Postal Update

I've decided to move my P.O. Box closer to home in Kayunga, because I don't go to Jinja very often. Here's the new address (mainly for letters):

H. Ryan "Migadde" Jones, PCV
P.O. Box 18279
Kayunga
UGANDA

However, if you want to send semi-important packages, I would still suggest using the address that goes to the Peace Corps office in Kampala.

Lastly, I just wanted to let you all know that I've signed up to a website called GoodReads. Now you can see what I'm reading and what I think of it (also see "widget" in the sidebar at right).

First Blog Post from Kayonza!<<< (now with footnotes!)

Letters

Thinking back, there were a couple letters I sent out that I wasn't sure if they had arrived, so I decided to put a list of some that I haven't heard back from. Also, after the first few that I wrote I started making photocopies - sooo, if it actually didn't arrive, I can send along another copy upon request:

Nicole, I sent you a letter back May in response to the frisbees and stuff (which I greatly appreciated), but Jason seemed to think that you never got it.

G'ma & G'pa, Pug & Jug, sent a little aerogram back in about Aug/Sept. It had a nice graph of my emotional state :)

Aunt Tracy, Thanks a lot for sending Ender's Game. It's already gone through the hands of a number of the volunteers. I sent you a brief letter of thanks in August with a lot of questions in it about what's going on.

James, sent something in July with many footnotes and a couple doodles.

Now a few of you may be wondering if I ever got things from you, and hopefully I'll get off my butt soon and write back:

Patty Finally got the duct tape and candy - what more do you need in life?

Sara, just got the amazing package of kid's books. Can't wait to put them in the resource room and start sharing them with the neighbor kids when they get back after the holidays. There's also quite a few that I haven't read yet - soon to be remedied. You Rock, you!!!

Michelle & Brandi, Will write soon. Awesome pictures, etc received and appreciated. You are missed.

Collete, see above.

Matt, have read most of the poetry and will be writing some responses soon.

Let me know if I missed anyone there.

The Whirlwind Tour of Uganda

So, as most of you probably know, Biff-Dad and Jason-Bro came to visit for 15 days at the end of Nov & beginning of Dec. Which was awesome! It was really great to see some faces from home and also to get a fresher perspective on Uganda. The joke (reality?) around here is that as long-term volunteers, many of us get very "jaded." For a good while near the beginning in training and a little beyond everything is new and exciting, and it's just so much fun to be in a new place so different from home. After a while things start to drag. The constant barrage of "Muzungu" from the local kids, the staring, your co-workers forever being 1+ hours late to everything or not telling you about this meeting or that, and how everything breakable seems to break and everything going wrong always does -- it starts to wear on you. And eventually, you kind of start to hate the world. To hate Uganda. And the worst part of it is that it becomes reflex. Now, you are jaded. In fact, I often will say that Uganda has taught me how to be angry. Anyway, to get back on subject, it was especially awesome that Dad and Jason were able to indirectly show me how much of a rut I was in, how much that reflexive anger was just unproductively bringing me down and isolating me . Both Dad and Jason were having a grand old time just hanging out with people (esp. kids) in my village. I remember Jason teaching Jason-Fu to Kenneth as well as learning the local card game, "Matatu"^@. All the kids thought Dad was a riot, with his weird noises and by village standards absolutely alien looks -- I don't think we could count on both hands how many times a kid would see Dad and just burst out crying : ). We had some pretty good times in the village, and even got some good work done on my resource center and house as well.

Each day was a new adventure for us, and as Dad said, it's not really possible to sit down and tell the story of everything that happened. There's so much to tell. So, I'm not really going to try. Suffice it to say, we had an awesome time, and maybe if we're lucky Dad and/or Jason will write a little something that I'll post here as a guest portion of the blog. Also, as soon as I get a workable operating system on my laptop, I'll put together a post with some pictures so you can see what it was all about.

