I don't know how many of you are still reading (I wouldn't blame anyone for giving up ... it's taken me awhile to get back in the swing of things and thus, my last post is untimely), but thought I'd give a last update about my experience.
It was definitely very hard to leave my host family. Really hard. Two nights before we left, our parents arranged a goodbye dinner with Ellen's and Katie's parents. They cooked all day long, preparing the biggest spread of food I've ever seen ... we had French Fries made from Irish potatoes, chicken, beef, fish, matooke, chipatis, watermelon, pineapple, pumpkin, spinach, g-nut sauce, spaghetti, and much, much more. While gathered around our parents' living room table, we laughed and reminisced about the summer while my dad's Celine Dion music video blasted in the background. At the end of the meal, they whipped out a surprise ginger cake, beautifully decorated with ribbons and silver candy balls that said, "Farewell dear." on the top, as well as Fanta and Mountain Dew (considered desserts there). While we were munching on our sugary delights, both my dad and Ellen's dad gave farewell speeches. My dad started his out by saying, "God has truly blessed me with this opportunity to have two beautiful and unfortunately temporary daughters..." His eloquence and sincerity were so sweet, and made me teary-eyed.
On our last day of work, we got to witness the Mushroom Project group hang their first batch of gardens. It was an exhilarating day. Henri had purchased his own water-misting can for the occasion (really taking to heart what Ronnie, our mushroom expert, told them about making sure the water is not dumped in "buckets," but rather, "like dew"). Ronnie showed the group how to hang the gardens from the rafters of the shed, attaching four bags, evenly spaced, to each string. He spun the string a little bit and sprayed water from the misting can, causing the four bags to look like merry-go-rounds in a rainstorm. He said this would ensure even water distribution. Everyone was awe-inspired by this nifty technique. They stared with wide eyes and smiles, and the men whispered, "Eh, eh," a vocalization habits of many Ugandan men I encountered. As we left, giving Jjaja our last hug and Henry our last handshake, all the Mushroom Project participants came to us to demonstrate heartfelt appreciation for our work. Even though they knew we didn't speak Luganda, they talked to us in their local tongue anyways, conferring their thanks in passionate gesticulations and earnest facial expressions. They told us, through a translator, to never forget them. I think that'd be impossible.
After spending Friday night at Hairly Lemon, an island "resort" (which basically meant free mosquito nets and a steady stock of candles to light the night), we headed to the Uganda airport Saturday morning. Boy, were we not expecting the troubles we'd have there. As we were in line waiting to go through security, a message flashed across the flight information screen informing us that our flight to Nairobi had been cancelled due to a strike on Kenya Airways. Not knowing when the strike would be over, and unable to provide us any alternative routes out of the country, the airline put us up in a hotel in Entebbe. Although I loved my time in Uganda, I was ready to leave, so this news was kind of disheartening. When we returned the next day, the airline wasn't being very forward about our options. Because we were a group of 20, they put us on the backburner on several occasions, not wanting to go through the hassle of arranging a flight for such a large group. We appointed several of the most argumentative people in our group to go to the head honcho behind the airline operations to negotiate ticket deals. After hours of heated arguments, they secured us a flight at 11:00 pm that night to Kenya. We heard reports from travelers who had just arrived from Kenya that the Nairobi airport was a madhouse ... hundreds of people stranded, fights breaking out, little organization or efficiency in rebooking flights, etc. So we prepared for the worst. These observations were unfounded, as we arrived in Nairobi with little trouble in what looked like a rather deserted airport. It wasn't until after we were able to book flights out the next afternoon that masses of people started arriving, forming lines that stretched from one end of the airport to another. Fights definitely did break out. We were all a tad delirious from lack of sleep (even though many of us brought home woven African mats, they didn't do much to provide comfort on the concrete airport floor), so we didn't pay much attention. So Sunday afternoon we flew to Amsterdam. We then had to go through the whole process again of securing tickets for such a large group. The Dutch were SOOOO hospitable to us ... giving us airtime to call our parents, frequent flier miles for future flights, food vouchers, a swanky hotel to stay in on Monday night, and the best continental breakfast I've ever had. We had to fly out Tuesday on five different flights ... mine left at three to go to Detroit. I then had to get a connection to Chicago at night. Then I woke up at 5 on Wednesday morning to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Nashville. What a whirlwind of a trip!
Since being back, I've been pigging out on dairy products (my body went on system overload the first couple days), enjoying the luxury of toilet seats and water pressure, and getting re-used to caffeine, as my classes started last Wednesday. It's been kind of hard for me to get used to the excess of everything, and with Vanderbilt being home to many well-to-do kids, it makes the transition all the more shocking. I'm excited, though, to get to work seeing how I can transfer pieces of what I learned to my service at Vanderbilt. I've already entered talks with several kids from my scholarship program about how sustainable business solutions, like the Mushroom Project, could be used in Nashville ... outsourcing the t-shirt-making for clubs and organizations at Vandy to the men at the Dismas House (a skill-building organization that works with homeless men in the resume-building and job application process), or teaching Hispanic immigrants living in an apartment complex nearby how to collectively make and sell popsicles to local businesses. This summer provided me with such a different perspective of the terms "service" and "sustainability," and I am looking forward to seeing how those shifts in thinking play themselves out in my future endeavors.
Thanks to all who read my blog this summer. Your comments and support meant a WHOLE bunch to me. I hope everyone's summers ended well, and I am glad to be back and close to (or at least on the same continent as) those I know and love.
Abby
Monday, August 31, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Goodbye
This will probably be the last blog I post before departing on Saturday. I will make sure and post one or two follow-up blogs to let everyone know I got home safely and make some kind of closing
statements :).
I haven't responded until now because the evening after the last post. I got sick again with the same symptoms as last week minus the vomiting. The FSD doctor again ruled out malaria and said it was probably leftover from the bacterial infection of last week. She is currently analyzing my stool sample (which I'm sure you all love to know!) to make sure I don't have a parasite. I don't know how accurate her results will be, given that she had me deliver it in a dingy film cannister. I can't wait to be back in the American health care system again.
I learned on Wednesday evening that earlier on in the day, when our team had split up (Bryan, Frankie, Ellen, and Katie going to Buziika to watch Jjaja present and explain our 16-page comprehensive mushroom-growing guide to the Starter Set; Daisy and I went into town with our dad so he could help us bargain for gifts), the Buziika group witnessed something horrendous. A man from Buziika had stolen a motorcycle boda boda and was going to get away with it, had a large community mob not descended upon him in the road a couple doors down from Jjaja's to beat him to death. Katie said she had to keep from gagging when she saw his head smashed into the concrete and blood mingling with the dirt on the side of the road. The mob asked our team
(assuming we were medical personnel, since we are white and travel to Buziika in a St. Francis ambulance) if we could "dispose of the body." Obviously our team refused. When I told my dad about the event later that night, he didn't seem surprised. He said mob justice is inevitable when a country has a police force as corrupt as Uganda's.
Katie, Ellen, and I went running on Wednesday evening. To cool off before showering, I sat on the back porch and for some reason got in a very contemplative mood. The run had been gorgeous. The sun has begun setting earlier, so we ended up running back in fading purple light. The grassy hills, cornfields, and pineapple plantations surrounded us as we ran by skinny men on rusty bicycles hauling bundles of dark green plantains, firewood, and jerry cans of water. I remember thinking at the beginning of this trip that all of Uganda was covered in bright orange dirt. I don't know if it was the way the sun was hitting the ground, my imagination, or the true nature of the dust on our run, but I noted patches of red dirt, mixed with every shade of brown and gray under the sun. Jinja could have its own exclusively brown Crayola crayon box. As I sat on the porch, I thought about what I will miss from this trip: knowing the trick behind opening the back gate; my naked neighbor babies with rainbow beads around their bloated stomachs, their belly buttons looking like a fifth limb due to malnourishment; the hugs I get every morning from Junior, a neighborhood boy; the golden moon that twinkles through the holes in the tin roof of the shower room; the zebra butterflies that were now fluttering before my eyes, swimming in the pink and cloudy sky with the smoke from charcoal fire pits behind my house, probably preparing steamed matooke; waking up to the sound of Aljazeera on TV or traditional spiritual music on the radio; Jjaja's blue eyes and the times I'll catch her staring at me during a meeting (when she's caught, she gets a goofy grin on her face as she sticks out her bubble-gum-colored tongue at me); my mom's laugh; my dad's stories. I'm going to miss Uganda and its people dearly.
On Thursday, we brought in Ronnie, a mushroom marketing expert, to talk to Jjaja and the starter set about how they should harvest the mushrooms and prepare them for sale (dried, fresh, packaged, etc.), as well as how they should connect themselves to local markets. He was an incredible speaker, and it was so uplifting to see every participant get out pens and paper to take notes. Everyone was very inquisitive and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about doing everything possible to maximize profit. After the seminar, the Starter Set had an impromptu meeting in which they semi-restructured our suggestions for marketing strategy. This was probably one of my most favorite moments of the trip: REALLY seeing that these guys were taking ownership of the project. Even though all of the responsibilities for the trip have been turned over to Jjaja and the Starter Set now, they are all still extremely appreciative of the work we put in to buy them materials and get them started. I've received more hugs and handshakes in the past few weeks than I ever have in my life. Generosity is generally highly valued in Ugandan society, so they want to be sure we know they've recognized our effort.
On Friday, two of Aljazeera's top stories in the morning were about 1) 13 bodies being discovered in Juarez as a result of the still escalating drug-related violence and 2) riots in Honduras's capital of Tegucigalpa. I was in Juarez in March 2007, about a year before violence got bad, and I was in Tegucigalpa in February of this year. It's eerie to think how quickly stability can change. I couldn't help but wonder if something is on the verge of happening in Uganda. It was just announced that Uganda has run out of anti-retroviral medication, meaning Saint Francis and all other health clinics in the country can't provide sufficient medication for HIV/AIDS patients. My dad seems to have a very pessimistic view about the current state of affairs in his country, and probably rightfully so. We went to a lecture in Kampala on Saturday called "The Role of Foreign Aid in Developing Third World Countries," taught by a professor at Makerere University's Women and Gender Studies Department. He mentioned that Uganda is the third most corrupt country in the world (this was shocking to me, and I'd like to fact-check it when I get home), in which $250 million are lost to corruption annually. Case in point: Daisy and I were asking our dad to compare political stability and fairness amongst all the African nations. He went country by country (without a map, mind you) and made highly intelligent comments about the leadership in each country. When talking about his own country, he mentioned that although the government discovered bountiful oil reserves in the western region six years ago, that information wasn't released to the media until this year, giving the government plenty of time to siphon money off for their own luxurious expenditures. He accused the government of "perpetual deliberate robbery." He also mentioned that Uganda's Parliament would be a perfect case study in how a dictator can manipulate his law-making body to just rubber stamp anything and everything that comes across the table. I was not aware at how bad the political situation is here. Before we came over, Yoweri Museveni was painted in relatively positive light, especially since he has been internationally hailed for reducing HIV rates (which emerged in the late 1980s) from 29% to 6%. I know that those numbers are now on the rise because one of Uganda's biggest AIDS-related donors is PEPFAR (US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which specifies that funds can ONLY be used in abstinence-only prevention programs. And now with the shortage of ARVs, Ugandans are likely to suffer even more.
