A little over a week ago I arrived in Chamwino, the village I will be living in, and opened the door to my nice house but had one slight problem…IT WAS EMPTY! (I have included a picture of our kitchen and a picture of our view from the front door) Haha, to be honest I knew this was going to be the case but I didn’t know they REALLY meant it. After a week I headed back to Dar es Salaam to buy house supplies. (Kedmon, you will be happy when you return home…thanks again for letting me stay in your house.)
Yesterday I returned to Chamwino and now it is time to start “living.” Today I made a trip to Dodoma town on the daladala to finish up my house supplies shopping. The house still looks fairly bare because I am only getting what I need. It is funny to have guests over and they are surprised I don’t have much! They seem to have all the things for daily life around the house and I don’t. They laughed at me because I only had ceramic mugs for both water and coffee/tea. Good times…
Chamwino is much different then what I expected. I think I had a mixed vision from my past trips to Uganda. Chamwino is 2 km’s off the main road. It is small but spread out. The President has a state house, which he seems to never use, and there is also roughly 10 gated houses (nice houses) for his entourage and these houses are also vacant because the President is never here. It is strange to see this in a village where people mainly survive off their farm crops.
Right now it is very dry and in the village there isn’t many crops growing. June, July and August from my understanding does not have rain. Rainfall usually starts late November/early December and then continues until about March. January usually sees the most rain but even that is less than 8 inches for the whole month! The rains came late this year and now the crops are suffering and there is a lack of water.
During the night it gets really cold. The first week I had a sheet and I woke up at 3am freezing my butt off! I now have a blanket.
Yesterday I met with the Head Mistress of Chamwino Secondary School. This school had about 575 students and only 8 teachers (they should have 14-17 teachers…). At some point down the road I will begin tutoring during free periods and after school and maybe even help with coaching soccer.
For now I will begin living life here on a regular basis, becoming more familiar how things work and better my Swahili. I am going to start working one on one with a few specific people who are involved in the partnership. They have been working on increasing their English and now they need more time talking. I am excited to see how they respond through time. The community seems to be looking forward to me teaching English and assisting with other tasks.
Chamwino life is slow and I was told this front the get-go. I experienced this the first time I was in Gulu. The thing I like best thus far is the lack of cars. Most people walk around the village or use bicycles. Sometimes when I walk I feel like I am going to fall over because I am walking that slowly but I think about it and just laugh. Being late doesn’t seem like too much of a problem…that is always a challenge for us because we are always time conscious but in the end it always seems to work out.
The people here are WONDERFUL and I think I am going to enjoy living here. Tomorrow I am washing my clothes. I don’t think I can go any longer wearing dirty clothes. Haha.
Hope all is well and sorry this is long.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment