1 Year In

This week I will have been in Uganda for a year, which means I have about 14 or so months of my Peace Corps service remaining. So what do I think of the experience so far?
I'm reminded of the wisdom that my friend Jen passed on one time; There's a difference between having a good time and having a good experience. I've had good times, and bad times, and in-between times, but definitely the experience has been one (or many) that I value very much. But lately for some of us in my training group, I have noticed that there has been something of a shift in focus and perspective. A subtle shift maybe, that is hard to truly convey in writing. It is a shift from the experience of living and working with the people here, to the people themselves. Sometimes the weight of that can be crushing, crippling, despairing. It's not that people live pitiful lives of depression...its...what?...I can't really communicate it very well yet, but I think it has to do with injustice, unfairness, ignorance (by us westerners and by a lack of education opportunity here) and all those other related things that are tossed around in discussions, and the fact that there is no difference between me and anyone here except that I can take for granted all the things my friends here will spend thier lives struggling for. I should say at this point that there is a great variance in how people live here among different parts of the country and among people with differing resources available to them.

Last week one morning as I made oatmeal for breakfast, squatting on the ground over my kerosene burner, I noticed some men walk on the path in back of my house carrying hoes and a shovel. I thought it a bit unusual as it's women who carry those tools on that path to get some dirt for mudding houses. After I finished breakfast and as I went back outside to brush my teeth, I saw that there were about ten men, gathered about 20 yards in back of my house where there is a small hill with two bushy trees where a few graves of victims of a cholera outbreak last year are located. Two of the men were hacking at the ground with the heavy hoes. I went over, greeted the group in Swahili, they quietly greeted me in response. I watched the two men struggle to break up the hard sun-baked earth in two holes, each about 2ft by 4ft. One of them standing next to me told me in Swahili that two children had died the night before and they were digging graves for them. I responded in Swahili that I was very sorry.
I spent most of the day helping Rubanga, Bosmick, and Jacob to develop their project plan and proposal for a video system that they want to get in order to hold entertainment and educational events in the village as fundraisers for community projects, but during the day I noticed that the carpenter in the village was making a couple small, simple wooden caskets. When I returned home in the afternoon, I saw that the graves were freshly filled in and each had a small wooden cross marking them; the only lonely evidence of the burial services that had taken place. From the information that Rubanga (my counterpart and friend) and I have gathered, about 60 people have died in our village of 2600 in the last six months. About 36 of them children under 5 years. Most died from malaria, diarrhea, or problems at birth.
I might have reflected on the bright smiling faces of children filled with happy laughter that have succombed to the emptiness of death, on the value of innocent lives destroyed, on what hope is for the future, but instead I detached myself enough to continue my daily routine; to not give in to the reality that I am nearly powerless to do anything substatial compared to the monsters faced; to continue doing the little, slow work that I can do, which is like trying to divert a raging river by throwing a pebble in its path.

And so I continue having good times and bad times and in-between times, and having a "good" experience.