Sunday was a very good day. We went to our last Ugandan Mass. I smelled really good because my mom surprise-sprinkled powdered (and sparkly) perfume on me as I walked out the door. During the homily, the Congolese priest called out the muzungus in the crowd (namely, me, Daisy, Katie, and Ellen). He said he was glad to see us at Mass because "people in the Western nations don't make religion a priority like they should." As we were walking out of Mass with our parents, past vendors of jeweled rosaries and raspberry popsicles, my dad apologized for the priest's comment, saying that he thought there was just as much spiritual apathy in his country as there was in his. I spent the afternoon washing dishes and learning Luganda songs with my mom while Daisy and my dad watched the brand new Harry Potter movie (pirated, of course). I eventually was forced by my dad to abandon the dishes and go inside because he was afraid the sun would ruin my skin. Ever since my legs peeled terribly after rafting, and since I explained why white people's skin is so much more sensitive than dark-skinned people's, he's been protective of my pearly complexion. I ended the night finishing The Devil Came on Horseback, an eye-witness account of the genocide in Darfur. I forgot how fun reading for pleasure can be. Throughout the duration of this trip, I've plowed through Mountains Beyond Mountains (an account of the famous Paul Farmer, founder of the non-profit Partners in Health and influential doctor in Haiti's Central Plateau, Peru's shantytowns, and Russia's prisons), Blue Like Jazz (subtitle: "Non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality"), Purpose-Driven Life, Things Fall Apart, and Last King of Scotland. I'm about halfway through a book written by Paul Farmer himself called Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. All have been very enlightening :).
This week will be pretty uneventful, since our project is basically completed. I'll be sure and let everyone know how the goodbye ceremonies go!!
'Til I reach the States...
Abby
statements :).
I haven't responded until now because the evening after the last post. I got sick again with the same symptoms as last week minus the vomiting. The FSD doctor again ruled out malaria and said it was probably leftover from the bacterial infection of last week. She is currently analyzing my stool sample (which I'm sure you all love to know!) to make sure I don't have a parasite. I don't know how accurate her results will be, given that she had me deliver it in a dingy film cannister. I can't wait to be back in the American health care system again.
I learned on Wednesday evening that earlier on in the day, when our team had split up (Bryan, Frankie, Ellen, and Katie going to Buziika to watch Jjaja present and explain our 16-page comprehensive mushroom-growing guide to the Starter Set; Daisy and I went into town with our dad so he could help us bargain for gifts), the Buziika group witnessed something horrendous. A man from Buziika had stolen a motorcycle boda boda and was going to get away with it, had a large community mob not descended upon him in the road a couple doors down from Jjaja's to beat him to death. Katie said she had to keep from gagging when she saw his head smashed into the concrete and blood mingling with the dirt on the side of the road. The mob asked our team
(assuming we were medical personnel, since we are white and travel to Buziika in a St. Francis ambulance) if we could "dispose of the body." Obviously our team refused. When I told my dad about the event later that night, he didn't seem surprised. He said mob justice is inevitable when a country has a police force as corrupt as Uganda's.
Katie, Ellen, and I went running on Wednesday evening. To cool off before showering, I sat on the back porch and for some reason got in a very contemplative mood. The run had been gorgeous. The sun has begun setting earlier, so we ended up running back in fading purple light. The grassy hills, cornfields, and pineapple plantations surrounded us as we ran by skinny men on rusty bicycles hauling bundles of dark green plantains, firewood, and jerry cans of water. I remember thinking at the beginning of this trip that all of Uganda was covered in bright orange dirt. I don't know if it was the way the sun was hitting the ground, my imagination, or the true nature of the dust on our run, but I noted patches of red dirt, mixed with every shade of brown and gray under the sun. Jinja could have its own exclusively brown Crayola crayon box. As I sat on the porch, I thought about what I will miss from this trip: knowing the trick behind opening the back gate; my naked neighbor babies with rainbow beads around their bloated stomachs, their belly buttons looking like a fifth limb due to malnourishment; the hugs I get every morning from Junior, a neighborhood boy; the golden moon that twinkles through the holes in the tin roof of the shower room; the zebra butterflies that were now fluttering before my eyes, swimming in the pink and cloudy sky with the smoke from charcoal fire pits behind my house, probably preparing steamed matooke; waking up to the sound of Aljazeera on TV or traditional spiritual music on the radio; Jjaja's blue eyes and the times I'll catch her staring at me during a meeting (when she's caught, she gets a goofy grin on her face as she sticks out her bubble-gum-colored tongue at me); my mom's laugh; my dad's stories. I'm going to miss Uganda and its people dearly.
On Thursday, we brought in Ronnie, a mushroom marketing expert, to talk to Jjaja and the starter set about how they should harvest the mushrooms and prepare them for sale (dried, fresh, packaged, etc.), as well as how they should connect themselves to local markets. He was an incredible speaker, and it was so uplifting to see every participant get out pens and paper to take notes. Everyone was very inquisitive and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about doing everything possible to maximize profit. After the seminar, the Starter Set had an impromptu meeting in which they semi-restructured our suggestions for marketing strategy. This was probably one of my most favorite moments of the trip: REALLY seeing that these guys were taking ownership of the project. Even though all of the responsibilities for the trip have been turned over to Jjaja and the Starter Set now, they are all still extremely appreciative of the work we put in to buy them materials and get them started. I've received more hugs and handshakes in the past few weeks than I ever have in my life. Generosity is generally highly valued in Ugandan society, so they want to be sure we know they've recognized our effort.
On Friday, two of Aljazeera's top stories in the morning were about 1) 13 bodies being discovered in Juarez as a result of the still escalating drug-related violence and 2) riots in Honduras's capital of Tegucigalpa. I was in Juarez in March 2007, about a year before violence got bad, and I was in Tegucigalpa in February of this year. It's eerie to think how quickly stability can change. I couldn't help but wonder if something is on the verge of happening in Uganda. It was just announced that Uganda has run out of anti-retroviral medication, meaning Saint Francis and all other health clinics in the country can't provide sufficient medication for HIV/AIDS patients. My dad seems to have a very pessimistic view about the current state of affairs in his country, and probably rightfully so. We went to a lecture in Kampala on Saturday called "The Role of Foreign Aid in Developing Third World Countries," taught by a professor at Makerere University's Women and Gender Studies Department. He mentioned that Uganda is the third most corrupt country in the world (this was shocking to me, and I'd like to fact-check it when I get home), in which $250 million are lost to corruption annually. Case in point: Daisy and I were asking our dad to compare political stability and fairness amongst all the African nations. He went country by country (without a map, mind you) and made highly intelligent comments about the leadership in each country. When talking about his own country, he mentioned that although the government discovered bountiful oil reserves in the western region six years ago, that information wasn't released to the media until this year, giving the government plenty of time to siphon money off for their own luxurious expenditures. He accused the government of "perpetual deliberate robbery." He also mentioned that Uganda's Parliament would be a perfect case study in how a dictator can manipulate his law-making body to just rubber stamp anything and everything that comes across the table. I was not aware at how bad the political situation is here. Before we came over, Yoweri Museveni was painted in relatively positive light, especially since he has been internationally hailed for reducing HIV rates (which emerged in the late 1980s) from 29% to 6%. I know that those numbers are now on the rise because one of Uganda's biggest AIDS-related donors is PEPFAR (US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), which specifies that funds can ONLY be used in abstinence-only prevention programs. And now with the shortage of ARVs, Ugandans are likely to suffer even more.
Sunday was a very good day. We went to our last Ugandan Mass. I smelled really good because my mom surprise-sprinkled powdered (and sparkly) perfume on me as I walked out the door. During the homily, the Congolese priest called out the muzungus in the crowd (namely, me, Daisy, Katie, and Ellen). He said he was glad to see us at Mass because "people in the Western nations don't make religion a priority like they should." As we were walking out of Mass with our parents, past vendors of jeweled rosaries and raspberry popsicles, my dad apologized for the priest's comment, saying that he thought there was just as much spiritual apathy in his country as there was in his. I spent the afternoon washing dishes and learning Luganda songs with my mom while Daisy and my dad watched the brand new Harry Potter movie (pirated, of course). I eventually was forced by my dad to abandon the dishes and go inside because he was afraid the sun would ruin my skin. Ever since my legs peeled terribly after rafting, and since I explained why white people's skin is so much more sensitive than dark-skinned people's, he's been protective of my pearly complexion. I ended the night finishing The Devil Came on Horseback, an eye-witness account of the genocide in Darfur. I forgot how fun reading for pleasure can be. Throughout the duration of this trip, I've plowed through Mountains Beyond Mountains (an account of the famous Paul Farmer, founder of the non-profit Partners in Health and influential doctor in Haiti's Central Plateau, Peru's shantytowns, and Russia's prisons), Blue Like Jazz (subtitle: "Non-religious thoughts on Christian spirituality"), Purpose-Driven Life, Things Fall Apart, and Last King of Scotland. I'm about halfway through a book written by Paul Farmer himself called Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor. All have been very enlightening :).
This week will be pretty uneventful, since our project is basically completed. I'll be sure and let everyone know how the goodbye ceremonies go!!
'Til I reach the States...
Abby
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Winding down some more
I apologize that the length of time between blog posts has been so long recently. I've been less motivated to travel into Jinja after work and have instead been opting to spend more time with my host family as my internship comes to a close (in a week!).
On Saturday, our dad took us to his home village, located about 45 minutes west of Mbikko toward Kampala. We got to see the primary school he attended, the house his dad (also a tailor) built for he and his 13 siblings, the gravestones of his parents and probably 20 of his clan members (he belongs to the clan of "Mamba," a type of fish), and the plot of gardening land his dad left him when he died. We also met two of his cousins, one of which is the headmaster of a two-room schoolhouse made of mud and sticks. The village children who attend this school need only to pay the equivalent of $10 a year to attend, yet some of them can't even cover that and try to trade crops for tuition fees whenever possible. If they can't, they just drop out. We met some of the children who attend the school, and before we left, they gave us two pineapples (one for me and one for Daisy) because they felt so honored that a white person would visit their school. It was heartbreaking accepting the gift, but it just goes to show how important generosity is to the Ugandan people.
Also on Saturday, three episodes of The Bachelorette arrived in the mail, kindly provided by my USA mom. Katie and Ellen are also huge fans, so we had been anxiously anticipating its arrival. My Uganda dad was also eager to watch, due to how much I had been talking about the show. So on Saturday evening, Katie and Ellen brought over some dark chocolate and hibiscus wine they had purchased at an Mbikko winery and we all gathered around my family's TV to watch. My Uganda dad was hilarious. Like I mentioned in my last blog post, he likes to clarify everything. So with each commercial break, he would get his gossipy groove on and say things like, "OK, so Wes is the one we don't like right? He's a snake. And Reid ... now I think Reid and Jillian are very natural together. The conversation does not seem to come as easily for Jill and Kiptyn." For all those who care, he DID NOT approve of Ed's return. He thought it was insincere, and that he shouldn't have left in the first place if he was so crazy about her. It was odd seeing American commercials again. I never realized how many food commercials we have (which, needless to say, intensified my cravings for familiar food to a painful level). My group has been so American-food-hungry for the past week that we've started making lists of the food we're going to eat upon returning. On my list is Cap'n Crunch cereal, mozzarella sticks and a cherry limeade from Sonic, graham crackers and Funfetti frosting, and frozen grapes, to name a few. Apart from the food commercials, I was also taken aback by my reactions to some of the product advertisements. There was one in particular at which I cringed for fear of what my Uganda dad was thinking while watching: it was for a laundry sheet. This woman was saying the these new-and-improved laundry sheets made her life SO much easier because it cleaned her drying machine while de-fuzzing her clothes at the same time. She said the only thing it didn't do was fold her clothes. I couldn't help but think that, at that moment, my Uganda mom was probably out back scrubbing her clothes with a scentless bar of soap, wringing the clothes by hand, hanging them on the clothesline (thus putting them at risk for mango maggot infestation ... the little critters like to hatch in moist clothing), and then ironing them to kill the maggots. My dad didn't have a visible reaction, but it made me realize how cynical I'm becoming about where Americans (myself included) place their priorities.
