Muzungu Central

The past week and a half has been quite a change of pace from village life. We had a 10 day in service training (IST) with the other volunteers from our training group at a nice hotel near Kampala. I’ve gotten so used to the electricity, hot showers, and so many muzungu that I’m worried it will be hard to adjust to life in my village! As for IST itself, it was really great to catch up with the other volunteers, most of whom I hadn’t seen in three months. We also got to reunite the fabulous team Lusoga for some extra language class! This past week was also the first time I went to a Ugandan comedy show. Let’s just say that Ugandan comedy is a LOT different than American comedy, and a lot of it involves people dressing up and lip-synching to various songs. A fellow volunteer went on stage himself to introduce American stand up to Uganda – much miscommunication ensued. For example, a joke about asthma was translated as malaria. Whether or not the Ugandans understood, we all found the night very amusing.

As a small aside, I realize I never blogged about a somewhat traumatic experience I had at site about 6 weeks ago – I had not one, not two, but three mango flies. On my butt. What are mango flies you might ask? You can try googling them for more details, but basically they are flies that lay their eggs in your wet clothes. When you wear these clothes the eggs hatch in your skin and develop into maggots. Yes, I removed three maggots from my butt. Only 6 weeks later can I actually appreciate the humor in this. At the time, I was pretty grossed out. It also helps that at IST I found that another volunteer currently had three mango flies himself. Since I was the only person in our group who had experience in this department, it was up to me to remove them. You might wonder how you remove a mango fly? Well, you squeeze it like you’re popping a zit and the maggot just pops out. Yup, fabulous. I have now extracting 6 mango flies and am the resident expert. Great title to hold.

On a more uplifting note, after IST I joined the majority of our training group on a rafting trip on the Nile. Now, you might think this is a silly thing to do since I can’t swim and this all day trip involves several class 5 rapids…I also am completely useless as a raft-mate since my single handedness prevents me from paddling…but I didn’t want to miss out on the fun! Instead, I rode down the Nile on the safety raft – the goal of the safety raft is to NOT flip and spill me into the Nile, and I fully supported that goal. Therefore, I got to enjoy my own private raft, rowed by a great guide/rafter, have the front seat on all the rapids, and head down all the rapids before all the other rafts and watch them come tumbling after. AND I didn’t flip. YES. My local Busoga name in my village is Nangobi, which means princess (it’s the name of the Busoga royal line). My fellow volunteers thought it was a fitting name for me on my private raft hehe. 

That's me under all that water

SO much water

My princess wave to the camera