Iganda? No, Uganda!

Some Other Kind of Justice

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:49:00 +0000

Not long ago, I was walking back from dinner at a Thai restaurant in Kampala with a large-ish group of friends. During our walk, we had thinned out to a widely spaced, nearly single file line, with two small clusters of people at the head and tail. It was fairly dark, given that it was night and Kampala is probably among the most poorly lit cities in existence. But the stroll along the edge of the steep, thickly forested ridge that leads down to the city's golf course was nonetheless enjoyable.

I was walking near the front of the line when suddenly I heard a frantic shriek from behind. I whirled around to see my friend Caroline (I'm not at liberty to use her real name), who had been walking by herself in the middle of the pack, being grabbed by a young guy who had popped out of the darkness of the woods.

Almost instantly, three boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers appeared. They pulled over, dropped their bikes on the side of the road, and ran towards the slope, ostensibly to help, but more likely to exact a violent retribution on the man grabbing Caroline. (In Uganda, the only real justice is mob justice, the cops largely being corrupt, incompetent, or just plain absent. When somebody is caught stealing in the market, it's customary for a crowd of vendors to turn on the thief and beat him mercilessly with tire irons and wood slats until he goes unconsious or dies. I've seen the former happen at the large produce market in Hoima town.)

By the time the boda drivers - and I - reached the spot where Caroline had been grabbed, both she and her attacker had tumbled down the muddy slope into the woods. We rushed over, shouting to Caroline and scanning the with our cell phone flashlights. We found her, frightened and crying, but okay. The attacker had tried to abduct her, but when that failed, he attempted to make off with her purse. Caroline, though terrified, had clung bravely to the purse as they fell down the hill, refusing to give it up. When they both regained their footing, the attacker gave up and fled through the trees.

Almost too late, a police officer wearing green camouflage fatigues came running across the street, weapon drawn. "Where did he go?" the officer demanded. We pointed down the steep slope, into the shadowy tangle of trees. Wasting no time, he cocked his AK-47 with a loud KA-CHUNK and disappeared into the woods.

Unfortunately, the would-be thief was long gone, no doubt having sprinted halfway across the golf course immediately after failing to snatch Caroline's purse. I carefully descended the muddy slope with some of the boda boda drivers, only to find the police officer standing and shaking his head disappointedly.

"We are thieves, we Ugandans and Nigerians. Even me," he said. I didn't ask him to clarify that.

As the situation was no longer tense, the officer and the boda drivers began to laugh heartily, congratulating Caroline on being such a strong fighter and resisting the attack. The would-be thief hadn't managed to hurt Caroline or take anything of value from her, but she had lost one of her brown flip-flops in her chaotic slide down the hill. We searched up and down the slope with our flashlights for a while, but it didn't take long to realize that a brown sandal would be more or less impossible to find under piles of rotting leaves and mud in the dark of night. We gave up the search and walked back up the slope to the main road.

Up top, we brushed ourselves off and comforted a teary, visibly shaken Caroline. We thanked the boda drivers for their help, and they sped off into the night on their motorcycles. The police officer ejected an unused bullet from the AK-47. "I wouldn't have even wasted bullets on that one. I would have just knifed him," he chuckled, toying with the unaffixed bayonette mounted below the gun's barrel. I noticed he wasn't carrying handcuffs. To this day, I'm still shocked and angered by the attack on Carloine. But stabbing someone to death for a failed theft? That's some other kind of justice.

Responsibility & Fate

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 13:24:00 +0000

A month and half ago, I was freezing my ass off.

It was a Monday morning. I was sitting outside the school office, spaced out like I usually am after teaching my 8 am physics class. An impenetrably thick layer of clouds had decided to usurp the normally fair skies of Kiziranfumbi that day, driving the temperature down to a frigid 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Goosebumps dotted my bare arms as I sat there in a rickety wooden student desk, quietly reflecting that my decision to wear a short-sleeved polo shirt to work that morning had been a mistake.

"How can you stand this cold?" my headmaster, Fred, asked.

In truth, I found it rather unpleasant. But I'm in total denial about how much of a weather wimp I've become after a year and half of living in the tropics.

"We Americans are used to it," I replied, secretly longing for my fuzzy black Mountain Hard Wear fleece.

"Well, I can't stand it," Fred said. "I'm going to the center for a cup of hot tea. Can I borrow your bicycle?"

Now normally I would deny a request like this. My bike is a secondhand mountain bike, or "sport bike," as they're called here, from Japan. Cosmetically, it's a piece of shit. A large chunk of the plastic gear guard is missing, the handlebar grips are coming apart, and the brakepads and tires probably haven't been replaced in a decade. Americans wouldn't think twice about chucking this thing in the trash on bulky waste pickup day (shoutout to my dad, who rescues still functional bikes from the trash!). But to a rural Ugandan, my bike is a coveted possession. A sport bike is several notches up from their heavy, rusted, fixed speed workhorse bikes, which—while good for hauling water from the borehole or carrying large bundles of sugarcane, goats, bedframes, or coffins—are more often than not missing crucial components, like pedals.

In the 15 months I'd worked with Fred, though, I'd come to know that he's a fairly decent, trustworthy guy. That's saying a lot for a school headmaster, a demographic that is notorious for their corruption. Ugandan headmasters typically siphon money away from their schools for private use, hire staff based on personal connections rather than merit, rule with an iron fist, and generally abuse their power in other ways—and get away with it. Fred, thankfully, shows none of these qualities, which is why I trust him more than almost anyone I work with. So naturally, when he asked to borrow my bike, I let him.

An hour later, Fred returned. My bike was intact, but the cable lock was completely busted. Fred had locked it around the handlebars in a way that prevented the rider from using the brakes, and then somehow had dislocated the key slot so that it couldn't be unlocked. Needless to say, I was a little angry about this. I'd used that same lock hundreds of times and never had any problems, yet in the one time Fred used it, he had managed to destroy the thing. But something like this was to be expected from the lock's inferior Chinese construction. Rather than make a big deal out of it, I simply asked Fred to buy me a new lock the next time he was in Hoima (they only cost like $2), to which he agreed. I then fetched a butane tank and a Bunsen burner from the lab and set about melting the old lock apart.

Some days later, I was rummaging around the cluttered lab storage room, gathering equipment to do a demonstration of heat convection for my Senior 1 physics class, when my good friend Jotherm, the lab manager, came in. We started talking and he mentioned that the headmaster had grumbled to him about having to buy me a new bike lock. Apparently, Fred was annoyed that I had asked him to pay the full cost for the new lock, as opposed to splitting the replacement cost with him 50-50.

I had stumbled a critical difference between how Americans and Ugandans assign blame and resolve conflicts. To an American, my solution to the bike lock issue was the obvious, logical one: Fred had borrowed my bike. Therefore, he had automatically assumed complete responsibility for it while it was under his control. He would be expected to pay for any damage caused to the bike or its accessories during the period he used it, simple as that. The terms of this contract were—to me, anyway—implied and trivial. They did not need to be stated; they were assumed.

Unfortunately, this is not how things are done in Uganda. Here, when a friend borrows your property, you both enter into a nonverbal agreement to temporarily share responsibility for the object. The owner can never completely relinquish responsibility, but since the owner gives up a certain amount of control over the object by lending it out, it is only natural that the borrower assumes some responsibility to account for the uncertainty he has introduced to the situation by removing the object from the owner's careful watch. Since responsibility is shared, both parties must contribute to repair or replacement costs in the case that the object is damaged while the borrower uses it. That is precisely why Fred was surprised that I asked him to pay for a new bike lock in full. In his mind, he was not solely responsible for the lock breaking.

This speaks volumes about how Ugandans view control in their lives. There is a great deal of fatalism in this country. Few people seem to feel that they are truly the masters of their own lives, and in many ways, they aren't. Uganda is an agricultural society. The welfare of its people and the health of its economy depend tremendously on rainfall patterns and crop yields. Not even the industrialized world has control over these factors, but the advantage of industrialization is that low crop yields rarely have catastrophic effects on the livelihood of the average citizen, due to the immense diversification of these economies and their employment sectors. But in Uganda, a bad growing season can prevent parents from raising the fees necessary to send their children to school, or feeding their family adequately, or keeping a sick relative alive by footing his or her hospital bills.

Moreover, anyone born into this society inherits the legacy of decades of misrule by despots who have all laughably called themselves "President," the ineffectiveness of a pseudo-democratic parliamentary republic at addressing the dire needs of its people, and the economic hardships introduced by over a century of exploitation under British colonial governance. Ugandans have the odds stacked against them; it is understandable that many feel powerless to improve their lot in life.

All of this translates into a deep, collective fatalism, the belief that one's destiny is determined entirely by uncontrollable external factors or acts of God. (As a side note, I take the admitedly cynical view that the main reason Ugandans are so religious is not that they place great value on showing reverence for God, but because they believe prayer will magically bring them meat and money and other earthly possessions that will assuage their hardships. The word "to pray" in Runyoro, kusaba, is synonymous with "to ask for." Thus, whenever you pray, you are really asking for something. I am not sure that kusaba carries the same sense of worshipping as "to pray" does in English.) Perhaps this explains why Fred expected to share responsibility for the broken bike lock: such things just happen, and to blame any one individual for a small, random act of God is unfair. It is up to all of us to collectively deal with the erratic behavior of the universe. A man alone cannot best fate.

Bus Salesmen

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 06:47:00 +0000

On a recent routine bus ride to Kampala, there was an obnoxious salesman selling some kind of minty balm for soothing headaches. Salesman are a common feature of long distance Ugandan bus rides. They give long-winded speeches about how a particular herbal tea will cure HIV or how a certain brand of soap will boost your man's libido, and inevitably some poor, ignorant passengers will believe the outrageous claims and shell out the money for snake oil.

I hate these sales pitches with a passion, partly because I want to enjoy my bus ride in peace, and partly because I feel like I need to protect the less educated, who are more susceptible to such exploitation. In America, advertising like that on a bus would never fly. At the very least the bus lines would have anti-solicitation rules. More likely, the salesmen would be afraid of getting sued for spreading misinformation to sell a product. Here, though, there's no protection for the consumer. It's up to the individual to make their own judgement on whether a goods or service provider is being truthful. There is so little threat of being caught for, well, anything, that people will lie blatantly and engage in egregious acts of deception if it means they'll get paid at the the end of the day. Which obviously enrages me.

It doesn't help that Ugandans generally have little business sense, because the bus companies would probably never think of banning on-board advertising to improve the customer experience and give themselves a competitive edge. Often, I am driven by a self-righteous vigilante streak to directly tell the bus salesmen to stop their endless babbling, or to tell the passengers near me that the salesman is lying and nobody should buy his products, but these tactics have so far failed to change anything.

An update on my Scrabble project

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:00:00 +0000

As schools let out for summer break back in America, the second trimester of the 2011 school year is in full swing here in Uganda. I find myself very busy these days, and not just with teaching (though they have me teaching an extra physics class this year). Since the beginning of the year, I've been working hard on a project that will increase the school's effectiveness at providing a quality education, without costing much money: making Scrabble boards from local materials for students to play. I wrote a rather long post about my idea for this project last year, but it took some time to become situated at school before I could get it off the ground. Now, though, the project is well on its way.

