Pallisa on Picasa!

I just loaded a few pictures up on Google's Online Photo Application, Picasa. The album contains pictures of Pallisa, a town that is about 20-30 minutes away from my home by public transportation. I come to this town often and a bunch of my favorite "hot spots" are pictured.

Speaking of hot spots, it was 109 degrees here yesterday. I layed on the cool concrete in my house under my radiating tin roof in boxer shorts and prayed for the sun to burn out. So winter is not all that bad, you Iowa folks.

I'm going to try and upload more frequently. Click the photograph below to go directly to the album.

Thank You For Appreciating

“Thank you for appreciating.” is a common phrase used in Uganda. It is used as a response after someone has thanked you for doing something or has just given you a compliment. You say, thank you for appreciating (something… my work, my clothes, my food, etc.). Personally, I love it. It humors me and I use it all the time these days. So today I will talk about some things that I appreciate.

Mr. Otoke is my best friend and source of companionship in the village. He is the geography teacher at Kamuge High. Over the past two terms I’ve come to know him better than most people I interact with in the village.

He is an intelligent, considerate, curious, and friendly man. One of the reasons I enjoy his company so much is because I can have real, meaningful conversations with him. I’ve visited him at his Kamuge home several times and he has come to visit me at my home. I say Kamuge home because his real home is in a different village. His real home is where his large family resides and where most of his land is.

This is very common amongst the professional class of working Ugandans. Most professionals in Uganda work outside of their home villages. They keep their homes out in the village, but work in the larger, more populated areas of the country, towns such as Kampala, Mbale, Fort Portal, etc. In Uganda, land ownership is a very important component to your social status. This is why they choose to keep their vast plots upcountry.

Mr. Otoke is curious. He is always asking me questions about topics that range from myself and way of living to life in the United States to global issues and conflicts to national issues and debates, both in Uganda and the United States. The Peace Corps calls this cross-cultural exchange. An important goal of the agency, maybe the most important.

It is truly a delight to be in his presence. He is almost always ecstatic whenever we meet. He is a great part of my village life.

Mr. Bulolo, the head teacher of my school, is a very interesting and unique individual. He is a really nice guy and in general looks out for me well being. This is something that I really appreciate. He has a tendency to talk extensively on just about anything you approach him with, so be prepared to stand and chat for awhile.

He is an older man with many years of experience. Often times you will approach him about one issue and the conversation will transform into a monologue of Ugandanish wisdom pouring from his mouth like a waterfall. Unable to swim upstream, I usually take in as much as I can, show that I agree or disagree with subtle listening cues and try to take away some sort of lesson from the conversation.

Today is the birthday of my Pops, Mr. Jeffrey P. Mathias, a great man, father, and true inspiration in my life. His email is jmathiasiowa@gmail.com. Send a shout out his way if you get a chance. Today is also the birthday of one of my best friends and a truly amazing individual, Miss Lindsey H. Diercksen, who is also serving in the Peace Corps in Mali. Her email is diercksen.lindsey@gmail.com. Again, if you feel so inclined, send a shout out.

I love the wonderful Ugandan cuisine I indulge in so often in my village life. Yeah, I just said that. Matoke and beans anyone? See picture below of one of my favorite dishes. Mmm…tasty.

Matoke, beans, and peanut sauce...delicious!

I’m not trying to sound to hipsterish/hippyish in saying it, but the food here is so fresh and free of chemicals or other preservatives. My taste buds crave it and my body literally feels better after ingesting it. I feel healthier, both physically and mentally. Yes, it does get bland sometimes, but there’s always Mbale or Kampala for some added variety.

I’m love my cat, Paka (pah-kah). Paka performs critical tasks essential to the survival and well being of the Mathias Ugandan household such as killing all living things inside of and within a 50 ft. radius of my home (examples: rats, mice, lizards, bugs, toads, snakes, etc.). He entertains my neighbor kids and serves as a companion for yours truly.

The rest of this entry consists of more recent pictures. Enjoy!

John, Brennan, and I enjoying one of our favorite activities in Uganda, riding the taxis

A gorgeous river in Budadiri near the base of Mt. Elgon

The same river from another angle

Girl in purple

Three kids relaxing on the rocks of the river

Me on the streets of Mbale Town

A boy setting up shop to sell dried fish

Kamuge... City of Neighborly Love

My neighbors in Kamuge are certainly a fascinating bunch. As many of you already know, I live in a duplex. I occupy exactly half the space of the house pictured below.

