i'm coming home, but....

i'm bringing malaria with me.

that's right, folks. I HAVE MALARIA AGAIN.

FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML.FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML. FML.

i can't tell yet whether it's gonna be as bad as last time. if it does get worse, it'll be right as i'm traveling for 24 hours. yay!! another girl and i are tied for having gotten malaria the most times. an honour i wasn't really pursuing....

so i'm back in kampala. leaving TOMORROW. i can't believe it, but i'm definitely ready for it. we're leaving for the airport at 8 pm. there's a ton of other ppl on my flight, which is nice, cause they can help me lug my stuff through the airport since i'm malaria-weak. ;)

kingfisher resort was beautiful and relaxing. we did presentations from 9 am-4 pm-ish every day, which was draining but interesting. then we swam, read, lay by the pool, and for some of us, went to the clinic to find out we had malaria. nah, it was great. and the food was GREAT. though it's nice to be back in matooke-land.

okay i'm just rambling now. TOMORROW TOMORROW TOMORROW TOMORROW.

and last but certainly not least, HAPPY (belated) BIRTHDAY ELLEN!!!! i remember last year on your birthday, despite the fact that i was totally drugged out, i remembered it was your birthday and was so worried i wouldn't be able to tell you happy birthday. and this year i was quarantined in a beautiful resort with no internet for miles around and i couldn't tell you again! I LOVE YOU, my long-lost sister. i'll see you SO SOON. (and be sleeping in your luxurious suite even sooner)

I LOVE YOU ALL I MISS YOU LIKE IT'S MY JOB

1 year anniversary

AND STILL ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



okay, i'm a few hours early, but basically it's my 1 year anniversary.

i'm posting now cause i don't know when i'll be near internet again.

i had to say goodbye to my family last night. i didn't expect to feel this sad about it, but i keep getting pangs. my mother came home from the wedding early so she could come to the farewell party. and i got a picture with her!!! i'm not on my computer right now though so i can't post it. and uncle newton came, and andrew and zerrida and jethro and it was wonderful. i'm going to miss them alot. they keep saying jethro's going to come visit me and i think they might be serious. god i hope so.

we're leaving for jinja at 1:30 this afternoon, which probably means 2 or 3, even though they said muzungu time. i have to try to go swimsuit shopping today cause there's a pool at the resort and who would've thought to bring a swimsuit to uganda? how do you even shop for a swimsuit in uganda? i'll let you know.

i miss you all so much i don't even know how to express it. i've discovered it's like the phenomenon where the closer you get to the bathroom the more you have to go. y'know what i'm talking about? the closer i get to coming home the more i miss everyone.

SO SOON.

and carla, your comments are beautiful no matter what. i love you.

done done and done

and done. with the report part, that is. now i have to put together the presentation, which makes me wanna VOM.

bobby, i'm assuming it was you who posted chris espinoza's wedding announcement. he invited me to be his best man but unfortunately i'm in uganda DAMMIT. he's so sexy. i have such fond memories of the back of his head since farnan came after espinoza. also, good one, ali. emily's such a creep. also I GOT THAT reference, anna, and it made me proud.

ANYWAY.

last night was PARTYTIME at my house cause mommy's away. she left yesterday morning and i'm never gonna see her again. :( not only that, but it was at the last minute that i realized i'd never see her again, so i never got a picture with her. :( :( :( so last night jethro, zerrida and i got crazy by staying up til MIDNIGHT and playing scrabble!! jethro was so excited by the disruption of his routine i thought he was going to implode. he was our scrabble scorekeeper and i don't think he's ever taken any job more seriously in his life. then at one point he jumped up and yelled: "THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE! Mommy's gone, we're staying up late playing games, the sitting room's a mess, and andrew's sleeping!!" it made me love him so much my heart broke.

matooke is kind of like turkey, right?

I’m going to try really hard to pretend it is, anyway. You’re so right, Aunt Ja – it’s no big deal at home but when you’re worlds away it’s suddenly filled with meaning and nostalgia.

So a belated and insanely love-filled HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wife and my daughter!!! The internet in various places basically chooses what web sites it will and won’t allow me to visit, and yesterday apparently it was hating on blogspot. Anna, my love – I’ll never forget that fateful day so many years ago in mr. p’s stupid class when you thought I was cool because I liked the cranberries. I miss you so much and I hope you realize that I won’t be leaving your apartment once I return to Rivy. Pammy, my baby – your father and I are so proud of you. I hope you’re kicking ass in D.C. and we’re going out for a big family feast at McD’s when I get back, k?

I’m at 38 pages. Slowly but surely it’s coming together. I have to have it done by Saturday so they can get it bound.

All the taxis here have messages written on the back windows. Some are weird, some don’t make sense, and some are just plain HILARIOUS. They range from things in luganda, to “Puff Daddy”, to “God is Great” (there’s a lot of god ones), to “obama” (of course). I’ve been meaning to compile a list of them all along because they’re so great, but I never got around to it. anyway, today I saw one that said “Baby Ashley.” WTF???? I especially don’t get it because nobody’s named Ashley here and nobody can ever pronounce my name. I thought it was a boringly simple name, but apparently not to Ugandans.

Last night I was talking with my mother about negotiating with taxi conductors over fares. She said something like, “you just need to be aggressive about it,” and jethro comes up and goes, “But women aren’t supposed to be….”, then he pauses, slaps himself in the face, and yells, “SHUT UP JETHRO!” that kid is hilarious. And it looks like he’s been trained well, right?

p.s. mama -- remember that this is a public forum, so please keep the drunk-commenting to a minimum, k?

also because this post is booooooooring i'm gonna include 2 rando pictures to commemorate birthdays.

home sweet home

i'm back in kampala! it feels so overwhelmingly good to be kampala-home, i can't imagine what it's going to feel like to be home-home. my basin bath was AMAZING because the water was actually warm, and my bed felt softer than any bed i've ever experienced. zerrida and andrew are home from boarding school, so everyone's around except kenny. even jethro's hyperness and precociousness is amusing again...i think i just needed a little break from it.

the bus ride from gulu to kampala yesterday was....fun. there's a stretch of road that's about 10 km that has FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY speedbumps spaced about 10 feet apart from each other. which means that, for about a solid hour, there is never a moment that you're NOT going over a speedbump. seriously, does anybody have any theories as to WTF the point of that many speedbumps could be????? also there was an old lady in the row in front of me who had control of the window, and everytime i would try to open it a crack she would slam it closed immediately. i couldn't really argue with her because she was old and ugandan, and both of those factors trump me. so i sweated a lot on that bus ride.

i'm at a super muzungu cafe called "good african coffee" and they have free wireless and i just ordered a huge coffee. all of this = happy.

my mother told me last night that she has a wedding in her village the night of our homestay farewell party, which is kind of poopy. but some of my siblings might go....? i don't know.

okay i'm supposed to be submitting a draft of my report to my advisor today. will it happen? i don't know. not likely with all this wireless around.

also, what's the first thing i do when i get access to wireless this good?

WATCH THIS, of course: http://www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com/video/clips/cold-open-of-the-first-show/1116061/

and this, too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyzLuLI78Rc

goat roast

Yesterday I went to a goat roast with kit and crevi. I don’t know quite how kit met these people. Somewhere in the course of her research she came into contact with Powel (pronounced pao-wool) and he wanted us to go over to his family’s compound so they could roast a goat in our honor. So around 3 yesterday some rando guy named erick pulls up to our hotel and drives us to the village, to this ADORABLE, peaceful little compound. They automatically welcome us as their daughters, so we quickly acquire a new taata (father) – Sam; maama – Joy, brothers – Erick, Dick, Powel, Tom, and Mark; and sisters – Maria, Martina, and Melissa. My back is so sore today because Melissa basically spent the entire evening sitting on my shoulders. It was the only thing the two little girls were interested in about me, because all they really wanted to do all night was play with kit and crevi’s muzungu hair. (Multiple times every day I get Ugandan women coming up to me and asking, in the most mournful and confused voice imaginable, “muzungu, why did you cut your hair?” They’re so fascinated by muzungu hair I think they see it as a sin to cut it off.)

