The Site Is Right
For the site selection announcements today they made it like the “Price is Right”, calling it the “The Site is Right” i.e. “Charley! Come on Down!” Cheesy as it seems. Then after a few corny jokes (I can’t even remember what they said about me) we were each told our location.
I will be working with rice farmers, and youth for the African Trainer and Entrepreneurs Forum. I will be living in Bugiri District, which is east of Kampala near the Northern Shores of the Lake Victoria, not too far from the border with Kenya.
It’s swampy, hence the rice farming. It will be hot and I’ll have to protect myself from Mosquitoes. There is a nearby volunteer I’ve heard about, working on a new product you can spray on the walls that prevent the malaria mosquitoes from landing. If they can’t land on walls, they won’t stay.
Quoting pertinent parts from the from the job description:
African Trainer and Entrepreneurs Forum was founded in 2009 to engage women and youths in modern agricultural practice. Our goal is to strengthen and support capacity of smallholder family farms and business communities in agribusiness and investment for economic transformation and food security.
MAJOR ORGANIZATION ACTIVITIES
– Promote rural financial inclusion through the Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) methodology
- Mobilize people and support them in creating income generating activities including soap-making, charcoal briquettes, candle making, mushroom growing
– Supporting rice farmers in growing lowland rice
PRIMARY JOB DUTIES
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– Conduct regular field visits to beneficiaries to provide hands on technical assistance,mentoring and coaching
– Mobilize participating farmer groups and clusters to participate in collecting marketing and bulk purchasing of agro-inputs
– Enhancing building capacity of farmers in business management and skills through training in farming as a business
– Promoting farmer access to agri-finance through training and VSLA methodology
My supervisor is “an entrepreneur and mentor to Ugandan youths through the Uganda Youth Entrepreneur League. In his free time he likes to spend time with his friends, many of whom are part of the Rotary Club.” Uganda is the second most entrepreneurial country in the world (percentage of independent businesses). Getting acquainted with the local Rotary Club will help my integration into the community.
Here are more photos from today. Sorry about the quality. I think they look good on my camera and on Google Drive but they get fuzzy when I transfer them to WordPress. Even the map above (not from my camera) transferred fuzzy. Still learning.
To the right I am posing with Lucine, the Uganda Country Director. 
She is from Armenia, where she met her husband, a Peace Corps volunteer. She became a U.S. citizen and has worked in several countries. She told me Peace Corps has a five year rule, and she will be leaving us next year.
On the left, David (56) my roommate during training, myself (60), and Ron (66). They claim Wisconsin as their home state, but neither have lived there for a long time. In one of our evaluation groups we called ourselves the “Fossils”. They will be posted in the west, across the country from me.
Peace Corps brought in some dancers and drummers after our site selection ceremony.
On the left, I’m dancing with a native dancer. (Photo from another camera). We were all kind of pushed out there.
In a few weeks I’ll be living with my Home Stay community with four other volunteers somewhere in the Eastern section, One of them, Nick, is from Kansas City and will be posted in nearby Jinga, at the headwaters of the Nile. He loves the Kansas City Chiefs, poor guy. Carson, a Denver University grad hailing from Vermont, will also be nearby. We will be learning the Lusoga language. It’s nearly identical to Lugando, the dominant language. First however, are two weeks of intensive Ag training.
