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I visited this women’s group above to check out their grinding mill, and then asked questions about their business practices, mainly how do they account, manage and protect their money. They used the opportunity to tell me about community problems, broken down bore holes, the need to protect the mill better from weather and theft (but that was their responsibility) and a desire for more training. In the photo above, as we were leaving, they broke out into song with the main chorus “Please don’t forget us Charley!”  Without knowing it, I changed my phone’s camera to a more vintage black and white! CARE works with many partners, but it just so happens that the mill, the sewing group, the semi-permanent shelters, and the youth restaurant shown below are all supported by grants from the Czech Republic, which just ended.

Yes, this grinding mill could use some more protection and security. But its a money maker.

Another women’s group display their embroidered sheets and linens. This women’s group was founded by a man, who was a tailor in South Sudan and brought his sewing machine with him. he does the straight edges on his machine for the group.

There are thousands of temporary shelters made of white tarps and poles. Unfortunately they are susceptible to burning to the ground. Yet there are recently harvested straw bundles for thatched roofs everywhere as shown in the rear.

CARE is now building semi-permanent shelters as shown here. They are called semi-permanent and not permanent because they used mud instead of cement and unburnt bricks, but these should easily last 30 years.

And every semi-permanent shelter comes with its own pit latrine.

CARE recently put up community bulletin boards and as shown on the left, suggestion/complaint boxes throughout the settlements.

This is a new Youth Garden restaurant supported by CARE

Denmark has an annual telethon in February for children’s causes, and CARE Denmark sent a film crew for a couple of days. A young man is filmed drawing a picture of the home and people he left behind.

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Team building exercise with the CARE staff.

This is our team leader in Arua, Julias, who lives at the guest house. He’s a big guy.

                                                                                                     In mid-December, at least 50 staff from CARE Arua took two mini-buses to Kampala for three days of trainings and R & R with the CARE Kampala staff. It was my first trip away from Arua since my arrival in August.  I’ve become a site rat, but really, I dislike the 9 hour bus trip.

For Christmas Eve, PCV Kelsey got us invited to an event at Radio Pacis, People sing carols by a decorated tree, followed by the radio station’s 13^th annual ice cream social. The manager has an Italian Gelato machine and set out 27 different flavors. One tiny scoop of each made a big dish.

Who wouldn’t want to gorge on gelato on Christmas Eve? It was in the 90’s through the holidays.

Kelsey on the left is in Kampala preparing to gong out as I type this. Her S.O. Harrison is an RPCV from Tanzania and Redskins fan. Angie, and Casey (also from Colorado) are teaching at a local medical college as one year Peace Corps Global Health Volunteers. Casey extended a second year.

Casey has access to a projector, and bought a bunch of wicker chairs. Then he turned an empty room into a home theater. Tonight its football, but every couple of Saturdays he’ll screen a movie and serve popcorn…unless the power goes out. No generator at Casey’s.

Then we went to PCV (Global Medical) Casey’s to wait for our appetites to return. At 9 p.m we had Casey’s home-made pizza and watched the Redskins crush the Broncos in a meaningless game for both teams.

Sam, our Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEAL) manager.

My story today is also informative about the local culture. Sam is a welcome addition to the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) portion of the office. He started only a few weeks before I did.  When he learned I was in the the Peace Corps, Sam told me about his own life, which was altered immeasurably by a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer’s intervention.

Sam is the fifth of his mother’s six children. His mother was the fifth wife of his father’s 13 wives. She and the children lived near Soroti close to three other wives.  Sam’s father was a Kenyan with more than 60 children.  He bought and sold the hides of cows, goats, and sheep from collection points all over Uganda, often near where his other wives were scattered.

Sam’s uncle was a sort of father figure and pushed Sam’s mom to ensure her children received a proper education. However, since his dad was Kenyan, Sam and his siblings were culturally identified as Kenyan. Ugandan teachers and medical staff would refuse service to Sam and his siblings. Sam’s mother changed their names to Ugandan names, but it didn’t seem to help much.

Shortly after Museveni came to power in 1986, foreigners in the North were persecuted and Sam’s mom feared her older children would be conscripted as child soldiers. After two of Sam’s step-brothers were killed, his mom took the children to Kenya. Sam was only four. However, Kenyan schools rejected the children for being Ugandans.