Luckily we arrived after they had already killed the goat and chopped it up into delicious little goat pieces on skewers. It roasted for about an hour and then taata proceeded to separate the bits into pieces appropriate for muzungu teeth and pieces appropriate for African teeth. (ugandans seem to think that muzungus are weak in just about every way. I’m not sure that I disagree with them, considering the things they do.) OMG THE MEAT WAS SO GOOD I think it was some of the best meat I’ve had in my life. And we ate SO MUCH, along with roasted cassava. They brought us beer and waragi (Ugandan gin – SO DISGUSTING) and marua (the local brew that they put in a pot and add hot water to and sit around in a circle drinking with really long straws – not as disgusting as I would’ve expected but had a really weird temperature and texture). Here’s me drinking it next to my new taata and trying not to vomit:


Then kit and crevi and I went into the house to go to the bathroom and the 2 little girls (Melissa and martina) followed us in and when we finished peeing they trapped us on our way out and forced us into an impromptu dance party. (Ugandans LOVE impromptu dance parties.) then all the other family members came into the house and we all danced to Ugandan music in a tiny, hot room. Pretty random and awesome.

Here’s a picture of maama wange breastfeeding mark while drinking a beer!!!!! Melissa snapped this gem with crevi’s camera. Public breastfeeding is totez acceptable in uganda; women do it anywhere and everywhere and no one looks twice. Though this is the first time I’ve encountered it alongside beer-drinking.

And here’s some pictures of me and kit and crevi at the goat roast.


(the little girl isn't actually drinking the beer she's holding, btw; i don't know why she has it)

p.s. bobby that poem is a masterpiece. i never saw you getting any of your poetry published in the st. catherine's yearbook, so lay off.

nothing to report

power has been out for basically the whole week. SO FRUSTRATING. it just comes on randomly for like an hour at a time.

which is why i missed your birthday elbow HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

i'm going back to kampala on monday. though i hear the power situation there isn't much better.

also thank you all for your outpouring of love in response to my last pathetic post. my phone number is +256.0777.896.334 but it'll cost you an arm and 3 legs to call me so don't worry about it. i'll be seeing you in like 3.5 seconds!!!!

love love love

nobody loves me

why doesn't anybody call me anymore?

:(

Nnina Ocwee

"Nnina Ocwee" means “I am Ocwee” in Acholi. In other words, not only did I see tons of cool animals this weekend, but I also finally got an Acholi name. and it’s AWESOME. “ocwee” means “you make it.” when we were driving to Murchison falls, we were driving with a ugandan woman who works at a hotel in the park. She asked us what our names were; Courtney and the Italians already had acholi names, but I didn’t have one yet. So the woman asked me about myself, and when I told her that I had 3 sisters and no brothers, she named me ocwee. Basically, when a couple has children of all one sex and people ask them why they don’t have any children of the other sex, they say “ocwee” to mean, if you want children of that sex so badly, then “you go make it.” great, right???

We saw SO MANY ANIMALS this weekend. We saw TONS of elephants and giraffes and antelope and buffalo and hippos and 3 lions. Considering the number of lions in the park has dwindled to less than 100, 3 is pretty good. unfortunately I left my thingy for transferring my pictures to my computer in kampala, but I got some of courtney’s pictures and I’ll put those on here for now. I took a bunch of videos of elephants and giraffes, so hopefully I can get those to upload next week when I’m back in kampala.

So we left at 5 a.m. on Saturday morning. It took about 3 hours to drive there. Once we arrived, we checked into our hotel (called “the red chili”, a.k.a. muzungu central) and proceeded to try making reservations for the 2 pm nile river cruise. We were soon informed that it was all booked, and our only option was to hire a private boat which would cost $200. we were pretty peeved and really didn’t want to spend that much money. Then we learned that there is a small boat that only costs $125. at first they told us it was too dangerous to take the small boat because of the hippos, but then we decided they were liars and told them we wanted the small boat. So we’re getting ready to go and they inform us that, in fact, we’re going to take the medium boat and we’re going to pick up 5 other muzungus on the other side of the river who will join us on the cruise. Peeved again, but oh well. So the 4 of us get into the medium boat, head out, and soon realize that we are NOT picking up the other muzungus and we have the medium boat all to ourselves. YES.

It was a 3 hour cruise and it was really beautiful and peaceful and we saw basically everything except lions SUPER close up. We probs saw like 50 elephants, cause they were all traveling in huge herds, complete with tons of little babies! At one point a group of 10 elephants came right up to the edge of the river and stood there drinking for like 5 minutes while we floated about 10 feet away and watched. It was INCREDIBLE. I got a video of that, so I’ll upload it next week. Then we saw the falls, which were beautiful. There was this disgusting, dirty foam floating in the water from the falls and it really made me mad. I don’t know why.

When we finished the cruise, we went back to the hotel and ate lunch and I got a SUPER YUMMY carrot burger. Then we went and hiked to the top of the falls. It was beautiful and SCARY. I’m discovering that my little ledge incident has given me quite the fear of heights. Driving back to the hotel, it was just about dusk, and all the tsetse flies came out and they SUCKED. They were huge and disgusting and their bites hurt like hell. And they transmit sleeping sickness. :)

Now we come to the night. Saturday night was the most T.I.A. night I’ve had so far. It was HORRIBLE and it lasted an ETERNITY. There were 3 rooms; 2 with single beds and 1 with a huge bed called the muzunguton. We flipped a coin and Courtney and I ended up in the muzunguton bed. I was fine with everything until I was getting ready to go to bed and realized the bed was crawling with bed bugs. I really, really didn’t want to deal with that, so we considered sleeping on the dinky little wicker chairs in the sitting room area. Then we remember, if we don’t sleep in the bed, we don’t have a mosquito net. We check the mosquito net and it’s crawling with bed bugs too. So we have to choose our poison: bed bugs or mosquitos and tsetse flies. Here’s the rationale that leads us to choose the mosquitos and tsetse flies:
(1) if you get bitten by mosquitos and tsetse flies, there’s medicine to deal with sickness. If you get bed bugs, they follow you around wherever you go and continue to bite you.
(2) If I slather myself in bug lotion and wear clothes that cover my body completely, maybe I won’t get bitten….? (or die of a heatstroke?)
(3) If I do get bitten and do get malaria, the malaria symptoms won’t show up for at least a week. So, if I work really hard on my research and my report this coming week and get malaria the next week, it’s not going to pwn me too much, right? (sad thought process, I know…)
(4) Even if I decided to sleep in the bed, I don’t think I’d be able to fall asleep knowing that the little shits are crawling all over me.

So we sleep on the chairs. I wake up pretty much every half hour in total misery and discomfort. Then at about midnight, I wake up to the sound of rustling outside the cabin. I lay there in terror for about a half hour, not wanting to move and not wanting to wake up Courtney for fear that she’ll freak out in her half-asleep state. (she had already woken up screaming once from a dream that the ceiling was crawling with bugs. I didn’t have much hope of falling asleep after that little incident.) of course I’m laying there imagining all of the horrible things that could be about to happen (LRA rebels, bandits knowing there’s a bunch of muzungus with money sleeping inside, etc., etc.), so finally I wake up Courtney and we realize it’s WARTHOGS. Goddammit I hate those warthogs. They’re so ugly and annoying and they roam the hotel premises freely because technically it’s park land. (Disney definitely did a good job of cute-fying pumba but they also did a really impressive job of capturing exactly how warthogs move and run. Fyi.) Finally I fall asleep for about 2 hours, and then up at 6 for the game drive. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper.

