March 22, 2007

My first post, finally. I'll try to sum up the last two and a half weeks now...

We arrived in Uganda safe and sounds. A long flight for sure, but I survived. We flew from JFK to Brussels; Brussels to Nairobi; Nairobi to Entebbe. We arrived late on a Monday night. The first 5 days were spent at this little "resort" outside of Kampala. We met the Peace Corps staff and were introduced to the culture, language, health, safety, etc. of Uganda. We were also just becoming aquainted with the other volunteers--we are a huge group--there are 50 volunteers in my training class. It was a nice couple of days to relax before training began. We even got to visit Kampala one of the days to see what life in the capital is like...very different.

That Sunday, we drove to our training site which is Northwest of Kampala. We met our host families which we will be staying with for the next 9 weeks. I'm staying with an older couple who take care of many grandchildren. I'm still not really sure who lives there and who doesn't...but they are all really great. They don't speak English too well, although some of the kids speak some so my communication is primarily through them. I have my own room in their house, and we have running water and electricity about half of the time. Not too bad. I go to bed early and get up early--when the roosters are up, I'm up...not by choice. I think my family gets up before the rooters sometimes. It'll be about 4 in the morning and I hear them...and Ugandans typically eat dinner at about 10pm every night...I don't know when they find the time to rest...

Training is from 8-5 Monday through Friday. We have language for a few hours a day--I'm learning Luganda which means that my site placement will be somewhere in the Buganda region. Luganda is the official language of Uganda, so I'm lucky to be learning it. It'll make traveling a lot easier. A little less than half of us are learning Luganda; the rest are learning various languages spoken in the Eastern region. Technical training also takes up a lot of the time. My group is the first Economic Development group for PC Uganda and there are 12 of us with this assignment--most being former Guinea volunteers. The others are Health and Education volunteers. We also have cross-cultural training, health, and safety throughout the day.

Alright, I'm off to visit a current Peace Corps Volunteer for 3 days to get a glimps of life at site. Pretty excited...Can't promise when I'll get the chance to write next, but I'll try. In the mean time, I love mail!