Send my Teacher to School Project

Hi there everybody. I am going to try and run a bit of a fundraiser for a very good friend of mine. My Runyankore teacher, Richard, is trying to raise funds to get his master's degree. I agreed to see if I can get people to contribute $10 or maybe $20 to this endeavour. He was absolutely essential in helping me during my time in Peace Corps, first and foremost as my language instructor, which I eventually used to pass my language proficiency test at Fletcher. As well, he was a fabulous resource for me when I had questions about different things that I would experience and see that I found confusing.

Here is a little that I had Richard write about himself:

Most Ugaphilles, as Paul would call you all who have ended your Peace Corps service in Uganda probably know or remember me as 'Richard of the Runyankore Krew'. But actually, my real name is Richard Nuwagira. I am heading to school to pursue an MSC in Population and Reproductive Health (PRH) program at Makerere University in Uganda for two years. It is a new course at this prestigious University that seeks to create a cadre of well trained "value chain creators" capable of participating meaningfully in reproductive health service extension and related public health programming in the country. I could not choose a better skill and information packed course anchored in real world practicum.

He is trying to raise about USD800 in total for his fees, but every little bit helps. So if anybody can spare a little bit we will see what we can do to assist in this endeavour.

If you have any questions or would like to contribute, please drop me an email at: eitumba@yahoo.com or my other email account, which I don't really want to post online here. I can also put you in contact with Richard personally if you want to communicate with him directly.

Thanks everybody:

Ian
Co-sponsor: Paul, RPCV Uganda

Back in the States

Well, my time in Singapore is done. I came back to Oakland on Tuesday after a decidedly unpleasant flight, but it is over. I will be out here for a couple more days and then Molly and I start driving back to Boston, which I am really looking forward to. We are going to take the trans-Canadian highway, which I am told is really quite a beautiful drive.

I had a wonderful time in Singapore and I really learned a lot. I got a much different view of the region than I did when I was in the area back in 1999 and 2000. So thank you to all the people at SIIA for everything.

So not much else. I doubt there will be much posted here until I get to Boston, as I will be on the road.

Cheers

Reality of the Future?

So life here is pretty slow at the moment, and a message came through on the Fletcher Social listserv from a graduated student, along with a picture of "what he will look like in 40 years." And I thought, well, his came out ok, so why not give it a shot? If nothing else, this should help keep me safely un-married....



Me in "10 years"











Me in "20 years"











Me in "30 years"











Me in "40 years"









As you can see, I am not predicted to age well.... Hope you all are having fun. In case you want to torture yourself, the link is here.

Peace Corps and the Military

Wow, two posts in one day. I want to weigh in here on my views on the recent stuff about the military inducing people to sign up by telling the recruits that they can join the Peace Corps for the last two years of service. The fact that we are having this debate is absolutely crazy. The Peace Corps is well-respected throughout the world, and I think that it does in fact further the goals of the US government. And I think that there are certainly people in the military that would make good volunteers, but there are certain choices in life that make others not possible, and I really think that this is one of them.

While living in Uganda, I was told constantly that my entire security was based on my relationships that I built within my community, and it was most certainly true. If there was a problem and I needed to speak with the office, the first thing I needed to do was find a hill or really tall tree to climb to get a signal for my phone. Then it was a good 4-hour plus drive out to my place so long as everything went perfectly for the vehicle. This is important, since it is the situation of every volunteer. Now, we start letting active military (I am counting reserve duty as active here) serve in the Peace Corps. What will happen for people that want an excuse to harm volunteers? And when the volunteers are asked if there are any ties to the military or intelligence and they have to say "yes," what will happen? Or do we tell them to lie to their neighbors about the nature of the program? It will cast a shadow of doubt on everybody, and the end result will be volunteers being killed.

President Bush has made statements over and over through his terms in office about using the Peace Corps for this and that. We are going to send the Peace Corps to Afghanistan even though there is an active war going on because "everybody loves the Peace Corps." Or we are going to "start targeting Muslim countries with the Peace Corps to build understanding." Statements like these start to build the idea we are CIA, and making it official policy to allow people with ties to that establishment (or the military. I personally don't think any distinction will be made by people) in is insane.

I could write a lot more, but I think my basic feelings on this are pretty clear. I personally have already written my various representatives voicing my opinions on this topic. If you want to save Peace Corps, please do the same. I love the organization and do not want to see the harm come to it that this will cause.

Thanks everybody.

Here are some links on the topic:

An interview on MSNBC
From the Washington Post
There is a page on the Returned Peace Corps Volunteer website about this with links to further information

Doing the Tourist Thing

Well, so Dawn came last week and we did a whole bunch of the tourist-type things around here. But first I will address some questions/ implications that I have been getting... As for smoking the hookah, it is perfectly legal in every country of the world that I am aware of (Bhutan could be an exception to this, as I remember hearing something about them outlawing smoking in all forms, including cigarettes). So if you want, I am quite sure that you can go and find a hookah bar somewhere near you.

