Catching up...

Hey everyone!

Well, we're back in Uganda!  It has been a whirlwind of a month!  First - ending the term and hosting two wonderful friends, and then an awesome time in Europe!  Thanks to those of you who checked out our *many* pictures - I think they tell a better story of our trip than I ever could in words...

But let me try all the same!  Our trip was a-m-a-z-i-n-g!  We fell in love with Italy!!!  I'll do my best to keep this recap to a nutshell version, but there is just so much to share!

The first section of the trip Ryan and I spent in Soriano nel Cimino - a great little Italian town in the hills of the Lazio region of Italy.  We spent our days walking around the community, eating delicious food and gelato, cooking with great ingredients, learning to like coffee, taking pictures, making fun day trips to nearby areas, and trying to just live in the amazingness that was all around us.  We were in Soriano for our 3rd anniversary as well!  I can't imagine a better way to celebrate three wonderful years with my very best friend!  It was an incredible time just to be together and remember what life is like without all of the little daily stresses of Uganda.  After a year and a half without leaving East Africa, it was a culture shock in the best of ways - so low key, such great food, so relaxing!  We loved it!

Next we met up with my family for a week on the Mediterranean!  We were able to visit some incredible places - Genoa Italy, Barcelona Spain, Ajaccio Corsica, Palma de Mallorca Spain, and Cagliari Sardinia.  We  had an incredible time reconnecting with family (it had been over 18 months since I'd seen my brother!!!), relaxing, catching up, and again eating plenty of non-Ugandan food!  Having family dinners every night after over 18 months apart - priceless!

Last but not least - a visit to the eternal city...Rome!  Here we had an amazing time visiting all of the major sites and some little places off the beaten path as well.  A favorite memory of my Dad's (and mine too) was getting on the metro at the station near our hotel, and getting off of it right below the Colosseum.  We walked out of the tunnel and bam - it was like being transported through time!  Ryan also had the great idea to download some free audio guides, which really helped us enjoy all the sites that surrounded us!  And again, more incredible food, great gelato, beautiful surroundings, and amazing culture every where you look!

Then (with our three bottles of wine and a large chunk of parmesan in tow), it was back to Uganda!  (I should mention how comfortable and spacious we thought the airplanes were and how delicious airplane cuisine was - my how our perspectives have changed!!!)  This weekend we are at an all volunteer conference - surrounded by all 150+ volunteers from all over the country - exchanging stories, catching up with old friends, and meeting new volunteers. 

We had also passed the 2/3 mark of our service - 19 months down, 8 or less to go!  It's an interesting place to be.  Although I know there is more to do here, and many things to be excited about (including many that we probably aren't even expecting), it's a little bit hard at the same time.  We had such a busy, fulfilling, and all around awesome term last term, and it's hard to know that some of the aspects of our two remaining terms hold a lot less excitement - at least it looks that way from where we're standing now.  Maybe the best way to describe it is to say that I feel a bit like we'd peaked by August...but still have 8 months to go!  Then of course, it's difficult to come down from a great holiday filled with time with family, friends, and time in the "western" world...
(did I mention the gelato...?)  It's just a lot to think about.  I wrote a letter to a friend today (hi angela!), and in it I forced myself to make a list of some of the things I'm excited about in the time to come.  I can already anticipate many great things to come, and I know there will be more that I can't even expect that will inevitably pop up.  Here's what I came up with:

• Our two VSLAs close their cycles in December.  It will be really amazing to congratulate them on an incredible year of saving and loaning, and see all the results of their hard work and committment! *yay*
• Hopefully the girls will take on the RUMPS project and continue it by leading workshops in their primary schools.  I look forward to going out to the schools to support their efforts on such an incredibly important project!
• Book club - possibly *another* book by Chinua Achebe...
• Our continually growing garden - it's rainy season again!  Before we left for our conference, we planted artichokes, basil, cilantro, cabbage, strawberries, lettuce, and made a cage for a rogue tomato plant that lived through the dry season!  Kudos, little guy!  I could get used to year round gardening...
•  Thunderstorms (love the rainy season)
• Living in such a beautiful place, with such a slower pace of life
• Time for pleasure reading - I've passed the 100 mark of books read in Peace Corps!  How many more wonderful reads will the next 8 months bring?
• Shopping at the market - love it!
• Spending Christmas in America!  (Thanks Mom and Dad!!!!)
• Continuing to be the neighbors and friends we have worked to become over the last 19 months - sharing and enjoying life in our Ugandan community

So...I'll just stay focused on those things!  I really truly do believe that as the term picks up and things get going, I'll feel really good about that fact that we're still here!  It's just a strange transition from an incredible holiday and into the last third of our time here in Uganda...lots to think about.

