Where does the time go?

Wow! Good thing one of my New Year's Resolutions wasn't to update my blog once a month. Looks like I have fallen behind once again! In an effort to keep this somehow short I'll focus on the most important events of the last few months.

Feb:

Jackie and Ben had an "introduction" party to introduce his family to her parents when they came for a visit. It was really great to meet Jackie's parents (Pat and Wally) and share Jackie and Ben's celebration with them. His family organized a lot of entertainment for the party. I even had the pleasure of making a speech! With all the public speaking I do here I should never again have a problem getting up in front of people and giving an impromptu speech!

After the "introduction" ceremony a new batch of Peace Corps Trainees entered the country. Amanda and I had the pleasure of pulling out our visual aids and presenting our HIV/AIDS 101 session to the newbies. The nature of our lesson requires that we go at the beginning of their training so we met them on their 4th day in country. It's so hard to remember what it felt like to be new here. We have somehow become veterans. Now they're about to be sworn-in! Eight weeks has gone by in the blink of an eye.

March:

Of course, my birthday was the most important day of this month! I celebrated the actual day with my friend Jackie. We made chocolate cake and tried to eat my chicken but it was laying eggs so we had to modify dinner a bit but still had some great BBQ canned chicken tacos and Ben made some excellent BBQ pork! Live chickens sometimes refuse to cooperate!

That weekend I attended the wedding of a friend in the village. We missed the actual ceremony but the reception was a lot of fun. Being the only non-Ugandan in the crowd the emcee decided that I was a good object to direct his attention at; I had a song dedicated to me as we were waiting for the "bagole" (bride and groom) to arrive and then had to give a short speech once they had arrived!

The wedding forced me to push the celebration of my birthday in the village to the following weekend but that was cool because it coincided with St. Patrick's Day (one of my favorite holidays!). I invited my friends and co-workers from the village to a birthday party at KCRC (my organization). The program was as follows: speeches, eating, dancing. The speeches were basically dominated by Jackie and me. We tried to keep the speeches short because the most exciting part of the day was yet to come! I had the food catered by a local restaurant but I made the birthday cake that everyone enjoyed. Dancing turned out to be basically just Jackie and me dancing to the amusement of the Ugandans. But that's cool. These days we don't really care what we look like anymore!

That night, Jackie and Ben spent the night and we drank green beer to pre-celebrate St. Patrick's Day! (Yes! I made green beer in Uganda!) To celebrate St. Patty's Day I made a spice cake that I shaped like a clover and then covered it in green frosting. I added a little too much water to the frosting, though so it just soaked in to the cake but it was very tasty even if it didn't look exactly like I expected!

Jackie and Ben bought a puppy while at my birthday party and as a result a lost puppy came wandering around to check out the visitor. The puppy (her picture is above) that came around looked on the edge of death; she was incredibly thin, with clumps of hair missing, and eyes bulging out of her head. We gave her some food but doing so I recognized she was probably going to continue to return for more food. I was really worried that I wouldn't be prepared to take care of this poor dog because it's not as if I can run down the street to PetSmart to get food and other necessities! But I decided that I could do something small for her and continue to feed her. So now, I have a somehow dog. I named her Ursa Minor because she responded when I called her little bear! I don't let her come into the house (too many fleas) and she still spends the night at the neighbor's house with their dogs. I think we have a good arrangement because I'm gone too often and thus need her to be somehow independent. We've had our challenges (like she refuses to eat food with the deworming meds in it) but she learns fast and has a very mellow personality. One of these days I'll working on getting rid of the fleas!

Easter weekend brought the going away party for the Peace Corps Volunteers who are at the end of their service. We had a relaxing day by the pool at a local hotel and then dressed up as movie characters for dinner and dancing. It's hard to believe that after people from this group leave the PEPFAR 1 girls are going to be the next group to leave!

The end of March saw the door fall off my latrine. I spent a morning putting it back on with nails that were entirely too big! At least it's back on, though!

April:

How cool is this?! I went on my first safari this month! There's are National Park near Masindi (north-east of Kampala) called Murchison Falls; I went for a game drive, boat trip and hike to the waterfalls. It was so much fun! I'll post pictures on the Flickr account so you can click the link to the right and see all the animals we got to see. There were a lot of Uganda Kobs, hartebeests, water bucks, crocodiles and hippos. We were incredibly lucky to see lions, lots of giraffes and elephants.

The early morning game drive had us across the water and starting on the drive by 7 am. Early morning and evening are the best times to see animals moving around because those are the coolest times of the day. Animals are smart to hide in the shade during mid-day hours because it got VERY hot in the park! Only silly animals like people move around in the heat!! :)

Murchison Falls was first mapped by Sir Sam Baker on 3rd April 1864 so we were there on the 144th anniversary of his first siting of the falls! Granted Murchison is neither tall nor wide but the space is so narrow at the top of the falls that you really get a feel for the power of the water passing down the falls. When Baker first saw the falls there was only Murchison but in 1962 there was a lot of rain and the excess rain caused the water to find a new route down and that is why in the picutres you see two waterfalls. Murchison Falls is to the right and Uhuru (in Swahili means freedom) Falls is to the left. Uhuru is wider but a shorter drop than Murchison.

And that brings us up to date!