But the game drive was totally awesome and we got to stand up in the bed of the truck with the wind in our faces and giraffes running like 10 feet away. (my body is so sore today from being jerked around in the back of the truck, but it’s okay, it was worth it) Oh my god it’s SO AWESOME to watch giraffes run…they look like they’re going in slow motion but actually they’re covering a ton of ground cause they’re so big. I have a video of that, too.

Then we drove home. While we were driving a stupid car passed us really fast and splashed through a puddle of mud and it flew into our truck and all over my face. That was cool.

I feel like this post has been boring and full of insignificant details. Hopefully the pictures will suffice to make it worth reading.

Also p.s. the guy at the internet café where I always come just told me that his friend has a new baby and his friend asked him to name the baby and guess what he named it? yep….Ashley. oh, Uganda.


this tree has these tube-shaped goo-filled things hanging from it and when elephants eat them they get drunk.


these are buffalo, but i think they look like old men with combovers. right?










this is the view from the top of murchison falls.


me and courtney in the middle, the italian girls on either end.

murchison falls

hey friends.

jas i SUCK happy belated birthday!!! i love you!!

and since i won't be posting for a few days, happy birthday grandpa!!! (the 14th and the 16th...)

so first i have some bad news, and then i have some good news.

the bad news is a little outdated, but i'm out of the loop and i just found out yesterday (i don't know whether to say thanks, j). this is terrifying and shocking, but i'll tell you from the outset that all is fine now, so try not to freak out too much. apparently on september 21st, while performing in spain, leonard cohen collapsed onstage. they say he had bad food poisoning (i'm so afraid they're lying) and he passed out while singing "bird on a wire.". considering he's 75 and touring all over the world, one fainting spell actually seems pretty impressive. supposedly there's video footage of him fainting, but i think i would die if i watched it.

we love you, leonard. REMEMBER WHEN I SAW HIM IN NEW YORK OMG SO GOOD.

and now for the good news. last week when i was dying all my roommates went to murchison falls, a national park that has beautiful waterfalls and ALL THE BIG ONES -- lions, elephants, giraffes, hippos, etc. etc. obvs i couldn't go cause i was sicky, but i'm going this weekend!!

at the orphanage where my 2 friends live/volunteer (and have the wireless internet), the orphanage people always take the volunteers to murchison falls. there are 3 italians who volunteer there, too, and they're going this weekend, and my friend courtney and i persuaded them to let us tag along. so we're leaving at 5 am tomorrow morning and coming back sunday night. you should SEE the pictures they got last time...they sat in the bed of a pickup truck and drove around and these animals were literally like 10 feet away. i'm going to have SUCH juicy pictures for you, because i don't have any moral qualms about taking pictures of animals.

oh and sarah b., giving them wrong numbers sounds like a good idea in theory, except for that they always want your number first and then they "flash you" (i.e., call you -- it took awhile to get used to that term) so you'll have their number, so if you give them the wrong number and they try to flash you and it doesn't go through....pwned.

til monday!

creepers

okay, THIS IS IT. i hope i didn't hype it up too much. if you're disappointed, find another blog to read. JK KEEP READING MINE IT'S THE BEST!!! i tried to do as much research as possible but people were hard to get ahold of and i didn't want to leave ya'll suffering with anticipation.

so this post is a small compilation of some of the CREEPER texts and emails people on my program have gotten. i'm only including a handful of examples here, but considering there's 29 girls on the program and we all get proposed to on average 4 times a day, there are a LOT of juicy examples. also i just want to show you that i'm not the only one who attracts the creepers with a special flair for bringing out the romance of english language. i tried to keep the grammatical beauty of these texts as intact as possible. here goes....

(1) i debated saving this one for last, because it's one of the best, but i might as well start off with a bang. so this was sent to courtney, who is one of my favorite people on this program. she was on a 2 hour taxi ride and the conductor kept pestering her to give him her number. she kept saying she didn't have a phone. finally, about 1/2 hour into the ride, she moves to another seat and her phone falls out of her pocket. OOPS. so then she had to give him her number. later that night, this is what she receives: "Flying kiss honey it’s me Ali a’m missing u. at my fast time when I sow u, u breaked my heat .honey, try to show me that u love me. honey let me tell u that u are beautiful lady. honey, i have many wards but let me stop there. but have a sweet good nite."

(2) now julie, who is one of the girls i'm living with in gulu, seems to attract the MOST creepers. she's very blond and very sweet and looks very all-american, so i think that's what does it. one night she was at a club and she met this guy named frank from congo. he entered his number into her phone as "frank from congo." since then he's been calling and texting her multiple times a day. here's the first text she received: "Hi baby, hop urefine. this frank 4yestertay night enge noir club.may gv me,in apoitment.imissu." then, a few nights later, he sends this: "This may not be an easy thing to do, I can handle it. “Even if this was true in the beginning, it is not so now. The drugs handled us, We lived to use and used to live. Very simply, an addict is a person whose life is controlled by drugs."

WTF?

then frank from congo apparently gives julie's number to his friend richard from tanzania, who texts this to julie: "Hi J.!U make feel good since u’ve a chocolate smile.Richard from Tanzania."

(3) here's another one courtney received, this time from a guy named ibra. i haven't heard the story behind this one, but i'm sure it's beautiful: "hi iam sorry but I need to see u in my life ur my hero please sms me good night from ibra"

(4) here's a little gem that laura got. i don't even know how to begin to decipher what this guy's saying: "j am rovinz lauli, and i just wanted 2 say hei to you, and how is the stardies but i would like to run your language miss laulia i badge you, be afriend of main , just afreind . But let me say good buy , yours faithfully juall bless you !!”

(5) and finally, i'll end with my own. the other night i went to get some dinner. i was by myself and it was my first time venturing out into the world after malaria had smacked me down. i just wanted to eat and get back to bed. of course that wasn't in the cards. i sit down, and after a few minutes pass by i look up and see this guy just standing there STARING at me. i look at him, he doesn't look away. i look away for awhile, look back, he's still standing there. finally he motions to ask if he can sit with me. i don't have the energy to argue so i say okay. we have a fine conversation, nothing too creepy. he's seems totally nice and normal. i make a move to leave, and of course the inevitable "can i have your number." again, no energy to argue (that and i'm a wuss), so i just give it to him. the next day i receive this: "HOW.WAS UR DAY HOPE WAS GOOD AM SORRY I DID CALL U CAN U 4 GIVE ME, AVE GOOD NIGTH". many hours later i respond and say something along the lines of, "i'm still sick, resting, how are you", and he responds: "AM NOT FINE BECAUSE I AM MISSING U"

I DON'T GET IT. they're normal in real life, but when they start texting, a whole other side comes out.