Sunday I went bungee jumping over the Nile. My parents tagged along to "offer protection in case I got scared." My dad brought his camera and videoed the whole thing: my preparation, the jump, the post-jump interview. The jump itself was crazy. The company we went through was very legitimate and well-run, but I got a little nervous when all they did to strap me in was tie a towel around my ankles and attach a caribeaner (spelling?) to a braided elastic rope. Then as I'm edging myself to the end of the platform (all the time trying to avoid looking down), the professional guy points to my right and says, "Oh! Lucky you! You get to jump toward that crocodile!" Yep, camouflaged in the bushes at the base of a cliff was a crocodile. I didn't have a choice, because they counted down from 3 then pushed me. I screamed the loudest I've ever screamed, flapped my arms in all directions, and tried to catch my bearings as I bounced around while also trying to ignore the pounding headache I was getting due to blood rushing to my head. According to my dad, though, "My execution was pristine, in the way I jumped so gracefully off the platform." It was a fun fun day. It was amusing to see my parents so into it.
I have to go to dinner now...I will try and return either later tonight or sometime within the next couple days to finish this post and get everyone up-to-date!
Abby
On Saturday, our dad took us to his home village, located about 45 minutes west of Mbikko toward Kampala. We got to see the primary school he attended, the house his dad (also a tailor) built for he and his 13 siblings, the gravestones of his parents and probably 20 of his clan members (he belongs to the clan of "Mamba," a type of fish), and the plot of gardening land his dad left him when he died. We also met two of his cousins, one of which is the headmaster of a two-room schoolhouse made of mud and sticks. The village children who attend this school need only to pay the equivalent of $10 a year to attend, yet some of them can't even cover that and try to trade crops for tuition fees whenever possible. If they can't, they just drop out. We met some of the children who attend the school, and before we left, they gave us two pineapples (one for me and one for Daisy) because they felt so honored that a white person would visit their school. It was heartbreaking accepting the gift, but it just goes to show how important generosity is to the Ugandan people.
Also on Saturday, three episodes of The Bachelorette arrived in the mail, kindly provided by my USA mom. Katie and Ellen are also huge fans, so we had been anxiously anticipating its arrival. My Uganda dad was also eager to watch, due to how much I had been talking about the show. So on Saturday evening, Katie and Ellen brought over some dark chocolate and hibiscus wine they had purchased at an Mbikko winery and we all gathered around my family's TV to watch. My Uganda dad was hilarious. Like I mentioned in my last blog post, he likes to clarify everything. So with each commercial break, he would get his gossipy groove on and say things like, "OK, so Wes is the one we don't like right? He's a snake. And Reid ... now I think Reid and Jillian are very natural together. The conversation does not seem to come as easily for Jill and Kiptyn." For all those who care, he DID NOT approve of Ed's return. He thought it was insincere, and that he shouldn't have left in the first place if he was so crazy about her. It was odd seeing American commercials again. I never realized how many food commercials we have (which, needless to say, intensified my cravings for familiar food to a painful level). My group has been so American-food-hungry for the past week that we've started making lists of the food we're going to eat upon returning. On my list is Cap'n Crunch cereal, mozzarella sticks and a cherry limeade from Sonic, graham crackers and Funfetti frosting, and frozen grapes, to name a few. Apart from the food commercials, I was also taken aback by my reactions to some of the product advertisements. There was one in particular at which I cringed for fear of what my Uganda dad was thinking while watching: it was for a laundry sheet. This woman was saying the these new-and-improved laundry sheets made her life SO much easier because it cleaned her drying machine while de-fuzzing her clothes at the same time. She said the only thing it didn't do was fold her clothes. I couldn't help but think that, at that moment, my Uganda mom was probably out back scrubbing her clothes with a scentless bar of soap, wringing the clothes by hand, hanging them on the clothesline (thus putting them at risk for mango maggot infestation ... the little critters like to hatch in moist clothing), and then ironing them to kill the maggots. My dad didn't have a visible reaction, but it made me realize how cynical I'm becoming about where Americans (myself included) place their priorities.
Sunday I went bungee jumping over the Nile. My parents tagged along to "offer protection in case I got scared." My dad brought his camera and videoed the whole thing: my preparation, the jump, the post-jump interview. The jump itself was crazy. The company we went through was very legitimate and well-run, but I got a little nervous when all they did to strap me in was tie a towel around my ankles and attach a caribeaner (spelling?) to a braided elastic rope. Then as I'm edging myself to the end of the platform (all the time trying to avoid looking down), the professional guy points to my right and says, "Oh! Lucky you! You get to jump toward that crocodile!" Yep, camouflaged in the bushes at the base of a cliff was a crocodile. I didn't have a choice, because they counted down from 3 then pushed me. I screamed the loudest I've ever screamed, flapped my arms in all directions, and tried to catch my bearings as I bounced around while also trying to ignore the pounding headache I was getting due to blood rushing to my head. According to my dad, though, "My execution was pristine, in the way I jumped so gracefully off the platform." It was a fun fun day. It was amusing to see my parents so into it.
I have to go to dinner now...I will try and return either later tonight or sometime within the next couple days to finish this post and get everyone up-to-date!
Abby
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Winding down
Since I blogged last, I've experienced a lot of ups and downs (more ups than downs).
Thursday was a big day. We visited the home of one of the Mushroom Project participants, Edward. He told us that he wanted to build his own shed (instead of having us build it for him) as long as we could provide the materials. Happy to oblige this request, we got him everything he needed and drew the dimensions and he set to work. As we were leaving his house, I spotted a little boy wearing a shirt that said, "I'm a Jayhawk" on the front and had the KU mascot on the back. I got SO excited and asked to take a picture with him. Kansas City residents must ship a bunch of clothes to Uganda, because that makes the second KC-related t-shirt I've seen. Also on Thursday we started packing the mushroom gardens. This was by far the most memorable activity yet. After explaining the process to Jjaja, she got to work laying banana leaves on the ground, covering the banana leaves with tarp, and sprinkling the surface with alcohol to make it sanitary. We then helped her transfer the cotton husks from the barrels to the tarp, as well as pour the bottled seeds into neat little piles. She then organized us and her helpers into an assembly line of sorts, and we all got to work layering the husks and seeds in the black plastic bags, which we then tied tightly and poked to leave room for the expansion caused by germination. At one point in the day, I was working next to one of the project participants, Henri, and told him I was happy he had come out to help. He corrected me, saying, "You do not need to thank me. This is our project. We don't want you muzungus to just come and hand us things. We want to be involved ... make it ours." It made me smile when he said this, since we had been told before arriving in Uganda that a lot of people would just expect us to dole out charity, to simply give them things. Henri wanted ownership. I told him to spread his attitude around.
Mushroom packing was such an interesting, unique process that I started wondering whether I'd be able to grow mushrooms out of my dorm room closet, or at least out of my backyard to sell to the KC Farmer's Market. The only bad part of the day was that Katie wasn't there and Ellen was recovering from illness: both had gotten food poisoning, probably from Nile fish. Frankie also contracted what seems to be ring worm on her arm. Our whole team seemed to have something funky happening, except me. Little did I know what would happen next Tuesday...
After work on Thursday, Bryan, Daisy, Frankie, and I went to the Jinja Agricultural Trade Show. I now know why all the schools here have such bright and variegated uniforms: to keep track of the hundreds of kids they transport on field trips to this festival. It was SO crowded ... almost too crowded to see much. We weren't there for long before the torrential downpour began, instigating utter chaos within the fairgrounds. Once being able to finally escape the hordes of children, Daisy and I, sopping wet, made it into Jinja to pick up some last-minute materials for our dad's surprise birthday party. When we told our mom our plans the night before, she was confused about why we would want to do anything special for him. Either birthdays here aren't a big deal in general, or my family just doesn't have the means to make them a big deal. But she pinky swore (which she also thought was weird) not to tell him anything. Once arriving home, we had our mom send our dad out to get chapati so we could hang balloons over the kitchen doorway. We didn't have tape, so I whipped out some of the billions of Band-Aids my mom packed for me to use as adhesive. When he got home, he was SO surprised and kept repeating, "I am the happiest man of the moment. I am so so happy I turned 47 in the presence of you people." We made him some peanut butter/Nutella/banana chapatis (possibly one of the best concoctions I've tasted in Uganda), Milo (Daisy's Singapore version of hot chocolate), and Jell-O. For rarely having sugar, he handled his sugar high pretty well. Birthday celebration = success.
Friday we left with FSD and the 20 GESI Uganda kids to head to Sipi Falls, about three hours east, near the border of Kenya. After eating dinner at our bunkhouse restaurant (situated on the side of a very steep mountain), a few of us climbed to the mountain tip. Laying on this little grassy plateau, we could see what seemed to be billions of the brightest stars I've ever seen. Luckily we had a constellation expert in the group who was able to show me my sign (Scorpio). Someone had brought some jackfruit wine to celebrate the birthday of one of the boys in the group (I have yet to taste a real jackfruit, but I always see them on roadsides and on the backs of trucks ... there massive and prickly and look like they'd taste sour). I saw more shooting stars that night than I've seen in my life. We could barely make out the view around us: only the slight outlines of valleys and mountains were visible. We resorted to wake up really early to watch the sunrise to get a better feel for our surroundings.
So Saturday morning I arose at 5:50, scurried to the top of the hill, and waited. And waited. And waited. Unfortunately, because there were so many mountains, the sun came up behind a ridge, illuminating the sky 45 minutes before we could even see the sun itself. It was a tad disappointing, but breathtaking nevertheless. I couldn't go back to sleep before breakfast because I was so excited about the morning menu: French toast with honey, peanut butter, and strawberry jam. And optional powdered sugar. Delicious. After breakfast, we set out on a "two to three hour hike" which turned out to be seven hours. It was strenuous because, like I said, Uganda has some steep mountains. It didn't help that it started pouring halfway through, making for some super slippery rocks and bridges (which were already precarious enough). We were able to take cover for a little bit under some eucalyptus trees and coffee bean bushes, but decided to just trudge onward. Throughout the hike we passed by four waterfalls in total. The last two were the sweetest. On the third, we were able to go behind it and into a cave. The fourth, well, that requires a new paragraph...
Oh the fourth waterfall. From a distance, it didn't look all that magnificent or big. It became magnificent and big when our guide pointed out to us a barely visible red rope hanging next to it. Yep, it was a repelling rope. The ten bravest members of the group assembled and headed to the waterfall. Once getting over there, we were met by 5 or 6 guys laying out harnesses and ropes. There was no waiver to sign, no money to pay up front, no explanation really ... they just asked who wanted to go first. I decided I might lay low and watch the first couple courageous volunteers before WALKING BACKWARD TOWARD A CLIFF as the man controlling the rope waves, "Bye! We will miss you!" Needless to say, preparing for repelling was scarier than any heights-related adventure I've done. Skydiving and paragliding don't give you time to think. Repelling did. Once I got past the initial overhang and just trusted the men above to lower me gently, it was the most amazing experience ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. I can't be emphatic enough about how gorgeous the view was: the waterfall right next to me, hitting rocks on the bottom and splashing back up, misting my face and creating little dancing rainbows all around; the valley, with its matooke and coffee plantations; the mountains on either side, on which people terraced their cabbage and sweet potato gardens; the slowly setting sun. I have never been so captivated by anything. I highly recommend it :). The hike out of the valley was pretty brutal. Otherwise Saturday was spectacular. It ended with me picking avocados from a tree outside my bunk room for next week.
We were greeted Sunday in Mbikko by a one-humped camel on our street right outside our house. We asked our dad once inside if he knew why it was there. He hadn't noticed, but quickly got his camera mumbling to himself, "Uganda does not have camels. I have never seen a camel. Never. Only in movies. They only exist in movies." Apparently the Jinja agricultural show had imported it from Cameroon, and the owner wanted to stop in Mbikko for a beer before heading home. So he just tied it to a tree. My dad was so excited. We had a debate over dinner about what was held in a camel's hump. Our dad refused to believe it was water. I need to work on my skills of making a convincing argument. After dinner, I gorged myself with Nutella (my love affair with this Italian hazelnut-chocolate spread just started on this trip ... I hated the taste of it in Italy but am infatuated now). I also noticed that all the water bottles here say, "This water is UV-treated and ozonised natural mineral water." Is that supposed to be comforting?