 After two years in Kenya, Sam’s mother brought her children back to Soroti, but she had lost everything; the house on her plot of land had been destroyed. For a while, Sam and his family literally lived under a tree, while his mom farmed her plot. Sam remembers his shelter during that time as worse than the shelters the current South Sudanese refugees get from CARE. Nevertheless, Sam managed to get through P-7, which is the highest primary grade.  He passed the P-7 exams which allow you to proceed to Secondary School.

Sam’s mom had a cousin in Tororo, whose husband was employed and agreed to support Sam.  He moved to Tororo from 1997-2000 and lived with this family to go to secondary school. This would allow Sam to attend “O” levels which is S 1-4. You can learn a vocation after S-4.

In 1998 Sam met Craig, a Peace Corps volunteer in Tororo.  Craig lived in a two room house. In one of the rooms, Craig had started a library with used books donated from the United States.  Sam remembers seeing stamps on them from U.S. schools. Craig allowed Sam to use the library, and Sam was a frequent visitor, particularly enjoying the science books. Craig’s Peace Corps service ended, and he returned to the United States.

After Sam passed his S-4 exams. The next level is “A” level which S-5 and S-6, prior to going to University. However, his school support from the cousin in Tororo stopped. He was still allowed to live with the family that supported him through S-4, but essentially Sam was in the streets with no options, and doing nothing. [Isn’t it interesting that Sam basically was ‘in the streets’, while, after completing S-4 and being stopped, Sharon from my home stay family still did cooking and cleaning and watching the kids.] This street time was during the first nine months of what should have been Sam’s S-5 year.

Craig returned to Tororo a year or two after his service ended, to pursue a post-Peace Corps education project, which continues to this day. He saw Sam in the street one day, and learned of his situation. Sam asked Craig if he could be his ‘library attendant’. Craig declined because he felt Sam needed to be in school. He sat down with Sam and collected the names and contacts of every friend and relative and obtained pledges of support. This was before mobile money, which Ugandans use today to transfer funds via their phones. Sam said Craig used couriers! [Peace Corps frowns on PCV fundraising, but Craig was an RPCV at this point anyway],

Next, Craig went to the local public school and negotiated an arrangement to let Sam get caught up with the 9 months he had missed.Sam says the public school was not that good, but he studied six relevant books Craig had given him, and despite the late start, passed S-5. Sam says you can choose your three subjects for S-6. He selected Chemistry, Biology and Physics. His primary source for learning was not the school itself, but rather three used high school textbooks on these subjects Craig gave him.

Clean radiographs (x-rays), CT Scan, and/or MRI research is done whenever stress fracture and purchase viagra in australia also nerve condition is in fact alleged. Moreover, any injury to the spinal cord, bladder, pelvis, prostate, and penis can impact smooth muscles, nerves, arteries, and corpora cavernosa fibrous tissue, leading to erection Problem This issue by and large emerges as an aftereffect of physical and mental causes where powerful cures for the condition change essentially starting with one individual then prescription cialis onto the next. Fallopian tube blockage may be generic prescription viagra without the result of diverse in?ammatory procedures due to proximity of fallopian tubes. There is no doubt how the coward attitude of your general ed requirements is best prices on viagra a drudge, take it first and get it over with. Sam characterizes his time studying in S-5 and S-6 as the “most difficult time in my life”, notwithstanding every hardship he had already endured. He says he only was able to sleep a few hours each night. He shocked the school by not only passing his S-6 exams, but earning a government scholarship to study medicine. So the secret to getting into Medical school in Uganda is memorize three high school text books on Chemistry, Biology and Physics. After three years at University, Sam got a new job very quickly and worked at a succession of medical facilities. Eventually he earned a Master’s Degree in Public Health. He transitioned into Research and Monitoring with San Francisco University’s outpost in Uganda, and then was M & E coordinator for work undertaken by Tulane and Georgetown.  He learned M & E mainly from mentors. Sam left Georgetown’s work to become the M&E leader in the CARE Arua office.

Eventually Sam lost touch with Craig, but Craig’s intervention left an indelible mark.  “I was inspired by Craig 100%. I feel my purpose in life is giving other people opportunities.”  Sam has stayed true to this intent.

Sam is married with two biological children and two orphans he adopted.  He adopted the first orphan before he was married. The baby survived a botched caesarean section, in which the mother died (her doctor refused further aid without more money). Sam asked his own mom to help care for the child, sending her part of his scholarship stipend. The second orphan is a survivor of a couple Sam knew who died of HIV/AIDS. 