And then the name of the blog... If you google the word "eitumba," you will get something along the lines that it means "time of great famine," and possibly "rainy season." While both of these are accurate in their own way (rainy season is the most common use), it can also be translated as "winter," which is the use that is being implied here. My cat in Uganda was named Eitumba from the use of the term as winter.

So for Dawn's visit. I am just going to put in some pictures and then some explanations near them.
This was in Little India where we had dinner the first night she was here. The dinner was really nice and I had been telling her about the packs of Chinese tourists I had seen there last time I was in the area on tours in bicycle sidecars, and lo-and-behold, packs of them started riding past.





This is Singapore from the cable car that heads out to Sentosa Island. I had been hearing about Sentosa since I arrived as the "must go" place that has nice beaches and lots of fun stuff to do. So I was interested to finally see the place. The cable car was pretty cool, even if it only was about 3 minutes. From there, things quickly went downhill. It was really expensive (we didn't do any of the expensive stuff).

This is a fountain we found on the island. It was about 50 meters long. As far as I can tell the theme of it was "intestinal worms of the Asia region," since that is what it looked like. But as far as fountains made to look like intestinal worms, it was pretty cool. Now, a couple comments on the island... We took the cable car over, which is the expensive way (there is a bus for about $1, the cable car cost $15), but the maps they had available had none of the paths marked, only general locations of things to do (we eventually found a map with paths inclued at the bus entrance. I guess there are benefits for being cheap). There is also a very big "land luge" being built across the island, so it is blocking taking any direct paths. This was rather confusing and frustrating. But not nearly as frustrating as finding a sign that says "Merlion, this way" pointing to the left. So we follow the sign and a hundred meters later find a sign pointing for the Merlion in exactly the opposite direction, with no paths in between.

So this is the Merlion. And it is not only for some random exhibits that this problem of directions was found.... It was for everything. Eventually we found one of the busses that drives around the island and got on to go to the beach. Everybody is always talking about how beautiful the beaches are on Sentosa, but I was wary. We were not going to go swimming, but we were hungry and tired. The average temperature here hovers around 250 degrees during the day with at least 185% humidity.

And my wariness was not without foundation. Singapore is one of the world's busiest ports. And Singapore is very, very small. So I thought "I bet there are ships all over the place" and that the water is not exactly nice, especially compared with lots of other places in Southeast Asia. So my advice... if you are looking for some relaxation in the tropics on a beach, don't come to Singapore.

A day later I met this girl on the subway. I thought the shirt was pretty funny, though she had no explanation for why she wanted to kill Molly.






We also took a walk in one of the nature areas here. This has been one of the biggest surprises. There is a ton of green. I expected Singapore to be one big block of concrete, but there really are efforts being made at bringing back living things. So we heard about this "tree-top walk" where there was a suspension bridge through the trees. So we headed out. The first order of business was finding a taxi. Easy enough. We got in and told the driver where we wanted to go, and I tried to show him a map. He wanted nothing to do with it. So we are driving and driving and driving and going in circles, so I start asking him if he knows where we are going. He assures me he does as he pulls into a residential area and starts looking at his maps. Eventually he brings us to a random parking lot and tells us we are at the reservoir. We are skeptical and start talking to him about where we want to go. He eventually takes us to the entrance to the reservoir. So we get out and there is no sign of people. A bunch of buildings, but we are baffled. Dawn eventually found the security office and got photocopies of a map for us. The security officer explained that the tree-top walk is about 5km away. Ugh. So we walk. And walk. 5km in a park in the US is not so bad. Here it is awful. But we were assured that once we got to the tree-top walk we can go across it and turn back, without doing the whole loop. Well, we get to the walkway and there is a big sign that says "one way, no turning back." And the guards told us we should "report"' the woman who told us we could turn back. Anyway, after about 7km we found ourselves on the road. EXACTLY WHERE THE TAXI HAD TRIED TO DRP US OFF!!! Now one question I am really wanting to have answered about Singapore. This country is well-known for being organised and efficient. So why can't they make signs that are useful? We eventually did find some signs for the treetop walk. There were about 1 foot off the ground and in front of all the parked cars in the parking lot. But we then took the advice of a person from work and went and had some margaritas, which made it more or less all ok.

This sign seemed pretty clear, though. Don't feed corn-on-the-cob to the monkeys.


Well, so that is a brief overview of doing tourist stuff here. This whole thing is not meant to make the visit or life here seem too awful. I am just feeling a little bit sarcastic. The visit was awesome. We had a lot of fun and it was nice to see Dawn. For those who don't know Dawn, this is her. We were in Peace Corps together in Uganda and she lives about a half-mile from me in Medford, MA with Paul, also of Peace Corps and a classmate at Fletcher. So Dawn, thanks for visiting. It was a lot of fun.