Routines

Last Sunday, I had the perfect blog post planned out in my mind. All I needed was the photo to complement it, and then, it would be ready to see the light of the internet blogosphere. But fate intervened and since Sunday night our apartment has been without internet. Yesterday, after a long discussion with the landlord, the internet has returned, however the orignial blog post concept no longer feels appropriate. This morning as I sat absently in front of my computer, nothing came to me.

And then, as I stood over the stove, pouring eggs over the vegetables I had prepared for breakfast, I realized how quickly all of this has become. I find it rather remarkable how quickly something completely new and different can become familiar and comfortable. I now walk around my neighborhood of Lusaka knowing the streets, and if I get lost on a run I know which direction I should point myself in order to find home. I can recognize the sound of the landlords car revving at the gate, or the vuvezelas signaling soccer matches at the nearby fields. Portico's has quickly become a favorite location for meeting friends to watch world cup games, and I can always tell you who is playing and at what time.

Some things I am still discovering and learning, like which direction to walk in to find the nearest purple vested hawker selling airtime for my phone, or where I can find a small vegatable stand nearby my apartment. I am still busy finding activities and making new friends. Work, too, is a new adventure, and my days are busy with meetings and reading documentation to try to understand the scope of work, structure and goals of the organization. These, too, I'm sure will soon be familiar.

New Beginnings

48 hours of travel is more than enough for anybody. It makes me really glad that I am settled for the next six months - even if I am not fully unpacked yet. The travel was mostly uneventful; I met my wonderful new roommate (for the next 6 months at least) at Heathrow; even though we didn't manage to make contact until the end of the layover. I especially appreciated the view we had of northern Tanzania during the last leg of our journey, including a great view of Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Meru peaking through the early morning clouds. In some ways, the travel was even longer than the two full days of airplane flights and layovers, with my baggage not arriving until this afternoon - though it did arrive fully intact. The wonderful admin assitants at work happily made the trip to the airport to pick it up for me, then deliver us safely back at our apartment together at the end of the work day today.

Travel aside, my first 24 hours in Zambia has been wonderful. On our arrival in Lusaka, we were taken to the most beautiful and luxurious apartment, where we met a few more staff from work. One wonderful colleague had taken charge of outfitting our apartment with all the necessities, so we walked in and found a living room with plush couches and chairs, and a large TV, a dining room table that very comfortably seats 8, a kitchen with oven, stove, a bright teal refridgerator, and all kinds of appliances - including a sandwich press (!), and two bedrooms, each with a queen sized bed and matching sets of leopard print sheets, pillows and comforters! Each room of the house has its own climate control with an air conditioner/heater, and today we recieved three very exciting additions - a microwave, cable TV, and INTERNET! Remember how I told you that living in Lusaka I would likely have access to more luxuries than in Richmond Indiana? Well it turns out I am living more luxuriously than any other apartment I have ever lived in (or will likely live in anytime soon).

In case our apartment doesn't sound nice enough already, it also has a pool! The sparkling blue water is extremely tempting, especially during the late afternoon when it is actually warm enough to consider taking clothes off, but the pool is unheated, and I think it might have to wait for a few months, an unseasonably warm day, or a day of temporary insanity to be used. Still, I hear that by October it is quite warm out, and I am looking forward to jumping right in!

It is easy to just talk about our living arangements since they are so nice, but we did get a chance to go into work for the first time this afternoon. Most of this week will likely be orientation, especially since our immediate supervisor will be in the Livingstone office until the end of next week. The office is a 15-20 minute walk from our apt, and today we chose our cubicals and met many of the 140 staff members, as well as recieving a breif orientation to the different projects currently being undertaken. Hopefully within the next few days we will get an opportunity to learn more about what we will be doing for the next 6 months. The general idea is that there is a job description with three tasks that must be accomplished, which between the two of us we will be responsible for doing, and then I will get a chance to do more technical work in quantification, while M. will be doing more technical work in monitoring & evaluation. The great part is, that since we will be living together and working next to eachother, we will also have the opportunity to learn about what eachother are doing! I am eager to get to work, and excited to get a chance to learn more about the current projects!

