Welcome Home Uganda

Hi everyone!

We are back at the internet cafe and I thought I would write a quick update.

We moved in on Saturday morning with a wonderful homestay family in Lweza. We live with a mom, dad, younger brother (10 years old), sister (21 years old and home from a break from University), and other sister who is also the household help. There are other children in the family, some directly related and some not. Some are away at boarding school or university, or don't live with the family all of the time. Our host dad works at an NGO that works on HIV/AIDS testing/eduction and our mom is an accountant who also runs a "small" chicken farm. (We found out later that her small farm has 800 chickens on it!!!) Our home is extremely nice and our family has been amazingly welcoming! We feel like we have a home and a family here in Uganda now and it is a really wonderful feeling!

On Saturday we spent the day mostly moving into our new home for the next couple of months. We have our own room in the house. Also, the house has electricity, running water (with a shower and flushing toilet!), a large gate that surrounds it for security, and guard dogs who are out once the sun goes down. We have a TV, and even a refrigerator/freezer. On Saturday we ate a wonderful meal of fresh chicken (from the farm), beans, rice, matoke (traditional ugandan dish made out of cooked, mashed, ripe bananas), and green beans. We had fresh pineapple juice afterward - delicous! We also were able to attend a meeting of a savings and credit coop that our family is a part of, along with many of their village mates.

Sunday we went to church with our mom and one older sister. It was a really wonderful experience. When nobody showed up to lead the service, our host mom and sister took it upon themselves to read scriptures and prayers from the Anglican worship book. Our mom gave the sermon! We sang Amazing Grace, What A Friend We Have in Jesus - all the classics! As we left, many more people were coming to the church for the service in Luganda that would take place after our English one was completed.

Also, my host sisters caught me up on their favorite soap opera - Hidden Passions. Unfortunately the power went out so we weren't able to watch it. We tried to go to the neighbor
s home with a generator, but it also failed. Lucky for me, one of my sisters spent about 2 and half hours catching me up on the story line - so dramatic! So, I will look forward to catching the rerun on Saturday! (PS - I NEVER followed soaps while in the states, so this is another cross cultural experience!)

There is so much more to share but my time is running out! I hope you know how often we are thinking of you all and how we can't wait to share more stories with you! Thank you for your kind thoughts and prayers and know that we are also sending them your way! If you get a chance, shoot us an email (ekjesbojohnson@gmail.com or ryanmark86@gmail.com). We miss you and would love to hear about what is going on in all of your lives!!!

Much love,

Emily

We have internet but only 14 minutes more!

Hey Everyone,
We just wanted everyone to know that we arrived safely in Uganda a couple of weeks ago now. We only have a few minutes to post this but just thought we would send a quick update to you. We have been having a great/exhausting experience at training so far. Tomorrow we get to go to our homestay families finally, we can't wait. We also have found out that we will be in the Southwest part of Uganda, more updates on that later. But we have been learning survival Luganda (spoken around Kampala), teaching techniques, safety/security, health stuff, and many other fascinating and not quite so fascinating things. We can't wait to update you all more really soon. Thanks so much for all your thoughts and prayers.
Talk to you soon!

36 Hours of Brotherly Love

Well our short stay in Philadelphia is almost over, and then in a mere 25 hours from leaving here we will be in Entebbe, Uganda!! We are officially now not PCN (Peace Corps Nominees), and are PCT (Peace Corps Trainees). Our day has been filled with group builders, shots, and understanding guidelines. We started the day at 8 am and finished around 5:30 pm. We covered everything from Core Guidelines, to Anxieties/Aspirations, to what to expect when we get to Uganda. The day was filled with meeting many new friends.

We found out that for the first two weeks we are in country we are going to be in what is called "Standfast." This means that we will basically not leave our training facility, Lweza, for the first two weeks at least. Every volunteer in the country is in standfast and for each one it means something different for. It is incredibly re-assuring that they are taking precautions to keep us safe while we are there. We are definitely ready to get there and get this crazy adventure started.

