What Would You do if Your Pit Latrine Collapsed?

            I have been haunted this whole week by a story about a Peace Corps volunteer who fell into a pit latrine after it collapsed.  I am aware that this story could be an urban legend, but I also know that it’s a possibility – pit latrines do collapse.  I do not consider myself to be very high maintenance in Uganda; I can handle the bugs, rats, snakes (sort of), dirt and bucket baths.  However, if I fall 30 feet into a pile of poop, I will be on the first plane home.  Apparently Peace Corps staff utilizes the “three jump test” in the pit latrine during site checks; so hopefully I should be okay. 

            I have officially been in Uganda for a month!  I saw my first snake walking to school on Wednesday, and I nearly had a heart attack.  As soon as I saw it, I screamed and leapt about five feet backwards.  A few Ugandan men saw, and they could not stop laughing.  They went up to me saying, “Madame, madame, it is dead” and then continued to crack up.  I took a closer look and realized that it had been chopped up.  (Ugandans, like me, are terrified of snakes and will chop them up if they see any).  I was a touch embarrassed, but I laughed, said thanks and walked away.  I could tell they were talking and laughing about me because I could hear them say something about the scared mzungu in Luganda as I was walking away.  Oh well!  I don’t like snakes…

            This week went by fast because we were at the Coordinating Center (CC) for three of the days.  It’s always nice to get out of the training center for a little break and change of scenery.  On Friday we had to give a two-hour workshop for teachers on the importance of learning aids.  We were told that 40 primary school teachers were invited, but since this is Africa, we were a little skeptical as to how many of those would actually show up.  Well, surprisingly enough, 32 teachers showed up and it was a huge success!  We started the workshop by introducing ourselves/explaining Peace Corps and gave a little shpeal on the importance of learning aids.  We designed the workshop to have three stations: math, science and literature.  The teachers split up and then rotated every twenty minutes.  Audrey, Bethany and I were in charge of the math station and we had prepared various learning aids to show.  We made a couple of simple posters targeted at lower level math (numbers with pictures, easy fractions, etc) and we brought in bottle caps to show how they could be used as a learning aid to add and subtract.  We also made a math bingo – we had numbers on the bingo cards and then we would say simple math equations that they had to figure out.  The teachers had never heard of bingo before, but they played and loved it!  We explained how it was a great way for students to practice mental math.  The teachers agreed because even some of them had trouble mentally figuring out the problems like 17 + 5 while playing.  We didn’t show math flip cup because the workshop was mainly for P1 and P2 teachers – we thought younger kids would have a tough time flipping the cup.  The science and literature stations also came up with some pretty great learning aids that the teachers also loved.  At the end of the workshop we raffled off the learning aids by randomly selecting names from the attendance list because so many teachers requested to keep our learning aids.  So the workshop went really well, and we were all pretty happy – especially after hearing that other group’s workshop wasn’t as successful and the attendance wasn’t nearly as high. 

            Tuesday was International Women’s Day, so it was a public holiday.  We, however, still had training.  We had a training session on gender roles in Uganda since Uganda is a patriarchal society.  (For instance, women are expected to kneel to men!!).  We started the session by having the men in our group pretend to be women and the women pretended to be men for five minutes.  It was great, we made them get our water, kneel, “sit like a lady” and basically just bossed them around.  Naturally, I was great at this game.  We obviously took it to a bit of an extreme, but I think the guys got the idea of what it feels like to be a woman in Uganda.  Funny enough, later that night, Dan and I had a discussion about women’s rights.  He asked me how I felt about it being women’s day, and I jokingly said, “It’s great, but I think every day should be women’s day.”  He looked at me with the most confused face and said, “Why? Men are superior to women, so women should not have more days then men.”  Now it took a lot in me to bite my tongue and not completely lash out at him.  However, I talked with him about how in America men and women are seen more as equals.  He seriously could not comprehend this, and he didn’t believe me when I told him that my mom actually wears the pants in the family.  He also thought it was shocking that a woman can make the first move and ask out a guy because in Uganda, the woman would be seen as a prostitute.  We talked for about an hour with him telling me how it is Uganda, and I telling him about how it is in America.  It was actually really interesting and I think we both learned a lot, even though neither of our views actually changed. 
             Today, I was cutting up some fresh mango in the kitchen, and Dan made fun of how poorly I was cutting it up.  He told me that he hopes I marry a Ugandan because then I will be forced to be better in the kitchen.  HA!  Keep in mind though, not all Ugandans have this same point of view - just some are more traditional than others, especially in the villages.  There are also people who believe that men and women are equal, it just all depends on who you talk to.   

             That’s all I have for now.  Weraba!  (That’s goodbye in Lugwere).