He turned to me as if to say, Hurry boy! I'ts waiting there for you!!!!

                These weeks since Zanzibar have been pretty wild.  My organization ran out of money and couldn't afford to pay my rent anymore.   The meeting in which I was informed of this was only the second time seeing my supervisor in person.  It was short and professional and ended with no bad feelings.  As I walked away from the Turkish restaurant (amazing somosa) I experienced a nice serotonin boost at the new freedom I had just acquired.  It felt like getting out of a shitty relationship.  That feeling was quickly followed by an OMF’ingGsh moment at the realization that I was going to be homeless in 8 days.  Truth be told, I was absolutely ready to move onto something else.  Relief was really what I felt more than anything else; my heart was really not into artivists 4 life. 

                First order of business was to call up Lando (aka Alana Sutter) and ask her if I could move into her place with all my furniture and everything I own to which she was very gracious in permitting.  I had been fairly sure that I was going to be put in this position for a while now, so I was keeping an eye out for good site replacements and I had found one at the place I go to hike in Mabira National Forest.  I wanted to have as much say in my new site as I could, so I went to check it out MAFICO (Mabira Forest Integrated Community Organization) to see if this place was a possibility.  It turns out that they were planning to apply for a Peace Corps Volunteer to live and work at their new camp site.  The campsite is 6 miles from their office through beautiful sugar cane fields near a small village called Wasswa.  They use the proceeds from the camp site to fund conservation and environmental education projects.  So they need a volunteer to help make the camp site more profitable and work on the other projects as well.  The camp site has solar power and a rain catching water tank and a small room in the back of their reception building for a volunteer!  It’s a 30 minute hike to Griffin Falls and has the trail heads of an extensive trail system deep into Mabira Forest.  They do all kinds of guided hikes and can take people all over the country for gorilla tracking or birding or whatever and it’s pretty inexpensive.  I think it could be marketed to young Muzungu travelers from all over.    As you can imagine it is pretty much a Katumba paradise.  Knowing that this site might be the outcome of this whole stressful situation really has made the whole process much more bearable.  So, if this all pans out, I’m going to be getting a lot more use out of my bike (and getting my ass in shape) and living in the forest hanging out with European travelers.  Peace Corps is visiting the site today to see if it can work.

                If it does work out, I’ll still have a couple weeks to kill before I can move there which means I can travel around Uganda and see my Peace Corps friends.

My room would be on the back side of this building

Update:  Since I started writing this blog, I’ve gone to eat lunch with Alana where I randomly ran into my Project Manager, Jenny, who was on her way back from checking out my site and she informed me that it’s goin’ down!  I’ve got 2 weeks of complete, unadulterated freedom and then I move into the jungle and start volunteering with MAFICO.  THIS is what I wanted out of Peace Corps!  I can’t wait to get out of the rat race in this city and get back to my roots in the forest.  Goat and sugar can juice projects. OMF’ingGsh!

Tanzania

What an adventure it was! I had the most amazing time in Tanzania!  Most of the planning that made it such an awesome adventure was done by a few awesome people (Alana and Rebecca mostly) and I thank them sincerely.  We started out with a whole cluster-cuss of dealing with Rwanda Air (who ended up losing my bag on the way back).  They bumped back the time of our flight by some 4 hours and didn’t think to let us know that.  It was a mess, but we got through it and only arrived in Dar es Salaam a couple hours later than we had planned.  We stayed at this amazing little place right on the Indian Ocean in these little Bandas on the beach.  It was awesome and the staff were all really chill folks.  The only problem was that their wells had been almost completely infiltrated by salt water, so there was no rinsing that salt off which was.  So the pool was also salt and chlorine and that was kind of weird.  But the place was great and we made friends with other guests from all over the world.  These low budget lodging places are so much better than staying in a nice hotel because of the interesting, awesome people you meet.
  We has Christmas there and the staff put together a fantastic buffet.  The amazing food in Tanzania is really the thing that made me least excited to go back to Uganda.  Uganda is a little behind the times in using the spices that everyone else in East Africa uses to make their food delicious... resulting in non-deliciousness in Uganda. After my first meal back in Uganda, I almost regretted taking my taste buds on a vacation that made them a bunch of snobby, high nosed bitches.  But then again (to paraphrase my man Billy), better to have lobsterbated and lost than to never have lobsterbated at all.  Anyways, Christmas never really felt like Christmas.  I just don't think it could when it's 95 degrees and I'm drinking cold beers on a beach.  And I am absolutely okay with that.

