Daily Archive: June 15, 2017

I had a dream..

The game of Mosquito Tag is also on the cover of the Malaria Think Tank annual report, thanks to fellow fossil David, who was in charge of the graphics.

As of today, an article over my byline about the Blue House Camp is linked from the home page of the Peace Corps. See it here. There were better projects by other volunteers, but this is a combination of my bother-in-law and sister’s great photography and the compelling backstory of the Blue House.
A couple of weeks ago, about 50 PCVs had a big social gathering. These kids love to party. It was called “Burning Sebo”, a take-off on the annual Burning Man fest in Nevada. It was at a camp in Jinja next to the Nile River. David had never been to Jinja or the Nile, so he came east. We rented a tent with cots, on a bluff over-looking the river. I am sick of staying in dorm bunk beds. However, while the tent zipped up pretty tight, there were no nets over the cots (unlike the bunk beds), and I got slaughtered by mosquito bites.

Our Burning Sebo was a little bit smaller than Burning Man

Another volunteer making her first visit to Jinja that weekend was Judith Fleming, who started subscribing to my blog in 2015 after asking D.C. headquarters if there was a blog from an elder Ugandan volunteer. She arrived a year after I did, and after occasional email correspondence, this was our first meeting. Judith was a 21 year-old volunteer 50 years ago as part of the first cohort in Tonga in the South Pacific. Yes, she is north of 70! Judith, David and I went out for dinner and we enjoyed her stories about the early days of the Peace Corps. In 1967, Peace Corps Pacific trainees did their training on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. They hiked once to the site of the Leper colony of Father Damien. Another time they learned how to camp on the beach, and how to catch, gut and clean fish. Back then, the number of trainees selected exceeded the number going to site. About 20% were told they had been “deselected” and sent home. This must have been tough after you thought you said good bye for two years. Of course there was no internet then, so the contact back home was with tissue thin letters that took weeks. Judith was deposited on a Tonga island with a family in a grass hut with no electricity of course, and basically was told to figure out how to help the people. She was called to help with a child birth once, purely on the basis of being an American. She practically acted as a mid-wife and was given the privilege of naming the baby!

David, Judith and I pose in front of the Nile. Judith is very popular with her cohort, and they look after her.

All you need to do is just take one kamagra 100mg oral jelly sachet just cialis cheapest before 20 minutes to your sexual session. They work in the body by improving blood circulation to the male sex organ. cialis low price It offers cialis india pharmacy effective treatment for fatigue and erectile dysfunction. There could be another physical cialis online price issue that abates your sexual reaction may cause tension about keeping up an Erection. She named him after her Peace Corps boyfriend from her cohort. Judith said this fall there will be a 50th anniversary celebration  of the Peace Corps in Tonga. Our Country Director Sean is friends of the Country Director in Tonga. They are trying to figure out if there is way she could go back for the ceremonies. It would be so interesting to find the 50 year old man she helped deliver and named. Seems like it would make a cool little documentary, not to mention it would show how she is doing a lot of work in Uganda. Neither she nor David have needed medical assistance since arriving in Uganda. I’ve only had to fix a bad ingrown toenail and had some dizziness issues that were probably solved by changing my malaria meds.
I will use this post to tell a sort of funny story. Way back at training two years ago, my cohort formed a big circle. Each of us was asked to step to the middle and state a “dream” goal during our service, even if it was likely unattainable. So I decided to announce that I hoped to find the next Dikembe Mutombo or Akeem Olajuwon in one of my villages, so he could build hospitals like Mutombo did in Kenya. Mutombo played for the Denver Nuggets many years ago. As I was about to enter the circle, I realized David was the only volunteer who would even know these names, and I couldn’t think of any current African NBA players. So instead, I clumsily tried to explain it as “I want to find a 14 year.old boy with mad basketball skills who I could bring back to America to eventually make the NBA and get rich so he could help his village.” I was told later, at first I sounded like a perv who wanted to bring home a 14 year old boy, although eventually they understood the gist of it. I have been teased about this ever since.

A future NBA star?

Sure enough, Ryan, who is currently a PCV in Arua, recently sent me a photo on WhatsApp of a 14 year old playing basketball in Arua. He said “Something to look forward to, Charlie, your 6 ft 14 year old, South Sudanese talent.” Andrei chimed in “And now with the refugee crisis They’re practically giving them away”. The good part about this is that now I know there is this basketball court, and I would like to play some pick-up basketball for exercise. It beats soccer drills, which I have been neglecting. And my “dream” is alive.

My distinctive helmet and jacket have held up well.

There was a little two room school house in one of the villages I was in last week. Each room was jammed with kids. I peeked in, and they all stood up and said “Good Afternoon”. I hope the teacher wasn’t too annoyed.