Friday, March 21, 2014

Flash Back Friday - Peace Corps Days 2004

I got my first digital camera 11 years ago, when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uganda. My parents sent me Nikon Coolpix 3100. A pretty little silver thing with 3.2 megapixels that ran on 2 AA batteries. They sent it to me through the postal service to my village in Uganda. It took about 2 months but I got it! Prior to this new little digital, I shot with Canon SLRs and a little Olympus point and shoot. All film.

I had a love/hate relationship with that Coolpix. HATED that it was so slow. It felt like an eternity from the time I pressed the shutter button to the time it actually took the picture. HATED that it could take about 50 pictures before the batteries were dead. But, I LOVED that I got to see my pictures immediately, albeit on a 1.5" dark, scratched up screen.

That little crappy camera though was definitely when I started the process of putting away my film cameras. They now all live in their cases on the top of a bookshelf in a guest bedroom, I can't part with them.

I had the Nikon Coolpix for the last few months of my Peace Corps Service in Uganda. Just recently I decided to update my website to include all those old photos prior to 2007 (when I started my smugmug site). I have them sitting on an external hard drive, but for safe keeping, and for the fun of being able to see them I wanted to get them secured in the cloud.

It has been so much fun to go through them and relive some of those memories, which seem like just yesterday and 100 years ago. As I'm slowly organizing them onto my website I thought it would be fun to do some flashback posts here on the blog. Mix it up a bit, so it's not just Piper pictures all the time, although we can never get enough Piper can we?!

So here are some Flashback pictures from early 2004!

 My bedroom and kitchen at my house. I lived on a hospital compound, it was actually pretty nice, I had running water a lot of the time!

Auntie Carol, the shop keeper near the hospital. Sweet lady, she became a nice friend. 

 One of the roads near my village.

Some kids getting the matooke (bananas) ready. My dog, Muha. 

 My little buddy Lukwago. This is where he lived with his Grandparents and 3 brothers. 

The bike repair shop in the village. 

 Me and my little sister Majo. 

Looking back at these pictures I do realize that the Coolpix wasn't a bad little camera. It was great to have it with me for those last few months of my Ugandan life, and the big adventure Paul and I took after we left Uganda (those pictures will have to come in a different Flashback Friday!).

For more pictures from this flashback, visit my Peace Corps Galleries on Smugmug.

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