Scrabble is my favorite board game because it combines my love of words and numbers with strategy, competition, and entertainment. In addition to being challenging and fun, it's also a hell of good way to pick up vocabulary words and improve spelling. Hoping to pass these educational benefits on to my students, I figured out a way to make Scrabble boards locally, on the cheap. The commercial version—an imported product whose price is subject to exchange rate fluctuations—currently retails for around $25 to $30 in Uganda. My local version, on the other hand, costs about $3.50 to produce. This is completely affordable for a government school that, due to a nationwide bureaucratic snafu, had until very recently received exactly 0% of its allotted funding for the 2011 school year (Uganda is plagued by corruption and incompetence at every level; I am no longer surprised by things like this.) A complete game consists of a board made from a piece of plywood painted with enamel paint squares, a simple, tailored cloth tile bag with a drawstring, a tile rack made from glued-together wood scraps, and a set of 1 inch square wooden tiles, labelled with permanent marker. The tiles themselves are the only game component made from outside materials; my grandmother in North Carolina shipped me several hundred blank ones that her woodcarver friend had left over from a previous project, making my job significantly easier. Thanks, Grandma!

Paul, a student in the Senior 5 class, paints a Scrabble board using a hand-cut stencil.

From the beginning, I've tried to involve my students in the process of creating the games. There's a whole lot they can get out it. For one, they're learning a practical, marketable skill: how to paint a board or sign. Nearly all signs in Uganda are hand painted because computerized printing services are expensive and labor is cheap. Sign lettering and graphics are produced by cutting out a stencil from manila paper or plastic film (usually discarded X-ray prints or something similar) and sponge-painting the cut-outs using torn-up pieces of foam mattress. This is the exact process we use for the Scrabble boards, and look! They turn out great:

The kids are also learning how to use the geometric construction skills I teach them in math class to draw perfect grids and perpendicular bisectors with a ruler and compass. Maybe some of them will be inspired to become architects, engineers, or go into construction; who knows? At the very least, they're coming to understand that they have the capacity to design, and to create, and that it doesn't take a whole lot of resources or a degree in fine art to do either of those things.

Above all else, by using students to create the game boards, I'm trying to ensure community ownership of the project. This is critical for sustainability. Billions of dollars in foreign aid are squandered in the devloping world every year, simply because the money goes to fund projects that were not initiated, embraced, or carried out by the communities they serve. Rather, many projects are imposed on the communities by the industrialized donor nations. Libraries and schools are built, clothing is given away, and vegetable seeds are distributed to farmers, all paid for by donor dollars. But as soon as the charitable gift giving is over, the donors fly home and everything turns to shit. Brand new libraries go unused because a reading culture was never promoted, shoes donated to schoolchildren are sold by their parents (leaving the children barefoot, as before), and exotic seeds are thrown away, because nobody learned how to grow that particular kind of crop, which had no place in the traditional cuisine, anyway. At the end of the day, the donors have wasted vast amounts of time and money, while the recipients, who really are no better off than they were before, are left greedy for more free handouts.

There's a right way and a wrong way to do development, and I've seen far too much of the latter in this aid-choked country. Take my friend Jake's school, Pope Paul Anaka S.S. in northern Uganda, for example. The school's headmaster is a wizard at obtaining foreign grant money. The school compound boasts several sparklingly clean, modern classroom blocks, a brand new library, and a robust computer lab, financed entirely by NGOs like Invisible Children. Yet the school is ranked among the worst in the country, worse than mine, even, which has substantially fewer resources and infrastructure. The donors, cleary, were misguided in their approach to solving the school's problems. In trying to bring it up to the standards of the western world, they focused on superficial flaws (i.e. aging, low-quality buildings) and not the underlying reasons for its failures as an academic institution (namely, a corrupt administration and undertrained teachers). A "solution" was imposed from outside without an understanding of the rot on the inside. The community's silent cry was for better teachers, better teaching methods, and therefore better educated students, not a swanky school compound.

But back to Scrabble. I am proud of this project because it is simple, fun, effective, and most importantly, because of its community ownership. Although I originally came up with the idea, the school has footed the bill for the game materials, not aid organizations, students have created the boards, and will continue to play the game and teach others how to play, hopefully long after I leave this country. That's what sustainability is. Already, there's a core group of students who—without my urging—come to the school office nearly every day to borrow the boards so that they can play after class. Other students watch them play, learn the rules, and then eventually play the game themselves. Soon, we'll have enough players to hold a school-wide Scrabble tournament, something that the students are very excited about.

So much of what I and most other Peace Corps Volunteers do on a day-to-day basis does make a positive impact on the people we work with, but it may take decades for the results to become visible. This is especially true in teaching; the handful of current African heads of state that were educated by Peace Corps Volunteer teachers (Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni included) is testament to the work we do. Still, it's incredibly rewarding to see the fruit of my labor, for once. Other teachers at my school have seen what I've been doing and have offered their own words of praise and encouragement. Perhaps the most inspiring came from Roggers, a math teacher, who came up to me, pointed to a Scrabble board, and said, "This is what we're lacking in Africa. This is practical, and students are probably learning more from it than anything we teach them in class." I beamed when I heard this. At that moment, I knew that even if nothing else went right for the rest of my service, even if my students continued to perform abysmally on their exams, even if every single project I did in the future failed miserably, that I could look back on Scrabble as something that irrefutably made a positive difference in my community, justifying my being here. Mission accomplished.

A Runyoro language game in progress. As a side project, I designed a custom tile distribution based on how frequently different letters are used in the language, using some hand-coded text processing software and regression analysis. Runyoro's extensive used of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes really lends itself to the word-extending that you have to do to play Scrabble competitively. We're still working the kinks out of the game, but it's been fun and I've picked up a bunch of obscure vocabulary and grammar from playing with my kids.

Leaving a legacy.

4th of Jul-island

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:54:00 +0000

A lot of people have this misconception that Peace Corps is some huge, selfless sacrifice, a sacrifice made with the goal of helping others, but still a sacrifice. On paper it certainly sounds this way: you've got to pack up your life, say goodbye to everyone you know, move halfway around the world, complete an excrutiating training program, settle by yourself in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of strangers who don't speak your language, and work on development projects for two years. On top of that, you must give up many basic creature comforts and do it all for less than minimum wage. Because of this, some refer to the experience as "self-inflicted masochism."

But the reality is that this can be a pretty kickass lifestyle. I teach seven 80-minute classes per week. If you include the time I spend grading assignments and planning lessons, that's maybe a 25-hour work week. There's no boss breathing down my neck and virtually no chance of losing my job. I receive one of the best healthcare packages on the planet, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Did I mention 24 paid vacation days a year? Sure, I'm paid a paltry $300 monthly living allowance. But when your rent is free, electricity is $5 a month, and $3 easily buys a day's worth of food, that $300 goes quite a long way. Especially when you consider the following indulgence: celebrating the 4th of July on a Kenyan billionaire's private tropical island in Lake Victoria, food and homemade banana rum included, for 20 bucks a night.

Banda Island is located 40 kilometers south of Entebbe, which served as the country's administrative seat during British colonial rule ("Entebbe" means "chair" in Luganda, an apt name selection by the Brits), and currently is home to Uganda's only international airport. After setting my midterm exams last July, I headed to the port of Kasenyi to take the boat down to Banda with a few other PCVs.

It turns out that there are no docks at Kasenyi, nor are there ferries. Instead, small, hand-crafted wooden boats perch about 10 meters offshore, awaiting passengers travelling to the Ssese Islands. The only apparent reason why the boats are parked like this is to place a short stretch of waist-deep water between dry land and the boats. This creates a wholly unnecessary, but lucrative, job for the local men: hoisting Ssese-bound travellers onto their shoulders, and carrying them out to the boats.

With our backpacks filled with cameras and iPods and dry clothing, we had no choice but to pay the men to carry us. One by one, we were loaded onto our boat (poorly, I'll add, since some people ended up getting their legs wet, defeating the purpose of being carried), and subsequently asked for ridiculous sums of money. "20,000 shillings!" one man demanded from my friend, Nathalie. "5000!" my carrier shouted at me. Now, I'd estimate that 1000 shillings has the same purchasing power in Uganda as perhaps $3 spent in America, even though it's worth only about 42 cents at the current exchange rate. So essentially, Nathalie and I were being charged $60 and $15, respectively, for a sloppily-executed shoulder ride! I handed my carrier two 500-shilling coins and laughed in his face. That was all he was going to get out of me.

The boat pulled away from land and we began our journey south of the equator. Given the situation, it seemed an appopriate time to listen to "I'm on a Boat" by the Lonely Island. An iPod and portable speakers were pulled out, and soon we were all singing about "busting five knots" and fucking mermaids. There were a few Ugandan passengers with us, but we figured that the 4th of July justified us being ugly Americans, just this one time.

Five hours later, it seemed almost comical to think that being on a boat would ever be something to brag or sing about. Four foot waves had been pounding us from the front (sorry, "the bow") nearly the entire way and it didn't look like we were getting any closer to the island. Water bottles had been urinated in, and then accidentally spilled because of the boat's rocking. A penis (Boy Devon's) had been spotted by mistake while it was filling one of these bottles. Rather than exciting its female viewer (Girl Devon), it caused her to vomit multiple times over the side of the boat. One girl in our group, who was suffering from an untimely case of giardia, crapped her panties. A few compassionate Volunteers assisted her in the clean-up while everyone else turned away, trying to ignore the unmistakable aroma of poo beginning to taint the air. The sun had gone down, and damp with schistosomiasis-infested lakewater, we started to seriously question whether we would reach dry land at all.

Thankfully, it was only another 40 minutes or so before the boat pulled up to a bank, dumped us on land, and sped off before we got a chance to ask why Banda Island Resort looked like a deserted grassy knoll. Where were the beach cottages? The volleyball net? And most importantly, where was the banana rum?

We had been scammed. The boat was supposed to take us directly to the resort, but instead dropped on the wrong side of the island so that another boat driver, conveniently waiting for us at the drop point, could charge us 20,000 shillings for a ride to the other side. Once again, we grudgingly handed over our money for an unnecessary ride.

Finally, finally, FINALLY we reached the resort. We were greeted by a palm frond beach fire, a pack of barking dogs, and two Israeli girls. The girls, fresh out of compulsory military service, had been invited to take care of the resort for a few weeks, after meeting its wealthy owner on their post-service travels in East Africa. They helped us unload our food and backpacks, which had done an excellent job of soaking up the vile liquids that had collected in the bottom of the boat, onto the beach, then showed us up to the island's "castle" for dinner.

Dinner in the "castle"

The rest of our Independence Day weekend, thank God, went a lot smoother than the boat ride. We packed in many hours of hardcore unwinding: reading in the hammocks strung from some lakeside trees out back of the castle, playing cards on the beach, swimming in the water (while praying we wouldn't contract schisto) and hiking up the island's main hill for a panoramic view of the lake and surrounding islands. The place was gorgeous and chill, and we had it all to ourselves, except for the Israeli caretakers, the cook staff, and an extremely stoned South African Member of Parliament (out of courtesy, I won't post his name) with travel buddy in tow.

Foreground: A Ugandan mancala game called omweso (way better and more complex than regular mancala). Background: someone chilling out in a hammock

Get out of my picture, bitch!

Bald eagle! Well, a wannabe, but who cares? Go America!

Back home in Ohio, Dave "Smiles" from our group – so called to differentiate him from the three other Daves we trained with, because he is perpetually smiling – had this 4th of July tradition he called Jortstock: he and his friends would cut up jeans into short shorts (jorts), which they would celebrate the holiday in all day long. Smiles, Boy Devon, and I decided to carry on the tradition. In light of it being America's birthday, I chose to make my jorts out of a pair of Obama Jeanswear jeans, a cheap Chinese brand with OBAMA stitched across the back pockets and legs. They were hideous, of course, but an entirely necessary component of our Jortstock 2010 take on the Iwo Jima war memorial:

It's not gay if you're doing it for America.