It doesn’t stop there. Sam was befriended by an 18 year old boy who hung out at a car wash in Kampala Sam liked to use. The boy wanted to go to school. Sam asked if the boy was willing to go to his mom’s village school for 6 months before he would support him. The boy agreed, and today Sam supports him as he learns to be an auto mechanic in Nairobi, Kenya. He also somehow finds time to mentor graduate students in Gulu, when he drives there each weekend to stay with his family.

I asked Sam how he can afford all this charity. Sam’s wife sells clothes, and his salary with CARE is supplemented by crops and animals he raises at his mom’s 4 acre plot in Soroti. He has acquired another 2 acre plot he would like to develop into a recreational park for children, and a community center with a bar & grill, a gym and a room to rent for events. He hopes to assist many young people in the future. And it began with a happenstance meeting with a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer in the streets of Tororo.

And now some photos-

Lunch at Arua hotel across from CARE office. Countries represented clockwise from lower left Congo, Rwanda, Kenya, Bangladesh,Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Three of them are staying in the Guesthouse I live behind.

Did I mention the roads to the camps are bad? This is a CARE vehicle that rolled over on the road to Imvepi. Three CARE staff with seat belts on were left hanging but were uninjured. It was a slow tip over.

Another view. This was actually being rented by CARE. Nearby there is an inscription on a rock “Tooth got lost”

Young men selected by their communities to be Role Model Males receiving training. They will go home and share in chores and watching the kids etc. The teachers said the neighbors will gossip the men have been bewitched. Until they notice how happy everyone in the family is.

Anyone who has lifted one of these babies onto a water cooler, knows what they weigh.

CARE supports drama clubs, who present plays and routines with lessons. I am writing a story about this, and went to Rhino Camp to watch performances. The club set up in the market and attracted a large crowd. The actors passed a megaphone around. A man climbed up on a roof beam to get a better view and photo-bombed a couple of my shots.

I have spent most of the last few weeks at the office working on a couple of projects and editing some reports. Doing the reports about CARE’s projects helps me learn about what CARE does. I am also conducting more interviews in the settlements, watching some activities, and writing or editing some stories. Often I get compelling backstories, but when it comes to CARE’s interventions, all I can get sometimes is “I thank CARE for my shelter” One refugee has a good backstory and is in a drama group at Rhino Camp. I decided I will write about her drama group and weave her story into it.

My “drama club member” walked through South Sudan to the Congo at the age of 19 after her parents were killed, and eventually walked to Uganda. During her entire journey and at the settlement, she has been the caretaker of 11 boys younger than she is: five younger brothers, four sons of her uncle, and two more boys from a neighbor. All 12 live in the shelter behind them, built by CARE.

In the interviews I have done, I am struck how ‘normal’ the needs of these refugees are. They want a job providing economic security. They want to live in peace without fear. If they have children, they want them to get a good education and have a better life. No American would want differently.

Many of these people, particularly the men, had stable, important jobs with nice houses. Now they are virtually powerless, living in tarp-covered shelters and dependent on aid. I have heard the wives have a saying: “We are now married to UNHCR, because it is our provider.” Not surprising, this is a potential trigger for domestic violence. And just like in America, alcohol leads to domestic violence, often when the husband sells food rations to buy booze.

Nick Turse is a correspondent I follow on TomDispatch, which usually is a chronicle about our military. Turse’s beat covers U.S. deployments in Africa. I recommend his recent story about South Sudan “Where the bodies aren’t buried.” It is still a grim reality there.

On another note, here is an interesting video by the BBC about the dangers of riding on boda bodas in Kampala. Arua has tuk tuks, which are three wheeled taxis the Peace Corps permits us to ride. CARE also strongly recommends tuk tuks over bodas,  They cost a bit more.
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In this skit, the man is sick because he defecated in the bush instead of a pit latrine, and didn’t wash his hands. The pit latrines in the settlements are not exactly pristine either.

This is Kelsey, one of the few PCVs left in Uganda with more seniority than me. She is a a third year extension Education volunteer in Arua. My country director Delphine asked me to consider using video sometimes. I have seen some of Kelsey’s work and invited her to do a bit of filming of the dramas. She had never been to the settlements.

Conducting an interview

Its hard not to keep talking about the lousy roads. Here a a security warning we received about some roads getting blocked by locals. I didn’t edit it, so you can get an idea how some of the writing I edit is: This is to bring to your attention about the security situation as per to day morning, The road that leads to IMVEPI from Yumbe was blocked by Villagers(community members) at Odubi Village, four kilometer away from the settlement, organizational cars where high-jacked for three hours before the police intervened and tear gassed the group that had blocked the road. the reason for blocking the road was in protest to the bad road leading to IMVEPI from Yumbe which they say it is as a result of NGO cars that continuously pass through it and as per now there is a bad spot cars are dogging by passing through some bodies garden. As CARE we got information for the plot of the road block much early before we set off hence we used BIDIBIDI road to access IMVEPI, for that we did not fall a victim however we remain vigilant and monitor the situation.

