We Are Uganda

Whew. What a crazy past few weeks. I haven't been blogging very much because research and paper writing are not nearly as exciting as dancing with genocide prisoners, visiting brothels, or bungee jumping. Also, I've been required to keep a journal about my research so after I did that each day the last thing I wanted to do was keep thinking about my day (they're pretty emotionally taxing). Also, for confidentiality reasons of vulnerable populations there's a limit on what I would be able to put on a public blog anyways. Mostly, after my days out at the center I just cooked dinner (which, with one burner, no microwave, and no pre-prepared food takes a while) and watching dvds on people's computers. There are tons of little stands that sell movies for 2000 shillings (roughly one US dollar) so I've definitely taken advantage of that.

I came back to kampala from gulu last week and spent all week sleeping, playing, doing research, and beginning to write my paper.

Last sunday we had a going away party with all of our homestay families. The consensus is that it was pretty awkward. It's pretty difficult to keep a conversation going for 2 hours with people who really have nothing going on in their lives. Since neither of my host parents have jobs right now and cannot afford to really do anything (including transportation) they mostly just sit around and watch tv and do chores all day. Most of the other students had similar experiences. It was nice to see my host family again though. I just realized I never really wrote much about them. I'll make sure to do that before the blog is over.

Right now I am on Ssese Island, which is a 3 hour (very slow) ferry ride from the coast towards the middle of Lake Victoria. Its incredibly beautiful and some fantastic (and some scary) wildlife. We've been here all week doing presentations on our research all day until 3ish and then playing on the beach and finishing our papers. Hearing about everyone elses projects are super interesting. People have done everything from the impact of chinese business and imports on the economy, to the link between malnutrition and HIV, to domestic violence in refugee camps, to censorship of press.

I finally settled on the experiences of forced mothers in the LRA and their views and relationships with men and sexuality upon return. It brought up a lot of interesting issues on mental health versus cultural preservation and acceptance. Also, like when I was in Rwanda, I spent a lot of time thinking about acceptance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Uganda currently has offers of amnesty extended to any LRA rebel whenever they decide to leave the bush, except for top commanders. Most Northern Ugandans are in support of the amnesty act, but former LRA rebels (mostly who were abducted and forced to commit atrocities against their will) still face a lot of stigma.

I did my presentation yesterday and think it went well, and I'm almost finished with my paper. It's going to end up being a little more than 30 pages of text, 1.5 spaced, which is about twice as long as any other paper I've ever written. Definitely makes me feel accomplished and it's something that I think I ended up doing a pretty good job on, which is nice. I was worried that I was going to put in all this time and effort only to get to the end and realize that I wasn't proud of all my work.

Anyways, that's about all for me right now. Heading back to Kampala tomorrow, doing last minute souvenir shopping and visiting my homestay family on saturday and then flying home on Sunday, which means I'll be home on Monday. I'm really ready and excited to go home, but the fact that I'm leaving here for an indefinite period of time hasn't really hit me yet. Pretty sure as soon as I board the plane I'm going to become a huge mess. I never fit in here at all, but I still feel really connected to both the land and the people.
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Double edged swords

Food
Will Miss = Chapatti. Chapatti is pretty much pita which is cooked on a skillet in oil and is incredibly delicious! It is sold on almost every street and in every market in Kampala in large part because organizations attempting to teach people career skills to pull them out of poverty often teach chapatti making. The vendors also make Rolexes, which are tomato, cabbage, and onion omelets wrapped in chapatti and are the best breakfast ever.
Won’t Miss = Matooke. Matooke (mah-toke-ay), the staple food of Uganda, is steamed and mashed, unripened plantain that incredibly dense and has very little flavor. It is usually served with a bean or goat sauce, though if you are lucky you may find sauces of peas, eggplant, or beef, all highly salted.

Taxis
Will Miss = Taxi rides that cost no more than 50 cents.
Won’t Miss = Being crammed into taxis that are about 100 degrees inside, often have a chicken or two flapping around in, and only go to somewhere in the vicinity of your destination.

