finally figured it out

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Ok, so up until now, I hadn't been able to post anything here, but I've figured it out. I'm just going to post the updates I emailed earlier, in case anyone didn't see them. Then I'll do a new update next time I come into town. I'll try to make future posts more blog-worthy but just so we're all on the same page, here is an update on the last three weeks:

6/9
I hope everything is going well back home. Things are good here.
We've been staying at a guest house outside of Iganga town, doing
orientation. Everyone is really cool and nice, and I'm really enjoying
getting to know everyone. We've been spending the days learning about
what we are going to be doing, and learning some lusoga, and then in
the afternoon and evening we hang out and play cards and talk. Uganda
is really beautiful. It reminds me a lot of Dominican Republic except
that everything is in English, so it actually doesn't feel like I'm
very far from home. I'm sure that will change once we go into our
villages tomorrow and start working. Sorry I don't have a whole lot
to say. There hasn't really been anything too exciting to report.
The orientation is really interesting, the people are really cool, the
food is extremely boring - every meal is the same - rice, beans,
potatoes, matooke (mashed unsweet bananas), some type of meat that I
don't eat, half a tablespoon of either cabbage or spinach stuff, and a
cube of pineapple or slice of avocado. Surprisingly I've eaten less
fruit total since I've been here that I would eat in an average meal
at home. I'm hoping that will change too once we move to the village.
Supposedly its mango season, and there are so many mangos that people
force them on you and by the end you never want to see another mango.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this rumor is true.

6/13
We moved into our village last friday, and it is pretty close to what I was picturing. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in an interactive museum exhibit of rural african life. Our house is actually really nice. We have a dining room/living room with a table, a comfy couch and chairs, which is also James' bedroom. Our team leaders Vicki and Helen share a room in the front of the house, and Brooke, Hannah, and I share a room in the back of the house. We have beds and mosquito nets which are really nice -- its kind of like a box around the bed. We were really lucky to get a house that already had a latrine, tippy-tap, and garbage pit. Our cook, Sarah lives next door with her grandchildren. I think her brother owns the house. There are a bunch of chickens and a lot of goats. One of the goats had kids the other day, and we got to watch them being born. There are three of them, and another goat had two kids a few days before that. They're really cute and make the funniest little bleating sounds. Our house has some trees and bushes around it, and a nice grassy lawn.
Overall the village is pretty dry and red and dusty. There are tons of animals around -- chickens, goats, and cows. One of our neighbors had a baby cow born the other day. So cute. Yesterday, we all took boda boda's to visit our nearest neighbors, the other follow up team. They live about 5 minutes away by boda, but their house is near a swamp and its extremely lush and green. They have a lot of coffee plants growing around their house and a really nice clearing in front of the house with trees and benches.

Everyone is extremely friendly. I am getting the hang of the greeting:
-Ossibye otya nyabo/ssebo
-Bulungi nyabo/ ssebo. Ossibye otya.
-Bulungi. mmmmm
-mmmm. Weena webale.
-Kaale.
They all find it hilarious when the white girls do the greeting, but I think they appreciate our effort. This village had interns last year too, so I think they are somewhat used to us.
As expected, there are mobs of kids everywhere we go, yelling "Mzungu mzungu, how are you?" and "Mzungu bye." They also swarm outside of our house. I brought out the ball to play with on the first day, so now they stand at our door making a kicking motion and yelling "this is a ball." If I bring the ball out, we will instantly have about thirty kids at our house running around and screaming. I'm worried they're going to break the beach ball, so we're going to try to find a soccer ball and also a jump rope in town for them to play with.
We are going to start working this week, meeting with the village health teams in our three villages tomorrow, wed, and thurs. Friday we are visiting a couple of the village health centers. I'm excited to start working. There is a lot that we could do, so hopefully we will be busy. Its been nice, but kind of boring so far.


