Things are going really well out here . I think I've been out about 5-6 weeks at this stage. Spent the first month in a training centre in a place called Mbalala. Pretty small place on a main road between Kampala & Jinja (big-ish town). The training was pretty hilarious, fun, scary and retarded all at the same time! It was like going back to second year secondary and being taught sex ed all over again. A load of the guys out here had no clue about half of it though ..it would literally take from 9-17h to explain a few basic facts about how AIDS spreads and then the next day after chatting to all their friends the national & community volunteers would be back in square one confused about things like - does aspirin stop girls getting pregnant..can I get AIDS/ get pregnant if I'm standing up while having sex (believing that sperm cant travel upwards...) etc... so yeah, veeery slow but obviously needed for a lot of the Ugandan team and it gave the internationals a chance to chat to everyone and settle in. Had some funny characters out there. Dennis Bob was a particular favourite starting every sentence with eeeeh-yyyeeeesss (like that hotel owner in Little Britain!! ) too good! He'd ask very revealing question such as - is it normal that when I have sex with someone they cry, I mean a friend of mine told me and I once knew a girl who did said it could happen...oh poor Dennis Bob!
Since training I've moved to a place called Nawanyago which is where my placement is. We've been meeting all the people in the community we're going to work with and setting up different projects & all that jazz. Unfortunately the music project doesn't look too good. We've got so much work that we have to cover for SPW and also they're not too keen on buying instruments & bringing them into schools because it basically means that when other volunteers come they're expected to buy things for the kids etc and SPW are pretty big on their minimum cost, investing in people & skills and sustainability...but we'll see how we fare! I've had a cool few weeks setting up here though. We've been doing tests at the schools checking out how much the kids already know and what last years volunteers achieved. We also meet with in-school clubs&Groups like environmental club, AIDS Action lcub & Dance 4 Life so we'll be working with them helping them out and giving them tutoring n stuff. We work in a primary and a secondary school and the moment and this week we've to find two more schools to work with. Then outside school there are two main farmers groups, Nalimawa & Igumyamoyo. We meet with them and help them forming business plans, checking what type of crops they should focus on growing, bring them to visit model farms etc..it's really good fun. Those places are far off the beaten track. Had the first meeting in a little mud hut with 30 typs crammed in and chickens running about. Good fun! Then there's other groups around the place and we have to have a minimum of two more farmers groups so we're just finding out which ones we'll pick & checking how that all goes.
On top of that we're organizing a big sports event sometime in March. Should be sweet, footy tournament just getting the whole community together to introduce ourselves to them and get them motivated about our work. They play footsy with platsic bags all rolled up n tied together, been practicing my skills! Looking forward to that man..and we're also organizing a big Voluntary Counselling&Testing day (HIV testing)..aparently over 400 people showed up last year so got a lot of work for that and looking forward to it too.
As far as the place is concerned I was put in one of the less rural placements which basically means I'm around an hour away from town. It's pretty cool actually because it means that where I live has a few shops selling food & necessities but then go 5 mins off and you're in really rural "villages"..basically a hut with a few people around. So I'm pretty lucky! The house the community lets us live in is pretty sweet. Clean and quite big, I got my own room which is cool. No electricity but there is some in the town so there's a place you can charge your phone and I got my solar charger so it's all good!
All in all I really like it so far and I'm looking forward to really starting up work in March! Had malaria which sucks a bit but hope I won't get it again too soon!! Then the one thing I reaaaally miss is music. I need to find a guitar but they're really hard to come by and very expensive when you do..sucks! BUT, Edgar ( the community volunteer i work with) said that one of the priest around has a few instruments in a school somewhere so I might be able to get access to them that way! Fingers crossed!!!
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