One year down, one to go!

Greetings from Rukungiri! As you can tell by my subject line, there is reason to celebrate—I’ve been sworn in officially and living in Rukungiri for one year now!

Back in June my parents came for almost three weeks to see Uganda. We had a great time and I definitely enjoyed seeing them and seeing parts of Uganda that were new to me. We were able to visit Uganda’s two biggest game parks (saw lions at both!) as well as some lesser known tourist attractions and of course about 5 days at my site in Rukungiri. My parents even helped teach art class at a local primary school! My friends in Rukungiri enjoyed meeting my family and continue to ask, “How are mum and papa? Did they enjoy their stay? Send my greetings!”

Work has been going well. The major projects I’m working on currently include:

1. Monitoring and Evaluation officer for RUGADA HIV Prevention Project. We’re now halfway through this one year grant and have reached over 5,000 people in the district with door-to-door HIV prevention counseling. It’s exciting to see the good work being done and also exciting to think of what the final 6 months of the project holds.
2. Arts & Crafts Teacher at a local primary school. I continue to teach art classes to students of about 3rd-6th grade. We’re having fun and I enjoy letting the kids use the right side of their brain for a small fraction of the school day. I am, however, running out of ideas, so if you have some please share!!!
3. Life skills! Josephine (RUGADA secretary) and I have just begun a new life skills project at our resource center. Quite some time ago I had started teaching baking lessons at the center, but we were really struggling with money for materials and transport. After attending a Peace Corps sponsored life skills workshop, Josephine suggested that we revamp our resource center activities to include life skills and cookery lessons, and I applied for a small grant to do so. We just started last week, with Josephine teaching life skills lessons about things like self-esteem, making good decisions, and reproductive health, while I taught baking (chocolate cake…yum!).
4. The final activity on which I’ve been spending a fair amount of time is ‘hanging out’ at TASO (The AIDS Support Organization). TASO is a huge NGO with one of its 11 national centers located right here in Rukungiri. The organization is very well run and reaches thousands of HIV positive and AIDS infected people in the area with clinical support, counseling, and a variety of other services. I say that I ‘hang out’ there, because mostly I just walk in once or twice a week and observe how things work, make new friends, and learn some tips. Their staff has been incredibly friendly and helpful, so that whenever RUGADA or another group needs advice on designing an HIV/AIDS related program, all one needs to do is walk into their building and ask whoever walks by! Their staff has also helped me to learn some new data management programs so that my monitoring and evaluation work for RUGADA is done more efficiently and accurately. They are a truly amazing organization!

I think that wraps up the major things I do with my days. With my non-work hours I’ve been enjoying exploring Rukungiri, and more recently exploring Japan (on a ten day vacation to visit my good friend Erin) and also celebrating Uganda’s Independence day with the annual Peace Corps gathering, Goatstock (complete with roasted goats, a softball tournament, and costume contest).

I think that’s about it. I hope you folks are still reading my blog despite my highly intermittent posts (sorry!). Also, I’d love to hear from you!

Happy fall to those of you back stateside!

Megan