Changin'

It’s funny how one begins to change as they stay in a place for a period of time.  It always baffles me when I see how differently I look at things now versus how I viewed them 3 months ago when I came.  For instance, small children playing with sharp objects.  Apparently Ugandans have no problems giving their children knives, or at least they don’t object to letting them find and play with them.  I visited an orphanage a while ago and saw a little girl of maybe 1 ½ years playing with a knife. I immediately jumped up and took it from her, not realizing that she wasn’t one of the orphans and her mother was standing a few feet away. The girl of course started bawling because I took away her “toy” and the mother looked at me with angry eyes because her child was now unhappy. Ha.  Now I have become accustomed to it, and barely take a second glance when I see a three year old with a machete.  That’s just how it is here.

Before I came I would say that I wasn’t a freak about clean food, but I definitely adhered quite closely to the 5 second rule when things dropped on the floor.  Now I find myself dropping food and not realizing it and then coming back into the kitchen 15 minutes later and thinking, “I am not going to waste that, and really how dirty can it be… not that dirty!”  On top of that is the fact that everything outdoors in indoors here and there is no way to avoid it.  No matter how quickly I put food in their containers, or cover my vegetables there are always fruit flies and ants all over them.  Last week I came home to find my precious jar of peanut butter (which cost me a good 3 dollars at the market in town) full of ants.  There was just no way I was sacrificing any of that good peanut butter, so I knocked off all of the ants that were on the outside and considered the rest to be extra protein.  Ha.  I am getting better at trying to figure food out, though it is a big challenge without a fridge.  As I stay here longer I am realizing that most things don’t actually need to be refrigerated so long as you eat them in a timely manner. My neighbor brings me milk fresh and warm from the cow every morning.  If I boil it in the AM and leave it out all day it hasn’t curdled by night so I can have milk tea then as well!  In the states if I left milk out for more than an hour I would probably chuck the whole thing.

I have been trying to compost all of my food scraps because I plan on starting a garden soon.  I just put them all in a bucket and add a little grass/ash and leave it.  A few days ago when I was sitting outside reading cows walked by and started munching on my compost! I was livid because it was three weeks of scraps.  I told the herdsman to stop them but he replied with, “It won’t hurt the cows.”  Well… that was the last of my worries!  The cow ate the entire compost, but I finally figured we are even because I drink his milk every day.

            I went to town the other night for the first time at night and was blown away at how different everything is at night.  The town really comes to life, with people hanging around and vendors selling rolexs (Chapattis and eggs) and cooked corn on the cob.  It is really a different place at night.  When we were walking around we came to a very lit area that was full of 100 gallon barrels with pieces of 30 foot long corrugated tin sticking out of the tops of them.  Around the entire place were huge flood lights, which is amazing considering the reliability of electricity here.  I guessed that it was some crazy Ugandan version of American Gladiator, but turns out they were just harvesting grasshoppers.  The grasshoppers get attracted to the lights, land on the corrugated tin and then slide down into the barrels and can’t get out.  Then the men empty the barrels, tear off their legs and wings and fry them up.  Haven’t tried them yet (they are my clan) but I think at some point I will have to because apparently they are delicious.

On a bit of a different note, its actually been a lot harder here than I ever imagined it would be.  The hardships have nothing to do with living in a third world country and so much more to do with just simply not fitting in yet.  I knew that it would be lonely and difficult, but I never really imagined it would be like this.  For some reason I had some image in my mind that I would come to Uganda and the whole country would be waiting with open arms to greet me and say, “Thank you so much for coming here Amber, we have been waiting for you.  Here are 100 things you can do to help us out, because we need so much help… being a third world country and all. We are so poor and have so much corruption and poverty, we just know you have all the answers.”  In all actuality, people tend to be very excited to meet me but that is where it ends.  Basically I feel as though they are saying, “We are doing fine.  In fact, we are happier than people are in your country.  We know that we don’t have much, but we don’t need much.  If you want to help you are welcome to, but we aren’t really sure what you should be doing because we weren’t doing all that bad before you came.  But we do appreciate it.”  It’s all a bit disheartening.  I know that I shouldn’t have thought that I could come to this country and suddenly be given thousands of responsibilities and duties, but the whole idea of Peace Corps is a bit romantic.  I just have to keep remembering that to build the capacity of a community you must first become part of it.  The communities here are very close knit and therefore are going to take a long time to get assimilated into.

            On a bright note, in the past 2 weeks I have been meeting with Agricultural Co-ops that are located in my area.  Most of them are groups of 25-30 people who basically work together to make sure their families are fed and hopefully make a little money in the mean time.  When I spoke to each of the groups they all mentioned wanting to expand their farms, improve their crops, raise more animals, etc. but all had the problem that they don’t have enough start up capital to make an investment in any of these things.  When I inquired about banks, they all replied that it is not possible to get a loan from the bank because they are sustenance farmers.  Banks here are impossible to work with because literally almost no one in the village has a bank account.  If you want to take a loan from the bank the interest rate is 25% and you have to pay the loan back in one month!  Can you imagine how much we would be stunted as a society if that were the case in the States?!!?  Even a savings account is not really advantageous here.  To open a savings account you have to have 25,000 Ugandan shillings, which is about 12 American dollars.  Your account must always have that much money it.  If you want to withdraw money from the account they charge you 5,000 Ugandan shillings just to take the money out! (That’s $2.50)  I know that banks in the States are not really people friendly, but it is outrageous here.  So all of the co-ops that I have been meeting with have started their own savings and loan schemes in which every member puts in anywhere from 500 shillings ($.25) up to 2000 shillings ($1.00) per month and then the group members can borrow the money.  Unfortunately that money is usually only used for emergencies and not really to expand farms or invest in animals.  Seeing this obvious need has got me interested in working with these groups to hopefully improve their saving and loaning schemes to allow them to save money more readily and hopefully invest it back into their farms, therefore increasing the amount of money they are able to make, etc.  Peace Corps uses a scheme called VSLA’s (Village Savings and Loans Associations).  If you are interested in reading more about it you can at VSLA.net.

            I start teaching here at the college next week, and they have told me that I will be teaching Early Childhood Education so that is exciting.  Actually doing something of substance where I feel like I can see results.  Wish me luck.  Love and miss you all!