At the end of the weekend, we all took the boat back to the mainland. The trip only took two hours this time, with placid water and sunny skies the whole way. Of course, dozens of people carriers were waiting for us at Kasenyi. As we neared the shore, we could see them jostling each other, each determined to grab one of us out of the boat and take our money. Everyone on board was tense, waiting for the onslaught. It was like D-Day. When we reached the shallows, the carriers dashed towards us and started pushing the boat back. They wanted to keep us in deeper water so that we had no choice but to be carried. Our driver, though, knew the carriers' sheisty ways. He gunned the outboard motor as hard as he could, blasting them out of the way and landing us safely on shore. The Americans won the battle. A perfect end to a perfect 4th of July weekend.

Getting spanked with an American flag flip flop while wearing Obama jorts. Could I get more patriotic?

Charlene sings into her "mic" on the ride back

Killing to Live

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:14:00 +0000

Here, meat doesn't come wrapped in plastic on a styrofoam tray, with a barcode sticker slapped on the outside. That's the stuff of the First World. Here in Africa, if want to cook meat, you're going to have to kill the animal it came from yourself. That or come face to face with its hacked-up innards at a village butcher. Either way, you are confronted, point blank, with the consequence of your decision to be carnivorous: something is going to die so that you can live.

That being said, I still eat meat in Uganda because meat is just too tasty to ever give up. But now I have a fuller appreciation for what has to happen to turn a living, breathing animal into food for people. Blood and guts are an inevitable part of that process. In my opinion, if you can't handle the gore of the slaughter, you don't deserve to eat meat.

I had my first experience with slaughtering an animal this past Thanksgiving. I was celebrating the holiday at my friend Jake's house in northern Uganda, along with my other PCV friends Bernadette and Siong, and PCRV (Peace Corps Response Volunteer—a former Volunteer who opts to do a short term deployment in an area of critical need and sometimes higher risk) Bill. Though Thanksgiving is of course a day for eating turkey, turkeys can be difficult to find in Uganda, so we decided to buy two live cocks instead.

Eager to earn the right to eat chicken for the rest of my life, I volunteered to slaughter the first cock. Afterwards, I described the experience to my oldest friend Daniel, who lives in New York, over instant messenger. Here's an excerpt from the chat log:

(11:46:42 PM) Me: but the chicken....

(11:46:55 PM) Me: it was kind of intense

Bernadette and I, dressed to kill.

(11:47:21 PM) Me: my heart was pounding as i walked with it to the spot where i was going to kill it

(11:47:36 PM) Me: it felt like some really important initiation rite

(11:48:29 PM) Me: my friend showed me how to pin it to the ground, then plucked some feathers from its neck to clear a spot for the knife

(11:49:21 PM) Me: and then told me that it's simple, but once you start you absolutely cannot stop cutting until the head's off

(11:50:21 PM) Me: so i pinned the wings back with knee, grabbed the head and stretched out the neck

(11:50:31 PM) Me: and stated slicing

(11:51:52 PM) Me: severed the windpipe, some blood shot out, the chicken was struggling frantically, then i hit the neckbone and got stuck for a few seconds

(11:52:49 PM) Me: it was a bit fucked up. i felt bad cause obviously the spinal cord was still intact but the entire front of its neck was cut all the way through

(11:53:18 PM) Me: so i sawed and sawed as hard as i can until i cracked through the bone and the head was off

(11:54:13 PM) Me: and chickens really can run around with their head cut off. i had to hold it to the ground for about five minutes before the heart and powerful muscle spasms stopped. it was kicking that whole time

(sic)

(11:56:13 PM) Me: my other friend bernadette also killed another chicken after me, but she was scared so she closed her eyes and made the cut too low

(11:56:33 PM) Me: hers was smaller so the neck was thinner and the head came off almost instantly

(sic)

(11:57:58 PM) Me: but the low cut made the esophagus come out and flop around wildly like one of those children's water toys that you hook up to an outdoor spigot. it flailed around and shot blood all over bernadette

(12:00:59 AM) Me: dude but the most disgusting part wasnt the actual kill. it was making a circular incision around the anus and pulling all of the innards out from the back

(12:01:39 AM) Me: … pulling out a chicken anus is fucking nasty

(12:03:11 AM) Me: me and jake (another friend whose house we were at) both accidentally cut open the stomach and all this half digested food spilled inside the chickens, which smelled HORRIBLE

(12:04:00 AM) Me: … all in all its incredibly gruesome, but in the end it looked like a whole chicken you'd buy in a store

Cock pluckin' motha ukkas.

(12:04:51 AM) Me: … we made "beer can chicken": drink half a can of beer, stick the can up the chicken's ass, and bake it. the beer evaporates into steam and cooks the chicken from the inside

With our masterful culinary skills, a bucket oven (a small pot resting on some stones within a larger, covered pot, placed over a fire – the standard Peace Corps substitute for an actual oven), and some Lowry's seasoning salt, we managed to prepare a decent main course. Siong's Chinese stir-fry made the meal a complete, albeit unconventional, Thanksgiving dinner.

Since killing my first chicken, I've killed just one other, as well as watch another Volunteer slaughter a goat in Fort Portal this past weekend. (We marinated the meat in soy sauce and meat tenderizer, skewered it, and grilled it. The grill itself was made from an empty oil barrel halved lengthwise and mounted on 4 metal legs, with some scrap mesh fencing placed over the hot coals.) I'd upload the video of the kill, but it's hard to upload a file of that size on my slow Internet connection. Besides, it's incredibly disgusting. For now, I'll leave you with some pictures of the delicious aftermath.

Slaughtering an animal for food is powerful experience. I encourage every meat eater to try it at least once. It'll help you appreciate the cost of your survival.

Before

After

Brian cuts the meat over some banana leaves

Kristin (PCV Paraguay, left) and Elizabeth fan the flames

Several people had birthdays, so we finished the meal with homemade chocolate and carrot cake.

Renee, Alexi, Boy Devon, and Girl Devon blow out the candles

Back to School / A Rant About Fear

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:43:00 +0000

Registration of new students.

Having grown up in the US, where the school year begins in September, I tend to associate going back to school with the end of summer and its promises of cooler weather, falling leaves, pumpkin pie, and all that autumnal stuff. Here in Uganda, though, the school year begins in early February, at the height of a long dry season. Instead of falling leaves, there's falling ash from farmers burning their dead, dry fields in preparation for the coming wet season. The sun shines bright and hot every day; it goes for weeks without raining. Overcrowded taxis rocket down the dirt highway I live on, sending up opaque plumes of red dust that find their way into every corner of every house. The dust is so thick you can practically chew the air. In short, it's a far cry from pumpkin pie.

Still, the back-to-school season here is a time for starting fresh, just like in the States. After a long "winter" break that included some HIV/AIDS education work with the US Embassy, an awesome visit from my family, a safari, hiking up a 12,000-foot volcano into three countries, and a rollicking trip through Egypt with two of my best friends just days before Hosni Mubarak was overthrown (I'm a little behind in posting, can't you tell?), I returned to teaching last month. It was nice starting school from the beginning of the school year. When I swore into service last April and headed out to the field, I began teaching in the second academic term, with very little idea of what I was doing, how to manage a class, or how a Ugandan school functions. Now, with two full terms of teaching and eleven months of service under my belt, I can confidently say that I have some idea of what I'm doing. Well, some idea of what I'm doing wrong, anyway, and possible ideas for how to do things right.

I took pictures of the whole Senior 2 class holding name cards to help me learn their names. The kids whose names I managed to learn last year tended to pass my class.

The first thing I made sure to do differently this year was put together a syllabus for each class I was teaching, and give a printed copy to every kid. Uganda is not very literate or text-oriented society ("reading culture is not there," as the locals say), so this kind of direct, written communication, especially to students in a government school, is extremely uncommon. In my syllabi, I outline my class rules, grading scheme, topics to be covered, office hours, etc. This ensures that my students know what to expect from me and what I expect of them. In doing this, my goals are to establish clear, two-way communication between myself and my students, to replace ambiguity with black-and-white, and to eradicate the traditional Ugandan teacher-student relationship from my classroom.

The traditional relationship is built around the idea that the student who fears his teacher learns best, because he is motivated to study hard in order to avoid punishment. Almost every Ugandan teacher I've met is dead-set in this mentality; the idea that our students are failing tests because they didn't fear the teacher enough to study hard ("they are not serious [about studying] because they are not fearing [us]") comes up at every faculty meeting. Some teachers will cane students for failing tests, in order to inspire fear, which they believe will encourage students to "pull up" their grades. I have literally shaken with rage when I've seen this happen. Imagine 30 teenaged girls in a line, shrieking like wounded animals as they are whipped one-by-one with thick sticks, while a few other teachers off to the side watch and laugh. It's fucking sick. Corporal punishment is never appropriate in my book (using violence to solve nonviolent problems – is that something we want to impart to future generations?), but especially not in this case. Though it's true that students in my school should be studying a lot harder than they are, that alone is not the reason for their poor performance. Large classes, no textbooks, the failure of teachers to show up for class (a huge problem here), and lecturing unclearly or ineffectively when they do . . . these also factor into bad grades. By beating kids for bad grades, teachers are blaming students for their own failings as educators. Fucked up, no?

The larger issue here, I think, is that this society confuses fear with respect. "Fearing God" and "fearing your parents" are commonly cited as values that should be instilled in children by schools and other institutions. Disgustingly enough, USAID funds the development of many Ugandan-made PIASCY (President's Initiative on AIDS Strategy for Communication to the Youth) materials that promote these same values. I show the federal government how I feel about this misuse of my taxes by wiping my ass with PIASCY pamphlets whenever I run out of toilet paper. While fear can in some cases inspire respect, fear and respect are not the same. Fear creates hierarchy when one person, to protect themselves from harm, submits to the will of another person who would otherwise harm them. Fear drives the submissive person to respect the other's authority. I believe that Ugandan society is really after this respect of authority, not the fear itself. Students and children should be doing what their teachers and parents tell them to do; they should be heeding to the requests of the authority figures in their lives. Inspiring fear is just one way of getting this to happen, and an extremely flawed one at that. In schools, the use of fear by teachers has some crippling side effects: students become too scared to ask questions in class, attempt work that they might make a mistake on (so they literally cannot learn from their mistakes!), or correct the teacher when he or she makes a mistake. Once again, we are smacked in the face by the twisted irony of the traditional Ugandan teacher-student relationship: the teacher uses fear to force the student to show respect and learn better, but this makes the student too scared to learn. The student fails the class. The teacher has thus failed at his job, but blames the student entirely for this outcome. The teacher then uses fear to force the student to show respect and learn better, and the cycle repeats.

Let me end this rant before my righteous foaming at the mouth spills over and damages the keyboard. To be brief, this year I am trying new methods to earn the respect of my students and help them master course material. These methods use positive reinforcement (rewards, pleasant interactions, etc.) rather than fear to generate respect. My classes are still large (there are 158 kids in my new Senior 1 class) and sometimes rowdy, but learning is definitely happening, and my students have a noticebly more positive relationship with me than with most of the other teachers, who scare and heckle them constantly. Maybe I can help the other teachers see that there multiple paths to respect; I'd like to think I can. We'll see.

Stay tuned for my next post. I'll tell you all about my secondary projects, with at least 40% less rant. Promise.

