Latest from Lugazi

Tomorrow is August! These past few weeks have been a flurry of activity. We are preparing a health survey in Lugazi, standardizing the jewelry being produced (e.g. quality control and prices), and continuing with lessons as usual. And having fun. In the midst of everything, we (the interns) are one by one leaving Uganda.

Some updates since the last post:

Musana goes into the community to teach the nutrition unit

In a previous post, I mentioned my concerns about how the women may not be interested in going out to the communities to teach. As it turns out, even though they were reluctant to actually practice giving the lessons, they did a phenomenal job giving them when it came time. So this was a success story, with some twists.

The first group to teach was Susan, Immaculate, and Florence. They were all very strong presenters and did a fantastic job.

(Florence is tending to her daughter behind Immaculate.)

The downside was that the woman who coordinated the group of participants, a town council representative, didn't actually inform them about it until five minutes before. The group was somewhat reluctant to attend, given the work they had to do at home and their lack of preparation. I was a bit ticked off, because it was the town councilwoman who solicited Musana for the lesson (not the other way around). I felt incredibly awkward, but the Musana ladies just said, "okay, we'll do it fast" and rocked it.

Harriet, Rosette, and Eve presented to the New Canaan's women's group, organized by Pastor Francis, a near and dear friend to Musana. They rocked it.

Musana taught in a primary school classroom. Nutrition, not the alphabet.

Cheesy group photo at the end.
I had to tickle Harriet so she would smile.

The last group has yet to present. Fingers crossed it happens at some point. Logistics, logistics.

Overall, the best part of the experience was that the women became experts in nutrition. They practiced giving the lesson so many times that they learned the material well and were able to field questions without help at the end. They are amazing!

Understanding Domestic Violence workshop

Was great, but I already blogged about it here. Check it out!

We say goodbye to Angela

For Angela's last evening in Uganda, we arranged a potluck farewell bash. With s'mores. The mosaic of photos below tell the evening's story, apart from some ridiculous dancing and comedy by Luta that could not be captured.

Angela was dearly loved by all. She will be missed by Ugandans and muzungus alike. The best/worst moment was when Eve dramatically told her 8-year-old son, Jorum, that Angela was going away forever, which made him cry. Lying to children is so underrated.

Group photo! It was quite the undertaking.

We explore Western Uganda (for a day)

This past weekend, we went to Fort Portal in Western Uganda to see more of the country. It's beautiful. But a trek! Taxis and buses and bodas galore.

We didn't have enough time to explore everything the area has to offer, like national parks and safaris, but we managed to go on a nice 11-mile nature walk, complete with hills and waterfalls and caves.

It was a hazy day, but if it had been clear you could see the looming
Rwenzori Mountains in the background.

The kids are still weird

No real updates here.

Though there's this one little girl ("Airplane Girl") who lives in one of the houses next door who always runs at us muzungus when we walk by to hug our legs. She's maybe one and a half years. Today, she was walking with her mom and as soon as she saw me she chucked the bag she was holding at her mom and sprinted at me open-arms like an airplane. Hence the name. She's always quick to let go and move on like nothing happened.

Kids are so odd.

Nicole's first time skiing!

Tina's baby, Emily. Julie has stepped on her twice now.

Jonah. No words.

Four lessons learned

The past week(ish) has been chock full of learning experiences. Here's what I've figured out.

1. Exotic animals taste delicious.

Last Thursday, we went to dinner at The Lawns, a nice, outdoor restaurant in Kampala. It was a farewell occasion in honor of Lugazi's one and only Scottish doctor, Andrew (sniffle!). He is a director of Living Water, the clinic that Musana has partnered with, and a dear friend to all of us Musana people. Except Julie, maybe. She and Andrew are more frenemies.

We rented a taxi (like a limo, but worse) to ride to Kampala in style.

The main draw of The Lawns is that it cooks exotic animals. They were unfortunately out of ostrich, but we still happily dined on crocodile (like this) and various types of antelope, like kudu, bresbok and springbok.

This was the best meal I've had in Uganda. It was served with naan and Indian spices and a big veggie/paneer kabab. Beats matooke any day.

And the evening itself was great. Andrew filmed us repeating a few special phrases for a project a friend is doing back in the UK. It is still a mystery what the footage will be used for, but we are certain the footage got better after each bottle of wine.

We also played dorky games.

"MUZUNGU, BYE!"

 2. Dropping babies is sometimes a little bit funny.

A recent theme at Musana has been dropping babies. Keeps happening for some reason. When I first got to Uganda I knocked 6-month old Travis over while trying to wipe the snot off his face. He's so precarious! He hit his head on the floor and I felt awful as his mom over to rescue him from me.

Travis, not snotty for once.

I feel better now that I've seen the others terrorize wee children as well. The other day, Julie stepped on Tina's baby, Emily. She said Emily looked like a pile of blankets - a fair assessment because she is tiny and she was under a pile of blankets. Tina, the Musana manager, didn't seem too upset, though. She just sang "Julie stepped on my baby!" for a while.

Also, Angela put Nicole on one of the work tables and then left, assuming Cissy would keep an eye on her. Wrong. Later, Nicole's mother told Angela that Nicole fell off the table "and bounced like a ball." (Nicole was fine, guys. Phew!)

Immaculate and Nicole, balancing a toy on her fro.
Talented and cute!

So I've learned kids are tough. And when they get a bit bumped around, it's usually not a big deal. Ugandans think it's a little bit funny.

3. Everyone loves Melissa.

This week, we welcomed Melissa and Katherine, latest additions to the Musana team. Actually, Melissa is hardly a new addition, as she's one of Musana's founders and a public health fanatic. She is also a celebrity in Lugazi. Seriously. People have yelled "Melissa" at me on more than occasion (once from inside a passing taxi) probably because we are both muzungus with brown hair.

This is Melissa, cuddling her favorite Ugandan baby, Fati, who is Mama Christine's granddaughter. Melissa LOVES Fati - even more seriously than I love Nicole.

Heavenly!

The Musana women had a spectacular greeting for Melissa. It's been documented and the video will likely be posted on the Musana Facebook page. It's great. Check it out if you like excitement and shrieking ladies.

Melissa's return to Uganda hopefully means some re-evaluation of how things are going at Musana. She is also leading efforts to do a health survey in the Lugazi community, which I've been helping set up. Melissa is also very spunky and fun. So basically, we are expecting her to fix all of our problems and entertain us in the next few weeks.

4. I will never feel remotely safe using Ugandan public transport.

I've tried to conquer the fear, but there's no way the utter terror of Ugandan traffic will ever become normal to me. I can pretend it doesn't bother me. Outwardly, I make a point to avoid flinching when another car or taxi or petrol truck zooms past an inch away.

Today was particularly awful for many reasons. The taxi (14-passenger van shown here) I first boarded to Kampala was empty, which is never the case when you pick them up in Lugazi. They are always nearly full and the conductors try to scrunch you in with families of screaming babies.

Source: http://www.uganda-visit-and-travel-guide.com/travel-in-uganda.html

I will spare the details of today's misadventure, but I'm 90 percent sure the driver and two other men planned to drive off with only me. Warning lights went off in my head. I told them I forgot my phone at home and persuaded them to let me out, even though they insisted on driving me home to fetch it. I promptly jumped in a fuller taxi.

This one was fine, apart from that that the sliding door on the side completely fell off after an hour. So after the driver borrowed tools from some dude on the side of the road to try and fix it (and failed), I boarded a third taxi, which finally got me there.

In Kampala, the fastest way to get around if you don't know the taxi system (which I don't) is by riding motorcycle taxis called boda-bodas. They're dangerous. If you crash, you will likely die. Boda drivers usually wear big puffy coats, which seems strange in the heat, but makes sense when you visualize what being thrown off a motorcycle does to you. Oddly enough, few wear helmets. Picking the ones with helmets seems logical, as you'd think they are safety conscious, but sometimes they see it as an opportunity to go faster.

Anyways, my boda rides today were as frightening as usual. Sometimes they're a smidgen fun, but today I was sort of tired of danger.

And in the taxi back from Kampala (where I visited a reproductive health organization to get materials for upcoming lessons), no one on the busy highway took precautions during a crazy thunderstorm. The road was flooding and the visibility was awful, but all the vehicles, including the large and flammable trucks, carried on speeding and swerving as usual. (For more educational reading about trucks on this highway, check out this awesome story.)

I tried to not visualize a fiery death. Didn't work. The scenario that played over in my head was that we would crash head-on with a giant truck and that all the rescue team (do those exist in Uganda?) would be able to identify was my bag, containing pieces of a shattered laptop and the sixty female condoms that the reproductive health worker forced me to bring back to Lugazi with me to hand out. Awkward.

Anyways, I didn't die. I live to blog the tale. But next time I come to Africa, I'm bringing a helmet or hiring a personal elephant to take me everywhere.

Public health reflections

I haven't posted enough about public health at Musana. The main reason I am here in Uganda. (White water rafting was awesome, though.) So here goes.

Public health lessons are only once a week, but we have been up against some challenges staying on schedule with the curriculum. Sometimes, Angela and I plan to a teach lesson only to find a half-filled workshop when we arrive because many of the women are at the clinic or in the hospital, either for themselves or their children. So lessons must be postponed. Or, sometimes there's a large jewelry order and they want to continue working on instead of participate in the lesson, which is hard to argue with. But I try. 

Another challenge is the chaos of the workshop - yelling children, large trucks roaring by on the road outside, and (one time) an obnoxious drunk who kept goofing off in the back. The women were too kind to tell him off, to my chagrin.

 

Harriet leads a group discussion during a lesson.

At the same time, we are also training the women to teach the nutrition unit they just learned to different women's groups in the community. This is part of Musana's "empowerment" initiative, the goal of which is to help develop the Musana artisans into community leaders.

Susan practicing giving the nutrition lesson.

A big challenge is convincing the women that teaching the community (and practicing to do so) is time well spent. In some ways, they view Musana as merely place of employment instead of an opportunity to develop skills and one day "graduate," or start their own business or self-sustaining initiative. But I take comfort in the fact that Musana is still a young organization that is constantly trying to improve its methods and welcome fresh ideas. Already, I am told, some of the women have made great strides in improving their lives in part because of what Musana has been able to offer.

Eve giving the lesson.

And I am confident that they find public health knowledge important. We held the first lesson in the women's health unit this past Tuesday, which focused mainly on sexual health and STIs. The women definitely paid attention. Eve made jokes, but you always get one of those clowns. The lesson morphed into a freer discussion about gender dynamics in Lugazi, which highlighted how little control women have over their own health. 

For instance, if her husband sleeps around, a woman has little means of protecting herself against anything he's picked up during his exploits. Asking him to wear protection or get tested is often laughable, so the only thing she can do is get checked for STIs like HIV herself. And then it might be too late. 

Harriet, and her granddaughter, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is, thankfully, not HIV positive
like her grandmother and mother.

During this discussion, one of the women, Harriet, volunteered her own story (of which everyone was already aware because Harriet is very open) about how she contracted HIV from her husband nearly 25 years ago. She emphasized the importance of knowing one's status, saying that she might be alive today only because she had gotten tested early enough. 

I appreciated the dialogue because it means at the very least, Musana is been a safe place for women to come together and talk (often very frankly) about their lives. Before I came to Uganda, I was unsure if there were some health-related topics that would be sensitive or off-limits. While I am sure there are some things they are private about, they've surprised me about how much they freely share. This makes my job as lesson-giver much easier, but mostly it makes me happy to be a part of these conversations and start to understand the challenges these women face.

Nicole again. My favorite
days are when she wears hoods.

Three major events

The past weeks have been a whirlwind of necklace discussions, frightening taxi rides and dirt. Lots of dirt.

But also great things, like pineapples and friends. Major updates include:

1. Rafting the Nile

Like many a muzungu in Uganda, we (Musana interns and friends) splurged on a day-long white water rafting trip on the Nile River. It wasn't as scary as people made it sound, except for when the raft flipped and we all fell in and thought we'd drowned.

I got caught in a whirlpool after I fell out of the raft. In my confusion and distress, I apparently became distressingly motherly, reassuring Julie between gulps of Nile "Sweetie, you'll be okay!" as she careened past me, mouth open in a (thankfully) silent scream. I am still not entirely convinced this is how it happened; Julie can be prone to exaggeration.

Our boat. I look proud because I just killed a croc with my paddle!

We were all rescued by a designated team of (rather buff) kayakers. Andrew's face was completely deadpan as he was rescued. Seems he suffered some wounds, but they were mediated by the promise of beer awaiting us on shore after the last rapid, which we successfully conquered.

(Credit to Angela for the artsy PTSD recovery photo)

The beer was lovely. The ride back was appropriately ridiculous. I think it's the rafting company's way of making up for any trauma we might have experienced. Smart move.

2. Fourth of July in the rain forest

Instead of attending some stupid party in at the American Embassy in Kampala (ok, the invites got lost in the mail), we went to the rain forest to celebrate the Day of American Independence. 

I could say we spent the evening dancing around a bonfire roasting wild boar after a triumphant hunt. With big, American guns. But that's not quite what happened. 

We actually went to the Rain Forest Lodge in the middle of nowhere (Mabira Forest) with our dear European friends. I'm unclear if associating with people from the UK on the Fourth is unpatriotic, as they were the enemy back in 1776. But Phoebe and Sig sported American colors, so we let them celebrate with us. Andrew drove, so we permitted his participation, too. Still, I kept a wary eye on all of them.

The place had a nice ambiance and made for a relaxing time. And we were the only folks there. The highlight was the four-course meal - a nice change from the usual rice and beans and mystery meat.

I consumed at least six cups of coffee over the course of the evening, so the entire experience was way more exciting than any loud fireworks display.

Julie, before her cake disappeared when she went to the bathroom. 

3. I realize that kids are really weird

Kayla is our two-year-old neighbor. Unlike Joshua and Jonah, the other terrors in the compound, she is generally well-behaved when you get her on her own. She's charismatic, articulate, and has great hair.

However, recently we suddenly realized that Kayla is really kooky. Not sure why it took so long to figure it out. Maybe it was her adorable teeth or polite little "Wangi?" ("What?") when her mother calls her.

The other evening, Kayla spent a half hour spinning in circles saying/singing "hallelujah." A full 30 minutes. Alone, just her. After that incident, I started observing her behavior more closely. Like many small children, she has a tendency to remove articles of clothing and wee everywhere. But most children don't repeat "hallelujah" while doing so. Most days, she can be found running around muttering incomprehensibly, sometimes pausing to dance like gremlin. She also consistently wears her flip flops on the wrong feet.

It's all part of the background hubbub when you don't pay attention. But when you do, you realize that kids are freaking strange.

Kayla, losing her hairdo.

I guess this is normal for a child? Was I this weird back in the day? Has society conditioned me over the years to suppress my inner weirdness? My observations of Kayla have brought up so many questions I would have never thought about if I weren't thrown into this living situation.