Christmas in Uganda

My friend Lisa and I spent Christmas in her village (about 15 minutes away from my village). We had a great time cooking great food and “enjoying life” as the Ugandans say. Our menu included French toast, pancakes, creamy potato soap, grilled cheese, sesame noodles, paneer curry, and homemade chapatti. For dessert we (tried) to make no-bake oatmeal peanut butter cookies (from the Peace Corps cook book) and rum balls (a traditional family favorite of my mine). While neither of them turned out quite as expected and therefore had to be renamed as crumble 1 and crumble 2, they were delicious and a big hit with the Ugandan neighbors.

Lisa with our homemade paneer

Making Chapatti

We also enjoyed Christmas lunch with my supervisor, Maria, and her children at her home. As soon as we arrived, my supervisor asked us if we could make a cake. She had tried the day before to bake her first cake and it didn’t turn out great….or even good. So Lisa and I made a delicious cake using her fabulous gas oven/stove combo (oh how I wish I had one of those) to enjoy after our Christmas lunch.

Maria, me and Lisa making cake

Christmas Lunch

Maria cutting the cake

All the kids!

Christmas afternoon we went back to the village and enjoyed some traditional Busoga music and dance, where, of course, the two mzungus had to demonstrate our (not-so-good) Busoga dancing skills! Lisa has decided to take lessons J

Enjoying Christmas and the mzungus

Our Ugandan Christmas card picture - this backdrop was set up at the trading center

Enjoying local brew

Ugandan dance party!

Some other things I’ve discovered about Uganda in the past month or so:

It’s important to keep my door closed at all times. ALL TIMES. I found a chicken lounging on my neighbor’s bed on more than one occasion, and when I asked her about she simply said “he likes to lay his eggs there.”

I love the stars. With no electricity around and no buildings taller than one story, the stars create a blanket around my house every night: my very own planetarium.

I seem to discover new types of ants every day. Lisa and I discovered 2 new types over the Christmas weekend alone. That’s when I discovered that Peace Corps tried to prepare us for this via an entry in my Lusoga phrasebook:  

Stink ant?! I haven't seen that one yet...

You can get any piece of furniture you want made in my small town. You just give the carpenter the dimensions of what you want, pay a boda boda driver to deliver the finished product to your house, and in a few days you can enjoy your custom furnished house! I'll post the house pictures once it's fully outfitted. 

ttfn – ta ta for now!

TIA - This is Africa

Some things I’ve learned in Uganda:

In America, we often say “time is money,” but in Uganda, it’s more common to say “eh, there is always time!” I think I like the Ugandan philosophy better.

Carrying a 20L jerry can of water on your head is hard. Really hard. Carrying 10L is easier, but only slightly.

Children are a lot stronger than me, and therefore end up doing a whole lot more work than me. For example, if I don’t want to carry the 20L jerry can of water back from the bore hole (see above about it being really hard), a Ugandan woman will often yell “boy!” at the nearest child and commandeer his bicycle to take back our water. What if the child doesn’t have a bicycle? Well then, he will go fetch one.

Kerosene lamps can burn. Oww.

As the only white person in my town, I often get overcharged for everything. A Ugandan friend told me that I should say: “Eh seebo! You are putting me in an oversized shoe!” when this happens.

My current favorite Uganda song goes likes this: O baby, oli vitamin. Omusuja gunuma. Oli chloroquine. Which translates to: O baby, you are my vitamin. I am suffering from malaria. You are my chloroquine.

ttfn - ta ta for now! :) 

Officially a PCV!

So I know this update is super long overdue, but keeping a blog has become increasingly more difficult without electricity!

A lot has happened since I’ve last written, so I’ll try to summarize the past month or so as best I can.

