I'm still alive

It's another long one, sorry about that. But here goes.

Looking I forgot to mention last time that the last day of in-depth module was really fun. My group went to a few schools to learn about public health regarding how it affects children. We first went to a high school and walked around with the headmaster to see the library, computer lab, some classrooms, labs, kitchen and the clinic. In the clinic we learned that the nurse had been administering quinine incorrectly with the risk that children would develop necrosis (dying tissue) but Sister Harriet corrected this. I could tell that this school was fairly well-funded because it actually had a lab and it had enough facilities for the classes. It also had a computer lab with at least fifteen computers. When we were there, many of the kids were making powerpoint presentations. I think it was a private school so that’s probably why it seemed so well funded. After that school we went to a primary/nursery school. Again, the headmaster showed us around which was nice. We saw a bunch of classrooms. In one, SH told us to look at the kids’ feet to see how many weren’t wearing shoes, which was slightly uncomfortable because she said it in front of all of the kids. It was true that at least five kids out of thirty or so were not wearing shoes but she probably should have been more tactful about telling us some of the kids were poorer than others. We also saw the kitchen facilities and dorms where some kids lived, some of them because they are orphans and others because their parents are too poor to support them. The nursery school kids had just gotten out from their class so they came and mobbed us. One girl was fixated by my hair. I tried talking to her but the teacher told me she was from Rwanda and she didn’t understand the English, Luganda or French I used with her so I’m guessing she was either really shy or speaks Kirwanda. A lot of the kids also kept touching my upper arms, I guess because they liked my light skin. It was a little strange but they were all so cute. We went to see the nursery school classrooms and all of the kids came with us. They all claimed a muzungu and fought over us. I had three kids who claimed me as their muzungu. They loved being twirled and they tried hanging off of my arms but they were a little too heavy for that. I love the kids. I wish I had some in my family. Anyway, that was the last day of in-depth public health. We didn’t really learn too much about public health but we had fun with the kids.

Then on Sunday we headed out to eastern Uganda, first to Mbale. Mbale was a really beautiful town with some nice hills/mountains in the background and trees and flowers planted along the roads. We had the day off once we got there so I went walking toward the hills just for some exercise and fresh air. It was nice to breathe air without diesel fumes or dust. That night we played capture the flag in the dark at our hotel which was really fun. The lights went out at one point which was really cool because it was pitch black and the stars were incredible. Unfortunately, the power came back after ten minutes or so and a few of us went to star-gaze and it just wasn’t that great with electricity. The next day I went to Children Restoration Outreach, a program that works to get streetkids into school and into jobs. We met a 15-year-old girl who ran away from home because her family was trying to marry her off and she just wanted to finish school. We also met a former streetkid who is currently attending Makerere to study social work so that he can help streetkids in the future which was pretty great. After lunch, we headed off to Sipi and Kapchorwa. We hiked to the bottom of Sipi Falls which was pretty cool. Once we made it to the bottom some of the group decided to go swimming and I was tempted but it’s probably better that I didn’t because now there’s a chance they got bilharzia. The waterfall was pretty cool. It wasn’t nearly as powerful or as awe-inspiring as Murchison, but it was still pretty nice. That night, Clueless was on DSTV so it was nice to pretend that we were back in America for a little while. On Tuesday I visited some caves and saw another waterfall, this time from the top down. Once again, the stars were amazing.

Then came the rural homestay in Busia district, right on the border with Kenya. My family consisted of a man, one of his wives, and ten of his children. The compound consisted of a bunch of mud huts with grass roofing while the family’s main house was brick with tin roofing with many holes. The room I shared with my partner Ashley had one bed with mosquito netting as well as a table and two chairs. The main house had a table, some wooden couches without a bottom in some parts, a storage room where they put some chickens at night and put some dishes (not sure how sanitary that combination is) and another room. Then there was a chicken coop (the kids kept going in and then would come out scratching and watching fleas or some bug jumping around on the ground-I didn’t go near that building), more housing for the kids, and more storage. There was also a really nice open shower that consisted of three short walls and no ceiling and a rock bottom. I wouldn’t mind showering there all the time. And then the pit which was fairly spacious but full of bugs of all kinds. On the first night I saw maybe twenty cockroaches while on the second night there was a mouse in the ceiling. During the day, there were flies and bees all over the place. Within the first hour of our being there, two of the kids had puked in the yard and more than the ten children of the family had congregated in the compound to meet the muzungus. They were all dancing around and put sparkly stickers on their faces and arms. Whenever I brought the camera out they would pose and then run and grab at the camera to see their pictures. They also liked doing this weird dance that was kind of like the Russian dance where you kick both legs out to their respective sides. It was pretty interesting. We also taught them how to play hopscotch which they really liked. The first night Ashley gave them books and crayons and they enjoyed drawing, an activity they continued in the dirt outside with sticks the following few days. Some of the older girls knew English and could read a little and write their names but most of the kids only knew the local language, KiSenya (or something like that, it was pretty close to Luganda). The three older girls went to school during the day and then would come home and help around the house, doing some cooking and cleaning and watching the kids. I don’t know when they would find time for homework. The mother also worked pretty much all day long without any breaks. She was always feeding the one-month old or gathering sticks for firewood or collecting water from the protected spring. The day never ended for her.

