life update

tonight is the last night with my host family. the evening will include a concert with my host dad... should be very very interesting :) tomorrow our practicum begins and everyone in the group is moving away. i am staying in kampala and there are about ten of us who will be living in a hostel near makerere university (including caleb who is going to be working with the anglican church here in kampala, learning about development through the church). so for the next six weeks i am going to be researching the relationship of policy between japan and uganda. japan has a really big presence here and a lot of money coming in to fund development. i am interested in the effectiveness of this aid and what the advantages are to direct bilateral aid rather than multilateral (for example the UN or World Bank). i have a meeting with JICA (the organization that heads all the projects) this monday morning. unfortunately this meeting should have taken place awhile ago, it has been difficult to make contact and so i dont have a specific picture of what my research will look like and what the opportunities through JICA are. so please be praying for favor :)
it will be so wonderful to live inside the city and to live on our own. i am feeling some fatigue from the daily commute and the mice and/or rats that i come across at home. the ugandan men also become waring. something about always feeling like a spectacle and constantly being commented on.
the next six weeks will be really fun as all of our friends will be all over then country so we will get to travel to all the amazing party of this country :)
book i am reading: the white man's burden by william easterly about how development does not happen by all the great plans that so many organizations have (millennium development goals) because there is no accountability and the west comes in and gives the poor what the west has decided they need, not what the poor actually need. of course he does not have all the answers on all to solve world poverty either but it certainly is an interesting perspective.
life here is wonderful. we have been here for two months now and are settling into kampala. there are good parts and there are bad parts but it is such a fun adventure.