Rocket Stoves

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 20:37:00 +0000

The three stone fire is an essential component of Ugandan cooking, and is as ingrained in local culture as the languages Ugandans speak. The set-up is simple: a wood fire, three stones placed around the fire, and a pot resting on top of the stones, filled with simmering meat stew, rice, or matooke bananas. This (or a similar variation) is how the majority of Ugandans prepare their food. The formula hasn't changed much since humanity first learned to harness the power of flame.

Unfortunately, this simple way of cooking has some serious drawbacks. First of all, the smoke given off by a three stone fire is a major cause of respiratory illness. Many Ugandan homes have a separate hut for cooking so that the smoke doesn't enter the house itself, but that doesn't do much for the cook, who must tend to the food and the fire for hours on end (Uganda has America beat on the slow food movement by a good 12 centuries or so). Secondly, the combustion reactions that happen in a wood fire release tremendous amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Finally, a three stone fire wastes wood: the large gaps between the stones expose the burning wood to lots of air, allowing heat to escape without cooking the food, and causing the wood to burn up quickly. Wasting wood here is no laughing matter; Uganda is currently suffering from severe deforestation, to the extent that it may need to begin importing wood from neighboring Kenya, a costly move. Many Ugandans have planted eucalyptus trees, which reach maturity in just four years, to combat deforestation, but this is not without its own pitfalls. Eucalyptus is not native to Africa; it was introduced to the continent from Australia in the late 18th century on one of Captain Cook's round-the-world voyages. In African soil, the tree is a notorious water hog, drainining so much moisture from the ground so that nothing but short grass can grow nearby. Not good in a place where upwards of 80% of the population are farmers.

Enter the "rocket stove". The rocket stove is a marvelous device made of locally available materials, including bricks, clay, mud, sawdust, and rice husks. It seals in the heat of a wood fire, directing most of the energy towards the cooking pot with minimal losses. It creates a nearly smokeless fire. It uses 60% less wood than a three stone fire. And a twin burner industrial size model (ideal for schools) costs less than $200 to make.

PCV Heather shows us how it's done.

The rocket stove is scientifically designed to make the world more awesome.

This past weekend I made the six-hour trek up to Gulu, a large town in northern Uganda, to help Drew and Bina, two married Volunteers, build some rocket stoves at their site. The event was the first of a series that I'll be attending this year as part of Peace Corps' 50th anniversary celebration. Upcoming events include rehabilitating a primary school south of Kampala next weekend, and painting informational HIV/AIDS murals at my friend Ashley's site in Rakai District, near the Tanzanian border.

I liked Gulu a lot. It's a much larger and nicer town than Hoima, which is probably attributable to the development work done by the gazillions of NGOs that call it home. Northern Uganda receives a lot of foreign aid because of the rebel warfare that ravaged its countryside for twenty years, forcing millions of people into internally displaced persons (IDP) camps and annihilating any kind of economic activity. The NGOs that flock to set up shop in Gulu bring in foreign workers (read: young, idealistic upper middle-class white folks), which encourages locals, and some of the foreigners, to create businesses that cater to them. Needless to say, I spent a lot of the long weekend indulging in all things mzungu: chatting in trendy coffee shops, eating hamburgers, Indian, and Ethiopian food, and floating on my back in the pool of an upscale hotel.

But somewhere between eating good food and partying with NGO workers, we managed to get two rocket stoves built for Drew and Bina's host organization, the Gulu Youth Development Association (GYDA), which provides classes and vocational training to youth unable to go to secondary school for behavioral or other reasons. The turnout was fantastic. We had way more than enough help, which was great because it meant that the PCVs could take a step back and let the locals learn how to make the stoves themselves.

PCV Jill oversees the bricklaying operation.

Still, we enjoyed getting our hands and feet dirty:

Mixing termite mound soil (part dirt, part clay) with water, sawdust, and rice husks to create mud. Kind of like stomping grapes! When the mud mixture is exposed to fire, the sawdust and rice husks burn up, leaving behind tiny holes that trap heat, turning the stove into a great insulator. Your coffee mug works the same way.

I had to get back to site early in order to teach, so I left before the stoves were finished, but all in all it was a fun, productive weekend.

And now, some cute Acholi kids:

Teabagging

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:17:00 +0000

American tea (Celestial Seasonings brand):

Ugandan tea:

Teabag marketing: a development level indicator? Discuss.

One Year in Africa

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:50:00 +0000

This past Friday marked one year since I first set foot in Uganda, one year of being in the Peace Corps. I'm proud of reaching this milestone, and of the 27 phenomenal PCVs I trained with who made it this far with me. It's been a crazy year, full of high highs, low lows, discovery, adaptation, and adventure. I could not ask for a richer or grittier experience.

The "toughest job you'll ever love" cliché that Peace Corps Washington delights in stuffing down our throats has of course turned out to be an accurate description of what being a Volunteer is like (hey, clichés are clichés for a reason). I've made some great friends and had some outstanding times, but cakewalk, this job is not. I've had to adapt to a simpler lifestyle that does not include running water, modern appliances, convenient transportation, reliable electricity, or access to a variety of foods, music, or consumer goods. I've accepted the fact that I will often be hot and sweaty and that there's no A/C or iced drink to cool me down. I've gotten exotic illnesses like dysentery and malaria, and will probably be able to check a few more off the Oregon Trail list before I get out of here. I've dealt with isolation and loneliness, and suffered debilitating psychological side effects from a malaria prophylaxis (thankfully I switched to a different malaria medicine in August, which fixed things almost immediately). I've experienced firsthand what rampant corruption, disfunctional democracy, hateful tribalism, and utterly inept educational systems can do to a society. I've banged my head against the wall in anger and frustration with the shitty, illogical ways Ugandans do things. And I've struggled to become a competent teacher in spite of having unmanageably large classes, students who barely speak English, no textbooks, and not a whole lot of teacher training myself. But far from defeating me, these challenges have made me stronger, more versatile, and more determined to succeed in initiating social progress.

Sometimes the hardening of my character has come at the cost of human empathy. Abject poverty is so omnipresent here that you become desensitized to it after a while. When a barefoot Karamojong child comes up to me on the street in her tattered clothing, asking for money, I feel nothing. My thought process supresses the emotional and makes a beeline for the rational: Why should I help this particular kid when there are thousands more just like her? That's probably her mom sitting there across the street, whoring her out for muzungu pity-money. Giving her some coins is not sustainable. Handouts generate foreign aid dependency.

For the most part, though, the changes I've noticed in myself have been overwhelmingly positive. I feel more confident and independent. I am more self-motivated, inclined to work on projects or refine my teaching skills, not because somebody is telling me to, but because I want to. I am more pragmatic because I have a better understanding of my limitations and factors that are within my control. And I am more patriotic because of the perspectives I've gained from serving here. America has its fair share of problems, for sure, but at least it has a working multiparty democracy, rule of law, accountability, truly free and quality public education, sanitary and accessible medical care, an innovative spirit, cutting-edge technology, effective social welfare programs, advanced industries, developed markets, and the strength that comes from a population diverse in ethnic background, aspirations, and thought. [Fuck yeah!]

After being in Africa for a year, I miss America. I really really do. But that's a good thing because it means I appreciate my home, and in ways I wouldn't have appreciated it had I not come here. Perhaps that's what I'm supposed to take away from this whole experience. And perhaps "the toughest job you'll ever love" is really about channelling that appreciation into positive conversations about the U.S. with locals, and into projects that sprout American ideas in host country soil.

Year two, bring it on.

Minutiae

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 23:13:00 +0000

The following is an unapologetically disjointed collection of observations, opinions, images, and accounts of recent events. Enjoy.

1. Justification for 12x optical zoom in a consumer grade camera: the President of Uganda decides to sit a few rows up from you at a football match. By the way, he wears that goofy hat everywhere. Rumor has it that it's bulletproof.

2. I finally picked up a can of Bop insecticide and obliterated the out-of-control insect population in my house. No longer will the flavor of my morning coffee contain hints of cockroach!

3. On Saturday, my friend Meg came to visit me in Kiziranfumbi. Meg is an American who works for a Hoima-based NGO called Innovations for Poverty Action, and is the only other white person I know in the area. Meg and I decided to go throw a frisbee around on the large field across the street from my house. Immediately, we were joined by hordes of village kids who were intrigued by "the plastic plate". We tossed the disc with them for a bit, until a mix of primary and secondary school students showed up with some drums, something I call "butt-shaking half skirts" (no clue what they're actually called, but I doubt the local name could compete with mine for descriptiveness), and these shin guard-like things with bead-filled wooden bells attached to them (your dancing becomes percussion music with these strapped to your legs). We put the frisbee down and went over to watch the performance. The kids sang, drummed, and danced, and Meg and I were captivated. They were fantastic! And the songs and rhythms were really catchy; way better than the crappy reggaeton on the radio. I started listening carefully to the words in Runyoro. One song was about being nice to sick people and the message of the next one could be summarized as, "Women and girls, AIDS is bad. AIDS kills. You must wait [to have sex]". It turned out that the singers and dancers were part of a troupe that travels around the area, promoting sexual abstinence as a way to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS. I imagine their campaign is pretty effective, given the repetitive, yet catchy-sounding lyrics.

4. Ugandans do the "come here" hand gesture upside down. Instead of motioning towards himself with the index finger, palm facing up, a Ugandan turns his palm down and repeatedly draws all four fingers towards himself. Weird! I'm still trying to kick the habit of doing it the American way.

5. Clowns are terrifying.

6. On the equator, the moon's crescent appears under the dark part of the moon, instead of to the side.

7. I wish my headmaster would stop dismissing students from school the day before exams for not paying their school fees. I walked into my S1 math class last Wednesday to hold an hour-long review session and like 80% of the kids were missing. Eighty percent! I will not be the least bit surprised if that many fail the midterm (though my fingers are crossed for marginally better results).

8. Some bars have better names than others. However, I defy you to come up with a better one than "Tactical Headquarter Hoima Cave".

9. Check out this sweet mud hut up the road from my house:

10. Dogs here seem to be nocturnal. They spend all day passed out in the heat, then wake up shortly after the last kerosene lantern flickers out to howl the night away. Look at this demi-bear snoozing at the Red Chili Hideaway (a hostel I often stay at in Kampala):

11. Speaking of Red Chili, they also have a rather ginormous pig:

12. Here in Africa, there are furrier options for travel than the dogmobile in Dumb and Dumber:

13. Last but not least, Arwen has freaky deaky monkey feet.

The Power of Pineapple

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:55:00 +0000

"What can I do to motivate my students?" I think to myself one morning, as I hastily pack my things before heading to school. "They talk in class, they fail my tests, and even if I broke down and started caning them like the other teachers, they still wouldn't give a flying fuck about physics."

Then suddenly, a revelation: "I'll tempt them with food!"

Bag packed and sandals strapped on, I leave my house and walk over to the roadside produce stands across the street. I pick out a juicy, medium-size pineapple and get the woman selling it to peel and quarter the pineapple for me. At 25 cents, it seems like a relatively small price to pay for classroom cooperation.

I arrive at school, pineapple in hand. My Senior Two (S2) physics class sees me coming. Of course, whoever was supposed to teach the 8:00 - 9:20 block never showed up, giving the kids free reign to screw around outside. But playtime's over. It's 9:20 on the dot, which means every pair of cheeks in a khaki green skirt or trousers—the S2 uniform—should be seated at a desk for physics class. I walk towards the students hovering outside the S2 classroom at a relaxed pace, a nonchalant lion approaching what looks like easy prey. My prey glance at the pineapple. Their mouths begin to water. But then they look at the lion that's carrying the pineapple. And they know it's time to run. Luckily for the lion, they run straight into the classroom. No chasing required this time.

