Almost Done with Donations

Funding Almost Complete

This is just a very quick post to first of all pass on the good news that the Kayonza contribution has reached 710,000 UgSh of our goal of 735,000! We are very close to completing the funds and are very excited to see the vision of a computer lab here at Kayonza Primary.

The news is also good on the US side with a combined contribution of $4200 of the $4500 goal, but unfortunately this has increased a bit to $4600 with the fluctuations in the world financial system. So, that means that we have $400 to go and we are asking for your help in finishing up by making small donations or by passing along the cause to others who could contribute even a little. An Obama-esque landslide of $5 and $10 is exactly what we need in order to reach our goal by the deadline of December 4th. (see UgandaJones Fundraiser Website for more info.)

Also, preliminary "thank yous" are in the works and should be sent out by this weekend, when there will also be a more substantial post. Thanks to everyone for your support, your letters, your cards, and well ... everything.

Tambula, Tambula, Tambula (Movin', movin', movin')

It's been a little while since I've updated, so first let me say what's going on with work. I've listed things in order of effort and excitement, so if they start to get boring, well, you passed all the "good" stuff so just scroll down to the picture:

1. Computer Training & Lab

   
   The computer lab is well on its way. For a while we were hung up on the fact that the parents were not well informed, and frustratingly, the PTA meeting kept being delayed¹. However, when we finally did meet, I gave a presentation answering the five questions, "Why? What? Who? How? When?", explaining different aspects of our computer lab project to a double roomful (~150) parents. The presentation went well and directly afterwards we voted in an 11-member Management Committee to deliberate and decide on the details of the lab.
   

   
   Meeting for the first time a couple rainy days ago, the management committee has already proved itself to be autonomous and dedicated. I prepared a little presentation and then was a bit bummed when it started raining pretty decently at 3:50pm before our 4pm meeting. As I set up the room I began writing this update in my head beginning like this:
   

   Unfortunately, the management committee didn't meet because it was raining. In Uganda pretty much everything stops when it rains and you can expect people to meet up with you hours late (which is also normal for good weather) if they manage to show up at all.

   
   This group of 11 people defied my Ugandan reality by showing up on-time, or at most, a half an hour late and then taking the discussions and decisions directly into their own hands. I was practically bubbling with praise at the end, and still it deserves saying that I was impressed by Uganda and Ugandans that day. As I post this, the committee will be having a meeting with all the pupils to inform them about the computer lab, and send home children who's parents haven't yet added their 1500 UGX contribution².
   

   As for a current funds update, please refer to this lovely graph:
   I have a very similar analog version of this graph up in the school's office to track donations. For the last two weeks it's required updating every other day because of the speed that the Kayonza contribution side, which is heartening. Also, we've stalled on the American base donations, so if you know someone that might be interested in giving a few bucks (less likely in the current economic climate, but still) please pass on this link: Uganda Jones - helping to build a computer lab in rural Africa. I've recently updated the text with some alluring sentence structure, although I may have broken parts of the page with my wordiness. Anyway, we hope to complete all our funds by the end of November, place the order at the beginning of December, which should allow the computers to get here by February and leave us with three more months to set up and smooth things out while I'm still around. Much to do, but it's seeming more and more doable.
   

   In other computer news, training of teachers is continuing with Yeko and Wasswa producing some valuable work. They've been creating score-sheets for the P7 (read 6th grade) pupils based on mock exams so we can analyze what their performance is likely to be on the PLE (Primary Leaving Exam)³. Before it used to take four days to compile, score, convert, and find the position numbers of the pupils, now it can be done (with a snazzy printed final document) in a couple hours. Although I'm wary to use this loaded term, here goes... DEVELOPMENT! FTW!
   

2. Reading Club

   After using a US Embassy program to get 20 copies of Freak the Mighty (about a 5th grade level chapter book), I have been holding regular classes to read it with the S3s and S4s (~Freshmen & ~Sophomores) at Nalinya Secondary. This mini-project alternates between crazy frustrating when the students are goofing off, or not responding, or just plain not trying very hard to understand the story; to really fun and rewarding as we act out different parts of the story or different vocab that they don't know yet. As it's written from the perspective of a 6th grader, vocab has been a lot of, "Oh, moron is just another abuse that means stupid person, similar to butthead, goon,doofus,etc."
   

   
   Also, we were very lucky to be visited by the Ambassador's wife, Susan Browning. She not only discussed the book with the students, she and her crew also brought all this fancy equipment (which looked really out of place in the dusty, brick/tin village classroom) and showed a number of little video snippets about the changes in US elections as the internet and youth start having more influence. It was actually really cool for me to see because I've been so removed from the election-ballyhoo over here and hadn't heard of the whole "Macaca" thing or numerous other big pieces of news. But, it's kind of nice to have a little distance from the overzealousness of the US media. But, (I know, two sentences beginning with "But"?!) trying to decide who to vote for was especially difficult without internet.
   