  The day after Christmas, we hopped on a ferry (with AC!) and cruised to the island of Zanzibar.  The first 3 days in Dar were awesome, but Zanzibar was even cooler.  We landed in Stone Town which is this beautiful, Greek looking town where most of the roads are too narrow for cars.  We stayed about 45 minutes away on the east side of the island where the awesome beaches are.
   I didn't have a cell phone or a watch for this entire trip so the days really blurred together.  Having no sense of time and no means of communication allowed me to just go with the flow and see where the tides would take me.  One of these blurred together days, I went with my good buds, Mark, Kirk, David, Michelle and her brother Mike into stone town with the intention of going on one of these spice tours that I'd been hearing all kinds of awesome things about.  I never did end up doing that tour, but I think we had a far better time checking out Stone Town.  I had the worst public transit experience that I've yet had in Africa that morning, which almost resulted in me puking on all over some sweet, old ladies Burka.  We got into Stone Town and Kirk had somehow found a guide who was going to show us around.  The first thing he did was brought us to buy these fruits (very similar to coconuts) that we drank from and it totally cured my motion sickness/hangover.  It was at that point that I knew this guy was awesome and it was going to be a good day.  We asked him how much it costed to have him as our guide and he told us we could pay whatever we wanted.  That was a really amazing thing I saw in that country is how people don't expect to get paid for every nice thing they do.  I got so many free rides, even from taxi drivers, throughout the whole trip.  I hate to say it, but you would never see that in Uganda.

  Our guide, Sa'id, was the coolest.  He knew all the history, from Freddy Mercury's birthplace to the slave market, he was knew his stuff and the cool places to go.  We even checked out the Sultan's old bath house built in 1870 that had hot water.  It was really great and it ended with the most amazing street sea food market.  Cheap lobster and shark skewers, pizzas (calzone style) filled with sea food, octopus and this fresh sugar cane, lemon and ginger juice all with the freshest, most exotic spices and spicy mango salsa.  After filling our stomachs with sea food and our minds with the rich history and culture of the west coast of Zanzibar, we headed back to the beach for an awesome night with new and old friends.

  The place we stayed was a short walk from the beach, but cheaper than the big resorts on the beach.  With all the walking and swimming I did, I think I came back in better shape than when I left.  Peace Corps Volunteers from all over Africa were on this beach including about 20 from Uganda.  I don't know if I actually met an American that wasn't Peace Corps.  Lots of Germans and Swedes who were all awesome.  I met these German girls that were super awesome.  I spent a lot of time with them and hope to someday visit them in Germany or wherever their travels land them.  We spent new years together and, after dancing all night, ended up swimming in the ocean as the sun rose.  Probably the best New Years I've had.
  On the way home, Rwanda Air lost my bag and I was sure it was going to be a pain in the ass to get back. The customer service was non-existent when Alana was getting hung up on while trying to figure out our flight out of Uganda, but a saint of a man named Rogers (AKA Mr. Rogers because of his helpfulness and boundless altruism) was the one who had saved the day and gotten us to Dar only a few hours late (when our friends who had dealt with someone else from the same airlines had to wait another 2 days).  I was getting nowhere with the person I was talking to about getting my bag back, but Alana still had Mr. Rogers personal number.  So I call him up and within 5 minutes he's located my bag and got it on it's way to Kampala.  He even offered to get it on a bus to Mukono so it could be delivered to my house.  We both decided it was not worth tempting fate with Ugandan transit, but they are going to cover my transport to go get it in Kampala.  I realize that something like this in the US would be looked at as awful customer service but believe me, this is above and beyond in the UG.
  As I sit on my couch writing this blog, itching to the point of insanity from sand flees and mosquitoes (and hopefully not bed bugs), flat broke, without most of my worldly possessions, realizing that sea food comes out much less elegantly than it goes in, but having just been visited by my good friend Maurice to wish me a happy new year and ask how my trip was, I find myself on a peak of this emotional roller coaster.