In Transit

I am currently parked on a stool along a busy thoroughfare of New York's JFK airport. The recent realization that my flight to London has been delayed by a little over an hour was mildly ameliorated by the fact that I found it out using a free wi-fi connection provided by a super-overpriced health food stall. And so, my now 6 hour layover can be spent writing a blog post for you, my dear reader.

It is hard to believe that I am actually on my way to Zambia. As I packed my daily planner today, I found the calendar I drew for myself back at the end of March. At the time, the three months until this departure date seemed an endlessly long time to wait. But over the course of the past few months, I crossed off squares with black "x' marks, one day at a time until I reached the first section highlighted in yellow - my trip to Uganda - with such a big trip and so many things to do, even then the second highlighted area seemed impossibly far off. And yet, it has snuck up on me. Despite my disbelief its actuality, June 20th arrived with the anxiety, excitement and tears that heralded the realization that I really and truely am leaving.

And despite the fact that I am going to miss home like crazy while I am gone, I am so excited for this new chapter and adventure. It is humbling to realize that there are many things that you don't know yet that you don't know, and really scary to decide you want to find out what some of them are. I have tried my best to prepare myself for that by packing the comforts that will get me through the hard and challenging moments; Ghiradelli chocolate chips, warm fuzzy slippers, and board games (Cranium party in Lusaka!). While I hope that these will lessen the moments of frustration, I know that they will never completely blunt the occassional (I hope) feeling of "what on earth am I doing here?" Of course, these are also the most important of moments, because when you recover, you know just a little more about who you are, why you are doing what you are doing, and what you still have to figure out. That is the adventure I am really excited for. The adventure of becoming me.

Home Again (Briefly)

It is 3am in Boston, and I have been awake for well over an hour. Travelling for 24 hours is never fun, but there is always something peaceful about the early morning hours that suddenly belong to you when you are seriously jetlagged. The next week and a half will be busy recovering, visiting, and planning to leave again. It seems somehow cruel to have such a short period of time at home, but I am happy to have it.

Back to Kampala

Yesterday we said our fond farewell to Nyabyeya. It has been a really wonderful three weeks, and a very successful conference. It is really strange to feel this all wrapping up after months of planning, including many days of anxiety, excitement and frustration. In the end, we had close to 80 participants earn certificates, and the feedback we have received is extremely positive regarding the impact the information and skills our participants have gained will have on their lives and communities.

In preparing my closing speech, I realized that the participants themselves are much like the seeds and plants that we have been teaching about for the past three weeks. Each one of them came with different roots; we had young and old participants, men and women, participants who are students or full time mothers and participants who are already large scale farmers or health care workers. Each one of them has a different goal, a different destination; like the seeds the agriculture class sowed which will grow to be maize, tomatoes, eggplant, cabbage and nakati (a green leafy vegetable), each one of our participants will take this training and implement it in a different way - teachers like Freda and Alex will go back to their schools and work with their students, government administrators like Robert will take the knowledge back to their work in planning and community development, farmers like Zed and Odongo will implement techniques to improve the output and sustainability of their crops, and young women and mothers like Josephine, Juliet and Gladys will implement changes in their homes that lead to healthier children.

The real change and effort comes on the part of each individual participant, and as conference organizers and facilitators, our role was little more than nurturing and fertilizing each seed as it begins to grow. We hope that as our participants continue to germinate their plans, CMU will be able to continue to support them through additional trainings, monitoring, and assistance in implementation. I look forward to following the progress of CMU and each one of our participants - I know that not every one will grow strong and tall, but I believe that some will really flourish, and have even already begun to plant their own seeds of change.

