Carlow is part of PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), a Bush policy from 2003 that was established to combat global HIV and AIDS. Here is his typical day: He awakens “with the roosters” at his two-bedroom house with concrete floors and no running water. He's at work - youth center coordinator - by 7:30 with roughly 30 Ugandan young adults ages 18-25 who have been educated in HIV/AIDS counseling. They go to schools and give health tests, HIV/AIDS education, speak on domestic violence, hygiene and water sanitation, among other issues. He's home by about 6 every night. Maybe you didn't get past the line about no running water. This isn't the Marriott. In rainy season (March, August-October), Carlow has an elevated basin that catches the rain to make showering easier. In non-rainy season, he lugs a 20-liter plastic container from a nearby well and participates in “bucket bathing.” There is electricity in the house because it's close enough to the Nile. There's no TV, no refrigeration, but a radio. There are computers at the youth center where the Internet is available. He talks to his family every weekend. He eats a lot of rice and beans, fruits and vegetables and occasionally white ants, which are fried and considered a delicacy. Happily, the Ugandans make their own beer and hooch. ”There just aren't that many material things,” Carlow said. “You get used to it.”
Greg Carlow loving life in Uganda
Greg Carlow loving life in Uganda
By Mike DiMauro , Day Assistant Sports Editor
Published on 6/4/2009
Caption: We stopped on the road from Kampala to Masaka to Masaka for the equator crossing. A store keeper comes running at the sight of tourists. Photo: youngrobv (Rob & Ale) Flickr Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic
Just an unscientific hypothesis here, but it's doubtful Vegas would lay great odds on the following conversation happening around many breakfast nooks:
Parents: “Good morning, son.”
Son: “Mom, dad, I've made a decision. I think I'd like to spend the next 26 months in Uganda.”
Parents: spit out coffee, look at each other incredulously.
And while it didn't quite play that way at Chez Carlow in Mystic, it was close enough. Yes, Greg Carlow, a former three-sport athlete at Fitch, is 10 months into his 26-month foray with the Peace Corps. Carlow lives and works in Uganda, an eastern African country of 30 million people that is roughly the size of Oregon.
And he's loving it.
It went like this for Carlow, the son of the region's No. 1 pair of hands, orthopedic surgeon Steve Carlow, who is plenty familiar to anyone around here who has ever experienced their own battle of Wounded Knee.
”I was in our pool, just about to graduate college,” Greg was saying Tuesday over lunch at Mystic Pizza, home for a week before returning to Uganda this weekend. “I was saying to my sister (Ally, another former three-sporter at Fitch), 'What the hell am I going to do?'”
Carlow, a 2004 Fitch grad, was just about to graduate from Skidmore, where he played baseball. Ally Carlow told her brother that his high school friend, Jamie Mangan, just joined the Peace Corps.
”I thought, 'Hmmm,'” Carlow said.
And so Carlow endured the application process, the one that accepts only about one in every 10. He answered the questions, passed the medical exams and waited for an opening. He discovered in April 2008 that by August he'd be headed to Uganda to work the field of community health.
Carlow is part of PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), a Bush policy from 2003 that was established to combat global HIV and AIDS. Here is his typical day:
He awakens “with the roosters” at his two-bedroom house with concrete floors and no running water. He's at work - youth center coordinator - by 7:30 with roughly 30 Ugandan young adults ages 18-25 who have been educated in HIV/AIDS counseling. They go to schools and give health tests, HIV/AIDS education, speak on domestic violence, hygiene and water sanitation, among other issues. He's home by about 6 every night.
Maybe you didn't get past the line about no running water. This isn't the Marriott. In rainy season (March, August-October), Carlow has an elevated basin that catches the rain to make showering easier. In non-rainy season, he lugs a 20-liter plastic container from a nearby well and participates in “bucket bathing.”
There is electricity in the house because it's close enough to the Nile. There's no TV, no refrigeration, but a radio. There are computers at the youth center where the Internet is available. He talks to his family every weekend.
He eats a lot of rice and beans, fruits and vegetables and occasionally white ants, which are fried and considered a delicacy. Happily, the Ugandans make their own beer and hooch.
”There just aren't that many material things,” Carlow said. “You get used to it.”
Still, though, in a country where many of us think a hardship is slow Internet service, why would anyone want to do this?
”I wish I had a really good answer,” Carlow said. “A little bit of adventure. Helping people who want to be helped. But the best part is realizing that while you might be American, Ugandan or whatever ... people are the same. Their senses of humor, personalities ... we're the same.”
Carlow sees what only we can surmise. That's because he lives it. And what he's seen and heard and felt since Barack Obama's election has been uplifting.
”People (in the U.S.) probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about how who we choose to lead us affects the rest of the world,” Carlow said. “It's been amazing. The kids I work with knew more about Obama's election than I did and I followed it closely. They definitely feel 100 percent more connected to us now.”
Carlow's had a chance to reintroduce himself to the family. He watched brother Kevin, headed to Brown next year, pitch a shutout in the state tournament for the Fitch baseball team this week. And he's ready to return to do some noble work.
”It's going to be hard to leave,” Greg Carlow said.
He was talking about 16 months from now when his time in Uganda is over.
THIS IS THE OPINION OF DAY SPORTS COLUMNIST MIKE DIMAURO
