The rainy season has begun, and you know what that means, all you can eat white ants!

Looks good doesnt it? Actually this was the tastiest meal my neighbors have prepared for me yet. This particular meal consisted of freshly caught white ants, fried and salted, and fried Matoke, which is basically a less sweet banana. I'd heard about the white ants and wanted to give them a try but i was pretty surprised when they gave me a whole bowl full, i just wanted to taste one. I was even more surprised at how delicious they were, although i really shouldnt be, you can't go wrong with oil and salt. They taste kind of nutty and have the texture of a really crispy french fry with the skin on it. I finished off the plate and wanted more. I've had more since but a different species that is smaller and gritty, ill pass on those from now on, i've become a white an snob! 

The rain forces the termites/white ants up from under ground and out of their mounds, they fly towards the lights and into the nets and buckets of hungry Ugandans. There are 4 species here and the gathering tactic is different for each. My favorite is when they use clay to form tubes from the openings in the mound down to a bucket. They pound the ground with sticks to scare them up and the termites walk right into the buckets.

The staple food here is Bwitta or Posho when there inst money and rice and beans when there is, so mostly the former. Bwitta and Posho are just millet and maize flour respectively that has been mixed with boiling water until it has a play-dough-like consistency. It goes without saying that it's really bland, but with a little sauce to dip in and a lot of hunger it does satisfy. I feel a little guilty eating nicer food, especially the packaged rice i recently bought at an Indian supermarket in the nearest big town, Mbale. It costs three times as much as the unprocessed rice, but it has no husks or stones in it. I have a bit of a pile of packaging building up in my house because im self conscious about throwing it all out and revealing what Ive been buying with my fat American dollars. They know to go through Muzungu's trash here, and not without good reason, we're used to tossing things that are perfectly usable or fixable, more on that later. So it can take a long time to sort through the raw rice and pick out all the crap, and since everything seems to take forever here, efficiency at home is the name of the game right now. I got a pressure cooker that cuts the cooking time of dry beans down from an hour and a half to twenty five minutes. Throw in some rice when the bean are almost done, and I have a complete protein meal in twenty five minutes. Add some avocado and MSG and its not bad, and there's only one pot to clean! Hurray for bachelor chow! So, that's pretty much the biggest news in my life right now.

I would say put me out of my misery but im pretty sure hell is an introduction ceremony

The day after I arrived at my site, my headmaster took me to an introduction ceremony. A teacher at my school was the groom to be and seeing as I had talked to him for a total of 2 minutes, naturally I was invited. The most important thing for me to do was to get the required attire. The white dress thing is a konzo, which is not Ugandan but adopted from Arabs for historical reasons, and the jacket was adopted from the British because why not, its not like its hot here. The resulting combination had me chuckling.

I left my house around 6am to go to Mbale and get the konzo before the ceremony. I met up with with my headmasters nephew and he babysat me while I did a bit of shopping for my house, he was an effective deterrent of the muzungu tax that I usualy encounter. After a full morning of shopping and carrying stuff around I was really hungry and tired and ready for lunch. I changed into my costume and got on a crowded bus that would take us to the party. I was struggling to hold it together, hungry and hot as I was. The bus driver started up the bus and then we just sat there for another 20 minutes, breathing in the exhaust and sweating profusely while absorbing the heat of the bodies squished next to me and hating the British for being so fashionable. Finally we started off and the fresh breeze was enough to lighten my mood and get me chatting with my seat mates. It was not to last though, because when we did get there and walked single file into the ceremony we were not allowed to sit down. There were little white boxes on each chair that I was pretty sure contained food but I couldn’t think of a culturally sensitive way to get at it, so at this point I texted the title of this entry to my friends in the area.

The whole idea of the ceremony is to introduce the families to each other and to make sure the groom knows who his bride is. There are a series of what I can best describe as skits where a series of girls are brought out and the groom must pick his bride out of the bunch or call for a new batch. This takes hours, and the only reason I know the story is because another volunteer filled me in. whenever I asked a Ugandan what the heck was going on they would say “oh, just a bit of drama”. they mostly seemed bored, some read newspapers but all were obligated to spend their entire day sitting through a bit of drama. Finally we were allowed to sit and so i devoured my roasted goat and seasoned potatoes, suddenly the world was a whole light brighter and I no longer hated the bride and groom.

They had me participate in the gift giving, never mind that I didn’t bring anything, just grab something from the pile and wait your turn to place it at the couples feet, I hope they enjoy their new lamp. I was the last in line to give my gift, awkward, the women in front of me was holding a chicken no big deal, its just the ceremonial marriage chicken. The stupidity of chickens never ceases to amaze me, they can be on the way to their doom but as long as you bind their feet they seem completely indifferent. You can tie 20 of them together and throw them in the back of a taxi but as long as those legs are tied they don’t even try to struggle. This particular chicken played an integral part in the ceremony and as he got closer to the couple I got closer to supper. This was the first time it really hit me that I'm white. Until the ceremony, I had never been the only white person at an event. Also, recently I realized that when I'm reading, im now visualizing characters as black, the main characters are still white though, does that make me racist? So the chicken is given to the groom and he hands the dangling bastion of stupidity over to the brides dad and the bit of drama part was over and it was time to eat.

Basically a  hobo pie wrapped in banana leaves instead of aluminum foil.

Nothing to see here, just a starcraft LAN party.