Okay I’m going to eat Ethiopian food tonight. SO EXCITED.

p.s. annie I knew you were gonna get me on that one. I knew it even as I was typing it.

p.p.s. BOBBY I LOVE YOU.

anonymous

i don't like you "anonymous" commenters. you need to sign your name like a man. or i'll kick you off my blog.

malaria II

so now that the cat’s out of the bag (you should work for the c.i.a., mom), i might as well post about it, because i have nothing else to report considering i’ve literally been in bed all week. i have malaria again. this time it was HELL. last time it was just tickling me, and this time it punched me full on in the face. my body hurt so much i could barely move, and i was so fatigued it took all my energy just to moan in agony. needless to say, i wasn’t able to make it to an internet café all week – i was barely able to make it down the hall to the pit latrine (i didn’t think squatting over pit latrines could get any more fun, and then i did it with malaria and a whole new world of excitement opened up to me!). the doctor i went to at the beginning of the week said that the malaria i had last time probably just didn’t entirely go away, so i relapsed. he said the meds i took last time were pretty weak, and boy did the meds he gave me this time make up for it. they knocked me flat. i don’t know how much of my agony was malaria-induced and how much of it was the meds. anyway, i’m FINALLY starting to feel better, thank GOD. i’m trying not to stress about the fact that i missed an entire week of research or about the really passive aggressive text message my advisor sent me for cancelling our appointments last week…. (“trying” being the operative word here).

so since i have nothing else interesting to write about, i’ll tell you what i did to make it through the week (other than sleep 20 hours a day). i watched titanic twice, little miss sunshine twice, v for vendetta twice, ocean’s 11 three times (I could rob a casino blindfolded by now), amelie twice, and Leonard cohen’s live in london dvd twice. i even resorted to watching ocean’s 11 and little miss sunshine with the director’s commentary on. god help me. and all of this from within my cave of a hotel room that only has a window out to the hallway, meaning no fresh air and no natural light. and my really weird alarm clock, which likes to announce the temperature at random intervals, reminded me throughout the week that the temperature in my room was usually between 85 and 90 degrees, so s don’t know how much of my fever was a legit fever and how much was due to the fact that i was in a SAUNA.

the moral of the story? – (1) don’t get malaria; and (2) bring more than 3 movies with you to Africa (titanic and ocean’s 11 were courtesy of my roommates).

i have a post in the works that’s going to knock your socks off. hopefully it will make up for the fact that this post was a major complain-a-thon. so give me a few days to do some research and then GET READY TO LAUGH.

message from the barber

i really need to learn to say no to giving everyone and their brother my email address.

here's a message from the barber who cut my hair the other day...

Hi Ashley, how are you doing? This is Simon, the barber man who trimmed your hair of recent. Hope all is well in Gulu. I am really looking so much to see you so soon if it is really possible because that would really be my joy. I so much liked you from the other time and it was really my honor to chart with you and realizing how interesting it is to chart with you, it would be my pleasure to share this moment with you again. Have a nice time, God bless you. Looking forward to seeing you soon.

this moment....? ALL HE DID WAS CUT MY HAIR!?!?!?

shower

OMG i get to take a REAL shower today. not only is it a real shower, but it's a shower that doesn't hang over the same hole that i do my other business in. i've never been so excited in my life. 2 of the girls on my program are working at an orphanage that's about a 20 minute boda ride from my hotel. they get to live in a guest house that has (i'm going to try not to throw up with envy as a type this list): a shower, WIRELESS INTERNET, a toilet, WIRELESS INTERNET, a fridge, a microwave, WIRELESS INTERNET, a tv with a dvd player, WIRELESS INTERNET, a stove, and i'm sure lots of other little treasures that i haven't even encountered yet. today's the first day i've been here and i think i've recovered like 90% of my sanity already and i've only been here for half an hour. did i mention they have wireless internet? like, they can LAY IN THEIR BEDS WHILE SURFING THE INTERNET. that idea has become so foreign to me i can barely comprehend it.

so i'm going to take a shower. my first real shower since i've been here. at the hotel the rest of us are staying in, there's just a bunch of stalls that are dual bathrooms/bathing areas. so there's the pit latrine in the middle where you squat to do your business (i swear, i'm going to have thighs of steel by the time i come home), and then every guest is given a little basin for bathing, which you fill with water, bring into the stall, and try to be as coordinated as possible in splashing water on yourself from the basin. FUN. did i mention you're squatting over the pit latrine as you're bathing? did i mention that you're often also squatting in the stuff that has overflowed out of the pit latrine, or that never quite made it into the pit latrine to begin with?

also the other day i filled up an empty water bottle with the (unboiled) bathing water to dump on my head and then i brought that water bottle back to my room and then a few hours later i was eating a sandwich and absentmindedly reached down and picked up that water bottle and DRAINED IT. not only did i survive, but no poopies either! though there's probs a parasite lurking in there somewhere. (jk, mom)

the other day i finally got my haircut in a REAL ugandan barbershop! since i've been here i've been using my homestay family's clippers, but obvs i'm not with them anymore, and i was getting desperate. so there's places here labeled "beauty shop" and places labeled "barbershop" and some that are both. i decided to try the beauty shop first, because it scared me less. so i walk up to this group of women sitting outside of the shop and they all stare at me the entire time i'm walking up and then i'm like, "um....can you....cut my hair?" and they all burst out laughing and say no, they can't. i'm like, "don't you use....clippers?" and they're like, "they're special clippers, they won't work for you, go down to that barbershop over there and they'll do it." so off i go. i walk into the barbershop and there's about 5 men just chilling there, and i ask if they can cut my hair, and they're like, sure, sit down, like it's no big deal at all. (granted, there was a STRONG scent of alcohol filling the room....) so i sit for about 45 minutes waiting for i don't know what, and finally the guy's like, "you sit there", and i sit, and he does the most METICULOUS job cutting my hair EVER. every once in awhile i'd see the reflection in the mirror of somebody passing by outside and stopping to do a double take. but man my hair feels good now and like 3 people stopped me on my way home to tell me i looked "smart."

what else?

OH so i met with the american woman at unfpa the other morning. she was cool. (she's from baltimore, ellie!) then that night i went to a bar (it was called "da pub") with my friends and SHE WAS THERE and she was drunk and smoking and dancing and it was like "WHOA people at the UN aren't allowed to do things like that!" apparently there was a wedding reception being held at the bar for an american woman and ugandan man who'd just gotten married. it was muzungu central, and like 95% of the muzungus were invisible children interns. LAME.

what else?

i went to the field the other day with empowering hands. we went to ajulu, which is a gulu sub-county where there used to be an IDP camp. actually, the camp is still there and people are still living in it, but a while ago (i can't remember when) the government declared that all camps were officially closed, so the people there are expected to go home and they're not receiving anymore support. anyway, the empowering hands women were giving a training on gender relations, so i sat there with my translator translating VERY sporadically, and then i got to interview 5 people. it was scary as hell but cool and interesting. everywhere i go people keep asking me what exactly i plan to do with the research i'm doing (a totez appropriate question) and it's getting overwhelming. i mean, technically, this report is "for academic purposes only," and i'm getting the sense, as i realize how impossible it is to do anything like this in only 6 weeks, that the practicum is more for getting the experience of conducting research than for producing great research. i just know that these people have so many muzungus coming in asking them probing questions and writing down the answers in their little notebooks and then just disappearing. i don't want to be that person.