My humble abode (the left half), those are heaped sweet potato plants in front, delicious

My house has three large rooms. I use the smallest room as a bedroom. It contains my bed, that’s about it. The room next to it is multipurpose/multifunctional. I use it for dressing, doing yoga and other exercises, chilling out during the day, hanging clothes, sleeping in when I have guests, a lot of different stuff. My third room located closest to my front door is my dining/living room.

My bedroom

Angle 1: My spare room for random activities

Angle 2: My wardrobe and homemade shoe rack

My dining/living room

I also have two smaller rooms, the larger of which I use as a kitchen and the other as my bathing area.

My kitchen, the orange device is the battery/control panel for my solar lighting system

My bathing area

I have built my own running shower using a jerry can, pipes, a shower head, and some nylon tape and melted candle wax to seal around the base. This enables me to have a free flowing overhead stream of water fall on me every day. It sure beats a bucket bath! And the temperature is customizable. I can create a hot shower by simply boiling water and mixing it with some room temp water.

My house is considered medium-large by most PCV Uganda standards. Many volunteers have only two rooms with an area outside used for a restroom and bathing.

So this is my pad. It’s almost perfect for me I would say. And I am able to customize a lot of its features to my specific needs.

My neighbors live in the same amount of space just a few feet away from me. Instead of just one bachelor living there though, they manage to sleep seven human beings. They are Mr. Justin Odoi and his wife, Mrs. Odoi (I cannot remember her name) as well as their five children, Junior, Sam, Patience, Oumolo, and Joanne (pronounced Jo-ahn).

They also house two hens, each with eight or so chicks, inside this home, as well as all their farming supplies, food, cooking supplies, etc. It is amazing to me how they manage to live in such tight quarters. What is even more amazing is that I believe many people in and around my village live in even smaller houses with more people.

My house is also highly upgraded compared with my neighbor’s. Their side has dirt floors and red brick (also dirt) walls. My headmaster informed me today that he gave Mr. Odoi enough money to plaster the entire home many months ago. However, Mr. Odoi chose to “eat it” (local saying) with other expenses. There is a lot of tension and hostility between them. And I don’t really understand it. I usually hear about it on several separate occasions each term, manifesting itself in the form of my head teacher railing against his latest actions or inaction to me and the other teachers. I’m not really sure if he ever communicates his concerns to Mr. Odoi himself, but if he does, they seem to have little or no effect.

Mr. Odoi’s children are well-behaved, charming, and entertaining little creatures. I’m thankful everyday for the first of these characteristics. Screaming and crying children tend to drive me insane. Pictures below from left to right are Patience, Joanne, and Oumolo.

3/5 of the my neighbor kids, great entertainment for me

They are incredibly productive. They help with virtually every domestic task. It is amazing what this family accomplishes.

Mr. Odoi receives a monthly salary from the Ministry of Education for his work at our school as an English Teacher. I’m guessing this amounts to around 365,000-400,000 Ugandan shillings per month (roughly $200). In addition to his work at the school, he also farms cassava.

One segment of my neighbors cassava field, it extends to the large mango tree in back

Above is just one snapshot of the cassava that Mr. Odoi produces (by manual labor). In this particular area of Uganda, there are two growing seasons for cassava. So he is able to harvest twice and thus sell hundreds of kilograms of raw cassava per year. This provides a second source of income for him and his family. In addition to cassava, the family also rears chickens. By my last count they had two hens with about 8 chicks each. The family grows the chicks to full weight and then sells them for around 8,000-10,000 shillings. This provides a third source of income.

Mr. Odoi also performs random additional work associated with his profession, such as proctoring exams at other schools and marking exams for the Ministry. Each of these tasks pays extra money on top of his regular salary.

Mr. Odoi also owns a vehicle. He rents out that vehicle to an individual in Tororo who uses it as a private hire taxi and pays Mr. Odoi on a monthly basis to use his car.

We all know that income is important, but what about the family’s expenses? Um….what expenses? The family does an amazing job at living off of… nothing. Almost everything they eat they farm and harvest themselves. This includes cassava, sweat potatoes, maize, and pumpkin. They spend money occasionally to buy things like rice and fish, but not often.

All domestic work is provided though the labor of the family. Schools fees in Kamuge are zero, something I have never seen in any other part of Uganda. The family lives in a home that is paid for and maintained by the school. The only other expenses I can think of are clothing, healthcare, and transportation. Clothing is purchases only when absolutely necessary (as you can see by the condition of the kids’ garments in the pictures). Healthcare – unless you are about to die, everything can be cured at home. And transport – the kids walk to school, the mother stays home, and Mr. Odoi, like myself, lives two minutes away from his place of work.

To me it is incredible.

