Hello all! I hope that everyone is having a wonderful weekend and a restful shabbos! I am very much appreciating the arrival of Shabbat this week, because it has been an absolutely crazy week! We had three papers due this week, not to mention that this is the last week before we all start out independent research projects (SIT calls it a practicum) so we basically had to figure out our lives for the next six weeks! Yikes!
The week began with receiving our scores on the ACTFL test, sort of a standardized way of assessing foreign language competency. For those of you who don't know (or have been skipping all of the little Luganda lessons in my blog) the first three weeks of the program included an intensive language study in Luganda.
I wound up getting a score of "Advanced Mid" on my ACTFL test, which I'm super pleased about as it's definitely better than I expected. I don't really feel like an Advanced Mid speaker, there is still so much I don't know and many moments that I have to stare stupidly at someone speaking to me in Luganda until they rephrase in words I understand. I'm not really sure, then, what it means to be an Advanced Mid speaker. However, in thinking about it, I've decided it means a few things:
It means that I don't get overcharged on taxis (as much). I have definitely had to protest to a few taxi conductors when they overcharge me (tonseera! don't overcharge me!), and when I am able to explain myself in Luganda, they usually are more willing to drop down to the legitimate price.
It means that I am freakin hilarious in this country. I feel like my study abroad experience is giving me an overly inflated sense of my own humorousness. All it takes is shouting "maas awo" (ahead there) in a taxi or greeting the person next to me "osiibye otianno ssebo?" (how are you this afternoon, sir?) And instantly the taxi is in hysterics. No one expects the muzungu to know Luganda, so people find it endlessly funny that I do.
It means that I feel like a part of my village. After I get off my taxi at the "Roko Construction Stage," I have about a 15 minute walk up a giant hill to get back to my house. I like to play a little game I call "pretend I don't speak English" (I imagine you can guess the rules of the game) as I walk to my house which has earned me many friends. First, I say hello the the hilarious women who work in an electronics house at the bottom of the hill. They are always so enthusiastic and happy to see me, shouting "Kulikayo Muzungu!" (Welcome back Muzungu!) whenever I pass. I complimented one of them on her Obama t-shirt in Luganda one day and they have liked me ever since.
It means that when I cross the road and pass a group of men outside the construction factory the no longer call after me in perhaps a not so parents-friendly manner... After they realized I spoke luganda they all shout "oli otya nnabyo!" (how are you maam) as I pass. I wish them all a "sula bulungi" (good night) as I pass and continue on my way.
It means that I can talk to one of my favorite vendors who sells candy and other snacks from a little table. She usually has her adorable little daughter with her who I always greet with an enthusiastic "ki kati mukwano!" (what's up my friend!), to which she just stares at me, much to her mom's amusement. I have asked the little girl her name many times (gw'ani? who are you?) but she still just stares at me, so I call her mukwano, to her mother's further amusement.
It means that the children in the neighborhood love me. Some of my favorites are a group of kids who play in front of one of the shops near my house. They like to show off when I approach, yelling Muzungu! and then dancing or jumping rope. I always say muli mutya (how are you guys?) and tell them jebaleko! (well done!) or kilungi! (awesome).
It means that I get many refrains of "kulikayo" and "nvuddeyo" (I have returned) as I approach my house. Most days, when someone starts to laugh at my Luganda skills, I hear a voice behind me saying to the laugher "amanyi luganda" (she knows luganda).
It means that as I approach the house, I see my favorite friend. She is a nearly toothless woman who sits on the corner behind a table with a jerrycan sitting on it. That's it. For the longest time I had no idea what she did or what was in the jerry can. But then one day, I stopped to ask her, "otuunda ki?" (what are you selling?). She proceeded to tell me "amata" (milk).... and then introduce me to every member of her family, including an adorable gaggle of children. Now, if I don't greet every single one of the kids individually, they will chase me around the corner until I say "oli otya?" and get a bonga.
