a placement
This morning I woke up feeling horrible… but now that I’m sitting here drinking cold mineral water and eating a banana and watermelon I am feeling increasingly better. Casey and I are sitting in our favourite cafe, which is currently blasting christian rock, a far cry from the Lil’ Wayne last night.
As already mentioned, Casey and I have a placement with TASO (The AIDS Support Organization) here in Gulu. We took a boda to the Gulu headquarters yesterday around 12. The Human Relations rep was in a meeting so we were told to come back around 2-2:30. Previously to coming to Uganda, I was told of a Canadian organization, CARE, that has done extensive work in Uganda and East Africa. We had a few hours before heading back to TASO so we went to CARE to ask if they needed volunteers. We were met with kindness (as always is the case here) but were turned away for volunteer work. Apparently the head office is the one who hires the volunteers. It’s funny how hard it is to volunteer your time. Even back home I had a difficult time finding volunteer work. That’s part of the reason Casey and I decided not to go with any one organization. When we were looking for different opportunities, it seemed there was a lot of red tape and bureaucracy. We felt that it was all unnecessary, and decided to go around it and pay our own way here. It may seem risky, what if we aren’t allowed to volunteer anywhere? A positive aspect is that we aren’t tied down to one organization and we haven’t signed any contracts.
Going back to yesterday, at 2:30, after a painful skype conversation with my mother (due to the lack of a strong internet signal) we went back to TASO and had a meeting with HR. Caesar was his name and he told is that it was a very good time for us to have a placement with TASO, whatever that means. He gave us an arbitrary price for the ‘international student placement fee,’ $300 USD each, that works out to roughly 841,487.54 UGX. It’s a bit steep but how can we turn down an opportunity like this? We’ll be able to go to the small communities around Gulu and work directly with the people. It’s all very exciting if it works out!
After the good news I felt much better. When CARE turned us down I was slightly discouraged, as I heard so much about them. What’s better about TASO is that it was developed in Uganda by Ugandans. Apparently TASO has affiliations with American Universities. Students can obtain a research placement with TASO and travel to Gulu to work on their theses. Caesar explained that TASO encourages placements so individuals from around the world can see the work they are doing for communities affected by HIV/AIDS.
Last night we walked to Cedars, a Lebanese restaurant, with excellent humus. I got the chicken shawarma which came, interestingly enough, with fries. The fries were delicious, nonetheless. It was an early night and I was in bed watching the final episode in season one of Dexter by 9pm.