Bargaining
Will Miss = Everything being really cheap and surprising everyone with Luganda when they try to overcharge you. There really is no way to describe someone’s reaction when they give you an outrageous price and you respond with “Oserra!” which means “you overcharge!”
Won’t Miss = Having to bargain for every purchase and always having the original price be twice as high as normal because you are white and, therefore, are rich and deserve to pay more.

People
Will Miss = Adorable children following you around trying to hold your hand.
Won’t Miss = Obnoxious men following you around everywhere who assume that by yelling “Muzungu I Love You” and grabbing you that they will convince you to marry them, bring them to America, and give them all your money.

Fruits and Vegetables
Will Miss = Cheap, fresh (as in picked that day) fruits and vegetables being sold every 10 feet on every main and not-so-main road in Uganda.
Won’t Miss = Not being able to tell if I’m buying limes (which they call lemons) or oranges (seriously. oranges in Uganda are small and green)

Bananas
Will Miss = Seeing banana plantations everywhere. They are super pretty and the bananas are sweeter than at home.
Won’t Miss = Eating bananas at almost every meal. You can make anything out of banana. Including beer, chocolate, and, of course, matooke.

Sleeping
Will Miss = Sleeping with all the windows open and the cool night breeze coming in.
Won’t Miss = Having to tuck myself into a mosquito net every night and finding out half the time that there is mosquito in there with me.

Animals
Will Miss = Seeing goats everywhere. They are surprisingly cute and grow on you. Oh yeah, the zebras, elephants, and baboons are pretty cool too.
Won’t Miss = Crazy big scary birds (literally 3-4 feet tall) that are apparently poisonous. They are everywhere, including the middle of the city.

Walking
Will Miss = People being really excited as you walk by and wanting to be your friend.
Won’t Miss = Dodging cows with giant horns, boda bodas, barbed wire, half burned piles of trash, uncovered man holes, and pot holes the size of elephants everywhere you walk.

Tanning
Will Miss = Being tan.
Won’t Miss = Finding out its really just layers of dust when that tan washes off in the shower every night.

Nighttime
Will Miss = The night being so dark that you can see millions of stars.
Won’t Miss = The night being so dark that you can’t see your own hand in front of your face when you’re walking around.

Dinners
Will Miss = Having house dinners and cooking for everyone.
Won’t Miss = Having the power go out about the nights and still having to cook for 10 people.

Cleanliness
Will miss = Those amazing 5 minutes after I finish bathing before I feel dirty again.
Won’t miss = The fact that I feel lucky if I have either hot water, a faucet with water pressure, or an actual shower head.

Healthcare
Will Miss = Really cheap medical care (think $35 without insurance for consult, lab work, and 3 antibiotics)
Won’t Miss = Misdiagnosis and seeing textbooks titled “Surgery for Undergradutes” while in the hospital.

Fashion
Will Miss = Having dresses made really cheaply in beautiful fabric that are made specifically to fit you.
Won’t Miss = Having it be scandalous when my knees show.

Time
Will Miss = Not having to stress about being late for things.
Won’t Miss = Waiting for 3 hours for a meeting to start, and therefore only being able to count on accomplishing one thing each day.

Emotions
Will Miss = The amazing moments you encounter here like watching the sun set over the palm trees and meeting amazing people.
Won’t Miss = The heartbreaking moments visiting slums, working with sick children, or just seeing the overall scope of poverty, inequality, and corruption in this country.

