I had to come to Uganda to find a teaching job.

So when I committed to coming back to Uganda with Lynn, being the incredibly sensible person that she is, she encouraged me to look up some volunteer programs to get involved with, as three weeks in Kampala with nothing to do would not be very productive. The third organization I contacted got right back to me and was flexible enough to accommodate me on a weeks notice; usually people set these things up many months in advance, but that’s not how we roll. Anyway, now I will have something fun to do while Lynn is busy teaching an HIV/AIDS course to a group of Ugandan and Tanzanian doctors. Sadly, I will be living out in the village M-F because it is too difficult to go back and forth everyday, but we agreed that this will make my experience so much better. She will be very busy during the week herself and we will spend the weekends together, so it has worked out nicely.
Lynn and I made the short drive from Kampala to Sseguku village near the Kajjansi trading center where I will spend the next three weeks as a volunteer teacher at Sseguku Primary School. I am volunteering through an organization called International Volunteer’s Network (IVN) run wholly by a local Ugandan named James Nadiope. Because I found IVN online only a week before leaving the states, I knew very little about the program, but after sitting down with James for an hour, both Lynn and I were very impressed with James’ commitment to helping struggling communities, and even more impressed with the nature and efficiency of his operation.
IVN is a “volunteer tourism” company, a type of foreign travel that is becoming quite popular around the developing world. Essentially, it caters to people who want to visit foreign countries as tourists, but who also want to give something back to the country and communities they visit in the form of time and energy rather than money donations. It is a sound idea if it is done properly with a strong sense of the particular community needs, which James appears to have. In the case of IVN, tourists (or people like me who are here for other reasons) pay US $150/week to work Monday through Friday in one of three programs offered, construction, health, or teaching. This leaves the weekends to travel the country, go on safari, raft the Nile, etc. The $150/wk covers room and board, including 3 meals a day. James’ wife Sara is an amazing cook and the food has gone far beyond my expectations considering I have basically become a true Ugandan who enjoys a simple meal of posho (cornmeal) and beans, or some chapatti (tortillas) and goat. I believe I might actually gain weight on this trip rather than losing a ton as usual.