Monday was an uneventful work day. What was eventful was the talk we had with our dad about international monetary aid in Uganda, public speaking, and the importance of self-expression. He is so wise and I feel like I'm learning a lot from him. I'm going to miss our conversations.
Tuesday was also unproductive, given that Stephen Lewis, the primary donor to St. Francis and the "fourth-most influential man in Canada," was making his first-ever visit to the health center. The Jjajas and the OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) had organized dances and songs. Speeches and handshakes galore. We couldn't get transport to our project, and we couldn't use the office space we typically do, so we just joined the tons of other people taking pictures. Tuesday night was crummy. I started feeling queasy (coincidentally after I had overstuffed myself with peanut butter and Nutella) before dinner, and it just kept getting worse. I woke up at 2 and vomited (luckily only once), but couldn't get back to sleep due to intense chill and fever spells. My parents were very nurturing, sitting on the side of my bed until they thought I was asleep. My dad wanted me to see a St. Francis doctor in the morning, so I very slowly made my way to St. Francis for a blood test. The doctor there said microscope slides indicated I had malaria. He sarcastically (although his sarcastic tone scarily wasn't convincing at first) said that only people who live in Uganda survive malaria. So I got some meds from the pharmacy, and called Dr. Debbie (the FSD Australian doctor) to notify her. Before I even said anything about my symptoms she blurted, "You DO NOT have malaria. Those small clinics always over diagnose malaria. It's probably a bacterial infection." So she told me not to take the malaria meds and instead take a strong anti-biotic. My FSD coordinator told me to take both medications, to be on the safe side. So to this day I'm not really sure what I have. I feel much better today. All that's left of whatever I had yesterday is a slight fever and low appetite and energy. It is still kind of unnerving not receiving an accurate diagnosis.
It's crazy to think that two weeks from this evening will be my last night in Uganda. Everything is moving so quickly!
Take care all,
Abby
Thursday was a big day. We visited the home of one of the Mushroom Project participants, Edward. He told us that he wanted to build his own shed (instead of having us build it for him) as long as we could provide the materials. Happy to oblige this request, we got him everything he needed and drew the dimensions and he set to work. As we were leaving his house, I spotted a little boy wearing a shirt that said, "I'm a Jayhawk" on the front and had the KU mascot on the back. I got SO excited and asked to take a picture with him. Kansas City residents must ship a bunch of clothes to Uganda, because that makes the second KC-related t-shirt I've seen. Also on Thursday we started packing the mushroom gardens. This was by far the most memorable activity yet. After explaining the process to Jjaja, she got to work laying banana leaves on the ground, covering the banana leaves with tarp, and sprinkling the surface with alcohol to make it sanitary. We then helped her transfer the cotton husks from the barrels to the tarp, as well as pour the bottled seeds into neat little piles. She then organized us and her helpers into an assembly line of sorts, and we all got to work layering the husks and seeds in the black plastic bags, which we then tied tightly and poked to leave room for the expansion caused by germination. At one point in the day, I was working next to one of the project participants, Henri, and told him I was happy he had come out to help. He corrected me, saying, "You do not need to thank me. This is our project. We don't want you muzungus to just come and hand us things. We want to be involved ... make it ours." It made me smile when he said this, since we had been told before arriving in Uganda that a lot of people would just expect us to dole out charity, to simply give them things. Henri wanted ownership. I told him to spread his attitude around.
Mushroom packing was such an interesting, unique process that I started wondering whether I'd be able to grow mushrooms out of my dorm room closet, or at least out of my backyard to sell to the KC Farmer's Market. The only bad part of the day was that Katie wasn't there and Ellen was recovering from illness: both had gotten food poisoning, probably from Nile fish. Frankie also contracted what seems to be ring worm on her arm. Our whole team seemed to have something funky happening, except me. Little did I know what would happen next Tuesday...
After work on Thursday, Bryan, Daisy, Frankie, and I went to the Jinja Agricultural Trade Show. I now know why all the schools here have such bright and variegated uniforms: to keep track of the hundreds of kids they transport on field trips to this festival. It was SO crowded ... almost too crowded to see much. We weren't there for long before the torrential downpour began, instigating utter chaos within the fairgrounds. Once being able to finally escape the hordes of children, Daisy and I, sopping wet, made it into Jinja to pick up some last-minute materials for our dad's surprise birthday party. When we told our mom our plans the night before, she was confused about why we would want to do anything special for him. Either birthdays here aren't a big deal in general, or my family just doesn't have the means to make them a big deal. But she pinky swore (which she also thought was weird) not to tell him anything. Once arriving home, we had our mom send our dad out to get chapati so we could hang balloons over the kitchen doorway. We didn't have tape, so I whipped out some of the billions of Band-Aids my mom packed for me to use as adhesive. When he got home, he was SO surprised and kept repeating, "I am the happiest man of the moment. I am so so happy I turned 47 in the presence of you people." We made him some peanut butter/Nutella/banana chapatis (possibly one of the best concoctions I've tasted in Uganda), Milo (Daisy's Singapore version of hot chocolate), and Jell-O. For rarely having sugar, he handled his sugar high pretty well. Birthday celebration = success.
Friday we left with FSD and the 20 GESI Uganda kids to head to Sipi Falls, about three hours east, near the border of Kenya. After eating dinner at our bunkhouse restaurant (situated on the side of a very steep mountain), a few of us climbed to the mountain tip. Laying on this little grassy plateau, we could see what seemed to be billions of the brightest stars I've ever seen. Luckily we had a constellation expert in the group who was able to show me my sign (Scorpio). Someone had brought some jackfruit wine to celebrate the birthday of one of the boys in the group (I have yet to taste a real jackfruit, but I always see them on roadsides and on the backs of trucks ... there massive and prickly and look like they'd taste sour). I saw more shooting stars that night than I've seen in my life. We could barely make out the view around us: only the slight outlines of valleys and mountains were visible. We resorted to wake up really early to watch the sunrise to get a better feel for our surroundings.
So Saturday morning I arose at 5:50, scurried to the top of the hill, and waited. And waited. And waited. Unfortunately, because there were so many mountains, the sun came up behind a ridge, illuminating the sky 45 minutes before we could even see the sun itself. It was a tad disappointing, but breathtaking nevertheless. I couldn't go back to sleep before breakfast because I was so excited about the morning menu: French toast with honey, peanut butter, and strawberry jam. And optional powdered sugar. Delicious. After breakfast, we set out on a "two to three hour hike" which turned out to be seven hours. It was strenuous because, like I said, Uganda has some steep mountains. It didn't help that it started pouring halfway through, making for some super slippery rocks and bridges (which were already precarious enough). We were able to take cover for a little bit under some eucalyptus trees and coffee bean bushes, but decided to just trudge onward. Throughout the hike we passed by four waterfalls in total. The last two were the sweetest. On the third, we were able to go behind it and into a cave. The fourth, well, that requires a new paragraph...
Oh the fourth waterfall. From a distance, it didn't look all that magnificent or big. It became magnificent and big when our guide pointed out to us a barely visible red rope hanging next to it. Yep, it was a repelling rope. The ten bravest members of the group assembled and headed to the waterfall. Once getting over there, we were met by 5 or 6 guys laying out harnesses and ropes. There was no waiver to sign, no money to pay up front, no explanation really ... they just asked who wanted to go first. I decided I might lay low and watch the first couple courageous volunteers before WALKING BACKWARD TOWARD A CLIFF as the man controlling the rope waves, "Bye! We will miss you!" Needless to say, preparing for repelling was scarier than any heights-related adventure I've done. Skydiving and paragliding don't give you time to think. Repelling did. Once I got past the initial overhang and just trusted the men above to lower me gently, it was the most amazing experience ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. I can't be emphatic enough about how gorgeous the view was: the waterfall right next to me, hitting rocks on the bottom and splashing back up, misting my face and creating little dancing rainbows all around; the valley, with its matooke and coffee plantations; the mountains on either side, on which people terraced their cabbage and sweet potato gardens; the slowly setting sun. I have never been so captivated by anything. I highly recommend it :). The hike out of the valley was pretty brutal. Otherwise Saturday was spectacular. It ended with me picking avocados from a tree outside my bunk room for next week.
We were greeted Sunday in Mbikko by a one-humped camel on our street right outside our house. We asked our dad once inside if he knew why it was there. He hadn't noticed, but quickly got his camera mumbling to himself, "Uganda does not have camels. I have never seen a camel. Never. Only in movies. They only exist in movies." Apparently the Jinja agricultural show had imported it from Cameroon, and the owner wanted to stop in Mbikko for a beer before heading home. So he just tied it to a tree. My dad was so excited. We had a debate over dinner about what was held in a camel's hump. Our dad refused to believe it was water. I need to work on my skills of making a convincing argument. After dinner, I gorged myself with Nutella (my love affair with this Italian hazelnut-chocolate spread just started on this trip ... I hated the taste of it in Italy but am infatuated now). I also noticed that all the water bottles here say, "This water is UV-treated and ozonised natural mineral water." Is that supposed to be comforting?
Monday was an uneventful work day. What was eventful was the talk we had with our dad about international monetary aid in Uganda, public speaking, and the importance of self-expression. He is so wise and I feel like I'm learning a lot from him. I'm going to miss our conversations.
Tuesday was also unproductive, given that Stephen Lewis, the primary donor to St. Francis and the "fourth-most influential man in Canada," was making his first-ever visit to the health center. The Jjajas and the OVCs (orphans and vulnerable children) had organized dances and songs. Speeches and handshakes galore. We couldn't get transport to our project, and we couldn't use the office space we typically do, so we just joined the tons of other people taking pictures. Tuesday night was crummy. I started feeling queasy (coincidentally after I had overstuffed myself with peanut butter and Nutella) before dinner, and it just kept getting worse. I woke up at 2 and vomited (luckily only once), but couldn't get back to sleep due to intense chill and fever spells. My parents were very nurturing, sitting on the side of my bed until they thought I was asleep. My dad wanted me to see a St. Francis doctor in the morning, so I very slowly made my way to St. Francis for a blood test. The doctor there said microscope slides indicated I had malaria. He sarcastically (although his sarcastic tone scarily wasn't convincing at first) said that only people who live in Uganda survive malaria. So I got some meds from the pharmacy, and called Dr. Debbie (the FSD Australian doctor) to notify her. Before I even said anything about my symptoms she blurted, "You DO NOT have malaria. Those small clinics always over diagnose malaria. It's probably a bacterial infection." So she told me not to take the malaria meds and instead take a strong anti-biotic. My FSD coordinator told me to take both medications, to be on the safe side. So to this day I'm not really sure what I have. I feel much better today. All that's left of whatever I had yesterday is a slight fever and low appetite and energy. It is still kind of unnerving not receiving an accurate diagnosis.
It's crazy to think that two weeks from this evening will be my last night in Uganda. Everything is moving so quickly!
Take care all,
Abby
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Family
This week has seemed to give me lots of insight into Ugandan families. And just drawn me closer to my Ugandan family.
On Sunday, when I returned from rafting, my parents wanted to know all about the experience. My dad has an amusing quirk of, whenever I tell a story, repeating everything back to me just to make sure he picks up every detail. So I'll say, "My boat flipped and I took a big swig of the Nile and I scratched my leg. Look!" Then he'll say, "Oooook. So your boat tipped? Into the Nile? And you swallowed some water? And whoa! Look at that scratch on your leg!" I think he does it to create a picture in his mind. He's very contemplative, and I'm convinced his thoughts are very vivid. That evening I painted my mom's toenails and fingernails with bright pink nail polish that I had bought at CVS in Chicago before leaving. She was very particular about not getting paint on her cuticles. Afterwards she exclaimed, "Nalwoga, you are a beautician! God bless you!" It was cute. I think the pink made her more sassy though. She's got a lot of attitude now :).
On Monday we started soaking cotton husks in the drums. We had to pump the water into jerrycans from a borehole (spelling?) and then carry them a decent distance to Jjaja Judith's house. The push ups my dad does with me are doing some good, as I was the only girl (apart from Ellen) on our team who could carry the cannister by myself. We also administered pre-nutritional surveys to the five families with whom we are working on our project. We're hoping that, after Jjaja hosts a nutrition seminar in a couple weeks, and after the community members are able to harvest and sell their mushrooms (and thus have more money to buy healthier food, like fruits and vegetables), the post-nutritional survey will reveal a better understanding about the phrase "balanced diet." One man told us he thought "balanced diet" meant getting all the three food groups: matooke (steamed banana), rice, and posho (tasteless, white, floury goo). Wrong-o. Since all of my teammates and I didn't need to be present to interview each person, Ellen and I decided it should be our job to distract the village kids while the interviews were conducted. We taught them the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," played some Simon Says, and just made silly faces and noises. One thing that cracks me up about the kids here is that there is no difference in attire for boys and girls. So lots of little girls in pretty, frilly, flowery dresses actually turn out to be little boys when they lift up the rim of their dresses to dance. Boys and girls also both shave their heads, making gender identification even more difficult. Monday evening we went to Bryan's house to say hi to his mom, Hajat Sarah. She barely speaks any English but is super excitable and very welcoming. She lives on a compound situated on 7 acres of farmland. Her hobby seems to be taking in orphans and elderly, mentally-off grandmothers. One of these grandmothers was so happy to see us that she ran around screaming, "Good morning!" before settling down enough to hug us all. She then quickly resumed talking to her invisible friends. Hajat has such a big heart, and it was refreshing to see that evident compassion in a woman who didn't really have many resources to share.
Tuesday was one of the most irritating days yet. The day started off with Jonathan, one of our supervisors, telling us that the 17-year-old girl who we met last week died in the morning. Apparently she had been taken to St. Francis last Thursday, where she received an adjusted ARV regimen that made the vomitting stop, but did nothing to alleviate the diarrhea. St. Francis suggested she be taken to the hospital to start nutritional therapy, but the family never did. They were afraid of the hospital bill. So the girl continued to wither away all weekend and finally just couldn't fight it anymore. That family will no longer be involved in the mushroom project since the burial ceremony (which lasts traditionally 3 weeks) is occurring right around the time we need their attention most. So I carried a mixture of infuriation (with the health care system, with poverty) and nausea into our day's work. Katie and I worked on the instructional brochure in the morning, then met the rest of the team in Buziika for the boiling of the cotton husks and the construction of another mushroom shed. I think the mixture of emotion, heat, and disagreement about not including that family in the project raised everyone's tensions. Katie and I went on an hour-long run that evening but decided not to talk. Both of us just wanted silence. Of course that wasn't possible, given that Ugandan children can spot white skin from a mile away. We had kids shouting, "Muzungu bye!" across the cornfields, kids chasing us with their makeshift toys (bike tires propelled by sticks), and kids runnning at our heels even with water jugs on their heads.
After the run I took a long bucket bath in the dark, ate my new most favorite snack (McVitie's whole-wheat digestive crackers and peanut butter ... I hope to find them back in the US, but given that the nutrition facts are in Arabic and Russian, I don't know how much luck I'll have), and finished The Last King of Scotland to decompress. I felt much better today. We ran out of bottle caps (used as washers for the nails of the sheds), so we called it a day early and headed into Jinja to send in our weekly progress reports. We won't be going to work on Friday, since FSD has planned a three-day trip to Cipi Falls so we can do some waterfall-repelling. On our way to the internet cafe, Bryan was digging bottle caps out of the ground with his spade. He looked so goofy carrying such a fierce-looking instrument through the heavily populated streets of Jinja, but not nearly as goofy as this red-headed muzungu trying to pull off a silky Ugandan traditional dress (the one with the pointy shoulders). I try to fit in as much as possible, but not that much. Daisy and I bought raspberry and lime Jell-O mix, as well as some Cadbury chocolate squares, for our dad's birthday tomorrow. We'll be heading to the annual agricultural show in Jinja tomorrow after work, but hopefully will be able to get the balloons blown and Jell-O made by the time he returns from work. Speaking of the agricultural show, we saw President Museveni's entourage escorting him into town today for the event. That's how big of a deal it is. I anticipate coming home with some unfamiliar fruits and vegetables tomorrow.
Ta Ta For Now,
Abby :o)
On Sunday, when I returned from rafting, my parents wanted to know all about the experience. My dad has an amusing quirk of, whenever I tell a story, repeating everything back to me just to make sure he picks up every detail. So I'll say, "My boat flipped and I took a big swig of the Nile and I scratched my leg. Look!" Then he'll say, "Oooook. So your boat tipped? Into the Nile? And you swallowed some water? And whoa! Look at that scratch on your leg!" I think he does it to create a picture in his mind. He's very contemplative, and I'm convinced his thoughts are very vivid. That evening I painted my mom's toenails and fingernails with bright pink nail polish that I had bought at CVS in Chicago before leaving. She was very particular about not getting paint on her cuticles. Afterwards she exclaimed, "Nalwoga, you are a beautician! God bless you!" It was cute. I think the pink made her more sassy though. She's got a lot of attitude now :).
On Monday we started soaking cotton husks in the drums. We had to pump the water into jerrycans from a borehole (spelling?) and then carry them a decent distance to Jjaja Judith's house. The push ups my dad does with me are doing some good, as I was the only girl (apart from Ellen) on our team who could carry the cannister by myself. We also administered pre-nutritional surveys to the five families with whom we are working on our project. We're hoping that, after Jjaja hosts a nutrition seminar in a couple weeks, and after the community members are able to harvest and sell their mushrooms (and thus have more money to buy healthier food, like fruits and vegetables), the post-nutritional survey will reveal a better understanding about the phrase "balanced diet." One man told us he thought "balanced diet" meant getting all the three food groups: matooke (steamed banana), rice, and posho (tasteless, white, floury goo). Wrong-o. Since all of my teammates and I didn't need to be present to interview each person, Ellen and I decided it should be our job to distract the village kids while the interviews were conducted. We taught them the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," played some Simon Says, and just made silly faces and noises. One thing that cracks me up about the kids here is that there is no difference in attire for boys and girls. So lots of little girls in pretty, frilly, flowery dresses actually turn out to be little boys when they lift up the rim of their dresses to dance. Boys and girls also both shave their heads, making gender identification even more difficult. Monday evening we went to Bryan's house to say hi to his mom, Hajat Sarah. She barely speaks any English but is super excitable and very welcoming. She lives on a compound situated on 7 acres of farmland. Her hobby seems to be taking in orphans and elderly, mentally-off grandmothers. One of these grandmothers was so happy to see us that she ran around screaming, "Good morning!" before settling down enough to hug us all. She then quickly resumed talking to her invisible friends. Hajat has such a big heart, and it was refreshing to see that evident compassion in a woman who didn't really have many resources to share.
Tuesday was one of the most irritating days yet. The day started off with Jonathan, one of our supervisors, telling us that the 17-year-old girl who we met last week died in the morning. Apparently she had been taken to St. Francis last Thursday, where she received an adjusted ARV regimen that made the vomitting stop, but did nothing to alleviate the diarrhea. St. Francis suggested she be taken to the hospital to start nutritional therapy, but the family never did. They were afraid of the hospital bill. So the girl continued to wither away all weekend and finally just couldn't fight it anymore. That family will no longer be involved in the mushroom project since the burial ceremony (which lasts traditionally 3 weeks) is occurring right around the time we need their attention most. So I carried a mixture of infuriation (with the health care system, with poverty) and nausea into our day's work. Katie and I worked on the instructional brochure in the morning, then met the rest of the team in Buziika for the boiling of the cotton husks and the construction of another mushroom shed. I think the mixture of emotion, heat, and disagreement about not including that family in the project raised everyone's tensions. Katie and I went on an hour-long run that evening but decided not to talk. Both of us just wanted silence. Of course that wasn't possible, given that Ugandan children can spot white skin from a mile away. We had kids shouting, "Muzungu bye!" across the cornfields, kids chasing us with their makeshift toys (bike tires propelled by sticks), and kids runnning at our heels even with water jugs on their heads.
After the run I took a long bucket bath in the dark, ate my new most favorite snack (McVitie's whole-wheat digestive crackers and peanut butter ... I hope to find them back in the US, but given that the nutrition facts are in Arabic and Russian, I don't know how much luck I'll have), and finished The Last King of Scotland to decompress. I felt much better today. We ran out of bottle caps (used as washers for the nails of the sheds), so we called it a day early and headed into Jinja to send in our weekly progress reports. We won't be going to work on Friday, since FSD has planned a three-day trip to Cipi Falls so we can do some waterfall-repelling. On our way to the internet cafe, Bryan was digging bottle caps out of the ground with his spade. He looked so goofy carrying such a fierce-looking instrument through the heavily populated streets of Jinja, but not nearly as goofy as this red-headed muzungu trying to pull off a silky Ugandan traditional dress (the one with the pointy shoulders). I try to fit in as much as possible, but not that much. Daisy and I bought raspberry and lime Jell-O mix, as well as some Cadbury chocolate squares, for our dad's birthday tomorrow. We'll be heading to the annual agricultural show in Jinja tomorrow after work, but hopefully will be able to get the balloons blown and Jell-O made by the time he returns from work. Speaking of the agricultural show, we saw President Museveni's entourage escorting him into town today for the event. That's how big of a deal it is. I anticipate coming home with some unfamiliar fruits and vegetables tomorrow.
Ta Ta For Now,
Abby :o)
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Weekend
So although only three days have passed since I last posted, I was conveniently near an internet cafe on this hot Sunday afternoon and decided to update everyone.
Friday was a pretty uneventful work day. We just did some organizing for the upcoming week and headed out early. Ellen, Katie, and I decided to go on a hiking exploration in the cornfields around our house. On the way up a mountain, we passed some sheep herders. The sheep here are so funny-looking. They have tails like dogs that wag and flop around when they walk. As we were ascending to the very top, about 10 schoolgirls were walking down the path. They were a giggly bunch, and asked if they could "escort" us to the top. It was a good thing we let them tag along, because they led us to a grassy cliff from which we could see all of Mbikko and Jinja, as well as Lake Victoria and the Nile snaking through the villages. Before I left for Uganda, a friend told me it was one of the most beautiful places on earth. In that moment, I couldn't have agreed more. The girls then taught us some traditional songs and dances, then asked us to show them our country's dance. We were a little embarrassed to say that the US doesn't have a dance. They thought that was odd. After a little while, we decided to join the other school children in their bright orange uniforms (all with rosaries around their necks) in a game of net ball. I don't understand why this game is named the way it is. There is no net involved. It was basically keep away, but once you receive the ball, you can't move again until you pass it to a teammate. They tried to get us to play with our shoes off, but our feet weren't tough enough for gravel and thorny bushes. After the game, the girls led us down a rusty-colored dirt road to their secondary school, where they introduced us to our headmaster. We apologized for not looking "smart" (a term Ugandans use to describe someone who looks sophisticated and presentable), but he greeted us warmly nevertheless. There were inspirational signs sprinkled throughout the schoolyard: "Education is Power," "Study Hard," "Chase Your Dreams." Then one that said, "Avoid Sugar Daddies." That's an issue here. Older men offer young girls a home and nice things in exchange for a sexual relationship. It's one of the biggest issues that HIV-prevention groups have trouble tackling. The girls then asked if they could escort us back to Mbikko. We allowed them to take us a back way, which was a bad idea considering Mbikko is a looooooooong village situated on about a three-mile stretch of Kampala highway. They dropped us at the opposite end of where our homes are. So we had to walk along the highway in our exercise gear back to our road. It was during this trip that I realized how uncomfortable I feel when I don't blend into my surroundings better ... it's one thing to be a muzungu dressed in acceptable attire (skirt and nice shirt), but it's another thing to walk around in shorts. We got a lot of glares. Revealing your knees is a sign of intentional disrespect.