3. VSLA⁴

   
   Both of my VSLAs are going well. The one with Kayonza teachers has been operating well by itself for the last two months and they've decided they'd like to share out (divide up all the assets saved in a metal box and begin again), which will be nice because I thought they may have to do this alone after I left. My other VSLA, among mostly poorer women farmers in another town, is doing well and will begin giving out loans in a couple weeks.
   

4. Teaching Teachers Music

   
   Last Saturday, I began teaching our PTE student teachers in Music, a subject many of them have said they struggle with. As we don't have any books or even old tests on music, my first lesson came completely from memory (Mom, piano lessons finally paid off). I taught them the notes, and how to write them (and memorize the lines) of the bass and treble clef. I really do need a resource, though, so I don't keep drawing my bass clef signs backwards and beginning the lesson by saying there's 8 notes, when there's only 7. Stupid octave, throwing me off.
   

   In related news, a new tutor (teacher trainer and my counterpart) has been placed at my school, Arthur. So far, he's been great. He's a bit younger, he's dedicated, and wonderfully, he communicates with me. Although I'm busy with a lot of other projects, he's a major improvement on my old (now retired?) counterpart and I look forward to working more with him in the future.
   

PLAY

And, just to make sure that you don't worry I'm working too much, here's a photo from an annual PCV get together called Goat Stock. It's our Halloween-ish type get together and I'm only going to give you one Clue as to what we're dressed up as.

Letters/Packages Sent/Received



• To Jay: a pen pal letter from Mukhama Godfrey.
  
• To Michelle: an overdue reply, but I think a decent one. ps, I forgot to make a photocopy of it, so I'll likely forget everything that I said by the time I get your reply...still.
  
• From Allie: two amazing and huge packages filled with goodies: candy, beef jerky, more candy, a soccer ball, a shirt, and some lovely postcards about the beautiful Finger Lakes region and, of course, Canandaigua. YOU ARE A-MAZING!
  

  
  Really sleepy now⁵, Loves to all,
  
  Jones⁶
  

  ---

  
  Footnotes
  
  1 - I'm not sure how transfers work in the U.S. for principals, but here they're a bit annoying. There's this thing called a "hand-over" which is where the old and new headmaster get together and sign some documents, especially things like the assets of the school and stuff. I don't know exactly what the problem was, but it took 3 weeks for this to happen. I think it had to do with the schedule of my old headmaster (thankfully, the new headmaster, John Bwire, seems to be very much more on-top-of-things). So, that's three weeks where I was getting more and more nervous that we didn't have any money from the Kayonza side. Three weeks where nothing was moving except the deadlines drawing near.
  
  2 - The exchange rate is about 1600UGX per dollar, so the contribution we're asking for each child is about that. Sounds like too little? Consider that most parents here would easily fall under the poverty definition of living on less than a dollar a day. So, to compare to US standards, a person making $30,000 per year lives on about ($30,000/365)=>$82 a day. So, in rough equivalency terms that's like paying $82 per child, which can be pretty steep considering that many parents have at least three kids at school.
  
  3 - Here's an "expensive" spreadsheet IF function I helped them write to give scores for certain grade ranges (they don't use A,B,C,D,F or the 4.0 scale): =if(C2<35,9,if(C2<40,8,if(C2<50,7,if(C2<55,6,if(C2<60,5,if(C2<65,4,if(C2<75,3,if(C2<85,2,1,))))))))
  
  Pretty intense nesting, huh?
  
  4 - Village Savings and Loan Association. This is a really nice and simple program providing financial services (banking) to people that want to save small amounts and live in remote locations. "Really nice" doesn't do it justice. Really.
  
  5 - It's after 1 am and I have to get up in about 3 hours to catch the early taxi to Kampala.
  
  6 - This is a reward to anyone who's read this far and still bothered to be checking the footnotes. Your reward is a juicy piece of truncated gossip: I have a date tomorrow ;).
  

USA trip & Computer Lab Fundraiser

I've been back from "the future" (a.k.a. the states) for about a week and a half now and thought I'd take this opportunity to point out a few of the wonderous things that I always used to take for granted:

• Water that comes from the wall, and it's even drinkable (faucets, drinking fountains, hot reliable showers, toilets that flush, plumbing truly is amazing).
  
• FREE water with ICE at restaurants coupled with good service.
  
