happy july!

Well, it’s been a while. Sorry about the delay in writing I’ve had a crazy past couple of weeks. I know that’s surprising considering all that has happened in the past. Two weeks ago I was going to the hospital and waking up twice a night with one of our volunteers Jake who had Bill Harsy (sp?), a parasite that is found in lake Victoria. I was really worried about him because the parasite caused his heart to slow down and then he would pass out. To top it off, jake is the type of guy that whenever I ask how he is doing, he responds “good.” I’ve never studied someone as much as I had to study that kid. We also had a member of the HELP board come and visit for about 10 days so we were running around trying to coordinate that. Mindy was really fun to have (I’m not just saying that because I’m nervous about her reading this). We have had our fair share of visitors so far this summer. Anyway, while mindy was here and jake was starting to get better, mindy took Melissa and I out to dinner. We were enjoying the night and relaxing when I got a call from a random Ugandan number. It was will, and he said, “hey I did something impulsive, I’m in Kampala.” I had to sit down when he said that. He had two tickets on Tuesday, one to Pakistan if his visa went through and another to Uganda. When the visa didn’t go through, Will came to UGANDA to visit and left two days ago in time to catch another plane to Pakistan. It was so much fun to spend time with him as well and to show him a piece of life here. All of the volunteers were loving it as well. We ate some good traditional food, went to some projects, went four wheeling right by the nile through villages and sugarcane fields, went to a graduation party, church, played some chess, went on a hike through the rainforest, and on an all day outreach to a village and sadly then our time was up and he had to go back.

I want to talk a little bit about the outreach. We went to this village named barara, it’s a fishing village on the coast of lake Victoria for community teaching day with a partner organization called CCWA. We went and they took us out on a leaky boat, originally to catch fish for lunch, but as the water covered our feet and they discovered that we were going to probably end up swimming with the fish, we rowed back into the shore. We then had an opening ceremony with speeches and singing of both of our national anthems. they served us ‘breakfast’ at noon and then ‘lunch’ at 2pm, both were big portions of food, breakfast is porridge and corn-nut esk corn on the cob, lunch was fried fish, matoke (plantains), rice, cassava (tapioca root), and pineapple. We went to tour a neighboring school which was very simple, breezy, and cheaply built but the kids are adorable. On our way back to eat and listen to speeches, we caught word that there was a child suffering from malaria who was waiting for transport to the hospital. When we were sitting there, word spread that the two year old had died. We went to pay respects and walked to a mud hut where the mother was wailing inside. They wanted us to go inside and I was really conflicted on if that was what I should do culturally or if they were just saying that, I also wasn’t sure at the time what the child died from. I went in and sat down, since there was not much room, I was almost touching the child, the mother uncovered the dead childs face, we said a prayer, and I left to make way for everyone else. It was pretty surreal and also made me angry. This should not happen. Malaria is cureable and that child should not have died. We paid for the childs transport back to the place where they wanted to bury him and after a moment of silence we had to move on with the plan to teach the village.

Teaching was funny at this village because they were honest and asked some tough questions. During the HIV training: “what if my husband is positive and I’m not, but we want to have children?”

When she talked about nutrition and taking care of yourself including not drinking or smoking, when you do have HIV, a woman said, “But I love alcohol, it’s so sweet.”

During the business training about saving: “my husband takes the money I put aside for my child’s education and buys alcohol, what should I do?”

During the sanitation training it came up that they really need a latrine because everyone just goes in the lake, does washing, and drinks from the same source.

It was fun.

Anyway, it was another emotional rollercoaster day with the highs of the adorable school children dancing and singing about wanting a better life, and the low of another child dying from malaria. It was obvious that their reality has a much more harsh light than I can understand.

We are going to build them a pit latrine and help their school.

projects

I haven't been talking much about the actual projects we have been working on as a group. here is a summary of our weekly report from last week

Hand washing stations

We found a new design to build hand washing stations because we couldn’t find all of the materials necessary to build the old model. After discussing the new design with Wilson, from Youth Outreach Mission, we decided to build hand washing stations that are a little more durable and therefore more sustainable. Today we will order one for the market and will install it as well as teach hand washing early next week. After seeing the finished product and its durability we will decide if we want to build them elsewhere.