It means that I make new friends everyday. More often than not, one of the people who I greet decides to strike up a conversation with me as I walk (which never interrupts my friend-greeting schedule, of course). We have lots of interesting conversations about careers, school, and Uganda, all in Luganda. Almost always, these conversations arrive at the question "lwaki osoma luganda?" (why do you study luganda?) With my limited Luganda, I can only answer "kubanga njagala kugamba ne abantu Uganda ne kubanga nsoma eby'enkulakulana" (because I like to talk to Ugandan people and because I study development studies). However, that is not the real answer. I study luganda because being able to speak luganda gives me the most amazing window into Ugandan life.
When I speak luganda, people immediately warm to you and are at ease. I was at the bank thursday(thanks again mom for sending me western union!!!) and the line was really long and the teller was cranky. However, when I got to the counter and greeted her in luganda, she broke into a smile. During the rest of the transaction, she kept teaching me the luganda words for everything we were doing, and told me to come back so she could teach me more luganda. When I returned to the bank friday with my friend Margie, she remembered me and called me up to the counter to talk to her, instead of waiting by the door.
When I speak luganda, I begin to move from being a tourist in this country to a member of the community, which is certainly how I feel in Kawempe.
As I walked up the hill today after an awesome trip to Mukono, all of my friends greeted me enthusiastically and asked me where I had been (eri wa? where were you?)- they notice when I am gone. Sadly, today is likely my last walk up the hill for a little while- I am likely (oh Uganda and how you challenge my type A sensibilities) moving into a house in Bakoto (another neighborhood of Kampala) tomorrow, where I will live with 5 other students during my practicum. I am so excited to live with the other students, but I am also sad to leave this community that has been my home. I will definitely be sure to come back regularly during practicum time.
So what is this practicum business anyways? Part of the SIT curriculum is 6 weeks of independent research. Students are given free reign to choose what they study and where they study it. For my practicum, I will be working with UNICEF in Kampala. So here is the best way that I know how to explain what I am doing: the world of foreign aid information can be divided into two main sources of information.
The first is commitment information, aka. the World Bank commits $10 million to build schools in Uganda. This is the information in AidData, the group I work for as a research assistant at WM.
The second set of information comes from monitoring and evaluation reports. These reports come from aid workers on the ground who go into communities to see what schools are there, whether they have books and desks and teachers.
However, there is no data source that connects these two sets of information- there is no way to compare what aid is supposed to show up with what aid actually shows up on the ground. This grey area is where corruption happens: if communities don't know what they're entitled to, they can't hold politicians accountable when aid doesn't show up because the funds have been embezzled.
My job with UNICEF will be to start on a prototype of what will eventually be a country-wide public website which will track aid funding from the top to the bottom and will include grassroots reporting on whether projects are functioning. Hopefully, at the end of six weeks, I'll have a website to show you people that includes all UNICEF funds and maybe world bank funds too.
I am super pumped about starting work monday (ahh, what?!?), though in many ways I am giving up some things to do this particular practicum. Many of my friends are going to go to amazing new places (and I will miss them all terribly these next 6 weeks) and are going to spend six weeks interacting with incredibly interesting people (for example, Greg and Margie are going to Gulu in the north to study how health care is a part of restorative justice in prisons and how communities respond to child headed households that are the result of conflict respectively, and Ashley is going to Mbarara in the west to study how the views of traditional healers affect maternal health, just to name a few). Most of my practicum will be spent in an office. However, I realize that I will be doing this for the rest of my life, and thus don't need to incorporate all of my research goal eggs into one practicum basket, as it were.
Most importantly, I have an amazing opportunity to begin a project that I really believe in and could improve how foreign aid works in Uganda. As we learn different things about development and foreign aid in Uganda, I have found myself questioning a lot of what I thought to be true about those subjects. Much of what I thought was clear and simple now seems to be neither of those things. However, the one thing that I really believe is true in development is that information is power and that information ought to be democratized so that the power lies with the people. I am so lucky to get the chance to work towards something I believe in.
Shabbat Shalom and weekend enlungi (have a great weekend!)!
All my love,
Alena
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Are you getting me? : The Eastern Excursion
Hello blog readers! I am so sorry that I have been so very neglectful of you all for the past three weeks. The first week was due to a lack of inspiration, the second week was a lack of time, and the third week was due largely to the fact that I was living without electricity for most of the week. I have a lot to catch you all up on. We have adopted the saying that “if you don’t blog about it, it didn’t happen,” so that makes the last three weeks of my life… nonexistent? Yikes. Well I’m going to cover everything in a few posts but I am going to start with the Eastern Excursion first.
