products of dubious quality may be a metaphor for something

Sub-saharan Africa is a lot of things and one of those things happens to be the dumping ground of the consumer world. The t-shirts you donate to the Salvation Army eventually end up here (and oddly enough Japan) where they are sold in unsorted bundles to market vendors for about $100 a bundle. This phenomenon can be followed to its conclusion where local textile manufacturing has been steam rolled by the impossible task of competing with second hand goods and those firms have mostly run for the hills. The textile industry has historically been one of the first "rungs on the development ladder" for developing countries and it has been argued that the knee capping of this industry by the second hand clothing market has contributed to the rather lowsy state of economic affairs in Uganda specifically and Africa generally. But that's an argument for another day and another post.

For a variety of reasons (poor regulation and lack of domestic competition are my bets) the quality of new things is generally terrible. It's better to buy just about everything here second hand. Of course the vendors know this, because it's their business to know this, so second hand goods actually cost more than most new goods. A good example is soccer cleats. Ugandans love soccer and know the equipment very well. You can purchase crappy Chinese cleats brand new for about $10 that fall apart in a month or second hand cleats for about $20 that will last you a couple years.

It's hard to get a good bargain on anything related to soccer because it's a product that is much better understood by the market vendors than it is by me. Outdoor gear is the opposite case because the vendors don't know the brands. I picked up this North Face Windstopper fleece for $3, they're going for about $125 on ebay. Though now that I'm doing a web search it is possible that mine's a fake and that's why it ended up going to the Salvation Army in the first place.

I bought this Camelback backpack for about $15 and they usually go for about $75. There's something off about the bag though. The guy seems to have a supply of them as he sold identical seemingly new bags to me and my buddy on separate occasions for the same price. Originally I imagined that he hijacked a Camelback truck and was selling them off one by one. Though after a couple months of ownership we both noticed that the bags have the relatively minor defect of a crappy label. My current guess is that these bags were rejected by quality control and dumped here at a fraction of the price.

You never really know what you're getting new or second hand although you can generally be sure that whatever it is you buy is defective in one way or the other. The people here know that too and sometimes I wonder if that idea is internalized.

the time i rode a very full taxi

I don't think I've bothered to explain transportation here. The transport here is a rather large improvement over what it was in Guinea, but that says more about the sorry state of Guinea than it does about Uganda.

There is a fairly decent network of major arteries spreading through the country and plenty of vehicles to get you where you need to go. There are buses, private compact vehicles, taxi vans (matatoos) and motorcycles (forbidden!).

PCVs have an ongoing who's-been-in-the-fullest-taxi-game. Adults count as one, children count as one half, and chickens and drivers count as zero. The most I've heard is 23 in a taxi with a 14 person carrying capacity.

a day in the life: site ed.

I've been on this bizarre kick for the past month or so that involves getting up at 5am. I'm not sure how I've managed to continue to convince myself that this a worthy goal but I have. Initially, I believed that I would start the day off with a nice brisk morning run but the light doesn't break until 6:30 and to run and shower and break the fast wouldn't get me out the door until 8:00am at which point I've missed the 7:30 school assembly (more on this later). Instead I've become fixated on the idea that early mornings build character or happen to be a habit of highly effective people or some other such nonsense. However you cut it, I'm up every morning sometime around 5am.

First stop is a glass of water, a nice cup of coffee and breakfast then it's out the door to school. Breakfast can be anything from a handful of g-nuts (groudnuts...they're like peanuts), a potato/onion/tomato omlette or even mango crepes if the season is right.

The school day starts with the morning assembly attended by the boarding students, staff, and the "teacher on duty." If you want to put that into NGO development-speak that would be all the "stakeholders"). Of course the day scholars rarely bother to come to school for this and most of my teaching colleagues make a point of missing it but I've found a certain zen to the whole thing.

The students are gathered and lectured on a litany of topics that usually center around the main theme that they are lazy and "stubborn.*" Now, there is no shortage of lazy and stubborn students at my school, but the majority of them don't bother to get up and get lectured at 7:30 every morning. Never the less, the lecturers ramble on unabated preaching to the choir and the students patiently listen to messages clearly intended for those not present.

The assembly is only supposed to last for half an hour but quite often the chief admonisher will get a full head of steam and plough on for a good 45 minutes to a full hour causing all the morning classes for the entire school to begin 20, 30, or 40 minutes late. It used to really irritate me (I almost always teach morning classes) but like I said, I've found certain zen to the whole thing.

After going into the staff room and greeting every person there with a hand shake and "good morning" it's off to class. I take attendance every day, more to learn names than anything else, and then start my lesson. Originally, I would let late comers come into the class but now I've set a hard cap at 30 minutes after I start my lesson for admittance.

