Director's Meeting / A Weekend in Jinja

First, let me clarify my last blog post.  Boredom comes and goes on a daily/weekly basis in the Peace Corps.  It just happened that the whole month of October was a slow work month and I had a lot of free time.  I was not depressed or lonely – in fact, I hung out with the Arua PCVs last month more often than usual.  And I actually enjoy reading for several hours at time (now that I have a Kindle).  I still have many goals set for myself regarding public health work, camps, and vacations – just not during October 2012.  However, we are now in November and life is getting busy!

Last week I met with Stevie and Aditi to discuss the direction of the next Girl Tech camp.  We rode a matatu from Kampala to Jinja and talked the whole way – everything from grant writing to t-shirt design.  Stevie also copied all of her computer documents (180 of them) onto our hard drives – Aditi and I will eventually look through all of it and divide the responsibilities.  For now, it was nice just have a starting point: writing the grant.  The next grant review is in February, so we have some time to complete the proposal and budget.

The three of us also went to the Wayange Secondary School for Girls and met with the Head Mistress, Deborah.  Unfortunately we decided to walk to the school (which is at the top of a very steep hill) and it started pouring rain as soon as we left that morning.  The dirt path turned into mud and we were completely drenched when we sat down in Deborah’s office.  Not the way I wanted introductions to go, but she was very understanding and gave us her entire morning to discuss having Girl Tech at her school again.  (The meeting went very well and the location is set with a tentative date of early May 2013!)

I walked away from last weekend with a renewed sense of purpose in the Peace Corps.  Maybe it’s because I have real responsibilities for work now; maybe it’s because this project will let me use my strengths and skills (i.e. organization and planning); maybe it’s because I feel like I have a serious full-time job again; maybe it’s because this project will actually come to fruition instead of being ignored or denied.

Coming from such a successful meeting, I indulged in a weekend of fun in Jinja.  I stayed in a budget dorm room at the Nile River Explorer’s – it was 2 days of good friends, cheap food, and sunsets on the Nile.  I also traveled through Jinja town on my way to the Mid-Service Conference for my Peace Corps group.  I bought some more African crafts :) and ate way too much American food (coffee, salad, milkshakes, and pumpkin bread).  It was awesome.