End of Week 7: Counterparts and Capture the Flag

Met Counterpart
I guess the biggest news is that this last Wednesday there was a workshop where everybody’s counterparts (at least for education the person we’ll be working with most closely for the next 2 years) and some supervisors (a.k.a. bosses) came to get some more information and meet us. My counterpart is a stocky man, I’d guess somewhere in his 50’s, who’s named John Mutuuba. He seemed really cool, although not terribly talkative, but I’m not exactly a social butterfly either. He actually comes from a Lumasaba speaking region (over in the east), so Luganda isn’t his first language. When I asked him how long he’s been teaching he said, “Since about 1980,” and I replied, “Oh, that’s a long time, I was born in 1983,” which elicited a nice chuckle from him. One surprising statistic that he gave me was that there are about 90 primary schools in the cachement area of our Coordinating Center School. That means that I’ll probably have plenty of work if I want it which I think is good. It would be harder to have nothing to do.

Two highlights from the day:
There was a small session where the different groups (volunteers, counterparts, supervisors) wrote down their expectations of the other groups and I was “voluntold” (a.k.a. forcibly volunteered to present the posters that the trainees had come up with. I didn’t really want to present, but there wasn’t much I could do when no one else was standing up and I was the closest. Anyway, I got up and presented fairly well, trying to radiate good intentions to our future bosses and partners. When I sat down again I was congratulated and Stephanie said, “Maybe if you don’t want to present anymore you should screw up really badly instead of doing well.” Well, that really made the ego glow for a bit and hopefully it will help with nervousness in presenting in the future.

And I was quite nervous for a little presentation I, and 4 other PCT’s, were going to give to the whole group (~120 people) on the EAP (Emergency Action Plan).
…. It was a disaster…
Near the beginning, rain started to fall on the tin roof above, which makes this lovely static noise which drowns out all other sounds created by presenters, microphone systems, and otherwise. We took a small break to see if the rain would stop and then the Country Director said we should just go on so that we just shouted very ineffectively into the microphone. What made it especially bad was that I’d spent about 2 hours making my flipchart nice and pretty and I was going to have the crowd guess and then peel away papers to reveal aspects of the “Site Locator Form” (exciting, I know! :). I knew that wouldn’t work so I just read them off and got it over with. It was silly. Many of the other PCT’s congratulated me afterwards, which was very nice and just goes to show you how well we all support each other.

Capture the Flag
Yesterday (Saturday), after an exciting “Language Immersion Day” in the morning, most of the PCT’s got together at the Diocese (our training center), to play a big game of capture the flag. It was a bit funny trying to get all the rules set up with so many strong, individual personalities, but after a little bit we got started. Running, dodging, and leaping through the midday heat (which was surprising with how cool it’s been the last week), many of us became sweaty and doubled-over, out-of-breath within the first 5 minutes. I hadn’t realized how out of shape I’ve become without a daily 20 minute bike ride to and from work and the occasional game of ultimate. I should probably take up running or jump roping or something. I guess that’s all I have to say about that.



Sorry, that kind of trailed off into boringitude. This next week should prove quite exciting and be a good source of stories as we’ll be heading off to our Future Site Visit. We all have to make our own way there by public transport and I’ll be staying in my future house as well. It’ll be for 4 days, so stay tuned – good stuff to come!

As always, loves you all, keep in touch, I will answer emails offline and copy-paste them next time I can get to the internets,
Ryan