Women’s Group

We met with the local women’s group on Thursday and discussed the possibility of building a mushroom house which they feel would be the greatest benefit to the group. I will discuss this with Jake, the project lead for mushroom houses, and run it past the group when they get home from Gulu. Also, Tifanee and I have been learning how to do the paper bead jewelry so we can teach the women’s groups this craft. We have made great progress but still have things we need to learn. In order to do this we will be meeting with a friend of Wilson’s in Kampala who makes these beads as her profession. She will help us to perfect the craft and purchase all the necessary supplies that we cannot buy here in Lugazi.

Aids Awareness Extravaganza

The extravaganza is growing at a rapid rate. We now not only are going to be showcasing performances and our work here in the villages but we also will be offering free HIV/AIDs blood testing and giving out free mosquito nets. We have been working a great deal with Wilson and Robert from the Youth Outreach Mission. This week we sent out letters to the Embassy asking for funding and asking for their attendance. We will meet with the Youth Outreach Mission again this coming week to go over the extravaganza to complete the details and begin renting all the equipment and starting all the details.

Gulu

16 members of our group left last Wednesday to travel to Gulu. They arrived safely and had a great time there besides a few logistical problems, but that’s expected. The group then safari’d and will be back tonight. Kellyn and Jake came back early so this is a brief update of what they did while they were there.

The Gulu trip was very successful and we completed 11 stoves. We built the stoves in 3 areas; Paichu, an HIV group around Gulu University, and a very rural village an hour outside the city center. The first day of building, we broke into three groups and each tried to complete the foundation for three stoves. One group completed all three, but because the other two groups did not have the materials ready for us, one group did one and the other two stoves. All in all it was a very productive work day even with the numerous complications. The following day, we split into five groups so we could accomplish more. Two groups filled the stoves, and the other three groups built 5 more stove foundations and taught the groups how to fill them themselves. We used ant hill clay instead of mud which made the stoves stronger. Also we discovered you can use the clay as a substitute for cement so that everyone has the opportunity and financial means to build his/her own stove. Overall everyone was very receptive and excited about teaching neighbors and friends how to make their own stoves. Personally, I felt like these two work days were the most productive and beneficial of all the work days this first wave.

They also went to meet with the invisible children headquarters and had a long discussion with the president of the organization there.

Kawolo Hospital Eye Camp

The eye camp is being spearheaded by ryan and jake. they are planning a week long camp to perform surgeries on rural people for cataracts and glaucoma. it's going to be big and we are really excited about it. The Eye Camp work has been very productive this week. We are going to separate the Doctor shadowing and the Eye Camp into two different projects. This week we haven’t done anything with Doctor Shadowing. We met with SightSavers in Kampala on Monday and they agreed to help us with the project and donate about 6 million shillings towards the project. We will try and provide for everything else through HELP and private donations. We met with the Superintendent of Kawolo Hospital and he approved our idea and clapped for us, it was cool. On Tuesday we met with Annette and Betty who are the Ophthalmologic Assistants in charge of the project and we created a budget with them and sent an application letter into SightSavers. The following day we met with the District “Healthy” Minister and he told us that he is very willing to help us with this project. We made flyers to pass out to all of the rural health clinics where we will be having the screenings and were going to go to radio stations so they will announce the Eye Camp but we were waiting for the final confirmation from SightSavers which didn’t come until Friday evening. While we were waiting we went to the church in Mukono where the teacher training was and I pulled a worm out of my arm. That was pretty crazy. We did however receive confirmation from SightSavers and so we will be meeting with Betty and Annette on Monday to go to the radio stations so they can announce the Eye Camp. This will get as many people to go to the Eye Camp as possible. Dis is gonna be da best project eva. Peace out Mike.

Music Dance Drama/HIV group

The MDD group started out slow the last couple of weeks and then kicked it into high gear this week when we found out that the performance for the town council members and Embassy members was moved to this past Thursday. We hurriedly camp up with some monologues and poems about Hope and not being afraid. The group performed some songs about getting rid of the stigma that accompanies having Aids. It ended up being a powerful performance and I think the audience really enjoyed it. We will continue working with group through out the summer so they can get ready for other up coming performances.

