Sky Captains and Economic Development

It has been a while since my last post and a lot has happened.  We got the grant money, bought the materials, hired a crew and built the Mabira Forest Canopy Super Skyway in the past 5 months.  It was a little rocky at first, but it didn’t take too long to get the hang of building the platforms.  My very good friend, construction manager and now, Sky Commander Kabugo Gregory was absolutely essential in finding a crew and many of the materials.  One of the huge challenges we faced was finding workers crazy enough to climb these massive trees.  Everyone wanted to work for the white guy until they saw how big the trees are.  So Gregory found some guys that had worked on some power lines and smoke stacks and we finally got the crew we needed.  With a little consultation from various sources, we managed to get 4 platforms and 3 zip-lines up and realized that we hadn’t even used half the grant yet, so we decided to add 2 more platforms and have the last wire cross the River Musamya (the really polluted river that feeds Griffin Falls).  So we now have 6 platforms and 5 zip-lines totaling 220 yards of zipping.  The addition of the last 2 platforms really adds a lot to the experience.  The final zip-line is 200ft long and passes between two 115ft trees.  Then we repel you back down to the forest floor and we hike over Griffin Falls and back to camp.  The month of February has been strictly for training my workers to be “Sky Captains.”  It worked out really well because I was able to hire most of my construction crew to be the Skyway operators.  Since they built it, they have a sense of ownership and comradery which results in them showing up on time and being happy to work.  I posted a message to all Uganda PCVs that they could come and do the Skyway for at a discount during this month to give my guys some practice and the response was excellent.  I also met a couple Israeli folks that went up and have since sent me 3 other groups.  We’ve got the insurance thing taken care of and we are planning a grand opening in March.  After that, I’m hoping to kind of phase myself out of the Skyway equation.  I was a little worried at first about these village fellas using such technical equipment but they picked it up in no time, and I now have no doubts about the safety and awesomeness of this attraction.

I also wrote a grant to The Pollination Project, which is an awesome group who give $1,000 every day to help seed small, personal projects.  I used the money to have a mural painted in our reception depicting all the cool animals of Mabira Forest and also to have huge stones put in the sugar cane fields at intersections to direct people through the labyrinth of roads to Griffin Falls Camp.  There was all kinds of drama getting the mural painted with our artist taking a bunch of money and disappearing, but we ended up harassing him enough to finally come back and finish it and it looks really great. 

So those are the big things I’ve been working on and they are all coming to a close as I start to think about what comes next for Tata Django (what some people have started calling me, meaning father of Django).  I’ve danced around with so many possible things to do with my life that I realized that I just have to pick something and stick with it.  And I think that something is going to be getting a Masters in Mechanical Engineering.  Building the Skyway made me realize that I really enjoy that kind of creative problem solving and I think I have a mind for it.  I still have no idea what I will end up doing with it, but it feels good to know which field I want to get into.  It will also give me mad post-apocalyptic value.  

Also, my awesome parents sent me a harness for Django.

It’s crazy to look back and see how much this experience has changed me.  I’m going to be SO WEIRD when I get back to America!  Overall, I think the changes are positive.  Just knowing that I am able to pack up and move to a completely foreign place and make a life for myself really makes me feel like I can do anything.  I never would have dreamed of getting into engineering for my undergrad, but now I have no doubt that I can do it.  Still got 5 months to go though…

One of the hardest parts of this whole experience is meeting amazing people who are traveling or doing other awesome work here and then realizing that you are here WAY longer than any of them.  So they all leave.  It’s great to keep in touch and to know people living all over the world, but it’s still hard to see them go again and again.  I can’t express how important my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers are to me.   Especially now that I’m in the oldest group, so I know I’m leaving before ANY of them!  And so the emotional roller coaster rolls on.

Something Skyway this way comes...