So the Eastern Excursion started off with a bang, literally. Last Friday night, the SIT school/office was broken into, and the safe where we keep our belongings was blown up and robbed. I got a rather alarming text message on Saturday morning explaining what had happened. I was sort of freaked out initially, thinking about how I would go about cancelling my credit cards and how I would replace my passport. However, walking to the internet café past people begging on the street and stooped over pans of boiling oil to sell cassava provides a healthy bit of perspective. It’s pretty hard to feel too bad for yourself in those circumstances.
Most importantly, no one was at the SIT office at the time so no one got hurt. Additionally, it turned out in the end that only the cash was stolen, and credit cards and passports were left untouched. I didn’t have too much cash in there and everyone is going to get reimbursed for what they lost. The running theory is that the night guard was the one who robbed the safe so we have switched security companies since.
In the end, considering what could have been stolen, the damage was fairly minor. However, it’s safe to say that most of us were feeling a little rattled as we left for the Eastern Excursion the next day.
The first day of the excursion, we drove to Mbale, a town nestled at the base of Mt. Elgon in Eastern Uganda. Also, the people who work on the farm at my house are all from Mbale, and they were all super excited about my going there. We got into Mbale in the afternoon and just hung out in the town in the evening.
The next day was absolutely amazing. First, we went to the Child Restoration Outreach in Mbale. The CRO works with street children to help resettle them in homes and help them reintegrate into society. “Street children,” perhaps apparently, refers to children who live without parents on the street. Sometimes, these children are orphaned or sometimes they are sent away from home to work on the streets to earn income for their families and just wind up staying in the city.
The CRO’s social workers go out into the streets and ask the children to come join their program, which includes a year of education to help street children catch up to students who have been in school, recreational programs, and eventual placement into schools and homes. More than anything, the CRO serves as a place where street children can connect with each other and adults who care about them, forming a new family in the city. When our van rolled into the CRO’s play area, the children were in class and the playground deserted. Suddenly, the bell rang and children came spilling out of every door, laughing and playing.
Initially, I felt a bit awkward, as I often do in situations that involve playing with children. I tend to hold back at first, not quite sure how to interject myself into the games and whether my interjection will be welcome. I started cautiously approaching whatever kids were around me. Then, one of the boys that I had been talking to, Gabriel, who was probably about 4, marched one of the other SIT students up to me and pointed at me, declaring “she’s my favorite,” beaming. I felt instantly comfortable and began to run around with the kids, starting a big volleyball game with the other students.
One of my favorite moments was when one of the girls was asking to serve but all of the boys wouldn’t let her. I told the boy with the ball that he should share, “gabana” in Luganda, and he begrudgingly handed over the ball to the quiet girl in her floral dress. She stood behind the line, thought for a moment, and then slammed an ace over the net. All of the boys just looked at her speechlessly as she smiled. Wooo gender empowerment!
Eventually, I wound up playing catch with this group of children, throwing bean bags to each other in a circle. They were all very impressed by my under the leg and behind the back throws. I was struck by how unbelievably polite these children were, children who had grown up on the streets under no rules but their own. Whenever a new person joined the circle, they would always include them and everyone obeyed their turns. I was really impressed and touched by how these kids took care of each other.
We were all so sad when we had to leave. As we piled into the van, kids rushed up for “bongas,” fist bumps, through the windows. The CRO is an amazing organization with some awesome kids. As an aside, whenever SIT visits an organization like this, we bring a donation for the organization that comes from our tuitions. It feels good to give something back, when we are getting so much from each organization. Another interesting thing is that SIT apparently helped the CRO write the curriculum for the year of education they provide in-house. Pretty cool.
After that, we drove to Kapchorwa, an agricultural town in the mountains. We immediately went on this amazing hike in the Sipi Falls. I will let pictures do it justice:
The view from my hotel. No big deal.