Anyway, during our rural homestay we were to briefly research a specific issues and we picked education. The first full day our father took us to a few places, beginning with the home of a blind man and his family. His son, Moses, had to drop out of secondary school because although the government pays for the first two years, fees after then were too much for his family. He hopes to be a doctor and work in the community where he is living, but for now he has to help his father break stones and his mother with the farming. Our next stop was the level-III health center. There were no patients there when we got there because it was lunchtime so a nurse had time to tell us a little about what was going on. The center was clearly underfunded-it lacked beds, bedding, medicines, and other basic necessities that are essential in adequate medical care. Afterwards we went to the seat of the local government of the sub-county of Busitema. We met a few people there including the sub-county chief. They talked about decentralization which we had already had a lecture about but they shed light onto the lack of funding due to a tax the government abolished a few years ago promising to make it up with direct revenue, which never happened. Then we met a volunteer for the only legally operating NGO in Busitema, World Vision, who explained how the organization is working to promote grassroots development in the area. There used to be a bunch of NGOs in this rural area but because of funding cuts many of them have pulled out though this is clearly a very poor area lacking many services. Anyway, World Vision has a bunch of programs and they go directly to the community to learn what they want and how they want it to be provided which is pretty cool. They have a sponsorship program for some local kids to get them in school though it doesn’t help the problem with quality of education. We discussed this issue with the headmaster of the Busitema primary school. The headmaster explained that enrollment cubed with the government passed the Universal Primary Education initiative about ten years ago. UPE pays for kids to go to school though it doesn’t pay for food, uniforms and other scholastic materials (books, paper, pens) so many kids still have a hard time paying for school. This school was clearly improving as test scores are rising and less kids are failing despite the rising enrollment, but they still lack a reliable electricity source, safe dorms for girls, a water source nearby, and many other things. I wondered how we had talked to all of these people so easily and I think it may be because our host father was the local chairperson for the community. Anyway, we headed back to the house for lunch after a quick stop at our host father’s other house to meet his other wife and a few of their kids. It was interesting to see that some of the kids in this household were visibly malnourished while the ones in the household in which I was staying all looked well-fed. It was also interesting to note that later in the day the other wife came over and it looked like she was friends with my host mother and the kids all played together most days. Family dynamics were pretty interesting and it would have been cool to look a little further into it if I had had more time. The rest of this day we hung around the house a bit and played with the kids. We walked to the protected springs with the parade of kids with us. They’re building a borehole for the community which is great because it will provide a clean source of water that is accessible to my host family and a few others but is somewhat far from other people’s homes. The stars that night were incredible. There is no electricity in the area so we only had our kerosene lamps to detract from the night sky.

The next day we went around with Moses, the boy from yesterday, to a bunch of homes to talk with people. We would interview them informally for a little and then would leave them with a piece of soap as a sort of payment. In the morning we only talked to men because the women present just didn’t talk but that afternoon we talked to some women whose husbands weren’t around. However, the women still didn’t talk very much. One of the women, though, told us about this business she has selling pineapple. Somehow she had gotten some pineapple seeds and planted them and is now one of the only sources in the market for pineapple. It’s in high demand and she sells them from her house which is pretty cool. Also this day, my host sisters didn’t go to school and we learned that it is because when it rains the roads become impassable and they have to walk several kilometers to get to the school so when it rains or when it might rain, they stay home from school. This was pretty sad to hear because the rainy season is just now starting so they will likely be missing a lot of school in the months to come. It just shows how much education intersects with things like infrastructure and health. I just finished reading “The White Man’s Burden” by William Easterly as a followup to “The End of Poverty” by Jeffrey Sachs and this is one area where Easterly disagrees with Sachs in that programs shouldn’t be overly ambitious and try to improve everything at once but should specialize when Sachs calls for a general improvement in everything. I am somewhat torn because I can see where specialization would work better and would get the job done more efficiently but also, if you don’t improve the infrastructure, improvements in education won’t really help the kids who have to stay home because the roads are impassable.