Love and miss you all - thanks for reading!

~emily~

Travels in Italy, Part 2

Our trip continues to be absolutely wonderful!!! I think we'll *eventually* write a blog about our adventures in Europe, but in the mean time....more pictures!!!!  Click below if you're interested!

Seeing the Mediterranean with the Kjesbos

Roma Amor - Five Fabulous days in Rome with the fam!

Thanks for reading!  We love and miss you all!

~emily~

Travels in Italy...

We have had an incredible first week in Italy!  A complete (and much appreciated) break from Peace Corps Uganda!  We'll definitely write something up about the trip, but in the mean time, here's a sneak peak at  the pictures from our first week in Italy!

Pics from Soriano

Pics from Florence, Bagnaia, & Viterbo

Thanks for reading!

~emily~

Elephant Dung & Other Adventures

August 10, 2012

We had an incredible time this week as two of our great friends, Bryan and Jenna, visited from the States!  During our last night together, I asked them how they were going to respond when they got the inevitable question: “So, how was Africa?”  Bryan’s answer was something along the lines of, “It was a great adventure!”  And I think that pretty much sums up our week - a great adventure with two of our favorite people!

Bryan and Jenna were our third set of visitors to Uganda, so we *thought* we knew the ropes of traveling with visitors well enough to prevent any major adventures!  Little could we all imagine the adventures the coming week would hold...

Ryan and I had been in Kampala for a few days leading up to when B & J were supposed to arrive.  We didn’t have any real plans on the day they flew in, just intended to get the the hotel and airport in plenty of time to be ready for their plane to land.  However,Thursday we were surprised with a crazy offer - to attend a private visit Friday afternoon from our beloved Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the US Mission in Uganda!  Our answer - YES!  The event was supposed to be very brief - a quick speech, handshake, photo opp, then off to pick up our guests!  However, even within the embassy compound, Ugandan time reigns!  Madame Secretary was hours late, and although her speech was incredibly brief, we were still scrambling to get to the airport in time.  As we raced to Entebbe in the back seat of a taxi, I realized that Jen didn’t have my phone number, the name of the hotel we were staying at, anything!   I prayed to myself that they wouldn’t feel like being adventurous and would just stay put until we got there!  And...they did!  They beat us to the arrival area by mere minutes, so everything worked out just fine!

During our week together we had quite the adventures.  We saw dozens of incredible animals in Queen Elizabeth National Park - a momma lion and her 3 cubs, leopard, hyena, giant forest hogs (very rare!), waterbuck, crocodiles, hippos, birds, kob, elephants, and many more.  Our encounter with the elephants was among the most exciting.  As we approached the road where they were, two safari vans full of tourists were totally blocking the road.  We slowly drove nearer, and found a baby elephant all by itself.  Our friend and guide Benjamin began to slowly back away - and we all understood why!  If there is a baby, there has got to be a mother somewhere near by!  In the end, the momma elephant and about 10 others emerged.  No cars were trampled and, for better or worse, all tourists were safe!  We stuck around for a while and ended up seeing one particular elephant about 10 feet from the car window!  Benjamin also told us a story of how in 1992 the head conservationist at Queen was killed by a mamma elephant who had lost a young one and turned over and trampled the car he was riding in because she was so upset.  Shortly after the telling of the story, we heard a strange noise behind us and Benjamin floored the car!  All of our hearts tensed up and the look on Benjamin’s face was utter terror.  In the end, it turned out to only be the muffler!  Yes, in one afternoon we narrowly escaped an encounter with a dozen or so elephants and...a muffler.

