Practicum

So, due to Rachel's current situation, I am writing this entry for her.

On Sunday she moved to Kyoga for her practicum. In stark contrast to Kampala, Kyoga is very small and rural town. (So much so, in fact, that you can't really even tell that the town exists though a Google search.)

Currently, the house that she is living in is not connected to the power grid. Until today, they ran a generator for 2 hours a day, but now they are out of gas indefinitely. The lack of power doesn't bug her (she actually likes using a lamp for light), except for the inability to communicate with us here. For a couple of days (hopefully that's all) her cellphone is going to be dead until they have more gas for the generator, and until the house's connection to the power grid is fixed she will have no access to the internet. Hopefully the fact that others living in the house are hopeful that the connection to the power grid will be fixed soon is indicative that this predicament will end soon.

The whole situation in this practicum should be interesting. She and a fellow student that she was with in Kamapala (Allison) are the first U.S. students to be sent by Food for the Hungry to this location. Because of this, there have already and will continue to be some struggles. But, the food is more diverse there (she was getting really tired of matooke), and she needed to get away from the city.

They are living in a building with a couple of other people with Food for the Hungry. The building serves not only as living quarters for these workers but also as the main location for Food for the Hungry's work in the area, so it also contains offices and a school.

Already she has started in her research. Today she held a meeting with many parents of the students who attend the school to talk to them about the greatest needs in their community and how an organization might help meet those needs. She was quite apprehensive about it, as she had only an hour allotted of their time and there could have been anywhere from 30-100 parents, most of which can not read and write, and many of which speak only Luganda. She said that the meeting went well. (I don't know any more because she had only enough power left in her phone to have the quickest of conversations today).

In addition to her research, part of her job is to help Allison in teaching, and doing activities with the kids at the school. Part of their "orientation" was doing this. On the spot they were asked to give them a message for "only an hour", but ended up talking for about half an hour. They were instructed to lead the kids in playing sports, which Rach wasn't exactly excited about. But overall she's really glad to have the chance to work with the kids and is quickly falling in love with them.

Well that's about all I know about how things have been going so far in her new location. Hopefully soon she'll be able to update this herself.
-Gavin (her boyfriend)