Immersion

I feel like I haven't done a good job of explaining exactly what I've been doing for the past week. Let me clarify.

So my fellow GESI participants and I arrived in Entebbe on Saturday. We stayed the night in a hotel on Lake Victoria Saturday night, then made our way through Kampala to Jinja on Sunday. We then stayed at a hotel in Jinja on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday nights. During the day, we went to orientation with the Foundation for Sustainable Development site team, consisting of three individuals who will help us throughout our project implentation process. We also attended Luganda language lessons in the mornings from local teachers (I have a video of a number song that we learned that I will be sure to post on Facebook once returning), and then travelled throughout Jinja town's restaurants and markets to become more familiar with our surroundings.

A note on Jinja town: although Jinja is said to be a major tourist destination, I have only seen a few groups of muzungus (what all white people are called here). Most are Australians coming to raft the Nile. So walking around town is an awkward experience. I often feel like an animal on display. The children like to touch our skin and ask if the "white rubs off." My teammate Frankie and I were running late for a meeting on our way back from the post office, so we decided to take a bicycle "boda-boda" to the Foundation for Sustainable Development office. This is somewhat dangerous (sorry mom and dad). Girls have to sit sideways on a tiny seat on the back of the bike because straddling is just not appropriate, plus anything other than skirts worn on the bottom for women is unacceptable. There was also nothing to hold onto. Ugandans treat touching of strangers very differently than Americans ... it would've been scandalous has I held on to my driver's back. Smiling or talking to individuals you don't know in passing or on public transportation is uncommon, and PDA is absolutely non-existent (you will often see a woman trailing her husband by several feet, although I did catch a young couple holding hands late at night on our walk back from a restaurant). As I was riding the boda-boda, my skirt starting getting caught in the wheel. People on the sidewalks were shouting, "Muzungu LOOK!" My driver was very flustered that I was so high-maintenance, because he had to stop on the most chaotic street in Jinja town so I could adjust. The bicycle boda boda was a perfect way to see Jinja, though. Matatus (big taxi vans that should only seat 9 end up cramming 20), bicycles, cars, delivery trucks and bicycle bodas (which we have been forbidden to ride by FSD) clog the streets. There are no stoplights, or really any traffic regulations (even the drive-on-the-lefthand-side-of-the-road rule is not always followed, as dodging potholes involves some risky games of chicken with oncoming traffic. Most shops are either electronic or grovery stores. Clothing vendors selling traditional wear, as well as fruit and ciapatti (fried bread) sellers operate their own street stands. I felt like Aladdin being carried on my magic carpet through a bustling open air market. It was frightening, but worth the 25 cents (500 shillings) to be taken probably two or three miles.

Wednesday was move-in day with our host families. All the host families arrived at the house of another GESI pair to eat lunch with us. But first, FSD made them play a kind of game. As our families started trickling in, they were required to pick us out of a crowd based on the pictures we had sent in our FSD biographies. When my father Stephen recognized my face, his eyes lit up and he yelled, "Hannifan!" When he saw Daisy Zhu (my roomie for the summer), he exclaimed, "Hi Zhu!" We then had a massive lunch of matooke (that banana mush I mentioned earlier), posho, pumpkin (I explained the concept of Halloween over lunch, and my dad thought it was very silly), sweet potatoes (not orange like in the US, but greyish-white), cow peas (delicious), chicken, pineapple, and magoes. This offers some insight into how Ugandans serve their guests: they pile mounds of food onto your plate, then act almost offended if you turn down seconds. My parents are no different ... upon noticing our still half-full plates once we had finished, my dad said that, as his daughters, we would have to learn to expand our stomachs to "fatten up." We're supposed to call them Mom and Dad.

A note on my new parents:

Mom is 26. She speaks some basic English. It's cute, because she adds "es" to the end of most words. So she'll say, "Beanses" or "underwearses." She finds most things that Daisy and I say or do hiarious, and her laugh is contagious. She doesn't have a job per se ... she stays at home during the day to cook (preparation of meals can take up to 3 hours), clean (the first morning at the house she burst into our room, humming a song, at five in the morning to scrub the floor), and tend to the garden and cattle. She was ecstatic to find out that I wanted to help her milk the cows and dig holes in the garden.

Dad is 46. He has three children (I'm assuming from a previous marriage): Harriet, 23; Gilbert, 18; and Bridget, 13. Harriet is an accountant, and the other two are in boarding school in Kampala. We are going to visit them this weekend. Dad is a tailor who commutes to Kampala (about 2 hours) each day. From what I've gathered, he is very spiritual and contemplative, somewhat reserved but very friendly and willing to engage in long, intelligent conversations when approached. Last night I talked to him about the Latin languge (the popular soap opera here is called "El Cuerpo del Deseo," and he was curious about the root of the Spanish word "cuerpo"), Catholicism, alternative energy, and industrialization of developing countries. I can already tell I will learn much from him. He also does what a lot of Ugandans do: they make the "mmmm" sound when listening to you talk. At first, I thought it was weird. But it is actually really comforting now. It makes me feel like I am really being heard and followed. Oh, and he wants to do push ups with me every morning so I will be strong enough to ring my clothes.