Friday evening I explained to my parents that, in the US, people typically say, "Bless you," after someone sneezes. My mom must not have understood this concept, because later that evening I was bucket bathing and heard my mom sneeze outside the door. Immediately afterwards, she exclaimed, "God bless Nalwoga!" (Nalwoga is my African name). I found this hilarious and explained to her between chuckles that I was the one who was supposed to bless her. I think she gets it now. Also on Friday, poor Daisy had to do a lot of doctoring of her mosquito bites. My skin must not taste good, because I rarely wear insect repellent and I have a crappy mosquito net and haven't been bitten yet. Daisy sprays her bed and body every evening and still wakes up with massive welts on her arms. I do, however, make sure and take my malaria medication ... which on occasion gives me strange dreams and mid-morning hallucinations. I read Things Fall Apart last week, a book about the invasion of British missionaries in a traditional and isolated African village. There were 14 Brits volunteering at St. Francis for the first two weeks we were here, so I dreamt that they were trying to takeover our mushroom project. Luckily they built their playground and left on Saturday.
On Saturday, all the GESI participants went rafting on the Nile. I was extremely apprehensive, since a rafting trip in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, last summer ended in a bruised knee and a stomach-full of water from a scary tumble into the Snake River. The Nile is SO much scarier. I knew it was going to be bad when they handed us helmets (we didn't have helmets in Jackson Hole) to "prevent our heads from hitting big rocks." It also wasn't reassuring when our Ugandan guide told us that the rapids we'd be going through (some class 5.5 ... class 6 are "impassable and lethal") had names like "Blood Runner" and "The Bad Place." Before every rapid, our guide would say, "Alright guys, there are rocks on this one. I really don't know what will happen. It's 50-50 that we'll be tossed out. Just don't do what I didn't tell you not to do." Huh? Well, our boat only ended up tipping once, but it was a good tumble nevertheless. All 11 people on my boat were thrown off. I was the only one who stayed attached to the boat and came out of it with only a scratch on my calf. Others cut their toes pretty bad. All in all though, six hours of floating down the Nile, past scenery dotted with trees that looked like they were right out of Lion King, was a blast. We ended the day with a bonfire and an overnight stay in bunkhouses right on the shores of Bujagali Falls.
________________
I've been reading Last King of Scotland, and have found that the author Giles Foden can describe Ugandan culture and life way better than me. Here are some excerpts describing things I've mentioned in my blog before that I couldn't have put better myself.
"A marabou stork was poking about nearby in a pile of rubbish, and I gave it a wide berth. These birds, the height of a small child, stood on spindly legs, their large beaks and heavy pinkish wattles making them look like they might topple over. They were urban scavengers, gathering wherever there was pollution or decay. I hated them, yet found them intriguing; they were almost professorial in the way they sorted through the heaps of rotting produce scattered all over the city, the organic mass mixed in with mud and ordure, scraps of plastic, and bits of metal."
"Filled with silky-haired goats, chickens, and what must have been thirty human bodies-in a space meant for about ten-the matatu didn't feel like a vehicle at all. With its windscreen cracked and browned, several of the door handles sheared off, one of the wheel arches missing and a general weariness distributed throughout the whole structure, onto which various bits of wood and steel plate had been tacked, it seemed less like a machine than an ancient artifact, something to worship or view at an exhibition. On the front windows are brightly lettered messages: 'Travel Hopefully,' 'Go with God,' 'Africa Superstar Express,' or 'No Condition is Permanent.'" The main character also describes being looked at like a "zoo animal" because he is a mzungu. I feel like that a lot.
Until next time!
Abby
Friday was a pretty uneventful work day. We just did some organizing for the upcoming week and headed out early. Ellen, Katie, and I decided to go on a hiking exploration in the cornfields around our house. On the way up a mountain, we passed some sheep herders. The sheep here are so funny-looking. They have tails like dogs that wag and flop around when they walk. As we were ascending to the very top, about 10 schoolgirls were walking down the path. They were a giggly bunch, and asked if they could "escort" us to the top. It was a good thing we let them tag along, because they led us to a grassy cliff from which we could see all of Mbikko and Jinja, as well as Lake Victoria and the Nile snaking through the villages. Before I left for Uganda, a friend told me it was one of the most beautiful places on earth. In that moment, I couldn't have agreed more. The girls then taught us some traditional songs and dances, then asked us to show them our country's dance. We were a little embarrassed to say that the US doesn't have a dance. They thought that was odd. After a little while, we decided to join the other school children in their bright orange uniforms (all with rosaries around their necks) in a game of net ball. I don't understand why this game is named the way it is. There is no net involved. It was basically keep away, but once you receive the ball, you can't move again until you pass it to a teammate. They tried to get us to play with our shoes off, but our feet weren't tough enough for gravel and thorny bushes. After the game, the girls led us down a rusty-colored dirt road to their secondary school, where they introduced us to our headmaster. We apologized for not looking "smart" (a term Ugandans use to describe someone who looks sophisticated and presentable), but he greeted us warmly nevertheless. There were inspirational signs sprinkled throughout the schoolyard: "Education is Power," "Study Hard," "Chase Your Dreams." Then one that said, "Avoid Sugar Daddies." That's an issue here. Older men offer young girls a home and nice things in exchange for a sexual relationship. It's one of the biggest issues that HIV-prevention groups have trouble tackling. The girls then asked if they could escort us back to Mbikko. We allowed them to take us a back way, which was a bad idea considering Mbikko is a looooooooong village situated on about a three-mile stretch of Kampala highway. They dropped us at the opposite end of where our homes are. So we had to walk along the highway in our exercise gear back to our road. It was during this trip that I realized how uncomfortable I feel when I don't blend into my surroundings better ... it's one thing to be a muzungu dressed in acceptable attire (skirt and nice shirt), but it's another thing to walk around in shorts. We got a lot of glares. Revealing your knees is a sign of intentional disrespect.
Friday evening I explained to my parents that, in the US, people typically say, "Bless you," after someone sneezes. My mom must not have understood this concept, because later that evening I was bucket bathing and heard my mom sneeze outside the door. Immediately afterwards, she exclaimed, "God bless Nalwoga!" (Nalwoga is my African name). I found this hilarious and explained to her between chuckles that I was the one who was supposed to bless her. I think she gets it now. Also on Friday, poor Daisy had to do a lot of doctoring of her mosquito bites. My skin must not taste good, because I rarely wear insect repellent and I have a crappy mosquito net and haven't been bitten yet. Daisy sprays her bed and body every evening and still wakes up with massive welts on her arms. I do, however, make sure and take my malaria medication ... which on occasion gives me strange dreams and mid-morning hallucinations. I read Things Fall Apart last week, a book about the invasion of British missionaries in a traditional and isolated African village. There were 14 Brits volunteering at St. Francis for the first two weeks we were here, so I dreamt that they were trying to takeover our mushroom project. Luckily they built their playground and left on Saturday.
On Saturday, all the GESI participants went rafting on the Nile. I was extremely apprehensive, since a rafting trip in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, last summer ended in a bruised knee and a stomach-full of water from a scary tumble into the Snake River. The Nile is SO much scarier. I knew it was going to be bad when they handed us helmets (we didn't have helmets in Jackson Hole) to "prevent our heads from hitting big rocks." It also wasn't reassuring when our Ugandan guide told us that the rapids we'd be going through (some class 5.5 ... class 6 are "impassable and lethal") had names like "Blood Runner" and "The Bad Place." Before every rapid, our guide would say, "Alright guys, there are rocks on this one. I really don't know what will happen. It's 50-50 that we'll be tossed out. Just don't do what I didn't tell you not to do." Huh? Well, our boat only ended up tipping once, but it was a good tumble nevertheless. All 11 people on my boat were thrown off. I was the only one who stayed attached to the boat and came out of it with only a scratch on my calf. Others cut their toes pretty bad. All in all though, six hours of floating down the Nile, past scenery dotted with trees that looked like they were right out of Lion King, was a blast. We ended the day with a bonfire and an overnight stay in bunkhouses right on the shores of Bujagali Falls.
________________
I've been reading Last King of Scotland, and have found that the author Giles Foden can describe Ugandan culture and life way better than me. Here are some excerpts describing things I've mentioned in my blog before that I couldn't have put better myself.
"A marabou stork was poking about nearby in a pile of rubbish, and I gave it a wide berth. These birds, the height of a small child, stood on spindly legs, their large beaks and heavy pinkish wattles making them look like they might topple over. They were urban scavengers, gathering wherever there was pollution or decay. I hated them, yet found them intriguing; they were almost professorial in the way they sorted through the heaps of rotting produce scattered all over the city, the organic mass mixed in with mud and ordure, scraps of plastic, and bits of metal."
"Filled with silky-haired goats, chickens, and what must have been thirty human bodies-in a space meant for about ten-the matatu didn't feel like a vehicle at all. With its windscreen cracked and browned, several of the door handles sheared off, one of the wheel arches missing and a general weariness distributed throughout the whole structure, onto which various bits of wood and steel plate had been tacked, it seemed less like a machine than an ancient artifact, something to worship or view at an exhibition. On the front windows are brightly lettered messages: 'Travel Hopefully,' 'Go with God,' 'Africa Superstar Express,' or 'No Condition is Permanent.'" The main character also describes being looked at like a "zoo animal" because he is a mzungu. I feel like that a lot.
Until next time!
Abby
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Emotions
This has been a whirlwind of a week.
Saturday all four GESI teams (20 of us total) went to Kampala with the FSD staff to see the Uganda Museum. I think they mentioned that it was the only museum in the whole country. Surprising, especially since the placards describing the items in the display cases looked and read like they had been created by fourth graders. I guess I shouldn't compare to the multi-million dollar WWII Museum in Kansas City. KC probably has more resources to devote to pretty placards. We did get to try and make some music on traditional African instruments and watch some cricket at a nearby field, though. The cricket set-up was interesting. There is a large Indian population in Uganda. Many of the Indians were expelled from the country during the dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s because they were the ones (basically the only ones) making a bunch of profit off self-started businesses. I'm not sure when they started trickling back to Uganda, but this cricket field (which had about 10 matches going on simultaneously) was heavily segregated: it was the Indian children versus Ugandan children. There were no racially mixed teams, and even the bleachers were segregated. It was an odd sight. While in Kampala, I also bought my host dad some balloons. He turns 47 on July 23, and I'm hoping to surprise him when he gets home from work. Oh yeah, and on our way home, I saw a tall Ugandan woman with a Kansas City Royals shirt. It made me happy.
On Sunday, we attended Mass again in the morning. This time around, Mass was held outside to accommodate for the extra people attending the confirmation ceremony. It was actually quite beautiful. There were several tents surrounding the altar from all sides, and a massive tree near the back where probably 60 kids had perched themselves in the branches. We got there late and sat on a woven mat underneath the shade. It was a good thing we didn't stand, given that the service lasted a whole four hours. And it was ALL in Luganda. I did some deep thinking during that time. When we got home, Daisy and I got to work on strategizing how we would bake the brownie mix I had brought along from the US. Our family doesn't have an oven...only a charcoal pit out back and a bunsen-burner-type thing inside. We decided to simulate an oven by mixing the brownies in a small metal pot, placing that pot on top of an upside-down glass plate that was situated on the inside of a larger metal pot, placing a lid over the larger pot, and sticking it over the charcoal. After about an hour of baking, the brownies were PERFECT: still a little gooey, but delicious. We didn't enjoy long, as the sun was setting and we had to get to the garden before dark. Our family has a plot of land about a mile away, tended to by my dad's deceased brother's son. We got to see their avocado, matooke, and mango trees, and their sweet potato mounds. I also learned how to milk a cow. Not much came out, and the cow kept looking at me like I was an idiot, but I'm glad I learned nonetheless. Before leaving, my dad's nephew asked us to stop in to eat. Like I've mentioned, whenever you visit someone, even if it's unexpected, it is only polite for the host to provide "food for the journey." So we were fed chicken, beef, bumonde (sweet potato), and passion fruit juice. It was on this visit that I witnessed something that I hadn't seen before but had heard about: Ugandan women, when they are serving food to men or greeting someone of high respect, are expected to kneel. It was so odd to see my dad's nephew's wife kneel in front of him to deliver the food. It looked wrong, and actually kind of made me upset. There are so many times I have had to tell myself, "It's a cultural thing" to avoid thinking too much. For example, homosexuality here is not only illegal in practice; merely discussing it is illegal. A member of a different GESI group here told me on Saturday that her dad thinks it's OK to beat women with sugar cane poles if she's "being annoying." I've seen a woman walking around, breastfeeding her child WITHOUT HANDS. The child was just dangling there. I wanted to take a picture but didn't know how without being discreet. So many odd encounters I just have to remind myself to dismiss.