I am coming home somehow soon

One of the things I’ve really grown to love about Uganda is the little phrases that people use. For example:
-Somehow is synonymous with somewhat. "My house is somehow near the big mango tree." "I am feeling somehow sick."
-During the first week, the doctor who came to talk to us about safety spoke of avoiding “the murder by WHAAAAT? The murder by shooting”
-Sorry is used as both “I apologize” and “I feel sorry for you” so any time you trip, cough, or have any small inconvenience, you get a surrounding chorus of “soddy soddy soddy”
-Yesterday we went out for dinner and when I asked for something on the menu I was told “it is missing.” As in, they have run out of it or never had it.
-In the US, when you ask people how they are, there are usually not long responses but they vary a little. Here, I have yet to hear any reply other than “Iyamfine” to “how are you?” I once said “I’m doing pretty well” and got a very confused look.
-When anything happens that disrupts common procedure, they explain that the problem “disorganized us”
-When referring to the general population or a large group of people, they are called the “general happiness”
-Whenever you attend a lecture, training, or speech, you can expect to hear “Ah we togethah?” at least once every 3 minutes
- If you go to the market and ask “do you have beans?” There is no other possible response besides “they ah there” or “they ah not there.” The phrase is actually appropriate in a surprising number of contexts.
-“It is ok” always replaces “yes” or any other positive response.
-“Ok please” “thank you please”. Not much of an explanation for this.
-Often, when you leave a store or someone's mud hut, instead of a goodbye that I am used to, they often say “ok. Nice time.”
-Finally, it’s pretty common for people to say things that clearly do not make sense. I’ve actually found this to be advantageous because if I don’t have a good answer to something, I just say whatever comes to my mind and nobody questions me if my response does not actually relate whatsoever to what the question was.

So I guess I should start out by saying soddy soddy soddy for the incredibly long time I’ve gone without keeping you updated. I have to keep a journal for my practicum and once I write in that every day I’m pretty ready to do something else other than reflect on the day. Also, the past few weeks have been pretty uneventful. Mostly just wake up, go to work, try to conduct some interviews but mostly just sit and observe, come home, make dinner, and then go to sleep. Anyways, here some highlights from the past few weeks. In order to make it more upbeat, I will try to alternate happy things with sad things.

-Happy: We attempted to go to Murchison Falls to see giraffes, lions, and other animals we’ve only ever seen in zoos, but it turns out Uganda realized that all tourists have absurd amounts of money they are willing to spend, and since we are all college students that still depend on the ‘rents for money, we opted for a slightly cheaper plan of doing research all weekend and then sleeping in our own beds instead. We briefly discussed trying to bribe our way into Sudan, but as the election results started coming back we quickly realized that was the worst idea ever. Ooh, and I also got like 4 more dresses made that I designed and then picked out the fabric for. Lots of fun! Glad I ended up getting a little more time in Gulu though. I’m really going to miss it here. I’m thinking if I can’t find a job when I graduate maybe I’ll come back and volunteer for a little while.
-Sad: Last night one of the girls I live with got really sick in the middle of the night. It took her half an hour to find a ride to the hospital and then when she got there, they didn’t have a lab technician on staff. This is yet another reason why I have a newfound appreciation for the American medical system.
-Happy: We have become pretty good friends with the guys who own the bar down the street from us. They have a trivia night every Thursday and last Thursday they let me and one of my friends make up the trivia questions and then announce them. Sooooo much fun!
-Sad: My research overall has made me pretty upset with the state of the world. For example, I discovered the most fantastic catch 22 ever: Around 50% of women in this area brew alcohol because it is their best way to make an income, yet women whose husbands often get drunk often (20%) are 50% more likely to report domestic abuse than other married women.
-Happy: I have become quite a resourceful chef on our one kerosene burner, lack of oven, lack of microwave, lack of refrigerator, spotty at best water supply, and frequent cooking by headlamp. For example, a few days ago we made PIZZA on the stovetop with chapatti crust (rolled using a glass bottle), sliced tomatoes instead of sauce, and cheese made in a cave that we bought from a doctor (who spent years studying in France, and smokes like a chimney) turned cheese man. Also, I am taking advantage of 25 cent avocados and have perfectly the art of guacamole. Also last night we made refried beans. From scratch. Do you have ANY idea how long it takes to cook dry beans? All day.
-Sad: A Ugandan friend of one of the girls I live with (who I had met a few times) passed away a few days ago. We were told he had some sort of lung issue, but from what we’ve heard I have almost no doubt that had he been at any hospital in the US he would have been fine. The custom here is that when somebody dies in the hospital, you transport them back home for the burial. Since the hospital’s one ambulance was nowhere to be found, it came down to his friends to hire a car and do the actual manual transporting of his body.
-Happy: The girls where I work take vocational classes, one of which is salon. As a result, I have spent the past 2 weeks with my hair in approximately 50000000 teeny tiny braids with woven in extensions, which took 4 girls 3 hours to do (and caused my scalp unexpected amounts of pain). As in, my hair was down to waist. However, Friday I was super nauseous and spent all day in bed trying to move as little as possible, and to entertain myself spent at least 6 hours (no joke) unbraiding each braid one by one.
-Undecided: I found out yesterday that one of Joseph Kony’s many children is named George Bush because Kony and our former prez are “close friends”
-Happy/sad: 2 weeks from today I will be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on my way home. Mostly I am pretty ready to go home. There’s a small part of me though that could really be happy just staying here for an indefinite amount of time. It’s definitely too early to get nostalgic though so I’m going to stop here.