                Just about 17 months in and I am finally doing something that I think can make a small difference in a small area of the developing world.  There have been a few things that changed at around a year into my service that have really made a big difference.  Maybe the biggest one was something that we were told so many times during training but could not possible grasp until we had been thoroughly chewed up, digested and blasted out by the Pearl of Africa.  That is, that our “sphere of influence” has about the diameter of a grain of rice and we just need to be celebrating the smallest of accomplishments.  Next is that you need to make this experience about something you’re passionate about or you’ll just end up killing time for 2 years (or vacationing and I have some friends that are doing that and still really enjoying themselves).  Even the greatest juicists of all time can’t make lemonade out of corrupt, boring and/or abusive lemons.  Never-the-less I’d like to give mad props to the many friends of mine that are still squeezin’!

                That all being said, I couldn’t dream up a more amazing experience than the one I’m having right now (Side note: If you’re one of the aforementioned PCVs that are still trying to add weird-ass flavors like ginger and cilantro to make your rotten lemon juice into something drinkable, you may want to skip the next paragraph as it will be bragging about how amazing my site is…).  So, for those of you who haven’t been keeping up in great detail with my life (shame on you), I am working with an NGO that represents Mabira Forest and its surrounding communities in Central Uganda.    They are called MAFICO, which sounds great as an acronym but is a little heftier in its entirety, Mabira Forest Integrated Community Organization.  Much like firearms, in the world of NGOs (non-gov orgs.), your organizations credentials and dependability can be measured by the heft and bulk of its name.  And donors are like poverty assassins, comparing the girth of two hand guns.  The metaphorical, non-gender-specific assassin lifts the .22 Glock in one hand and then the Desert Eagle .50 in the other, expertly comparing.  It’s a tough job, cleaning up after European colonizers and you need the perfect weapon.  Which is going to strike fear into the hearts of the enemy? Which is going to pack the most punch and then also serve as a bludgeoning device after it runs out of ammo?  Mabira Forest Integrated Community Organization, that’s who!  Anyways, I live and work at their income generating camp where I meet all kinds of interesting people from all over the world.  The camp has plenty of things for me to work on and the guys in my NGO are awesome and very receptive to my suggestions.  They’re all ecotourism guides, so they actually care about protecting the forest.

When I first visited Griffin Falls Camp to see if MAFICO had what it takes to support a PCV, I walked into Mabira Forest and thought:  a canopy zip-line would be super impractical to create, but would be SO awesome!  Eight months later, I’ve written a grant and am able to access the top branches of no less than 4 forest giants.  We will be building the platforms in the next few weeks (or months) and then The Mabira Forest Canopy Super Skyway (henceforth referred to simply as “The Skyway”) will be available for the enjoyment of our camp visitors. 

                I wasn’t so wrong when I thought that it would be super impractical to create The Skyway.  It’s just mildly impractical. It’s been complicated enough already and we haven’t even begun building the structures.  But we’ve learned a lot and have had plenty of time to research and plan.  I am very confident in our ability to do this right, with big, strong platforms and a well-trained, professional staff and great views from structurally sound zip-lines.  As I write this blog, I have all my wood treated and ready to be moved into the forest to build the structures, a fearless and competent crew of 3 guys and myself ready to to complete the project and 4 boxes of generously discounted, climbing gear (8 harnesses and helmets, three 60M ropes and a bunch of belaying, ascending, descending and transcending gear) waiting for me in Kampala.  People have been so awesome in helping out with the project.  Special thanks to my Peace Corps Country Director, Loucine Hays who enabled me to have all the gear sent to Uganda for free, freeing up a bunch of grant money that will go to making The Skyway even cooler.  Also thanks to Backcountry.com for big discounts and free shipping to DC (and my prayers for the blackened souls of the REI staff who never even responded to my many emails begging for discounts on climbing gear).  Now I’m just waiting for the very capable and professional Uganda National Forestry Authority staff to give me the permission I’ve been asking for for the past 2 months (seriously, these guys must have taken convoluted bureaucracy lesson from the US government because they are KILLIN’ IT!), and then I can get to work and finish this thing.  Then I need to train a staff to operate the attraction and then to market it all over the adventure tourism hot spots like crazy.  And this all needs to be done in such a way that MAFICO has the know-how and the drive to run and maintain it long after I leave.  And that’s exactly how it’s going to go down.

