I am going to add some pictures in the next few days but I'm back in DC. Considering the fact that I grew up overseas and have never noticed culture shock or needing much of an adjustment, I have been shocked at how hard it is for me to get back to reality. All of a sudden things are back to being clean, convenient, and costly. It feels like I'm getting home from a mission all over again. As my friend Will said, "Kristen, you seem like you are always high lately." I don't really feel like myself and am trying to find a comfortable balance of living comfortably while the memories of the simplicity of a rugged existence are constantly in the back of my mind.

I just moved into a new place with two of my best friends Wendy and Laura in Alexandria. It's going to be a busy and fun semester. I'm taking a financial accounting class, a NGO management class, and a tools for a development worker class. They will be rigorous but I'm excited to dive in because I really want to learn all of the subjects.

I got a fellowship this year for half tuition so that makes this program much more affordable, but still sometimes overwhelming to think about the investment. I just have to remind myself that I will be that much more marketable and knowledgeable when I am done and that it is worth it. I'm planning to continue working for help international while I am also taking classes and starting a non profit. I would love any advice and if anyone is interested, I'll send you the business plan. it's called Nyirira (nee-ri-da) which means beauty in Luganda (a major language spoken in uganda). I'm trying to find balances in my life and know that if I just keep my priorities straight and do the simple important things first, that everything will work out.

anyway I'm debating on the whole blog situation. I'm thinking I will add pictures to this one and call it good. Maybe make a book out of it or something. I might go back to my blog with graham and be the single writer, start another, or just take a hiatus from blogging until I'm a newly married person, like most other bloggers.

it's been a while

it's tuesday night and I leave friday. who would have thought I'd be getting even less sleep? Melissa and I are really trying to do a good job on our projects that we have started. Some highlights as of late are:

1. we moved to the veranda and now sleep outside, with a mosquito net as our covering
2. there are only four of us in the house
3. we put our day guard in prison for a few days because he stole from us, the police wanted 20,000 to do the paper work that had to do with his case so he got off.
4. I got mugged with one of our other volunteers. We are fine.
5. I'm starting a non-profit I'm really really excited about. email me and I'll forward you the business plan.
6. I interviewed the dean of the public health school for makarere university. he is a really big deal and was on the hill during the first PEPFAR with President Bush and has written books and is in a bunch of newspaper articles etc.
7. We are trying to go through our house which has a ridiculous amount of stuff.
8. I miss it here already...but I need a vacation.
9. we made a fruit dryer

that's it for now.

I miss you all and only sometimes miss "real" life.

About 20 of our volunteers left last week. I am going to miss them all but am excited to keep in touch in the future to see what they all do with their lives. We have some great people that have come through the program this summer.
To add to the eternal list of sicknesses, I guess that most people who went home got sick upon arrival and eating American food again. One of our volunteers who, lets be honest, is cursed to have everything go wrong when it comes to health emailed and said that she may have malaria, she is getting de-wormed, has a respiratory infection, and is being tested for giardia.

The day the last group of volunteers left, wendy seth and jeff came in town. They slept at our house wed night and then we spent half day on Thursday and Friday back at sipi falls. It’s so beautiful there and it’s been fun to have them here. The plan was to raft on Saturday but, surprise surprise, wendy got sick and didn’t feel up to going. So I stayed and hung out with her. She, seth and jeff slept at some friends place in kampala Sunday night and last night and should be sleeping here again tonight and tomorrow before they leave to the airport Wednesday.
I want to give another project update. So, we finished the eye camp with 1700 people screened and 102 surgeries. There was a man who was blind for ten years due to a bilateral cataract who was so enthusiastic about being able to see that he yelled to the crowds and pointed to say “I can see that you are a boy, and you are a girl!” On my mission in Taiwan, I tried to do that a few times and failed calling girls boys and vice versa, but this man was good and from what I heard, didn’t offend anyone.

Another big project we are doing is starting a social business of soap making with the persons with disabilities. That is our biggest project to pursue in this last week and we are probably going to need some business advice. The two leaders now have the training and we are going to work out an initial business model today and see how it goes. So if anyone wants a copy to look over, let me know. We are trying to work it out with the hospital that the persons with disabilities will be their soap provider. If that works out, then it would really be great and a constant buyer for them.

Our mushroom farms are something that we are trying to finish and make sure are sustainable. I’m workingout a contract with one of our partners to pay him in chickens to make sure that this is structured and he gives us updates on the farm etc. we have another one with the HIV group and need to finish that. The HIV positive group is more straight forward because the proceeds go to their transportation to come to meetings and medications for those who can’t afford them.
We are building two pit latrines, one for a school and one for a fishing village who uses lake Victoria for all their water needs, washing, drinking, and latrines included.

