Getting out of the village for a few days and a good meeting with my organization. Found a satchel in the second hand market today that I'm going to use when traveling and I don't want to bring my REI backpack and my NorthFace day pack.
Also, City Top Restaurant of Mbarara for the first time in probably 2 months!!!
Got a Fluor Polo shirt in the mail and cool mug with a picture of the Jack County Station on it. Friends from Fluor continue to treat me better than I deserve.
Lows:
Getting fat. Just not working out a lot lately. Rainy season combined with travel and the opportunity to eat good food has not been good for me.
My light packing week out of site turned into a week and a half out of site, meaning I'm going to run out of clean clothing about 3 days before I return to Nakyenyi. Haven't formulated a plan yet.
What I Did:
Had a meeting with my org Monday and detailed out my ideas, our capacity, and how I would like to proceed with obtaining funding for biogas. After which I started writing a grant for Engineers Without Borders. We are almost assuredly going to get shut down (and for good reason because my organization isn't qualified for a program this big), but I've decided I no longer care about the big picture, I just want to do something. If this falls through I will proceed on getting a Peace Corps grant and trying to build a smaller scale digester. After my meeting I spent 3 days in Wakiso so I could deliver a 5 minute explanation to trainees on what the VAC is. It's good to a girlfriend on the training committee.
What Is On The Agenda:
3rd VAC meeting of the year is Sunday - Monday and the first full meeting in 6 months with a Country Director. Will be interesting to see how committed she is to addressing policy reforms she has communicated she is on board with. There is a 50th Anniversary event on Thursday I was going to go to after returning to site but now my Program Manager wants me to serve as some type of glorified usher and attend training for my glorified usher duties on Wednesday. For this reason I believe I'll be hanging around Entebbe Tuesday instead of going back to site. Maybe I'll buy some clothes in the market since I will no doubt be beginning to smell by that time.
American Annoyance of the Week:
Thats right. I'm annoyed with the federal government this week because the exchange rate on the dollar is down about 50% since I arrived but my living allowance hasn't changed by a shilling. So the Peace Corps gets the same number of US dollars for me each month but I have about 2/3 the buying power I did a year ago. Transportation and food costs are up big time. What really hurts is that when prices go up here they go up in ridiculous increments, usually 30-50% all at once. I still live a quality of life far superior to what I expected when I came here, but I am missing the good old days when a beer cost 2000 UGX and dinner was less than 10,000 UGX.
What I'm Reading:
Finished Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three and am really starting to enjoy The Dark Tower series. I didn't have a very good reading week after making into Wakiso so I'm trying to finish Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the next 24 hours to keep my pace going. I've started Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor but expect it to take me a full week of 4-5 hours a day to get through. The mammoth Atlas Shrugged is on the radar soon and that may take me a few weeks to get through so I want to get ahead of my 1 book a week pace before I tackle it.
Suggestion for the clothes dilemma: Wash them.
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