On Colonialism

    I think that movies play a huge part in the colonization of the minds of Africans.  Since they are very young, the majority of African children's exposure to white people, is through movies.  I have coined this idea the "Indiana Jones Complex."  So what they see, for their entire childhood, is an incredibly glorified and unrealistic representation of white people.  American movies are very common here in restaurants and on the street and they are translated into the local languages  (sometimes they are Indian movies that are dubbed into English and then again into Luganda and it's just one guy reading the vocal parts for all the actors.  It's really chaotic).  I see huge groups of kids gathered around TVs on my street and I've noticed that most of the western movies I see are action movies and romantic comedies (which are the worst as far as making white people look way more awesome than they are).  Lots of Nick Cage.  I wish there was a way to get them to watch historical documentaries on the many horrible failures and abuses of power that white people have exhibited throughout history.  Instead they see Vin Diesel kicking some (African or South American) drug cartel in the crotch.   As they get older, they start to become aware that these are movies and not reality, but I think it is still engraved in their subconscious.  I notice it on taxis when the conductors give me a better seat (often resulting in the discomfort of other Ugandan taxi riders), or when I get service before a Ugandan that was waiting longer than I was.  I notice it with the Mukono artivists, when they are arguing and talking over each other, but as soon as I speak up, they get quiet and listen and take what I say as fact.  It is an unwarranted power that can easily be misused and do damage.  At our In Service Training, my PCV friend, Matt told us a pretty interesting method to combat this “Muzungu is always right” mentality among youths.  The idea is to make outrageous proposals like, "let’s make cell phones and sell them as an income generating activity!"  And the act really excited about it and start taking steps to make it happen: “Alright guys, I’m going to go to Kampala and get some computer chips we can use and we’ll put the casings together with plastic.  Does anyone know a place where we can make plastic cell phone cases?  No?  We’ll just have to design a way to melt down old plastic and reform it…” etc.  You keep pushing until someone finally musters up the nerve to tell you that it is a stupid idea!  The idea is to both encourage Ugandan youth to be assertive and confident and to show that white people are not always right.  He said he doesn't even tell them that he knew it was a terrible idea all along.  It’s kind of a crazy way of making the point, but it’s better than any other suggestions I've heard.  

    I read an article called "Hair Imperialism" and it discussed something that had confused me up to that point: What's with the huge obsession with artificial hair here?  It talked about the huge amount of energy and money that is put into making African women have hair that looks like white people (and smells like baby powder).  Almost all women here have one kind of artificial hair or another.  I'll see a 16 year old with an identical hairstyle as a 45 year old woman.  It's another perfect example of a colonizing of the minds of African women and it is self-perpetuating in that having this fake white person hair is socially encouraged among African women and can even be an advantage in getting a good job.  

    Another observation/theory that I've developed is about why Ugandans (Africans and really, any culture located around the equator) seem to naturally have a very different work tendency than western society.  It occurred to me when I was thinking about that old folk tale (maybe you're familiar with it) in which there are 2 squirrels and one of them spends his summer playing and enjoying living in the moment, while the other is gathering nuts and preparing a home for the winter.  When winter comes, the first squirrel isn't prepared and the second one is happy and warm in his home.  I forget how the story ends or even why I was thinking about it, but it made me realize that this story would make no sense to people who have no experience with seasons.  It got me thinking about the west (more realistically, the north) and how their society has always, by necessity, been a society of preparation and looking forward (planning for winter).  Compare that to a society with very similar climate year-round and some of the most fertile soil on this planet.  Whenever they need food, they just plant it and it grows in a very short amount of time.  Historically, this society’s needs have always been met without having to plan too much into the future.  My theory is that this mentality lead European nations to the various revolutions (industrial, agricultural and technological) and places on the equator never had a need to develop in such a way.