Ashley, Rosie, Me, Erin (eating sugar cane) and Greg
The next day, we did an activity to help us learn about different methodologies that we could use in our imminently approaching research. After learning about the methods, we were split into three groups and brought to three different organizations that work with farmers in three different villages. My group went to the Tangwen Kwigate Bee Keepers Association. Our group was charged with making a “crosswise matrix,” which is basically a chart that prioritizes problems facing a community in order of importance.
The process of getting the information from the villagers was really interesting. The six of us in my group sat in front and the villagers sat in the pews (we were taking refuge from the rain in a church) in front of us, and the two interpreters were the literal intermediaries between the two groups, going back and forth. As an aside, they don’t speak Luganda in this part of the world, they speak Samia, which was a bit silly not to be able to use the Ugandan language I know, but such is linguistic diversity I suppose.
It was very interesting to learn what the villagers perceived as their most important problems. There were some unsurprising ones, such as lack of medical resources, crop disease, and lack of electricity, but I was surprised that what the villagers unanimously identified as their most pressing problem was the prevalence of orphans due to HIV/AIDS. Not what I expected going in. It was also interesting to witness how the group made decisions. Though there might have been initial debate on which of two issues was more important, every single vote was unanimous.
The dynamic between the male and female participants was also interesting to watch, with the men, perhaps unsurprisingly, leading the discussion and the women only chiming in occasionally. There was one moment when we asked if there was a problem with education in the village. The men all initially said no and then the women interjected, stating that there definitely was a problem. The men were all “oh right… maybe the women are correct.” It was a cool insight into how villagers perceive their community and the differences between male and female perceptions. Ultimately, however, I felt that the need to achieve the methodology undermined our ability to learn as much as possible about the village. We spent so much time filling in the little boxes of the chart that we perhaps lost some of the big picture, like who each of the villagers are, what they do, what their motivation is, etc. So, a good lesson on how to best get information.
The next day, we went to our rural homestays. We were all divided up into groups of two (and one group of three) and placed with families in different villages in the Busia District. My partner was my friend Erin (who actually goes to DU, small world!) and we were put in the Namkombe village. Our family consists of one mother and a father (many of the families students were put with are polygamous, though ours was not) and their eight kids. However, only three of the children were still in the house (Isaac, Abraham, and Evelyn) as well as a niece and nephew whose mother has moved away (Franco and Gertrude) and a three year old granddaughter of one of the children who passed away (Leticia).
Mom, Abraham, Me, Dad, Girl from the village (?), Erin
Evelyn's friend, Mom, Erin, Abraham, two of Evelyn's friends
Gertrude (making the face she made in every picture), Leticia, and Evelyn
My father was absolutely hilarious. After having eye surgery, the doctor recommended he wear a hat, which of course means a rainbow or leopard print cowboy hat. He also called us “my young girls” and would say “isn’t it?” or “are you getting me?” every third word. My 15 year old brother Isaac also wants to become a musician. His band name would be “sweet carrot” because “I like carrots and they are rare.” I told him I would buy his album some day.
Our family lives on this little compound shown below and Erin and I lived in one of the huts for the three days we were there, sharing a twin bed- cozy! Our family, like virtually everyone in the village, works as farmers. People in the village grow a lot of maize, cassava, fruits of various kinds, eggplants, and interestingly cotton. Our dad spent most of his time leading a construction team that is building the Protestant church in town, though I think that is a volunteer position? Not too sure…
Erin and I lived in the one on the right.
Our days consisted of waking up at 6:30am and then going to the kitchen to help Gertrude and our mother with the dishes from the previous day. Then we would help cook breakfast which would be served roughly around 8am. Then, Bernard, our interpreter who was a young guy living in the village working as a mechanic, would come and eat with us and then take us around to see different places. We were all tasked with writing a research paper from what we learn during the week. Erin and I decided to research the activities of gold miners in the village, after being told that there are really no safety standards in place and that deaths from mine collapses are a fairly routine (once a month or so) occurrence.