I started attending meetings of the Arua Rotary Club. This is the traditional banner exchange. The Arua Club has a cool looking leopard on their banner. We met outside under a tree this particular evening.

My friend Judith was able to go to Tonga for the 50th anniversary of Peace Corps in Tonga. She is on the far left with four other members of her cohort. Unfortunately, she didn’t find the 50 year old baby she named.

Last week we received a visit from the “Double Delphine”: Delphine Pinault, the CARE Uganda Country Director, and Delphine Mugisha, the program manager who developed my position, and their small entourage. It looks like we will we need to move to a bigger office, but larger available buildings are hard to come by in Arua. Delphine M. asked me to mentor the initiative managers here to help in their writing.

For my entire career, except my first three years out of law school, I either practiced solo, or as a partner in a partnership with a few employees. Probably eight people were in my largest law firm.

Meital at swearing in

Working in the Peace Corps meant I would a supervisor (called a “champion”), for the first time in 30 years. As readers know, this was Meital. In the beginning, it was a bit difficult, because I felt she was a little too “mothering” but eventually we became rather collegial, and now I love her like a sister. She complemented my writing, and gave me the confidence to apply for my current position. Meital was supposed to be the champion for the five 3rd year extension volunteers. However, last week it was announced she was leaving the Peace Corps at the end of October, for undisclosed new opportunities. She has been on leave, so I don’t know more yet. I wish only the best for her.

Of course there were a few other people above Meital in Kampala, and the whole Peace Corps agency from it’s D.C. headquarters across more than 60 countries. But generally volunteers get a lot of autonomy in our scattered isolated locations. In Bugiri, Adams was my “Supervisor”, but he was very much like one of my small business clients. ATEFO was a small NGO hanging in there, scrambling to attract donors for projects. I was never shy about giving Adams my two cents, or rather 2 shillings, about running his little enterprise, and he respected my work experience.

Today, the Peace Corps is humming very quietly in the background, as I now have become a very tiny cog in a big machine called CARE International. Wikipedia states “For the fiscal year 2016, CARE reported a budget of more than 574 million Euros ($688 million US) and a staff of 9,175 (94% of them local citizens of the country where they work)”. I don’t know if the CARE employees in the north with me exceed 50 yet, but they are increasing every week. The home office in Kampala seems more involved too.

As small as my role is, I have important responsibilities and deadlines, and there is more pressure to perform. I am taking some things off my hard working team leader Carly’s plate. She has been a patient “boss”, and I enjoy her. I have met my soon-to-be new boss Julius, who visited while he waited for visa approval. When he returns next week from his home in Kenya, there will be a small overlap with Carly before she heads back to Melbourne for a well-deserved break. I hope Julius and I will get along well.

I can’t say there is much “fat” in this office. Everyone works hard, including every Saturday. The senior staff has to go to so many meetings, both in the office and at the settlements, and yet I can understand the necessity of them. This sprawling refugee crisis is complex with lots of moving parts.
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I was a lawyer for 16 years before obtaining my first P.C. Many of you remember Dictaphones, and word processors? My lawyer friends reading this blog will recall legal research in law libraries, piling up open law reporters to photocopy cases, then cutting and taping cited opinions into hand-written briefs in legal pads to give to a word processor tech. My last two years in the villages were strictly low tech. I taught financial literacy using lessons printed on grain sacks or on white sheets of paper taped to a wall or a tree.

Today at CARE, all of the initiative managers have to use laptops (unlike ATEFO staff), and the entire CARE organization uses Microsoft Office 365 in the cloud, which is new to me. I struggle to figure out elements of Excel, PowerPoint and Word software. Back in the day I would delegate: “Fix this, so it looks this way”. Now I really need to learn how to do more, but fortunately the younger staff are quite patient to respond to my requests for guidance. I always joke with Ugandans, “My brain is not as ‘spongey’ as before.” I mean it more for learning local language, but it applies to learning software and its tricks.

I have not been able to get out as much for interviews and story writing. Story writing is a different discipline than legal writing. I had hoped my blog experience would be helpful, but….. my Peace Corps colleague Ruwani in the Kampala office, edited one of my stories. She did such a good job, I was sincerely humbled! I need to step it up!

