Welcome to my "house"

Before we get to the whole tour, I wanted to share with you my oven. It is there on the gas stove. This method is used to cook many dishes in Uganda, but there are some important differences to making this a functional oven. Ugandans would put sand in the bottom sauce pan and some would put rocks, however, I would not recommend either if you don't plan on purchasing another sauce pan soon.

The items I use are three ceramic coated metal cups. They raise my cakes and cookies off the bottom, allowing plenty of air to circulate and allowing the heat on the bottom of the pan to dissipate. I know people who have burned through the bottom of the "oven" because they used rocks. Sorry for them, but I'm still baking with mine. I do miss real ovens though, so enjoy them, those who have them, and bake something nice for me...hehe

So if you remember from the time before where my door is, this is the entrance looking out. Yep, there is the refrigerator, with all its rusty, puddle making, electricity taking convenience. There on the wall is a picture of my Grandma's house, and there in the corner is that wonder long handled blue broom.

Here is the sitting area. I do have two chair, but they take up quite a bit of room, so I am using the other elsewhere. In the corner there is my shelf that my friend help me get made. It is getting extensive use. Also you see my table for everything from pre-eating to eating, and also puzzle setting, catch-all, foot rest...

My friend also help get me a stand for my kerosene lamp because it does have an awful smell and I can get better light coverage from its new location.

Better view of the couch with what looks like stuff to iron and unpack as well as another package from home...thank you thank you thank you by the way.

Good view of the lamp stand and my new Peace Corps calendar...thank you very much Susan! There hanging next it is my new bag from Banana Boat for carrying my things to school and elsewhere. It comes in quite handy.

Now, let go to the kitchen. You will see where I store my food and dishware, a there on top is my water filter. I have found that the rainwater I get from the compound tanks makes my filter dirty very quickly, but the water from the borehole in town keeps it clean for much longer. There is my gas tank there in the corner as well.

Here is my stove with all my frying pans and cooking utensils above as well as a really nice out of the way place for my dish-rack. When the tanks dried up, I went and purchased 3 more jerry cans for hauling water...only ended up using them for just under two weeks and except for washing, don't use an exceptional large amount of water. Pretty good for me, right?

Okay, so that brings us to the entrance to the second room...my bedroom.

As you enter, my bed (or what I refer to as my sanctuary) is on the other side of the wall from my kitchen. It may be called a mosquito net, but it is definitely for ALL types of bugs.

Turning around, you will see the other chair and whatever you call the wooden compartmentalized structure where I put my clothes and other necessities (cause there is not any room for superfluous stuff).

As we continue the turn to the right we find my bathroom complete with walls and a floor drain. I have my basin and 3L jerry can for washing. I also store my bucket and soap for clothes washing in here too.

Since we are on the subject of bathroom...and since that translates to something different in America, I want to now show you my latrine. So we need to go back out of the house. Out the door to the right, and straight ahead, you can see the tippy tap I use to wash my hands.

Once you get to the wall, you take yet another right. The sign tells people not to pee in the area of that first door...it is the outdoor bathing place.

Hey, our first left...There's my latrine door complete with lock, tucked away here in the corner.

Okay, so what is behind this door....

Well, I have TP, a broom and a wooden cover...

And you guessed it...a hole in the floor or ground or what have you...

So that's it for the tour, hope you enjoyed seeing my place as much as I enjoyed showing it to you.

More to come...again

Not sure why I always seem to have problems uploading pictures in Mukono, but I do.
Just a quick update...sorry no pictures this time.
Term 1 of school has started. I am volunteering at a primary school created to serve orphans in the area. I teach P3 and P4...mainly P3 because they behave the best. The subject I prefer is math. I do English every once in a while, but really it is not my strength, never really was...seems to be language period, but that's besides the point.
So my job with my organization is to work with schools organizing and teaching their Sanitation clubs/committees. One school has grown over the last two years to be 60 members. I just went to another school and we had elections for the first time and I counted about 75 members-probably more, because they have to sit so close together and some get lost. How many ands did I just write...anyway.
Any I guess since I don't have enough to do, I told the main women's group I work with that I would begin teaching then English. I am kind of excited about it because the way I am going to teach them is through the lessons of other activities...such as cake baking.
I attended a conference about integrating WASH into Home based care and I think the counseling cards they provided with be a great addition to what I can teach while teaching English. We'll see how it goes.
I was having meeting every day somewhere, including 2 days of teaching...
After four days I found out I was not going to be able to keep it up, so I reduced my school teaching (P3 &P4) to Wednesday mornings and took back my Mondays to concentrate on other things I need to do... i.e. some type of research. Wow, so much to do, so little actual time to do it.
Enough blabbing from me for now. Have a good weekend.

Until Next Time...

The second wedding I attended

We took a wrong turn and ended up on a ledge between some water and soggy ground.

The reception area...pretty heh.

More reception, the center where the cake is located on a raised platform. Fancy eh?

The entertainment was really great. And you could tell they were having fun doing their job. Good stuff.

