I feel like I am at the African version of Burning Man…there is a circumcision for two neighbors coming up on Saturday, and the music has been blasting from their boom box for three nights in a row. It is now 6:45 in the morning, and it is still going. I don’t know how to describe the music, but I can tell you that after three nights of it I am going a little crazy! Ok, so imagine a big cauldron filled with the tinny sound of a poorly recorded Grateful Dead bootleg. Stir in the repetition of trance music. Mix thoroughly with a lot of very fast drums and vocals. Drop a dash of Afro-Caribbean flavoring in the pot. Pour in a bit of really simplistic synthesizer. And play that in your head all night for three nights in a row! That’s a recipe for temporary insanity! I think this is one of those situations where, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! Tonight I think I will be going tribal. Sorry my Jewish friends, that’s not what I mean...

Favorite moments since I last wrote…

1. About 30 students and staff from FDNC went out to the remote village of Buyobo to celebrate the construction of a pump for drinking water. After introductions and a tour of the village, there was a ceremony to honor the donor, and all of the visitors. A group of singers came up and performed several songs in both Lugisu and English. All of the singers were women, except for one old man. He was wearing an old, beat up cowboy hat rolled up on the sides in Burning Man style (I’ve yet to see anyone wearing anything like this in Uganda) walked with a stick for a cane, and had very thick glasses on. He looked somewhat out of place, in a very endearing way. He wasn’t singing though, just clapping along with the singing. Then, out of nowhere, he started this yodel like noise. We were all trying not to laugh, but it caught us all totally off guard! I have video of it, and when he does it, the camera pans from him over to me and I am turned to the woman next to me trying to restrain myself! I came home that night, and tried to imitate it, and everyone went hysterical. So now, everywhere I go, people make requests for the yodel. I am planning to go back to that village to learn some technique from this character!

2. The marching band played for a wedding recently, and at night after the reception, the CEO decided to have the band march through the town…a little free marketing. We walked straight from the reception to the main street of Mbale Town. The principal and I were in the front of the procession standing in the pickup truck, dancing, clapping and hollering, the band was behind us, and following the band was the bus. We had about 30 kids running next to us on the sidewalk following along and backed up traffic behind us as far as I could see. I didn’t hear a single horn of complaint! People would go around us in their cars when there was space, and they were smiling and clapping for us! The wedding, reception, and impromptu performance made for a great day all around.

3. I discovered that nobody here in Mbale seems to have ever heard beat box. One afternoon I wandered into Mai’s house absentmindedly busting out some beats, and everyone looked at me cross-eyed. So a few nights later, when I was saying good night after dinner, Mai (67 year old Ugandan woman mind you) tried to do some beats, and I almost fell over laughing. So I decided to get a free style beat box jam session complete with traditional drums going with Mai and the rest of the family. If I could only post video on my blog!

Difficult moments….

1. Lona, the 36 year old daughter of Mai (my host mother) is schizophrenic. When I first got here, I think she was on her medication, so I didn’t know anything about it. But for the last five days or so, she has been sitting in the living room with her head in her hands, mumbling to herself. There is no way to get her in a car, so Mai had to go to the hospital to get some medication for her. Initially, they wouldn’t give her any without Lona there, but when the medical students stepped out of the room, the assistant gave Mai five bottles on the sly. The next day, we had to hold her down in the kitchen while Richard, the Community Health Worker from the school, injected the medication in her hind section. She’s a fairly large woman, so we had about six men there to make sure she didn’t hurt anyone. She was yelling and cursing throughout and afterwards. I had never done anything like this before. I am going to do the best I can to help Mai manage Lona’s illness while I am here, whether that means buying her drugs, or helping her to stay on her medication….whatever it takes.

Power has returned to a more predictable schedule, so I am finding that I have enough juice to watch movies in the evenings, as well as write on my laptop. So let me begin with some of the work I have been doing these past few weeks. There is a donor in the UK who learned about FDNC when Sam the CEO took the brass band to England. Phil, the donor, read about it in a newspaper, and decided to contact Sam. Since this initial contact, he has been incredibly generous to the organization. Last weekend I went to a ceremony held in the remote village of Buyobo (where I met yodel man), where Phil paid to have a bore hole drilled to supply clean water. He has arranged for many other donations as well, from his own funds, as well as from people around him. The big news is that Phil is going to attempt to create the first youth orchestra in Uganda, and possibly all of East Africa or maybe even all of Africa (I need to do some research online) here at the FDNC Vocational School. Phil was involved in one of the best youth orchestras in the world as a teenager, and is very passionate about music. He trusts Sam, and I think he believes that Sam and the organization could make it happen. So Phil is beginning the process of raising funds in the UK. From everything I can see, Phil is someone who gets things done. So how do I fit into this equation?

