Today marks the end of week one in Uganda. It appears that this blog will only be updated about once a week due to the electricity and poor internet situation where we are. While it is true, as the handbook stated, that we have electricity and running water – the running water is out of a tap about ten feet from our front door and, if used too often during the day, runs out at night while the electricity is barely enough to charge anything and not enough to light the house. Of course, for some bizarre reason we have enough electricity to power a single television but nothing else (even with the TV off we can’t light things). Thus, since the running water is outside, our bathroom – rather our latrine with no toilet seat – is about fifty feet out the back door in the woods of the compound (past two other houses).
That being said, however, I’ve really enjoyed my time spent here thus far. I’m here with an amazing group of seven other people and, as the title to the blog alludes, as a group we have adopted three dogs, one cat (who I haven’t seen today), and at least two children. What I mean is that on the compound we are living on – the Foundation for the Development of Needy Communities (FDNC) – is also home to a handful of families, two of whose children have permanent fixtures at our house when we’re not eating, sleeping, working, or they are in school (speaking of those children, here he comes now – a rambunctious three year old boy who absolutely loves playing with us). There is a Japanese man who also lives on the compound working with the Japanese equivalent to the Peace Corps and has a dog, Maru, and Sam (our Ugandan counterpart) brought two puppies this morning, both of whom are not allowed in the house because they are covered in extraordinary amounts of fleas.
We were given a tour of the school we are going to work at – two buildings with two classrooms and four classes – yesterday. We were expecting to repair a fence and upgrade a kitchen. The actual work to be done: install the entire chain-link fence and work on a kitchen that currently only has outer walls (no floor – currently overgrown with weeds and tall grasses -; no roof; no water; no stove). We have a lot of work ahead of us and only five more weeks to do said work. We haven’t started working on the project just yet – part of acclimating is getting used to African time – much slower and not on schedule like US time – so we are waiting. Sam says the supplies (fence, posts, etc) should arrive tomorrow – so sometime next week we’ll actually see the supplies and begin working.
The best thing so far about the trip, believe it or not, is the food: I’ve never had such fresh and sweet food before – not even in Costa Rica! The bananas are so sweet you could eat a whole bunch in one sitting, the passion fruit is amazing, pineapple is out of this world. Many of the fruits we buy at market are extremely fresh, most likely harvested the day we buy them or the day just prior to purchase. Some of the fruits are even grown on the compound, but they are not for our enjoyment, but the families who permanently live here. We are eating a lot of beans, rice, potatoes, and chapatti (the best thing ever that I’ll have to make when I get home.
The compound we are staying at is about a ten minute drive from town – an hours walk – so we don’t go into town much, if we need to get out of the compound we can work at the FDNC community farm or walk through the village. We are currently fifty kilometers away from the Kenyan border which may be reached by two roads just down the front gate.
Some of the girls on the compound washed our laundry for us on Monday and we returned from FDNC headquarters and the market to see the entire place – all the trees, grass, and bushes – taken over by the drying laundry of eight people. Hopefully we will learn how to do our laundry here, but if not we are in good hands with two of the women who also help us cook (they make sure we are eating and preparing the meals correctly so we don’t get sick).
Today we were able to help Sam on the community farm and we planted a little less than twenty young banana plants– hard and laborious work in the heat and humidity. I learned how to successfully use a hoe today – Isaac showed me how and after watching him and several Ugandans successfully make it through the top and heavy, wet clay beneath I learned how to do it. I was pretty successful in doing it correctly, but my lack of upper body strength prevented me from progressing very much. And then I brush too close to a pineapple tree and managed to scrape my arm and get splinters (about ten of them) stuck in my arm – who knew that pineapple plants were prickly?
So far our day begins with the crowing of the rooster right outside our (the four girls) bedroom window at 6:30ish in the morning and ends when our flashlights give out or the world cup game ends (if the TV is working). Right now we are hoping for some rain again so that it will cool down and we won’t have to work quite as hard this afternoon, maybe just play with some children. I think Xavier’s computer is going to overheat in the heat, so I’ll post again when I can – but I don’t know when that will be.
