Meet Aisu Fiona

Aisu (pronounced I-ee-soo) Fiona, besides having a pretty awesome name, is one of the smartest students in my S4 class. She's pictured above in my main photo on the far left.

She's one of those students who comes to school every day and arrives on time. She asks questions in class and participates actively. She has a lot going for her. She visits me in my office often to talk about school and America.

Her home is about an hours walk from the school. So she spends two hours a day walking to and from school, five days a week, sometimes on weekends too. I see her all the time when I run in the morning.

She is 16 years old, very young for S4, impressive. She is the third born of seven children. She has one brother and five sisters.

The eldest sibling is a primary school teacher. And the second born is at Kyambogo University studying Information Technology. So her potential to move past A-level and onto university looks pretty promising. I'm happy for her.

She is lucky enough to still have both her parents, Okanya Sam and Asuma Mary. When she grows up, she wants to be a doctor.

She is an Itesote by tribe and speaks four languages: Ateso, English, Luganda, and Lugwere.

She epitomizes the reason I teach.

My Souvenir from South Africa

Earlier I alluded to the two sides of the South African healthcare system and said I would elaborate more later on. As promised, here it goes...

One early morning during the first week of May, my friend Renee and I set off on a 9 mile run in preparation for a half marathon we were planning on running on May 22nd. Apart from the fact that we were both in beautiful South Africa, there was nothing unusual about this particular day. We had been staying with a friend from CouchSurfing.org and had told our third travel mate John that we would be back in an hour and a half or less. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

We were about 32 minutes into our run. We were both feeling pretty good. But staring back at us dead ahead was a T-intersection and we had to make a decision on which way to go. Both of us being completely unfamiliar with the area entirely, I suggested we go left. Which we did. We had come down a long gradual hill to the intersection and were taking in the peaceful heart rate relief it provided before we crossed the road and cut left, continuing our run against traffic (they drive on the left in SA) as you are supposed to while running. Minute 34 of the run rolls around. We notice that the road is slowly transitioning from dense urban to country open and thus the traffic is increasing speed and, well, increasing. Minute 35 and we notice a lot of traffic in the left lane (far lane). We round a corner to the right and are inundated with sunlight. Cars passing in the left lane. Now cars are passing those cars in the right lane, and right next to us.

Renee and I are on the shoulder, though by this time we are running single file due to the three or four previous cars that pass us carelessly missing us by a few inches. The last one doesn't miss. Renee had been running slightly to the left in front of me and becomes the first and only victim of the collision. She gets clipped and knocked to the pavement.

For the first second, maybe two, it appears to me that Renee barely got grazed and had been knocked down, and maybe her injuries might not be as serious. Then I realize the car was probably going about 30 mph at least, and nothing involving hundreds, thousands of pounds of metal, plastic, and rubber colliding with the human body is not serious at that speed. Post-collision-second three settles in and I hear the first scream of agonizing pain. Renee is hurt. I go to her. One look at the shoe on her right foot tells it all. The fabric and rubber on the back heel is peeling off, a gaping hole on the right side, and the material just above the toes is shreaded. More agonizing. The car stops. Two men get out and walk to me. They stare. That's all they do. They just stare at this woman who is yelling and crying in pain.

"Call an ambulance now!" I yell at them in frustrated anger, not understanding why the hell they are not doing shit.

"We don't know the phone number for an ambulance." They respond back, barely audible to me in the chaos.

I lift Renee off the pavement and out of the way of more oncoming traffic and place her on the grass.

"You're taking us to the hospital then!" I tell them as I pick her up and slide her into the back seat.

A woman is in the driver's seat. I tell her to take us to the hospital. The two other men have been left behind but it's too late at this point and my concern is not with them. She takes us to the closest hospital there is. It happens to be a public hospital. After a lot of confusion and poor navigating by the driver and myself, we arrive at the ER entrance. We somehow manage to locate a wheelchair and wheel her in. Again, trying to navigate where to go, no one seems to be too concerned. We wheel her into a huge waiting room filled with people waiting to see...someone.

