Ups and Downs

So the previous blog post was written sometime in October and mailed to the US. Sully was kind enough to type it up for me. Thanks Sully.

A lot has happened since then. November was spent grading homework and quizzes every day. I would get to the school around 7:30, teach, then spend the rest of the day in the library grading till about 4:00. Long days, but it paid off. I saw a significant improvement overall, and outstanding improvements for the students who started coming to class everyday. The world over, math and science are usually dominated by males. In Africa, as you can imagine, it is even more of a stereotype that girls can’t do math and science. Well ladies and gentlemen, I have just calculated the averages for all of my classes and in each of them the girls averaged at least 10% higher than the boys. “Why!?!” my students ask. Simply because the girls, on average, come to class more often and come get help outside of class more often than he boys. Putting those results up on the board really made me smile.

However, my grin was short-lived. A few days after the end of the term, I was in the middle of our first rugby meeting. The ball was pumped up, we were tossing it around, there were 12-15 guys there, I was explaining the basics when all of the sudden my neighbor comes over and says there is an urgent phone call for me. He hands me his phone and my Peace Corps supervisor is on the other end. She says “You must leave.” I’m a little confused, so I reply “Now?”
“Yes, right now. Bring your passport and cloths for two weeks. Meet the others in town as quickly as you can.”
I’m mildly panicked and really confused. I know that the Peace Corps is worried about the referendum in Sudan, but that isn’t for another month and I haven’t heard of any trouble on that side of the boarder. The presidential election in Uganda is also a big concern, but that isn’t until February so I still have no idea why I need to leave my site.

In spite of my confusion I hang up, cut the meeting short saying that I have to go and meet someone in Gulu and that I will be back in a couple of weeks, then hurry home to pack my things. Ten minutes of packing later and I am in a sweat as I hurry to the road where I start walking to town. About a mile or so later, a car picks me up and takes me to Kitgum town. From there I meet three of my fellow volunteers and we get in a taxi to take us to Gulu where a Peace Corps vehicle is waiting for us. I’m really worried that we are getting evacuated from the country and that my community isn’t going to have any idea what happened to me. When we finally reach Gulu four hours later, the whole story is finally explained to me.

There have been several cases of a strange illness in the area. Apparently people are dying from something that is causing severe fever, head ache, vomiting blood, diarrhea, bleeding from the eyes and nose, and body aches. This of course catches Peace Corps’ attention and naturally they want to get us out of there as fast as possible. Fair enough, but that still really sucks for me. I had big plans for this holiday break now that the term was over. Besides the rugby meeting I was going to learn some cultural dances, take some of my girl students to the Girls Leading Our World (GLOW) camp, learn how to hunt the elusive-but-tasty bush rat, and fix my solar death ray. But now I got nothing. I’m an exile from my own home. On top of that, PC wanted me to stay in the capitol. I hate that dirty, disgusting, expensive city.

Well, after a few days of being bummed out like never before, I found something to do. The US embassy sponsors a World AIDS Day event in several of the larger towns to help promote AIDS/HIV awareness. So I got in contact with the leading lady for this traveling road show and made myself a roadie. It gave me something to do and it had some awesome perks. The embassy doesn’t operate like the PC. They have their own cars (with AC!), stay in nice hotels (with AC!), and eat good food (with AC!). So for about three weeks I got a free tour around all of Uganda in exchange for handing out T-shirts.

I know that sounds like an easy job, but please, let me explain. Handing out T-shirts in the US would be fairly relaxed. Maybe you have a table, a stack of shirts, and one or two people giving them to people as they pass by. If they had something particularly interesting or clever on them, then a lot of people might want them so a line might form. In Africa, walking into an event with a sack full of T-shirts would be like walking into an orphanage with a box full of puppies, walking into a refugee camp with a tray of doughnuts, or walking into a prison with a keg of beer. They have absolutely no shame and no integrity. Opening the back of the SUV with the shirts is like the poor guy who has to open Wal-Mart on Black Friday. It is simply awful. The people will lie to your face. They will take one shirt, stash it under what they are wearing, and then demand another one. All of this taking place right in front of your eyes! Even though you just stood there and watched them, they will insist that you did not give them a shirt. And when you call them out on it, they get mad at you and say that you are a bad person. It was by far the most depressing and disgusting thing I have ever experienced in Africa. So I think I earned my AC, comfortable hotel, and nice food.

However, after all the World AIDS Day stuff was done, I still wasn’t allowed back home. So I visited a few other PCVs here and there. Then for Christmas a few guys were headed down to the Kabale district in the southwest, near Rwanda, to climb some volcanoes. I tagged a long and I am really happy that I did. It was absolutely gorgeous! When I get the pictures, I will post them. It is exactly the kind of scene you think of when you think jungle. Thick dense forest, bamboo groves, birds, moss, rain everyday, forest buffalo, lizards, snakes and all kinds of stuff. The view part way up he mountain was like the opening scene in Jurassic Park where he helicopter is coming into land. We climbed Muhuvura (which means “The Guide”) on Christmas Eve and then climbed Sabinyo (which means “Old Man’s Teeth”) on Christmas Day. On Muhuvura we were able to stand in Uganda and Rwanda at the same time, and on Sabinyo we were able to stand in Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC at he same time, take that border patrol!