I'm beginning to get used to and almost comforted by my little village in Mbikko (yep, I've been spelling it wrong all along). When we went out to eat on Friday night to eat muzungu food (i.e. pizza), I actually missed eating my mom's food. It also makes me smile when the next-door neighbor children walk their goats on leashes every morning, when I can look up at the sky while brushing my teeth outside at night and see billions of stars shining so much brighter than they do in the US, and when kids walking home from school peer through our kitchen window and shout, "Muzungu, how are you?" Actually, funny story. I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking milk tea and eating my favorite purple ground nuts, and a little kid said exactly that. I shouted back, "Muganda," meaning, "I'm Ugandan." My mom unfortunately happened to be drinking porridge at the time, found my declaration funny, and snorted the liquid up her nose. So that was Sunday.
Monday. Bryan and I had set up a meeting with the bishop of Jinja diocese because we heard from one of our supervisors that this bishop had experience in exporting mushrooms. So Bryan and I hopped on a motorcycle boda boda (I know, I said they were illegal according to FSD, which they are ... but we were running late, and it's the fastest mode of transportation available). I made Bryan sit between me and the driver so I could grab onto Bryan. Luckily, the bicycle boda experience seemed far more terrifying than the motorcycle. When we entered his office, we were confused. A white man was sitting at the desk. Bryan asked for the bishop. He said, in a think Dutch accent, "That's me!" We foud out that he's been in East Africa for 50 years now: he spent 7 years in Kenya and the last 43 in Uganda. Surprise #2: he knew absolutely nothing about mushroom exportation. He does, however, love eating mushrooms. Surprise #3: he said, if we wanted to, he could take us to her house right then! So we hopped in the car with the bishop and went to Mushroom Margaret's house. She is also half-Dutch, half-Ugandan, and is a very serious businesswoman. She started producing mushrooms out of her house in 1984, and now has some pretty lucrative contracts with Chinese herbalists in Kampala and several markets in Jinja. She showed us her shed and gave us her number. More about her later. She is also the one of the reasons I cried this week. Also on Monday, we told Jjaja Judith that we had picked her to be our point person for the mushroom project. She was SO excited, and hugged us all, blessing us in Luganda. That evening, Daisy and I went on a walk up a hill surrounded by cornfields behind our house. As we neared the top, 8 monkeys emerged from the crops (we were told monkey theft is a problem here), looked curiously at us, then wandered off.
Tuesday was crazy. Nelson, an ex-rebel who knows a lot about the materials needed to start a mushroom garden, took Bryan, Daisy, Katie, and me to Jinja town to get some of the materials. Frankie and Ellen made the trek to Kampala to get the mushroom seeds, only available at Makerere University (according to Jonathan). That turned out to be a fiasco. When they got to the "herbarium" (the location to which Jonathan had directed them) after a three-hour matatu ride, they were told that no one had ever heard of mushroom seeds. After wandering around Kampala looking for an internet cafe so they could look up phone numbers of other university departments, they finally contacted the chemistry department, which had the seeds. But they won't be ready until Monday. We were hoping to start the growing process on this past Wednesday so we could see the whole process before leaving in August.
Let me explain briefly the growing process: Monday, we will train Jjaja to soak the cotton husks in large barrels. Tuesday, we will train her how to drain the husks, then boil them. Wednesday, we will layer the prepared cotton husks and the mushroom seeds into black plastic bags. These bags will then sit in the Jjaja's mushroom shed (which we constructed on Wednesday) for two weeks. After those two weeks, they will be taken home by the 5 families who Jjaja Judith designated and watered in their sheds. After a week of water, they will be ready for their first harvest. The families can then sell their mushrooms in local markets. Dried mushrooms go for more money than fresh ones. So they'll have to decide how much effort they want to put into the process.
So back to the craziness of Tuesday: while Frankie and Ellen were having trouble in Kampala, the four of us were having our own issues in Jinja. As we were preparing to leave St. Francis in an ambulance (we needed enough space to load our three barrels) to head to the market, two nurses asked if we could transport a patient to the Jinja hospital on our way. So they loaded a man in on a stretcher. This man was so so sick. He looked to be about 80 pounds, had sores all over his ankles, vomit around his mouth, and he was breathing so quickly and mumbling incomprehensible things with all his strength. When sun would come in from the window, he would clench his eyes tight and reach for Katie's hand. With each bump in the road, he would grimace and moan. The inefficiency of the hospital was absurd. It took us forever to find the right unit due to lack of signs. When a doctor finally hopped into the car to check him out, we found out that the man was HIV-positive and severely dehydrated. Before checking him into a ward, he had to be registered, which took probably 45 minutes. All the while, the man started shaking and moaning louder. I don't know the mannerisms of dying people, but he looked like he was literally dying right before our eyes. I started crying, maybe unnecessarily because the doctors didn't seem too concerned about speeding up the process.
So once in Jinja, we had already missed lunch. With the help of Nelson, we were able to find our materials pretty quickly (and avoid muzungu prices): charcoal dust for the floor, black bags for the gardens, string to hang the bags in the sheds, nails for the shed construction, tarp to make the sheds completely dark, sugar sacks to assist in draining, and the barrels. At one point, Katie and I guarded our barrels on probably the most chaotic corner of the market while waiting for the ambulance to come pick us up. Soooo many men came up to us to ask if they could help us transport our barrels. One man even tried to sell us the barrels, not knowing we had already bought them. Another asked about our project, and wondered whether we could expand it to his village. Katie gave him her number. Our last stop was a soap factory for the 6 large bags of cotton husks. The van wasn't big enough for the barrels and the husks, so the ambulance had to drive to Buzkia (Jjaja's town), drop off the barrels, then drive back for the husks. Daisy and I waited at the soap factory, run by Ugandans, who were supervised by Indians. The Ugandans tried to get us to give them 300 shillings to load the bags onto the ambulance. Their Indian supervisor chastised them and even threatened to fire them for trying to trick us into tipping. The said thing is, 300 shillings is only 15 cents. They probably make a dollar a day. I wouldn't have minded. The Indians run a tight ship, though. Before heading home from work, Katie, Daisy, and I walked about a mile from St. Francis to the lumber yard to negotiate prices for the next day's purchases (we needed logs and papyrus mats to construct Jjaja's shed the next day). On the way back, none of us talked. It was hot, we hadn't eaten since seven, and we had sat in a car with a dying man. The only thing mentioned was, "Wow," as ten truckloads of army men, each equipped with an AK-47, drove by. It was an overwhelming day. To top it off, my dad mentioned at dinner (a delicious spread of Nile perch, avocados, pumpkin, and g-nut sauce) that he thought Idi Amin was one of the best leaders Uganda had ever had. Shocking. I don't know if the Last King of Scotland just depicted him in an exaggerated negative light, but from my understanding he killed around 300,000 political adversaries and regular civilians. I wasn't in the mood to argue.
On Wednesday, we constructed Jjaja Judith's shed. It went so splendidly, and seems sturdy enough to stand firm against the rainy season's gusts of wind. While the engineers were finishing fortifying the shed, Daisy, Katie, and I visited the five families who Jjaja had designated. All were older, physically limited, and taking care of 6-15 grandkids orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. Luckily we only have to construct one more mushroom shed! The other four families already had exisiting rooms or structures that will be suitable. By the time we got to the fifth house, though, I was feeling the effects of dehydration. One of my water bottles keeps breeding moss, so I had purchased another. But I gave that one to Jjaja Judith halfway into our visits. Adding to the dizziness was the fact that the fifth jjaja (jjaja, remember, means old person) was taking care of her 17-year-old granddaughter who had had HIV since birth. While we gathered around her to introduce ourselves, she vomited. Her grandma told us that the anti-retrovirals she's been taking haven't been working because she hasn't been able to hold any food down since May, thus incapacitating absorption of the medication. So since May, this poor girl has been withering away to probably 70 pounds, and the grandma hasn't taken her to see any doctors. We told her that immediately (as in Thursday morning of this week) she needed to go to St. Francis and be admitted to the Omoana House, a home for children in need of an environment of monitored recovery. Hopefully they did that today. I started getting nauseous, probably as a result of no water and this girl's story. I would've passed out had the jjaja not placed a goat-skin mat under my butt and told me to sit down. After rehydrating, I felt well enough by evening to go running with Katie. This was the most memorable run yet. While heading down a road surrounded on both sides by maize, we came upon a group of 8 young men carrying machetes. Their leader said, "Good evening madams. Well done! Thanks for your work! Can we join you?" Before we could answer, they started jogging: four on our left, and four on our right. They said they were on their way to brand cattle. It actually wasn't frightening. I felt safe. They stuck with us for half a mile before bidding farewell.
On Thursday, we did a bunch of financial figuring. This involved calling Mushroom Margaret to ask how long a bag of mushroom seeds will last before it needs to be replenished. I was the one to call. Boy did she lash out at me. She was wondering why, if we had reliable informants stepping us through the mushroom-growing training process, we were calling her. I explained that although Jonathan (a St. Francis employee who had some experience growing mushrooms before) knew what he was talking about, we didn't think it'd hurt to have a second opinion. Without saying it, she basically told me (in a very loud and angry voice) that if we were going to consult her for her expert insight, we would need to pay her. So I thanked her and she hung up. I teared up. I wasn't personally hurt; I think I was just emotionally exhausted by all the week's activities and didn't think a little unpaid cooperation would be a big deal. Obviously it was.
So, as you can tell, this has been a crazy week. I'm learning a lot, though, and love my host family more and more each day. This weekend, our team is going rafting on Nile. Also, Bryan and I would like to go bungee jumping. I've heard that girls can jump for free if they jump naked. I'm tempted...any comments?
Sula bulungi ("Good night" in Luganda),
Abby
Saturday all four GESI teams (20 of us total) went to Kampala with the FSD staff to see the Uganda Museum. I think they mentioned that it was the only museum in the whole country. Surprising, especially since the placards describing the items in the display cases looked and read like they had been created by fourth graders. I guess I shouldn't compare to the multi-million dollar WWII Museum in Kansas City. KC probably has more resources to devote to pretty placards. We did get to try and make some music on traditional African instruments and watch some cricket at a nearby field, though. The cricket set-up was interesting. There is a large Indian population in Uganda. Many of the Indians were expelled from the country during the dictatorship of Idi Amin in the 1970s because they were the ones (basically the only ones) making a bunch of profit off self-started businesses. I'm not sure when they started trickling back to Uganda, but this cricket field (which had about 10 matches going on simultaneously) was heavily segregated: it was the Indian children versus Ugandan children. There were no racially mixed teams, and even the bleachers were segregated. It was an odd sight. While in Kampala, I also bought my host dad some balloons. He turns 47 on July 23, and I'm hoping to surprise him when he gets home from work. Oh yeah, and on our way home, I saw a tall Ugandan woman with a Kansas City Royals shirt. It made me happy.