• Wearing shorts outside and even no shirt at the lake.
  
• Lines painted on beautiful roads, with sidewalks and relatively orderly traffic.
  
• Cleanliness - because it's not crazy dusty, even though you can take a shower ever day, you don't really need to.
  
• Fast Internet
  
• Washing machines (do you know how much time this saves - holy gosh!)
  
• FOOD. All types. All flavors. (esp. Subway & BBQ)
  
• and last, but not least Awesome Friends and Amazing Family.

Three weeks was too short, and although I was afraid that home wouldn't feel like home when I got back, I had a ridiculously awesome time (and I must apologize to the Wheelers that "awesome" is my adjective of choice, it's just the most apt ;).

On the subject of Amazing Family, I want to thank the enormous efforts of my mom, Linda Zeringer, who as a surprise raised over $1500 towards my computer lab project!!! She, without any of my knowledge, colluded (how's that for vocab) with my brother-in-law, Jason, to create a website to raise money and surprised me on my trip home. The website is fairly easy as it's the same address as this blog minus ".blogspot":

The Uganda Jones Fundraiser - http://ugandajones.com

This site will be updated with the status of the project soon and even a graph (you know how I love 'em), although, I'll probably give lengthier discussions of what's going on here.

As of now, there's enough money (with the $600 I've managed to save from my monthly stipend) to buy the first half of the lab! However, I'm unsure as to the status of money raised here in Uganda among the community (remember they must match by 10%) beyond the fact that all parents were asked to donate in recent progress reports sent home. It's currently a break between terms (like a mini-summer break), so few people are around the school. When we restart I hope to be meeting more with the school administration and parents to setup a management committee and hopefully order the first shipment of computers!

Besides that, being back has been good, but a bit boring. I am utterly amazed at the ability of American children to get bored - with all of the books, fast internet, public transport, accessible and nearby parks and public places and frisbees, games, etc. How could it ever get boring? A village in Uganda (and probably most developing nations) has surprisingly little to do. There's work (gardening with a hoe, washing clothes by hand, etc.) of course -- and the kids get plenty of that, but when that's done (sometimes it never is, especially the girls work so hard). There's not much to do except sit, or maybe borrow a radio or kick around a soccer ball made from plastic bags. Coming from the a land of constant entertainment I get bored really easy and have been reading an almost unhealthy amount. I've read 3 or 4 books in the last week and a half, and sometimes have even resorted to just sitting. Well, sitting and chatting with neighbors anyway, which is not time wasted.

Lest you think that I'm doing nothing, I still have to cook, bathe, and wash clothes (all of which take a much larger chunk of time to do than you'd think), and I've been teaching small, fun computer classes to the P7 kids (6th graders) in the mornings. I also just started a reading club with 20 copies of Freak the Mighty with the local upper-secondary students. It's a cute little book written for roughly American 5th graders which means lots of explanations of "freak" "doofus" "butthead" "moron" in addition to all the other words they don't know (weird, cellar, casual, tugged, ...). It was almost a joke as they would bring up a word and I'd have to say, "Ah, it's another abuse" (meaning a derogatory word) and try to translate it or act it out. Lots of fun.

Some other little projects are going, but that's good for now. It was wonderful seeing everyone I saw, although too short -- sorry to those I missed. Thank you so much to all those who have (or will) donate.

-Uganda Jones

If I were asking for money...

So, I feel a bit silly even doing this, and many of you know that one of the things I really dislike talking about, let alone "asking" for, is money. That most evil of evils, the root, yet makes the world go 'round with all of its greed and dreams and stuff. Anyway, the exciting part of this blog is that my school, especially the headmaster (principal), has become excited about the computer lab project and especially making it a decent size and with good computers. Our vision is to put in a lab of EIGHT Inveneo computers! I've done a good budget on the project and this is going to cost about $4834 dollars.

Now, ideally I should write a grant to get this money, but from looking into grants, I've found that the lowest community contribution¹ is 20%. Usually, Peace Corps volunteers shimmy around this a bit by having "in kind" contributions where the community does a bunch of work for free and that's included to cover a large part of the contribution. The problem is, that's difficult to do when nearly all of the costs are monetary for buying the computer equipment. The other option was to get fewer, or lower quality computers that would just crap out in a couple years anyway. So, I've offered to try and raise money informally among family and friends and ask instead for a 10% community contribution². In addition to this, I've been saving from my own Peace Corps stipend³ for about 5 months and have saved $520 towards the project.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I want to gauge interest in donations from home. To do this I've put an anonymous vote on the right side of this blog. Please note that this is in no way a commitment to contribute, but rather to give me an idea of whether this method would work. I appreciate all truthful responses, and send lots of love to everyone.