I enter the classroom and wait until everyone's seated. Then, without a word, I take out one of the pineapple quarters and bite into it slowly. A little juice dribbles out of the corner of my mouth. I let out a long, deliberate "Mmmmmmmmmm" as I take my time enjoying the perfection of this fruit. My S2s gaze longingly at the dripping pineapple.

"Master, is it sweet?" one asks.

Before I answer the girl, I finish the slice, making sure to lick its juicy remains off of each finger to emphasize just how much she's missing out on.

"Yes," I say. "It's very sweet."

I then address the entire class. I explain that there are 3 slices of pineapple remaining. Coincidentally, there are 3 students seated at each desk. I'm sure there's at least one desk that's worthy of pineapple. But I'm not sure which desk it is.

"So," I say, "we'll have ourselves a little contest. Remember last time when we talked about swimming? About how your ears hurt when you dive deep underwater?" I get a few nods. The rest probably haven't ever gone swimming. "Well, that pain you feel is the water pressure acting on your eardrum, also known as the tympanic membrane. If too much pressure acts on it, the eardrum can rupture, or tear. And then you wouldn't be able to hear anything."

All very well and good, they're thinking, but what does this have to do with pineapple? "Scientists," I continue, "have found that the eardrum will almost certainly rupture if exposed to 100 kilopascals of pressure. For the rest of this pineapple, calculate how deep you would have to dive to rupture your eardrum. The density of water is 1 g cm^-3 and gravitational acceleration is about 10 m s^-2. First desk with the right answer gets the pineapple. Go!"

At that moment, hell freezes over. My students are actually working! I pace the room like I usually do when I give in-class problems. Only this time, I don't need to play disciplinarian. Hands shoot up as I walk by, offering answers to my question. I look at the answers. I dismiss several lacking units of length. Some people are off by a factor of 1000. Others have copied numbers from a previous, unrelated problem (I fear there are some lost causes in my class). But finally, a group of boys gives me the correct response of 10 meters. We have a winner! I present the boys the pineapple and return to the front of the class to put the solution on the board.

"But master, you give me that pineapple," a girl pleads, Bambi-eyed, head cocked to the side with her hands out like some beggar-child.

"No. You didn't answer my question correctly. However, there's more pineapple where that came from..." I turn to the class and grin, "...if you answer some more questions."

Where to Look

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 22:14:00 +0000

Sandra: a cute little nightmare of a next-door neighbor.
One of many faces in my new web album.

So I've gotten a little backlogged lately. I have several half-finished posts on the back burner, but lack of time and motivation to finish them right now. What can I say? I'm a slow and easily distracted writer. Wordsmithing takes me some time.

Something that doesn't take me a lot of time, however, is snapping pictures. Click. Done. Up until now I've had a tendency to put maybe one or two pictures of some relevance in each post, or else do an occasional post dedicated entirely to pictures. But my posts haven't been keeping up with my pictures, so readers are getting neither verbal nor visual snapshots of my life.

My solution to this problem was to create a Picasa web album. While in Kampala for medical reasons this weekend, I took advantage of the fast internet speeds to upload some choice photos to it. The photos are in chronological order and span the duration of my time here thus far. Maybe I'll get around to captioning them or tagging people or transferring them to Facebook, maybe not. Some may eventually end up on the blog when I finish those back burner posts. In any case, I plan to continue using Picasa as a visual complement to my largely verbal blog. So now you get words and pictures, hooray!

Links for future picture viewing delight:

My Picasa Public Gallery

RSS feed for the above

RE: Anal Fireball

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:11:00 +0000

Dear Dr. S. of The Surgery in Kampala,

Our first meeting began like any other encounter between doctor and patient. You asked me what was wrong, and I explained that the gnarly warts on my toes were in dire need of medical attention. However, unlike a normal doctor, this did not prompt you to immediately attend to my bubonic feet. Instead, you proceeded to tell me about a "gay American Jew" afflicted with "a great fucking forest of anal warts." You and a colleague had been treating this poor man, cauterizing the warts with a hot iron, when one of the warts began to bleed substantially. You grabbed an alcohol pad to clean up the blood and sterilize the wound, but neglected to remove the cauterizing iron. The heat from the iron ignited the alcohol, causing a large explosion between the patient's buttocks. Locally anaestitized, the gay American Jew felt only a dull sensation around his cornhole. When he asked "what happened?" you and your colleague both exclaimed, "Nothing!" and returned to cutting down the forest.

To be sure, Herr Doctor, your story is hilarious. But appropriate for a first time meeting with a new patient? No.

- L

Not-so-urban legend

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 17:46:00 +0000

Apparently there's a world of riches underneath Lake Albert. You can get there by putting two eggs in a basket, placing the basket in the lake, then climbing inside the basket and sinking to the bottom. Be sure to bring another person with you, though. That way, you can sell their body to the lake-dwellers for lots of cash. That cash can be brought back to the surface, or spent at any of the fine shopping malls under the lake. Oh, and this watery underworld is a safe place to hide when the apocalypse comes, or so Nurse Violet tells me.

People believe this. I shit you not.

UPDATE: My next-door neighbor has warned me not to be out on the street past midnight. Men who roam the streets in the wee hours, she says, have been known to decapitate strangers, thinking that they can sell the heads to the lake people. In a kind of Darwinian justice, these men get their comeuppance when they drown in the lake, basket, eggs, and all.

Catch a cheetah by the toe

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:56:00 +0000

I have a very strict policy about cheating in my classes: if you cheat, you get a zero. End of story. Not doing your own work is the same as not doing any work at all.

Since grades alone cannot deter cheating here, I also assign punishment work that students must complete, or else take a zero on the following exam or assessment. This sounds harsh, but these kids are so unruly in large numbers that I have to suspend sympathy for them. Otherwise, they wouldn't take me seriously because they know I won't cane them (despite the other teachers' opinion that "an African's ears are on his ass"). Personally, I think a difficult or humiliating punishment is more effective than caning. Caning hurts a lot, but it is over quickly, and tends to only stave off bad behavior for a day or so before students relapse.

Last week, as I was marking a physics quiz I'd given, I caught six girls cheating. They were all giving the same incorrect, nonsensical English answers to a series of short answer questions. So I called them each into the library/office/teacher's lounge (we have a space problem at "Kizesco High"), looked them straight in the eye, grilled them on why they cheated until tears welled up in their eyes, gave them each a zero on the quiz, and told them to get out of the office immediately and each write me a full page apology letter. If they did not submit their apologies before the final exam a few days later, they would get a zero on the final.

You'd think this would be enough to stop the cheating. But, as usual, Uganda surprised me: two of the girls copied each other's apology letters. Verbatim.

How dumb do they think I am?

I still haven't figured out what to do with those two. Probably fail them for the term. The other students at least wrote their own letters. But one of them blamed Satan for making her cheat, instead of taking responsibility herself. Another thought that filling the page with idiomatic expressions would get her back in my good graces:

The reason as to why I coppied is that Idid not read the books. So that's why trying to eat ahamble pie in the nick of time or this time. So teacher may you please put my appology in consideration after the anchent has been burried and then I will concentrate on my books and leave those issues of playing after I have seen that copping is bad.

I told the girl that I accepted her apology, but that she should work on her English.

Scrabble

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:33:00 +0000

Lately I've developed an obsession with Scrabble. On weekdays, I generally play at least one game a day with my fellow teachers. Despite English being their second or third language, a few of them are quite good at it. I've picked up a few strategies from our games: look for two-letter word connectors like XU and SH, save high-scoring tiles until you can triple their value, and always sit to the left of Sam Peter, the head of the math department. He tends to open up Triple Word Scores by accident. I can safely say that I'm a much more competitive player now than I was on those frosty Tuesday nights in college, when my roommate Kort and I would crack open a bottle of Jim Beam in the library, slam tiles down, and yell at each other until more studious students would glare at us.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm encouraged to (I sincerely apologize for the following mouthful of hippie-speak) initiate secondary projects that promote sustainable development at the grassroots level. All the Scrabble I've been playing gave me an idea for a secondary project: create a school Scrabble club! Scrabble is an excellent game on so many levels. Besides being extremely enjoyable to play, it expands English vocabulary, passively forces players to do mental arithmetic, and develops capacity for strategic thought.

I think this is a perfect project for several reasons:

The average first-year Ugandan secondary school student has just enough English vocabulary to be able to play the game. Scrabble would help them to learn new words.
Ugandans are bad at spelling. This is a generalization, but an accurate one. Scrabble teaches correct orthography.
Youth and children here are desperate for mental stimulation and entertainment. Books and games are practically nowhere to be seen.
Scrabble boards and tiles can be made from local materials. My parents suggested pasting printed letters on cut up pieces of linoleum to make tiles. But my requests for linoleum at the hardware stores in Hoima, even the Indian ones, where met with blank stares. If you have other ideas for materials, let me know!
Students overuse calculators, which makes them poor at mental math and estimation. This becomes a problem when they have to manage personal finances as adults. By constantly optimizing play values, thinking about the odds of picking certain letters from the bag, and adding up scores manually, they develop these skills.
Most importantly, this project, like any successful secondary project, stems from the desires of the community it would help. Students want to play Scrabble. One of them literally walked into the room while I was writing that last sentence to ask if he could borrow my travel edition of the game.

Last weekend I was playing against two of my students when an idea for a spin-off project occured to me. The game had been a slaughter; my final score was larger than theirs combined, and well into the 300s. This kind of thing tends to happen when an experienced player who speaks English as his mother tongue goes head-to-head with newbies who know English as a second or third language. After the game, one of the students said to me, "But masta, if we played in Runyoro, we could not fail to beat you." That got me thinking. Why not make a Runyoro Scrabble game?

Why not, indeed? I went online that very night to research foreign language versions of Scrabble. As it turns out, all of them use a board identical to the one used in the English version. The difference is in the tiles: the letter distribution and tile values are adjusted to reflect how frequently each letter appears in everyday writing. When architect Alfred Mosher Butts designed Criss-Crosswords (the predecessor to Scrabble) in 1938, he created a set of tiles based on a frequency analysis of letters in English text. The man literally sat down and counted, by hand, the number of A's, B's, etc. printed in an entire issue of The New York Times. While I applaud Butts for doing this—his labor resulted in my favorite board game—I was not about to sit down and mindlessly tally letters for 8 hours. Counting letters is not a man's job. It's not a woman or child's job, either. It's a computer's job.

So, shaking the rust off my programming skills, I set to work writing a Python script to count how often each letter appears in a block of text, then return a list of the individual letter counts and frequency percentages. The end result is a program that determines how many Scrabble tiles should be made for each letter in a particular language. You can even change the alphabet used to include or exclude certain letters. For example, I would omit X and V when analyzing Runyoro text, because those letters are only in found loanwords. What I plan to do is amass a bunch of text from Runyoro language websites, feed it through the program, and create a tile set based on its output. The only problem is that I can't find websites in Runyoro! Only about a million people speak Runyoro and most don't use the Internet, let alone computers, so there are very few Runyoro sites. At least my program works, though: running the Wikipedia entry for Scrabble through it generates a letter distribution that is over 99% identical to the English language Scrabble tile distribution.

