve figured out that time isn’t by a clock. The question should read “when do you leave for school?”, to which I think the response would be, “whenever I finish feeding the chickens and grazing the cow”, haha. But it works for them, its just an interesting difference.

One final story and then on to part 2 of the blog… there are two 4^th grade girls at the school who are very friendly and have taken a liking to Caiti and I. Every day last week, they would write me a note which said something along the lines of “we love you so much Tr English our best friend” :) (PS. they call every friend their best friend, but still really sweet!) And in keeping with true girl note standards, there are usually hearts, flowers, or both drawn all over the paper. In the last note, they wrote, “please reply”, so on Friday, I went way back in time and wrote a 4^th grade note to 4^th grade girls, haha.  Drew flowers with hearts as the centers and everything. I think it went over pretty well, both girls squealed and gave me a hug after reading it :)

Mayimuna and Brenda, my note girls

Ok, on to part 2…