Will Work for Food...and Peace of Mind

I’ve been in Uganda nearly four months now and I’ve already gotten way more out of this experience than I thought I would. I’ve already accomplished a great deal in terms of grassroots diplomacy and cultural exchange. I’ve already learned a lot about myself and like the subtle changes I see in my personality as a consequence of living here. And I’ve already had a ridiculous, almost embarrassing, amount of fun. Just a few days ago, I hiked to the top of 13,500-foot volcano through a misty jungle alongside a machinegun-toting Ugandan, stood in two countries at the same time, and ate the tastiest stale, half-frozen peanut butter-and-honey sandwich of my life.

It’s been a good four months.

But with my belly full of good Thanksgiving fare and my soul full of good Thanksgiving company, I nonetheless lay my head down to sleep last Thursday fully conscious of the sad fact that I’d not really done any real work here. And it’d been weighing on me. I’d been going to work bright and early every day, but I hadn’t actually accomplished anything that I could honestly claim had any value in terms of contributing to the quality of life in Uganda - you know, the whole main-reason-for-having-come-here thing.

On Friday and Saturday, though, I think I might actually have made a difference. I spent those two days training two separate community groups how to design an advocacy campaign (basically, a concerted effort by common citizens to influence public policy and compel their government to act). It’s a topic I felt qualified to discuss and, more than that, I just relished the opportunity to teach a group of motivated adult learners. These last couple of years, I’ve really come to miss my days as a Teaching Assistant back in graduate school and it felt good to scratch that itch.

Anyways, besides the actual work itself, I am further energized by the fact that the objectives of these two committees - the reasons these groups of people came together in the first place - are genuinely important. In the case of the first group, the goal is to improve and/or relocate the “lagoon,” which is what the locals call the sewage plant in Kisoro Town. It’s not really a treatment plant like we’re used to in the States. It really is like a lagoon. It’s a massive breading ground for mosquitoes, which spread malaria, the number-one killer in Uganda. It contaminates the drinking water, which is arguably an even bigger problem here. And there is anecdotal evidence that people from outlying villages often wash vegetables in the adjacent stream - contaminated by the lagoon - on their way into town to sell those vegetables at the twice-weekly market. Yikes. The goal of the second group is to bring safe drinking water to the roughly 10,000 people of their sub-county who currently have to settle for the dirty, disease-causing variety they get from unprotected streams and ponds. This is pretty fundamentally important stuff, right? So, it’d be pretty cool if the tools I gave them have even a small positive impact on their ability to achieve their goals, right? I think so. And that makes me feel good. And feeling good about my work-related life here feels damn good for a change.

Moreover, in the case of the training I delivered to the latter group, I got to feel super “Peace Corps-ish” in the process. The training took place in Murora Sub-County, about 12 km southeast of Kisoro Town down on the border with Rwanda, which means I’m riding a bicycle to work that day. The new bike my organization gave me when I got here was stolen off my front porch in the middle of the night the second week I was here - despite my having locked it to the railing - so now I’m down to a decrepit version of the kind of bike model that isn’t reliable even when brand new. I realize not long into my journey that my front brake is completely broken, which sucks for me, but is, if nothing else, a source of much entertainment for the villagers who get to witness my already very conspicuous self descend in a clumsy, obviously uncontrolled, cacophony down the steep, rocky roads. I take some satisfaction in that. About halfway there, my left pedal falls off. Luckily, on my way out the door that morning, thinking “just in case,” I had tossed a Leatherman tool in my bag. I use it to cannibalize one of the two nuts on the right pedal as a means to reattach the left one. My working theory is that if a pedal has at least one of the two nuts with which it was originally endowed by its creator, then the pedal will continue to function adequately. Kinda like us humans and our kidneys. I’d say my theory ended up being about 70% correct.

Anyways, I do make it to Murora Sub-County Headquarters to deliver the training. Murura Sub-County Headquarters is a three-room barn with a tin roof. I use masking tape to adhere sheets of butcher paper to the concrete wall and scribe upon them with an assortment of permanent markers. The green one doesn’t work. The blue one leaks all over my hands. But still, the information is conveyed. I even use some local language here and there. On my way back to Kisoro Town, my left pedal falls off again. I put it back on again. I get lost, but I’m not worried because Muhabura, the towering volcano I would hike the following day, is always visible and it keeps me oriented. In fact, it got its name for fulfilling that very purpose; Muhabura means “the guide.” And, besides, all roads in Kisoro District lead to Kisoro Town and I’m confident I’ll get there eventually. I do. But not before stopping to eat lunch, left-over chapati from the night before, perched atop a short stout stone wall amidst some corn stalks. When I finally get back to town, I notice my hands are completely covered in two things: grease from my perpetually broken bicycle, and blue ink from the leaky pen used at the training that that perpetually broken bicycle nevertheless managed to get me to.

Staring down at my hands, I feel a sweet satisfaction in having had what I’d envisioned, prior to coming to Uganda, to be a typical Peace Corps kind of day.

I hope I have more days like that.