  So (whether or not the reasons above are actually accurate) we are now living in a world where these western revolutions have really taken off and created a global economy that is very focused on planning ahead, maximizing profits, competing to stay on top, etc. This global system is has no room for societies that don't compete or plan strategically.  And this system is showing no signs that it's going away any time soon.  

    I think the overarching question that is most relevant to the challenges today is:  How do we get Africa on board with this seemingly permanent system that is very unsympathetic to traditional African ways of doing things without destroying their identities, heritage and culture?  This is an infinitely complex topic and one that needs to addressed before we can move forward with the whole idea of "development."  In an ideal world, I think that the best thing would be to let Africa work it out without the "help" of muzungu.  They seemed to be doing alright before we showed up anyways.  But unfortunately, a global economy doesn't allow for that.

  The people making the decisions on how to combat these problems (and fully believing that they are doing a great service) are of the mentality that we can just dump a ton of money and resources into Africa and train them to be western and wear suits and ties and have fake western hairstyles and everything will work out.  These are people who are never on the ground level to see the effects of their actions.  They sit at desks in big cities and look at numbers and papers that are so far removed from the people that they represent and are intended to help.  

  The other big issue is if we are doing more harm than good in our efforts.  Are we creating a foreign aid dependent society?  I think the answer is yes.  But how do we create a society that doesn't depend on handouts while also getting them up to speed and able to compete and be successful in the global economy?  I DON'T KNOW!!!!

World AIDS Day Event

On Friday November 30, 2012, Alana and I organized a World AIDS Day Event at the Youth Center (Alana did way more work than me).  Artivists 4 life performed some promotional and informative entertainment in the form of 2 traditional dances (the Baganda and the Runege) and a skit about HIV that I did some acting in.  I played the role of the Muzungu (white person) boss who engages Mashakalugo (my good friend from Kaunga) in a carpet interview (a job interview that you do adult things to get the job) and gives her HIV.  She goes on to sleep with 3 guys who turn out to know each other (PLOT TWIST!) and then they meet up and discuss why Maurice got HIV and they didn't (condom use, circumcision, etc.).  Anyways, jam packed with HIV messages!  Here's some dancing and drumming from my artivists:

All those guys are my good friends.  My friend and professional artist/artivists 4 life member, OJ, designed the t-shirts that were given out to the first 120 people who got tested for HIV.  Him and some Mukono Artivists crammed out all 120 in a day and a half of screen printing.  Then Peace Corps showed up and brought like 150 more shirts and then people started getting crazy about the shirts and were flooding the testing aarea and Alana (with the backup of some guards) locked it down before rioting started.

Rebecca and her shirts being protected by armed guards

It was a wild day and we tested 375 people.  We proceeded to celebrate our victory at Casablanca.

Thanksgiving and Malua

So Thanksgiving was last week and (of course), I was sucked into going to Mud Town, Kayunga.  And as usual, I left exhausted, covered in mud and mosquito bites but with no regrets.  My amazing PCV friends put together such a magical and extravagant Thanksgiving feast.  Three turkeys, 3 stuffings, 5 casseroles, about 100 lbs of mashed potatoes and 22 thankful people, both American and Ugandan.  They Ugandans were blown away by the food.  It was really cool to see everyone get together to plan out an execute this amazing evening despite the challenges of being in such a little town.  Peace Corps pretty much took over the kitchen of Hotel Katukomu for about 10 hours or so.  Everyone contributed in one way or another to the food and we all went around and gave short speeches on what we were thankful for.  It was a really amazing night!   On Thanksgiving Eve, we played beer pong at Rebecca's place which was awesome!  On that Kayunga journey, I also had some time to go visit Maria Gorete Primary School (my secondary project) to get some video footage for the fund raising video I'm working on.  I really do love the people in that place and I have made some amazing memories there.  I should be more thankful that I get to go back to my awesome little city that I love instead of bitching about having to visit my awesome friends in Kayunga.