Our last week in Wakiso concluded with a party thanking all of our homestay families for hosting us these past two months. As part of the festivities, each language group presented some form of entertainment that demonstrated what they had learned about Uganda during training and also shared something about America for the Ugandans present. Some of the Ugandan entertainment included traditional songs and dance. For the American component, groups performed things like the chicken dance, the YMCA dance, and taught the group how to make rice crispy treats. My language group tried (not so-successfully) to sing the Busoga anthem and then sang (more successfully) the 50 state song. In addition, I was asked about 5 minutes before the program started to lead the group in the national anthem, since somehow word got around that I enjoyed singing…sheesh

After leaving Wakiso, we all gathered at the Peace Corps office in Kampala to get the official tour and get some books from the library (yay!) Then we went to a hotel outside of the city where we spent our final week of training, which consisted mostly of workshops introducing us and our supervisors/counterparts to expectations for the next two years.

The week ended with the official swearing in ceremony at the ambassador’s home where we officially became Peace Corps Volunteers. The ceremony included fabulous speeches by two volunteers (both from my fabulous language group!), the country director, and the ambassador. I had also found out the previous day that traditionally, the volunteer who sings the national anthem for the homestay thank you also sings at the swearing in….not sure how I got roped into all that hehe.

All the new PCVs

The above mentioned fabulous Lusoga language group!

We were told that we were indeed a unique training class (something we already knew!) because all 45 of us made it through training and became volunteers – usually a few trainees go home during training for various reasons. I have high hopes of seeing the entire group still here at in service training in 3 months!

The next day, all of us new volunteers departed for our sites…well, except for me. There was a snag with the paperwork and housing with my organization and Peace Corps, so I instead traveled to another volunteer’s site. Thankfully, she is an AWESOME person and friend (from, of course, my awesome language group), so we had a fabulous week and half together, where I helped her settle into her new home.

Finally, I did arrive at my site only about a week and half late, and now I’m settling into my home for the next two years.

My new house!

So far, my house has a bed, a tall cooking table, and 4 chairs. Other than that, I’m attending some meetings with the district health office staff, such as planning meetings for upcoming mass polio immunization campaigns, observing the immunization and HIV clinics at the health center, getting to know the town, and adjusting to life without electricity (I go to bed very early and read lots of books…)

I’ll try and update again when I can.

ttfn – ta ta for now! 

So remember that flexibility thing….

Last week we all went to visit our future sites (with the exception of two of our trainees who had their site fall through at the last moment – actually about 12 hours before they were to leave), and here is the updated information about my future site:

• I will indeed be working at the District Health Office in Mayuge, but I am actually working for an organization called URC  (University Research Company). Here is a brief overview of URC (from their website):

University Research Co., LLC is a professional services firm dedicated to helping clients use scientific methods and research findings to improve program management and outcomes and achieve organizational and behavioral change. For over 40 years, URC has helped government and private sector clients design, operate, and evaluate programs that address health, social, and educational needs.

With its non-profit affiliate, the Center for Human Services, URC works in the United States and abroad on projects that span five core practice areas: Communications & Outreach, Education & Training, Health & Population, Quality Management, and Research & Evaluation. CHS and URC share the same capabilities, staff, and facilities and provide the flexibility to work under for-profit or non-profit contracting arrangements.

• I will be working specifically on the Health Care Improvement Project. Here is another internet blurb about HCI:

The USAID Health Care Improvement Project builds on URC’s technical leadership of USAID’s global efforts to improve health care quality since 1990 through the Quality Assurance Project (QAP) I, II, and III. The five-year project, which was awarded on September 24, 2007, supports the USAID Global Health Bureau and country missions to address significant challenges in raising the quality of health care in developing and middle income countries. The contract’s task order mechanism allows USAID country missions and other U.S. Government agencies to issue separate task orders within the HCI mandate. The first task order, effective September 28, 2007, covers three years and the transition of field and centrally funded work from QAP.

The goal of the HCI Project is to improve quality and outcomes of health care in developing countries by adapting and applying modern methods of quality improvement (QI). The project is guided by a vision that health care quality can be significantly improved by applying proven QI approaches to curative, preventive, and chronic care.

Priority areas for HCI are scaling up evidence-based interventions and improving outcomes in child health, maternal and newborn care, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and reproductive health. Other significant goals include expanding coverage with essential services; making services better meet the needs of underserved populations, especially women; improving efficiency and reducing the costs of poor quality; and improving health worker capacity, motivation, and retention. 