SO WHAT'D EVERYBODY DO FOR HALLOWEEN????!?!?!?

p.s. sarah b., paredes is intimidating. don't downplay the guts it takes to go talk to that big scary man.

p.p.s. ANNA WEATHERFORD have you moved into an apartment????????????

gulu [i can't think of a more creative title, sorry]

hey all. so here i am, in gulu. it's similar and yet completely different from kampala. most noticeably, it's QUIET here. which is nice. it's a desert region, so it's very dry and there's not much greenery, unlike in and around kampala. the town is very small; only a few main roads and very few taxis, so you pretty much have to take boda bodas everywhere. SO FUN. and don't worry, we're only forbidden to take them in kampala. there are hardly any cars here and the streets are so empty that it's very unlikely that you could get into an accident. everything is very dusty and run-down and dilapidated. it feels post-conflict here. i'm also having a similar reaction that i had in rwanda...i keep looking around and imagining things everywhere. not a whole lot happened here in the town during the conflict; it mostly happened in the surrounding rural areas. but, as i'm sure many of you know, every night for the 20+ years that the LRA terrorized these people (the people who live in Gulu are Acholi), thousands and thousands of children would walk miles from the surrounding areas every night to sleep on the verandas of shops and such in Gulu town so as not to be abducted by the LRA in the middle of the night. i keep looking at the verandas and imagining hundreds of children sleeping on them.

things are going well, logistically speaking. i'm feeling totally better health-wise, i'm living in a decent hotel with 3 people i actually like, and i've gotten going on my research right away. but god, i never realized how EXHAUSTING research is. it makes me have SO MUCH respect for people who do this for a living, who spend years producing entire books and not just dinky 40-page reports. it's basically just a lot of going from place to place to place, talking to random people, getting doors slammed in your face, getting lost, feeling like an idiot. it turns out that (a) the woman who was supposed to be my KEY contact can't help me at all because her kid is sick and (b) the organization i was going to intern with is not really....what i expected....so it looks like i'm not going to be interning anywhere, but rather will be moving from org to org doing interviews. however, that organization, empowering hands, has agreed to take me into the field with them a few times and help me arrange some interviews, which should be intense. they're engaged in facilitating community dialogue and counselling to help formerly abducted people to reintegrate into their communities. it should be intense.

yesterday, the woman who agreed to be my advisor (thank GOD....most people don't even have advisors yet) suggested that i talk to a woman at UNFPA named mollie fair (how much more american can you get?). so i called her last night and OMG it was SO WONDERFUL dealing with an american on the phone again. she was SO EFFICIENT and so on her shit and i could understand every word she said and i could hear her writing our appointment in her planner and i KNOW she'll actually be there when i show up on friday morning. i really like uganda, but i don't know if i could handle their....inefficiency?....in the long-run. i've just been too socialized to be obsessed with time and promptness and reliability and efficiency.

what else? we've been going to this restaurant every night and the woman who cooks and runs it has started asking us when we finish eating what we want her to prepare for us for the next night. it's AWESOME. whenever you go to a restaurant here, it usually takes forever to get your food because they don't really have any preservation system, so they go out and buy the food and make it right after you order it. totez fresh, but totez TAKES FOREVER. but yeah. she's made us some yummy stuff and she's gonna make us some kind of curried chicken and rice thing tonight. YES.

okay gotta go. love ya'll!

jk

i lied, i'm not going to gulu until monday. yesterday i started feeling like total crap again and went back to the clinic just to get it checked out. everything's fine, i think i just didn't let myself rest enough while i was recovering. (kind of ironic after i did that long post about how strong my body is...) so i'm taking the weekend off and chilling out and officially going to gulu on monday.

i'm at the really american-ish mall in kampala, garden city. SO MANY MUZUNGUS WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM?!?!?! i spent way too much money on a hamburger but OH MY GOD IT WAS SO GOOD i practically licked my plate. ALSO they had HEINZ at the restaurant!!! ali you would hate it here -- they use this stuff called top-up as ketchup, but really it's just liquidy tomato paste.

yesterday while i was waiting for my results at the clinic, i was talking to one of the S.I.T. assistants, helen, who had brought me there. she was asking me what my plans were for the weekend, and i told her i was just gonna rest and recover. she asked if i was going to watch movies, and i said maybe. then i told her about this awesome video store i found in one of the markets that sells REALLY good quality burned dvds for only 5000 shillings. apparently the doctor had been listening to our conversation, so he came over and asked me what kind of movies i like. i was like...ummm....independent films? romantic comedies? now keep in mind that this is your typical machismo middle-aged ugandan man, and a doctor to boot. and he asks me if i like, wait for it...................FATHER OF THE BRIDE.

OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS COUNTRY. finally i've found people who share my superior taste in movies and music (i.e. celine dion). the doctor and i proceeded to have a great conversation about the merits of father of the bride 1 vs. 2. and then i found out i didn't have malaria anymore. all in all it was a decent day.

gulu bound

hey hey hey.

first of all, a belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA. i couldn't post yesterday cause i was out and about all day, but i know you wouldn't have read it anyways since you're out wandering in the woods somewhere.

i'm pretty much recovered malaria-wise. i still feel pretty fatigued, but i think it's because i didn't really rest enough and i've heard the meds really wipe you out. though i've come to the conclusion that i have a pretty badass strong body, because i had the most mild malaria ever, and i had no side effects from the meds (almost everyone else has been debilitated by nausea and stomach cramps from the meds). [if you need further proof of said bodily strength, let me remind you of that one time i fell off of a three story building.]

i'm heading to gulu tomorrow morning. i'll be staying in a hotel with 3 other girls. it's only 10,000 shillings a night (about $5) and includes breakfast, so it'll be good. i'm going to be working through an organization called Empowering Hands, which is (so i hear) a coalition of smaller women's organizations based in Gulu. i'm going to be researching the extent to which security council resolution 1325 has been implemented in the peace, recovery, and development plan (PRDP) for northern uganda. from the people i've talked to in kampala, consensus seems to be that it hasn't been implemented at all and that the prdp is totally gender-blind. we'll see what i find.

i want to give you a glimpse into our dinner table conversation last night because it was AWESOME/AWKWARD. the characters in this scene are me (obvs), mommy, jethro, and andrew the carpenter. (i'm told he's a carpenter and he claims to be building chairs and a wardrobe for my mother, but i've yet to see said chairs or wardrobe and everytime i see him he's either sleeping on the couch or watching tv, so....) this was pretty much the first time we've eaten at the dinner table since i've been here, because we're always crowded around the tv watching TERRIBLE (but addicting, i'll admit) spanish soap operas dubbed in english. i think the reason we ate at the table was because andrew prepared the beans for dinner....? so here's the conversation: (the parts in brackets are the things i was thinking but not saying aloud)

Jethro: i'm not eating this matooke because it looks like poop.
Ashley: [trying SO DAMN HARD not to laugh hysterically]
Mommy: JETHRO! how dare you say such a thing at the dinner table! if you said that in the village you would be caned! [damn]
Jethro: [looking at Ashley because he knows he said something funny and Ashley wants to laugh]
Mommy: Ashley, what would have happened if you had said something like that at the dinner table when you were growing up?
Ashley: um....we were pretty....free.....to talk about what we wanted at the dinner table [did we ever talk about anything BUT poop at the dinner table...?]
Mommy: but what would your parents have said?
Ashley: um. [dad was usually the instigator and encourager of poop talk at the dinner table....]
Andrew: [staring at Ashley in confusion? judgement? disgust?]
Mommy: [says something to Andrew in Luganda; i hear the word "Americans" in there a few times] we would never want to be as free as you Americans.
Ashley: okay.

btw, whenever jethro is doing something bad, my mother always tells him he's turning into an american. i don't think she has a very good opinion of americans.

the big M

i have malaria.

don't freak out, it's no big deal. it just feels like the flu, and i'm on lots of meds. though i hear the meds make you feel worse than the malaria itself does, so i'm really excited about that.

so far more than half of the students on the program have gotten malaria. it's about half and half in terms of the kids taking doxycycline and the kids taking malarone prophylaxis. for awhile, as everyone was getting really sick, they were getting mad at us and blaming us for not taking our prophylaxis, not using our mosquito nets, not wearing bug repellent, etc. but then they talked to the academic directors for the program in northern uganda, and it turns out they've been having an unusual amount of malaria cases, too. the doc is thinking that maybe it's a stronger strain of malaria going around and our prophylaxis meds aren't potent enough to resist it. i dunno.

i really thought i was going to make it through without getting malaria, because i NEVER get bit. in fact, just the other night i was giving my mother this long speech about how great i am (or how unappealing insects find my blood...?) for not getting bit. god hates me.

jawlines, goats, obama, etc.

