The Chronicles of Nathan

Peace Corps adventures in Uganda, March 2006 - May 2008

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Another Shift

So after I was sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer after training last year in May, I was first placed in Kabale district in the far southwest corner of uganda to work with a Catholic health center, then after 2 months of frustration I managed to get switched to another organization, the one I'm currently working with, and I changed locations to a fishing village on Lake Albert (after a transition phase in Kampala), where I built my mud house, latrine, etc. That was around last August and I spent a lot of time in the village until about January or February of this year whenI've been going back and forth between Kampala, the capitol, and my village on Lake Albert, doing various things at the organization's office in Kampala, the longest stint being about 3 months when I was working on the ferry project mentioned in a previous blog entry (which the contract for fell through and so the ferry is currently still sitting where it was built, now with grass growing up around it). I tried to get small things going in the village when I was there and worked on laying the groundwork, getting community support, and preparing to implement a big community health project, which is the reason the org requested a Peace Corps Volunteer in the first place. That project never came to fruition. Now over the last months the potential for security risks have increased around Lake Albert due to factors such as increasing activity surrounding oil exploration in the area along the lake and border tension with the DRC that have caused a couple incidents on a different part of the lake. Since priority is placed on volunteer safety, it was decided that I should relocate away from that area, even though I never felt at risk and by all likelyhood would have probably been just fine there. So I've been away from my village for a couple months now, mostly in Kampala. I'm now moving to a different fishing village, this one in adifferent part of the country, on one of the large islands in LakeVictoria, to the south of Kampala. Lake Victoria is the largest lake in Africa and the second largest in the world, is shared by Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and has many islands and supports a big fish trade. I have visited the village where I will move to and found a place to live there, sort of a wooden shack, that needs a little work to meet Peace Corps minimum standards but should do the job okay. Today I'm moving out the island, a 3 hour ferry ride from the mainland, to start getting to know the community and make new friends there and see what projects I can get going there. What I'll be doing there somewhat depends on the funding the organization puts toward any projects there. They don't currently do any work in that area, so we'll see what happens with this next phase in my peace corps experience.