I returned to Mukono on Friday, a haggard mess but with social obligations yet to be met.  It was Alisat's birthday (she's one of Alanas counterparts at the Youth Center and a really awesome lady), so we had to do some celebrating.   My good buddy Keith (PCV) and another volunteer at his org are from Western Uganda and had come out for Thanksgiving and wanted to see the night life of Mukono.  Several of my closest artivist bros had just finished a full day of screen printing shirts for the World AIDS Day event and were also ready to live it up in Mukono.  The night was ripe for mischief and adventure!  So we got the bro team together and hit the Malua circle.  I don't know if I've described the Malua in my blog yet, but it's a big clay pot of this sloppy millet beer mixed with hot water.  It's usually found in a really tucked away, hole in the wall place that is combined with a pork joint.  Everyone sits around in a circle it with big, long reed straws and drinks this warm alcoholic slop out of the pot in the middle.  It can be up to like 20 people in the circle and they upgrade the size of your pot as more people join the circle.  I hated the taste at first, but now it's totally grown on me.  You spend about $1 and you can sit there for as long as you like (we did 4 hours the first time I went there) and drink as much as your belly will hold.  It's definitely my favorite cultural experience here so far.  Everyone is super excited when there is a Muzungu (white person) there.  The conversation usually turns to politics and bad jokes and general merriment is experienced by all.  By the time it was getting dark, we were all singing church hymns at the top of our lungs, eating pork and enjoying each others company.

After drinking Malua to our hearts content (it's actually pretty low alcohol %, so you never get too drunk), we proceeded to hit up this art exhibition where we met up with other artivists and checked out their awesome crafts.  These guys are really talented craft makers!  Then we hit Casablanca (Alana and my regular hangout) for a night of hookah and dancing and mayhem.  It ended up being one of the best nights I've had in Uganda so far.

And then the next morning I went back to Mabira Forest with this really awesome Canadian girl that Alana introduced me to.  Zoey and I spent all day cruising around through the jungle and enjoying the complete chaos that is the public transit in Uganda.  It was an awesome end to my Thanksgiving vacation.  So here I sit on Sunday morning, reflecting on the awesomeness of the past 4 days and realizing that the vacation is over and I've gotta get my shit together and get back to work.  My apartment is filthy and I have tons of preparing to do for the World AIDS Day Event at the end of the week as well as a million other little projects I need to check in on.

Life is really good right now.

Planning phase, Muzungus, Friendship and the Like

Where to begin...  Life is moving along quite quickly as wings begin to take dream (that's a George Bush quote by the way "where wings take dream").  So, it sounds like I'm going to be able to help out this school that my bro, Maurice, started for orphans who lost their parents to HIV.  I'm planning to get their new school house built and filled with school stuff through various fund raising and grants and my awesome mentor, Rebecca Workman, just gave me the idea of having this other PCVs organization build them a water tank so they have clean water to drink through another grant.  And then there's yet another grant that I can apply for to get them a truck full of school books. So I'm getting pretty excited about my secondary project.

Rebecca is my mentor through the PC Peer Support Network and she's a really good friend and resource for getting shit done in this country.  She's dating Craig McIntosh who was my room mate when we staged for departure in Philadelphia and was in my language training group, so we've gone through this whole crazy adventure together.  I take the shitty taxi ride to hang out in Rebecca's mud town, Kayunga, pretty often both because her and Craig are normally there to chill with and one of the artivists 4 life branches is there.  I hate the town, but I love the people.  I'll be heading there for Thanksgiving to have some awesome food with some awesome friends.  I'll be rocking my stars and stripes bandanna and starting as many U.S.A chants as I can.

Yesterday Alana and I met with this other really cool organization that works with teenagers that are pregnant or have been pregnant.  They approach it in a really holistic way that keeps these young mothers out of the cycle of dropping out of school and having a bunch more kids.  They've got a psychologist and a social worker and they do crafts and life skills lessons and all kinds of awesome confidence building stuff.  So they are going to start making use of the youth center for some of their activities and Alana and I might do some talks for them on various life skills things.  I wonder if any of my blog readers have any material on being a new mother and being pregnant and all that stuff that they might want to send me? (AaronRBlanchard@gmail.com)

The youth center is pretty slow right now, but there are a bunch of awesome things that are going to be happening soon.  Due to Alana's planning and persistence, we are having a big World AIDS Day Event that the US Ambassador and Peace Corps officials are going to attend.  Artivists 4 life is going to be performing some traditional dances and some skits about HIV issues.  We're also going to be doing face painting and having a big drum circle (which I'm super excited for).  Other artivists 4 life stuff is just business of preparing our annual report and proposal for next years activities.  That stuff's not terribly exciting, but necessary.