Let's talk about fair

The girls at where I work are raising children of LRA rebels and also Acholi men who they turned to for companionship to deal with their PTSD and who then ditched them when they got pregnant.

-The girls are responsible for taking care of the babies.
-The fathers can show up and any time and take these babies away, because even though the woman has to care for them if the man decides at any point that he wants them he can come take them.
-When the girls get married, which their parents pretty much all want them to do asap (they're around 18 and 19 years old), there's like a 99% chance they're going to have to give up the babies to a distant family member who will treat the child like a burden their entire lives, because it is culturally unacceptable for a man to help support another man's baby

Its kinda like men and women here drew straws and the woman's straw is so small you need a microscope to see it... Good luck finding a health clinic to let you borrow a microscope and see it... And honestly I don't think that the majority of women here get that.

I guess I did have time for one more quick thought before I delved into the world of 18-year-old formerly abducted mothers in a place that has recently had the highest rates of depression and PTSD on earth.
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And so it goes

The past few days have been pretty good, though fairly uneventful. One thing about research is that it takes a lot of patience, which has never been one of my strong suites. The girls and their children are really amazing. For what they've been through, they seem pretty happy and stable.

I've heard some really horrible stories about things the girls were forced to do by the LRA. There's a girl who at like 12 years old was trained as a bomb expert, and another girl who stopped counting after she killed 100 people. I could keep going, but I'm short on time.

I'm leaving in a few minutes to go spend 2 nights at the compound about 20 minutes outside gulu. I'm having trouble bonding with the girls because none of them speak english so hopefully this will help. I had some bonding time earlier today with the director of the program, and she's really cool. She's American and came 3 years ago to set up the program from scratch. Now they have been invited to set up similar programs is Pakistan and Sudan. She's hanging an extra hammock up in her tent for me so in the next few days hopefully we'll get to talk more. She's usually really busy-- like today she went to go visit a girl's family who said as soon as she gets home they're going to marry her off. To get there from our center you have to take a bodaboda for a while until you get to a river, wade across the river, catch another bodaboda to the next river, wade across the river, and then walk for about an hour-- but anyways, she still manages to really get to know all of the girls and their children.

Side note: just got in the organization van to go out to the center and there is a woman in the back with me who I didn't recognize. I introduced myself and asked how she was and she said not well and that she was in town getting medicine. I said I was sorry and asked if it was malaria (people get it here like the flu). She said no and then pulled back her head scarf and I realized that she only had one eye and the whole area where her other eye should be is covered in some sort of rashy infection thing. What is with healthcare in this country!!! Not even a little bit close to acceptable.

Anyways, about to lose cell service for 2 days so I guess that's what I'm going to leave you with. Sorry to be such a downer... Despite all of the new, horrible things I'm learning about, I'm actually really enjoying myself...
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Gulu

So I finally got out of the big city and have been up north on Gulu since Monday night. I took the public bus up here, but it was a lot less traumatic than passover because the other girl from my program who was traveling with me was also traveling with a Ugandan friend she knew from before. People tend to mess with you a lot less when there's somebody there to yell at them in Luganda.