                In other news, we fired our old receptionist, Betty, and got a new one who is way better.  Her name is Juliet and her cooking is excellent and she has a great attitude.  I’ve written another grant to get a bunch of murals painted on our reception and restaurant depicting all the cool animals in our forest which is pending but should go through.  We chopped Djangos testis and he has completely changed for the better.  He plays and is no longer aggressive and his coat is much softer and he smells better and he’s growing like crazy.  And NO, I don’t know what I’m going to do with Django when I leave, so stop asking!  Many Ugandans are very keen on eating him to which I politely say:  “OVER MY DEAD BODY M*THER TR*CKERS!”  (I don’t actually say “truckers”…  Not like they know what I’m talking about anyways, don’t judge me!)  I’m in the planning phases of exploiting the ridiculous gullibility and superstition of these village folks by planting some kind of supernatural myth around Django, cursed by a Gyspy or something of that nature to protect him after I leave.  Please contact me if you have ideas for a good Ugandan village myth to plant.  Also we can now deliver Pizza and awesome Asian food and burgers to Griffin Falls Camp.  And they’re supposed to be cleaning up the river really soon so the waterfall will no longer be horribly polluted and stinky and swimming will absolutely be a possibility.  And that’s all.

This has to do with Uganda

                It’s been a little over 4 months since I left Mukono and I’ve really settled into my new site.  I feel like we’re really starting to whip this camp into shape.  I had my birthday and it was definitely one of the best yet.  My girlfriend surprised me and we went on an awesome adventure to Galagala falls on the Nile and then had some drinks with my Mukono friends and she had set up karaoke and it was a blast.  Then we had the solstice/birthday/full moon party with a solid group of PCVs, GHCs and STDs and it was great. 

                The big project I’m working on right now is a canopy zip line.  It’s going to be crazy awesome if it actually works.  It’s going to be an attraction for my camp and it’s going to take a lot of labor and training and creative problem solving.  We’re hoping to make it a 3 line system between 4 giant trees.  If you do it in the morning or evening, you very well may be surrounded by monkeys as you fly through the canopy.  So I have to figure out how to build 4 tree forts 150 feet up a tree, build a zip line that travels through the canopy and train my colleagues how to belay and safely get adventurous tourists through the course.  I’ve also never written a grant before and the grant I’m applying for is an HIV grant, so I have to figure out a way to put an HIV spin on the whole thing (that might sound weird to people outside of development work, but it’s really not).  It’s very difficult to submit a plan and a budget for a project like this without actually having some of the grant money to use, so we’ve had to be creative in getting ourselves into the canopy to do the actual planning, because you really can’t do it from the ground.  Despite some of my Ugandan staff are very skeptical that anyone is going to want to use this thing once we get it built, I’m totally jazzed on this project and I think it could be a kickass thing to leave behind.  Nothing like this exists anywhere I know of in East Aftrica.  All the profits from the final product will go to funding community projects which we are slowly by slowly developing.  We’re probably going to charge a lot to do it because it’s going to be super awesome and if Adrift can get away with charging $100 for a 12 second bungee jump, I think I can jack up the price for a much cooler experience.  We’re close enough to Kampala and Jinja to do it in a day trip, so I think, if we market it well, it could be a pretty big attraction.  But first we have to write the grant and build it and I have no experience in architecture or carpentry or engineering or grant writing, but what’s the WORST that could happen!?  But seriously, safety is going to be the number one priority. 

                In other news, Django and I have developed a very special relationship and I don’t even care how weird that sounds.  He went rock climbing AND crossed the bridge over the waterfall for the first time during the solstice party.  After a week of trying to just push him with my feet or drag him with a rope down the trail with mixed success, I figured out his weakness.  His stomach.  I got him hooked on soy nuts and he can’t get enough of them and now he follows me everywhere ‘cause he thinks I have them.  He came on a backpacking trip up to Namusa Hill where we camped out and was totally easy and awesome.   He’s totally content to just chill out and eat foliage all day and then run to me when I make a clicking noise that he associates with getting soy nuts and proceeds to head ram my leg until I give him some soy nuts or head ram him back (this could become a problem when he gets full sized…).  He also came on a trip with 30 school kids into the forest.