Jones out.

---

Footnotes
1 - This is the amount of "money" put forward by the community to pay for the project. The grant puts up the rest of the money.
2 - Of course, in addition to this, most grants ask a lot of questions about plans for sustainability, which I also plan on developing with the community. I've begun training a few teachers to be computer administrators and know some things about managing programs and viruses (although we shouldn't have many problems with the latter due to our reliance on Linux-based OSs). The next thing I want to get started soon is some type of committee to get things moving and spread the word.
3 - This would probably be considered pretty meager by US standards. To give you an idea, but not the actual amount, if the poverty level were set at $5000 dollars income per year I would fall a healthy margin below that. However, it's still about triple what teachers here get, who are doing quite a bit better than the average Ugandan. At times it has seemed ironic that I'm a volunteer and making so much more above the average of the people. I've run out of money before (partly due to banking errors) and had to live for a week on about a dollar and left-over food, which is probably a more realistic experience. So, to feel a little better about myself I've been using good amounts of this money to improve the resource room, or in saving towards this project, or buying materials for the savings groups.

Pen Pals?

Just a quick note here. Not much is new, still doing the same things, but might be expanding the VSLA (savings groups) to some poorer parents. Yesterday I had my first meeting under a tree where the participants were mostly sitting on the ground--I felt very Peace Corps.

My counterpart, Yeko, has expressed interest in having a pen pal in the US. Is anybody interested in that? If so, just send me an email with your address and I'll have him write you a letter. If I get a lot of responses I'll look for other people here that might want to have a pen-pal.

Peace out.

Random Pictures & Busy with Projects

It's been a while. To reward all you diligent checkers of my blog, here's some pictures (there's some cool bugs too):

Introduction Ceremony

I managed to invite myself to an introduction ceremony¹, which was pretty cool, although mostly what I'd expected from other volunteers' descriptions.

• The spoils of having a daughter (and these are just the stocking stuffers):
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Wasswa² (left, spitting out chicken bone --flattering, no?) and me feasting with nature's fork:
  
  

Visiting Joe and Bird "Watching"³



• left to right: Rustum (finished and soon to be heading back to grad school is physics, there's more nerds out here than you think), Joe (crossword guru who just put up a basketball hoop at his site in the middle of nowhere, and general cool guy), Jenna (behind, short-term volunteer, who may have mentioned that Peace Corps Costa Rica is way better), Rishi with the "isn't that the rare ___?" look (the bird "watching" organizer and source/go-to-man for many fun events -- check out his blog), and a Ugandan man nice enough to put up with us and paddle us around the lake.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Rustum and I chilling on the very top of a big rock outcrop that we camped on.
  
  

Bugs

Dedicated to Amy G. & Tara (now in PC Madagascar!), ladies of biology.
These first two beetles were about the size of a chapstick tube and each one managed to make enough noise in my room to wake me up. You could hear the jaws of the second one clack, it could probably take a finger off. This spider could win a staring contest with two people.

What I'm doin'...

I've finally gotten busy and feel like I have enough (not yet too much) work to do. I know, it took a year?! What have I been up to this whole time? Well let's just say I was doing good things at times, but now I'm doing good things that 1) I care about and motivate me and 2) others care about and motivate them:

1. Co-teaching P7 (6th grade) math at my school. This can be both a lot of fun (like starting a group clap for an impromptu music lesson) and frustrating (to mark pupil's work who have trouble adding when they're supposed to know some algebra). Because of the latter aspect I've mostly become the "remedial" math teacher, going over topics that they should know already. This last week we covered the multiplication table, with an emphasis on having it memorized⁴ and receiving a sweetie (candy) for reward.
   
2. Teaching the "Computa" to Teachers at my school. With a "theory" lesson every week on word processing and spreadsheet programs⁵, a recent typing test, and continuing practice sessions 3X per day on my laptop, the teachers at my school are slowly becoming a bit more conversant with the digital world. It's heartening. It's also painfully slow, but teaching anyone to use the computer from scratch when you've been using one since 3rd grade could cause a little frustration.
   
3. Starting a Village Savings and Loan group among my teachers. This is a cool program created by a group called VSL Associates which allows people to create their own savings group with minimal materials (basically a metal box with three locks). To illustrate why this is valuable it takes me about $7 and a whole day to get to a bank where I can withdraw money. So, my teachers can get together every few weeks, put money in a box, then after a couple meetings start giving loans to themselves (and thus sharing the interest at the end rather than losing it to a bank). That all makes it sound easy-as-pie and informal, but there's quite a bit of detail including writing a Constitution and stuff. We've done two of the nine 2-hour sessions and it seems like it's going well. If this works out I might try to start some more outside my school⁵
   
4. (Computer Lab). Made a budget for this, but it's on the backburner until VSLA is mostly done. + other little projects.
   

