PEPFAR girls as of March 2008!

PEPFAR girls as of March 2008!
Ok, Hannah's missing and Jess (far right) just went home, so we're 7

PEPFAR girls-the original group, all 12 of us!

PEPFAR girls-the original group, all 12 of us!
Training group following the swearing in ceremony at the US Ambassor's residence on Nov. 30, 2006

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

And another month flies by!

Ok, so another month goes by. Some of it exciting, most of it involved a lot of reading! After my last update Carrie and I had an exciting time getting back to our site. See, the roads around us are all made of marram (dirt) and they have been adding marram to make the roads a little less treacherous. The problem with doing this during the wet season is that when it rains (and it rains heavily) the roads become almost impossible to pass on unless you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle. Well, sadly, our taxi was rear-wheel drive and had a problem climbing some of the hills on the way home. So, we got stuck and Carrie and I got out to push...which is a huge deal because most of the people around our town were shocked that we could walk and ride bicycles (they have only seen white people riding through in vehicles). It was great to give my toes a mud bath! It's been a long, long time since I last stuck my feet in the mud and there was a lot of mud to play with! It was a crazy long evening, it took us about 2 hours to push the taxi about 1 km (needless to say we weren't going very fast)! Every time it seemed we were about to get it unstuck the vehicle would slide to the other side of the road and get stuck again...very sad. By the time we reached the 1 km mark, we had blown and tire and the road seemed to b getting worse. Lucky for us, Carrie's organization has 4-wheel drive vehicles so someone came to pick us up...after we walked another km (or so) to meet it on a part of the road that wasn't so bad!

The next week we had an emergency visit to Kampala because Carrie was sick with what seemed to be malaria. Not good! So, I went with her to Kampala for a brief stay and on my way home had my phone stolen! Not exactly a good time because I was looking forward to talking to family and I hate to miss their calls. So, I had to buy a new phone. But the new phone I bought came with a bad battery which was a constant reminder, for one week, that I had been careless and got my phone stolen in Kampala. On the plus-side, at least that's the only thing the guy got because my wallet was just under my phone, phew!

Life at site has exciting moments. Right now we are planning to work with the guys who drive the motorcycles/mopeds and taxis because they want education about HIV/AIDS. I think it will be a lot of fun. Plus we continue to look for ways that our groups can make some money and start to get some good projects going. Right now, we are doing a lot of planning and I hope that in the future we can really build the Resource Centre!