                I got a call on a Sunday night asking me to take the place of one of the MAFICO guys as a guide/environmental educator for a group of 30 tweenage school kids the next morning.  It turned out to be pretty awesome.  I found some of my old environmental science notes and put together a kickass presentation on the effects of mankind on the environment, putting on trial the very policies established to protect the forest and giving a voice to the people that live and breathe the forest and finally concluding with a glimmer of hope on the horizon highlighting the changes that need to take place here, on the ground level to save our planet before it’s too late! Then I found out that we had 20 minutes to split between 4 of us which was cut down to 10 minutes and the kids were 6 and 7 years old.  They were totally stoked about Django though.  Oh yeah, Django is my goat, btw. 

                Anyways, things here seem to be in a perpetual state of ass kicking.  My girlfriend’s awesome and the things I’ve been working on are starting to take hold.  I’ve also got Uganda’s most charming goat chilling on my front porch, ready for the next adventure whenever I am.

My Bleating Heart

   I was a counselor at Camp BUILD (Boys of Uganda in Leadership Development… or something), responsible for 8, 13-21 year old boys for a week.  It was a crazy week and the most memorable camper quotes were:

In reference to the entire camp experience, “You whites really know how to make funs!”

   And, in a rousing night game of capture the flag, our team mate comes running back to our base grinning from ear to ear. He looks down at his prize and his face drops, it’s as if he’s just noticed he were holding a dead puppy.  He sees the red shirt decoy that he thought was the red team’s flag and gasps,  “Ah!  I have been deceived!”

   Being responsible for the health, safety, education and entertainment of a group of adolescents is uncharted territory for me, but I got really lucky with my Ugandan Co-counselor and my group of kids.  We had a great week and I think I learned more than any of those kids.  Highlights include a massive 5 team capture the flag game on the whole college campus which resulted in a stalemate because all of the bases were too awesome and impenetrable, a bitter rivalry between me and my co-counselor/nemesis Patrick Glisczinki which lead to many unsuccessful water balloon assassination attempts and ended with a pride-shattering glitter attack on my sweet camp shirt, my teams flag being taller than Patrick’s team’s flag, riddle battles and a giant mattress fort party/extreme Olympic mattress pit jump with the 85 mattresses rented for the camp after all the kids left.  

   I bought a goat very recently and I think Django Reinhardt Goatsly is going to show a real marked boost in my life awesomeness index.  As a hooved quadruped with propensity for following, he’s proven to be a great hiking partner.  When we’re not hiking, he just chills out and eats my weeds.  It’s a pretty low maintenance, awesome thing we got going on here. 

   In other news, the next big project is going to be a Peace Corps Grant funded Mabira Forest Canopy Zip Line.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew on this one, but despite having no idea what I’m doing, it’s going ahead. 

   Camp is awesome as ever especially now it is filled with the bleats and charm of Django, and life is good.  

Forest Parties

                I’ve given up on the tiny, translucent, red ants that have invited themselves into my bread bag.  These are seriously crafty little bastards; they can slip through the seal of a Pringles lid and just when you think you’ve blown, flicked or picked them all away, one will emerge from a crevasse and crawl onto your hand as if mocking your feeble efforts to control nature.  They aren’t disease harboring and lord knows I need to pick up protein wherever I can get it, so screw it! NOM NOM NOM! Suck it hymenoptera!!