Another memorable adventure occurred the day we toured a coffee plantation, to give Jen and Bryan (serious coffee lovers!) a taste of the coffee world from the Uganda side of things.  In the midst of driving to the plantation, we had a breakdown.  So, Benjamin got us set up with a colleague of his and went to work on fixing the car.  He told us we were in for a one hour, low key visit to a coffee plantation where we would see the growing, picking, and drying process of coffee cherries, and learn about the husking and selling of the beans.  So, off we went! 

Long story short - our one hour coffee tour turned into a 3+ hour incredibly intense hike during the hottest time of the day through coffee fields, people’s backyards, rocks where ancient people made sacrifices, down and back up unbelievably steep bluffs (we cant’ possibly be headed that way....we *are* headed that way!), into an apiary full of very upset bees, and through fields where elephants had trampled everything in sight, including the coffee trees that were supposed to deter them from decimating the local people’s farmlands.  At one point, I stopped to take a picture holding some relatively fresh elephant dung (the stuff was *everywhere*) and one of the guys asked how our guide could be sure that elephants wouldn’t come back through the area while we were hiking through.  His answer:  I just predicted...?!?!  Luckily, despite our complete lack of preparedness for what we ended up enduring - terrible footwear, no water, no sunscreen, and Bryan was injured - we arrived at the tourist lodge at the end of the trail relatively unscathed!  We tromped up through the resort, looking like a group of dusty nomads, being stared at by all the comfortable tourists sipping icy glasses of water and enjoying the view - at least until we appeared in it!  I will never forget the looks on their faces as the four of us, disheveled and utterly exhausted, dragged ourselves up to the bar for some water. 

Other adventures during our week included political riots and teargas, bumpy bus rides, trying to avoid Ebola, playing nerdy strategy games by candlelight, and Bryan walking around Uganda with a cane...priceless!  And, of course, we had many, many incredible conversations and times of laughing so much we could hardly speak!!!  It was an incredible week!

I’m so thankful for friends like Bryan and Jenna with who, no matter how long it’s been, we can pick up exactly where we left off!  I’m so thankful to the opportunity to catch up on their lives and share a bit of our Uganda with them!  (Love you guys!!!)




Here's the link to pics of our week together!

We love and miss you all!

~emily~

PS - Beware: Where there is fresh elephant dung, we hear there are likely fresh elephants!

The birds and the bees (+ pictures!)

Hi Everyone!

Hope you're all well!  Things in Bushenyi are winding down for the term!  Last week was our final week of classes, and after 2 weeks of exams our students will be out of here for another holiday, and we'll be off to Europe!  (could we be any more excited?!?!)

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Before the term finished off we put on a big event that we'd been building up for the last few months!  So, Saturday, we held what we called a "Health and Lifeskills Workshop."  Essentially, a souped up version of "the birds and the bees."  We divided our students into groups of girls and guys, and took the whole day to talk about issues of lifeskills, HIV/AIDS and STIs, reproductive anatomy, relationships/gender roles, family planning, and general health.  The girls also learned all about making RUMPS (reusable menstrual pads) - more about that later!  The theme of the day was "Health teachers for a healthy Uganda."  We hoped that through equipping our students (Uganda's next new teachers) about many of these important issues, the knowledge can spread out to their future students in the primary schools, as well as friends and relatives that we'll never have contact with.  Working with teacher training creates a lot of opportunities for ripple effects - sustainable work that we may never see the fruits of, and we hope that his can be one of those times!

The need for a workshop like this is huge!  Not only is Uganda one of the few countries where HIV/AIDS prevalence is actually on the increase, but many of our students have such limited knowledge about their bodies, their options in regards to their health, and what be practically done to prevent things like HIV transmission and unwanted pregnancy.  This year alone 3 girls have been sent away from school due to unwanted pregnancies, and there are surely more to come.  Although our students are in the 17-23 age range, chances are good that nobody has talked to them about many of the issues we confronted on Saturday.  There is an abundance of misunderstandings and complete myths in the minds of our students (i.e. America not only created AIDS, but has a cure for it and is not sharing it with Africa, condoms spread cancer, washing yourself with laundry detergent can prevent unwanted pregnancies and HIV, etc.)  So, we really tried to get down to the basics and equip our young adult students with factual knowledge and the opportunity to make good decisions. 

