Are the Pieces Moving?

Haven't been too worried about things with the election until I read today's Monitor.

Besigye's Latest

Though my first reaction is posturing, his rhetoric seems to be enough to get him sent to prison for a very long time. Needless to say I'm sticking close to home today, maybe repacking my "go-bag."

Life Skills Program

Despite the fact that I have no evidence to support the claim that I a
m any good at life, (in fact there are those who would claim that I suck at life) my organization and I hosted a Life Skills program at our school facility earlier this month. It was a pretty frustrating experience as my organization once again demonstrated their contempt for planning. The exercise wasn't a total loss as I feel there were some good sessions, but based on the evaluations I conducted with a before and after test there was no measurable impact. I'll hold onto a little bit of belief that there were positive effects that were unmeasurable.

The first day was a mess of epic proportions, which I am still angry about and don't feel like discussing.

We actually had a really good second day covering lessons on what HIV does in our bodies, what 'Assertive' communication it is and how it can be used, and what the steps in making a good decision are.

The third day was disappointing but informative. We started out with an exercise called 'My Life Story' where we chart out the story of our life. I made one ahead of time and demonstrated, it had the low point of my life (middle school), major turning points, bumpy areas (college), and things I look forward to in the future. (like returning to America, Clemson winning the National Football Championship, and a lake house on Lake Hartwell) Demonstrating was a big mistake. Ugandan children aren't really encouraged to think outside the box so when it came time for them to make their own life story, they all copied mine, complete with joining the Peace Corps and moving to Uganda. Doh.

What was more disappoining was the gender roles activity. In this activity we broke the boys and girls up and gave the participants cards with various concepts, occupations, or tasks on them and asked them to place them on the blackboard where we had designated Male and Female areas. When Americans do this activity you get maybe 5 cards on the male or female side and about 40 cards in the middle. Not only did the boys put all the positive attributes and occupations on their side, but the girls had practically identical responses.

I should have known we would have trouble with this exercise when I was having my translator put Luganda on the cards and noticed that both the doctor card and nurse card said 'Omusawo'. I asked him how can you tell the difference between a doctor and a nurse, and he replied, "Doctors are always men, nurses are always women." DOH!

Unfortunately the women did not really fight this at all. They agreed that Intelligence, Education, Money, Decision Making, Leadership, all belonged on the Male side. The women's side was decked out with Weak, Raising Children, and Violence. (this one confused me and when I asked the group about it both the men and women agreed that women were "quarlsome" and that violence belonged on their side)

I practically begged the women to stand up and claim that they were as intelligent as the boys but couldn't get it out of them. I did get them to agree that they didn't think the boys were "better than them." What really got me was the smiles on the boys faces as the girls just sat there and didn't stand up for themselves. I wanted to backhand a few of them off their feet. They are so proud to be men, and since I've been here I can't think of a single thing Ugandan men have done to warrant pride.

High point of the workshop was one girl in the corner who while the boys were boasting said almost under her breath, "It is not true." I leaned in and asked, "what isn't true." She said, "that the boys are smarter." I told her, "you're right, in fact, you are probably smarter than them."

But overall the activity was frustrating. I was a development worker in a developing country and in a room of over 100 people it seemed only one person really believed one of the fundamental truths necessary for a society to develop.

Attached below is my full write up I did for my organization. It is a bit rambling and I abandoned proper voice and tense on several occasions, but some may find some of it interesting. The results portion is much more skim-able and interesting in my mind than the general summary of events. At the end I tear into my org for their lack of planning/support.

Life Skills Program Report - 891 MB

New Feed

I've added an election feed from the Daily Monitor (a decently respected newspaper here) to the blog. I'll keep it up through the election drama.

On a related note, in our January training we assigned "Spice-Girl" names to many of the volunteers in our group. Though it annoyed me a little at first I couldn't help but admire the appropriateness of Becca naming me RSS-Spice.

Needed A Pick Me Up This Morning

Wakey Wakey!

Out of 45

Peace Corps Wiki posts a chart on their website called "Out of 100" in which they document of every 100 persons at a given stage how many make it to the next step. The chart looks like this:

I was a little bored this morning, and am sequestered at site for a while, so I made up a little chart of how our group looks so far:

Here's to continuing to screw up Ted's budget.

6 Month Anniversary, The Find of Finds, and Other Thoughts

6 Month Anniversary

6 Months and about 1.5 hours ago 44 volunteers and I landed in Uganda. The new Freshman class gets in tonight, and they have big shoes to fill, cause the Sophomores are still 45 strong.

The Find of Finds

I was in Kampala in early December and one of the street merchants had bottle opener key-chains for sale. I had lost my Samuel Adams bottle opener when I lost my keys in October so I decided to pick one up. Not being a soccer fan I quickly weeded my way through all the ManU key-chains and found an absolute gem. A bottle opener key-chain with Jesus on it. I had to have it. I was pretty happy with myself upon purchasing it, but it wasn't until 8 hours later when I got back to site and opened a Coke that I found just how amazing a find I had stumbled upon. On the back was an image of Jesus in Medieval armor, riding a white horse, stabbing a dragon with a spear. Oh... and one more thing, he's wearing a cape!!!

Other Thoughts

Was really busy this week hosting a life-skills workshop at our school. Will have a full blog post up on it in a few days.

Got a subscription to Time magazine on my Kindle and love it. Today I stopped by a wifi cafe to get this week's issue. Uganda continues to live up to the name Peace Corps light.

On a less Peace Corps light note, I cut a bug out of my toe today after he burrowed in there.

The students are back at school, which has both pluses and minuses. Things ought to be more active around here now, but it also means that 20 girls are going to line up and watch me do laundry tomorrow.

We are locked down currently on a scheduled 2 week stand fast surrounding the election. I'm not expecting any problems. I think Museveni will legitimately have more votes, the people seem to actually support him. I wouldn't mind getting consolidated though; I could deal with a few days in a hotel, with western food, hot showers, reading books by the pool, and seeing a few friends from southwesternish Uganda.

Oh by the way... you're welcome...