Business Training

Promising progress has been made in business training this past week. With the arrival of Taylor Mackay, our group numbers have increased dramatically (from 1 to 2, to be precise, which doesn’t include the intermittent members), which makes the workload less overwhelming (and less lonely) to manage, the vision more possible to fulfill. On Thursday, we visited Stanbic Bank to learn the process of opening bank accounts for home and for business, as well as Pride Microfinance Ltd. to better understand its methods of loaning, credit, outreach, and training. With all introductory meetings behind us, we are fully set to commence business classes with five separate groups (two of which actually had their first classes last week). In order to better facilitate discussions with class members, we have contacted Professor Joan Dixon at BYU and requested Pro-literacy materials that specifically address business concepts. From here, we will run classes and continue to research what else can be done to benefit people through business.

Mushroom house

the mushroom house has been constructed for a women's group. they each have been given one small bag to start and are being followed up with business classes so that they can learn how to expand. they are also committing to save 10% of profit for their children's education funds.

Adobe stoves

Andrew Harrison has been heading up adobe stoves and has built over 15 in lugazi. He is doing a great job and people are really excited about their stoves. the stoves help with respiratory disease, cut costs of firewood and are time savers.

Sanyu school

there is a rural school that we have done teacher training, a square foot garden for math teaching and to add more nutrition, and a chicken coop for income generation for students who are unable to pay tuition.

Youth outreach

we have partnered with some college aged ugandan students who are really impressive. we go with them to different schools or help gather street children and orphans for one hour of soccer (andrew lovel donated the jerseys) and then one hour lesson on AIDS awareness and on basic sanitation and health.

public health outreach

we meet once a week with a woman from the mukono branch named margaret who plans outreaches, this week we are going to have a soccer match with a secondary school and then do some trainings. we have done business, health, and teacher trainings in the past. we are also expected to give speeches and the village performs for us. it's great.

there are other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting but we have a great group of volunteers and we are really excited about what we have going on. I'm trying to encourage more partnerships with other ngo's. we have a list of over 300 working ngo's in uganda.

five of our volunteers are leaving and it makes me sad. I'm going to miss lezlie, matt, kellyn, kat, and drew. I'm excited for our new ones that are here though. they are also going to be great!

rwanda

Our team’s missions statement is to create sustainable differences on the road to self discovery. After interviewing a lot of our volunteers, I’ve found that the end statement, to “discover” more about yourself is a lot of our group’s goal. Many are redefining themselves out here.

I didn’t really put myself into that category with everyone else that I interviewed. I have felt that I’ve had a lot of life changing events or moments in my quarter century life and that a lot of those previous experiences have shaped and molded me. Reflecting back on this past month and a half I’ve realized that I was wrong. I’ve realized that I have been constantly re-defined things I thought I had already figured out. Here are a few examples of what I mean.

Trust. I feel like we have been forced to discern people’s motives a lot lately. I’m much more skeptical of some people after a friend of ours stole from us but then other people here I trust whole heartedly, without reservation, even with my life.
Loyalty. After interviewing five HIV positive women who were all infected by their husbands but felt no anger, I re-evaluated loyalty and what that means. I am not sure how I feel about it. It’s great that they aren’t angry and can let go and focus on living life to the fullest, but at the same time it is not okay if this is a cultural acceptance thing.

How to live my life. I feel like more than anything I’ve been slapped in the face with raw life and what it is like to live with problems that are much more survival based than anything I’ve experienced in my pampered life. Looking at a person with AIDS or someone struggling with malaria, someone who has suffered from deaths in their family and others who don’t know what they are going to eat that day, I have realized that most of my problems are self inflicted or things I’ve conjured up in my head from boredom. Spending a lot of time with people who are in extreme poverty makes me feel like I’m living more richly and it doesn’t have to do with money. I see things in a more vibrant and yet a harsher light.

That’s how I felt in Rwanda this last weekend. On the 13 hour cramped and bumpy bus ride from Kigali to Kampala, I sat reflecting on human nature and trying to decide if and how that definition has changed in my mind. The images of skulls and femur bones piled up on shelves, the room in the back of one of the churches where everyone was set on fire, the blood still left on a wall in the neighboring room, the priests changing room with a bible on a table next to a pile of bones and a huge grenade like hole where the window was, piles and piles of dirty rag clothes taken from the bodies of the victims and stacked on the church benches, thousands and thousands of pieces of clothing. In the piles of clothes, a snoopy childs t-shirt caught my eye.

