Finally posting stuff from training, some of it is pretty silly in hindsight, and so much has changed since, but here it is, unedited

February 15th

With few exceptions we are a bunch of nerds. Lots of engineers of the electrical, mechanical, and chemical variety some bio majors and a few fellow math majors. One business guy. Everyone is interesting and most can boast that they were the president of this or that at some point. Luckily there are a few underachievers whose resume consists mostly of number of hours logged on diablo 2 or guitar, hooray for us!

We are a sarcastic bunch and every class so far the entire room has erupted with laughter at some snarky comment. Its a lot of fun to be around people without properly working comedic filters, the only downside being that there are some truly horrific nerd-cackles that make me cringe.

There are some really bright folks here, a physics teacher named Kevin with an encyclopedic knowledge of pretty much everything, but most notably birds. He's in the right spot because Uganda is said to be a bird watchers paradise. There are hawks circling around our dorm every morning which are now my favorite birds because they hunt snakes and snakes suck. I told Kevin that I understand birdwatching because I've played Pokemon. Maksim is a fellow math major and pushed his bagggage weight to the limit in order to bring all the tools required to build his own full scale solar panel at his site including a power drill so I know who to go to if I need tools. And there’s Mark, the electrical engineer who was able to deduce that his power strip sparked, smoked, and ceased to work when plugged in because its set up for 140 V and here we’re at 220V, at least most of the time. The power is unreliable here and there are blackouts every day. When the power comes back on there is a surge in voltage that can fry whatever you have plugged in.

There is definitely a freshman year in the dorms mixed with summer camp vibe going on here. We're on stand fast due to the presidential election which means we cant leave our training center so we're getting to know each other pretty well, its been fun but I'm ready for some time to myself, I've been unusually social and it can be exhausting. I've made some equally immature friends and we've been having a good time. We got our med kits today and they are jammed full of all sorts of fun stuff, most notably tons of condoms. So David was helping out and carrying a bunch of med kits for people, so my response is to say, hey David you know you can just ask for more condoms right? We've been having a good time helping people not take things too seriously by interrupting deep religious conversations with comments on what our monkey butler are going to do for us once we train them. My first order of business once I capture my monkey is to get him a little tuxedo and train him to carry it in a briefcase to work ie my house and put it on. Anything he does after that is just gravy. Oh yeah, there are monkeys here. The luweza training center doubles as a monkey sanctuary so they run amok. They are pretty much awesome except that they like to steal stuff which kinda makes them more awesome. Maybe one will steal my camera and take some pics for me, that might be the only way I get pictures because I cant seem to remember to take them. Hmm, these are pretty good how the hell does he know the 2/3 rule? My body is not used to the altitude or heat yet, im also jet lagged and I think that’s the reason I felt so shitty when we were playing soccer next to the burning trash piles.

The director of secondary ed training is a very large Ugandan women with unblinking eyes and a manner of speaking so slow I was surprised by her intelligence. I had an interview with her to discuss my expectations and my future site and took an immediate liking to her, I don’t think I’ve ever been so quickly convinced of a persons goodness and wisdom before. The wisdom coming out of her mouth was inversely proportional to the speed at which she spoke them. She introduced herself to our group during a session about Ugandan culture and told a story at glacial speed of a PVC’s host family cooking him a whole chicken and he not knowing how to go about eating it as there is a very particular way to start the process. At the end of the story I look around and some of the trainees are nodding knowingly. But wait she cant be done she didn’t finish the story? So I raise my hand and ask, uh so what part of the chicken are we supposed to start with? She laughs and there is a long pause, and nothing. So the lesson was sometimes Ugandans wont answer a question you ask not because they don’t know but because they have to get comfortable with you first.