When it rains, it pours

There are two seasons in Uganda: rainy and dry. Dry season is no fun, but I didn’t mind it so much last year because it would still rain a bit and be somehow cool where I had been living. Here in the east, it’s a different story! I haven’t seen rain since Christmas… until today! It’s amazing how you can feel the dust being beat to the ground by each drop that falls. The loud crash of water hitting my tin roof is music to my ears! And I’m in love with the whole “not sweating in my house all the time” thing. Let’s raise our glasses to bid farewell to the constant dust layer covering everything and welcome instead, the muddy shoes and never dry laundry!

*clank*

It seems that bad things always happen in clusters. Let’s review the following week:

1. The nails in my back door hinge came out of the frame as I was closing up for the night.

2. The water was out from the tap I fetch from when I was having people come the next day.

3. My computer fan died and then my screen went totally black…

But with every negative there is always a positive. Let’s review the outcomes of each:

1. I got to feel awesome by balancing the door on a rock as I nailed my door back in.

2. My pupils were nice enough to fetch water from the borehole at the college until the water came back to the tap. Then my friends who came helped me fetch even more water from that.

3. My faith and confidence in Ugandans was restored by meeting Fred, who took apart, cleaned/fixed, and then reassembled my computer like it was nothing. It’s now working better than it has in a long time. Also, he only charged me half price!

Probably the most terrifying moment of my life,
but a job well done!
Also, disgusting dust clog.
Yuck.

Speaking of books,
my pupils keep bringing me them
because they 'love me' and
they saw me reading at school.
Oh Uganda... :P

Tomorrow starts the 3^rd week of school. I’ve had a good 1^st two weeks at the new place. I like all of my teachers and it’s very convenient living so close. My counterpart was assigned a transfer to another school, but we went to talk to the district education officer and she got to come back! I hope she can stay all year because she is AWESOME. There are a lot more pupils at this school than at my last which is a little overwhelming, but I’ve begun doing reading assessments with the P4 pupils so I can start reading groups. There are a lot of other things I’m ready to get into motion as well. Like on Tuesday, some teachers and I are taking 2 pupils from each class on a field trip to the library in town. They’ll learn how to use a library properly so they can share that knowledge with their classmates for how to use our school library.

The P4 class. Wow.

So cuuuute!

Fun story: Bats live in my roof. Usually they don’t disturb me other than dropping things and making noise. The other night I woke up to one of them being stuck on top of my mosquito net. (I work up a bit later to a mouse with the same problem) Then a couple nights after that, the bat somehow managed to get stuck under my bed. Friday, I walk into my room and there he is, just chillin’ on my bed post. So my friend helped me scoop him up in a can and release him outside. I’m sure he’ll find his way back and I can still hear a lot of creatures up there, but it was a total TIU (This Is Uganda) moment.

As I’ve mentioned, my new place is in a very convenient location so I’ve been having a lot of visitors. I had a very nice birthday lunch last week with my PCV neighbors and some more came this weekend for a Chinese New Year/Valentine’s Day celebration. Involved lots of good food of course. My house is finally all organized and I’ve also been keeping busy with other personal goals I’m wanting to work on this year.

Happy (late) Valentine's Day &
Xin Nian Kuai Le (next week)!

This year has started out really well and I’m feeling very happy to be here. Now, I’m going to go enjoy this rainy Sunday by drinking some tea while snuggled up on the couch watching a movie. Chocolate will probably be involved as well. As always, thanks for the love and support <3 <3

Life is Better When You're Laughing

Kuseka=to laugh. We definitely did a lot of that at the Camp Kuseka! Let me tell ya about it.

PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) put on camps for different groups of students during the school’s term breaks. This particular one focused on special needs children in the western part of Uganda. It was a smaller sized camp, only about 40 or so kids, but each camper had their own counselor and every counselor had a max of two campers. That was nice for developing a really good relationship during the week they were there.

Me and Sharon

The kids ages ranged from 5-27. Some had physical disabilities, some had mental, some a bit of both. They were broken up into 3 different groups with their counselors. I was in the Orange team and my camper was super cute! She has a limp and is so so soooooo shy. She’s 12 years old and understands a bit of English. It took her sometime to start talking, and even then she still didn’t say much, but her smile! Oh my gosh! When she was happy, she had the biggest smile and most adorable laugh. She liked to play and dance a lot. When she first arrived she was very quiet and didn’t play with any of the other campers. By the end of it, she was running around and participating with the others. It was a really great thing to see!

Spending all day everyday for a week with a bunch of kids is definitely tiring, but it was tons of fun! It was so nice to see these kids who have such a hard time here because of their disability, light up and be seen as themselves instead of “what’s wrong with them”.

Most counselors were PCVs but some of them were HCNs (host country nationals. Aka: Ugandans). Even some of the directors were. They also invited the parents to come for two of the days to attend sessions to learn more about how to empower their child. Most kids with disabilities get beat or neglected because of it. Seeing all the adults come together to stand up for their children was really moving. They even had a Special Olympics winner come as a guest speaker!

Camp is a lot of work. The days are hot, you always need to be on, and sometimes your camper just doesn’t want to participate, but it was all worth it in the end to touch the lives of these kids in some small way. Change is a very slow process, but I can already see that Uganda is heading in the right direction. I know that someday the stigma of disabilities will be eradicated! It’s just gonna take some time and a lot of work. I’m thankful to the people who do that :)

(Camp was from January 12-16^th so it’s been over a week since I wrote everything above. Now I want to say a short few words about more recent things.)

The week after camp, the new education group swore in as new Peace Corps Volunteers. I went to their ceremony and it felt very, very strange to reflect back on what I was feeling a year ago when I was in their shoes, what I’ve done/learned in the year since, and where I am now. It was refreshing to see their excitement, but also made me a little sad to think about the hardships they’re going to face. But they’re a great group of people and I’m very happy to have them here!

My poster for the gallery walk at MSC.
It's been a good year!

My cohort (group I came with) just got home from our MSC (Mid-Service Conference). It was the first time we had been together as a cohort without any other PCVs since our IST back last April. It’s truly amazing to look at how far we’ve come as a group and as individuals. MSC felt so far away this time last year when we had just arrived. Now it’s come and gone and COS (Close of Service) Conference will be here before we know it. It made me a little emotional to think about how quickly this second year will go and how we’ll then have to say goodbye. These people have become my family and show a huge support simply by being here and experiencing all this with me. You can talk about it all you want to friends back home, but they’ll never fully understand it like your fellow PCVs do. All of this hit me at MSC and I feel very blessed to have such an amazing group of people to share these two years with.

We’ve all been through a lot of ups and downs this past year and we’ll continue to go through more. That’s just life. Tomorrow is the first day of the new school year. I’m settled into my new house and now I get to settle into my new school. Getting a site change was no fun, but from it, a new motivation has grown in me and it feels amazing! I have lots of ideas I want to try out and am SO ready to take on this year!

I’m thankful to all of the people who have shown me non-stop love and support during these last few months when I was going through a difficult time. I feel like I’m in a really good place now and I’m looking forward to what lies ahead :)