The Musana Jewelry Workshop

We (the interns) usually arrive at the Musana Jewelry workshop at 9:30 or 10 in the morning, after an attempt at jogging (okay, we've gone twice so far) and a carbohydrate-friendly breakfast (thanks, Africa).

The workshop is a four-room building ten minutes from home with a garden-in-progress in the backyard. When we arrive, the ten artisans already have been there for a few hours, some as early as 6:30.

Most work in the front room, sitting on mattresses. When the interns first arrived in Lugazi, the women were making paper beads, but since then they've also worked on beaded jewelry. The converse in Luganda while they work, so we're not really sure what they talk about. But by their bursts of laughter, we know it's hilarious.

They eat and drink tea while they work. Several women bring in their children regularly. They crawl and cry and poop and run around. Regulars include:

Nicole, Eve's daughter. She is perfect in every way.

Travis, Betty's son / baby dinosaur.

Elvis, Cissy's son / grumpy old man.
He looks sweet here, but he usually just
frowns and hits me when I come near him.

Prosper, Florence's shy three-year-old.

In addition to jewelry-making, each Musana artisan is designated an extra job at the workshop, like design or sales or workshop upkeep. Mama Christine, the most senior, is in charge of the garden. Florence shows me how to "dig" (weed). We aim to plant more vegetables soon after a slight period of inactivity (well, 5 months).

The other interns and I also teach lessons a few days a week for an hour in public health, jewelry design, and "communications," which constitutes English literacy, professionalism, ethics, or anything that might help make them more marketable for future employment. This is one of Musana's main objectives. Business and finance classes will begin soon after the arrival of the new intern, Trista.

Design class on color schemes, led by Julie.

The public health lessons, taught by me and Angela, launched last week. Tuesday was the first lesson, on nutrition. It triggered conversation about the barriers to well-balanced diets for families, like financial resources. Next Tuesday, Angela and I will buy and cook some lesser-used vegetables to help them expand their knowledge about what foods are available (and hopefully) affordable. 

We also have fun exercising and stretching. And I can't wait to teach them zumba. Yes, my big contribution to Africa.

Everyone stretches except Florence,
who just laughs at everyone else.

Thursday, we had a spectacular fashion shoot for a new Musana brochure. Rest assured that this will be fully documented in its own post.

Check out the Musana website for information about the artisans and staff. We'll be posting updated profiles soon.

Tours with Luta

Since arriving in Uganda, we've had some pretty great times outside the Musana workshop (which I will write about next!). Luta, one of the Musana coordinators, graciously volunteered to be our unofficial tour guide / entertainer. (Note: if you ever meet Luta during your lifetime, be sure to ask him to do an impression of a lady in distress or a lady putting on make-up. Just do it.)

First, Luta took us to Jinja, a small city about an hour from Lugazi. This is the "Source of the Nile," or where the Nile River begins from Lake Victoria. We went boating and saw a giant lizard.

We also completed Luta's Unofficial Walking Tour of Lugazi, featuring a venture through the city's districts, a stop by his family's home, and a beautiful tour of the Mehta Golf Course where he occasionally teaches golf. Luta is a great golfer. He won a coffeemaker in a golf tournament one time.

Luta and his mother, Mama Christine,
who is also a Musana artisan

The Mehtas, an Indian family, have owned Lugazi's sugarcane plantation since the late 1800s. They have lots of money, so they built a golf course, as people with lots of money tend to do. Recently, Mrs. Mehta also designed near the course one of the most beautiful, near-deserted gardens I've ever seen. It's very zen.

Luta also took us took us to Namango, a district of Lugazi, where we hiked up a large hill to get a view of the area. The rolling green hills were lovely. However, at one point some locals living on the hill (Hill People!?) spied us and persuaded Luta to let them kidnap us.

Just kidding. They persuaded Luta to let them take us to a sacred spot (essentially some rocks in the shade) where we could leave money for "the gods," who would then grant our wishes. "And if you come back tomorrow, the money will be gone!" the old leader-dude told us, as if this was undeniable evidence that the gods had indeed stopped by. We played along.

The gods are here.

Seeing Lugazi and learning about the surrounding areas was wonderful, but learning Luta's life story along the way was also awesome. He had a few stories ready at every turn - wandering through the Mehta golf course, meandering through the child-packed streets of the Ghery-Ghery district, walking by the Lugazi prison. Also, absolutely everyone in town knows him. They call him the town dog because of this (which sounds awful to me, but for him it's a source of pride).

We made some new friends walking
through Ghery-Ghery.

Living in Lugazi (when you're me)

Currently, I am here:

Lugazi is a town of thirty to forty thousand people but feels much smaller. This might be because 40 or so percent of Ugandans are under age 15. Basically, there are lots of kids everywhere.