That night we stuck around the house again. It really started raining at one point so a bunch of kids came into the hut with us and we just watched the rain and the sunset. Later, after Ashley and I ate dinner in our hut (they served us there, not sure why), we watched the rest of the family eat dinner. It was cool to watch the mother doling out servings to the kids. There were about ten to twelve small bowls on the ground into which she would put a piece of meat (coming from the meat that we didn’t eat) and some watery sauce that would be for the posho. The kids took posho from a communal bowl that they picked large chunks from. They would all share a cup of water for a drink. It was such a cool process to watch. I kind of felt like I was in a movie watching it this night and the night before. Also this night, we gave the rest of the toys I had brought to the kids and one of the boys fell asleep on the ground holding one of the stuffed animals which was adorable. I love the kids here. Also this last night my host father asked us some questions. He didn’t understand why our families in the US would pay for our education but not demand a bride price when their daughters get married. We tried to explain that our parents just want us to be happy but he thought that they should get something out of raising us well. He also thought that poverty only existed in Africa and we tried to explain the relative poverty in the US and he didn’t understand why we send help abroad when we have poor people at home that we should help first, which was a pretty interesting and valid thought. I don’t think he understood the difference between the types of poverty though.

During this homestay, I got to ride a motorcycle for the first time which was incredible. I think I’ll have to buy one in the future. I rode along on a dirt road on the back and just took in the scenery. You can sense so much more in the open air and it was just a great feeling to be driving around rural Uganda on the back of a boda. The last day we rode back into town on a motorcycle with our host father. It was about a half-an-hour long ride and we saw so many people. Everyone would wave to us as we passed and when I was comfortable enough to stop hanging onto the boda I would wave back. I wish I could always travel like this. In town, I walked almost to the border with Kenya but had to stop at the customs yard because I didn’t have my passport (it’s processing somewhere in the Ugandan government) but I rode on the back of a bike to the hotel where we were having lunch that day. It was nice getting back together with everyone and hearing their stories. We had the first malaria victim of the group with one more to follow a few days later. I’m still healthy and taking my medicine and using a bednet every night so I should be fine. After lunch, we all went to Miriam’s (the great assistant we have here) family’s house where we were staying for the night. We had an amazing dinner of all the Ugandan food cooked so that it was better than normal (chapatti, matooke, posho, rice, beans, cabbage, etc.) and then just hung out that night. I played an uno-like game with some Ugandans and went to a dance party where all these Ugandans were standing around watching us muzungus try to dance. It was a little awkward but some of the kids and adults eventually joined in. It was a pretty fun night. The next morning, they followed up the best dinner with the best breakfast and we had lots of pineapple, mango, banana, omelet, bread with butter, etc. I wouldn’t mind going back to eat there every once in a while. We said good-bye to rural Uganda and hello to Kampala that afternoon. It wasn’t great being back in the city but at least everything is more familiar in Kampala.

Monday morning wasn’t very fun. The taxi conductor flat out lied to me and told me the taxi was going to Kampala Road when it was really going to Old Kampala and the New Taxi Park. So I was shoved out of the taxi at the end of the line and had no idea where I was. Luckily I had some landmarks (the mosque, the taxi park) to guide me and I eventually found my way to the Resource Center. I also had Luganda that morning for the first time in two weeks and it was brutal. I didn’t remember anything but neither did anyone else. It wasn’t a great idea to have two weeks of no Luganda before the week of the ACTFL test. Later that day, I tried getting into touch with the organization I’m hoping to work with for my practicum but learned that they lost my application so on Tuesday, I got on a taxi to a part of town I have never been to before and then took a boda to the organization. I felt pretty good about getting there on my own, especially because I was so worried that I would get lost on my way. We had a free day because we were supposed to go to Parliament as a group but parliament wasn’t in session. I went home early and just did some work. The door to my room was open while I was using the computer and a mouse just ran in and scampered about for ten minutes. It was a little strange. It definitely made me glad that I wear sandals around the house (at my family’s insistence-I don’t have the tough feet that they have and the cold floor might make me sick, at least they claim that’s the reason I had a cold a few weeks ago). Wednesday was a pretty busy day. I went house and apartment-hunting for post-homestay Kampala time. Our guide for the house was about an hour late picking us up which turned out fine because on our way to the house, we had to walk to the New Taxi Park to catch a taxi to Kasubi. As we were walking down the street the Resource Center is on, the police stopped traffic, which was really nice for us because we could easily cross the roads. A motorcade started driving through with lots of fancy cars, guys holding really huge guns, and a car where we saw Muammar Gaddafi, president of Libya, being driven to the mosque in Old Kampala that he built. He was in town for the beginning of the week to open the mosque and we got to see a brief glance of him. Later in the day he passed the RC again going the opposite way. That night we went out to a fancy muzungu restaurant for Amy’s 21^st birthday which was a lot of fun. I split an elephant pizza with Amy and it was delicious. Then Thursday we prepared a little more for the Luganda exams. My taxi completely broke down on the way home-something fell from the bottom and started dragging. I thought the tire had fallen off but luckily it was something a little less minor, but I did have a brief moment of slight terror. I caught another taxi heading up to Kagoma which also broke down but luckily made it. On my walk home, some mouse bolted in front of my and slammed into the wall of the ditch by the street. I am now convinced that I am getting bubonic plague from these crazy rats I keep running into. Then Friday was the ACTFL test which I think went okay. My tester asked me questions I had never heard before and wanted me to talk about public health in Luganda though I, or anyone for that matter, don’t have the vocabulary for. She also asked me what I was studying in college in the US which led to a discussion that I study Spanish. She then asked me how to say “Wasuze otyanno” in Spanish which really scrambled my brains for the rest of the test. I couldn’t help thinking a lot in Spanish during Luganda classes and it really started popping up in my brain after that. I really don’t know what score I’m expecting but I’m hoping above novice-low. Because it was Good Friday, a lot of things were closed so I headed home early. My somewhat creepy brother was home from boarding school and my host cousin was watching a bunch of American movies. Shortly after I sat down to watch one with him, he switched it to the Tenacious D movie which was a little awkward to watch with my family. It continues to amaze me how much of American culture has spread here and how much people love it.

