Post Industrial Technology

• This weekend we went rafting on the Nile, which was one of the most fun things I've ever done. All of the ISSLP students in Uganda and two Kellogg interns came down to Jinja for the weekend and we rafted down twenty miles of the Nile. On our first big rapid (class 5) our boat flipped which was awesome but somewhere in the wash cycle that followed I dislocated my shoulder . Oops. It actually wasn't too bad until we flipped again on the last rapid which, I kid you not, is just called "The Bad Place."
  
• I learned a new adjective this week. There's good job and bad job but apparently here they also have HIV job. that seems mildly tasteless.
• Some of the prostitutes I teach have told me they want me to find them Mzungu husbands and wives. They decided they'd just start with pen pals though and then try to woo people over time. So if anyone's looking for a pen pal who's secretly trying to get you into bed let me know. As a side note there's also a teacher at my school looking for one too. She's 40 and married so I think that one's a little safer though maybe not as funny.
• It turns out that I was wrong in my last post and we actually do have tests. But the teachers don't make them, they buy them from some program and I don't think they have much control over the test questions. And I know I wasn't consulted about the material. The grades on the test are also irrelevant because the students don't get term grades. So yeah, they have tests here they're just pointless. But hey it gives the teachers a few days off to sit around and not teach anything. Why teach when you can test?
• Because of the exams this week I have no classes to teach. So they have me sit in the class and proctor the exams (while they read the newspaper outside). It's actually pretty fun catching cheaters. And these kids are terrible at cheating (probably because the teachers here don't really care if they cheat) so I don't really have to work too hard. Mostly I just read more books.
• Last night we had a going away party for one of the two priests who lives in the house. But they didn't really have anything planned except to eat and to serve a ton of beer and waragi (gin). So needless to say we all got drunk with the entire religious community of the parish of Bugembe. Have you ever seen 50 drunk nuns brothers and priests dancing to Abba? Because it is a sight to see. There's a video don't worry. And when I say drunk I mean really drunk. It's almost noon and one of the priests is still snoring next to me. The normal wake up time for priests around here is 6 A.M.
• I found another excellent example of Ugandan journalism in a review of Iron Man 2. Here's the description they gave: "The Iron Man is a science fiction story about the intersection of man and post industrial technology. The central character is an average Japanese office worker who is transformed after implanting pieces of scrap metal into his body. As he evolves into a strange hybrid of man and machine he also develops a connection with another of his kind: the metal fetishist, who has been undergoing a similar conversion. The two then engage in a violent, destructive battle through the streets of Tokyo." Does anyone know what a metal fetishist is?