A New Ordinary: Africa Literacy Conference: Part One!

So in mid-September I had the opportunity to attend Peace Corps' Africa Literacy Conference! It was the first regional literacy conference in Africa, so yay! Uganda hosted because we've had pretty good successes with our 'Teacher Boot Camp' model and other ways of integrating literacy into our teaching practices.

I left on a Saturday and my bus broke down (you can read about that in a different post...) but eventually made it to Kampala around 8pm. It takes generally a two days for me to get anywhere which is not in the North, because it takes all the daylight in one day to get to the capitol. I don't travel at night. Split a room with another volunteer going to the conference. Our rooms at this particular hotel are 20k Ush per night, which works out to about $8, which is almost the lowest you can get (and friendly for our Peace Corps budget!).

We got a ride out to the conference center in a Peace Corps vehicle, which is always preferable to taking public. On the way, we picked up some PC Washington folks, and some PC people from different countries. Also, my program manager (my direct supervisor) and our country director! So we headed out of Kampala to Jinja. They're doing some construction on that road (gasp!) so it took a little longer than we thought. Luckily (or if you have a small wallet, unluckily) being stuck in traffic means food and other items to buy just come to you. People walk up and down traffic jams in the middle of the road, between cars, right up to your window to try to sell you groundnuts, bananas, toilet paper, eggs, newspapers, you name it. If you sit long enough, someone will come by.

The first night was pretty relaxed - met a few people from the other countries and worked with the rest of the PC Uganda team on getting things ready for the conference in the morning. It helped to have a peaceful and beautiful place to be at; it just felt relaxing all the time. Stay tuned for more! Haven't figure out how many parts there will be yet...

Some 'action' shots from the first days of the conference.