I wish I could find you all a picture of ronnie, too. He’s not bad looking, and he’s not aggressive in person at all (unlike in his emails).

So as of last night, it looks like I am, indeed, going to Gulu for my practicum. I’m excited but kind of sad….i was looking forward to hangin with my fam for awhile longer. But it will be good to experience a different part of the country. I’m still not sure what organization I’m going to be working with, but I should find out Monday. “Should” being the operative word here, because, as everybody says, T.I.A. [this is Africa] and nothing ever happens the way you expect it to. Alas.

Because I don’t have any particularly big story to tell, and because I don’t have the energy to put my random anecdotes together into one coherent story, I’m just going to write a bunch of random blurbs/comments/observations/experiences. Yay!

-people here have THE MOST impeccable bone structure. I swear to god, I don’t think I’ve come across a single person who didn’t have a jawline that could cut metal. Totez jealz.

-it’s HILARIOUS to watch people negotiate here. If two people are arguing over the price of something, they’ll just kind of stand there and not look at each other for longer than you could think possible, and somehow by doing that things get worked out. It’s SO confusing to watch. I will never, ever be good at negotiating. It’s just not in my blood. Not only because I’ve been conditioned to accept that everything has a fixed price, but also because, when I’m arguing over the price of a pineapple that costs 3000 shillings (about $1.50), I can’t help but think, “um, idiot, that’s $1.50. they obviously need that more than you do.” Also, there’s the muzungu price for everything, which means that even if I negotiate to get the price down, it’s still likely a helluva lot higher than a Ugandan would pay. Oh well.

-every once in awhile, I’ll pass by someone and make eye contact, and all they’ll say is, “obama.” That’s it. No facial expression, so comments, no expectation of a response. Just, “obama.”

-people here have this habit (which I’ve adopted wholeheartedly, so don’t hate me when I come home) of doing this half grunt half “hmm” sound when they’re listening to you. I do it ALL the time now. It’s so great, because you know they’re listening to you but they’re not actually interrupting you like so many muzungus love to do (myself included).

-hand-holding here is SO different than in the u.s., and it really threw me off when I first got here. People of the same sex hold hands all the time (like, ALL the time) and it has NO sexual connotations whatsoever. It’s just a friend thing. (btw, the gayz can get LIFE in prison here). Also people have such different attitudes toward personal space. Sometimes you’ll see 4 people crammed onto one boda-boda (motorbike taxi thing), and I’ve been in taxi buses with 20 people shoved in (they’re only meant to carry 14, and even that’s pushing it).
-when we were in the rural homestay, our father took us all around his village to see schools, orphanages, microfinance meetings, village chairpersons, etc. one day we visited a primary school, and our father left to do other stuff while we were talking to the headmistress. When we finished we decided to head home cause we didn’t know where he was. It was lunchtime when we were leaving, so there were like 500 kids playing on the front lawn. As we left, they ALL started following us home, like literally, down the street and into our family’s compound. We didn’t speak the language and we had NO idea what to do, so it was just 2 muzungus with a herd of 500 kids streaming along behind us. SO AWK. Finally when we got home our little brother came out with a stick and chased them all away.

-we did indeed end up buying goats for our rural homestay families. Some people got chickens. We had to tie them up ourselves and then some got tied to the tops of the vans and some got shoved under the seats inside the vans. So during the drive to our homestays I kept feeling a goat licking my ankle. EW. Apparently one of the goats fell off the roof of the other van. I know it’s not funny, but LOLOLOLOL. Also, I convinced my partner to let us name our goat Leonard. Even though it was a girl. And she agreed. And Leonard is not going to be killed and eaten, but rather is going to be bred to make a bunch of baby Leonards. Yay!

-today I did laundry again and it took me 3 hours and I have sores all over my hands and jethro sat there the whole time with a running commentary about how I was doing everything wrong and wasn’t squatting properly for a girl, etc. etc. he’s going to his auntie’s house until tomorrow, and I’m not gonna lie, it’ll be nice to have a break from the kid.

-also EMILY the other day I showed jethro a picture of miley (don’t ask me why I have a picture of that roundhead on my computer) and the FIRST question he asked about her was what color her poop is. LOL.

latest installment of the ronnie saga

keep in mind that i never responded to his last email. also keep in mind that i told him i was ENGAGED.

----

Am really sorry not to attend to you some times but it because of the trust the the Boss has in me where by i move in every department in the the Hotel.
While i love to sit with you and have fun together but that's the only problem hence i care for you a lot.
Who gave you that name Ashley, it sound great in my minds.But still we can chat on Phone +256-772-467193
Take care
Ronnie

----

sit and have fun together...? our most adventurous interaction has consisted of me asking him for a soda..... annie, there's his number -- go for it girl!

chaos

everything is crazy. it will work out, right?

i know i still haven't written about the eastern excursion. i'm sorry but i think i'm just going to have to let it go. it's overwhelming me for some reason and if i keep telling myself i need to write about it i'll just never end up posting again. maybe someday i'll have a burst of inspiration and then i'll write about it. and i also know that i haven't properly thanked you all individually for what you sent me. all i can say right now is MY GOD THANK YOU. when i go home stressed at night i just look through it and it makes me feel so much better (and sometimes worse, but i a good way, y'know?)

our final practicum proposals are supposed to be due tomorrow. mine pretty much changes every 5 minutes, so there's no way in HELL i'm going to have it finalized by tomorrow. these people are CRAZY. in the last 24 hours i thought i was going to be living in kampala, then it changed to teso, then it changed to gulu, and now it's at the point where i might just be going all over the damn country not actually working with any specific organization at all.

the internet's not really working anywhere so i'm at an internet cafe. i should probs be doing more productive things. also i've kind of screwed myself over in terms of the internet at the hotel near my house. this is kind of a funny story. maybe. there's this waiter who works there who's always really welcoming and friendly to me. he's probs in his late 20s or something. finally the other day he asked me my name (you can see where this is leading) and then my email address. i decided an email address is no big deal, it's not a phone number or anything, right? so i gave it to him. within FIVE MINUTES he had friended me on facebook, sent me 2 facebook messages, 1 email, and tried to connect with me through yahoo chat.

this is what his email said: (this might be mean of me to post this, but oh well)
Am called Ronnie ,
It's a surprise that to email you know After long challenges of getting your E mail.
how is life in Uganda for you i hope you are enjoying it.
.About me, Am single, staying alone,Understanding and greater black guy.I liked your character.you look a caring lady.
Ashley tell me more about your self dear
Take care

i have no idea what he's talking about re: the "long challenges" of getting my email. so i emailed him back and told him i'm engaged (from what i've gathered, ugandan men tend not to believe there's anything between "single" and "married"....everything else appears to be negotiable for them). this is what he wrote back:

Hi Farnan,
Am so happy for you that you are looking at some one. But on another side am sorry for myself because Am single and Am looking for some one who will be my everything.And if you were single it's could be great for me. but still i promise to be greater friend of yours.
while my dream is to marry someone outside Africa and i will fast and pray for that.
I liked your ways, life and you look cool person to me
Take care
ronnie


should i feel really bad for posting this? i'm in a mood, so i'm doing it anyway.

okay my internet sesh is about to expire. talk to ya'll later.

p.s. ANNA OMG TELL ME IT ISN'T SO!!!!!!! coffee depot is finally going down?????? i seriously teared up when i read that. aghhhhhhh where am i going to spend every second of my life when i get home?!?!?!?

nvuddeyo!