The first church tour our guide Latifa explained after asking her that when she was 10 she came to this church to hide from the hutu extremists. Her family hoped to find sanctuary from the extremists in the church along with 5,000 others. When she saw the hutus coming for them in a mob like fashion, she ran and was able to escape with some others to a swamp and stayed in hiding for a month. When she came out of hiding she had to face the enormity of the slaughter of many who she cared about and loved. She said that coming to work can be difficult to have to relive the experience day after day. I was completely over-whelmed and with my voice strained said, “I’m sorry you went through that” as I left. I don’t know if I’ve ever understated anything more in my life.

The second church was a perceived sanctuary for 14,000 people. As I descended down the stairs in a mass grave behind the church I saw thousands of broken skulls and my emotions shut down. It was too much to deal with and I just had to sit for a while and try to understand what was in front of me. These uniform skulls and bones were once brothers, sisters, moms and dads and now are just bones. They were murdered in the most barbaric and brutal methods that I don’t need to go into. I factually know that numbers,1 million murdered and 2 million people were displaced, but seeing the clothes, the childrens bones, and talking to another guy my age who was about 12 when it happened and was there to visit his diseased relatives made me question the inherent nature of humans. I used to think we are inherently good.

I was taken back in my trip to Rwanda to when I went to Hiroshima in 7th grade and was speechless again at atrocities that humans can do to each other. The ways that we can desensitize ourselves. Books I read about how the Japanese treated Koreans in China and Nanking during ww2, the holocaust, the genocides in bosnia, turkey, and the native Americans, I was disgusted that 1. we don’t learn from the past and in conjunction with that 2. that it is HAPPENING NOW in Darfur.

I think that sometimes we convolute and make excuses for things that should be black and white. In a situation like Rwanda where the Germans, Belgians, priests, hutu extremists and the international community were all at fault. The international community just sat back when they only needed 5,000 troops to stop the genocide and 5,000 UN troops were in Rwanda at the time but were not allowed to stop anything unless they were directly shot at. It’s ridiculous that we have to sit back again and allow innocent people to die again in Darfur until political will changes. People are dying NOW and I’m just frustrated and feel helpless. At the same time, the helplessness is exactly what de-sensitizes us on the outside. Our cook Mary just went back to sudan last weekend and just knowing that she is waiting for peace to be reunited with her husband is more motivation for me to get involved so it’s stopped.
Anyway, Rwanda as a place is gorgeous, it is so much more developed than Uganda and I felt much more safe there. The streets are manicured, tree-lined, and there is not garbage around. I love it there. Getting there was typical African fashion of definitely struggling. The first bus that Lezlie found was going to take about 16 hours to get to the Rwanda Congo border. We decided that was not the right match for us so frantically at about 6pm found another company and went to buy tickets for that night. We got to the bus ticket office, I clarified the tickets and we bought six tickets for Lezlie, Alexis, me, Kat, Kellyn, and Drew. We got there at 12 for our 1 am bus to find that they booked us for the next day. We sat there frustrated and tired at 1am as we watched our bus drive away in the middle of a dark parking lot and were not wanting to try to find a way home to Lugazi again. The manager figured out a way to squeeze us into a 3am bus and we happily accepted. Sadly, the tranquil bus ride sleeping was not on the agenda. We felt like we were on the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland. I’m not being overdramatic. The third or fourth time we were all air-born about 3 hours into it, I blurted “ARE YOU SERIOUS?” and then Lezlie followed up with “THIS IS RIDICULOUS” and Alexis “I’m going to talk to the driver.” And we all erupted in laughter at the pitiful state we were in, heads bumping all over the place as we pretended to sleep as we rode at about 80mph through fog in pot-holed roads.

Besides almost missing the one bank to get our money out and finding that French, Rwandan Kenyan (I think) and English are spoken pretty equally, one third of the time we were able to effectively communicate. I did NOT communicate effectively with our hotel man when we were talking about prices and ended up paying four times what we had thought, which turned out to be about $18/person/night but when we were expecting $4 it was annoying.

That aside, I once again wish I had more time there. We ate great food and I was soo impressed with the beauty of the country. I could live there. I also had great company so it was a great trip.

Oh lastly guess what? Mzungu is Swahili, so we didn’t escape that phrase.