However, it became clear that where we would be taken was totally subject to the will of what our father wanted us to see. So on the first day, we went to visit the sub-county office and talk with the LC3 (one level below a member of parliament), to our brothers’ primary school, and then we went to see the mines and speak with miners. In the evening, our hilarious brother Isaac and his friend Finnacus (our evening guides) took us to see how passion fruit is grown and to a rice farm and a cotton farm. Day 2, Bernard took us on an incredibly long walk to see two more primary schools and then, after surviving a deluge of rain, our brother took us on a very dark walk to buy things at the market. Before an awesome Boda ride back to town on Saturday, we stopped in at the health clinic.
Picture of rice fields at dusk
All in all, I learned a lot about rural life. One alarming thing I learned about mining was that miners use mercury as a magnet to separate the gold from the rock (of course without protective gear) and yet no one had any sense that exposure to mercury could have any negative health effects of any kind. Yikes!
However, the most informative times happened when the research was over, when we would all cram into the outdoor kitchen hut at the end of the day to hang out and help prepare dinner. These times were my favorite, filled with stories, laughter, and sporadic dance parties. There was a really touching moment when my dad came home and started to explain the family. He stated “your mother and I have eight. With these two (Franco and Gertrude, the niece and nephew) we are ten. With this one (Leticia, the granddaughter) we are eleven. And with this one (Finnacus, Issac’s best friend) we are twelve.”
In this family, there was no distinction between actual kids, nieces, grandchildren, friends, and random Americans barging in for a few days. Everyone was family all the same. There were moments when, sitting in the kitchen, I would watch Gertrude stirring a pot over the fire with Leticia clinging onto her and I would imagine the camera angles for one of those commercials that get sponsors in children in Africa. The camera would zoom in and the celebrity voice over would say “Leticia’s mother died and she had to be taken in by her grandparents who struggle to take care of her in this little shack where they also have 8 children and a niece and nephew. What will Leticia’s future be if you don’t help?” Yet, if the camera zoomed back, they would see a family that loves each other, laughing, singing, sharing stories, and dancing: completely happy.
It really made me see that the black and white numerical view that some organizations portray of poverty is so oversimplified.
Don’t get me wrong, nominally, this family is poor. My mother was sick the whole time I was there but she can’t get adequate medical treatment at the one clinic with the one doctor that has to serve the 26,000 people of the Busitema sub-county. Gertrude stopped going to school in P5 because her mother didn’t have the money to send her (though her brother Franco still goes… ah gender inequalities), and spends her days cooking and taking care of the house. Yet, in many ways they are very rich, and that shouldn’t be forgotten. All in all, it was an amazing experience!
With bongas and love,
Alena
So the Eastern Excursion started off with a bang, literally. Last Friday night, the SIT school/office was broken into, and the safe where we keep our belongings was blown up and robbed. I got a rather alarming text message on Saturday morning explaining what had happened. I was sort of freaked out initially, thinking about how I would go about cancelling my credit cards and how I would replace my passport. However, walking to the internet café past people begging on the street and stooped over pans of boiling oil to sell cassava provides a healthy bit of perspective. It’s pretty hard to feel too bad for yourself in those circumstances.
Most importantly, no one was at the SIT office at the time so no one got hurt. Additionally, it turned out in the end that only the cash was stolen, and credit cards and passports were left untouched. I didn’t have too much cash in there and everyone is going to get reimbursed for what they lost. The running theory is that the night guard was the one who robbed the safe so we have switched security companies since.
In the end, considering what could have been stolen, the damage was fairly minor. However, it’s safe to say that most of us were feeling a little rattled as we left for the Eastern Excursion the next day.
The first day of the excursion, we drove to Mbale, a town nestled at the base of Mt. Elgon in Eastern Uganda. Also, the people who work on the farm at my house are all from Mbale, and they were all super excited about my going there. We got into Mbale in the afternoon and just hung out in the town in the evening.
The next day was absolutely amazing. First, we went to the Child Restoration Outreach in Mbale. The CRO works with street children to help resettle them in homes and help them reintegrate into society. “Street children,” perhaps apparently, refers to children who live without parents on the street. Sometimes, these children are orphaned or sometimes they are sent away from home to work on the streets to earn income for their families and just wind up staying in the city.