The hardest part about being teaching is varying your teaching style to reach all the different types of students in the class and keep things interesting. If I'm not careful I find myself getting all college professor-y and lecturing too much making the dry subject of mathematics positively barren to a room full of teenagers. I much prefer to break them into groups and ask them to complete an activity which is submitted to me at the end of class.

For lunch I eat in the staff room (lunch is expected to be provided by the school) with the other teachers. Lunch is usually beans and posho (pounded corn meal) but usually one day a week it's goat instead of beans.

After lunch I head over to the bursor's office. This term I've been working with him to make electronic records of the school fees due by the students. The records have previously been kept in paper ledgers and sorting and tracking which student have paid and which haven't and which have a balance and which don't has been a mess. I've created a rather simple Excel spreadsheet that I'm hoping will be a vast improvement over pen and paper. This is the first term we've worked together so I'm doing most of the data entry. I'm hoping he will appreciate how much easier it is to do these things on the computer and I can tutor him in Excel so he can continue after I leave. Things are going pretty well so far.

I come home around 5pm and if I don't have an extra curricular activity I go for a run around 6pm when the sun has begun to set and the temperature drops. I cook some food when I get back and dink around on the computer or do some reading or prep for tomorrow's classes and then I'm in bed around 9:30 (that 5am start time comes with cost!) and that's that.

*"stubborn" is the preferred, and often only, adjective used to describe anyone or anything that is difficult, non-cooperative, disobediant, or generally bad in any way. It's just one of the little wrinkles of living here that other PCVs appreciate more than anyone back home can understand.

buzzards and dreadful crows, a necessary evil I suppose

This what it looks like outside my front door these days. Perhaps you can compare with the photo taken a couple months ago. Same mango tree, different season.

We're in the heart of the dry season right now. It began in November and will continue until the end of February. I would previously gripe about the mud and general sogginess of the wet season but I have been reformed! The rain keeps down the dust and provides merciful coolness to the hot grasslands of northern Uganda.

The dry grass is also regularly set ablaze by the villagers for reasons not entirely understood by me. I have been told by it's done for aesthetics, replenishing soil nutrients needed for agriculture, or assisting hunters in their quest for game meat (the Ugandan Cob is a regional favorite).

I find the whole endeavor to be madness. The constant grass fires kick up waves and waves of wispy ash that coat nearly every interior part of my house. The fires quickly spread beyond the purview of the originator across vast stretches of plains. Grass thatched huts in their path can be set ablaze like dry Christmas trees. The whole territory now looks somewhat post apocalyptic.

But, hey, it is what it is.

I'm praying for rain.

Happy New Years

Mt. Muhavura

4137 m

yabba dabba do

Pony tail ahoy!

It may come as some surprise to those back home but until two days ago I hadn't updated my journal since August. My track record with letter writing is even worse and you can see how poorly I've been updating my blog. The first months at site have been a struggle. Though hardly the black death of loneliness and isolation I expected, it has taken all of my available faculties to tread water. Apparently those water treading faculties are also requisite for my journaling and letter writing. Something like winning the war but losing the battle.

I recently (and smugly) underlined the passage: "A neck tie is a noose inverted and if you're not careful it will hang you just the same" from the "The Life of Pi" as if it were a reaffirmation of my beard, pony tail, and flip flop life style. Occasionally I have these moments of (mostly imagined) bohemianism. But it got me thinking about why I'm here rather than over there.

One of the things that enticed me, and I imagine others like me, to the Peace Corps was the idea of living on the edge of the known world. Going farther, deeper, better, faster, harder, stronger than would otherwise be available via the more traditional school-to-more-school-to-cubicle-to-office-railway. In private pre-departure moments I imagined myself a yogi of the African grassland, personally growing through rich cultural experiences followed by careful meditation and quiet reflection.

As I roll up on a year and half of skipping around the the world, my experience has been more "square peg pounded through round hole" than "Buddah of the Serengeti." I run, but sometimes walk, face first into brick walls nearly every day. That is to say, rewarding though it has been, the experience has not been without it's discomfort and contortions. Some of the very basic ideas about myself and society at large have been re-opened for debate and debate can be uncomfortable because it is uncertain. I won't be quite sure until I return home to my friends and family but I feel as if squared edges are being rounded.

this is my cat, i am not a cat person

Just recently I inherited a cat, actually kitten, from another PCV. Initially I named her J-Woww though after careful reflection she is now known as LeFleur the Cat. Her interests include sleeping, being insufferably noisy in the early morning and leaving disembowled rats and lizards on my living room floor. LeFleur the Cat is named in homage to a good friend of mine who has a predilection for yoga and terrible movies.