In Wakiso Town . . .

. . . there is a post office, but you cannot buy postage.

I’m really not sure where to begin. I feel like I’ve lived a year in these last few weeks and it seems like the new friends I’ve made have been my friends forever. I already have a ton of interesting stories to tell; stories about my environmentalist Ugandan Daddy, about making apple pie on a charcoal stove, about witnessing an almost-death-by-matatu . . . But I’m short on time and working from an internet café with early-90’s-speed connection to the web. So, I think I’ll skip the stories and cultural analysis for now and instead just provide a little glimpse of my day-to-day here in Wakiso, Uganda.

I wake up at around 6:00. I need no alarm clock. This function is provided organically via rooster. It’s actually a pretty cool way to begin the day. Next, I get totally pumped about living in rural Africa. This involves me crawling out from under my mosquito net, scratching my head, and saying to myself: “Well, at least it’s not rural Hell.”

Josephine, the lady of the house and probably the hardest-working person I’ve ever met in my life, has breakfast on the table by 7am. Breakfast is usually bread, hard-boiled eggs and tea. The tea is taken with piping hot milk provided just minutes beforehand by a cow that sleeps 20 feet away from where I do. Fresh. Freaky-Deaky Fresh. And also pretty freakin’ awesome, if you ask me.

I’m out the door for training by 7:15am. It’s a 45 minute walk to the class; 25 minutes if I ride the bike Peace Corps gave me. But I usually walk. Walking is more relaxing, I can take in more of my surroundings, and it also gives me a chance to study on the way. I hear “muzungu” every 5 to 10 seconds. Muzungu is what the locals – and especially the children – call white people, usually with much excitement, big smiles, and sometimes even while jumping around waving their arms in the air. Sweet! I’m now a novelty and totally famous! And I didn’t even have to sleep with Lindsay Lohan!

My school day usually begins with language. I’m (theoretically) learning Rufimbira. This is the language of Southwest Uganda. There are only 3 people in my language group, so we each get plenty of individual attention from our instructor. I think I’m picking it up okay, but it’s hard to tell for sure. It seems like it’s been been forever since I learned an obscure Bantu-derived African language, you know?

In addition to language, we’re taught about things like Ugandan history/culture, HIV/AIDS, water sanitation, safety/security, and so on. Some of the sessions are pretty lame and/or not very useful, but for the most part, training has been interesting. My brain usually hurts pretty bad by lunch time, which is when we’ve been getting our shots. Bring it on Yellow Fever! Me and my new antibodies have a can o’ WhoopAss ready for ya!

Training wraps up around 5pm. Sometimes I head straight home and relax. Sometimes I linger in town and do some shopping for things like toilet paper and kerosene (what else does a man really need?!). Sometimes I head up to the Choice Guest House and drink beer with my new Peace Corps buddies. From what I can tell, Uganda has three mainstream mass-produced beers, all of which come in 500ml bottles (that’s about a beer-and-a-half for you stubborn, arrogant, ounces-using Americans back home (see, I’m totally culturally adapting!)). I don’t have many functioning beer-detecting taste buds left, but my sixth sense tells me that, if nothing else, all things being equal, beer-and-a-half beer is a much better than regular beer.

We eat dinner late; I hope for 8pm, but usually it’s closer to 9pm. My Ugandan father is quite worldly and very into politics and history. Our dinner conversations are always interesting. We don’t have electricity, so we eat by candlelight – take that Al Gore! – and we usually listen to BBC news on the radio. I may not learn Rufimbira, but my British accent is coming along nicely.
After dinner, I bathe. After bathing, I wonder what the hell I’m doing here. Just kidding. Actually, despite the fact that we have no running water, the fact that I don’t have warm water of any kind, and the fact that my bathing infrastructure consists solely of a bucket and a drain in the corner, I’m quite satisfied with the Ugandan bathing program. Here’s how it works: 1. soapy rag, 2. non-soapy rag, 3. pour water over head. (I shaved my head down to about a 1/8 inch, so I can skip the shampoo stage.) It’s amazing how clean you can get with so little water. I’ve gotten it down to about 3 liters per bath. No shit. It’s pretty neat. And by “neat,” I mean, “I’d give anything for a hot shower.”

Then I hit the sack.

We have training 6 days a week; Monday through Saturday. Sundays we have off, so that’s my laundry day. Doing laundry by hand takes several hours and my poor dainty hands are literally bleeding by the end. I do my best to rub out stains with my palms and knuckles and then just massage out the general dirt/odor. My philosophy: if it smells clean, it is clean. I use 3 buckets: one for washing, one for the first rinse, and then one for the final rinse. If I’ve done my job well, as I wring out the item of clothing after each stage, the water coming out will be slightly less cloudy than it was after the stage previous. I can usually pull that off, but it’s virtually impossible to get all the soap out at the end. So, no matter how clean the item is, it will still feel a little stiff and off-putting; kinda like Alex Rodriguez.

I feel morally obligated to mention pooping. Each morning I reaffirm the prime directive I issued to my digestive system two weeks ago: Thou shall deliver product only between the hours of 8am and 5pm. This is when I’m at the training center, the premises of which includes two flush toilets. Toilets that sometimes even work! If my gut adheres to the prime directive, I feel so much at home while conducting my business that I often feel compelled to sing “America the Beautiful.” Of course, we don’t choose such things, such things choose us. So if nature calls in the early morning or in the evening, I get to play Pit Latrine! One plays Pit Latrine more-or-less how one plays Porta-Potty, except that in Pit Latrine, the difficulty is increased from Novice to Expert by virtue of the fact that instead of a seat, the contestant gets a brick-sized hole in a concrete floor. Successful squat-and-hoverers get to complete the game as winners (or at least as non-losers). Those who miss the target must go onto to the Bonus Round, where the only prize is a greater appreciation of how lucky he/she was to have once had running water.

So, that’s my life at the moment. I’ve spent a couple days in the capital city, Kampala, enjoyed a few days up-country in a place called Kibale visiting a currently serving Peace Corps Volunteer, and will have one or two other events/excursions to break things up over the next few weeks. But for the for the most part, this will be my daily routine at least until training concludes the first week in October and I move to my permanent post.

I’ll try to check in again soon – maybe in a couple weeks after I find out exactly where I’ll be placed and what I’ll be doing – and will perhaps share with you something more culturally relevant or socio-economically profound. I really do feel like I’ve had quite an interesting experience already, even having only been in Uganda less than a month. Some things have been really hard, of course, but I’m really happy to be here and am so glad I decided to do this.