ridin' solo

The time has come – my other half, Jessica, left last Thursday, so now I’m the only intern holding down the fort in Sembabule. Things have been good so far.. I haven’t started talking to myself or having conversations with frogs or anything, which I take as a good sign.

Last Wednesday, the night before Jessica left, the staff made a huge, delicious dinner (FRIED chicken, potatoes, cabbage, greens, etc) for everyone and we all stayed late and ate together. It was so, so nice of them. We all sat around afterwards, each person saying their goodbyes to Jessica and thanking her for all the work she’s done. The power was out (the battery-powered Coleman lantern I brought has come in VERY handy for situations like this) and the whole thing kind of felt like a slumber party to me – everyone sitting in a circle, with a light in the middle, sharing their deepest darkest secrets (okay, not really). Anyway, it was a really great ending to Jess’s time here.

On Thursday I went along with the car that was taking Jessica in to Kampala. I only stayed for the day, but we got to have lunch at our favorite place – Café Java – and I stocked up on some groceries. The huge advantage to traveling with the WellShare vehicle is that you can buy a lot of stuff and not worry about how to get it back. Public transportation is much more restricting, in that I usually only buy one (large) bag of groceries to lug back here. The day trip to Kampala was nice, but long and tiring (about four hours each way). Not to mention that there was a really bad traffic jam (just known as a “jam” here) that resulted in us sitting for 20 minutes not moving in the parking lot of the grocery store, and then slowly inching out of the parking lot for 15 more minutes. It was incredibly frustrating. I’m not sure why Kampala traffic is prone to such bad jams, but at certain times of the day it is almost impossible to get somewhere without pulling your hair out.

This past weekend, I rearranged and cleaned the room. It had gotten pretty dirty, so I took out the carpet and the guards helped me clean it, and the floor under it. Then I moved a bookshelf from the office into my room to store all the things that I had previously been storing under/around my bed (food, books, toiletries, etc). The room looks MUCH better now. Having a roommate is great, and I would not trade Jessica in exchange for a neater room, but that room really is small for two people. So, my consolation prize is to have a spiffier room. After I finished the cleaning process, I spent the rest of the weekend alternately reading and watching Gossip Girl season two. I never thought I’d get into that show, but I bought season one here, and I have to say I’ve gotten sucked in. One of my coworkers here is letting me borrow season two, further fueling the addiction.

This week is the CCG training, in which the TOTs (who finished up their training by WellShare two weeks ago) in turn train the CCGs, with facilitation by the F/CBOs. We’re using this opportunity to conduct the last of our focus group discussions, both among the CCGs and in the communities in which the trainings are being held. I’m looking forward to finishing up this process and analyzing the results.

A word of warning to anyone who is traveling and needs a long-term visa at any point in the future: try and make sure that you know what type of visa you will need (based on how long you’re staying in the country) and what that visa requires BEFORE you arrive. My visa process has been something close to a nightmare. It turns out that I need a different visa than what I had previously been told I needed, and now I’m scrambling to get all sorts of weird things (a police letter from my hometown, my OFFICIAL transcripts) and have them sent here before my tourist visa expires in a week. Not to mention I've ended up spending a lot more money on the process than I had planned to. The end is in sight now, but it’s been a hassle and it would have been a lot easier to have gathered these things before I left the US. So there’s my travel tip for the day.