This evening we went out to eat with a large group of people to Maggiano's Little Italy. Which if you know Emily and I but at all you know that this was one of our favorite places until it closed in the Twin Cities. So that was a great celebration dinner for our leaving for Uganda! The waitress was super excited for us, and as such gave us celebration cookies and charged us for 7 extra meals. We had a great time and once we got the waitress to correct the bill we had many relieved laughs to go around!

We leave our hotel tomorrow morning around 2 am! Which we are just so excited about. But we will first fly to South Africa from JFK (15 hrs). Then to Entebbe from there (4 hrs). Once we get to Uganda we may be contactless for our time in standfast. We won't have a chance to get cell phones until that time is over. So this may be our last post for a little while. We will be excited to tell you all about our time once we have gone through at least two weeks of training. Thanks again for the great send off and we can't wait to tell you all about training!

4 bags = 160 lbs = personal belongings for 2 whole years!

The good news is the packing is over! It was not an easy task, but we think we've done an OK job.

As much as we desired to pack light, it's really difficult to decide what is and isn't necessary for the next two years of our life in Uganda! Peace Corps and other volunteers have given pretty helpful lists, but when it comes right down to it it's not easy to sort out our 160 combined pounds of stuff. As much as he wished, we couldn't bring Milo! :-( (we didn't even stage this picture! He just plopped right into a suitcase as we were packing all around him!)


Generally, here's a very summarized list of some of the items that we brought:

• Modest business casual/professional clothes for work
• rain jackets
• sleeping bags
• spices we like to cook with
• games to play
• books
• Kitchen and other tools
• Laptops, Ipods, Cameras

That's what I can think of right now! When we did the dreaded weigh in before we left we were pleased to find we were about 20 pounds underweight! So, all is well and hopefully it's everything we need and not much that we don't!

Also, today was the day that we left home! We'll try to write more later about our staging experience in Philadelphia, but we wanted to take a moment to tell everyone how grateful we have been for the support as we have gotten ready to go. Friends and family have been absolutely wonderful through this all and we hope you know how much we appreciate and love you all. Thank you for understanding our emotions and being so supportive and excited for us. What would we do without you all!!!

More to come....

Goodbyes....

...are hard! And we have been saying lots of them in the last days and weeks! We've been packing up our home, saying farewell to family and friends, leaving jobs that we enjoy and have lots of history with... It's hard. A strange experience for sure.

One really neat and sort of random thing that has happened in the last few weeks is all of the crazy connections we have discovered we have with the country of Uganda. Everything from friends to coworkers, we never knew we had so many ties to this little country in Africa. Who would have thought. It's a small world after all!

Ryan and I were talking yesterday about how we've been so busy with this wrapping up section of the Peace Corps process that we almost haven't had time to process the emotion of really leaving, how long we will be in Uganda, and everything else about this huge transition in our lives. I told a coworker today that I don't really think it will hit me until I walk out of work today...or maybe even not until I don't come back on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.... You get the idea.

But with the sadness of goodbyes is paired the excitement and anticipation of what is to come! Just this week we got four more loaded documents with info about what what we can expect in the weeks to come. A couple of the more interesting facts:

• Our training is at a different site than previous PC trainings (although they tell us there is a lot of "Peace Corps history" at this place!). We understand this is because of security with the upcoming election in Uganda. Coincidentally, it's also located near (or maybe in??) a monkey sanctuary. Sweet!
  
• Also due to security, we will begin our training living in a dorm-style housing situation instead of a homestay. I feel a little disappointed because I was so excited to become part of a Ugandan family upon my arrival, but I feel like it could be a good chance to get to know many of the other volunteers right at the start. And...I guess security is important! ;-) I believe we will move in with a family at some point, just not right away.
  