That weekend I spent most of Saturday, all day Sunday, and most of Monday with my family. On Sunday, I was inside all day because it rained pretty much from morning until night. My family didn’t go to church because, as my sister told me, Easter is a day when even pagans pray-a little strange. So I just sat in my room for a while reading “Atlas Shrugged” which I really got into. My parents eventually came in with some popcorn and told me that they thought I was lonely so I went and talked with them for a while. They were watching some really bad tv-some dance show and Apprentice Africa, a terrible take-off of a terrible American show to begin with. So I was bored out of my mind and I just wanted to read my book but I had to watch bad tv. However, my dad did say something that entertained me-“Salt is a medicine for the snow”-when we were talking about Ohio’s weather. And my mom told me I made her laugh which I do seem to do a lot. Then on Monday I bought some movies to watch, including one dvd with seven movies, and gave it to my family and they of course picked the worst movies on the dvd including “Delta Farce” and “Who’s your Caddy” which were painful to watch. Later on we watched “Constantine” and started “The Saint.” Overall, I feel like I wasted most of my last days with my family. I bought some chick flicks to watch with my sister because she asked me to but she wasn’t even home the last two days. Oh well.

Then on Tuesday I moved out of my homestay and into the house I am sharing with Maya and Emelie. We found a really nice house about 30 minutes from the city center by taxi and a 15-minute walk. It has two bedrooms, a bathroom with a real shower (and hot water) and a flush toilet, a kitchen, a living room with a tv and dvd player. The people who own it also gave us dishes to use so we’re pretty much set. We are supposed to have DSTV, which means American tv channels, but that doesn’t work at the moment. I guess no NCAA tournament for now. Hopefully we will be able to get it soon. Anyway, we cooked veggies last night and watched a movie. It’s so nice to eat and shower when I want to and not have to sit and talk if I don’t want to. We also have some couches so it’s nice to just sit and read for a while. It only costs about $5 which is way under our budget of $15 so it’s a great deal. Practicum wise, I’ve tried calling the offices of where I want to work all day today because they were supposed to call me yesterday and let me know if I can work with them but never did. Now I just need to keep trying them out. Ideally, this would have been resolved last week if my application hadn’t gone missing somewhere along the way. I still haven't heard back from them though they told me I would know for sure by today, but I guess I can just do an ISP project without an organization. I have two interviews scheduled for Monday so things should start to fall into place. One interview is even with a member of the Ugandan Parliament. I'm still not sure how I want to focus the project but I know I want to do something with international aid and transparency/accountability issues.

I’m really impressed with how far I’ve come since I got here over two months ago. I don’t mind using the pit and I’ve learned to ignore the cockroaches and mice I occasionally find in my room and elsewhere. I’ve been eating more adventurous foods which for me has meant raw veggies and ice cream (by risky I mean possibly illness-provoking since I’m so paranoid). Talking about food, I could go for some chesse nan now from Ponnus, an Indian/Lebanese restaurant near the RC I have been frequenting lately. They also have pretty good pizza which I’ve had a bit of in the past week. I also found some good ice cream with some people which is a nice treat once in a while-3 scoops for a little under a dollar.

Anyway, overall I am doing well. Hopefully things will start to get busy soon. I hope everyone is doing well wherever they are. Happy belated Easter!