Lugazi is located about thirty miles outside Kampala, the capital, but takes an hour plus to get there with traffic. It's along the Kampala-Jinja highway, a main trucking route. Its largest industry is sugarcane, and the town is surrounded by lovely green hills and fields.

The Namango district of Lugazi.

Weather is hot and humid, but not as bad as DC in the summer. I'm convinced the sun is much more powerful here, but maybe that's because I spent the last two years living in an office under florescent lights. Nights are cooler, but often it smells like old alcohol from a distillery nearby. Pretty narsty.

Sometimes it rains a lot.

I live with three other American interns (Julie, Angela, and Vilate) in the Lugazi district of Nakazedde. A fourth intern, Trista, is due to arrive in week or so.

Interns and Luta at the top of the hill in Namango.

We live in a gated compound shared with two other families. There are five small buildings (two for us) surrounding a courtyard where the kids play, where we do laundry, and hang out.

We have electricity except for when we don't. Our running water hasn't worked in over a week, so we've given up on it. Instead, we get it from a large container outside belonging to the landlady and take bucket showers. We buy drinking water at the store. All aforementioned inconveniences are mitigated by the fact that we have (fairly) reliable internet, which is really all that matters.

We do not have cockroaches, thank god. We do have the occasional lizard or spider or mystery bug, however.

These are the two boys next door, Jonah and Joshua. They're cool, I suppose, for little kids. Except Jonah shrieks incessantly at least once per hour about nothing (which reminds me of this awesome blog). It's especially delightful at seven in the morning, sometimes coupled with a crowing rooster or two tethered in the courtyard. Fortunately, I have ear plugs.

Here, Jonah sports a lovely, summer look.
He sometimes wears dresses. We don't ask questions.

Jonah carries a stuffed
bunny on his back.

Youssouf and David are our teen-aged neighbors. They offer us perspective of what it's like growing up in Uganda. Conversations usually are about family, schooling, food, or music. And youth health, of course (at my prompting).

They also help us with everything - washing sneakers, fixing our water problem (aka clambering onto the roof to mess around with the pipes), taking us for morning jogs. And David is quite the singer. In short, they are amazing.

Playing Twister with Youssouf and David (and their friends)

What the heck I'm doing in Uganda

Originally, I wasn't going to blog about my summer in Lugazi because I thought it might be too time-consuming. And I've never really blogged before and I'm still not sure I completely understand the point.

But the gajillion personal emails I've been writing to friends and family got very repetitive. Plus, I found the posts I was already doing for the Musana Jewelry blog kind of fun to do. Especially the photos. So I'm giving it a whirl.

I promise not to be too wordy or preachy or annoying. This "setting the stage" post will be my longest, I swear. Mostly, I'll just include snippets and snapshots ("Hey! That's the name of this blog!"). I understand reading is hard for some of you fidgety folks out there.

So. This summer, I am interning with Musana Jewelry in Lugazi, Uganda, a small, nonprofit organization that employs women to create jewelry for sale in Uganda and the United States. These artisans come from disadvantaged backgrounds and have struggled over the years to make ends meet. 

In addition to employment, Musana aims to improve their skill sets to make these women more employable in the future and help them achieve their personal professional goals. Areas in which they receive instruction include finance, literacy, computers, and professionalism. Musana also provides them with knowledge about the health issues that greatly affect their day to day lives, from preventing the spread of diseases like typhoid to cooking more nutritious meals for their families.

Before going back to school in the fall for a degree in public health, I wanted to spend a little time working in a small community to get a better idea of the public health issues faced by individuals, particularly women, from a developing country. I hope the experience will help better  focus my global health interests in my grad program. At Musana, my assignments / goals include:

• Creating a public health curriculum of 16 lessons, consisting of units in nutrition, women's health, sanitation, and disease prevention. I will lead an hour-long class each week, beginning this Tuesday.
• Training the Musana women to condense and give these lessons to three women's groups in the community.
• Assisting with the administration of a family health survey in the Lugazi community.
• Helping coordinate a partnership with a local clinic, Living Water, which will offer discounted services to Musana employees and their families.

My fellow intern, Angela, will work with me on these tasks. We also hope to introduce a fitness aspect to the daily routine at the Musana workshop at the request of some of the women. We've already done a Jillian Michaels video, so we are basically well on our way to top physical condition.

I'm going to try to post as regularly as I can, focusing mostly on the goings-on at Musana. However, we've also been having tons of fun getting to know the Lugazi area these past two weeks, so I'll be sure to include documentation about our adventures and mishaps.

The Musana Jewelry Workshop,
a four-room building where all the magic happens.