·      Document interventions implemented to improve the quality of health care, how quality is measured, and the impact of the interventions

·      Institutionalize modern quality improvement approaches as an integral part of health care in USAID-assisted countries

·      Expand the evidence base for the application of QI to human resources (HR) planning and management

·      Expand experience with the improvement collaborative approach in USAID-assisted countries

·      Expand experience with the spread collaborative approach in USAID-assisted countries

·      Expand the experience base for other specific QI approaches

·      Improve the cost-effectiveness of QI in USAID-assisted countries

·      Provide global technical leadership for QI in USAID-assisted countries

• More specifically, I will be working on a pilot project in my district on palliative care in health facilities, focusing on patients with HIV

• Lastly, I actually do not have electricity or a water tap; therefore, once I move to site, blog posts are likely to be even fewer and farther between – my apologies! However, I have an adorable blue roof on my house. Pictures (hopefully) to come relatively soon. 

In other news, since I recently celebrated my 23^rd birthday, I would like to reflect on the differences between this birthday and my previous one:

The day I turned 22:

• I was a graduate student in Baltimore
• I had 7 AMAZING roommates
• I woke up to find a wall of balloons barricading me into my room, followed by a breakfast of pancakes and cookies, courtesy of the above mentioned amazing roommates
• The amazing roommates also made me a delicious meal of fajitas followed by chocolate cake and gifts
• The festivities ended with an evening at the symphony with, you guessed it, the amazing roommates J

The day I turned 23:

• I was a Peace Corps Trainee in Uganda
• I was spending my first night alone in my soon-to-be home: Mayuge
• I attended a Village Health Team (VHT) training in one of the villages outside of town
• I greeted several groups of Ugandans in Lusoga, and all of them were extremely amused that I could do such a thing
• I ate lunch huddled in a hut during a monsoon-type rain
• On my way back to Wakiso, I treated myself to a delicious meal of Indian food followed by a coffee milkshake

In conclusion: my life has changed a bit in the past year J

This week marks our last week in Wakiso, and we’re all surprised that it has come so soon. For the past several weeks we’ve all been eagerly counting down the days until training ends, but as the end approaches, a lot of us are filled with some anxiety about the transition to come as well as sadness at leaving our 44 new muzungu friends. The next two years are finally about to begin: scary/exciting!!!

I’d like to leave you today with an amusing tidbit: one my favorite sites in my village is the ice cream man. Yes indeed, the ice cream man. He rides a boda boda (motorcycle) with a cooler strapped to the back, and he plays music (usually of the Christmas variety) while driving down the street. It makes me smile every time I see it. J

ttfn – ta ta for now!

Oh Happy Day

Today there was a collective rise in the morale of the training class – a general sense of excitement and joy. Today was the day we’ve been waiting for since we arrived in Uganda. Today we got our site announcements.

Now, some of you might be thinking “so what? – you’re already there.” Even though we’ve been in Uganda for about two months now, we’ve had pretty much no idea where we’ll be living or what work we’ll be doing for the next two years. Today we were finally able to start putting together a picture of what our new lives will look like.

Having said that, there’s still a LOT of information that’s unknown, and we’ve all been warned that placements often fall through at the last minute. The main requirement for Peace Corps service = flexibility.

Here’s what I know so far:

-       I’m working for the District Health Office in Mayuge (in the southeast of the country, close to Lake Victoria), whose goal is to improve delivery and access of health services to its population

-       The health office supports 183 facilities and 39 District Health Teams

-       I will live about 2 km from the nearest town and post office

-       I will have electricity and a water tap at my home

This may not seem like a lot of information, but I’m super excited to start getting information on what the next two years will look like, and I’m even more excited about the organization I’ll be working for. Next week we get to visit our future sites where we can meet our colleagues and get to see our new home. Yay J

In other news:

This week we had a talent show, which showcased the fabulous skills of the trainees and trainers. Some of the acts included a skit of a “Ugandan” Hidden Passions (a soap opera that many families here watch on a daily basis), an African fashion show (including my male language trainer modeling a lovely dress), and lots of dancing (both American and Ugandan). I think training should include a talent show at least once a week.