6/19
We made it back from Kampala yesterday evening. It was a fun trip,
but exhausting. Kampala is crowded and dirty and its hard to breathe.
Driving is especially intense, like san jose only much more so. I'm
glad I went, but I definitely have no desire to go back. We took a
taki (matatu) there on Friday afternoon -- about a two hour ride.
Most taxi rides are kind of unpleasant, because they pack as many
people as possible into the bus as possible, but luckily there are
traffic cops on the route to Kampala, so they have to follow the rules
and limit it to 14 passengers so it was pretty comfortable.
Bernadette's cousins met us in Kampala and took us back to her aunts
house. They were all super friendly and accomodating. We spent the
afternoon and evening hanging out with the cousins and talking. The
party started around 730 with food and dancing. Not a huge party, but
it was fun. I ate goat blood (its tradition) and fried grasshoppers.
Both were much better than you would expect. Yesterday we went to a
craft market downtown and picked up some souvenirs before heading
home.
Now, for an update on why I'm actually here... I appologize if this is
confusing or hard to follow. I have a lot that I want to say and I'm
not really sure how to say it so bear (bare?) with me.
Last week was our first week of work. We met with the Village Health
Teams for the three villages we're working in. These people were
elected last summer during the UVP internship, and they are supposed
to be working on improving the health of their communities throughout
the year, by doing things like distributing bed nets and condoms,
encouraging villagers to use good hygiene and sanitation, boil or
treat their water etc. Our role as a follow up team is to support the
VHTs and make sure that they can continue all these projects once UVP
leaves the community (each community gets interns for 3 years).
We talked to the VHTs about what the major health concerns are in
their communities, what they've been doing for the last year, and what
we want to work with them on while we're here. It sounds like they
haven't done much since the interns left last year, which is pretty
much what we expected. They said that Malaria is the biggest health
issue they're facing, along with diseases from unclean water, and that
people won't use the waterguard UVP promotes because it smells bad so
they try to encourage people to boil their water but most don't. They
said that they've been successful with promoting sanitation and
getting people to build tippy-taps (a pretty brilliantly designed
handwashing station made from sticks, string, and a plastic jerry can)
and pit latrines. They also said that promotion of family planning
has been successful, and that many of the women are using birth
control, but that most people still don't use condoms. They also said
that the villagers don't really listen to the VHTs, and that its hard
to mobilize people. The VHT's asked us for "motivation," aka money,
to help them do their job (which is unpaid) which we cannot provide.
We made a schedule for some of the activities we want to do this
summer, including following up with people who've bought bed nets and
doing a workshop for the VHT's to give them some skills for more
effective community leadership (don't really know what this will look
like yet, as the curriculum is still being developed).
We also visited the Health Centers used by the three communities.
They are all understaffed and over-crowded and struggle to provide the
services that people need. They frequently run out of drugs, which
the government distributes quarterly. They do seem to have a lot of
programs and services available, that are under-utilized by the
community. They offer immunizations for kids, birth control and
condoms, HIV and TB testing and treatment - all free of charge
(supposedly) - but the directors we spoke to said they have a hard
time getting people to come in when they are supposed to. Partly,
this is because it can be difficult and expensive to get to the health
center, which is something we can't really do anything about. Partly,
its because people don't know what services are available or dont
remember to go get them, which is something we definitely can, and
hopefully will, do something about.
All of the health centers said that malnutrition is a major issue they
see. I'm excited (not that people are malnourished) because I think
this is an area where we might be able to have a positive impact while
we're here. From what I've heard and seen, people have access to food
but don't have an understanding of nutrition or whats needed for a
balanced healthy diet. There's plenty of vegetables grown here, and
chickens, goats, and cows are everywhere, but people pretty much just
eat starches (and mangoes) and sell everything else. If there are eggs
or meat served, they are usually given to the adults. One of the
ugandan interns told me that the lusoga word for food actually only
describes starches. Matooke, sweet potatoes, cassava, and rice are
food. Everything else (protein, vegetables, anything with vitamins)
is a condiment. I think that we are going to make nutrition a focus
(I am obviously, since its my designated focus area) and try to have
several sensitizations and events around it, as well as including it
in all the other work we're doing.
Tomorrow, we're starting our sanitation follow up. We'll be going
house to house with members of the VHT to make sure that people have,
and are using, funcioning tippy-taps, plate stands, trash pits, and
latrines. We'll also be deworming all the kids we find, so that
should be helpful on the nutrition front.

6/25
This week we did a sanitation follow up in the
village where we live. We split into groups with members of the VHT
and went house to house asking to see peoples latrines, wash rooms,
tippy-taps, and trash pits. We were also deworming children as we
went. It would be kind of funny to try to do this in the US actually
- " Hi, you don't know me but can I look at your toilet and give your
child this drug. Thanks." But people here seemed ok with it,
although some of them hid from us because they thought we were with
the government. Apparently gov't health inspectors come through
occasionally and arrest people if their latrines aren't up to code.
We also had a family planning day at our house on Thursday, although
we weren't actually a part of it. The women are pretty shy about
coming, especially since they are often sneaking birth control behind
their husbands back, so I mostly hid in the house to give them
privacy. A couple people from our group were allowed to actually be
there, and I'm going to another one this week in a different village.
It was pretty interesting to hear about the 22 year old with 4 kids or
the 32 year old with 8 that showed up. Two of the women who came
turned out to be pregnant, which they were disappointed about and I
was really sad to hear. Its always unfortunate and upseting when
people don't want their babies and aren't going to be able to take
care of them, but the fact that these women were seeking birth control
or had been on bc and gotten pregnant anyway, makes it especially
hard. Its also probably detrimental to the village, since those women
will tell their friends that family planning doesn't work. Hopefully
the people running the family plannign were able to offer some
counseling and education to those women.
Today I went to Jinja with a bunch of the other interns. We went
"hiking" in a forest that was really beautiful, and saw a couple
monkeys and some really cool trees. I took lots of pictures to show
you. Most people stayed the night in Jinja but I came back with
Hannah because we are having a birthday party at our house tomorrow
for all the interns with birthdays over the summer so we wanted to get
ready (I also just prefer to sleep under my own mosquito net). We
asked everyone to bring books to the party for an exchange, so
hopefully I can get some new reading material.
I miss you all so much and can't wait to see you and hug you in just a
few more weeks.

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