Christmas & New Year's

I remember seeing a news story a few years ago showing footage of a shirtless Santa paddling to the shore of one of the Hawaiian islands. In reaction I just shrugged and said "that's weird" thinking nothing of it. Well, I had no idea how weird it actually is -- frickin' weird. I've remarked before on the strangeness brought about by days having the exact same length^$, everyday, a Groundhog-Day-effect of sorts. Along with the lengthening of the day to signal oncoming summer, the shortening of the day was always the precursor to the holiday season. But as the same day comes, 80 85 90^o F, even though Christmas music is playing, it still feels more like it's about 4^th of July. It was especially strange because the major PCV get together in Kampala was a barbeque. Also, I've gotten pretty used to the go-home-to-Spokane, catch-up-with-friends-you-haven't-seen-in-a-while, laze-around-and-do-jack-nothing-at-the-p's-house routine. Which was nice. Comfortable, even. Instead there's a training right up to a few days before Christmas^#, I get to hang out with familiar friends, and actually had a nice Christmas Eve dinner of salad and pumpkin soup^%. It was cool, it was fun, it was pretty alright. But, it wasn't really Christmas.

Actually, it was a lot closer to Christmas when Dad & Jason came. Really, it was like six Christmases rolled into one with all of the stuff they brought for me^&, and of course just to see them was a lot closer to a Christmas feel than I felt on the 25^th. Near the Eve many of the PCV conversations turned to "what does your family do on Christmas?" and we all wistfully shared our stories. Mine were about decorating the tree, twice-baked potatoes, getting a little tipsy off rum & coke (just the one time), and the plastic-toy-gun wars on Christmas morning among others. It was kind of cool to hear how everyone's family celebrated differently. It was also kind of sad. Ooh, that's kind of a bad place to end this blurb. Oh, well^*.

Maybe it's just be easier to say

that Christmas gave me a rain-check this year.

But, I want you all to know

that I miss you much, loves you dear.

Hope Christmas was Merry^~,

and have a Happy New Year.

Loves,

Uganda-Jones

---

footnotes

! As Dad & Jason brought my laptop, I now have the ability to take more time to compose blog posts while I'm sitting around with nothing to do in the village. This is the first. Sadly I don't exactly have an operating system and I can't include pictures from my camera. You can be the judge of whether quality has improved, although I must say I do enjoy footnotes (who was it that sent The Mezzanine, Amy N.? P.S. I love you.).

@ As Kenneth doesn't speak much English, Jason had to pretty much learn this card game with hand gestures and Kenneth saying, "I win" to signal that Jason had come out poorly. This was especially hilarious as Jason kept losing and began to suspect that Kenneth was just making up rules to win : ).

$ Plus or minus ~7 minutes. Someday when I'm bored I might figure out exactly what the time difference is at this latitude. All I need is the radius of the Earth, the declination of the Earth's axis, and my latitude (handily got from GPS), and to assume the Earth is a sphere. I remember doing it once riding with Lee & Nancy on the way back to Spokane. Man I'm a nerd.

# Which was made infinitely better by the hotel we stayed at having a pool. For swimming. And volleyball. And general awesome enjoyitude.

% Unorthodox? -- Yes. Delicious? -- Quite. It's amazing how refreshing and mouth-wateringly good a salad can taste. It's also amazing how silly somewhat-deprived PCV's can get over simple things.

& Much of which was brought from a variety of sources, which all deserve a huge "THANK YOU SO MUCH! LOVES YOU LOTS!" -- you know who you are.

* I actually didn't mean to make a little poem here, I just noticed that the last few lines had some rhymes and couldn't help myself.

~ And in the case of Arya and Larry-Dad, I hope you both had a really good birthday.

Thanksgiving and Other Random Pictures

Thanksgiving


Here's a picture of the amazing Thanksgiving Feast we had at Amy's new house in Kayunga, with Amy (one of the Top Chef's along with Brett) proudly smiling in front. She appears a bit damp because it decided to downpour for a little bit right as we were finishing the preparations, but supposedly that's good luck here in Uganda. I ate two heaping plates of food and was full until lunch the next day.