We finished a lot of different teacher trainings and business trainings. We also have given multiple womens groups mini cabbage farms. We have done outreaches with disabled persons and with the public health nurse, some other vulnerable groups that can’t afford to come to the hospital.

We also designed a peer teaching structure for a sex-ed curriculum to be implemented beginning in three schools and will hopefully expand. About ¼ of pregnant women that come into the health centers in our areas are under aged women. They then must have c-sections and drop out of school etc when they have children so young. The initiatives have really pushed abstinence but haven’t addressed the people who are still going to have sex.

We have two chicken coops, both for underfunded schools, one is for a school that is mostly orphaned children.

We have built a lot of stoves, probably around 50 of them, which help with respiratory disease and fuel costs (cuts it by about ½). We are working on some stoves at the hospital this week.

We are also doing a family planning public health group who is using fertility beads and charging the women after training to pay 5 cents for these beads. When used correctly, the beads are a really effective method of birth control.

We had the aids extravaganza, where over 100 people were given free hiv testing, including one 15 year old girl fatuma. It turns out that she is positive and doesn’t know. So, we are befriending her (the public health nurse wants us to and for some reason it wouldn’t be suspicious in her mind) but she is a sweet 3rd generation ugandan born Indian. I really like her and am not sure how this relationship is going to go considering she said to her grandma she would kill herself if she was positive.

On a lighter note, I am also trying to branch out the products in Lugazi, we are helping the youth outreach mission (a group of about 30 college students who want to give back to the community) start a snack shop. They are selling the exact same product as everyone else. So Melissa and I recreated some of our favorite chapatti (they are a little thicker than Mexican tortillas) including honey butter and powdered sugar, cinnamon and sugar, pb and j, jelly, etc…so that maybe they would spice things up a little bit. I’m not sure if they will.

Wednesday I’m also teaching a local bakery how to make cookies to sell. They said that the ones I made last time were “too soft.” So this is going to be a struggle, but I’m determined.

We are also starting some savings and loans groups which are really exciting. It’s what has been keeping me up late and waking me up early the past few days. I’m really excited about it. It’s microcredit with savings in womens groups that don’t need an institution. That being said, it’s fairly complicated and takes training.

anyway, life is good. I'm really happy here.

gulu pt 2

We just got back from gulu last night after a looong journey. To be honest, one of the things I've learned to expect from this summer is that nothing can ever go smoothly. Our bus broke down for three hours on the way to gulu so we didn't arrive to the nasty run down hotel until 4am. Following our first encounter at the "multi-choice" hotel where I only really got two choices from, sickness, or sickness. Literally. Brian started throwing up right after we shared our beds (they didn't save all our rooms for us so we doubled up on singles) and around two hours later I hear a knock at the door with a worried brian telling me that he threw up blood.

for those of you who know me well, I don't really do the whole doctor role very well. I told him that everything would be fine and that we would take him into the hospital in a couple hours. Inside I'm freaking out. When I went to throw away his throw up in the squatty potty that reaked of urine, I gagged myself and when there were mice in the room I decided we were upgrading the next night.

We took brian to the hospital and of course they gave him malaria treatment, but he also had a bacterial infection because his white blood cell count was really high so I had him take that antibiotic and hold off of the malaria medicine that they give us EVERY time.

We went to church which was great and then had a little fireside with the ward members after.

Monday and tuesday we went to work to finish 11 stoves that the last group started. We were in the round huts with thatched roofs and for some reason my depth perception was off because I ran into the roof about every time I left or entered the hut.

The reason why we build these adobe stoves or "energy saving" stoves is because people inhale smoke as they cook in their homes which is a huge problem for respiratory health and eye health. They also save a lot of money by using firewood in these stoves and can spend up to 1/2 to 1/4 of what they spent before on charcoal to cook. it also cooks their food more quickly so cuts the time women are cooking by a few hours a day.

When we build them we try to train people around how to do it so that others can do it as well. we put a cement finish on them and a chimney but you can do it without so that it is virtually free.

We did that and then one afternoon went to an IDP camp. One of dennis's best friends amos had been helping us all week and as we walked through a still very populated IDP camp, I ran into Amos on his bike. People seriously just show up places all the time here. He told me he lives with 9 other family members, mostly extended family, but it was really a harsh reality when I realized he was living with them in these tiny mud huts. He doesn't have a sponsor for school so is kind of at a standstill in his life as well.