The CRO’s social workers go out into the streets and ask the children to come join their program, which includes a year of education to help street children catch up to students who have been in school, recreational programs, and eventual placement into schools and homes. More than anything, the CRO serves as a place where street children can connect with each other and adults who care about them, forming a new family in the city. When our van rolled into the CRO’s play area, the children were in class and the playground deserted. Suddenly, the bell rang and children came spilling out of every door, laughing and playing.
Initially, I felt a bit awkward, as I often do in situations that involve playing with children. I tend to hold back at first, not quite sure how to interject myself into the games and whether my interjection will be welcome. I started cautiously approaching whatever kids were around me. Then, one of the boys that I had been talking to, Gabriel, who was probably about 4, marched one of the other SIT students up to me and pointed at me, declaring “she’s my favorite,” beaming. I felt instantly comfortable and began to run around with the kids, starting a big volleyball game with the other students.
One of my favorite moments was when one of the girls was asking to serve but all of the boys wouldn’t let her. I told the boy with the ball that he should share, “gabana” in Luganda, and he begrudgingly handed over the ball to the quiet girl in her floral dress. She stood behind the line, thought for a moment, and then slammed an ace over the net. All of the boys just looked at her speechlessly as she smiled. Wooo gender empowerment!
Eventually, I wound up playing catch with this group of children, throwing bean bags to each other in a circle. They were all very impressed by my under the leg and behind the back throws. I was struck by how unbelievably polite these children were, children who had grown up on the streets under no rules but their own. Whenever a new person joined the circle, they would always include them and everyone obeyed their turns. I was really impressed and touched by how these kids took care of each other.
We were all so sad when we had to leave. As we piled into the van, kids rushed up for “bongas,” fist bumps, through the windows. The CRO is an amazing organization with some awesome kids. As an aside, whenever SIT visits an organization like this, we bring a donation for the organization that comes from our tuitions. It feels good to give something back, when we are getting so much from each organization. Another interesting thing is that SIT apparently helped the CRO write the curriculum for the year of education they provide in-house. Pretty cool.
After that, we drove to Kapchorwa, an agricultural town in the mountains. We immediately went on this amazing hike in the Sipi Falls. I will let pictures do it justice:
The view from my hotel. No big deal.
Ashley, Rosie, Me, Erin (eating sugar cane) and Greg
The next day, we did an activity to help us learn about different methodologies that we could use in our imminently approaching research. After learning about the methods, we were split into three groups and brought to three different organizations that work with farmers in three different villages. My group went to the Tangwen Kwigate Bee Keepers Association. Our group was charged with making a “crosswise matrix,” which is basically a chart that prioritizes problems facing a community in order of importance.
The process of getting the information from the villagers was really interesting. The six of us in my group sat in front and the villagers sat in the pews (we were taking refuge from the rain in a church) in front of us, and the two interpreters were the literal intermediaries between the two groups, going back and forth. As an aside, they don’t speak Luganda in this part of the world, they speak Samia, which was a bit silly not to be able to use the Ugandan language I know, but such is linguistic diversity I suppose.
It was very interesting to learn what the villagers perceived as their most important problems. There were some unsurprising ones, such as lack of medical resources, crop disease, and lack of electricity, but I was surprised that what the villagers unanimously identified as their most pressing problem was the prevalence of orphans due to HIV/AIDS. Not what I expected going in. It was also interesting to witness how the group made decisions. Though there might have been initial debate on which of two issues was more important, every single vote was unanimous.
The dynamic between the male and female participants was also interesting to watch, with the men, perhaps unsurprisingly, leading the discussion and the women only chiming in occasionally. There was one moment when we asked if there was a problem with education in the village. The men all initially said no and then the women interjected, stating that there definitely was a problem. The men were all “oh right… maybe the women are correct.” It was a cool insight into how villagers perceive their community and the differences between male and female perceptions. Ultimately, however, I felt that the need to achieve the methodology undermined our ability to learn as much as possible about the village. We spent so much time filling in the little boxes of the chart that we perhaps lost some of the big picture, like who each of the villagers are, what they do, what their motivation is, etc. So, a good lesson on how to best get information.