However, there is more to the story (as there always is) of the Odoi family. Mr. Odoi, like many Ugandan men, is a polygamist. He has/had a second, younger wife by the name of Josephine. When I first moved to my site back in April, Josephine was the wife living in the house with Mr. Odoi.

The two also have one child together, a boy, by the name of Prosper. I find it interesting how some of his kids are named after verbs and virtues while others seem to have regular English names and yet others have Ugandan names. I still haven’t figured this one out yet.

One night, about a month after I arrived at site, I was sleeping soundly in my home when I awoke to some very loud yelling. It took me awhile to figure out what it was exactly but I soon realized it was my neighbor, Mr. Odoi, yelling at the top of his lungs for some strange reason.

It was about 1 a.m. In training they told us all these stories about witch doctors and “night dancers” coming to your house at night to terrorize people and put curses on them. Moreover, I heard another man’s voice, very deep, very unfamiliar. So I thought there was an intruder outside our home and Mr. Odoi was trying to get them to go away. At this point in my service I was still on Mefloquine.

Mefloquine is one of the worst drugs ever. I don’t really know why Peace Corps still administers it to volunteers. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mefloquine, it is given to volunteers for malaria prophylaxis. The problem is it has some unwanted side effects, some of which lead to a person going completely insane!!! I’m serious, this drug causes night terrors, hallucinations, and paranoia. All of which I experienced during my first month at site.

It was pretty freaky being all alone in my big house in the dark in the middle of nowhere Africa hearing strange voices and thinking someone was tapping on my front door wanting in. I once had a dream that someone was peering in my window and shining a flashlight inside in the middle of the night and then awoke only to find the hallucination continue even though I was awake, I wasn’t fully conscious.

So my mefloquine induced reaction to this midnight disturbance was paranoia, confusion, and fear. After about an hour the yelling stopped and I was able to get back to sleep.

The next morning, Josephine came over and stuck her head through the bars of my bedroom window (which sort of freaked me out by the way). She tossed me a folded up, handwritten note that read something along the lines of:

Joe,

Please call the Headmaster over immediately this morning. Last night my husband threatened to kill me and my co-wife. And by the way, I’m in love with you.

Josephine

To shed more light on this development, Josephine had been writing me love letters for the past three or four weeks (basically since I had arrived at site). I had been unresponsive to all of these and told Josephine that a relationship consisting of anything more than friends was simply impossible and not desired on my end.

Co-wife. Haha. Love that term. Her co-wife was also living on the premises at this time! She was sleeping in the car and Josephine was sleeping in the house! Now, I’m no expert on polygamy, but it doesn’t sound like a good idea to have both of your wives living on the same compound. Come on Odoi! Shady!

It turns out the reason Mr. Odoi was yelling was because Josephine would not allow the older wife into the home that night. She had wanted to come in and sleep in the home and not the car (not an unreasonable request). Josephine objected strongly and would not allow it. Mr. Odoi was thus scolding Josephine for not allowing it to happen.

However, I did not know any of this at the time! I was worried about Odoi being ma at me since one of his co-wives was apparently madly in love with me. I called Peace Corps security and spent a few days in Kampala while the whole situation got sorted out.

Solution? Josephine moved out with little Prosper and they have not been back since. That woman is trouble! Seriously, she was also shady. She would ask me for money and material objects all the time. And she would stick her head in my windows and come into my house unannounced all the time. Freaked me out! I’m glad she is gone.

I will close with a snap I took the other day while visiting my friend John near Mt. Elgon. Rise and Shine!

The sun rising near the base of Mt. Elgon

Break... Me Off a Peace of Mind

We’re almost ¾ through the long school break. The students are slated to come back to school on January 31^st. There seems to a be quite a bit of varying speculation as to whether that will exactly happen due to the upcoming elections.

The Presidential Elections are scheduled here in Uganda for February 18^th, 2011. For most voters, this means returning to their home villages where they are registered in order to cast their ballots. And thus reveals the most apparent conflict with the students at secondary boarding schools who are age 18 and over.

It is thought that many students will remain in their home villages until the conclusion of the elections and delay their arrival at school by 3 or 4 weeks. This would be unfortunate. Because it diminishes an already short school year filled with constant absenteeism on both the teachers part and the students.

Luckily, I happen to be working at a school that is composed of 90% day scholars. We refer to a day scholar as a student who is basically not a boarding student. These students walk to and from school each day. Sometimes from 5 or 10 kilometers away. I’m one of the few PCVs who works at a school like this. Most are boarding schools.

My sister and her boyfriend, Jamie, and I in the NYC subway

This means that these students, my students, will already be in their home villages and my first term of the new year will be unlikely to be majorly disrupted due to the upcoming exercise in African democracy. Knock on wood.

