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