Pictures from the 100 KM Day

At one point in attempting to visit all 64 schools in my cachement area I had to head, as they say, "deep deep" and took a long bike ride. Luckily, I brought my camera along with me, here are a few pictures from the trip:


This is a Jones-eye view on a typical day while going out to visit schools. Almost endless dirt "roads," but lots of good exercise and sun. And look! I have a little bell!


These cool cactus trees are not rare, but not common either. They look like they should be in the desert rather than the tropics and they can grow to be pretty huge. I've been wanting to get a picture of one for a while and got this nice shot against the blue of the sky.


Awesome birds are everywhere. Here's some of the kind that have this amazing crimson underbelly.


SWAMP! (notice cool little lily things) This, I think, is a finger off of Sezibwa "river," which is a branch off the Nile. My district, Kayunga, is placed right between Sezibwa and the Nile, with Lake Kyoga to the north. So, it's like I'm on a little island, unfortunately sometimes it feels like it.

Clouds & Trees

I like them. Hope you do too:


A neat UFO cloud. I think this is caused by a thermal, which happens to push up beyond the dew point another, more humid, layer of air. There's a name for this. I don't know what it is, but I do know that it happens around mountains a lot.


There was one weekend where I went a bit crazy. Literally. Anyway, I'm okay now, but one of the days after having realized I was going a bit crazy I decided to take a morning and bike to the Nile. I found it and here's a picture of the morning dew drops - it was awesome and I felt a lot better. Also talked with the ferry man that was waiting for passengers about how I missed things like mountains and water and stuff.


About a month ago I went to a really cool little rainforest where a JICA volunteer is posted (in Nepoleon Dynamite voice, "Lucky!") for a rave (yes, a rave), and a nice hike through the woods. Here are some green shoots growing on a log. P.S. I forgot the name of the forest. Sorry.


There were some huge spider nests in {pick your own name} Forest.


A really neat tree that I found on a hike while in Sipi Falls a while back. Reminds me of the show Six Feet Under, anyone? anyone? (Nathaniel?)















RANDOM


This is a bat. I have a lot that live in my roof. I don't know why this one was crawling instead of flying. Sometimes I find them in my house. If I'm feeling mean I kill it with a flip flop (the same flip flop as for cockroaches) and then I throw it outside (where the chickens will eat it in the morning - Yes! chickens eat bats, and frogs, and even rats - whole). If I'm feeling nice I try to kindly usher it outside with my broom.


(Really old pic back from In-Service Training) Derek likes his bi-coffee.


There was a man selling apples at 500 /= a go in the taxi park - I bought the whole bag. And don't they look dashing in my neat wicker basket-thingys? Very Zen. And with that, I'm out.


Peace,
Jones

Stuff?

Hey there,

A couple people have asked me if I (or my schools) want anything for Christmas. I'm having trouble thinking of anything - which means I'm probably pretty good. A good book, or a cartoon you doodled on a restaurant napkin, or pictures are always welcome and I love to get them. If you can think of cool little toys / games / oddities that village children would like and would entertain them for a long time (a.k.a. must be durable and not require things like batteries - and, of course, this is a school so it's better if it can make them think) that would be really cool too. I've been trying to find a good level book to have them read, but their English (+ reading) is so poor, they probably couldn't read anything beyond Dr. Seuss (which some might like).

As before, remember that anything that more closely approximates a letter (e.g. a padded envelope versus a box), it will travel amazingly faster.\

Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy CHOGM! (google it if you don't know what that is)
Loves you all,
Jones out

Things is Okay

I just got a package from Michelle, with the most awesome Birthday gifts: Pictures of everyone with messages on the back – Thanks so much to: Dave, Arya, James, Amy, Tara, Andy, Lindsay, Parker, Raz, Jesse, Lizzy, Anna, Sarah, Brandi, and of course Michelle (and thanks for the XKCD & card too). Also, a shot out to Collette, with the most randomly awesome package with magazines, playing cards (how did you know?!), and other goodies.