June 1

“Ugandans are very friendly” is a phrase many Ugandans say about themselves. I’ve found this statement to be true. They are also helpful, and generally give you good advice or directions, but the sociology major in me has made me question why. I do think that some people help us because they are sincerely good people and just want to help. If they are men, I think that the motives vary. They may still confidently help you no matter what you need, but deep down may want money, an address, phone number, girlfriend, or any means to a green card. Either way, many Ugandans have helped me and despite some leading us WAY out of our way or giving us a bad deal, generally they really are eager to help. Fred was one of those guys.

We decided Saturday night at midnight that we were going to attempt to register and run a half marathon Sunday morning in Jinja (a town about 40 minutes away). I spent Saturday in Kampala eating heavy Indian curry, ice cream, and watching a movie. I definitely did not carbload and I also most definitely have only ran about 3 times in the past month. Anyway, we got up at 5am and after an adventure of finding the registration point, they allowed us to register at 7:15 am. The race didn’t start until 9am so we had a few hours to kill and to try not to fall asleep. In true Ugandan fashion, the gun shot went off at 9:45 am and hundreds of us took off running. The front of the line included Olympians from Uganda and a traveling Olympic team from Kenya. They looked straight out of a nike commercial and even their warm up jog would have worn me out. Despite trash talking in my head, I didn’t see them once during the race. I’m fast,but that is an idea of how fast they are. We took off running through Jinja with many people lining the streets cheering for us. We got to the first water station, which were water filled sponges which I drank from and then when we got to the real water station I wanted to kick myself for once again drinking unsafe water, but didn’t have time to think too much about it. After the first water station the five of us help intl runners spread out into our respective comfortable paces. I was feeling good running behind Kat and felt like I was keeping up a good pace. We ran into a more rural area right by the nile and lake Victoria. It was beautiful. We could see people washing clothes in the river and there were kids running along with me after I would give them five or “bonga” (fist pound) while I ran along. The problem was that the sun came out strong and I realized that I like to drink a lot of water in those humid situations. I kept telling myself that just around the bend there would be water and was feeling exhausted. After running for literally twenty minutes feeling like I might pass out, I stopped to walk for a second and my legs almost gave out under me so I just picked up and kept running. I passed a prison where a guy in his jumpsuit was cleaning a railroad track and stopped to cheer for me. By the time I finally got to water about 30 minutes of miserable dehydration had set in so I walked to try to get re-hydrated. As I was walking a Ugandan guy came up to me and was completely encouraging. His name is Fred. We started running together and he became my favorite running partner. I found out he has a family with two little kids and as we jogged along, we were passing time just chatting among beautiful landscapes. After a little lul in conversation and I was kind of wondering if he was one of the purely nice people or if there were any ulterior motive for befriending me, he turned to me and asked “do you know Jesus Christ?” I smiled to myself as I told him yes. I realized I probably needed some missionary work done on me considering that I was missing church at that very moment. I really was hoping that this conversation would NOT evolve to something that I couldn’t physically run away from for the next 6 miles, but it worked out okay in the end after I told him that I also am “saved.” He’s great and I’m soo glad that I was able to run with him. Every water station from fred to the end, I grabbed two bottles of water to run with as a death-prevention measure.

The last hour or so of the race fred and I ran and walked and ran and walked to the finish line. It was great because at the end the tables had turned and I was encouraging him to run. This may come as a shock but he was LESS prepared than I was for the race. He didn’t eat breakfast that morning and was cramping up.

Nonetheless, after about two hours and fifteen minutes, we crossed the finish line. Me in 31st place for the women and fred in 298th place for the men J. I’m sure there were just as many women as men running and that I’m just that fast.

As we stiffly grandma-walked home, we knocked on our gate and...knocked and knocked. Shaun one of our volunteers poked his head out and yelled at us. We looked over and about 30 feet of our impenetrable fortress of a wall surrounding our compound had crumbled because of what we hypothesize as erosion. I initially thought a small bomb had exploded. They are fixing it even now as I’m typing so we will hopefully be once again less exposed in the near future. When I went out to shower in my bathing suit to the well, I turned around to see about 20 teenage boys just staring at me. I pumped water into a basin and carried it to the back of the house for relative privacy but, lets be honest, the fun never stops here in Lugazi.