Greetings everyone! Before I begin, let me thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to follow my little life here in Uganda; I really appreciate your interest!

After spending time in schools here in Uganda it has become apparent to me that teachers teach strictly using lecture and the children then spend hours upon hours memorizing what the teacher told them that day. If I were to ask ten students what a parasite was they would each tell me, “A parasite is an organism that lives in or on another organism and benefits by deriving nutrients at the host’s expense.” Their definition would be word for word from their notes and if I asked them to put in their own words most would not be able to. Children here are not taught to think critically in the least. In some ways I understand why; teachers are expected to teach over one hundred students at a time. Lecturing seems like the most logical thing to do with a classroom of this magnitude. Despite the fact that I knew students did know how to think critically about things, for some reason I expected that adults would be able to. The other day when I was painting my bedroom the neighbors would stop by in awe that I was painting; they could not believe that I knew how to paint. They assumed that I had been taught and were astonished to find out that no, in fact I had never been taught and this was my first time ever painting. They informed me that woman would never paint and that they would hire someone to do the painting because they have not been taught how to paint. The same thing occurred the other day when I invited Carol over for breakfast where I made pancakes. I have never made pancakes from scratch, but I had a recipe in the Peace Corps recipe book. Carol was flabbergasted that I had never been taught to make pancakes, but I was able to read the recipe and make perfectly delicious pancakes For me, as I am sure many Americans, we see something once and we try it. We may research it first, but a lot of times we just try and see what happens; that does not happen here in Uganda. Realizing this, I now feel that in order for development to occur the children of this country need to be taught how to think critically about things. Part of what I am hoping to do is teach teachers how to teach in a way that promotes critical thinking to large numbers of students. If anyone has any ideas that I can pass along please be sure to let me know!

A few random stories completely unrelated to the above:

I do not know if it is because I feel that I have to prove myself, I like being independent, or that I like the looks of shock on the faces of the people in my village, but I feel the need to do everything myself. As I have mentioned before, the borehole behind my house is out of use and the nearest clean water to me is the hospital about 1.5 K away. I have four twenty liter jerry cans and last week I told Carol that I would carry two of them. She laughed for a while, but humored me anyway and let me carry them about halfway until my hands turned a few different shades of red. Today Kennedy, also a student at the college I work for, went with us and I, again, told him the same thing I told Carol. I made it a bit farther than last time and then he took over for me. The whole way home neighbors were telling me how powerful I was. It makes me laugh because I see woman carrying these things on their head and I am the powerful one? The carpenter came while I was painting my bedroom today and also told me that I must have brought the power with me. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I think people here just assume that everyone from America hires people to do things for them and that we are incredibly weak human beings.

The other day Carol called me over to her house where I found her mother and five of her siblings surrounded by grasshoppers. Earlier that day Carol had went to the market and purchased bags full of grasshoppers at a moderately expensive cost; here in Uganda grasshoppers are a delicacy. At her home, Carol and her family were busy pulling the legs and wings off of the alive grasshoppers and putting them in a basket. I am sure they had assumed that I would join in with the process, but after looking at the large basket of alive grasshoppers missing their limbs and in a state of shock, I didn’t have the heart to help. As I should have guessed, later on that day Carol shows up at my door with a bowl full of at least one hundred fried grasshoppers, all looking directly at me. Here my neighbors are sharing this delicacy with me and I am completely grossed out and still feeling bad for the little fellows, but I knew I had to at least eat just one. It took me awhile to get up the courage to stick him in my mouth and once I did, I wished I hadn’t. It is not that he was bad, he was kind of like a potato chip in that he was salty and crispy, but I couldn’t swallow him. He just wouldn’t go down and the longer he was in my mouth the more disgusted I got by the thought of eating all of its parts. I explained to Carol that most people in America have never eaten an insect before and I think that helped her understand why it was so difficult for me and did not offer me another. The carpenter came over the next day and told me that he was looking for me earlier in the day because he had fried a bunch of grasshoppers he would like to share with me. Luckily I was able to explain myself before they were actually brought. Later on that night, a few other volunteers and I went dancing and on the way we saw what looked like a WWF arena. There was an area surrounded by tall pieces of sheet metal beaming with lights. We walked over to see what was going on; hoping to see WWF Uganda style, but instead we saw millions of grasshoppers swarming the lights. Once they hit the sheet metal they would slide down into barrels where they were collected by workers. After we had our fill of grasshoppers we headed over to the club. Once we sat down with our drinks we realized that we were covered in grasshoppers as well. Needless to say, I have had my fill of grasshoppers.

One day I was sitting around talking with Carol and Kennedy about random things and out of no where one of them asks me if we have t-strings in America. I had no idea what they were talking about. At first, I thought they might have meant a G-string, but thought there is no way they would be asking me this. They were getting giggly and told me that they saw people in movies wearing them on the beach and Carol imitated for me what they looked like while doing so. I laughed hysterically for awhile; the things they tell me they see in these American movies are outrageous. There is always a boy named Frank in my village who for the first week of my living here would knock on my back door and ask me if I knew a bunch of actors I have never heard of before. Everyday he would walk away disappointed that I didn’t know who he was talking about, until finally he asked me if I knew Chuck Norris and I knew who he was talking about. I even had to argue with him that Prison Break is a television show and not a movie. He told me that I was wrong and that he watches it at the theater in town. Now, when I say theater I mean a small shack in which movies and tv shows that are pirated are played. I cannot blame Frank for believing that Prison Break is a moving when it is advertised on the chalk board outside the theater as “Prison Break 13.”

And lastly, a lot of Peace Corps volunteers have a difficult time when they first get to sight. After all of the training and listening we’re ready to do things, but it is difficult to get started. While we all have job titles a lot of our job titles do not mean much and we are left to find our own work within the community. Luckily, there is plenty of work to be done, but it is difficult to get started and many people find themselves incredibly bored and wondering what they are actually doing here. For me, it has been the opposite. The other day I read a quote by Aldons Huxley in the Peace Corps newsletter that said, “ “Your time traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-- his excessive freedom. He accepts boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.” After reading this it got me thinking about boredom in general. With all of the entertainment and all the work I was doing in the states I constantly felt bored, but here, when I have no electricity and no place to go, I am never bored. I have never really enjoyed complete quiet; I am a music person, but the lack thereof has become a blessing. These past few weeks I have been forced to spend time with solely myself and I am thankful for that; it is like a constant state of meditation. This has been an opportunity for me to get to know myself and it is wonderful. How often in America do we take the opportunity to remove ourselves from the outside world and just be?

Anyway, I hope all is happy and sunny on your side of the world! I miss you all immensely!

Peace and love,

Autumn

p.s. I just read “The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint” by Brady Urdell and thought it was fabulous; just in case you were looking for a good read!