I’ve been at my new site for about a month now and my experience has, thus far, been truly amazing.  There is a lot that I can do to be of help here, but the biggest challenge is the isolation.  I’ve always been able to enjoy solitude, so loneliness hasn’t been too big of a problem so far.  I have people come visit often and I get out to Mukono regularly to see friends which helps keep me balanced.  I’ve also started to get to know some folks around my village.  What a drastic change it has been from living in Mukono. It felt so weird to be in such a busy place with everyone hustling around, trying to get some small money just to get by while I effortlessly passed the days, more concerned with avoiding boredom than anything.  If I had been with an organization for which I felt some kind of ownership or commitment or that I was making a difference, Mukono would have been better.  Then again, I had never imagined my Peace Corps experience to be located just a short walk from a supermarket and a night club.  I rationalized it by thinking that life would be such a drag if I didn’t have a flushing toilet and a shower and such readily available (junk) food.  In reality, I was living just like I had back home and those little challenges I was worried about have turned out to be the best part out here.  It’s really similar to when I worked at Mt. St. Helens.  I plan out my meals for the week and cook on charcoal (when Betty isn’t around).  

Betty has turned out to be awesome!  A few weekends ago, Craig, Alana, Zoey and Alexus came out to stay with me and it turned out that these 3 awesome UK folks had found out about the camp and come for the weekend also, so we had a bon fire at the camp site and it was awesome.  We had my faithful Boda Boda delivery guy bring us beer from town and we had a forest party.  Betty cooked for all of us all weekend while also tending to various other groups passing through.  She was a total champ.  Women here are amazing workers.

Caitlin came the next night and we had another forest party and a hike with tibbs the next day.

At camp, I live with completely renewable resources (solar power and rain water) and I’m pretty much vegetarian (except for some tuna packs my folks sent me).  It’s mostly rice, noodles, peas, beans and veggies (and bugs which are not strictly vegetarian).  Never-the-less, I’m sure I’ve never lived so sustainably in my life.  I have temporarily taken on a new comrade here, his name is Mr. Tibbs and he can be a real pain in the ass, but I’m growing to love him.  He’s my good friend Craig’s dog and he’s staying with me while Craig and Peace Corps figure out a new site for him.  One of his first nights here, Tibbs and I had a bit of a disagreement which resulted in a battle between us physically and a rift between us emotionally.  Neither of us are the type to hold grudges, so the next day we hugged it out and moved on, somehow with a better understanding of one another.  Tibbs is a truly handsom dog, a slim tridapple with a big head and big paws.  But he had a tough puppyhood, having been “rescued” by some Peace Corps Volunteers who didn’t have a great exit plan other than to dump him on a new Peace Corps Trainee and head home.  Craig, being the compassionate, dog loving man that he is, took on Tibbs only to find out that his site would fall through, leaving them both homeless.  Tibbs has since been displaced, moving between foster owners, without much stability and having never been properly trained.  He was given to Craig as a disobedient, overly energetic dog with attachment issues, so I place no blame on Craig.  Without much other choice, Craig has stepped up and done a really good job of making sure Tibbs is taken care of and being there as much as possible. But the reality is that it is very difficult to have a dog as a Peace Corps Volunteer, especially one drifting between sites.  Tibbs is spastic and neurotic, but still a loyal and good dog.  I know this because whenever he is going crazy barking at a motorcycle dropping someone off at camp, he runs to find me and make sure I’m ok. 

I’m starting a chicken project, a topic which I know nothing about, but I’m excited for it.  My village chairmen and I decided, over a pot of Malua, to start up some kind of community agriculture project.  We decided chickens would be the best.  He introduced me to a very interesting fellow who had gotten degrees in accounting and agriculture and then moved back to his home village after checking out the job market.  And it turns out that he's dating Betty!  I'm happy she didn't end up with one of the village boys that always hangs around camp.  They're good people, but I have high standards for Betty.  Anyways, the chicken project is looking promising.  I’m going to do my best to advise and facilitate while making sure they do most of the actual work themselves.  I think the key to a successful project is local involvement and ownership.

There is some animal amidst the symphony of night life forest noises that I have named the banshee death owl, though I have no idea if it’s an owl.  Someone told me it was a bat, but I’m not buying it.  Bats use high pitch sounds for echolocation, not human like, shrill death screams.  It calls intermittently with about a second in between and it sounds like a mixture of a crow call and the final scream of somebody who’s had their throat cut open (sorry for the imagery, I’ve been rewatching Game of Thrones for the 3^rd time).  It’s the only thing that freaks me out when I walk out to my bathroom before bed because I have no idea what it is.  Anyways, this night sound track still beats the tortured wailing of the tied up dogs back in Mukono Town.

