1st Day in the Field/Yoga!

Work has cranked up this week as we develop new survey questions and go into the field to pre-test them. Today is quite the headache as we try to correct the miscodings in our baseline survey--it seems that the parishes and sub-counties (location identifiers, VERY important) were all entered incorrectly. Not so fun.

Yesterday, we took our new health knowledge and 6001 questions out into the poorer areas of Kampala to test them. I knew that I was living in the more posh area of the city, but I don't think I was quite prepared to see poverty that I did. The worst part is that I know there are so many people even worse off in different parts of the city and country. Many of the people live in tiny shacks that look like they can't last more than a season or two of Kampala's heavy rainstorms, and of the people wearing shoes, they were full of holes and the soles were falling off. It is very sad to see such poor living conditions and I am hoping to find a way to get involved or volunteer in some way during the little free time I have.

On a brighter note, I went to my first yoga class in Uganda last night in Munyonyo, a far away but beautiful area of the city right on Lake Victoria. It is a class run by two guys, Kevin and Gavin, who live in this UNREAL house right on the lake with a patio/hut area in their backyard for yoga. It was very well-done, not intense, but a nice stretch and very relaxing. They both trained in South Africa, and told me that there is a Kripalu teacher in Uganda they are going to put me in touch with! Speaking of Kripalu teachers in Uganda, one of my friends, Jon, that I did teacher training with, is doing his Bahai service in Jinja, and I am planning to meet up with him in an upcoming weekend to get my official Kampala Bahai temple tour. It's quite the coincidence that we are both in Uganda at the same time--before he was in Uganda, he was in Akko, Israel, another country I happened to visit when he was there.

Anyway, it's back to work for me!