Alana and I have met these great muzungus from Uganda Christian University (a couple Americans and a Canadian) that who made us dinner last night and went out on the town.  It was really fun and will probably happen again soon.  We went to Casablanca, which is a hookah bar that Alana and I frequent which is equidistant from both of our houses.  It's a college crowd, but it's really fun and we meet a lot of interesting people there.  It's a good place to have a few beers and get down on some politics and philosophy with some well educated Ugandans.

In the scheme of things, I think my service and my life are moving in a pretty positive direction. However, always looming in the back of my mind is the Peace Corps Guilt (read the article I posted) and the uncertainty of whether we're just creating a foreign aid dependent society and digging them deeper.  Those things are impossible to ignore, but only weigh on you as much as you let them.  You just power through and remind yourself that you knew this wasn't going to be easy.  In the most narcissistic chambers of my mind, I remind myself that no matter what, this experience is only going to leave me more enlightened and a better person both professionally and personally so... positive net gain.

That last paragraph sounded a little gloomy.  The reality is that the majority of my time is spent happy and excited and still freaking out about being here and actually doing this!  Tomorrow I'm going back into Mabira National Forest with my new friends and it's going to be awesome!

It begins!

Alright guys, I promised to keep you all informed about my adventure by posting in this blog and I have failed.  But there is hope!  For, I woke up this morning and was bored and felt like starting this blog thing up.  So here we go:

  I guess we should start with the basics in case people haven't been following me on Facebook.  I'm in semi-urban Mukono, Uganda.  My organization is called artivists 4 life and they do activism through art.  That means anything from billboards and murals to skits on social issues performed in the community.  They are very grass roots, but the goal is to get them registered as a CBO (Community Based Organization).  So we've been going through that arduous process of applying for that.  The fun part is working with these 12 or so, 20 something year old artivists with whom I have already developed life long friendships.  My organization came to Mukono about a year and a half ago and recruited these idle, out of school youths who were interested in becoming artivists.  They have been training them and building their capacity to make change in their community. Part of my job (at least as I've defined it) is to build up their leadership skills and any other technical skills they may need (ie. computer training, lessons on basic economics, critical thinking activities, resume development, etc).  I've seen a lot progress in the few short months I've been here and I have a lot of optimism about their futures.
  We operate out of a Youth Center:

  There's a goat in this picture because I have found them to be the most photogenic barnyard animal, but the building in the background is the youth center. 

  The Mukono District Youth Center is part of the Walter Reed Project out of Makerery University in Kampala.  They are PEPFAR funded and have a long history with Peace Corps Volunteers (PCV's).  Alana Sutter is my awesome friend whose is the PCV who has been pretty much put in charge of running the youth center.  Alana lives about a half hour walk from me, but the youth center is the middle point between our houses.  I feel very lucky because we have become good friends and we get to work closely together on whatever projects we can dream up!  This experience would be much harder without her and I'm sure our friendship will live on long after our Peace Corps service.  

  Her organization, MUWRP, is artivists 4 life's only partner, so most of what we do is in collaboration with them.  We managed to get 2 of my artivists (Maurice and Kisitu) hired as volunteers there which is an awesome opportunity because they get really good training in HIV testing and counseling (which is the primary function of the youth center).  The really cool thing is that this youth center is brand new and we have been given a lot of creative freedom to come up with projects that align both our organizations goals.  We've been putting the artivists in a kind of promotional role.  It works out well because the age group of people int their 20s can be hard to reach out to and they are really receptive to activism through art (artivism) done by people their age.  

