Settling in

Three days and I am very comfortable here. My luggage arrived yesterday via KLM, considering I never took a KLM flight who knows where it was for the past few days. I am glad to be whole again.
I have come here "out of band" for starting as a volunteer, so there are only two of us preparing to leave for our placements in Kampala at the moment. Siobian is from Ireland, she is heading south west and myself, heading north have now completed our IC1 training which was mostly orientation and essential administration work. I got a phone, a bank account and have developed a comfort with the local shopping area. I still hate the banter expected when purchasing things but that will come in time. We are now getting language training for the rest of the week. Today we got a briefing on the tribes and an idea of why there are something like 40 languages here in a country the size of Oregon. The region I am going to speaks something completely different than where Siobian is going so we are getting private tutor lessons. The language of Lira where I will be living is proving to be easier I think than Portuguese as there are no gender elements, just "I, you and they"; in Portuguese even the verbs were different for male, female, a group of males, a group of females or a mixed group. As well the tenses are easier as its just where you place the emphasis and not completely different words. YEAH I may be able to manage this. There are however some sounds that we don't make easily, like a ng sound you make with the back of your tongue that sounds like Asian languages. But thankfully there will be a good deal of English where I will be going.

We discussed greetings and I quickly understood what they mean by Ugandan English. They express things differently. For example, when I arrived from the airport the driver said "your welcome" when we drove up to the guest house I am staying in. I thought i had missed a queue and quickly said " thank you" and tried to get out of the car. He said "Not Yet Madam" and i became quite confused.
Steven my tutor explained that he was just welcoming me to the place, not like how we tend to use welcome as a final response to something... here it meant "welcome to your destination"... like a doormat placed outside an entrance. As well I am told if you meet someone you have not seen for a long time they will say "You were lost" which really means... I have not seen you for a long time.
Most of the greetings are about how you slept or how your day was and its funny as they joke the greetings here in Uganda can be 30 minutes long as you ask about everything (if you know the person well). No wonder things take a long time.
There is also the concept of Uganda time. No different than Brazil time... you get around to things, but dont expect things to be on time or people to show for a meeting when it is scheduled to start. So for a Canadian who is always early I just need to learn to bring a book or adjust things to account for it. Or as Daniel told me ... people always come for food, so they wont be late for lunch. So serve food i guess is a good rule.

Its supper time now and i can smell the wonderful dinner waiting for me. A bit of food, some reading about my project and off to bed, as the jet lag has finally caught up with me and I have been quite tired today.