A Practicum Update

Hello friends! I hope everyone had a great weekend and hope that all of you who are in finals are surviving reasonably.

I finished up my practicum with UNICEF on Friday, and moved out of the Muzungu house the next day. Those two "lasts" like all things towards the end, were bittersweet. But I don't want to talk about "emotions" now. I'll leave that for my next/last post.

Instead, I just want to tell you all a little big about what I did during those six weeks. In the end, my practicum went super well. Once I was able to really start working (around week 3... oh well) I was able to accomplish a lot. Ultimately, I did a feasibility study for a larger, country-wide resource using Gulu District as a prototype. This involved learning about how UNICEF collects and stores aid information, how to connect diffused sources of information to create a complete picture of UNICEF aid, and consulting with those far tech savvier than I (which is really everyone) on how to best display this data in a web-based resource.

In the end, I discovered that a lot is possible. For many projects, individual cash requisitions can be tracked as far as to the location (aka clinic or school) level. However, this level of specificity required a lot of effort on my part pouring through the paper records I mentioned in my previous post to get the most specific possible information. Fortunately, a lot can be automated. I discovered that it would be possible, through digital databases, to completely automate tracking UNICEF funding down to the district level, which would represent a huge improvement over the national-level information that is currently the standard.

However, that isn't really good enough. It isn't sufficiently meaningful to a citizen on the ground to know that their district is expected to receive a certain amount of funding, and it weakens the ability of aid organizations to coordinate activities to avoid duplication or cross-contamination if they only can tie activities to the district level.

I am fortunate that the staff at UNICEF recognize this as well. They recognize the value of transparency, and want to position themselves as leaders in that field in Uganda. That was what I really took away from my practicum. It was encouraging to see that UNICEF Uganda was very serious about moving forward with this project and improving the way in which they give aid, and more encouraging/bizarre, that I could sit in the same room with the Head of the Uganda country office, and he was willing to listen to my advice. Strange, but awesome. I am very excited to witness my work reach it's full potential in someone else's hands next year (they will be hiring someone to finish this project). As I said in the presentation I gave today, maybe this won't change anything, who knows, but I think it represents a small step in the right direction, which is very encouraging.

For now, I want to share the mock-ups I designed with one of the aforementioned tech-savvy UNICEF employees so you can get a little taste of what this web-site will become.

The sub-counties of Gulu District are shaded based on amount of aid received. The icons represent UNICEF project locations.

The size of the circles around a location represent the amount of funding going to that location. You can see that some locations receive a lot of funding while others receive none.

Shows where within Uganda a certain donor (e.g the world bank) is active.

This view shows all active projects at a certain location, making duplication or gaps in aid apparent.

You have no idea

Happy Friday everyone! This must be a record blog post frequency for me! It's amazing how much more appealing writing blog posts becomes when the alternative is writing a forty page paper. But that is not to make you feel like sloppy-seconds my dear blog readers, you are always number one in my heart!

So, I don't like to play the Africa card. You know the whole "oh you think that ____ is bad, well in Africa ______." Because that is both disingenuous and super super annoying.

However.

There is one exception. One first world trifle that will now always make me chuckle. And that is when my friends in first world countries complain about the traffic. Oh, you think your traffic is bad?? You have NO IDEA.

My first day in Uganda, we arrived at the Kampala airport at 7am. After the roughly hour drive from Entebbe to Kampala, we had barely set our bags down when Terry, who had already been in town a couple of days, proposed he take us to this "great bar overlooking the city."

"Woooo welcome to study abroad!!!" I thought. So a gang of us set out to follow Terry to the bar. Little did we unsuspecting bazungu know, but he was taking us to Old Park. After winding my way through what can only be termed madness, knocking down a vendor's stand in the process and feeling mortified, we finally sat down at the bar. "What have I gotten myself into?!?!?!" I thought. "How am I ever going to learn to navigate this??"