The original impetus for the event came from a grant I received from the Minnesota Returned Peace Corps Volunteer association.  The grant is all about teaching the female students at the school about reusable menstrual pads (RUMPS) and helping them teach the primary school girls (P5 - P7) about them as well.  As I described in my grant application:

One challenge commonly faced among the young women of Uganda is the ability to attend school regularly and consistently.  On top of gender related duties at home, long distances traveled to get to and from school, and availability of funds for school fees and school related materials, many girls are also unable to attend school during their monthly menstrual cycle.  Many girls do not have access to proper materials to manage their menstrual cycle.  Instead of using sanitary pads or tampons, some girls resort to using rags, socks, newspapers, banana leaves, or feathers.  Others use the same soiled pad for days on end, while others simply stay home and miss school while they wait for their cycle to end.  In some cases, girls find a “sugar daddy” who will buy them things (including disposable pads) in exchange for sex.  Clearly none of these options are conducive to a girl’s development and each has the potential to increase the risk of sexually transmitted infections, low performance at school and high dropout rates.  In addition, the shame and confusion created by the cultural lack of communication about reproductive health issues often contributes to low self esteem and negative self image.

This project aims to address the lack of knowledge and abundance of misconceptions about reproductive health among young Ugandan women.  In addition, it seeks to provide an opportunity for girls to create hygienic, inexpensive, environmentally friendly, reusable menstrual pads.  This project will teach future teachers the skills needed to effectively and accurately teach reproductive health lessons, as well as provide the materials for workshops to create reusable menstrual pads.  Not only will it empower future teachers to speak to their pupils about reproductive health issues, but it will empower girls to manage their menstrual cycle in a hygienic and affordable way, thus eliminating the danger of missing school or making high risk decisions simply because “it’s that time of the month.” 

On Saturday the girls not only learned about why RUMPS are a good option for them and their primary school girls, but also had the chance to make a set of RUMPS for themselves. (I should backup and include that there was a lot of prep work to make this happen!  Over the last few months, I've been cutting fabric, towels, ribbons with abandon - collecting buttons, needles, winding thread, and putting together over 300 RUMPS kits!  Each one consisted of enough material to make 2 pads and 3 cotton towel inserts, along with a card of thread, needle, and buttons to make "wings" on the sides of the pad.)  Each student also got a manual with a lot of helpful information about reproductive health, answers to common questions, and directions for teaching about and making RUMPS.  (Thanks to PCVs Chelsea, Bethany, and Audrey for sharing your excellent manual with me!)  When our students get back from break next term, I hope to support many of them as they lead health and RUMPS workshops in their individual primary schools during student teaching.  The girls are super excited to share the knowledge they have gained!  Many of them are already planning their own workshops, and some have already even bought materials and intend to get started at home in the village during their August vacation!  I was encouraged to see the passion with which the girls embraced the project and their eagerness to continue to spread what they've learned!

But, we figured, why make the workshop only for the ladies?  Why not do more than just create RUMPS?  So the day ballooned into an all out health/life-skills, both gender event!  And we're so glad it did!  There was great participation, great excitement, a feeling of general thankfulness for the knowledge our students received!  And.....hopefully there will be a great impact too!  Our big hope was that our students would at the very least leave the workshops knowing the facts, so that they could make (hopefully good) informed decisions about their health and their lives.

We also were fortunate to be joined by 3 staff from the Uganda Peace Corps office, and many of the PCVs and volunteers from our region (thanks to Dan, Bailey, Nick, Andrew, Marianne, and Susie!) 

Our friend Susie snapped lots of great pics from the day!  I put them up on facebook, so if you're interested in checking them out - click here!

Thanks for reading - we love and miss you all!

~emily~

Vlog #7 - 3 crazy days

Hey Everybody!

Here's the latest video blog we've made.  It includes videos from our MDD festival, the sports and games competition, and the fun day we had with the CBO Silent Voices.

Enjoy!

We love and miss you all!

~emily~

PICTURES!!!

Hey Everybody!

I'm super excited to share some of my favorite pictures taken over the last week!  Hopefully these pics can give you some visuals to go along with the stories shared in my last post. 

Click on the links below to see my facebook album of each event:

Music, Dance, and Drama Festival

Games and Sports Competition

"Silent Voices" Activity Day for Deaf Children

Thanks for reading!

~emily~