kyleejk

July 23-Aug 4 Well, it’s officially been 6 weeks in Mbarara. The time has flown by, it feels like just yesterday we were on our way back from Ruhija. Mbarara started to feel like home, but the unreliable water, electricity, and appliances was very frustrating. Since we’re in the dry season, the water and power outages have been even more frequent. We also had our kettle break with 5 days left in our house, which was a loss that hit us hard (RIP). Looking back on our 6 weeks here, I think it might’ve have been more difficult than our 3 weeks in Ruhija. Although in Ruhija we had no running water or power, we knew what to expect every day when we woke up. We knew we had to brush our teeth with water from ... read more

June 24th- July 7th Well, here we are, back in Mbarara. It feels nice to be back in the city, but it’s very different than the small communities we just came from. Everything is so loud and so busy, there are so many people. I miss the seclusion, the quiet and relaxing feel to Ruhija, however it is nice to have access to the stuff we need. We don’t have to drive 2 hours to go to a market and we don’t have to hike to the top of a mountain to charge our phones. Our group is split into the houses we were during our training week, there are 5 in my house and 5 in the other house. Our house is smaller, but we have yet to see a cockroach which is great. However, ... read more

May 26 – June 10th Sunday was our first full day in Mbarara, and we immediately dove into training by spending the day doing Cross Cultural Perspective training, and we got to meet some of the other international students and Ugandan students. This training was very interesting and we did lots of different activities that highlighted how different cultures perceive things in different ways. The one that stood out to me the most was the privilege walk. During this exercise, we all started with our backs against the wall, then the facilitators would ask the group a series of questions for example: “Did you have magazines growing up,” “did your family have a bicycle,” and “did you go to Kindergarten.” Each time you answered yes, you had to take a step forward. Many of the questions ... read more