Muhuvura was a rough 23 Km round trip and elevation gain of about 6,000 ft. I was really slow and in an obscene amount of pain all the way up. A month of eating greasy food and sitting around depressed about my situation didn’t do much for my fitness. I still made it to the top though. It may be the tropics, but at the top of a 13,000 ft peak it is pretty dang cold. Still, when I came up finally, huffing and puffing, I was sweating like a grub worm in a chicken coup. So naturally I stripped down to my birthday suit and dove into the crater lake (lake is misleading, it was a large puddle) at the top of the mountain. No warning or questions. I just got naked and jumped in. Our Ugandan guides just laughed and after I got out the other three guys followed suit one by one. I thought it was refreshing, but everyone else said it was the coldest water they ever swam in. To be fair, they were at the top a while before me, so they were already cold when they went for a dip. That was Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day we climb Sabinyo which is a shorter round trip and slightly less elevation gain. On the other hand, we were sore, tired and hungry (the only lodge there is over priced and under portioned). But we climbed never the less. If Muhuvura was the beast, Sabinyo was the beauty. Much more vegetation, more song birds, more grandeur in general. We followed up a three peak ridge to reach the top. On each side of the ridge was a gorge that stretched out into the land ending in a beautiful river that flowed into the rolling foothills. Each of the foothills looked like a quilt because the locals terrace and section them off for farming, making for stunning view after stunning view. On one of the sub-peaks we stopped to check out a couple of chameleons as they crawled on us changing colors. The day progressed and we were greeted with some warm moist wind blowing in from east. As it rose, though, it cooled condensed and turned into wispy fast moving clouds that would envelope us one second and then vanish the next. It made the experience all the more mesmerizing, but made taking pictures tough. Finally, as we approach the top, we have to use some locally made wooden ladders staked into the mountain side because it is so steep. They are made of, what appeared to be, solid cedar branches. They weren’t bad, I only pulled out a few rungs on the way up, and one more on the way back down. Fewer than I expected. At the top we had lunch, recuperated, and braved the cold wind and fog for as long as we could so we could stand in awe at the majesty around us. Sun light was piercing through the clouds like arrows lighting up hill and valley in a marvelous symphony of illumination. It was like having box seats to God’s own concert of mountain, valley, clouds, wind and sun.

Finally though, the wind, clouds, and fatigue overcame us and we began our descent. Much faster going down, a little too fast at times. Slipping here and there wasn’t bad because the ground and vegetation was pretty soft. But if you slipped a little too far, you were likely to pitch right over the side of the ridge. That drop was far enough that it didn’t matter how soft the ground was, you weren’t going to walk it off. So we took it slow and steady and made it down to the bottom of the mountain into the thick bamboo grove. This alone was an accomplishment and a spectacular way to end our day, but then the clouds saw fit to bless us with some hail. Little pea gravel hail that kind of stung your hand, but bearable at first. But then it really opened up on us and came down in such a torrent that we were walking in a river of pebbled ice. Despite the discomfort we counted it as a bonus. We got to have a white Christmas.

After our stay on the mountain we moved out to a beautiful lake for New Years where we meet up with about 60 other PCVs and enjoyed three days of lounging around in the sun, swimming, drinking, playing cards and being Americans. On top of this, I finally got word that I could return to site. Wooooohoooo!! Apparently the Center for Disease Control had officially declared the mysterious disease “yellow fever.” I don’t know if I buy that, but I don’t care. I am vaccinated for yellow fever and PC said I could go home. So on January 1st, I made the long three day journey from the very wet and cold southwest to the very hot and dry north.

When I arrived home, everyone was happy to see me and commented on how fat I was looking (fat equates to health here so it is a compliment). Then I got right to work. So much to catch up on. Clean my house, do laundry, roast g-nuts, fix bike, patch tires, make a road, organize rugby team, meet with the chief, check in with the head teacher, visit friends, fetch water, and fix the fence. So much to do and so little time to do it. I was home for about a week, and then I had to leave again, only this time with a smile on my face.

John Sullivan is making his way out to visit me as I type this. We are headed out to Mt. Elgon, the highest peak in Uganda. Then we’ll play the rest of the trip by ear, but our options seem to be: Riverboat Safari in Murchison falls (hippos, crocs, leopards, birds and such), white water rafting on the Nile (they are putting in a new dam soon so that may not last long), or go to my place and see if we can shoot some critters with bamboo bows and arrows (the local favorite is the bush rat, but guinea fowl and bushbucks are a possibility too). He will be here until the 25th of January, so we don’t have that much time.

I guess that brings me up to date for now. We’ll see how Sully’s visit goes and then maybe I’ll have some more to share with you all. Maybe even some pictures too.