Gulu itself is actually a very nice town. The center of the town is only about 7 blocks in each direction, including a giant market. There isn't nearly as much food selection as Kampala, and everything is more expensive, but people don't really bargain here like in Kampala, which also makes for a nicer shopping experience.

Our house is... Interesting. Since I stayed in Kampala an extra week, I didn't really get a say in where the people who came up earlier decided we should live. To an extent, I'm dealing with a little culture shock again since I got so spoiled in the house that people staying in Kampala rented there. This house is under construction, and when it is done it will be very nice, but for now there is a reason why the owners are not living there and rented it to us for so cheap. I won't go into the details, but my current frustrations stem from a cockroach infestation that I have staged a one woman war against because nobody else in my house cares enough to spring for the $5 bottle of bug killing spray, and a construction worker infestation. As in, they showed up without warning at midnight last night and will be staying in the house as well through the weekend, waking us up early in the morning to work on the plumbing. But I digress...

On tuesday I went to have a meeting with a person at the organization where I will be doing my research. Everybody here gets around on bodabodas (motorcycle taxis) because there are no regular taxis (basically public minibuses), which I thought could be an issue because I am pretty much required to wear a skirt here and riding side saddle on bumpy roads is maybe not the best idea. I've kept my balance so far though. Anyways, my meeting turned out to be actually us going to her sister's house, socializing for 2 hours, eating a meal, and then talking for about 20 minutes about what I was interested in doing. I also met someone named Lily, who said that the custom here is that now I owe her a chicken.

Just a quick overview: My organization runs a 1.5 yearish long boarding school type program for child mothers (generally around age 18 and 19 but are as young as 15 and as old as 25). They continue their studies while also learning life skills, getting counseling, and getting help with childcare. I am not sure exactly about the numbers, but many of the 30 girls there are formerly abducted children and the father's of their children are rebel soldiers (that is what I'm doing research on). The school is on a small compound in rural Uganda about a 20 minute drive north of Gulu.

Yesterday I started my practicum, which is not so much a practicum as just research. I get the feeling that they're really used to having people here to do research. In the morning, they said that they had capacity for 2 new students, so they were going to do home visits to some girls who they thought might want to come to the school. Only one of the girls was home (nobody makes appointments here. You just show up). Her father was beaten and killed by LRA rebels for buying a bicycle (the LRA has a lot of really stupid rules) and so her family moved to an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp. She met a man there and got pregnant but as soon as he found out, he disappeared. Now the family is back home and she has a beautiful girl (3 years old maybe) who only has one eye. When we asked what happened, all she told us was that it was witchcraft. Oh, and they have HIV.
Then, in the afternoon they had dance and music for a few hours. Most of the songs are about God (from what I can guess. They are almost all in Acholi Luo, which is the local language here. Of course, just as I start to get a handle on Luganda, the language changes) but there was also one about my organization and how thankful the girls are for all that it has done for them. It was both nice and kinda creepy in a brainwashing way at the same time...

Today I got here just at the end of morning prayers. A new girl arrived last night (she was captured by the LRA in 1994 when she was 10 and escaped relatively recently) and when I went to greet her and shake her hand I realized there was a huge scar on it. Then I realized it was because she was missing a finger. I cannot even describe what a jolt of reality it was to me, and I had an incredibly difficult time hiding my shock. I started to look around at the girls, who generally seem very happy and healthy, and realized that many of them had scars that I hadn't noticed before. If the language barrier isn't bad enough, I'm going to have a really hard time connecting with these girls because I am just so intimidated by them.

My organization really has impressed me so far. The school seems like such a safe and open place for child mothers to find support. While it is pretty much impossible to ever forget to hardships that brought the girls here, it makes me so happy to see the mothers interact with their babies, each other, and each others' babies. More on this next week.
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New pictures!