Raining Cats But Not Dogs

My diabetes story got the second most reaction of all my blog posts, following only my tribute to Jan last August. I enjoy getting emails from all of you. I encourage your questions and comments. Sorry Uganda, you weren’t really in either top post.

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A road on the way to work after heavy morning rains

The rains have been loud and brutal at times on the roads. Tis the season. At least my bore hole doesn’t run dry. As a I hop over the mud and water patches on the road, I think of taking a bad spill with one misstep, so I have to focus. Most of the time I’m walking with my backpack carrying my laptop. I honestly worry about breaking my laptop in a spill more than my own bones!

My Lusoga language cohort friend Becky has a nice blog. She has posted a video you should watch. Her blog is here. The video is also on YouTube here. It does a fantastic job capturing the “Flavor” of our experience. Well done Becky!

When I try to click on Becky’s video, it says that its blocked in my country (Uganda) due to copyright. Only thing I can think of is the Kinks song she uses for background music. She showed it to me during IST so my comments are from memory of one viewing two weeks ago..

You will notice a few snippets with me in them. In one, I am sort of standing there like a lump while the others sing. This was our “entertainment” segment for the town dignitaries and home stay families at the Fare Well to Home Stay party. My language cohort is performing a song I did not know called “Day Man” from the TV show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”. I would have preferred a Ugandan folk song. Kids. I should have been more enthusiastic. I did give a good speech though, which is more my forte. It was a day mostly of speeches and eating.

One day I will upload my own video. Even with my 3G modem I can’t even send a short video by email. Becky used the free WiFi at Sol Cafe, so maybe I will try that.

As far as my work goes, it appears I will do intensive training starting with five farmer groups, presenting perhaps 4-5 programs to each, once a week at their VSLA meetings. Then we will take on five more farmer groups, while following up on the first set every month or so, to see if anything “stuck” with them. This will help me with variety, and I’ll get to know these farmers pretty intimately. I continue to want to establish four youth groups in at local Bugiri high schools. So that is what year one looks like for me.

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I went with Sharon, Hellen and Simon to admit Sharon to the Iganga Nursing and Midwifery School. It has a beautiful manicured campus and the dorm rooms look first rate. We were not allowed near the dorms. I met the Deputy Principal, who told me that 97% of their graduates find employment.

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Some PCVs report that neither their office locale nor their home site are amenable to a permagarden. At IST my counterpart Matthews showed the Agri-Business cohort how to build an elevated garden and a sack garden. He did great, although we ran out of time before they could be planted. He made a special trip back to Entebbe last week to finish both of them. Hope the nuns are pleased. Matthews says people in the villages are not well versed in these gardens, so we will add them to our teaching package.

sack garden

For the sack garden, use two grain sacks for durability. As you put dirt and manure into the sacks, you use a cylinder to build a column of rocks in the middle for aeration of the water.

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Draw 8-10 columns down the side of the sack, and then burn 5 holes into each column with matches. Plant Japanese Onion seedlings or other types, and have up to fifty plants around the sides plus a few more on top.

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Voila. This is a sack garden at my office. Trim off the green part of the onions as you need them, and this particular sack will grow for 2-3 years.

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These are scratch cards you can buy from little stands everywhere. You load the numbers you uncover into your phone to buy airtime. Our Peace Corps issued “burner” phones by Nokia allow unlimited airtime to anyone else from the Peace Corps, a Closed User Group. You can also convert this airtime into internet data. You can also use your phone for “Mobile Money”, by giving money to an authorized dealer and getting it credited on your phone like a bank deposit. You can transfer mobile money to others or buy airtime with it. Most PCVs seem to avoid mobile money, but my landlord wants me to use mobile money to pay my electric bill, so I have to learn it.

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Meet my new roommate, Meowi Meowseveni, named in honor of the exalted leader of the Republic of Uganda. I will just call her Meowri. . I use a basin with my carpenter’s wood chips for a litter box. I have been feeding her ground up silver fish and hard boiled eggs and whole milk. She’s about three months old. We are getting along fine. Kittens are so photogenic.