The thing that surpised me the most about living in Uganda for two years was that once the initial shock and the initial adjustment period wore off, life went on pretty much as usual. Yes, there is poverty, and occasionally it can be staggering. There are many more “have nots” than “haves.” But pretty soon you realize that you can get by with what you have and not really miss the things that are gone. No computer or television? Read a book. No electricity? Use a lantern. No McDonalds or KFC? Matooke, matooke, matooke, every single day! (Matooke is steamed, mashed, plantains.) Initially I missed checking my email every 10 minutes and being able to retrieve any information I wanted to with the click of a mouse. I found ways to get news, however. I grew to love my little hand-crank radio and to this day I miss my lazy afternoons with a book and my BBC News.
Life could be stressful and difficult, but it was also sometimes beautifully simple. I had to be self sufficient and I had to learn to do things that I’d never done before. I took bucket baths. I washed my clothes by hand. I would haul 20 liter jerrycans of water to and from the well or the rainwater tank. I cooked and did my dishes, same as always except for a keen new appreciation for conserving water. No running water and sporadic electricity sounds difficult, but it was by far the easiest stuff to get used to.
My House in Ibanda
What was difficult was the culture; the sense of otherness. With some people I overcame it, and with many others I knew I was always the muzungu (white person). It was difficult to see myself as part of the community at times. Some of my cultural values were starkly different and when things became difficult it could be easy to place myself outside of the community. For the first year it was always in the back of my mind that if I really wanted to I could be on a plane back to the United States in a week.
Things really started to change for me once I moved sites from a trading center called Kazo to a small town called Ibanda. My assignment in Uganda was to work as a teacher trainer. Uganda is trying to establish public schools, and there is a dearth of qualified teachers. The Peace Corps’ education program is trying to help with this problem. Volunteers like me are posted to teacher colleges. The colleges then assign us to work at the primary school level at a “Model School.” We worked in concert with headteachers (principals) and Coordinating Center Tutors (CCT) to work the with teachers in the surrounding schools. Kazo, my first site, was not a good situation. I suspected my headteacher of being corrupt and it became apparent that my CCT was not doing his job. The headteacher was only interested in grants, and whenever he would come up with a budget it would ALWAYS come out to be the maximum allowable budget under a particular grant. He offered no support for programs to improve the teaching methods of the area teachers, which is the whole goal of the education program. In addition, my community was slow to accept me because their previous volunteer had been kicked out for bad behavior. I was not getting any work done and becoming increasingly frustrated. Five months into my service I decided to get my site changed. If it didn’t work, I was going to quit.
I got in touch with the Principal of St. George’s Teacher College, the college I was posted to. Initially when I arrived at site he had expressed interest in working closely with me and Stoops, the other volunteer who had been posted to St. George’s. At the time we were teaching at the college two days per week. I told him about my lack of work at site and that I was interested in working more closely with the college. He wanted me to help the college start an ICT program and agreed to write the Peace Corps to request that I move closer to the college. I talked to my supervisor at the Peace Corps, and he agreed that it would be best for me to move to where I had more work. The only problem was I didn’t know where I was going to live or when I would move. So for the time being, I waited.