One of the major obstacles in the way of making a playable Runyoro Scrabble game is defining which words actually are Runyoro words. Uganda is a linguistically heterogeneous country; over 30 languages are spoken natively here, and each tribe has its own language. A 20-minute taxi ride can sometimes carry you across a tribal border, and suddenly nobody speaks your language anymore. I noticed this happen when I visited some friends in eastern Uganda last month: Stacey and Tony live in Bukedea, where a Nilotic language called Ateso is spoken. But Mbale, a large town nearby, is primarily composed of Bagisu/Bamasaaba, who speak Lugisu/Lumasaaba, a Bantu language (an enormous language family that includes Runyoro/Rutooro, KiSwahili, Luganda, and even a South African language, Xhosa). Tony was able to communicate just fine with the locals in Bukedea. Once we headed into Mbale, however, even greetings proved difficult, and we both resorted to English (which most people know to some degree, especially in urban centers). Luckily, we met up with two other PCV friends, Arwen and Alyssa, who both live near Mbale and studied Lumasaaba in training.

With such a high density of languages, a lot of overlap and word-stealing goes down. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's unavoidable. I would not be surprised at all if somebody in my village came up to me and said: Hello, ssebo. Oli sawa sawa? That simple greeting is in four languages! Hello is English of course, ssebo is Luganda for "sir", oli means "you are" in Runyoro, and sawa sawa¹ is just the KiSwahili word for "fine" (sawa) repeated: "Hello, sir. You are fine fine?" People here switch languages mid-sentence, whenever one language lacks a word with the appropriate shade of meaning that happens to be present in the other's vocabulary. As a result, people forget which words belong to which language. President Yoweri Museveni pointed this out in the speech he gave at the empango (coronation anniversary celebration) for the Omukama (King) of Bunyoro-Kitara Kingdom, Solomon Gafabusa Iguru:²

Do you know that in Runyankore, Luganda, Rukiga, Lusoga and other languages we use the word kuyamba(to help)? [But] you Banyoro and Batooro say kukonyera: that is Acholi [language]! The Acholi say kony. Why is your word for kuyamba different? We are one people [linguistically]. You ask Rwot Acana (of Acholi), he is here. What we call okuyamba, the Acholi call it kony; this Kony who has been butchering people.³ You Banyoro and Batooro just added on that Bantu ’ku’, kukonyera; but the root word is ‘kony’. Now, some people waste time proving how they are different. [They say]: “We are Baganda, we are Banyoro, we are Banyankore, boboooboo...! Now, what’s that? You spend all your time showing how Ugandans are different. We want to unite people; you are [busy] dividing them up.

I highly encourage you to read the rest of this speech. Museveni justifies the coexistence of Uganda's semi-ceremonial tribal kingdoms with the country's centralized democracy. It's federalism turned on its ear, and an interesting peek at how Uganda [dis]functions. But that's a discussion for another post, ideally one that is titled something other than "Scrabble". My point with all this talk about languages is that without a proper Runyoro dictionary, it will be hard to decide which words are legal in Runyoro Scrabble, since the language itself is mingled (to use a popular Ugandan English word) with words from several others.

Whatever the text equivalent of "talking someone's ear off" ("writing someone's eyes out"?) is, I think I've done it here. Rest your eyes, dear reader. Then write me some comments!

¹ Sawa sawa by itself is a perfectly acceptable informal greeting where I live. It's my favorite greeting, and I always try to say it as smarmily as possible.

² I attended empango and met the King in person, in front of his palace, which I would describe more accurately as a modest mansion. He introduced me to his brother and thanked me for teaching the kingdom's children. I got there too late to meet the President, though; he had already helicoptered it back to Kampala by the time I arrived. After meeting the King, I did the traditional empango dance with some Banyoro. It was an endless, repetitive combination of kicking and hand gestures, done in a circle, in unison. As usual, children were laughing at me.

The King and I.

³ Joseph Kony is head of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a violent Christian terrorist group that the Ugandan military has forced out of Uganda and into neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Central African Republic. The LRA is rumored to use child soldiers and is responsible for thousands of rapes, murders, and cases of human flesh mutilation (including cutting off the lips of northern Ugandans) since it began fighting in the mid-1980s. Kony himself is on Forbes' list of the World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives. His company on that list? Osama Bin Laden.

Personal Ads

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 07:14:00 +0000

Personal ads are fascinating.

Think about it: romantic love is an extremely complex human emotion. Love includes the sexual desires that stem from our biological need to reproduce, of course, but it's a little more complicated than "Insert Tab A into Slot B." Physical appearance, personality compatibility, emotional stability— these (and other factors) play crucial roles in the dating and mating game. So things tend to get interesting when people, desperate for love, attempt to boil themselves and their desires down to a single sentence.

The following are personal ads from the 9 July 2010 edition of The New Vision, one of Uganda's leading newspapers. In my honest opinion, The New Vision is an abysmal publication, rife with spelling errors, subjectivity, and atrocious graphic design. I'm fairly certain that my high school newspaper, The Mountaineer, had better journalism and editing, but then again, it was voted one of the best high school papers in New Jersey. Anywho, I found myself looking at the personals shortly after giving in to my thirst for internet access and purchasing a mobile broadband (wireless dial-up, really) modem in Kampala. A teacher at Kiziranfumbi SS asked me to see if there was "a profile" associated with an email address he had written on a scrap of paper. I googled the address, and up popped the personals page.

One of the first things I noticed was the prevalence of requests for partners of a certain religion or tribe. In Uganda, your tribe and religion are almost as important as how many children you manage to squeeze out before drawing your last breath:

MAN, 30, HIV+ WANTS A BORN-AGAIN Munyankole or Rwandese lady, 28-35, for marriage. Call 0757774231

JUMA, 31, WANTS A LIGHT-SKINNED Muslim, 22-30, for marriage. est87.nalulive@ymail.com

EDUCATED MUTOORO OR MUNYANKOLE girl, 18-23, wanted for love. ronnie.magezi@yahoo.com

BEN, 35, BORN-AGAIN SINGLE FATHER of 3, looking for a Christian lady, below 30 for a relationship. ben.kata@yahoo.co.uk

MUSLIM GUY, 31, IS LOOKING FOR A working Muslim girl from western Uganda or Somalia for marriage. mimi.guy35@gmail.com

MUGANDA MAN, 36, WANTS A LADY for a relationship. vickiemutebi@yahoo.com

HIV and employment status also seem to be important. When 6% of the population is HIV positive and upwards of 80% are engaged in subsistance agriculture, how could they not be? Age is a pretty big deal, too. In this society, men ideally marry women 2 or 3 years younger than themselves:

PAUL, 28, WANTS A GOD-FEARING GIRL, 18-25, for a relationship. Paulk25@yahoo.com

Some of the ads strike me as simplistic or brutally direct:

DAVID WANTS A BRITISH LADY. Call 0718505915

MAN WANTS A WOMAN FOR LOVE. boobyjuicethirst@yahoo.com

Others just make hypocritical demands (look at the email address):

I WANT AN UNDERSTANDING AND respectful woman for marriage. freshcumtaster@yahoo.com

And even though The New Vision informs "those opting for secret sexual affairs, sugar mummies and sugar daddies...that their requests will not be honoured,"

STEPHEN, 22, WANTS A FINANCIALLY stable lady 27-35 for a relationship. stephen27ev@gmail.com

C'mon Stephen. You're not gonna find a "sugar mummy" to diaper your ass by posting in the personals.

In case you were wondering, the teacher who provided the email address that ultimately inspired this post is still single. But I figured I'd give Kenneth, a die-hard 24 fan (he addresses me as "Jack Bauer") and burning hunk'o'love, a little publicity. So, [white] ladies, you are most welcome to drool over these photos we took to showcase his machismo:

Kenneth is an intelligent man, evident in his ability to put a king
in checkmate while stroking an imaginary goatee.

Kenneth also has a bit of a bad boy streak. How many teachers do
you know that ride a motorcycle to work? Well, actually it's not
his motorcycle. But he does look badass sitting on it.

Attitude and intrigue: what more could a girl want?

On Teaching

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 18:05:00 +0000

So, what's it like teaching science in rural sub-Saharan Africa, you ask?

Well, for one, teaching a class of over 100 students with marginal command of the English language is a whole different ballgame from tutoring a single, native English speaker (my job prior to joining the Peace Corps). Tutoring facilitates learning through continuous student-tutor dialogue: the student communicates gaps in knowledge or ability to the tutor either directly (by asking a question) or indirectly (by failing to do a math problem correctly, e.g.), and the tutor responds accordingly. Each student is different, and it is the responsibility of the tutor to adapt his teaching methods to the learning style of the individual so that understanding is achieved. However, when you teach a class of 100+ students, this kind of learning dynamic is completely and utterly infeasible. How can you adapt to the learning styles of 100 individuals when you don't even know their names?

The answer is that you can't. The best you can realistically do is aim for decent average comprehension by planning each lesson thoroughly and presenting it clearly and logically. I walk into class with the expectation that not everyone is going to understand everything I say, but at the very least they'll have a clear set of notes to study from by the time I'm done teaching. These kids don't have textbooks; what they copy from the blackboard is the only reference text they're ever gonna get. The unfortunate reality is that the majority of a class period is spent copying notes from the board. There's simply no other way to ensure that students have written study material. Kiziranfumbi Secondary has no money for printing or photocopying notes (it's a public school in the Third World, after all), and Ugandan students aren't used to taking notes on what a teacher says (they have enough problems understanding my English anyway), only on what's written out for them, quite literally in black and white.

As you can imagine, this is really frustrating! If I spoon-feed notes to the class for 80 minutes, the learners get bored and fall asleep. If I opt to do fun demonstrations, walk around, and lecture informally instead, class might be more entertaining, but nobody takes notes and therefore nobody can study. Finding a balance between these extremes is tough. This is especially true with teaching mathematics, which is harder to find good, non-time-wasting demonstrations for.

It doesn't help that the education system in Uganda appears, for all intents and purposes, to be dead-set on draining every last ounce of creative thought and critical thinking out of the students it is supposed to be educating. The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) sets yearly exams for fourth-year secondary school students that test material covered across all subjects, throughout all four years. Teaching is geared entirely towards getting students to pass the UNEB exams. Think about it: how shitty would your high school education have been if every class you sat through was SAT prep? Not that teachers here spend every class period working through multiple-choice problems, but the emphasis on rote memorization of inane facts for the purpose of passing the exams is omnipresent. In the grand scheme of things, it is far more important that a student be able to apply knowledge than regurgitate it. But these exams test regurgitation, and if a student does not pass a certain number of them, he or she cannot continue on to the fifth and sixth years of secondary school ("A'level, or "Advanced Level"). And if you don't complete those years, you don't get to go to university, or a teacher's college, or really do anything substantial with your life! Okay, perhaps that last one is an overstatement, but if you came to my village and saw how many people spend the entirety of every day sitting around doing nothing, idly awaiting a customer that never comes, or just drinking themselves into a stupor, you might conclude that I'm not far off base here.

And so I find myself in a very odd position of having to spice things up and encourage critical thought, while simultaneously teaching towards the exams, knowing full well how monumentally important they are to determining one's outcome in life. I haven't graded enough of my students' work to see how effective I've been, but at least the bar is set low: 30% is considered a passing grade. Perhaps that's because midterm and final exams are the only work that count towards grades, and there aren't resources for going around printing practice tests.