"kulikayo" means "welcome back" in luganda, and the response is "nvuddeyo" which means "i have returned."

so i'm back from the east. but before i can even begin writing about what went down there i have to say

OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I GOT MY PACKAGE TODAY I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY OH MY GOD.

seriously. i got it and opened it and the first thing i saw was the j.crew catalogue and i couldn't even go on. i had to set it aside and wait a few hours. literally. and then i sort of began rummaging through it and as soon as i started getting a sense for how intense it was i almost started to cry so i set it aside again. i'm afraid i'm never going to actually be able to look at everything without wanting to die. it's so amazing i feel guilty. i don't deserve you all, but for some reason you seem to like me so i'm just gonna go with it. all of my muzungu peers were SO JEALOUS of me this morning. i think they're all living vicariously. i looked through the jcrew catalogue like 10 times with 10 different people and it's so covered in drool it's falling apart. god you guys are amazing. clearly i don't have the words to thank you properly. hopefully i'll be able to get through it tonight and then tomorrow maybe i can fully acknowledge how damn lucky i am. mama, i did see what you included for jethro....you are so cool. he's going to die. i already told him that everyone back home wants me to bring him back with me, and i think he's down.

seriously i'm so overwhelmed by the package that i can't make this a proper post. i'm just going to post some pictures and that will have to suffice for now, k?

first, here are some pictures of my living room and dining room and bedroom (complete with mosquito net) in kampala:




here are pictures of the eastern excursion/rural homestay

(1) the house i stayed in with my partner and 2 of my sisters (we didn't stay in one of the grass huts because it was pouring rain the whole time and they said the huts leaked)

(2) our bathroom (there's a hole in the corner where you squat and pee but the ground isn't slanted enough so it's basically impossible to pee without peeing all over your feet. there's a pit latrine outside for things other than peeing, but you damn well better not have to poop during the night because it's pitch black and likely pouring and you have to walk across the compound to get to the pit latrine). this is also where you bathe. 1-stop-shopping!

(3) our sitting room

(4) the grass huts that the rest of the family sleeps in

(5) family portrait

(6) 1 of my 15 rural siblings, faye -- the cutest little girl EVER (she also had ringworm, i think, which made me sad)

(7) my rural homestay partner, stephanie, and i

(8) our typical dinner (unfortunately they don't eat much matooke in the east, so i'll have to take a photo for you here in kampala where we eat it at EVERY MEAL. i've actually come to really like it and i missed it last week)

(9) the obama calendar our rural homestay family had hanging in their sitting room

too cool for school

right?

that's jethro on top and his best friend bona below and for some reason my alarm clock is being used as a phone. also, note jethro's AWESOME barbie sweatshirt.

never again will i take a washing machine for granted

we were supposed to go visit zerrida today at her school but apparently there's been a big swine flu outbreak there so they cancelled the visitation and have all the students quarantined in the school. yikes.

i think i've physically exerted myself more today than i ever have in my life (or at least since i've been here). i will NEVER, NEVER AGAIN take for granted a washing machine, dishwasher, or mop. dear lord. these people are amazing. so first i did laundry. doing laundry entails putting your clothes in these little basins, filling them with water from these huge jugs (they call them jerry cans), rubbing the clothes with a bar of soap, and them rubbing the clothes together vigorously for what feels like eternity until they're clean. luckily my family has a water tank thing in the backyard, because most people have to walk like 1/2 a mile to fetch the water before they can even begin doing the washing. the past few saturdays, i've started doing my laundry on my own, but something has always come up to pull me away from it so the housegirl or my mother have finished (or maybe my mother has come up with an excuse to get me away from the laundry, both because she feels bad for what a lame-o i am and because she knows she can do it 1,000 times faster than i ever could). today, however, it was all me (save for the few times my mother came up and watched me, laughing hysterically). i probably did a really half-ass job, but i don't really care too much (i know ya'll are familiar with my general disinterest in cleanliness and hygeine). one girl came into school a few weeks ago with her hands literally rubbed raw from how hard she scrubbed her clothes. there was no way i was about to work THAT hard on ANYTHING, much less clothes that are going to get FILTHY again the second i leave the house.

then, once i finished the laundry, my mother suggested that i mop my room. let me tell you that "mopping" is a VERY relative term. mopping here consists of a wet rag that you wipe across the floor, over and over and over again. it was EXHAUSTING. mom -- i told my mother about how, at home, whenever you ask me to do chores and i come back and tell you i've finished, you always ask me whether i've done it according to my standards or yours, because i'm lazy and do everything half-ass. she laughed a lot. (and probably concurred)

but really, the hardest thing about all of this wasn't even the physical labor required, but the amount of squatting and bending over that everything entailed. people here squat SO MUCH, and make it look so easy, and IT'S NOT. i squat for like 30 seconds and already i have cramps in my feet and calves. sometimes i can hardly finish my bath because i get so tired from the damn squatting.

i have a 6-8 page paper do tomorrow that i haven't started. uganda isn't exactly bringing out my academic seriousness/dedication. i should be working on it now, because the power has been out at my house all day (and all day yesterday) so i haven't been able to charge my laptop, so i'm at the hotel down the street and have limited time and need to be using it wisely. instead i'm blogging.

tomorrow we're leaving for the eastern excursion. we'll be spending roughly 3 days with a rural village family, and it's going to be HARDCORE and i'm SO EXCITED. no running water, no electricity, and little to no english or luganda spoken. we've been paired up for our homestays, and i'm satisfied with the girl i'm paired with, and we're going to bring a goat as a gift for our family. YES. they're buying the goats for us in kampala and they're going to strap them to the roof of the van for the drive to the east. i'm trying not to think about that.

my practicum is starting to come together and i'm feeling so much better about it. i'm going to be doing my research on the first topic i wrote about a few posts ago -- about UN security council resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security (the resolution that PeaceWomen Project, where i interned in NY, was involved in advocating for and implementing) and how it has or has not been implemented in the northern ugandan peace processes. it looks like i'm going to be staying in kampala for most of it and will be going up north to gulu for a week or so near the end. i think i'm going to ask my homestay mother if i can continue staying with her. i'm pretty sure she'll say yes, but i'm TOTEZ nervous about having that conversation, especially because the issue of monetary compensation will have to be addressed at some point and it's gonna be AWK (i think the s.i.t. homestay coordinator lady will help out with that, though). i think my mother and i have gotten a lot closer/have kind of become friends because last week i had to do a family tree assignment and the issue of her divorce came up while i was interviewing her and we had a great convo about her life and how AMAZING she is. (you're more amazing, mama, DUH)

okay i gotta do my paper now. btw i ended up getting the lion king yesterday and so far jethro has watched "finding nemo" THREE times and "lion king" TWICE. i love this kid.

uncle dane -- i didn't hear or see anything about that slum being turned into a "modern eco-city"...that's so strange and interesting and possibly scary. i'll definitely keep my ears and eyes peeled...

bobby -- i don't know if you're still reading this but the other day we were talking to this semi-powerful chairman guy and i couldn't concentrate on a word he was saying because he was wearing a "home improvement" windbreaker and it was AMAZING and hilarious. i thought of you.

snichols -- i've got my fingers crossed! but i want a mountain day toooooooooo!!

jas -- i'm sorry, love, but i'm out of king for good. you're gonna have to trek out of quad-world if you wanna see me. ;-)

liz -- have your fingers un-frozen enough to play your celtic guitar? :)

sarah b -- "moonlight sonata" kills me and i can't stop listening to it

annie -- the other day i went into this really american-ish supermarket and there was SO MUCH toothpaste and it made me think of that one time in cvs. i laughed like the crazy muzungu i am and of course everyone was looking at me.

nana -- i do remember you mentioning those contacts before. i don't know that i'll make it to arua, but if you want to email me sherry's contact info i might be able to chat with her!

auntie c -- when did you learn luganda?!?!?!? can you help me???

ellen -- our herstory WILL continue DUH. p.s. a little bird told me that you had a certain london-friend visiting you at the beginning of the semester. we have a lot to catch up on, honey.

j -- poop scoop

drinkin with the boys

I can’t BELIEVE it’s already October. We’ve been here almost 6 weeks already…SO crazy. Though I can’t think too much about the fact that it’s October, because then it makes me remember that I’m missing Fall, and then I feel homesick. I hear that it’s already freezing in Noho, though, so maybe I’m not missing it too too much.