• We found out there will probably be around 45 volunteers coming in our group. That's pretty big, eh?
• Dress is very important for first impressions. This means we are supposed to dress professionally for the entire crazy long plane ride we have coming up! So much for PJ pants. :-(
  
• We received our rough 10 week schedule of what's waiting for us in training. It includes such topics as orientation, field based training, tech immersion, language immersion, site visits, and assessments. It sounds like a lot, but we are pleased to sense the organization of what is coming and the feeling that they have done this many times before.
  

So...what's next for us?! Tomorrow we board a plane for a sunny week with family! Then back to Minnesota for some final family and friend time. Then, 1 pm on the 8th we board our plane to Philly for staging. And then....? That's where the adventure begins!

I'll be sure to post once we finalize our packing - that's a crazy experience in itself! For now, we are getting ready for what we are sure will be the ride of our lives. Can't wait. Stay tuned.....

~Emily~

Sitegeera?!

I'm trying to get a head start on learning the language we will probably be speaking while in Uganda. So far it's fun, because I obviously have some time before I have to really get serious about learning it! The Peace Corps has provided us with 12 brief lessons and a pdf guide to help us learn some of the common phrases, alphabet, etc. So, today I am doing dishes and listening to "Herbert" and "Ven" greet each other over and over, trying to make it stick! I'm making *slow* progress, I think. It makes me smile to think that in time I these greetings will become second nature. I can't wait.

For now, though, I am practicing very hard on these specific phrases, as I have a feeling I will be needing to use them a lot. :-)

• Yogera mpola mpola (speak slowly)
• Sitegeera (I don't understand)
• Ddamu (repeat)

Stay tuned, Beera bulungi! (stay well!) :-)

~Emily~

Uganda: A Snapshot

If you are anything like us, you might not know a whole lot about Uganda. We certainly didn't much before we found out it would be our new home while serving in the Peace Corps. So, over the last few weeks we have learned lots about this beautiful country. The Peace Corps Uganda welcome book has been very helpful in giving us some snapshots of our future home. Here are some of the basics and interesting things we've learned about the "Pearl of Africa" so far:

• Uganda is located in East Africa. It spans the equator and is bordered on the west by Congo, on the north by the Sudan, on the east by Kenya, and on the south by Tanzania and Rwanda. Lake Victoria forms part of the southern border.
• The country of Uganda is about the same size as the UK.
  
• People living in Uganda speak around 50 distinct languages, divided into three major linguistic families. While Swahili and English (inherited from the colonial period) are the official languages, we will likely be learning another language spoken in the rural village in which we will be serving.
  
• Peace Corps volunteers began coming to Uganda in 1964, and have continued, on and off, since then.
• Currently, there two types of Peace Corps programs operating in Uganda: Education, and Community Health & Economic Development.
• Uganda is one of the countries most severely affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, yet it is also a tremendous success story, as infections rates have reduced by 50% over the last 10 years. (The current adult infection rate is around 10%)
  
• "In the 20th century, Uganda went from being perceived internationally as an Eden incarnate — Britain’s “Pearl of Africa” — to being considered the antithesis of Eden, largely because of the extreme actions of post-independence leaders Idi Amin and Milton Obote."
  
• Uganda peacefully achieved independence from Great Britain in 1962.
• Until recently, the Ugandan government followed a single or no-party parliamentary system. However, now there is a parliament representing various parties.
  
• Uganda has frequently been considered an economic success story by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, due to their economic reforms that begun in 1986.
• Education is highly valued in Uganda, as seen by the government's commitment to universal primary (and recently, post-primary) education.
• Uganda has an equatorial climate that is moderated by altitude. Average annual rainfall varies from more than 84 inches around Lake Victoria to about 20 inches in the northeast. Vegetation is heaviest in the south, thinning out to savanna and dry plains in the northeast.
  

Hopefully that gives you a *tiny* snapshot into Uganda. And hopefully our blog can provide even more of a personal snapshot in the months to come.

It will be great to learn in this adventure together!

~Emily~