The road from my home to town lies next to a dormant golf course. It is said the caretaker died, and that was that. Cattle is herded now.

I have lots of little hills and gullies around me. A common sight throughout Uganda, washing boda bodas in a creek.

Just up from the boda guys, ladies were digging sand. I asked what they were doing with it, and the lady pointed to a sand pile twenty feet away and said “We will sell it!”

In this nearby gully, there were always kids playing, bathing, or clothes getting washed. I paid 500 shillings to a lady down there who insisted I pay to take this pic when I asked permission.

Momma is cooking at Rhino Camp. There are clusters of huts in a compound, similar to what I was used to in the villages.Refugees are given small plots to grow their own food.

Yay, a Coner Oberst/Monsters of Folk blog title! My son will be proud.

My first CARE assignment took three days. I learned some new skills, but I’m not sure yet, when or how I will utilize them. Nevertheless, it was real interesting, and led to my first visit to a Refugee Settlement. I represented CARE at a training with representatives of 17 other NGOs at a large compound operated by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR will be referenced frequently in the future.)

OpenStreetMap is a crowd-sourced mapping program. Google Maps doesn’t send it’s photo cars into much of the developing world, let alone refugee settlements, and so this is a way to handle it. An example given by our instructor was the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti.  It is best explained from this blog:

Before the earthquake, widely available maps of the country of Haiti had little more than a few highways and roads. The capital city of Port-au-Prince was a shaded outline that suggested a city. The problem was that Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, had been ignored by traditional commercial data providers. Few could afford a GPS, so why build digital maps of roads or buildings?

When the earthquake struck and crisis responders began planning their aid, they were left without a means to identify cities, routes of entry, buildings, parks, or much of anything that would allow them to know how to possibly provide support to the citizens of Haiti.

Immediately volunteers began scouring for available maps and road data. Historic maps, unclassified and released from the CIA, served as the first options for understanding what infrastructure existed.

The result of all this data was that a largely empty and incomplete map gathered thousands of volunteers, developers, and organizers to generate what is currently the most complete map of the country of Haiti. The city of Port-au-Prince has been largely mapped and volunteers are now working on outlying cities and villages. Beyond just marking roads and transit information, there was analysis of damaged buildings, displacement camps, and triage centers.

The map serves more than merely a digital, web based map for viewing the decimated region. The data gathered is free and open to use by anyone….Response organizations and government agencies are using OpenStreetMap for print maps to hand out in the field, and also deploying to mobile GPS units.

And the data will only get better, providing as a resource for the long-term recovery efforts, and rebuilding. Haiti need never again be an empty spot on the map.

Check out this cool 30 second video of the mapping of Haiti within 12 hours of the earthquake.

These maps can be updated remotely from anywhere. We spent our second day of training identifying and marking roads and buildings near Arua. I got my own little square to work on. All but one of my roads were identified as paths (hence the map user would know they can’t drive a car there, perhaps a boda boda) and most of my buildings were probably huts. I also looked at my neighborhood in Denver, and added ATEFO’s identification to the Bugiri map.

On the third day, after downloading two OSM apps onto my smart phone, I went out with three teams to Rhino Camp to do mapping from the ground. We took turns mapping hospitals, schools, and health facilities. After taking a picture, and fixing the GPS point, I interviewed local people to determine, for example, for a school, how many students and instructors, does it have latrines, how many class blocks, who is the owner, is it from an NGO etc. So if someone has mapped it remotely, as a “building”, my data will be added so anyone clicking on the map will now know it is a school, with more information.

Rhino Camp is the fourth largest refugee settlement serviced by CARE in the West Nile, with nearly 80,000 refugees as of June, 2017.  That’s more than a sold out Broncos game! The Politically Correct. term is Refugee Settlement, rather than refugee camp, since these places are less temporary. Yet this settlement is called Rhino Camp because it used to be a rhino camp.
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Below are some photos from Rhino Camp.

The first object I mapped were these water tanks, courtesy of the Danish Refugee Council.

Kids get water from a tap across the road from the tanks I mapped above. These water points are also mapped.

A latrine made from mud for a compound. Note the water container hanging out front to wash hands. A Health PCV would be proud.

Another, very common latrine. I used one like this. It’s only for short calls. No hole was dug. Kind of yucky in there, but there is a board to stand on.

Kids play in a playground provided by Save the Children. There are also football pitches.

I mapped this school. No desks, just benches.

Your standard white savior photo. This was in front of a very well-built permanent school.