So we’re back at the resource center today and done with our slum visits. It’s been quite an eye-opening week. On Wednesday we visited Naguru slum, where a lot of refugees from Northern Uganda have ended up. Apparently this particular slum is known for its waragi, the locally-brewed alcohol made from either millet or maize flour. We got to see the area where the women (yes, it’s the women who do ALL the work almost everywhere) brew the alcohol. It almost made me throw up just watching them – this work is SO labor intensive and these women are so strong and they can pretty much touch fire. (my homestay mother likes to say that African women are fire- and heat-resistant, and I think I believe her) Then the man leading us around (he’s called a Key Community Volunteer [KCV] and he volunteers with Slum Aid Project; their structure is so amazing and effective because the volunteers live in the slums, so they actually know what’s going on and how to best solve problems from within the communities) decides it might be interesting to go into the “bar” right next to where the women are brewing the alcohol so we can talk them. It’s actually just a little hut with about 10 (very drunk) men crammed around a tiny table downing this stuff that has, like, 95% alcohol content. (they tried to get us to try it, and some people did, but even with the glass like 3 feet from my nose my lungs were already on fire, so I think I would have choked to death if I had actually had a drink.) So all of us muzungu girls (and one muzungu boy) file in and squeeze amongst these men and our leader explains that we’re there to study gender relations and domestic violence. You can imagine what kind of reaction THAT elicited. So then the men start yelling about how Museveni has overempowered women and women don’t know their place anymore, etc. etc. etc. Half the time we couldn’t tell what was going on, but they were passionate and angry enough that I managed to get the gist of it. And what was so perfect was the fact that there was a window (or hole in the wall, to be more accurate) across from where I was sitting that gave me a picture-perfect view of the women outside working their ASSES off while these men sat inside, complaining about how women have too much power and drinking the liquor that the women are making with the money that the women have earned from selling the liquor elsewhere. Beautiful.

Yesterday I came across a video store and decided to try buying a cartoon to watch on my laptop with Jethro. He’s been asking me since I first brought my laptop home if I had any movies. The only movies I brought are “V for Vendetta,” “Lost in Translation,” and “Amelie.” Finally a few days ago I figured “V for Vendetta” might work for the time being (I think you’ll agree with me that that was my best option, right?). Let me preface this story with a little info about Jethro’s obsession with violence. I don’t know if this is something all 7-year-olds go through or if it’s just Jethro, but he is OBSESSED with violence. EVERYTHING he picks up becomes a gun. He even bites his bread into the shape of a gun so he can pretend to shoot people with it. Pen caps, stuffed animals, table tennis paddles – everything is a weapon. It’s really disturbing. He mentioned something about wanting a water gun a few weeks ago and I was considering getting one for him as a goodbye gift, but HELL NO. So I put on “V for Vendetta” and let him look at the scene selection menu to see if it looks interesting. From just looking at those tiny thumbnails that appear on the scene selection menu, he was able to pick out precisely the scenes that contained the most violence, and that’s ALL he was interested in watching. So when I went to the video store and decided to buy “Finding Nemo”, I was a little nervous that it wasn’t going to be quite….exciting enough for Jethro. But he loved it, thank god. He even laughed at a few parts, though I was laughing way harder than he was through the whole thing. It was really uplifting and I think it made me feel a little less homesick. (although yesterday I was in the taxi and a Backstreet Boys song came on the radio and THAT made me feel homesick. Go figure, huh?) I think I’m going to buy “Lion King” next to watch with him, though more for my sake than his, to be honest.

Okay we’re supposed to be having some sort of briefing about the eastern excursion, though one of our academic directors has malaria and the other’s daughter just got out of surgery for appendicitis, so I don’t know who’s going to be conducting this debriefing….

P.S. seriously I love you all so, so much and I hope you know how happy your comments make me. They’re the first thing I look at in the morning when I get to the resource center. It takes 700 hours for the page to load, but dammit I wait it out.

the slums

This week is turning out to be about on par with the Rwanda week in terms of intensity. I feel like they slammed everything into one day yesterday and I’m still reeling. Last week and this week we split up into four different modules (human rights; grassroots development; public health; and gender and development – I’ll give you one guess as to which one I’m in….). Last week we had lectures, and this week we’re out in the field. Instead of moving from NGO to NGO every day, the gender and development group is sticking with the Slum Aid Project (SAP) all week. SAP assists people living in the slums of Kampala, especially women and children who are the victims of domestic violence (DV) and/or have HIV/AIDS. So every day we’re going to different slums. Yesterday we went to Kisenye, which according to my mother is one of the worse slums in Kampala. We went to the homes of a few refugee women affected by DV, which was incredibly hard, of course. Then we went to one of the few areas of this particular slum where the prostitutes live and we got to talk to them and ask them questions and it was so sad and interesting and conflicting. Right when we sat down to talk to them, it started pouring rain, so they took us to this building where the prostitutes work and we shoved into this tiny hallway that was only lit by a single green lightbulb and the rain was pounding on the tin roof and we continued talking to them and it was SO strange and surreal. Then we were supposed to talk to children who were victims of DV but it didn’t end up happening, so we moved on to the most dreaded/anticipated activity of the day: condom distribution in the slums. SAP distributes condoms for free to all the slums in the city, so we came armed with boxes and boxes full and walked around handing them out. Apparently they get all their condoms from USAID, so it was kind of funny walking around with boxes that said, in huge letters on the front, “From the American People.”

Snichols/anyone else who cares: these are my potential research ideas:

(a) this is the idea I came in with, and I think I’m going to end up sticking with it. Drawing on my work at PeaceWomen Project, I want to study how women are influencing the peace negotiations in Northern Uganda. Obviously it’s going to have to be more specific than that, but that’s the gist of it for now.

(b) this is the idea I was thinking of switching to the other day, but now I’m thinking of dropping it. During one of our gender lectures, the professor mentioned that it’s been notes that cases of DV have increased in the North in response to western NGOs that are targeting only women for development/reconstruction programs (especially microfinance) and leaving the men unemployed/idle. I thought that could be pretty interesting to look into.

(c) this idea will of course be incorporate in anything I study: how Leonard Cohen’s music will bring peace to the world.

p.s. HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHNNY!!!!!!

p.p.s. a few nights ago I kept hearing scratching in my suitcase but I kept trying to ignore it because I didn’t want to deal with what was in there and finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I made my mom come and look cause I’m a huge wussy and it was RAT.

p.p.p.s. i have to fill out a housing form for where i want to live in the spring. suggestions????!?!?! obvs i'm gonna put parsons/pannex as my first choice, but what else should i put?