I try and get her a doctor right away. This is much harder than it sounds. People keep telling me I absolutely must fill out form XYZ before she can receive any care whatsoever. I'm so frustrated I just keep wheeling her deeper into the hospital until I see some form of healthcare professional in the form of doctors and nurses. I wheel her up to the station and go back to complete the stupid form.

Nobody understands what the hell I'm saying. They all looked confused and are wondering why I'm so amped up. I wait around for a long time, waiting for this awful form. It finally comes. Of course it doesn't help that we happened to be running during the incident and I have absolutely nothing on my person. No ID, no passport, no money, no phone, no address, no phone numbers to call, nothing. And I had no idea where we were either. I had a wristwatch though!

Finally some woman offers to help me with her address and contact info so we can fill out this damn form and get Renee some treatment. The driver of the car comes to me and apologizes. Her lawyer is here already. What the hell? You call your lawyer 10 minutes after we arrive at the hospital? She must have been freaking out! I was beginning to not like her even more. I ask her if she can take me to my friend's house, I think I can find it at this point.

We go there, I tell John what happened. We go back to the hospital. Renee is still waiting for... anything. By now this is two hour after the injury. An hour later, they take x-rays and recommend we transfer her to a private hospital. One problem though, the hospital won't let us leave until we pay them for the x-rays. I have nothing on me. John has a credit card from the US that he is hoping to pay with, but nobody is there to take the payment, we're waiting for some person for some unknown reason. John, Renee, and I decide that I will take Renee to the new hospital in our rental car and John will stay back and handle the payment. Renee and I burst out of the hospital in search for our new home for the next week.

We pull away, go up the road, and pull a U-turn. Ten seconds later as we are passing by the same hospital, I see John come running out the ER doors across the road and towards the car with an envelope. I slow to a stop. John gets in. "Go Joe! Go Joe! Go Joe! I didn't pay them!" He shouts. This of course causes me to laugh hysterically and makes me feel a little bit better that we inflicted some small form of revenge on this horrid hospital with such shitty service. In the end, we knew Peace Corps would pay the hospital for all the costs so we weren't too concerned. And it changed the tone from somber seriousness to situational hilarity.

We arrived at the private hospital, aka heaven. My God. It was night and day. We walked into the ER and they already had Renee's forms that Peace Corps had faxed over on the front desk. They wheel her in and within minutes a doctor and two nurses begin treating her. John and I sit there with her in the ER, entertaining ourselves with push up competitions and a ginormous sack full of fresh South African produce and peanut butter. Renee has surgery that night.

There are numerous thoughts and lessons that I took away from this experience. I'd like to highlight a few.

1) I feel bad for the millions of South Africans that cannot afford private insurance and have to wait in those long lines and put up with that crappy service.

2) I hate bureaucracy.

3) South African healthcare is pretty darn good, if you go to the right hospital.

4) You can still have a great time on holiday if something really bad happens, traveling is about the experiences! I don't know if Renee can say the same. But we truly enjoyed being there to support her and entertain her at the hospital. And when we weren't there, we explored South Africa!

5) Peace Corps has their act together when it comes to taking care of their own.

6) And most importantly! WE ARE NOT INVINCIBLE!

What's that you say? Not invincible? Yes! It's true. Indestructible, we are not. Most of the 29 great human beings that were in my Peace Corps group fall somewhere in the early to mid-twenties range. At this age, this is how a lot of us tend to feel. We feel invulnerable, unconquerable, immortal. Combine this with living in Uganda as a Peace Corps volunteer and you've got yourself one deadly cocktail.

The truth is, no matter how little we may think about it, we are fragile. We are capable of sustaining life changing events in the blink of an eye. The risks are there. The statistics hammer them home, and they don't lie. As Peace Corps volunteers, and I'm generalizing here, we tend to have a more "adventurous" spirit. And there's nothing wrong with that. I could be in the safest neighborhood in the cozy US of A and walk out my front door in the morning and get slaughtered by a drunk driver. The risks are everywhere. The calling I'm making to everyone is to be cognizant of them. Think every situation through and make the best decision you can at that time. Have a system in place and stick to it, because that is the best safeguard you can have for your own self.