A note on the textbooks I've been issued for lesson planning: uuuuuurrrrrrnnnggghhh. I quote the preface to O. Akonopeesa & R. Oriada's Physics: A Complete Course: "Physics has always been considered a nightmare subject by many students. However, in this era of rapid scientific advancement physics becomes unavoidable." Great job, guys. In the first two sentences of your book, you've validated students' fear of physics by labeling it "a nightmare subject," then characterized it as a kind of necessary evil by calling it "unavoidable." I'm almost happy there aren't enough copies of your book to go around. It would make my job miserable if my students shared your negative attitude towards the very subject you "taught for a long time in Kenya and Uganda." Never mind the fact that your 2002 text is a blatant, shameless, and shoddy repackaging of A.F. Abbott's Physics, copyright 1963 (the other book I use for teaching my second year physics course). Forty years is a long friggin' time "in this era of rapid scientific advancement." Did you even bother to check if anything's changed since then? Apparently not, judging by your description of how solar power is generated: "Large concave mirrors collect the sun's rays and focus them onto special steam boilers which provide the mechanical force to run electric generators." Take a look at the solar panels on a calculator. Do you see large concave mirrors? How about steam boilers or rotating electric generators? If that Postgraduate Diploma in Radiation Physics from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa is worth as much as the paper it was printed on, you'd know that conventional solar power is generated by light exciting electrons into the conduction band of a semiconductor. I suggest you boys find a new line of work. That or hire a damn copy-editor.

Am I done enumerating my teaching woes and grilling the textbook authors that exacerbate them? Yes. I do really enjoy teaching, even though it makes me tear my hair out sometimes. It helps that the school has a nice little library to relax in after class, and flip through books on African geography or Old English epic poems (let me tell you, they're pretty epic). My physics class tells me I speak clearer and teach better than any physics teacher they've had, which of course makes me happy. Students often come by my house to say hi, give me some fruit, or watch a movie. I get along very well with the other teachers at Kiziranfumbi SS, too. We chit-chat and play hyper-competitive games of Scrabble, and go out for drinks at night. Tomorrow I'm attending a celebration of the anniversary of the King of Bunyoro's coronation with some of them. I may even meet the king, who knows? I think he's a neighbor of the headmaster.

Other news:

I've started clearing land for a personal garden at the south end of the school compound. This involves slashing and burning the overgrown area used by the Volunteer previously stationed here (before he got kidney stones, was medevac'd to South Africa twice for treatment, then finally sent back to the States by Peace Corps - rumor has it the gardening was somehow responsible). Slashing is done by hand with a machete-like "slasher," and is even better exercise than using a mechanical push mower! My shredded, blistered palms can attest to the quality of these tools. Carrots, red onions, peas, lettuce, coriander, sweet basil, and possibly watermelon are going in the ground next month, when the rains return.

I had a kitten for about a week. We found her in the school office, and even though she was feral, I decided to take her home. No joke, that first night I had her licking warm milk off of my fingers (girls, that's your cue to say, "Awwwwwwww"). She wouldn't drink it any other way. Unfortunately, my neighbors were afraid of her and after she vomited rancid milk into my bedsheets, I decided it was time for Kayaga ("Little Storm") to go.

I shaved my head. This came on the heels of a disastrous haircut from a local barber who, believe it or not, did not own a pair of scissors. The typical African buzz-cut look didn't work for me, so I decided to start from scratch. I'll post pictures when I get a chance, including the ones of the mohawk I had for about 5 minutes. In Uganda, the shaved head look is called the "Shao-Lin." Previously, when I wore my long hair up in a bandanna tied like a headband, kids asked me if I was Bruce Lee.

A new discotheque called The Afro-land Joint opened up in Kiziranfumbi. It's owned by a local who goes by Best Man. Must be a pretty cool guy, with those neon lights lining his SUV runningboards and all. Kiziranfumbi lies on a major road to Lake Albert, where oil has recently been discovered, so lots of development is happening around here. It's exciting to have village nightlife. Hopefully Best Man will let me mix some foreign dance tracks in with the domestic reggaeton.

This song is stuck in my head: Ability by Radio & Weasel. It's some of the only Ugandan music I like. The words you don't understand are in Luganda, the language of Buganda, the largest kingdom in Uganda.

That's enough for now. Peace out. I've got a tribal king to meet.

All Eyes on Me

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Sat, 29 May 2010 05:06:00 +0000

It's weird to be a celebrity.

On the one hand, always being at the center of attention encourages a kind of cocky self-confidence. It's not so much arrogance as it is a healthy, jovial, devil-may-care attitude that comes with feeling important. I step into a bar and suddenly the reggaeton music videos on TV are no longer the most interesting thing in the room. Heads turn, and hands reach out to shake my comparatively albino ones. A spot just for me magically opens up between the men on the bench; I grab an Eagle (my brew of choice) and sit down in it. I find myself in five simultaneous conversations in three languages. Some guy offers me his daughter. Another wants to show me his dance moves. A third asks me to buy him a drink. No, Jean Pierre, even though the house waragi is only 600 shillings, (a) despite being white, I'm broke, (b) you're wasted, and (c) didn't that stuff blind like 30 people in Kabale last month?

Living centerstage promotes self-confidence, but also self-consciousness. This is especially true when your appearance is the primary reason why you're the focus of attention in the first place. Let me put things in perspective: I haven't seen a single other white person in three weeks. And that was when I visited my PCV friends in Fort Portal. When I walk down the street, people look at me like I'm some kind of exotic animal, certainly not one of their own species. Every move I make is subject to the scrutiny of every single person that sees me. If I go on a run, or bike to the market, my friend Jotherm will know about it within two hours, because the women selling tomatoes on the corner (his spies, no doubt) will tell him. When you stick out as much as I do, you simply cannot live in anonymity. It doesn't matter what I'm doing; whether I'm gnawing on sugarcane or reading Mark Twain's Roughing It on the front porch, a group of little kids will be staring with rapt attention, curious if that alien lifeform chews his 'cane the same as them. This is uncomfortable and makes way me more conscious of my appearance and actions than I'd like to be.

At times, I hide in my house for hours to escape the eyes. I watch Six Feet Under with headphones, cook with my doors shut and locked, or listen to the BBC World Service on shortwave until the top news headlines have been repeated thrice. But inevitably, these activities become lonely and I have to go out for some human contact, even if it means being watched.

Forget teaching physics to a class of 120, dodging potholes on my bike in the pitch-black darkness of night, the mosquitoes, the long, sweaty taxi rides, and the monotonous Ugandan cuisine. Not being able to to live a private life remains the biggest challenge I've faced during my service. If you've ever been famous, you'll know what I'm talking about.

Pikchuresk

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Mon, 17 May 2010 13:48:00 +0000

Ten weeks of being trapped in training gave all of us a bit of cage rage.
Especially Devon.

Surreal landscapes often accompany the storm clouds. This was at RACO, our training site.

Creeper 'stache #1 (Jake, on the bus to swear-ing in).

Creeper 'stache #2 (Tony, at the ambassador's house).

The ladies of Peace Corps/Uganda April 2010-2012. The picture of the guys is on
someone else's camera.

The Runyoro-Rutooro crew, right after swearing-in.

My house, seen from the street. Normally, these kinds of spaces are used as shop stalls,
so when I moved in, people were always entering unannounced, perhaps to find out
what I was selling. I had to post a sign that reads, "Enu teri dukka. Eri enju yange.
Caali otataahamu otaikirizibwe." ("This is not a store. It is my house. Please
don't enter without permission.")

The view out my front door.

Taking a few steps backwards, this is the first room in my house, which I use as
a kitchen and living room. I have since put a reed mat on the concrete floor and
am currently getting a small wicker sofa made to lounge in. I'm also going to
find a carpenter to make me a high table to use as a countertop so I don't
have to keep cooking on the dirty floor.

The same room, but seen from through the front door. On the desk you can see the
most important thing I purchased after I found out that my house has electricity:
a speaker set with a subwoofer. Sometimes you just have to drown out the incessant,
aurally abrasive Ugandan "island" music,

Walking through the doorway in the previous photo, you enter my bedroom. On the
left is my Mickey Mouse wardrobe, graciously supplied to me by Kiziranfumbi
Secondary School. Not exactly what I would have picked, but it gets the job done.
In any case, it's better than storing my clothing under the bed (center), among the
sawdust piles created by my bedmates, the termites. On the right is the drying rack
I use for my underwear. In Uganda, it's rude to dry your undies outside.

My back door leads to a small courtyard. The two black cylinders in the back
are rain collection tanks. They supply the water I use to brush my teeth, bathe,
and wash my dishes and laundry.

If you cross the courtyard, you get to the shop complex's bathing area and pit
latrines. I get my own personal, locked bathing area and pit latrine as per
Peace Corps/Uganda's requirements. This is my bathing area. Right now I take
bucket baths using that red basin and water from the orange bucket. However,
I've stuck a faucet in the green 20-liter jerrycan and once I figure out a good way
to suspend it, I'll be able to fill the jerrycan with hot water (from my stove) and
take an actual hot shower!

Ahh, my pit latrine. If only that little hole were just a wee bit bigger. I mean, three
months of living here has made me into a solid waste sharpshooter, but when it comes
to the yellow stuff, that's a hard target to hit from a standing position. Presumably they
make the holes small to prevent infants from inadvertently taking Slumdog Millionaire-
style poo dives.

The main building of Kiziranfumbi Secondary School, my workplace.

A feeble attempt to fight the student body's biological programming. These kinds of
signs are a common feature of Ugandan school compounds.

Try as we might, Peter, Theresa, and I could not get this gut in Hoima to leave us
alone. Oh well, at least he bought us beer.

With a cackle, Peter lovingly smothers Theresa. Peter is another PCV and Theresa
is a German volunteer.

The road to Butimba market, which I bike to every week, is filled with scenes like this...

...like this...

...and baboons!

Sunset street scene by the market. If you climb those hills in the background, you
can see across Lake Albert to the Montagnes Bleues in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, forbidden fruit for PCVs.

"Yo, man, it's spelled 'm-a-r-k-e-t.'"
"Nawwww, it's definitely 'm-a-r-k-e-r-t.'"
"Let's compromise. You do yours with an extra 'R' and I'll do mine without it."
"Find, if you want everyone to know your dumb ass can't spell!"

Silly Ugandans. Arrrs are for pirates.

Speech & Song

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:04:00 +0000

Several people have asked me to post the speech I gave at swearing-in and the song my language class sang for our homestay thank you event. Lucky you, dear reader. Today you get both.

First, the song. It's called "The Ten Weeks of Homestay" and is sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." I'm omitting the part sung in Runyoro-Rutooro and the annoyingly repetitive first section. Here's the end:

By the very end of homestay, I had received

Two thumbs up for style,

A fair price for pineapple,

Mud-covered legs,

Eighty power outages,

Flu and rabies shots,

Frightening mefloquine dreams, ["Fiiive gol-den rings"]

Tons of dirty laundry,

Broken mountain bike,

"How are you, muzungu?!"

And matooke, matooke, MATOOOOOKKEEEEE. [Complete with jazz hands]

And now, the speech, delivered April 21, 2010, at U.S. Ambassador Jerry P. Lanier's house (palace?) in Kololo. I've received nothing but praise from the Peace Corps Volunteers and staff, U.S. Embassy employees, and Ugandans who attended the swearing-in ceremony.

"Eh, muzungu! Where are you going?"

Where are you going. It's a simple enough question, really, and one that two months of living in Uganda has largely conditioned us to ignore. By now we each have our own arsenal of ways to decline a ride from an inquiring boda-boda driver: “Peace Corps will fire me if I get on your bike,” “Sagala kugenda,” and “If I'm going to die today, I'd rather not do it pelvis-to-pelvis with you” are all somewhat acceptable ways to do this.

We respond to the question “where are you going?” without much thought. But the question itself is worth thinking about. “Where are you going?” implies that the person being asked has a destination, a place that he or she aspires to be, but has not yet reached. Having a destination demonstrates something uniquely human: the ability to conceptualize the future. Our capacity to think beyond our present state, set goals, and develop long term plans to meet them is fundamental to our development as individuals and as a civilization.