The next day, we went to our rural homestays. We were all divided up into groups of two (and one group of three) and placed with families in different villages in the Busia District. My partner was my friend Erin (who actually goes to DU, small world!) and we were put in the Namkombe village. Our family consists of one mother and a father (many of the families students were put with are polygamous, though ours was not) and their eight kids. However, only three of the children were still in the house (Isaac, Abraham, and Evelyn) as well as a niece and nephew whose mother has moved away (Franco and Gertrude) and a three year old granddaughter of one of the children who passed away (Leticia).
Mom, Abraham, Me, Dad, Girl from the village (?), Erin
Evelyn's friend, Mom, Erin, Abraham, two of Evelyn's friends
Gertrude (making the face she made in every picture), Leticia, and Evelyn
Our family lives on this little compound shown below and Erin and I lived in one of the huts for the three days we were there, sharing a twin bed- cozy! Our family, like virtually everyone in the village, works as farmers. People in the village grow a lot of maize, cassava, fruits of various kinds, eggplants, and interestingly cotton. Our dad spent most of his time leading a construction team that is building the Protestant church in town, though I think that is a volunteer position? Not too sure…
Erin and I lived in the one on the right.
Our days consisted of waking up at 6:30am and then going to the kitchen to help Gertrude and our mother with the dishes from the previous day. Then we would help cook breakfast which would be served roughly around 8am. Then, Bernard, our interpreter who was a young guy living in the village working as a mechanic, would come and eat with us and then take us around to see different places. We were all tasked with writing a research paper from what we learn during the week. Erin and I decided to research the activities of gold miners in the village, after being told that there are really no safety standards in place and that deaths from mine collapses are a fairly routine (once a month or so) occurrence.
However, it became clear that where we would be taken was totally subject to the will of what our father wanted us to see. So on the first day, we went to visit the sub-county office and talk with the LC3 (one level below a member of parliament), to our brothers’ primary school, and then we went to see the mines and speak with miners. In the evening, our hilarious brother Isaac and his friend Finnacus (our evening guides) took us to see how passion fruit is grown and to a rice farm and a cotton farm. Day 2, Bernard took us on an incredibly long walk to see two more primary schools and then, after surviving a deluge of rain, our brother took us on a very dark walk to buy things at the market. Before an awesome Boda ride back to town on Saturday, we stopped in at the health clinic.
Picture of rice fields at dusk
All in all, I learned a lot about rural life. One alarming thing I learned about mining was that miners use mercury as a magnet to separate the gold from the rock (of course without protective gear) and yet no one had any sense that exposure to mercury could have any negative health effects of any kind. Yikes!
However, the most informative times happened when the research was over, when we would all cram into the outdoor kitchen hut at the end of the day to hang out and help prepare dinner. These times were my favorite, filled with stories, laughter, and sporadic dance parties. There was a really touching moment when my dad came home and started to explain the family. He stated “your mother and I have eight. With these two (Franco and Gertrude, the niece and nephew) we are ten. With this one (Leticia, the granddaughter) we are eleven. And with this one (Finnacus, Issac’s best friend) we are twelve.”
In this family, there was no distinction between actual kids, nieces, grandchildren, friends, and random Americans barging in for a few days. Everyone was family all the same. There were moments when, sitting in the kitchen, I would watch Gertrude stirring a pot over the fire with Leticia clinging onto her and I would imagine the camera angles for one of those commercials that get sponsors in children in Africa. The camera would zoom in and the celebrity voice over would say “Leticia’s mother died and she had to be taken in by her grandparents who struggle to take care of her in this little shack where they also have 8 children and a niece and nephew. What will Leticia’s future be if you don’t help?” Yet, if the camera zoomed back, they would see a family that loves each other, laughing, singing, sharing stories, and dancing: completely happy.
It really made me see that the black and white numerical view that some organizations portray of poverty is so oversimplified.
Don’t get me wrong, nominally, this family is poor. My mother was sick the whole time I was there but she can’t get adequate medical treatment at the one clinic with the one doctor that has to serve the 26,000 people of the Busitema sub-county. Gertrude stopped going to school in P5 because her mother didn’t have the money to send her (though her brother Franco still goes… ah gender inequalities), and spends her days cooking and taking care of the house. Yet, in many ways they are very rich, and that shouldn’t be forgotten. All in all, it was an amazing experience!
With bongas and love,
Alena
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