mbale lady ladia ooohoooooh

so, i'm in mbale right now, a city in the eastern part of uganda. this is about an hour south of my future site (which i can't name for security purposes). i do have a new address though, which i can name!

rishi desai
p.o.box 400
kumi, uganda

and that'll get right to my site.

the site is sweet. according to peace corps policy, i'm not allowed to write any funny anecdotes that might in any way be critical of ugandan culture, so i can't really talk about the quirky things that strangers say to me. this sucks, but at the same time, it makes sense. i think ugandans have a great sense of humor though, so the policy is kind of lame.

i joined the local soccer team i think. i tried to tell my counterpart that i'm not very good, but he didn't seem to think that would be an issue.

my counterpart is good people. we get along well, and he laughs at all of my jokes. or maybe we get along well because he laughs at all my jokes.

the college i'm going to work at kicks ass. when i had asked my trainers to tell me about the Teso region, specifically if they had mountains or not, they told me that it's flat, and there's a bunch of rocks. i was pretty disappointed, expecting a wasteland. instead, by rocks, they didn't mean a few small rocks, or even a few small boulders, they meant beginning-of-lion-king-hold-simba-up-to-the-light type rocks. massive rock piles that you can scale. at the top of these you can see for miles. it's gorgeous. also, out east there's a few mountains, the king of which is the towering mount elgon. i'm going to try to climb it this winter.

i added amy's blog to the list on the right (http://www.amy-olson.blogspot.com/) check all of them out, and leave them comments. in fact, if you want to send them letters in stead of me, i won't take offense. they're all good people. mostly.

if you get a letter from me, let me know. i'm not sure if the ones i'm sending are actually going through. at the same time, i don't want to take away from the surprise of getting mail, so i don't want to ask anyone specifically.

if you want to call me, call me in the afternoon wherever you live. except ben, you need to figure something else out.

okay, i've gotta peace out. thanks for the comments, and i'll try and post again soon.

-rishi