Into the Ugandan school system

3/10

in school based training this week and last. Five of us were assigned to Kitende secondary school, and when we showed up and were introduced during a morning assembly to all 1000+ students I had a serious how the hell did I end up here? moment. Apparently we have hilarious accents, most of the students laughed when we introduced ourselves. The idea was that each trainee would be assigned to a few teachers shadow them the first week, co-teach the second, and solo teach for the last week. During my shadowing I learned that “Uganda time” doesn’t just apply to buses and meetings but schools as well. The physics lab that I was observing was supposed to start at 10:00. The teacher showed up at school at 10:20 and naturally had to take tea and chat with colleagues. At 10:40 I ask him when we are going to class and he tell me to wait in the teachers lounge while he goes to set up the classroom. Meanwhile the students are sitting in their classroom waiting. Finally at 11:55 we start the physics lab and while no actual physics was done the students did learn how to fill out a chart neatly in pencil, (how could you use pen? And a black pen at that!) And to blindly plug values into a given equation. And there you have it, you all now understand how to derive the acceleration due to gravity using knowledge of pendulums. And this is one of the better schools in Uganda. On the plus side their tables and graphs are neater than any I've ever made.

It turned out to be too difficult to organize the co-teaching so I got a bunch of solo teaching practice. My first class was a bit of a mess, I kicked over my water bottle spilling water everywhere and dusted wiped chalk dust all over my clothes. A good start. The next day I was explaining probability tree diagrams when it started to rain, but downpour better describes it. The school roofs are just sheets of tin and it quickly got to the point where I could hardly hear my own voice. We had been told that often when it rains, class is effectively over, teachers just wait it out. I couldn’t bare to just stand there for another hour with fifty Ugandans staring at me so I wrote a quadratic 4 times on the blackboard and called up four “volunteers” to the board to race to factor them. I had been told that Ugandans love competition, but I didn’t think they would like it as much as they did. After they watched the first group, everyone was laughing and excited and wanted their turn to compete. Good to know that I have that card up my sleeve now.

Congrats to Dr. Dana!!

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.

Homestay

2/26

I think that I’m going to learn a lot from kids here. My little bro Mathias walked me around today pointed out all sorts of plants and there medical uses. In hindsight I realize that he lies a lot and tries to trick me so maybe I shouldn’t take his word that this plant in an anti-diarrhea. At least one of the things he told me is true, there is a grass here that you put into your tea and it makes it extra delicious. I love the tea here, but more importantly I love the way they take tea. Pretty much everybody here takes break tear around 10 30 am, they stop what they're doing and chat and drink tea for half an hour and then go back to work, love it. They love sugar here and after 3 spoonfuls of granulated sugar the tea is really more syrup than tea but yum so good. Anyway, Mathias is an amazing little athlete, a wizard with with a soccer ball (I brought him to play soccer with some other volunteers and it was the best soccer we've played yet, I thought we were ding pretty well. Afterward I asked him if he had fun and he shrugged and said it was slow and boring. Nice, come to the bar with me and ill buy you a soda for your honesty). But the little shit cheats at draft, a more complicated checkers, more complicated because every time he got in a tough spot a new rule was introduced. But I learned all his rules and started using them against him and destroyed him three games in a row. Yes I’m bragging about beating a 13 year old at checkers. No, I have no shame. So he walked me around and showed me the important stuff like the internet cafe and the cinema shack where drunkards hang out, and most importantly the short through the bush that cuts my walk to the conference center from 10 minutes to 5 minutes. My grandma (i knew her name the first day but she wont let me call her anything but grandma) is a little over-protective and so didn’t want Mathias taking me to the parts of town we naturally went to right away. How did you get those grass stains on your pants? Uh, I slipped in the garden. I definitely didn’t fall in some bushes when a brick wall collapsed while I was trying to climb it because I couldn’t slip though the crack that Mathias could,saying make your body smaller isn’t exactly the most helpful thing.

My host dad is pretty awesome, hes a security expert who specializes in disarming IED's, he worked in Baghdad for 2 years contracted by the US government. Around Lweza, he knows most people and everyone knows him. I felt pretty bad ass walking around with him when he took me buy a phone. He can clearly handle himself but hes still warm and sincere and very well read. We went from stand to stand shopping for a good price and found a dual sim unlocked phone with radio and a torch for 60,000 ush. It just so happened that that particular shop was one I had visited the prior week with a few mzungus and we were told that the cheapest phone they had for us was 100,000 ush, that's the mzungu tax for you. Earlier in the week I went looking for a rice sack to store some of my crap in and when I finally found a place that would sell me a single rice sack she wanted 2000 ush for it so I tried my hand at haggling, come on its a rice sack so I offered 1000ush. She just looked at me unamused and said you're a mzungu. Cant really argue with that, of course I can afford a 2000 ush rice sack, that’s not even a dollar. So I failed at haggling, but eventually I’m going to have to get good at it because I'm not getting paid in dollars.

1,2,3 Malaria Pills!

So today medical gave us our anti malarial medicine. I go in knowing that if the name starts with an m I need to veto it because it can trigger depressive episodes, but medical seemed to be on top of their game and had read my medical history and had already decided that was not the best for me. Kinda too bad because it also triggers crazy lucid dreams. The m one is the first choice and when that was out they jumped to choice number two, the doxy one. The nurse handed me the doxy and I was getting up to leave when another nurse, my guardian angel, ran over and said we cant give him that hes allergic to minocyclin! Thank god, I vividly remember that allergic reaction and have no desire to repeat that experience. Two things occurred to methen. One that finally after years of writing my one allergy on all sorts of medical paperwork it finally paid off and two that I need to be on top of my shit because PC medical sure isnt. Best healthcare ill ever have my ass. In the end, they put me on malarone, which is by far the best in terms of short and long term side effects but it costs $5 a day so PC only uses it as a last resort. They told me to keep quiet about how great the malarone is, so they dont have everyone asking to be on it.