Some of my other family members and friends

I always refer to her as the Brown cow because I can never remember her actually name. She recently returned from her trip to a friend's farm. The going was slow, much stopping, starting, mooing, swerving, stumbling, jerking, at dusk fun. She is safely back home now and is eating up a storm every time Anna calls for food.

This is Anna. Maama Gertrude says she's stubborn. Mind you stubborn actually encompasses a whole list of other adjectives to describe someone's behavior. If someone isn't doing quite exactly you would like them to do...they're stubborn. Anna makes two very distinct sounds, a loud long moo to let everyone know there is no food in the trough and that somebody better do something about it because she is hungry. The other sound she makes it similar to what any normal person after consuming WAY too much food would make...kind of a moaning 'I'm so full' groan. It could be one of two reasons...she did eat way to much or...

This is a crazy picture of our late friend the mama goat. She was having problems one morning that I was leaving for school...wasn't the usually goat droppings dispersement. But she was just hanging out under the dish drying rack. Half way through my day at school, Raymond shows up to tell me that the mama goat is no longer with us. I guess she was experiencing paralysis of her entire body and the lady next door kept wanting it slaughtered (hearsay from me), so now we are one goat less on our compound. Her son cried and cried...it was one of the saddest sounds. He cried so much he was getting hoarse; so pitiful that sound. Maama Gertrude couldn't take it anymore either and sent for a companion goat. I kept thinking about all the trouble Sis went to for her rabbits to like one another and that was definitely not the process here. The result of this match was a headbutting young female who liked to eat all the food and keep the little guy away. A few times they were seen frollicking across the compound, but most of the time it wasn't buddy buddy.

I do want to tell you about mama goat since I brought up the topic of rabbits. One day we went to collect the goats from the area by the police station and they were proving quite difficult for just me to run down. As I was trying to get close enough to grab the rope, they of course would run off. There was a large group of goats at the time and during the chasing process mama goat took a running leap and totally did a binky. Anyway, I figured at least Sis would enjoy that little tidbit. Let me tell you, mama goat definitely had some air time on that one too. Didn't know they could do that. I've seen the little kids do some cute little excited manuevers, but that was cool.

This is the little boy who is no longer with us. He was sold off. However, before he left he managed to get himself tied up in a corner of the compound. He was definitely stuck there. I did help him out of his predicament after I took this photo. I thought it quite humour.

Welcome to My little corner of Uganda

Welcome...this has been a long awaited visit, sorry I did not invite you to come see my place sooner. This is the street I live on. As you can see, if there is a camera, there are children running to get in the picture. Okay, we are infront of Maama Gertrude's clinic so let's turn around and go inside the compound.


I live in a gated compound, so I feel pretty secure at night. During the day people are coming in and out to visit Maama Gertrude, bring food for the cows and goat, and collect water in their jerry cans for 100/= (USG) each.

My new friend Joyne here is going to begin out tour with the open courtyard. Beyond her, you can see two rainwater harvesting tanks...mine is on the right, well the one I use anyway. The building in between is the kitchen. The goats like to sneak in there every once in a while.

If we go in and look to our left we see Maama Gertrude's house. People are always coming and going, but a few people are ever there like my friend Raymond, who is completing is university work, Noah, who does all sorts of jobs around the place and out in the 5 gardens Maama Gertrude has, and Brenda is the newest of the household help, she helps with basics like cooking and cleaning. Of course I cannot forget Nalongo and her twins. She is the main helper to Maama Gertrude in maintaining the compound...and she does it while watching her two little ones. They are pretty good too, except one likes to cry often.

Okay so sweeping around to the right a little you will see the dish washing/drying area and beyond that is where the cows live (eating, sleeping, and poo-ing). It only took me a couple weeks to migrate to using the washing area, but I have my system down now.

Now here we come back to the kitchen and if you look closely on the very right you can see a lace curtain. That my friends is my door.

Unfortunately I need to cut the tour short here due to time. I invite you in and show you where all the fun stuff is next time.

I'm running out of cool new titles

Tippy tap

Newly constructed school rainwater harvesting tank

Sunset over the sand mine...one of my favorites...not the sand mine but the sunset.

21 Months Left. Hope I can get something done

Our training group has just completed our first three months at site and finished our in-service training. Now we are all excited to get back to site and start working on projects...well except for the few that have already started projects, guess they get to continue, right?
Christmas and New Year were good...not the same as at home, but good having friends here to share the holidays with. I definitely didn't miss out on one aspect of the season...eating way too much food. It didn't help that someone else was doing the cooking. I feel I eat less and enjoy the food more when I cook for myself; might have something to do with it taking a significant amount of time to prepare. I do tell my mom that I will be an expert onion dicer, maybe even develop an immunity to the juices causing my eyes to burn and tear up. I doubt it, but we'll see what happens. Maybe that can be one of my side experiments.
Picture from the holidays to come. Just wanted to say Hi and ask for prayers that the next wedding I go to is either at a comfortable volume or I am no where near any of the speakers...behind them is where I'm thinking will be the best spot.
Hope all of you had a good Christmas and beginning to the New Year.

Until Next Time...