This past week has been my busiest since I’ve been in country. I’ve been waking up at 6 to try and squeeze in a work out before spending the better half of the day at the college (on average from 8-6 every day). My students have been phenomenal. We managed to paint, grid, and draw all 8 pictures on the mural sites in 3 days. I thought drawing the pictures would take us all weekend and part of Monday to finish…my students finished on Thursday! When I told them to break for lunch, they told me they were going to finish before eating. I was shocked; I’ve never gotten that sort of response from anyone here! In my experience, they try and find any excuse they can to get out of working. It really made me realize how pumped my students are about this project. Joan, one of the second year girls in my girls club, came up to me and said how proud she was to be involved in the project and how it was going to do amazing things for the community by spreading educational messages. This whole week I have been busting with pride. I can’t stop smiling! This magnificent high I’ve been riding is still around, and I ‘m freaking loving it. To feel this good about work for this long is a foreign concept for me, but I really hope it continues to last. My community is coming alive and I can’t wait to see how they interact with the 35+ Peace Corps volunteers that are coming down my way next weekend to help us paint.
Now for the downside…getting all the work done on Thursday meant I really didn’t have much to do over the weekend. I decided I’d take Friday off and have a “me day.” Bad idea. Laziness here is like this terrible black hole. It sucks you in without warning and before you know it you’ve watched 8 episodes of Freaks and Geeks, had 5 cups of hot chocolate, and devoured an entire 2.5 serving pasta meal. Did I just confess to that? Oops. But it’s true. And after the awesome productive week I had I felt so disgusted with myself after Friday. And guilty. I felt like such a waste of a human being and I really didn’t like it. I didn’t leave my house and I don’t even think I changed out of my pajamas all day. I guess days like that are good every once in a while, but they’re also dangerous. It’s terrifyingly easy to slip into that mindset of “just one more episode…” and the next thing you know it’s 8:00 at night and you haven’t done a single productive thing all day.
I’m definitely going to make up for it this week, though. Before Friday I have to slash my yard, clear the walk ways, clean the latrine, empty out and clean the neighboring house, clean my house, arrange to have 20 mattresses delivered, teach 7 lessons at the college, pay for and pick up the 2 goats we’ll be roasting at the celebration on Sunday, make sure the football pitch is ready for the tournament, sensitize my kids about proper behavior around visitors (ie, not begging for money or calling them mazungu), and have a meal ready for the 24 people staying at my house by the time they all get here Friday evening. Just another week in Uganda!
Wish me luck! Completed mural pictures to come soon!
Love y’all,
Ash
Hola: me parece muy interesante las labores que desarrolla como miembro de los Cuerpos de Paz, especialmente en el sector educativo.
ReplyDeleteHi, I have been visiting your blog. ¡Congratulations for your work! I invite you to visit my blog about literature, philosophy and films:
http://alvarogomezcastro.over-blog.es
Greetings from Santa Marta, Colombia
Congrats on getting all of that work done for your project, that's awesome! :)
ReplyDeleteAnd don't judge yourself too much for taking a lazy day...those days are necessary once in awhile. Nothing bad about enjoying self-created Freaks and Geeks (!!) marathon with some delicious food. Plus..Jason Segel! <3 Plus, you might not have liked realizing that you weren't productive that particular day, but seems like you used that day of relaxation to be your motivation to get a lot done afterward.
Hope everything goes well with your visitors! Who's coming to visit?
Hope everything is going well :)
--Jill