Really, a lot of this first month has been me exploring the area and seeing what we have to offer around here.  Besides the cultural tour that we’re working on, I want to design a camping trip up on this really beautiful hilltop that you have to hike a couple miles to.  My idea is to use local kids as porters to carry the water and camping supplies up to this beautiful clearing on top of Namusa Hill.  A guide would stay with you overnight and make a bon fire and tell local folk tales and you could sip wine (BYOB) under the stars.  Then in the morning, the porters would come back and pack you out.  They would get some income for their families and the visitors would have a memorable experience. 

Clearing on top of the hill

Having Mr. Tibbs here has made me realize that it’s a bad idea for me to get a dog here.  So I’m getting a goat.  His name will come when I meet him, but I read that they are excellent hiking partners and they are much lower maintenance.  When you hand raise them, they follow you around and as a hooved quadruped, there isn’t any hike too intense for them. 

My parents and my sister are coming to visit in April and I’ve been planning out that whole trip.  We’re using my organization to do pretty much everything which will be great both because they are awesome and because it will give me a chance to see firsthand how my organization looks through the eyes of the consumer and search for improvement.  We are going to spend a few days at my site and then head southwest for gorilla and chimp tracking and then hitting up a safari at Queen Elizabeth National Park and maybe Murchison Falls for some giraffes and zebras.  I’m super stoked!  And then my heterosexual life partner, John Edward Campbell is coming in June and that will be an entirely different and amazing experience.  Good things to come.

Monkeys and envrionmental stuff

                I’m watching the dew fall in the rainforest outside of the front door of my new home as I write this.  After many delays and hang-ups, I have finally moved to my new site.  I feel lucky though, as many of my volunteer friends have been waiting months for their new sites.  In my group, a lot of the original (Peace Corps assigned) sites fell through and Peace Corps has really taken it’s time finding them new ones, so I thought it would be a better choice to find my own.  After 2 weeks of the typical Ugandan delays, MAFICO finally got the construction done on my place.  But then I find out that they hadn’t filled out the application for a volunteer!  So I went to the MAFICO office, sat down with them, filled out the application, took pictures of it and sent it to Peace Corps and got everything cleared by that night.  It was nice because I got to pretty much got to write my own job description. 

                During this impossibly long month of waiting (the 2 weeks we gave them to get shit done + the extra 2 weeks it actually took to finish), I was very lucky to have an amazing host, Alana Sutter.  She was gracious enough to allow me to bum around her home and be completely worthless for most of a month.  One of the best parts about this whole Peace Corps experience is the amazing and profound friendships I’ve built, firstly with the folks in my region (Alana, Craig, Rebecca, Caitlin and Matt) but also with the rest of the PCV’s that for which I will travel to the ends of the earth (or so it feels like as I wait for 2.5 hours in an idling, hot and sweaty bus just for it to fill up so we can start the 5 hour ride to Kampala) to see for even just a night.

The construction/miscellaneous delays at my site came at an unfortunate time because I ended up moving to my new site the day before I had to travel across the country for the new PCV “orientation” (aka Western Welcome Weekend/80’s prom) which was awesome and totally worth the 10 hour trips there and back.  It’s amazing how much further I am willing to travel for events like this.  Stateside, I would never go through 2 full, 10 hour days of very uncomfortable travel just for one night of rocking out with friends.  But in the states, it’s much less important to my mental health to have these kinds of social interactions.  One thing I’ve learned/am always learning more and more here, is patience.  I’m not even stressing about the 14 hour plane ride back to America at the end of this whole experience (mostly because it’s a year and a half away) but also because I am capable of sitting and doing nothing for vast amounts of time that would have driven the old Aaron crazy.    

