Maize

Today I went to a far away village to harvest maize! Well, I say “far”- I think it’s about 25 miles away, but it takes 2+ hours because of the bad dirt roads. My counterpart has a farm for the clinic there. My convent owns a huge amount of land right in the area that we live, but my counterpart has the farm in this particular place, because the community there is incredibly poor. She farms there to give the local people jobs, to give the local people food, and to get food for the sisters who stay in the sick bay. I harvested maize all day, along with my counterpart, another sister, several workers we brought from the convent, and several members of the community. The village kids came to collect corn for their families- they are so cute! This might possibly be my favorite picture that I’ve taken here (I swear it’s not staged!):
They were walking out of the field with the maize that they were taking home for their families.

The people of this village live in mud houses with thatched roofs- the mud here is really great, so the houses actually stay together and keep out rain fairly well, from what I can tell. (Bugs are another matter, but that’s just how it goes. I have bugs in my house too, and I live in a palace of a convent.) One thing that is perhaps most bothersome about their living situation is that they don’t have access to clean water. They literally drink pond water. They boil it first (as everyone in this country should- even the running water is not so safe to drink without boiling), but in the end, they’re still drinking pond water. A borehole (aka water pump that pumps water from underground springs) has been tried, but the underground water in this area is just too deep- the boreholes stop working. A major way that people get clean water in Uganda is by collecting rainwater in big tanks- they put a gutter system around the tin roof of a house or building, and run it into a tank that sits beside that building. The tank usually sits on a slab of concrete so it’s raised off of the ground, and there’s a spigot low on the side of the tank. A year or two ago, my counterpart wrote a grant proposal for a building and tank, but her proposal was rejected… proposal writing is quite difficult when you’re not familiar with the way that donor funding works. (I’ve found that most people here aren’t very familiar with it.) So, I told my counterpart I would help her- there’s a specific grant I know of here that we can apply for, so I’m hoping the grant committee will also see the need and help up with getting a tank! It’ll be a long process, but I will be SO happy if it works out. My counterpart showed me one of the places where people get water, and it was even worse than I expected. Not only was it dirty, it was opaque. It was the color of coffee with creamer in it.

It’s always difficult to help people here, because they see your white skin and automatically think that you personally have thousands (or, at the very very least, hundreds) of dollars at your disposal. It is incredibly hard to convince them otherwise. People constantly ask for money. Even if you do convince them that you are not personally rich, they can never be convinced that you don’t have good connections with very rich people. (And, perhaps they are right about that one.) The definition of “rich” is also much different. If you’re reading this, you’re rich. And if you’re reading off of your own computer and with your own internet, you’re unfathomably rich. (I know at least one of you is thinking, “Well, I’m stealing my wireless right now, so it’s not really my own internet…” If you can make that statement, sorry to break it to you, but you’re still unfathomably rich, ha!) It’s also really hard as a volunteer here, because most foreigners don’t just come to volunteer- they come to volunteer plus give money to whatever they’re volunteering for. Most organizations that foreigners are working with are funding organizations. The Peace Corps is not a funding organization. If you’re in a community that has ever had another foreigner, you have to constantly explain that, while that foreigner may have come to give money, you just came to give your time and expertise. While time and expertise are perhaps better in the long run, that’s hard to explain to people who need money, now.

Anyway, with this particular community, I feel like I’m only going to be confirming their stereotypes of muzungus. I’ve been there just once, and now I’m planning to get them a water tank. But, in this case, clean drinking water is really more important to me than disproving any stereotypes. But… now I guess I can’t complain when people automatically think I’m loaded.

I've decided I'm going to be better at posting pictures, so here you go-

My counterpart and I in the field:

Me and really cute little girl from the village. The other workers were laughing at me because she was 8 years old, and they thought it was funny that I would choose to hold her and not one of the smaller kids! She was adorable, though:

The fields:

Me enjoying some roasted maize at the end of the day! My counterpart had my camera, I didn't know she was taking a picture of me right then!