So, I’m doing pretty well, I just spent last night in Jinja winning 50,000 /= (which is about $30) at the Casino, before going out dancing. We may be volunteers working against disease, ignorance, and poverty during the week, but we know how to party on the weekends. And some of that money will probably go to improving my resource center – I’m pretty sure no money will be coming from the college to fix it, and grant writing seems pretty daunting especially considering that the amounts are so small ($5 here, $20 there).

Well, I think that I’ve just recently cleared a hump that I knew I was stuck on. It seemed like every day I was getting mad at kids calling me “Mzungu” every where I went and taxi drivers trying to overcharge me (by like 25 cents, but it’s the principle), and I was spending an increasing amount of my time at site just reading and being by myself. Angry + Lonely – Good Friends & Family_closeby = Sad Jones. Anyway, I think what really helped was reading a book called Blue Like Jazz. It’s actually a book about one man’s search to be Christian in the modern world, so there were some parts about loving Jesus and whatnot that didn’t exactly speak to me. However, at the end there were some chapters where he talked about Living in Community, which really struck a chord with me. I’m really used to living with people (and if I can brag a bit, really awesome people), and here, by definition, I must live alone. The only problem with that is that it gets lonely. Anyway, there were also another few chapters at the end of Blue where the author talked a lot about just “loving” other people, randomly, and unconditionally. This idea echoed what I read about Paul Farmer in Mountains Beyond Mountains (thanks Michelle), and I think it’s really an essential part of living a happy life. It’s also something I’m not very good at. But, over the last week, by just looking at the kids yelling “Mzungu” and dancing and going crazy, and laughing at them instead of scowling, I’ve felt a lot better. Looking around with a smile and approval of those around you has helped me very much to be happier. It’s true, things are annoying here. But it is infinitely easier to deal with them if you take them with acceptance and a smile than if you battle them. Anyway, that seems to be going well and I hope I can keep it up.

As far as work is concerned, things are going well. I’m almost finished visiting all 65 of my schools – there are only two left to go! Some of the ones I’ve already gone to were really “deep deep” in the bush. One day I visited three of the more remote schools and logged just under 100 Km on my bike mileage meter – which to brag a bit, is not too bad, especially on potholed, muddy, dusty, swampy, windy and sometimes maze-like “roads” and footpaths. It’s also amazing how much work it is to do things that seem so simple. I only visited 3 schools in one day. Three pages of basic information collected from a long hard day of riding. In the states, with a car, on good roads I could probably visit 12 schools in a day and be done with this tour in a week, rather than taking about 2 months just to visit each one for half an hour. Anyway, now that I have most of the data I’m starting to analyze it to figure out which schools are doing the best, and especially which schools are doing the best with the fewest resources. This will be a bit of a challenge as I’ll be working pretty much exclusively in Excel (oh, what I wouldn’t give for a nice copy of Matlab – never thought I’d miss that). Hopefully, I’ll have some type of report before the new term in Feb. 2008

Here’s a quick update of what’s coming up in my life:
* Dad and Jason coming to visit (Nov. 27th – Dec. 13th) WOOOT!
* Training of Facilitators (of which I’ll be one) for the Thematic Curriculum for P2 (2nd grade) teachers. This is a new project that Uganda is phasing in where the material to be taught isn’t strictly placed in subjects as much as themes and is supposed to integrate things better. It also focuses on giving pupils (they almost never call them “students” here) a more fluent base in their local language (in my area, that’s Luganda). I think in theory it sounds like a good program, but as I’ve seen in some of the P1 classes while I’ve been here, actually doing it is a bit rocky.
* Life Skills & HIV/AIDS training (almost right up to X-mas) for a week in Kampala. I’m still not exactly sure what this “life skills” thing is – something like teaching kids to stand up for themselves so they can make good decisions and not get AIDS (most kids [and women] here are very deferent to anyone older and I bet this gets abused all too often).
* A nice break – no Christmas plans yet. It’ll be weird to be away from home.
* Then actually doing the training for the P2 teachers in my catchment area in January.

