What exactly will I be doing?? (2 days till blast off...)

The question I am most often asked (after the whole "JEWS IN UGANDA??" curiosity is taken care of) is: "what exactly will you be doing there?"  To this I answer, quite evasively: "Researching and volunteering in the community!" No, this doesn't say much. But it does attempt to sidestep the long speech that a self-created summer project requires for actual explanation.

If one does decide to dig, this is essentially what I will tell them--
I am going on a special program/grant for independent projects through Princeton, and I have two main missions for this summer. One is to serve the Abayudaya community, which I will hopefully do by assisting in the teaching of Hebrew.  As of now, I'm not sure whether I will be serving the primary or secondary schools, or even the small Yeshiva housed in Nabugoye (or perhaps all three!), but I will work this out when I get there. I hope to be of use to the community in other ways as well, in any way I can be.  But this is half the fun of volunteering in Uganda, and I'm guessing many places abroad--as I've been told time and time again, it does all work out when you get there, but planning ahead rarely does much good.

Students at the Hadassah Primary School (Uganda's only Jewish primary school) in Nabugoye.

The second prong of my project, the research, is not quite as traditional (assuming you consider teaching Ugandan children Hebrew a traditional way of volunteering).  The goal is not so much academic as it is explorative in nature.  I am most interested in spending time in the community, with both the individuals at the head and the laypeople.  I want to learn their personal perspective on the Judaism they practice--the rituals they have taken on and find most meaningful, how Judaism interacts with their day to day lives.  And I hope to come out with a series of testimonies, not a composite of their perspectives which forms an ethnographic assessment of their community as a unit, but rather a series of individual accounts of life, Jewish and secular, in Nabugoye.  Voices, not concrete conclusions, are what I seek.
In the preliminary research I have been doing, this kind of ethnographic work has proved immensely fascinating.  Looking at testimonies of people, the actual words they speak, with their diction still intact, their perspectives palpable in what they say and what they omit, can give a much needed humanity which is often lacking in academic research.  And since rigid research is what I am expected to complete during the academic year, I thought this summer, during which I am expected by my university to partake not in academic but in personal discovery, gave me the perfect opportunity to pursue this different approach.
I ultimately hope to have a series of monologues that can be shared with others, perhaps even performed--providing a window and a connection to this community halfway around the world which shares so much and so little with American Jews. I can't promise success, or even the final form this quest will take, but I do hope to do as much as I can to transmit the essence of my experience to anyone who may be interested.