On Sunday, we attended Mass again in the morning. This time around, Mass was held outside to accommodate for the extra people attending the confirmation ceremony. It was actually quite beautiful. There were several tents surrounding the altar from all sides, and a massive tree near the back where probably 60 kids had perched themselves in the branches. We got there late and sat on a woven mat underneath the shade. It was a good thing we didn't stand, given that the service lasted a whole four hours. And it was ALL in Luganda. I did some deep thinking during that time. When we got home, Daisy and I got to work on strategizing how we would bake the brownie mix I had brought along from the US. Our family doesn't have an oven...only a charcoal pit out back and a bunsen-burner-type thing inside. We decided to simulate an oven by mixing the brownies in a small metal pot, placing that pot on top of an upside-down glass plate that was situated on the inside of a larger metal pot, placing a lid over the larger pot, and sticking it over the charcoal. After about an hour of baking, the brownies were PERFECT: still a little gooey, but delicious. We didn't enjoy long, as the sun was setting and we had to get to the garden before dark. Our family has a plot of land about a mile away, tended to by my dad's deceased brother's son. We got to see their avocado, matooke, and mango trees, and their sweet potato mounds. I also learned how to milk a cow. Not much came out, and the cow kept looking at me like I was an idiot, but I'm glad I learned nonetheless. Before leaving, my dad's nephew asked us to stop in to eat. Like I've mentioned, whenever you visit someone, even if it's unexpected, it is only polite for the host to provide "food for the journey." So we were fed chicken, beef, bumonde (sweet potato), and passion fruit juice. It was on this visit that I witnessed something that I hadn't seen before but had heard about: Ugandan women, when they are serving food to men or greeting someone of high respect, are expected to kneel. It was so odd to see my dad's nephew's wife kneel in front of him to deliver the food. It looked wrong, and actually kind of made me upset. There are so many times I have had to tell myself, "It's a cultural thing" to avoid thinking too much. For example, homosexuality here is not only illegal in practice; merely discussing it is illegal. A member of a different GESI group here told me on Saturday that her dad thinks it's OK to beat women with sugar cane poles if she's "being annoying." I've seen a woman walking around, breastfeeding her child WITHOUT HANDS. The child was just dangling there. I wanted to take a picture but didn't know how without being discreet. So many odd encounters I just have to remind myself to dismiss.
I'm beginning to get used to and almost comforted by my little village in Mbikko (yep, I've been spelling it wrong all along). When we went out to eat on Friday night to eat muzungu food (i.e. pizza), I actually missed eating my mom's food. It also makes me smile when the next-door neighbor children walk their goats on leashes every morning, when I can look up at the sky while brushing my teeth outside at night and see billions of stars shining so much brighter than they do in the US, and when kids walking home from school peer through our kitchen window and shout, "Muzungu, how are you?" Actually, funny story. I was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking milk tea and eating my favorite purple ground nuts, and a little kid said exactly that. I shouted back, "Muganda," meaning, "I'm Ugandan." My mom unfortunately happened to be drinking porridge at the time, found my declaration funny, and snorted the liquid up her nose. So that was Sunday.
Monday. Bryan and I had set up a meeting with the bishop of Jinja diocese because we heard from one of our supervisors that this bishop had experience in exporting mushrooms. So Bryan and I hopped on a motorcycle boda boda (I know, I said they were illegal according to FSD, which they are ... but we were running late, and it's the fastest mode of transportation available). I made Bryan sit between me and the driver so I could grab onto Bryan. Luckily, the bicycle boda experience seemed far more terrifying than the motorcycle. When we entered his office, we were confused. A white man was sitting at the desk. Bryan asked for the bishop. He said, in a think Dutch accent, "That's me!" We foud out that he's been in East Africa for 50 years now: he spent 7 years in Kenya and the last 43 in Uganda. Surprise #2: he knew absolutely nothing about mushroom exportation. He does, however, love eating mushrooms. Surprise #3: he said, if we wanted to, he could take us to her house right then! So we hopped in the car with the bishop and went to Mushroom Margaret's house. She is also half-Dutch, half-Ugandan, and is a very serious businesswoman. She started producing mushrooms out of her house in 1984, and now has some pretty lucrative contracts with Chinese herbalists in Kampala and several markets in Jinja. She showed us her shed and gave us her number. More about her later. She is also the one of the reasons I cried this week. Also on Monday, we told Jjaja Judith that we had picked her to be our point person for the mushroom project. She was SO excited, and hugged us all, blessing us in Luganda. That evening, Daisy and I went on a walk up a hill surrounded by cornfields behind our house. As we neared the top, 8 monkeys emerged from the crops (we were told monkey theft is a problem here), looked curiously at us, then wandered off.
Tuesday was crazy. Nelson, an ex-rebel who knows a lot about the materials needed to start a mushroom garden, took Bryan, Daisy, Katie, and me to Jinja town to get some of the materials. Frankie and Ellen made the trek to Kampala to get the mushroom seeds, only available at Makerere University (according to Jonathan). That turned out to be a fiasco. When they got to the "herbarium" (the location to which Jonathan had directed them) after a three-hour matatu ride, they were told that no one had ever heard of mushroom seeds. After wandering around Kampala looking for an internet cafe so they could look up phone numbers of other university departments, they finally contacted the chemistry department, which had the seeds. But they won't be ready until Monday. We were hoping to start the growing process on this past Wednesday so we could see the whole process before leaving in August.
Let me explain briefly the growing process: Monday, we will train Jjaja to soak the cotton husks in large barrels. Tuesday, we will train her how to drain the husks, then boil them. Wednesday, we will layer the prepared cotton husks and the mushroom seeds into black plastic bags. These bags will then sit in the Jjaja's mushroom shed (which we constructed on Wednesday) for two weeks. After those two weeks, they will be taken home by the 5 families who Jjaja Judith designated and watered in their sheds. After a week of water, they will be ready for their first harvest. The families can then sell their mushrooms in local markets. Dried mushrooms go for more money than fresh ones. So they'll have to decide how much effort they want to put into the process.
So back to the craziness of Tuesday: while Frankie and Ellen were having trouble in Kampala, the four of us were having our own issues in Jinja. As we were preparing to leave St. Francis in an ambulance (we needed enough space to load our three barrels) to head to the market, two nurses asked if we could transport a patient to the Jinja hospital on our way. So they loaded a man in on a stretcher. This man was so so sick. He looked to be about 80 pounds, had sores all over his ankles, vomit around his mouth, and he was breathing so quickly and mumbling incomprehensible things with all his strength. When sun would come in from the window, he would clench his eyes tight and reach for Katie's hand. With each bump in the road, he would grimace and moan. The inefficiency of the hospital was absurd. It took us forever to find the right unit due to lack of signs. When a doctor finally hopped into the car to check him out, we found out that the man was HIV-positive and severely dehydrated. Before checking him into a ward, he had to be registered, which took probably 45 minutes. All the while, the man started shaking and moaning louder. I don't know the mannerisms of dying people, but he looked like he was literally dying right before our eyes. I started crying, maybe unnecessarily because the doctors didn't seem too concerned about speeding up the process.
So once in Jinja, we had already missed lunch. With the help of Nelson, we were able to find our materials pretty quickly (and avoid muzungu prices): charcoal dust for the floor, black bags for the gardens, string to hang the bags in the sheds, nails for the shed construction, tarp to make the sheds completely dark, sugar sacks to assist in draining, and the barrels. At one point, Katie and I guarded our barrels on probably the most chaotic corner of the market while waiting for the ambulance to come pick us up. Soooo many men came up to us to ask if they could help us transport our barrels. One man even tried to sell us the barrels, not knowing we had already bought them. Another asked about our project, and wondered whether we could expand it to his village. Katie gave him her number. Our last stop was a soap factory for the 6 large bags of cotton husks. The van wasn't big enough for the barrels and the husks, so the ambulance had to drive to Buzkia (Jjaja's town), drop off the barrels, then drive back for the husks. Daisy and I waited at the soap factory, run by Ugandans, who were supervised by Indians. The Ugandans tried to get us to give them 300 shillings to load the bags onto the ambulance. Their Indian supervisor chastised them and even threatened to fire them for trying to trick us into tipping. The said thing is, 300 shillings is only 15 cents. They probably make a dollar a day. I wouldn't have minded. The Indians run a tight ship, though. Before heading home from work, Katie, Daisy, and I walked about a mile from St. Francis to the lumber yard to negotiate prices for the next day's purchases (we needed logs and papyrus mats to construct Jjaja's shed the next day). On the way back, none of us talked. It was hot, we hadn't eaten since seven, and we had sat in a car with a dying man. The only thing mentioned was, "Wow," as ten truckloads of army men, each equipped with an AK-47, drove by. It was an overwhelming day. To top it off, my dad mentioned at dinner (a delicious spread of Nile perch, avocados, pumpkin, and g-nut sauce) that he thought Idi Amin was one of the best leaders Uganda had ever had. Shocking. I don't know if the Last King of Scotland just depicted him in an exaggerated negative light, but from my understanding he killed around 300,000 political adversaries and regular civilians. I wasn't in the mood to argue.
On Wednesday, we constructed Jjaja Judith's shed. It went so splendidly, and seems sturdy enough to stand firm against the rainy season's gusts of wind. While the engineers were finishing fortifying the shed, Daisy, Katie, and I visited the five families who Jjaja had designated. All were older, physically limited, and taking care of 6-15 grandkids orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. Luckily we only have to construct one more mushroom shed! The other four families already had exisiting rooms or structures that will be suitable. By the time we got to the fifth house, though, I was feeling the effects of dehydration. One of my water bottles keeps breeding moss, so I had purchased another. But I gave that one to Jjaja Judith halfway into our visits. Adding to the dizziness was the fact that the fifth jjaja (jjaja, remember, means old person) was taking care of her 17-year-old granddaughter who had had HIV since birth. While we gathered around her to introduce ourselves, she vomited. Her grandma told us that the anti-retrovirals she's been taking haven't been working because she hasn't been able to hold any food down since May, thus incapacitating absorption of the medication. So since May, this poor girl has been withering away to probably 70 pounds, and the grandma hasn't taken her to see any doctors. We told her that immediately (as in Thursday morning of this week) she needed to go to St. Francis and be admitted to the Omoana House, a home for children in need of an environment of monitored recovery. Hopefully they did that today. I started getting nauseous, probably as a result of no water and this girl's story. I would've passed out had the jjaja not placed a goat-skin mat under my butt and told me to sit down. After rehydrating, I felt well enough by evening to go running with Katie. This was the most memorable run yet. While heading down a road surrounded on both sides by maize, we came upon a group of 8 young men carrying machetes. Their leader said, "Good evening madams. Well done! Thanks for your work! Can we join you?" Before we could answer, they started jogging: four on our left, and four on our right. They said they were on their way to brand cattle. It actually wasn't frightening. I felt safe. They stuck with us for half a mile before bidding farewell.
On Thursday, we did a bunch of financial figuring. This involved calling Mushroom Margaret to ask how long a bag of mushroom seeds will last before it needs to be replenished. I was the one to call. Boy did she lash out at me. She was wondering why, if we had reliable informants stepping us through the mushroom-growing training process, we were calling her. I explained that although Jonathan (a St. Francis employee who had some experience growing mushrooms before) knew what he was talking about, we didn't think it'd hurt to have a second opinion. Without saying it, she basically told me (in a very loud and angry voice) that if we were going to consult her for her expert insight, we would need to pay her. So I thanked her and she hung up. I teared up. I wasn't personally hurt; I think I was just emotionally exhausted by all the week's activities and didn't think a little unpaid cooperation would be a big deal. Obviously it was.
So, as you can tell, this has been a crazy week. I'm learning a lot, though, and love my host family more and more each day. This weekend, our team is going rafting on Nile. Also, Bryan and I would like to go bungee jumping. I've heard that girls can jump for free if they jump naked. I'm tempted...any comments?
Sula bulungi ("Good night" in Luganda),
Abby
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