Today after site announcements we went on a field trip to Zika forest and the botanical gardens. We all had a nice relaxing afternoon enjoying the beautiful wildlife. A great ending to a great day.

Hopefully next time I post I’ll have more details about my site.

ttfn – ta ta for now J

Some random thoughts

Ode to Ugandan yogurt: Oh delicious dairy, thick, creamy and strawberry flavored. How I love drinking you out of your bag with a straw along my dusty walk home.

Eating Ugandan children: I didn’t believe the apparently popular folk tale that white people eat Ugandan children until a few days ago. As I walked to training, I was offered a terrified two year-old to eat, so that I would spare the older children accompanying her. No wonder the shouts of MUZUNGU are sometimes punctuated by screams of terror…

Mist: It’s beautiful, mysterious, and makes me stop and stare on my walk through the jungle to training.

Mosquito nets: Sometimes I feel like I’m in a dome of protection. Sometimes, it strangles me in my sleep. We have a love/hate relationship.

Mefloquine: Disappointment. I was hoping for the advertised vivid dreams/hallucinations/night terrors. Sadly, all it does is prevent me from getting malaria. Sigh. 

ttfn friends :)

More than half way there!

This blog is written in two installments, dated from when I wrote them and listed oldest to newest:

September 12, 2010

Today marks the end of week four of official training – one month down! This week has been pretty eventful, with some field trips during the training week, a Muslim/national holiday that the entire country (include the PC office in Kampala) had off except for us, and a fun filled weekend.

On Monday we drove for several hours east to a current volunteer’s site to visit village health teams (VHTs) and ask them questions about their work. VHTs are meant to be a first line of health care/referral for communities, especially those that are far from health centers. They provide education on hygiene, sanitation, HIV/AIDS, malaria prevention/distribution, and refer people to facilities when needed. VHTs are chosen by the communities, and are usually people who are well trusted and respected within the community.

We also got to visit a woman who raises poultry and grows mushrooms. She demonstrated how she creates her mushroom gardens in plastic bags, and then we got to see her room full of mushroom gardens – bags hanging all around with mushrooms growing out of the sides. Pretty cool! The ride back to town was also eventful since one of our trainers bought a live chicken to take home, and she carried in back in the bus in a plastic bag – his worried little head stuck out of the bag-handle the whole way back!

This week I also got to co-facilitate a medical session on STDs and HIV with two other trainees and a Peace Corps medical officer. Some of you might know that I volunteered with Peer Health Exchange (PHE) in college and taught workshops on this very topic to high school students in Boston. Proof that this is indeed a small world: one of my fellow trainees also did PHE and taught the very same workshop! So we got to pull out our old activities and use them with the PCT class. Great fun J

Saturday was a designated cooking day – within each of our language groups, we prepared a menu to cook at one of our homestays lunch for our class and the host family. We made a delicious three course meal: egg and cheese sandwiches, chapatti burritos with guacamole, salsa, ground beef, rice, and beans, and pineapple and brownies for dessert (one of my brilliant classmates rigged an oven out of two pots and some sand – I love my language group!) The meal turned out great, and I had an absolutely amazing time cooking with my Lusoga team – I really and truly could not have asked for a better group of people. Freeze frame moment: after our meal while waiting for the brownies to cook, we all laid out on a mat on the back porch, and digested our delicious meal while enjoying a gorgeous view of lush Uganda in the midst of the rainy season. Life just doesn’t get much better.