However, since being in Peace Corps, I find that it is always best to hope for the best but expect (and plan) for the worst, which is a common occurrence. I fully expect less than five students to be in each of my classrooms on January 31^st. And I fully expect not to hit 90% attendance until the third or fourth week. I also fully expect never to hit 100% attendance on any given day.

But… I am preparing to begin teaching new material on day one. That is all I can really do as a volunteer in this position. I’m hoping that as the students see that they have at least one teacher making and effort and showing up to teach, world will spread and more students will show up.

Me and the sibs in the subway

It has been awhile since my last post, and for that I apologize. Between visiting the states and traveling Uganda I have been pretty mobile the past few weeks.

Coming back from the states, I felt reenergized, full of motivation and ideas to impact real change in my community. I do have a “to do” list going full of some pretty robust projects. Although I recently read that “to do” lists are just another form of procrastination and should avoid being used. Whatever… I love lists.

A day or two after I arrived back in my community, I decided to take a day trip to Pallisa, my closest decent sized town. I spent a lot of time there that day. I began walking around and throughout the day was greeted by many random Ugandans, some of which I remembered, others I had no idea of.

My and my pops in front of Lady Liberty

But it was great! It was a really special experience for me. I was already feeling reenergized and happy after a relaxing vacation in America. And now it was great to see all these welcoming, smiling faces of some of the nicest and friendliest human beings I have ever met. And just to see the joy on their faces merely from crossing paths with their “mzungu”.

I was recently reflecting on this experience with a friend and fellow PCV. She brought up the fact about how lucky we truly are to be placed in a Peace Corps country that truly loves white people. And it is so true. For all the harassment and overcharging and the like that we put up with, the people of Uganda truly love us as human beings. And it is obvious whenever you have a sustained interaction with one of them.

My good friend Gerard and I inside his home in Kamuge

To add to the list of examples, I recently had a great dinner with a close PCV friend of mine and his barber, a Ugandan. The barber had been inviting him over for weeks and so we took up his offer. Eating at another Ugandan’s home is by far one of my favorite experiences in the country. You do get a sense of who they are and where they come from. And you get to experience a little bit of their personal life in their own home for a few hours. Everything was prepared for us and we were catered to for the entire evening, without interruption. It makes you feel really special and loved.

As I was coming home from Pallisa that day, the sun was setting. Many Ugandans were out in the fields digging or on the road walking somewhere. I was riding home with the wind blowing through my hair and just waving to all of them as we drove by. The sky was a collage of burnt and bright oranges and yellows. I felt really happy to be here and at peace. It was a great feeling. Those are the moments that I love and cherish about being in Peace Corps. They come at random times and in completely unexpected forms. But they make the difficult days worth the struggle.

My Christmas was great. I spent it in Uganda with a good friend. We had a relaxing Ugandan style Christmas meal, relaxed, had good conversation, listened to music, and even made a little.

The photo shoot continues, Amanda and I with a few fun villager friends on top of their biogas digester...what???

New Year’s was also a great evening. I will admit though that it didn’t quite feel like a legit NYE celebration to me. I guess I’m so used to watching the ball drop and drinking champagne. It was still a very memorable year for sure.

So now here we are, mid-January. A little over two weeks until school starts. I’m looking forward to getting the rest of my house and office in clean and working order before I begin the next term of what I’m here to do.

Being at site during term break is definitely a test in a PCV teacher’s mental strength. The days are…. still there… still 24 hours long….still hot. The hard thing is that the teacher’s and everyone else you seem to know retreats back deep into their villages to be with their families. So it can feel pretty isolating.

No one is ready for this picture to be taken, but I like it

I have taken comfort in the simple pleasure of reading, listening to music, attempting to play the guitar, working out… A LOT, going for long walks in the village, calling Ugandan friends that are around and visiting with them, and maintaining the homestead.

I really do enjoy being in my own house though. It’s relaxing and familiar. Familiar in that it is characterized by all the idiosyncrasies of my personality. I take comfort in this personal setting in a country that sometimes still feels like another world.

Another one with the kiddos and others

Even as I gain a deeper understanding of and become more integrated in my community. Uganda still has a certain mystique about it. I often wander the public areas of the community and wonder how exactly it would be to live in the life of a Ugandan, deep in the village.

John and I taking in the accommodation of Bududa

Even though I live deep in the village, amongst the people. I’m not living exactly like a Ugandan in rural Pallisa District does. And I wonder what type of life it would be. What my outlook on life would be. What my views and perspectives on the world would be. It is mysterious to me. And it is also a barrier, at least right now. Maybe after more time I will gain a better understanding.