Right now it’s 6:15 am and my last day of one week with an org in which I did not have a good experience.
This week I have dealt with baby cockroaches in my toothbrush and mouth piece case, living in a storage room, bedbugs, mice (living in the home at peace with the family), compulsive lying and finding all my luggage had been looked through. I stayed in two different homes because I was not comfortable at the first. I would have been comfortable at the second, but that is where there were bedbugs were.
This is how I spent yesterday. All day. Busted my butt. Nice lunch, huh?
I don’t know if this org is a good one or not but I couldn’t work on the website when I couldn’t trust the information I was being told. While I was doing the website I realized that they had lied to me prior to my arrival too. I do have to say the org isn’t totally bad, some of the people I met were great, and I know this org is doing good work because I did witness some good projects. They are probably doing other great work too, that I didn’t get a chance to see, but I’m just done.
It was hard for me to decide what to do: to stay and tough out the full month and fight the bedbugs here or move on to my next place. I made up my mind when I realized:
- I could not recommend this org for anyone to donate to because I couldn’t trust the guy making decisions
- I would not recommend volunteering here because the both the options of places to stay are not suitable
- If I knew then what I know now I would never have come here
- Why am I risking getting more bed bugs in my luggage when I don’t even feel good about working on the website?
Supposedly bedbugs die at 120 F. This is how hot it was that day! I’m hoping that the stuff in the bags, in the sun, for hours got super hot. But, either way, I boiled most of it.
After all that we went to town to get pesticide (lambda-cyhalothrin) and plastic bags to put my stuff in. THAT was an ordeal and took forever. There are no trash bags here and no ziplocks! I’m very happy to the people that helped me here though. It was 11 PM when I was finally done working on my stuff for the night.
This morning I will work on my stuff a little more then I’m heading to the next org, also in Uganda. I pray that my upcoming time is better. This may have been one of the most difficult weeks of my life. I kind of blame myself for not being tolerant enough to all these factors, but it’s time to move on. I pray that there are better days ahead!!
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