After being here for a month, I started naturally gravitating towards work at the school. I live in the school compound, the school has tremendous potential but needs a lot of work, and I know education. When I met Phil last week and he proposed the orchestra plan, I felt that it was even more important to ensure that the school was running efficiently so that it would be ready for such an enormous undertaking. So the principal and I have been working side by side to structure and organize everything that is happening here at the school. First, I decided to tackle finances. There was no reliable system for accounting, so I’ve rigged up something in Excel that will allow us to keep careful track of income and expenditure until we can get proper accounting software. I’m also working on marketing and pricing for the band and the traditional dance troupe, streamlining registration and enrollment, getting the student store running properly, meeting with individual teachers to assess needs, etc. – basic management stuff. I’ve also been either writing, rewriting or proofreading grant proposals, and providing consultation to the CEO about a wide range of issues relating to the organization. I am also excited about a project with an organization called Global Goods Partners, which funds and helps market and sell the art of local artisans in developing countries. We have an artist in mind who we would like to hire as a consultant for a new Art and Design Program here at the school. Pison’s work is beautiful – different types of wall-hangings, paintings, and cards made out of recycled local materials. I am currently editing a final proposal for Global Goods, and I think we have a good shot of getting the award.

Now that Phil (donor from UK) and I have met, I will also be acting as his direct liaison with the organization. I think he feels reassured that there is a westerner here that he can communicate with to make sure things are being done properly. If the youth orchestra thing happens, this is going to be huge. This would be a giant step for the students, the organization, and all of Uganda for that matter. We will almost certainly have a documentary film crew come in and record the entire process. This could potentially be an international story. I’ll keep everyone posted on how things develop with this!

I also want to get involved with some of FDNC’s other programs that do outreach in remote villages, but I can’t spread myself too thin. For now, I will focus on the school. There are other projects here that I want to work on as well. The idea I came up with a week or so ago and I am most excited about is a large mural to be done on one of the school’s buildings, like many of the ones I have seen in the Mission District of San Francisco. As far as everyone I have talked to knows, nothing like that exists anywhere in Uganda. My friend Conso in Kampala has agreed to donate her time and skills to do this piece in November, so we just need to raise the $$$ for the paint, which will probably come to around $200 US.

For the most part, I create my own schedule. In my free time, I’ve been doing different things. This week I finished the first two complete songs (music and lyrics) I have ever written alone. The first is called Goodbye, and the second, Taco in St. Petersburg. Random title I know, but it makes sense once you read the lyrics. Considering my beginner skill level on the guitar, I am pretty pleased. It’s frustrating at times, because I can hear things in my head or I can sing them, but I don’t have the skills on the guitar yet. Such is life. Very happy that I bought a voice recorder for my iPod so I can record stuff as I am developing a song. I go through phases…sometimes I will play for two or three hours a day for four or five days, and then I won’t play at all for a couple of days. I want to try and write enough songs to do a short album when I come back to the States. Go to a cheap recording studio and cut a CD for fun. I think I would like to open for another guitarist who has his or her own music, in an intimate performance for friends. We’ll see. I bought an inexpensive Chinese motorcycle three weeks ago in order to get back and forth between town and the village, so sometimes in the evenings before it gets dark I will take it out and just ride, or explore. (Mom, no cause for alarm – I have a good helmet, drive carefully, and don’t drive at night unless I am followed, and little did you know, I rented motorcycles in SE Asia every summer, so I promise I will come back fully intact!) I haven’t been reading as much as I have during other travels, mostly because I am working, but I am reading Kite Runner right now. Some days I take my camera out and just wander and shoot different things…mostly people. Moses (Mai’s 21 year old quasi adopted son) and I are memorizing the map of Africa right now – our goal is to do the entire world before I leave. I also found a video store in town which has bootlegged DVDs from UAE or China or somewhere, so I’ve been watching a fair amount of movies on my laptop. The selection and quality is lacking as you would imagine. Sometimes I go for walks around the village, and chat in broken English with people I meet, and try and pick up a few new words of Lugisu each time. There are rainbows here about 3 or 4 times a week on average….I learned the Lugisu word yesterday for rainbow…Lufutu. On the weekends, I sometimes go to a nice hotel in town that has a swimming pool, and relax there. Much of the time, I just spend time with Mai and her family, and sit and talk, tell stories, and laugh a lot about the day’s events, or about her encounters with Americans in her 2 month trip to the US. The other day I was trying to explain the concept of Santa Claus to her…that was an entertaining discussion! I am slowly meeting other mazungus as well, and there is a guy from SF named Jacob that is living in Mbale. Everyone I have met so far has been interesting, and very easy going. I think that is required to survive here!

I can definitely say that this is really proving to be the Peace Corp-like experience that I might have had in my twenties if I had been a little wiser then. But I am glad it is happening now. There are many reasons why, but I think the most important is that I have so much more to offer now in terms of experience than I would have had just out of college. I truly believe I can leave this organization significantly better off when I am gone, just as Roman and many other people did before me.

I have included a picture of the kids that run around and play outside my house. Lona’s daughter Stella, who is as full of life as any child I have ever met, is front and center. I play with her just about every day. The other pic is of Mai and yours truly at the wedding reception.

I’m really enjoying my time here. Every now and then I have those “What the hell am I doing in this village in Mbale, Uganda, Africa?” moments, but I think if I wasn’t having those at all, this experience probably wouldn’t really be what it is, and I might be a little crazy as well. I mean crazier than my normal everyday crazy! But I am definitely missing the energy of many people at home. I wish that some of you could be here with me for this experience. Thank you for reading and sharing this time with me.

Much love,
Papa Justin Uncle Justin (Stella’s name for me)