Mom and Dad's house is about a 20-minute drive outside Jinja town. My house is situated on a bumpy dirty road in a village surrounded by farmland (main crops are maize, sugar cane, cabbage, eggplant, and tomatoes). My house has 5 rooms, electricity (yay!), and a pit latrine/shower room out back. The latrine is challenging. I'll just say I have bad aim. It doesn't help that I always have a friendly bunch of cockroaches, geckos, and these hyperactive little moths swarming my feet as I use the facilities. Bucket bathing is also somewhat difficult ... I'm only provided with half a small basin of water (much less than I'm use to), so I'm learning to be conservative in my cleaning. The first day we were introduced to the hen of the backyard, who was very protective of her five chicks. I noticed today that only one chick remains in the backyard. Upon asking my mom about it, she said that the four others fell into the pit latrine. That would explain the chirping I heard last night ...

On our first night at the home, my father rebaptized me "Nalwonga," and Daisy, "Nakkazi." We are fed tea, groundnuts and milk biscuits (a kind of sweeter version of animal crackers) at 7, and dinner at 9. My mom took us to the market behind their house before dinner to get a "welcome home pineapple." This market has row upon row of wooden shacks with tin roofs. It made me realize how spectacular my little house is by Ugandan standards. I felt like I was walking through one of those charity informercials, with naked children wandering around, emaciated cows roaming the streets, litter and sewage running everywhere. It was my first glimpse of real Ugandan poverty.

Thursday was our first day with St. Francis Health Care Services. We were able to accompany Angela (our supervisor) and Claudia (a Peace Corps volunteer) to go to one of the "Grandmother Villages," a program started by St. Francis to assist the grandmothers who must take care of their grandchildren because their own children died of HIV/AIDS. Claudia started a village Savings and Loans program, so we attended their monthly meeting. Upon entering the mud hut gathering room, the 15 or so grandmothers (called Ja Jas) started singing in appreciation for our arrival. We then had a meeting with some of the directors of various St. Francis programs to get a better idea of where St. Francis has been successful, and where there is room for improvement and innovation. As a team, we then generated 17 areas of interest in which St. Francis already works or would like to work. The main topics that interested my group the most were:

1. The potential for a mushroom project. Many of St. Francis clients who have HIV/AIDS or other infectious diseases A) are too weak to work and B) don't have proper nutrition, which is essential if their anti-retroviral treatment is to work properly. Mushrooms are easy to grow, and there is a high demand in the local market for them. If we were to train St. Francis employees to train the villagers how to grow the mushrooms and how to connect with local vendors, as well as save some for themselves, it could be beneficial from an income and nutrional standpoint. So next week, we are meeting with one of the grandmothers who knows a lot about mushrooms. We are also meeting with the bishop of the archdiocese of Jinja who likes to export locally grown items. The security guard at St. Francis also has connections with local market vendors. So there is a lot of potential here.

2. St. Francis also has a Shadow Idol program, in which children and young adults whose parents have died due to AIDS (and who thus don't have strong role models) can get together and dream about better futures. They are a huge resource, because they often love public speaking and communicating. St. Francis has wanted to implement a Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) program in the schools just yards from their compound, but has yet to start anything. If we were to utilize the Shadow Idol children's enthusiasm about giving talks to their peers, they could eventually end up partially running the prevention programs, as well as the discussions/drama presentations about living positively with HIV (stigma is a major issue here).

3. Also closeby is a truck stop where truck drivers from Nairobi and Mombassa come to seek out prostitutes before continuing their journey to other parts of Uganda. Many girls have tried to get out of their prostitution ring, but have no program for psychological rehabilitation or alternative lifestyle/skill-building. This would be a sensitive area to explore, but for right now, my group is still keeping our minds open before settling on a final project idea (and submitting a proposal to FSD and Northwestern) by next Friday.


Some closing random observations:
-The lack of street lights and electricity in the villages surrounding my house make for some super starry skies.
-Many of the grandmothers we saw had very black skin but the most piercing blue eyes. It was incredible. I had to keep reminding myself not to stare.
-I've been running a couple times with other GESI kids. The orange dirt sticks to my sweaty skin, and I end up looking like a carrot by the end.
-There is a decently sized Muslim population in my village, so the call to worship is becoming a very recognizable sound.
-Michael Jackson is a big deal here (yes, I know he's dead).

I miss you all and hope to keep updating!

Abby