Remember, I've been a vegetarian for 10 years.

I just witnessed.  The beheading of a rooster.  And the running of a headless chicken.  Yes, one of the one's that I wrote a post about the other day.

 Happy rooster.

Luke killing rooster.

Rooster running with no head.

Becky teaching Ben how to pluck a rooster.

I will never be the same.


(Disclaimer: I've been eating chicken the last few years as my one source of meat.  This may change now).

 
Tomorrow is Uganda's Independence Day!

Corporate Africa? Not so much.

I've been to enough take-your-daughter-to-work-days to realize that business in Africa works differently than in America.  For instance, the girls (and their kids) for the treatment center arrive on Monday.  Yesterday we called in the teachers and found that two of the four teachers (one nursery, one adult literacy) are no longer going to able to work here.  So my supervisor, Barbra, and I drove to a nearby nursery school and asked them if they had any names of people that applied for positions there but that were not hired.  We then drove to the district office and asked the director of education for another person.  We basically just said, give us someone and trusted that they had interviewed them and would give us the best of their candidates.  So today we drove back to the nursery school.  We didn't even tell them we were coming but they had sure enough brought a woman that they thought we should hire.  So we did.  On the spot.  We also went back to the district and they are giving us a person later today.  Just like that.

I can't even imagine that working in the states.  No background check for someone working with children?  No references?  No interviews?  No discussion about salary?  No check for identification?  Just "okay, come in on Monday."

I think there are a couple reasons for this:
1.  This is Africa.  Everything is on the fly, planning is silly because things just happen.  Nobody is concerned about formalities and nobody gets sued for silly reasons.
2.  This is an NGO.  Non-government Organizations seem to have a rep for being relaxed in terms of business.  You may or may not have found that out, but sometime you will, just wait.



Anyhow, last night we went into town (which is about an 8 minute walk from where we are).  We were on a mission to buy chocolate bars.  We finally found some and we are going to teach two of the women from FH staff how to bake chocolate chip cookies!

Good Morning World.

For the first time in my life I woke up to the sound of a rooster crowing right outside my window.  I then went onto the porch to find Noel chasing a turkey out of the kitchen.  It's going to be a good day.

Day 1

I made it!  Woo hoo!

Today was the first day of my internship (my title is: Gender Based Violence and Peacekeeping Assistant).  My first task was to assemble a whole slew of data into a spreadsheet to make graphs etc.  (I know Dad, gasp now).  If you've ever been around me while I was on excel, you'll know that I hate it.  It typically ends with me cussing and throwing things.  When I need to use it at school I still have to call my Dad and ask about all the shortcuts etc.  Anyhow my 9th grade computer class kicked in today and I somehow managed to remember how to do it and produced a product that my supervisor was surprised at.  :-)

The women for the rehab do not arrive until Monday.  There will be 28 women and 30 little kids.  I'm excited!

The center I'm at runs on a generator so electricity (and thus internet) is sketchy.  I will try to update this often but there are certainly no guarantees.  That was ironic, as I typed the word guarantees we lost power.



PS.  It's got to be 100 degrees here!

So close!

Flew into Pader, which was awesome as it's not an airport but rather a strip of dirt in the middle of some fields.  Then went to the FH office in Pader at around 9:30.

I then learned that when field staff says you will be going to Kitgum shortly they do not mean that.  And when they say they will call your ride, they won't unless you beg them.  And that when they say the ride will be here at noon, it won't.  And when they say the car is only 30 minutes away, it's really 2 hours.  And that when the ride does come, the driver will want to do some business while he's here.

Hopefully getting to Kitgum tonight - rumor is I might be leaving between 4 and 5.  The staff that I'm with here is great, they're all increadibly nice (this is not me complaining about them, just laughing at the situation).  TIA (this is Africa).

At Last

Leaving for Kitgum this morning!