Scenes from Old Park:

Right before our Ethiopian cooking lesson, Hannah and I stopped at the same bar. As we sat overlooking Old Park, the inevitable reflections began. We talked about how we felt we had come so far in Kampala. How the things that once felt unconquerable now felt commonplace, easy. I'm not sure exactly when that moment happens when you stop feeling like a tourist, and start feeling like a resident, but as I looked at Old Park with total comfort, I was certain that it had happened. While I once wondered how I would survive Kampala, I now wonder how I am ever going to be able to leave.

So, go ahead and complain about your traffic. With your "lanes" and "traffic lights" and "cars that go the right way in traffic" and "no livestock on public transportation." That's fine. But until you've conquered Old Park, you have no idea.

Bucket list items one, two, and three

Hello Mikwano!! I hope all is well!! And happy Rabbit Rabbit to those of you who do that! With the coming of December, it is becoming ever clearer that my time in Uganda is coming to an end, a fact which never ceases to blow my mind!

A few weeks ago, Ali, Hannah and I sat down and made a bucket list of things we wanted to do before we leave Uganda. This blog is about three of the things on that list.

Bucket list item number 1: Learn how to cook Ugandan food.

So I miss a lot of American food. In fact I have come to realize that I have professed my longing for cheese a bit too much. So, sorry for that. The love of a girl and pasturized dairy products is not to be messed with.

However, I am going to miss a lot of Ugandan food too, so I employed my friend Erin, and our Kenyan friends Brian and Henry to come over and teach me how to cook omuceere (rice), emboga (cabbage), ebijanjalo (beans), and chapati. So now I am an expert Ugandan chef, and I have decided that I am having a study abroad potluck when I get home, so if you want to try Ugandan food you are invited. And if you are currently studying abroad, you must come and cook food from where you're studying. That is the deal.

Bucket list item number 2: Learn how to cook Ethiopian food.

Who knew so many of my bucket list items would have to do with food?? My friends and I have taken to frequenting this Ethiopian restaurant.... though I fear that restaurant is not quite the right term, as this place is the epitome of hole in the wall. You wind your way through the crowded streets near Old Park (the subject of my next post), enter a guest house through an alleyway, climb up several flights of stairs, walk into a small kitchen and call "hello madam?" Then, a lovely Ethiopian woman will come into the kitchen, take your order, and will eventually serve you in her living room.

Ali, Alena, Hannah, and Madam on the balcony outside her house/restaurant

View of the guest house courtyard. Many other Ethiopians live here.

The food is delicious! And super cheap for bounteous quantities of food. Though there is a strict leave nothing on your plate rule, which has resulted in Injera snuck out in purses on many occasions.

One time we were there, Madam offered to teach us how to cook the food, so last Sunday, Hannah, Ali, and I went for a lesson. We learned how to make the traditional Ethiopian salad, and the vegetarian dish shown below:

Madam measuring out the all important Ethiopian spices

The aforementioned dish, bubbling away on the stove.

And now for something completely different, bucket list item 3: white water rafting on the Nile

Yes friends, after 20 plus years of life as a nerd, I have become a bad ass. I know. You're shocked. But it's true, and I have the bruises and sun burns to prove it.

The day after thanksgiving, ten of the SIT crew took to the Nile river for a day of Class 5 rapids. It was so much fun: totally crazy and terrifying, but I always felt safe and just had an awesome time. I thought I was so legitimate having rafted a couple times in Colorado.... but lets just say that the class 3s and 4s on the Colorado river are nothing compared to the class 5s on the Nile. Here's a little taste of what we did.

After a long day of rafting, we got to spend the night at the lodge of the rafting company we used, which could not be more beautiful. I will let the pictures do it justice:

The sunset view from our lodge... yeah, this doesn't suck.



Drinking Nile... on the Nile!!

I have a couple more items on my bucket list, and I will be sure to tell you about them as I check them off. I look forward to completing them and adding to the unbelievably long list of incredible memories I will take with me from Uganda.

Also, tonight is the first night of Chanukah!! I made some latkes, which of course didn't taste nearly as good as Mom's, but a gal can try, right? I hope those of you who celebrate had a wonderful first night!!