Alright, that’s it for me – Peace out!

Loves,
Ryan

Dad & Jason coming end of November

Just a quick note here: Biff-Dad & Jason Bro are coming on November 26th (contact them if you want to send anything along with them -- hint hint, wink wink).

Things are going alright here, still bouncing up and down emotionally, but staying strong. Laters.

Things are going well

So, I think I last left off saying that I was going through a few tough times (which have continued off & on), but that I was looking forward to having some work to do over the next term. I guess that's pretty much come true, I have been working quite a bit. Most of what I've been doing is riding my bike around to different schools with student teachers, watching them teach a lesson (~45 minutes) and then talking with them about the good and bad things I saw and wrote down on their supervision form. At first I didn't really want to do this because it seems so hypocritical. I've never been a primary school teacher, what do I know about teaching, and what gives me the right to criticize these teachers? So, the solution to this dilemma was to rationalize. 1) I've been through a lot of school and I could tell which teachers were good for me and which ones were not. 2) Many times what follows a supervision is not just a criticism, but a conversation about how the lesson went, and a bouncing back and forth of ideas for making the lesson better (not every time, but one every few). 3) Many times I am the first person to ever watch them teach and try to give them some pointers on what they are doing well and what new methods would be good to try. With these rationalizations in mind I can definitely say that supervision seems helpful in the long run. As I was riding along one day I realized that it is almost definitely not the best use of the skills I have (which is largely in solving mathematical problems and using computers), but it's not bad either. I think that may many times be what Peace Corps is about -- Adaptation. Not only trying to fit yourself into a new culture, but to do work that you never really would've considered doing before. To try to fit your square-pegged self into a circle-shaped hole and then come out of it with some rounded edges and the ability to fit better everywhere.

The plan is to just keep on doing as I'm doing. John, my counterpart, has been a bit absent due to family obligations in Mbale (weddings and funerals), but I'm hoping he will come back soon to help me (with 30 students and a goal of 8 supervisions each over the next two months, I know I can't do it alone - and furthermore I shouldn't have to). Also, CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting) is coming up next month, which to my understanding will just involve a lot of people coming from different countries that used to be under British rule to visit and talk in Uganda. This seems to be a pretty big deal over here and all the talk is about "Are you ready for CHOGM?" which has really become more of a joke as it seems they really aren't. You can often go into an empty restaurant, sit down and look at the menu, and find that they don't have anything on the menu except matooke and beans - if they aren't ready for normal customers, then how will they deal with an influx of hungry foreigners who want some services? I've been hearing through the Peace Corps grapevine that CHOGM will cause all of the schools to get out early, which would be silly, but would give me a huge hunk of time from the end November through January in which I won't have any official work. I'm actually a little afraid of that time, although Dad and Jason will be visiting (ROCK!), the rest of the time I'm going to have to find things to do to keep from going crazy.

Changing Gears: Here's some pictures from Sipi falls. I'm just on my way back from there, where most of the volunteers congregated for Goatstock, our Halloween celebration (and yes it does involve the killing and eating of goats. I got to see / participate in the slaughter of one of them, which was fairly interesting. I'll spare the details for all you vegetarians out there : ). Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of costumes, I didn't have my camera out, but I plan on stealing some tonight from Allie, to be posted next time:




A few of us on the cliffs near the top of the upper falls. From left to right: half of our guide, Christina (PEPFAR group of 2006), Marcus (2nd-year PCV), Becky (Crisis Corps Volunteer). P.S. Sorry that this picture is crooked, I just realized that the horizon isn't straight and don't have photoshop to fix it - ah well. Still a beautiful view.



Here's a view of the upper falls We climbed to the bottom first and got completely drenched in the powerful spray that explodes outward from the bottom like a perpetual hurricane. In other words, it's really awesome.



Just some trees on the top of a cliff overlooking the upper falls

That's it for now. As always, loves you all and hope to hear from you now and then.