Sunday I went with a few other trainees to a local secondary school event to cheer on our friend’s host sister during their “field day.” She won the cross country race (go Stella!). and we stayed to watch some of the other events: sack racing, long jump, jaggling, matooke peeling (my favorite event! girls had to demonstrated peeling and wrapping matooke in the banana leaves for cooking, but boys only had to demonstrate fast and correct peeling), and bottle filling (a race where kids filled their mouths with water and ran across the field to spit the water into a bottle, repeating until the bottle is full). Since these events took until 1 pm, and there were 32 total listed on the schedule, we left to get lunch instead of watching all the events. However, I was sad to miss some of the events-to-come, such as the laughing and crying contests…not quite sure what we would have experienced with those! Afterwards we enjoyed a delicious meal of fried chicken and fries with a bag of strawberry yogurt for dessert. Mmmm mmmm good.

September 22, 2010

There’s a general feeling of restlessness among our training class: in just over a week, we’ll be given our site placements. We’ve been anxiously waiting for that day since training started (and honestly, since we applied to the Peace Corps), but the wait has become even harder since we’ve just returned from our immersion week. Week 5 of training was our “tech immersion.” We all got placed with current volunteers and spent 4 days at their site. Not only we were all excited for a vacation from the usual training schedule, but it was a great chance to cook our own food: no matooke!

I went with another trainee to visit a volunteer just east of Kampala. Sadly our site was not in my language region, but at least we were close to Wakiso, so we didn’t have to spend 10 hours on a bus like some of our training class. Part of the excitement of the journey came from the chance to spend some time on the way to and from the site in Kampala. We savored the opportunities: coffee, smoothies, burgers, fries (with real ketchup!), Indian food, etc. We even got to use a real flush toilet! Woohoo!

The community we visited was right on the shore of Lake Victoria, and we got a beautiful view by hiking up a hill and looking out over the village. We also got to feed some local monkeys along the lake. Some were shyer than others, but they were eager for our bananas!

In terms of cooking, we learned that the locals are much, much better at preparation than we are. One of the PCV’s secondary students helped us one evening, and she peeled and chopped sweet potatoes, tomato, cabbage, and pineapple faster than I could blink. I have to admit, after using the locally purchased knife the PCV had, I am glad that I brought a set of good kitchen knives with me! We also got to cook some luxury foods: sweet potato fries, peanut butter cookies, and pancakes. Mmmm.

Needless to say, after the freedom of immersion week, it was hard to come back to training. We’re also all starting to realize how little training we actually have left, and we’re all scrambling to finish our self-exploration projects and study for our language exams. We’ve been told that failing the exam is no big deal (you still swear-in as a volunteer and just retake the exam in 3 months), but we’re all a little worried about being that ONE TRAINEE that fails…

Some things that have become “typical” in my Ugandan life:

-       Sweating. All the time. Even at night. What I wouldn’t do for a screen on my window so I could get some fresh air while I sleep!

-       Rain. The rainy season is in full swing, and sudden downpours are commonplace. Last week I enjoyed a peaceful walk to training in the pouring rain: even though it happens all the time, the Ugandans all stay in doors when the rain comes, so I was met with strange looks on my walk from people looking out their windows, but few shouts of MUZUNGU!!!

-       That brings me to the “SEE YOU MUZUNGU!!” and “BYE MUZUNGU!!” shouts that every child yells, at least a dozen times, at the sight of a foreigner. Muzungu means traveler or white person, and I still haven’t figured out why seeing one inspires such excitement in Ugandan children. They scream, run toward us, and often grab our hands or hug us. It can be sweet, funny, or overwhelming depending on my mood.

-       Dust. There’s constantly a layer of it all over my body. It bothered me for a couple of days, but now I’ve accepted that I will be dusty for the next two years. Embrace the dust!

-       Christmas music. They start playing it even earlier than back home!

-       Pizas/Rolexes - similar delicious street foods. A piza (not to be confused with pizza, which has the much missed cheese) is a small chapatti with fried egg and onion on top and costs the equivalent of about a dime. A rolex is a large chapatti served burrito style with fried egg, onion, and tomato, and it’s a bit pricier: about 30 cents.

-       Cadbury chocolate. It’s readily available in town, and has sadly become part of my daily routine.

Well, I think that’s all to report at the moment. I’ll update again when I get a chance. ttfn – ta ta for now!