Did Renee and mine's decision entail some risk? Of course. Was it wrong for us to make that decision? Certainly not in my opinion. In the end that's all that we can really say about that event, it is a real bummer, a terrible accident, and completely unfair. The prognosis on Renee? Fuzzy at best. Some doctors say she won't run again, others have different opinions. Knowing Renee, she will be running a 5K in a few months, she has that level of mental fortitude, I have very little doubt about that.

So Renee, I look forward to traversing Uganda's crappy dirt roads with you when you get back. As long as we do a full assessment of every single pothole, crevasse, massive rock, intersection, and vehicle within a 10 mile radius first.

Stay safe and be well.

Pictures from Dad's Visit

My dad recently visited me in Uganda for two weeks. These are pictures from the trip. Enjoy!

The Struggle to Stay Smart

"Sometimes I feel dumber here."

This is a quote that I occasionally hear from other volunteers in country, especially those that have been here awhile. Usually they are reflecting on how they think they have changed since joining the Peace Corps and traveling halfway across the world... to a different world.

I can relate. There are times where I feel like my brain has slowed down. When I think about it more, it makes sense. In our villages, our lives are simple. Our interactions with most people are basic and short.

It's been an important priority for me to come up with ways to stay mentally challenged at site. Teaching math and physics helps, sort of. Mostly I'm just refreshing and rehashing concepts I learned years ago in high school and undergrad. I can have detailed, in-depth conversations with one or two people in my community. That also helps. I read magazines and books that I can get my hands on and try to keep up with volunteers via email and phone. That helps too. In Peace Corps, there is a lot of time for introspection and reflection.

I sometimes feel like I'm stuck in some philosophical maze trying to navigate which path is objectively correct. You question your personal reasons and motives for doing what you are doing. That is probably a good thing though. It means we are still thinking critically about our words, decisions, and actions. However often times it offers little comfort. Just more questioning.

Is Development a Good Thing?

Is development a good thing? This is a question that I and many other volunteers find ourselves asking quite often after a year in Peace Corps. It's the same question my dad brought up during his first few days in Africa when he came to see me recently. He has helped me formulate my thoughts to the answer to this question.

Allow me to shrink the scope of the question down substantially. Is development a good thing for Uganda?

I look around Uganda and I see a lot of good things. I see a thriving culture of business and entrepreneurship. Yes, all the shops are selling the same things. Yes, almost all of it is imported. Yes, innovation is almost non-existent. However, Ugandans still possess a energetic spirit for commerce and free trade.

I see hundreds of square miles of verdant and fruitful landscape. I see almost all Ugandans taking ownership of that land and using it independently to produce their own food each year. If there ever was an economic collapse in Uganda, they would still be able to eat because of how self-sufficent they are.

I see a cash economy. One that functions solely by the exchange of hard currency for valued products (though credit cards are becoming more common in Kampala). When you work, you get cash. If you don't have the cash, you don't buy the item. If you do, you do. Simple as that. This is a stark difference in our credit crazy consumer culture of the United States.

I see a culture of self healing and self dependency when it comes to sickness. Only if you are close to death do you go to the hospital. For the most part, you will recover some other way, somehow. The natural way.

Is this status quo optimal? In my opinion, no. Is it terrible? In my opinion, no. For all its faults at the national level, Uganda is not a bad place to live. The people have food, they have some degree of freedom, they have amazing weather, and they have peace.

Would it be better if Uganda had a thriving manufacturing sector that created jobs? Yes. Would it be better if Ugandan could innovate and come up with Ugandan solutions and come up with marketable solutions? Absolutely.

Would industrialization of its agricultural practices be a good thing? Maybe. Maybe not. Look at what happened to small farmers in the United States during the mass commercialization of agricultural products. There aren't many of them around any more.

Credit cards in Uganda? I don't think the country is ready for them. Nor am I sure they are a good thing in general. But they will come regardless.