Training Of Trainers

I received an email today from a friend of mine chiding me on my lack of blog posts. Its not that I don't want to update all of you on what I have been up to - indeed I think of you often and want to reach out and let you know that here on the other side of the world (or depending on where you are reading from, maybe only a few hundred miles away), I am happy, or frustrated, enjoying my work or missing my friends. In Nyabyeya however, internet is a luxury we do not have. In fact, electricity to run a computer or spare time to use the internet has been an unthinkable luxury until today!

Being busy has its pro's and con's. Today is only the second day we have had off since the day after we arrived in Uganda (!), and it felt great to sleep in, sit on the porch and journal, shower and do laundry before being picked up at 11 by our CMU driver to head into Masindi for internet, Mzungu food, and a quick shopping. The con of working so much is quite simply exhaustion. We are all tired and yet we never seem to get a break. Now that we have moved into the phase of our project in which the trainers train their counterparts, we are enjoying having our evenings free of lesson planning and team meetings, and instead available for tossing a frisbee, relaxing on the couch, or drinking a beer with friends.


The pro of working so hard is that the participants seem to be really enjoying the training - and getting a lot out of it. I have broken up my health group into 4 small groups; 1)Nutrition, 2)Locally Important Diseases, 3)Hygiene, and 4)Family Planning. Each group is responsible for putting together a session on their topic which they will be presenting to the Agriculture group on Monday and Tuesday of next week. It has been a struggle to get groups to think outside of the box and come up with ways of teaching which go beyond lecture or notes on the blackboard, but with the help of a few really creative and wonderful individuals, we have at least one drama which will be performed!


And so on Monday we will move into phase 3 of the training in which the participants teach one another. It is exciting and also a little sad to see the project nearing its close. I am really hopeful that the information that the participants have gained will help them as they continue to be leaders in their communities, and I believe that the knowledge they are bringing from the training will make a long term impact on the whole sub-county.

Last day before Tomorrow

Today was our last full day in Kampala. Erika is set to arrive tonight at 9:40pm, and she will have less than 12 hours in the country before we set off for Nyabyeya tomorrow morning. The past few days have been busy and fruitful. Yesterday we spend the entire afternoon meeting with facilitator of the agriculture course. I feel that we made progress, but at the same time it was challenging to work with the pedagogy here which highlights lecture, while the focus of a TOT is on practice and participation.

Today, we spent a hot and exhausting day walking through the crowded streets of downtown Kampala, searching for bargains on the many items needed for our project. We will get many of the heavier items in Masindi tomorrow (such as hoes for the agriculture workshop), however today saw bargaining for plates (75 of them!), silverware, washbasins, stationary, photocopies, flip charts, and seeds.

I have heard that the city of Kampala is one of the worst in the world for pedestrians, and it certainly seems that you take your life into your hands every time you try to cross a street. The sidewalks are full of people - open shops stocked with rows and rows of wares from floor to ceiling many times over, colorful people selling peanuts, gum, airtime, socks, (or many other things), young men lounging around on top of the wares they are unloading from lorries stacked high with cardboard boxes tied with twine, big plastic gunny sacks, and the occassional bunches of plantains. Of course there are the pedestrians too - lots and lots and lots of them - women wearing beautiful fabrics, men in suits and soccer jerseys, young women in sharp looking suits or fashionable tanktops (and always wearing high heels), and every other get-up you could possibly imagine. We shove and push and bump into eachother and we make our way down the street, pausing at corners until the coast is (mostly) clear and we can dash to the other side before the endless stream of taxis (public minibusses), boda bodas (motorcycles that carry one or two people on the back for a fee), lorries, busses, and private vehicles continues.

Hopefully, I will get a chance to upload pictures soon. Until then, I will likely be out of internet touch for a bit as we head upcountry and away from the city. The town of Masindi has internet options, but has been powerless for the past three weeks, and we will be working from Monday-Saturday anyway. Much love to all!