However, the unfortunate reality is that you cannot plan for the long term unless you first address the concerns of the short term. This presents seemingly insurmountable challenges for anyone living in abject poverty, which includes a great many in the developing world. Think about it: how can you save money to buy a house, start a farm, or pay university tuition when every last shilling you earn selling airtime goes to feeding a hungry family of fifteen? As Peace Corps Volunteers, we will most certainly encounter dilemmas like this, and finding solutions will at times be overwhelming. But I believe the key to success here lies in a Luganda phrase with which we are all familiar: mpola mpola. Slowly by slowly. True, sustainable progress is achieved in baby steps. Whether we work in secondary schools, primary teacher colleges, NGOs, or community-based organizations, we must all remember this simple truth. We are here to help others achieve long-term goals through small short-term victories.

Let's be honest. Peace Corps people are idealistic people, and I mean that in a good way. We all want to save the world. But at the end of the day, we're not superheroes; we're boda-boda drivers. Our job is to ask people where they want to go, and help them get there.

The V-card

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:59:00 +0000

Oooohh. Aahhhh. I'm back at the keyboard, and it feels oh so good. I musta done writ real nice cause people are hounding me for more posts. Readers, stop salivating and start satiating.

Guess what, everybody? I'm a PCV. That's right, a Peace Corps Volunteer, with a capital V because it's a title. On April 21 in Kololo, Uganda, I faced the U.S. Ambassador, raised my right hand, and stated:

"I, Lukas Fried, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

With those words, I exchanged the lowly title of Trainee for the coveted one of Volunteer. Ten weeks of training down. Two years of service to go.

Completing training is bittersweet, to steal fellow PCV Alyssa's word. On the one hand, it's nice to not have to wake up at the crack of dawn, bike 6 km through the mud, attend inane lectures until 5 pm, bike back, choke down some matooke, pass out, wake up, and do it again every day until Sunday. It's nice to be a big boy, able to choose where and when I eat, and what I do with my waking hours. It's nice to have my own place. But on the other hand, it's difficult to leave my new PCV friends and my homestay family for another unfamiliar town full of unfamiliar faces, left to fend for myself and figure it all out on my own.

Okay, now that I've had my emo moment, let's get down to brass tacks. Maybe you like it when I wax poetic about my feelings (of which I assure you I have none) but more likely than not, you're here to find out just what's going on in my little corner of the planet.

Like I said, I finished pre-service training and swore in on the 21st. The lead-up to swearing-in consisted of a visit to our future sites, followed by an arduous week of skills assessments, a homestay thank you event, and a few days of "relaxation" at a nice hotel. One of the skills assessments was the Language Proficiency Interview (LPI), a half-hour oral examination administered in the target language (whatever language you studied during training) by a member of the training staff. Passing the LPI (by achieving at least Intermediate Low proficiency) is a Peace Corps requirement, though you can fail the first time and retake it after 3 months in the field. Everybody in my language class (Runyoro-Rutooro) passed, and two of us, including me, achieved Intermediate Mid. I felt pretty proud of myself, and happy that I didn't have to retake the damn thing. Runyoro-Rutooro, I'll add, was the only class out of the the six (the others being Runyankore-Rukiga, Luganda, Lumasaaba, Ateso, and Acholi) to have a 100% pass rate. Go us, and go Anthony.

I won't say much about the homestay thank you event, except that my language class wrote and performed a song called "The Ten Weeks of Homestay," sung to the tune of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," and that my host family didn't show up, except for my host aunt Elizabeth and this random Acholi (northern Uganda) guy named Dennis who had started living in our house a few days earlier to study the Mulindwas' agricultural management techniques. A lot of other families didn't show up either; I think they had a good sense of what a colossal waste of time it was, having hosted previous trainees.

The day after homestay thank you, we all packed up our things, said goodbye to our host families, and relocated to Joka's Hotel, outside Kampala. The point of this was to ease the transition from homestay to site, as well give us time to rest and enjoy the sauna and pool. In actuality, Joka's did not prove to be very restful. During the day, we had to do workshops with our new work supervisors and counterparts (for me, these were my school's headteacher, or principal, Fred, and math/physics department chair, Sam) and attend development and security briefings at the U.S. Embassy. One cool thing about the U.S. Embassy is that they have a wall where they hang pennants from the embassy employees' alma maters. I saw two Carleton pennants out of the fifteen or so hanging up. Maize and blue, baby. Maize and blue. I hadn't yet written the speech I'd volunteered to give at swearing-in, so after the briefings and workshops, I spent quite a bit of time trying (and failing) to put inspiring words on paper, instead of chilling out with the other trainees. In my usual style, I didn't finish writing the speech until about two hours before I had to give it. All throughout the last workshop, my fingers were frantically channelling the mishmash of thoughts my brain was spewing out, until I had finally typed something speech-worthy. Later that day, at the Ambassador's house, I took my oath and delivered what I'd written. Somehow, it didn't turn out half bad! After the swearing-in ceremony, everybody—newly-minted PCVs, training staff, the Country Director, and Ugandan supervisors and counterparts—congratulated me heartily. Fred even called my speech poetic. Procrastination, you have yet to fail me! Following a delicious snack of meat kebabs with various dipping sauces, we shopped for some essentials in Kampala, then returned to Joka's to celebrate, and the next morning, our training group of 29 parted ways and left for site. All 29 of the Trainees who landed at Entebbe ten weeks earlier had sworn in and become Volunteers. In Peace Corps, that is virtually unheard of.

My home for the next two years is a concrete, two-room shop stall across the street from The Lord Is My Shepherd gas station, in the tiny trading post of Kiziranfumbi. The Kizi is a 40-minute taxi ride from Hoima, down 25 kilometers of shit-tastic dirt roadway (the main highway between the Hoima-Massindi and Kyenjojo-Fort Portal areas, interestingly enough). Halfway to Kiziranfumbi, the taxi will generally get pulled over by two white-uniformed police officers operating a police checkpoint. The taxi driver will get out and, instead of explaining why there are 8 people crammed into a 5-seat Toyota compact, slip the officers a modest bribe of perhaps 4000 shillings, or $2. The officers will smile, accept the bribe, and take note of the taxi's license plate number. That way, they'll know not to pull over that particular driver on his return trip, at least not for the rest of the day. Upon paying off the corrupt cops, the driver will return to the taxi, get in the driver's seat, reach over the passenger sharing the seat with him, shift into first, and peel out in a cloud of brown dust.

PC Uganda times training dates so that Volunteers working in education begin their service during a school break. This means that I am essentially on vacation for the next month. During this time, I'm supposed to be focusing on community integration: settling in, meeting and greeting people in town, and getting a feel for the place. I've made a few active efforts to meet the locals. For example this past Sunday I went with my neighbor Eva (who's fast becoming a good friend) to the service held at the nearby Anglican church. Looking back, I didn't really think that one through too well. The service was four hours long, and in Runyoro. On top of that, it was Women's Day, so after the service was over, some women from the congregation sang and acted out a skit. About three songs into the performance, my butt fell asleep and I decided to sneak out the side door (hey, you try sitting on a warped wooden pew for four hours!). Linguistic and gluteal circulatory issues notwithstanding, going to church did end up being an excellent way to expose myself to the community. My white face sticks out like a sore thumb in landlocked Uganda's sea of brown, so early on I was flagged as a visitor and invited to sit near the front of the sanctuary. During the service, I was asked to stand up and introduce myself. I gave them the schpiel I'd rehearsed in Runyoro during training: "Ibara lyange niinyowe Lukas. Nduga New Jersey omu Amerika, baitu hati nyikara omu Kiziranfumbi kusomesa abaana okubara na physics. Mwebale kusangwa." ("My name is Lukas. I come from New Jersey in America, but right now I'm staying in Kiziranfumbi to teach children math and physics. Thanks for having me"). Basically the entire congregation erupted into laughter when I said this. Rev. Geoffrey, who is also my next door neighbor, later assured me that this was laughter of appreciation. It's not too often a mujungu busts out some slick vernacular.

Alright all, time to head home and start whipping up some nourishment. When my doctor friend lets me use his modem again in a few days, I'll post some pictures of my house, the end of training, and swear-in. I hope my words will be enough for right now. Ciao.

Stop double-fisting

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:03:00 +0000

Dear falling-down drunk woman at the bar where I had my language class today,

Stop double-fisting. It's bad for the baby, which probably already has fetal alcohol syndrome, anyway. Talk to me when can put a coherent sentence together. Until then, lay down the bottles. You need help.

Concerned,
Lukas

Kandore ensi yaawe (pictures!)

noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Fried) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 21:14:00 +0000

Kandore ensi yaawe means "let me see your world" in Runyoro-Rutooro. That's the intention of today's post: to give you a peak at my daily life here in lush Uganda. So without further adieu, I give you pictures!

This is the hill I see every day from the RACO training facility. The view from the top is spectacular.

Me, Arwen, Brian, and Tony at the top of that hill.

My host brother Victor thinks that the dimple in his bread looks like Michael Jackson's chin.

My host sister Juliet (Victor's cousin, technically) works in a salon, but here she's having a bad hair day. If she hadn't fro-picked the shit out of her hair before I shot this, I would have guessed that she got an electric shock from the showerhead. The house is chock full of questionable electrical work.

Some of my Trainee friends in front of Kasubi Tombs just days before this UNESCO World Heritage Site was burned to the ground, inciting a series of riots across Kampala. The Tombs were the burial site of the kings of Buganda (the largest kingdom in Uganda), an important cultural site for the Baganda people. Inside that gigantic hut, we got to drink traditional Baganda beer. I didn't care for it; it tasted like a mixture of expired sangria and bacon bits.

Me doing a handstand in two hemispheres.

Apparently, getting to do this is one of the perks of marriage! Stacey and Tony are hitched chemists from Michigan.

The madness that is the New Taxi Park in Kampala. Those minibus taxis hold like 18 people and rarely have seatbelts. If you think New York cabbies are crazy, you should see the lunatics that operate these. Hit-and-runs are the norm (I was in one the second time I ever got in a matatu).

Not gonna lie, I always get a little nervous when I encounter a herd of these cattle on the road, which is almost every day. Their horns are HUGE.

Devon and I with a class of primary school boys in Gayaza. We taught them life skills (sex, puberty, HIV/AIDS, condoms, etc.) and the great game of Red Light Green Light as part of our technical immersion in the field with current PCV Amanda. I'll hopefully write about tech immersion in a future post.

Hard to see, I know, but this is Wakiso Town from the hill that my host family lives on. I can't emphasize enough how beautiful this country is.

Case in point: equatorial sunset.

This is from this morning, when a current PCV nicknamed "Sexy Jesus" (who also goes by "Chimuli" and "David") taught our training group how to build insulated cooking ovens with bricks, mud, sawdust, and banana tree trunks. The ovens can reduce a family's firewood consumption by as much as 40 or 50 percent, staving off deforestation (a big problem in Uganda) and lessening the amount of money spent on wood. Naturally, our mud collecting devolved into an all-out mud war, which ended around the time the snacks came out. Who could resist guavas, jackfruit, sugar cane, and bananas? Pictured (left-to-right, back-to-front) are Brennan, Cowboy Dave (there are 4 Daves in our group, so we had to do some nicknaming - this one wears a cowboy hat on occasion), Brian, Shannon, Arwen, myself, Devon, Nathalie, and John.

Enjoy the pretty pictures. I'll have a wordier update soon.