Well, that's all I have time/energy to write today. Know that I miss you all.

Loves,

Ryan

---

Footnotes

1 An Introduction Ceremony is an important aspect of marriage here, it's more important than the actual wedding. The idea of it is that the family of the bride and the family of the groom get together and have a big conversation about these two people getting married and then the groom's family brings a whole bunch of presents on top of which they give the dowry, which is usually something like a few cows and can be refused by the bride's family. I've been told that "Here in Uganda it's the man that marries, and the woman that is married." Hmmm.

2 Wasswa is the teacher that I'm co-teaching P7 math with. He usually dresses very "smart" and will often be wearing a tie just for fun. He's also one of the teachers I'm giving extra computer training to, so that they can run the computer lab (whenever that gets moving).

3 "Looking for" may have been more appropriate because we were canoeing on this lake to find the elusive (and frankly quite ugly) shoebill. However, few birds were seen, but much fun was had.

4 One thing I've discovered here in Uganda is that my memory sucks. It's probably partly the Emerson aspect that if a man gets a watch he loses the ability to tell time by the sun--so I've lived in America where reminders abound and have lost the ability to remember :). The value of memorizing important or often-used things has also come up quite a bit. Memorizing names, or memorizing basic concepts saves so much time in the end. Memorization is also a big part of the VSL&A system which makes it transparent. Then again, memorization can be overdone at the expense of understanding, and sometimes there's just too much crap to remember--I still suck at crosswords and may never know who "Poet St. Vincent Millay" is.

5 I didn't say "Word" and "Excel", because we're running Ubuntu-Linux here. None of that Microsoft junk, only Abiword and Gnumeric, and Open Office, yo. Actually, beyond that nerdly fervor, I would suggest that people check out Open Office. It works on pretty much all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix, etc.), is free, and does pretty much everything that Microsoft Office does, and probably more.

6 VSL&A is designed for the poorest of people, many of whom may be illiterate. Although my teachers should benefit from it, they are better off than many of the completely subsistence farmers in the area. That's one thing that's a bit sad about doing work here: you can see a lot of people that need help, but it's also very difficult for you to go out and help them if you feel so much like an outsider. This is the main reason why pretty much all my work has been at my school. I feel like I belong here and am accepted and don't have to worry about being called "muzungu" or constantly asked inane questions about Barack Obama or whatever. I've also travelled to some places that could really use a Peace Corps volunteer (or just some dedicated teachers), but they're so "deep" that no one wants to live there--no electricity, small dirt road impassable most of the year, and practically no goods available. Then again, I know some volunteers in "deep" places like that, who are struggling to find ways they can help. < /random_musings_on_development>

Emotional State, Letters Received & Awesome News!

Just another small blog post here, mostly due to the fact that I've been receiving a lot of awesome letters and really need to get my butt in gear to reply to all of them.

Letters Received

• Mom: Cute card. Gyebaleko (trans. nice work!) on hosting Eraetu.
  
• Grandpa Dick: Thanks, that's exactly what I wanted. Something small coming your way soon.
  
• Michelle: Awesome pictures & beautiful letter. Like some of the past ones it's a work of art that should be displayed rather than put on the shelf, I haven't figured out a good way to do it yet though.
  
• Amy Nicholas: Laughed my butt off, even the blueprints on the back (no carpet in the collection center ;).
  
• Dave: I've been listening non-stop to the new music. Thanks for taking the time during busy finals week to make those. I just recently got some ugandan music on my computer. I'll try to organize it a bit and repay the favor.

Also, I managed to lose the letters I got from Tara and Lizzy (I know, it was lost once and now again -- MADNESS!). But I have your addresses so I'll just write/draw some random things for you.

Lastly, I've been keeping track of my emotional state by drawing in my planner smiley, frowny, and blandy faces, respectively :) :( :|. And I assigned them numbers from -2 to 2 with blandy at 0 and made a graph. Here it is:


Note that the mean (orange line) is above 0, and that March was very manic depressive. Things seem to be smoothing out though, which is good.

AWESOME NEWS! I'M COMING HOME!

It just so happens that I am DEFINITELY coming home August. I'll be flying in on the 6th and then heading out the 25th. WOOT! TWO AND A HALF WEEKS OF AWESOMENESS!!!

Please put in your orders for cool african things, drums, games, carvings, whatever. More to come.

Adios,
The Jonesinator