Now I’m finally facing the challenges that I was expecting from this whole Peace Corps experience.  I have almost no coverage from any service provider at my site and I’m 6 miles from the nearest market.  There are a few things I can get in the village just outside my camp, but definitely not enough unless I want to live on Matooke (plantain mash) and beans.  I have a little apartment on the backside of the reception of this small camp.  My bathing and toilet situation is pretty similar to what you would see at camp sites in the states.  Fortunately I have a plastic toilet setup rather than a pit latrine and my bathing area is surrounded by the forest and the stars above.  I basically have 3 counterparts who are all in and out of the camp at various times.  The most important is Betty who is more or less the receptionist here, but also handles all the cooking and cleaning.  We’ve worked out an arrangement where she cooks and cleans for me and I teach her new dishes and basically, how to cater to Muzungus (I also pay her).  She’s really sweet and I think we will get along just fine.  Then I have Hussein who is an educated Ugandan who is a guide for nature walks and safaris.  He’s very bright and I think we can collaborate on a lot of things.  And then Gregory who is a Ugandan village person and he serves as the night watchman/kind-of-handy man around camp.  He normally sleeps here too, which is nice to have backup in the event that the monkeys break our covenant of peace and raid the camp (think: the end of I Am Legend, it’s pretty much exactly like that when they raid except with more elaborate booby traps).  In quantity, the monkeys here are like squirrels in the states.  There are pretty much no predators in these woods.  Which is lame because there are no big cats or anything but cool because you can go on hikes (day or night) and you are the biggest animal in the forest.  Oh yeah, and I was kidding about the monkey raids, btw.  The covenant the Ugandans have with the monkeys is more like: we used to poach the shit out of you but now it’s illegal. 

As far as work goes, my first goal is to make some improvements on the camp itself.  I’m gonna add a bon fire pit, level out the camp sites, maybe put in a rope swing and some other stuff.  Then I’m gonna get some online marketing going and try to hit the European and American tourist market.  I don’t know why any tourists would come here unless it’s on the way to Tanzania or somewhere else, but I think there is a market for this whole “voluntourism” thing that’s getting popular. 

Part of me does feel like my first 6 months here were kind of a waste.  I put a ton of effort into getting Artivists 4 Life their contract, and it doesn’t look like it will even come through.  I guess that would validate my site change though.  On the bright side, what I really picked up in the past 6 months is getting to know Uganda and how to do business with Ugandans (with an iron fist!), which has made integrating into my new community much easier.  I got most of my embarrassing mistakes out of the way already and now I have a fresh start.

I was wandering around Wasswa (the village that my camp is just outside of) and I ran into a drunk, elderly man who told me his name was Johnny Walker.  It wasn’t long before I found out that he is actually the LC1 Chairman (which is pretty much a 21^st century village chief).  He’s the guy that people go to when there are civil and domestic disputes and he resolves them.  The overall opinion that I’ve gathered is that he is always drunk, but still a pretty effective and responsible chairman.  He’s 60 years old and has been drinking this Waragi (moonshine) and Malua (warm millet beer served in a large pot in the middle of a circle of people who all drink it with long straws) pretty much his whole life and he appears to be in very good health.  He was very excited when I told him that I also take Malua, so I spent most of my Sunday afternoon in an old health clinic (turned malua bar) sitting around a big pot of millet beer with a bunch of village folks.  It was some good conversation and integration. 

I had my first meeting with my organization to plan out what we’ll be working on in the next few months and it was one of the most professional and concise meetings I’ve had in Uganda.  They were very responsive and excited when I presented my new ideas and we have a pretty solid plan to get things going.  It’s very reassuring and refreshing to be working with an organization that is focused on solving real problems facing Uganda today.  Rather than organizing Skype meetings with Canadian graduate art students (clearly the people who need help from a PCV in Uganda the most!), I’m going to be going to local schools and teaching environmental education.  I’ll also be developing a cultural tour through the villages surrounding the forest.  It feels great to be taken seriously by my organization and to be working on worthwhile projects.  I’m very excited.

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!