When I left Uganda back on December 10, I was definitely looking forward to a break. The frustrations from dealing with a lack of infrastructure, trying to make progress in a society where development often barely inches along, and being so far from home had accumulated over my first 4 months in the country, and I was ready for some time off. The vacation gave me some good time to reflect on my first few months in the country and to think about what I want to accomplish in the upcoming months. As I now look forward to my return, I feel recharged and ready for classes and work to resume.
As I reflect on the past five weeks, I feel like I was able to make some good progress on a few of my projects while also spending some quality time with friends and family. However, before I get into that, there is one other item I should probably cover first…
I was originally scheduled to fly back to Uganda on January 5. However, during my last week of final exams in December, I found out that the next semester wouldn’t be starting until early February. I decided to prolong my stay in the States by a couple weeks, but I opted to not share that information with anyone other than my parents. I kept the flight change a secret because I saw a perfect opportunity to use it in the coordination of a surprise for Tracy. So, with a little help from her family and my parents, I faked leaving on January 5 (I know, a little cruel, but the ends justified the means). Two days later, with a little more help from family and some friends (thank you again, Matt Schutt & Carole Custer!), I surprised Tracy with a scheme that involved having Schutt pick her up from school, chauffeur her around Ames, and ultimately bring her to the Campanile where I surprised her, with ring in hand (the full story is a little more complex; shoot me an email if you’d like all of the details). Thankfully, that was enough for her to forgive me for pretending to leave the country, and she said yes! So, I am now returning to Uganda as an engaged man!
That, obviously, was the highlight of my return home. However, I did manage to make some progress on a few other projects. I am trying to bring together a few Rotary clubs to start a mosquito nets project for the Kamuli schools that I visited back in August, and I spent a good amount of time with meetings, presentations, and putting together proposals for that project. Beyond that, I was able to visit Tracy’s classroom a couple times and talk to her students about life in Uganda and their pen pals in Kamuli. I also did some work on my thesis research and took care of some of the boring things that had to get done while I was in the country (taxes, doctor’s appointments, dentist, background checks for teaching, etc.). I was able to see many friends at the Jorgensen-Connolly wedding and have a lot of fun at family Christmas get-togethers. And my mom managed to get me to re-gain any weight that I had lost while in Africa, and then some. Overall, it was a fantastic trip home!
Now I head back to work in Uganda. I’ll have a couple weeks before classes technically start (and probably a couple more weeks after that before professors actually start teaching) that I’ll use for catching up on research and re-adjusting to life in Uganda. I’ve got a lot to cover, and I know that my 5 months are going to fly by, so I better get started right away!
Anyway, I’ll end there with my vacation update. I still have five hours before my flight leaves for Amsterdam, so maybe I’ll put together another post or two about some fun stories that I didn’t get around to covering in December.
Cheers!
Chris
Returning to the car after the big surprise. I had been standing outside for 30 minutes at this point and could no longer feel fingers or toes...still happy though! :)
I flew out of Eppley Airfield in Omaha at 6:45 am today, so I had my parents drop me off the night before and slept in the airport. Here's my makeshift bed that was good for nearly 5 hours of sleep.
3 comments:
Hi, Chris-
Glad to hear you made it back to Kampla ok. Sounds like you had a looooog trip.
Congratulations once again on your engagement. We wish you and Traci every happiness.
Keep up the blogging-we look forward to each new entry.
Charles and Mary Sukup
Hi. Just saw your blog. We tried to set up a pen pal program between some students in rural Kamuli and our church kids in Minnesota, as well as between some Kamuli teachers and the youth teachers at church, but it didn't work out. I think somebody made off with the stamps and envelopes we gave to the Kamuli teachers. And one batch of letters from the students were in an envelope that never reached us. The email correspondence, which was encouraged for the teachers because it is cheaper than stamps, didn't work out because of no response from the Ugandan teachers. It is hard for them to get to an internet cafe. So it goes. All hurdles we don't appreciate here.
We are currently trying to get in touch with some people at the Royal College of Kamuli, so if you get back there and can help me, please contact me. We haven't heard from them in over 2 weeks. There must be a problem. Thanks.
I just called Uganda and found out that the problem was lack of electricity in Kamuli, hence no internet. I can't help but wonder how the cell phones work when the electricity is out. How do the towers get power?
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