Not Much Has Happened

I moved to Masaka on Monday. Actually, that’s not quite right, I moved to Kayirikiti village within Nyendo township, about 5km from where I work in Masaka. My organization is called Renewed Efforts to Alleviate Poverty (REAP) and the reason that I moved here so quickly is that I am replacing a volunteer from the group that came in August who terminated his service after a month. There were prospects in the far west and in the far east, but, in the end, I am here. I’m not going to lie: when Peace Corps told me that I was coming here I was extremely disappointed and upset. I told them that all I wanted was to live in a village. I did not care the work that I was told to do or where in the country I was told to go and I didn’t mind learning a new language; I just wanted to live somewhere rural for another year. Nyendo is not rural. It is a township at an intersection of two roads that go to two bigger towns, Mbarara and Masaka. Nyendo feels a little like Busia, a border town in the East. There are a lot of businesses focused on people travelling, more motorcycles than people, a lot of bustling and exhaust and noise, car repair shops, litter everywhere. It’s ugly and when I first arrived I was extremely upset, disappointed and honestly wondered if I could live in a place like this for a year. I’m staying.

I don’t live somewhere beautiful anymore, but I am living and working with wonderful people that I already trust. I live in a small, two room house with a separate kitchen in the back yard of my counterpart/supervisor, Paul. I spent the first day organizing and decorating. I put my pictures on the wall and unlike my last house, I put up a ton of pictures of all of you. I wanted this house to feel like my home. I have electricity now, which is nice, but has already been detrimental to my habit of reading a lot. The best part about my home is Paul and his family. They have taken me in and in two days have already made me feel accepted and a part of their family. So far they have invited me to breakfast and dinner every morning, where we sit as a family and eat. His wife, Margaret, sits at the table with us, which is not common here and it feels like home, I feel like I am part of their family, not just a guest in their home. Ibrahim is their 18 year old son, home from school until February. He’s helped me get organized, helps with my laundry and is hopefully going to take me to play soccer with his friends. I’ve invited him to watch movies at my home and I lent his the art book that my sister gave me and he’s done a very good sketch of the Mona Lisa from it. I feel comfortable there, I feel at home. I am also excited because across the street lives a truly amazing woman named Josephine. She is older, in her 60s and she takes in unwanted children. I visited her for the first time yesterday and she has at least 10 1-5 year old kids living with her. I want that to be one of my bases. I want to go and play with the kids and help her with her work.

REAP also has people like that. I work with Paul and a woman named Molly. They share a two person office in the Ugandan equivalent of a strip mall. I was not happy to see that most of my work would be done in this office. In fact, I am here now, at my computer about to connect to the internet in my office. I have to say that I had terrible flashbacks to my last job. Our problem is transportation. Paul, Molly and to some extent, myself, are trained to teach and do outreaches. They work in four communities but the problem is that there is no money to get out there. This was part of the reason that their last volunteer left, he also didn’t want to work in an office. I feel that if we find a way to get into the field, we have a lot to offer. The idea that I introduced yesterday is to piggyback on other organizations and go out with them when they do outreaches and teach and train them. Molly and Paul liked the idea and we had two meetings yesterday to arrange transportation with other organizations. I think and hope it will work because I don’t want to be cooped up an office all day. I hope it works. I also started a blog for them (reapmasaka.blogspot.com) where we intend to publicly document the work we do which we can use with other reports to maybe get funding down the road.