  I'll give you a typical day/week in my life out here.  I wake up early most of the time and check my emails.  I do a huge percentage of my work through email.  Being as we don't really have an office, I can get a lot of work done from my couch:

That's what my living room looks like right now (...after I moved some beer bottles out of the shot)

With the new activities Alana and I are putting in place, I will have a lot more, but right now I normally have 2 workshops each week.  Those normally take place at the youth center and I always really enjoy them.  So breakfast is usually a rolex (it's kind of like a breakfast burrito and I eat waaaaayyy too many of them).  I'm pretty much in a small city and right down the street is my main rolex homie, Bengy.  I practice a little Luganda (the local language) with him and either head to the youth center for a workshop or back home to work on my computer.  The nice thing is that no day is the same here.  We have a laptop, kindly sent from my Canadian supervisor Leslie, that I've been teaching basic computer skills to my artivists on.  They sign up for times, so I have them randomly throughout the week.  I also give guitar lessons to another main homie, Kenneth who is picking it up really fast.  I think we might start a band sometime soon with Maurice's booming church voice and his brother Paul on the drums.  I hang out with those 3 guys the most.  

  I found myself kind of guarded about befriending Ugandans at first.  I needed them to figure out how to do a lot of stuff in this country, so I think that helped break the ice.  But then about 3 months in, I realized what I was doing and now I've started to develop a social life here which I am enjoying very much.  I'm thinking more and more about getting this band started.  Maybe have songs with positive life lessons and HIV education... who knows!?

  I was really worried at first being placed in a city.  Where was I going to get into nature!?  Fortunately, the Catholic Church bought up this big hill right by my house and has made it Prayer Mountain (though, I call it Spirit Mountain).  It has a small amount of forest where I often see monkeys which is a treat!  It's great because it's a big hill to climb (as I learned to love in Ellensburg), it's got forest and I can take foot paths down the other side and then take the road back to make a nice hour long hike.  So I usually hit that at least 3 or 4 times a week.

  Everywhere I go, all hours of the day, children are yelling MUZUNGU!!!! BYE MAZUNGU!!! Muzungu means white person which can actually be asians as well.  It's a strange thing that I didn't really know how to react to at first.  It comes from every single child in my city of 60,000.  I quickly realized that if I decided to be annoyed by it, I would loose my mind in this place.  So now I just think of them as little cheer leaders rooting me on in whatever my current task may be.  I've got the ones on my street calling me Katumba now at least (my Muganda name).  My 4 year old neighbor is the coolest.  His name is Van and he has excellent English.  He's definitely a part of my emotional and mental support network (along with Alana).

This is him and the way my kitchen used to be set up.  It has since been moved inside because I never used it out there.

My days usually end with some kind of media viewing on laptop as I make a to do list.  I could not survive without lists, they are all over my apartment chaotically organized in like 7 notebooks.  The most important things I have here are my laptop (I could not function without this thing), my guitar, my ipod, my backpack and my speakers.  Losing any one of these things may send me into an existential tailspin.

  So, this is turning out to be a long blog, but there is one more topic to cover.  My side project is with an organization called AHUDA (African Humanitarians for Development Alliance) who have built a school for orphans who have lost their parents to HIV way deep in the village of Mayangayanga.  Maurice is their co-founder and coordinator and the one who introduced me to the project. I'm getting some teaching materials from my awesome friend Jan Gaffe which I'm going to train their teachers on (for an economic development volunteer, I do a lot of teaching which I'm finding I love).  I am also applying to have their school house finished by another PCVs organization, Brick by Brick, which will be awesome if we can make it happen.  Then the plan is to do this kind of grant through which Peace Corps lets me fund raise from America and fill up the building with all the things a school needs (hoping ya'll can reach deep into your hearts and your wallets for this one!).  It's kind of a pain in the ass to get out to the school, but I love the project and the kids and I'm really committed to helping in any way I can.

  Let me say that this has been an emotional roller coaster these past 5 months.  I've done so much on the job learning and I am learning so much from the people here.  Some days I'm King Shit of Turd Mountain and other days I want to punt a puppy!  However, I have absolutely no regrets and I'm finding out so much about my place in this world and what I have to offer.  Every day, I find myself in disbelief about the awesomeness that my life has become.