March 7th?
Today was a good one, we met a bunch of current volunteers and they took us to a new very awesome ski filled bar with a seemingly never ending supply of COLD beer. Our previous hangout had a very small fridge and no generator so we were getting used to warm beer. One of the volunteers informed us of some peace corps end of service stereotypes. Its said that volunteers in south America come back political activists, volunteers in Asia come back spiritually enlightened, and volunteers in Africa come back drunk and happy. I'll try my best.
I also found out today that Dana is going to be a doctor! I am so proud and excited for her, but I had to mask my excitement when I came home because Gofrey's future career had all but dissapeared. He found out today that the security job he had been diligently waiting for fell through. The job he was up for was working for the US government at an embassy in Afghanistan and had been applying for months being narrowed down from group of about 1000 to 60, he had passed all his tests and done well in training and it looked like he was going to get the job in Uganda, the government doesn’t allow private security companies and so his group had to be represented by an agent. So on the day that a contract was supposed to be signed, the agent demanded a 50% commission from the Americans. Obviously the group had no say in this and perhaps not as obviously, the Americans refused, saying that, shocker, the money is supposed to go to the people actually risking their lives, the agent could take 10%. There was some back and forth bickering and the Americans finally settled at 20%, but would go no higher. The agent wouldn’t budge so the Americans passed on the contract and 60 people went home without jobs. It gets better. The woman acting as their agent is none other than the sister in law to president museveni, not exactly hurting for money. It gets better yet. The only other person who can act as their government recognized agent is miss greed's sister. Its your basic, choose between a giant douche and turd sandwich scenario.
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