Improvements in public health? This is something I think we can all agree on is definitely a good and valuable result of development. I hear so many stories of people suffering and dying of preventable and/or curable ailments.

So I think development is a good thing, overall, with some caveats. Let Uganda develop on its own. Let it develop in its own style. And let it be slow but steady development. Right now, most Ugandans have cell phones but they don't have reliable electricity. That is backwards. Let Uganda first tackle the fundamentals (education, water, jobs, health), then move on to the less substantial peripheral items.

Is development fueled by outside assistance from other countries a good thing? ....in Uganda. At the Kamuge High School level, I think it is, at least I hope so. At the 50,000 foot level, I'm not so sure.

World Malaria Day

April 25th was World Malaria Day. On April 26th, I invited Soft Power (an NGO based in Jinja) to come out and do a demonstration in my village.

It was great. The team came out and gave a really good presentation on the causes of malaria, how to prevent it, now to treat it, and how to properly use a mosquito net. Afterwards we sold mosquito nets to the villagers at a heavily reduced price of 3,000 shillings (about $1.25). It was a great success, villagers were eager to buy the nets and bring them home to their extended family members or even themselves. Many would otherwise have to travel long distances to get the nets at a reduced price, incurring unnecessary transport costs.

Pictures of Event

At the Bottom of Everything (the continent that is)

Traveling is always a unique experience. Each journey has its own adventures, its own pace, its own tone. Each of these are highly determined by the place you visit and the people you decide to visit it with. South Africa was no different. It was also an incredible experience.

During our few days spent in the most southern and most developed country on the continent, we met great people, tasted great food, swam in two oceans and under one waterfall, hiked several coastal trails, drove stick on the left side of the road, ate fresh fruit everyday, climbed a table-like mountain, tasted dozens of wines, drank at a whisky bar, paddled a canoe and pulled a pontoon across a river, and got acquainted with the two sides of the South African healthcare system (more on this later)

We stayed with locals we met through the popular website couchsurfing.org. This reference did not disappoint. Every host we stayed with was incredibly warm, friendly, welcoming and helpful.

Our first night we stayed with this really impressive and dynamic young guy named Johan. He prepared a traditional South African dish for us. He invited four of his closest friends over and we shared a peaceful evening together drinking wine and partaking in the cultural exchange that so often dominates the travel experience.

They shared with us that, as South Africans, it's very difficult for them to travel outside their country. Because their passport says "South Africa" on it. Because South Africa's border patrol is so poor. Countries scrutinize their reasons and intentions for leaving the country. "You guys have really pinned the lottery." One of them says as they comment on our "worth its weight in gold" USA passport.

Talking with our new friends, they begin telling us about where they were from and their upbringing. What it was like to grow up in rural South Africa. This seemed so strange to me, talking to white people much like myself that were born and raised in the sticks of the African countryside. It was amazing to see, even with so much distance between us, how similar we were as people.

The next day, while driving around the Cape Town area coastline, my travel mates and I started questioning what it was we truly enjoyed about the travel experience. Yeah, we were in South Africa. But why were we here? And what were we hoping to get out of it. We all agreed that we didn't want to check off the boxes of all the typical tourist attractions. For me, a good experience is often times elusive or unpredictable, but when it comes, you know it, and you soak it in while it lasts.

For this trip, it was our first dinner with our friends, learning about the country directly from them. It was learning to drive in a foreign country. It was teaching John and Renee to drive a stick shift (both had never done it) in a foreign country. It was running the trail at Robburg Peninsula only to discover one of the most beautiful and secluded beaches in the country. Almost getting blown off the top of the cliffs by the strong sea gusts. It was enjoying good seafood and sushi for the first time in a long time. It was taking in the luxury of well stocked and well managed supermarkets, eating and preparing fresh food everyday. It was getting to know the painful history of the country from staying with a host who was discriminated against for much of his life. And sharing a few braais (South Africa's version of BBQs) with him and his friends. In the end it boils down to what moves you inside, and that can come in unexpected ways at unpredictable times.

Pictures from SA