We also met with invisible children who is doing a lot of really great work from uganda. I'm really impressed with their organization. One thing that makes me really excited is a micro savings and loan group to do with women. I'm going to meet with the mayor again here and propose that we institute more of these groups for the women here and see if he will provide in the business counselors job description to follow up on these small savings groups. The women start by saving anywhere from 1-5,000 shillings a week and each gets a stamp in their book for how much they put into the pot. then there is a loan system set up where they take turns being able to use the money in the pot but have 1 month to pay it back with 10% interest. As the money is constantly loaned out and people pay back as a group, by the end of a 6 month cycle, everyone gets back the money they put into it and a portion of the 10% interest. They make more money by lending. It's really great. there are systems set up for accountability with a president, secretary, and treasurer in the group who have keys to the 3 key lock box. all three have to be present to open the box and ideally money is not left inside. They have done it with some womens groups and by the third or fourth cycle of six months, there are women who are saving up to 20,000 a week as a group. (or about 10 dollars). I love that idea.

we went on safari yesterday and saw giraffes, elephants, warthogs, rhino's, alligators, birds, deer who morphed african style, and some other animals. it was a ton of fun. We did a boat safari to murchison falls on the victorian nile. you should google image it and hopefully in the next few days I'll actually have a camera!!!

Last night as expected, our driver had issues and we ended up traveling for 12 hours when we could have been home in 5.

such is life.

I calculated that I probably only got about 21 hours of sleep in the past 6 days. I don't know how I'm not sick.

lex left two days ago which makes me sad. most of our volunteers leave early next week and then it's down to 8 volunteers for a week and then 6. it's going to be crazy. but I'm excited to do some of my own projects an to have a cleaner house, and maybe sleep?? That being said, I'll miss them all a ton.

Dennis and Gulu pt 1

alright, I should probably do better with keeping my life updated. I have never been in such a whirlwind. There are a few things I want to write about and then I'll put on another update on our projects.

Last week on thursday night we invited our friend dennis to come and eat with us and tell us his story. He is a 26 year old from Gulu in northern Uganda who is now a freshman in high school because he was abducted as a child. This is a sad story so if you want something happy, I wouldn't read this right now.

When Dennis was eight years old the LRA came into his village and stormed his house. They took his father and two mothers out infront of their children and told dennis that since his dad worked for the government, he needed to be killed. And dennis needed to do it. Dennis refused and there was some arguing as they tied his parents naked to a tree. When he had a second, out of fear, Dennis took off running and the LRA took their guns and shot after him, they hit him in the arm but he ran into the bush and hid for a little bit of time and then made the decision that he should go and die with his parents so went back to witness his father and mothers massacred. They were cut down the middle, their throats cut and insides pulled out of their bodies. He had a drawing of what had happened that he showed to everyone. After that, the LRA took dennis (he was the oldest) to be a soldier and left his siblings orphaned, in their village.

Dennis spent EIGHT years in the bush. He tried to escape once but got caught and was caned until he couldn't walk. He finally escaped the second time and was successful. During his time in the bush he was forced to kill a man. it was either he die or the man die and so he shot a man as a young child. The LRA used to play games to with the people they would capture and force them to fight 1x1 and the survivor would move on to the next round like a sick sporting tournament. they would then wait until their were 2 people left out of 60, leave a note with them and tell them to inform the government that they were in that location with 50+ dead bodies waiting to fight. He also talked about how brainwashed the child soldiers get, where some thirst to kill and how joseph koni is possessed by the devil and has powers to predict the future.

He talked really matter of factly about the experience and said there were many things that happened that were too much to explain. He talked about the problems in gulu today with HIV, girls that were raped and then drop their babies in bushes or pit latrines, and starvation associated with people forced to leave the IDP camps.

when he came back after 8 years in the bush he found two of his little brothers and had a little place for them to stay as he went to school and tried to provide for them. he would lock them inside while he was gone and then come back with food from the school to feed them. One day while he was at school his siblings were playing with fire in their hut and accidentally set the hut on fire and both ended up dying.

He then lost all of his fathers property and luckily found someone to sponsor him for school. He since has moved to jinja (about 30 minutes from us) and is trying to support another orphan girl who was his neighbors child and who he promised to look after. She is 2 and living in gulu with someone that he put her with.

I am amazed by Dennis. He wants to build an orphanage and is working on raising funds for that. I am so impressed with his outlook on life. He says that sometimes he doesn't feel like he should be alive and wishes he were dead, but then he reminds himself that God chose him to stay alive and he needs to help as many people as he can.

He joined the LDS church and found a sponsor for his schooling through a contact their but that is a population that is a lot of times left to the waste side, the returning abductees who are in their teens. There is a ton of funding for elementary school kids, but not enough attention is paid to those who are older and escape.

I'm still digesting that reality mixed with the fact that I just came back from gulu at 5am this morning. I'll write another entry about that. I'm sorry about the grammar errors but I don't have time to really re-read over this right now.

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!