My Name is Not Mzungu!

Been having a bit of difficulty adjusting to the city this week, although it has gotten better over the last few days. I think the excitement of being in a new city is over, and now I’m just frustrated with always being stared at and yelled at and grabbed on my walk to the taxi park. There’s also always so much traffic and so many people on the street and it’s tiring by the end of the day. I’m trying to accept that this is the way things are here and trying to embrace them instead of being frustrated, and it’s kind of helping so far. Cross my fingers!

One thing that has helped is that my mom here came home from Dubai on Tuesday! She brought me back a bunch of candy, and I shared with her the presents I brought for the family like the Obama buttons and the pineapple bookmark (did you know pineapple is the fruit of Virginia? Just so happens they eat a ton of pineapple here, too!) and I showed her some pictures of my family and such. It’s nice to have her home, as I feel like I have someone to mother me again which I was definitely missing out on while she was gone. She promised that we would make chipati pizza one night, so I think I will have a lot of fun with her learning how to cook and do other things here. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

The most exciting thing about this week has been going to visit a women’s group funded by Action Aid that provides services for extremely poor women and children who are HIV +. Most of their clients live in the slums of Kampala, and we had the chance to visit some of these people. Seeing the slums was like nothing I had expected – of course we’ve seen pictures of the slums in our classes, but I didn’t expect them to be smack dab in the middle of Kampala. They literally were right down a road in the center of the city. So much for this whole core-periphery framework. What was expected were the poor living conditions – each family had a one room house with a sheet of tin over top for a roof. There weren’t any sort of drainage systems, so when it rains the water just rises and brings many diseases to all of the people. The most striking thing about the slums was the number of children. I’d say over half the population of the slums were children – a frightening thought to think about what will happen when these children grow up and have 4-6 children themselves…there’s no way that a slum/country/environment can sustain that many people. I got a chance to play with some of the children, and I taught them how to “high five.” Even though these children live in such poor conditions they are still so much more joyous and free than many children in America. I’m now positive that I want to work with kids for my practicum.


I suppose this is my last post before we leave for the Western excursion. I know I will have many stories after that’s over, as I’ve heard so much about how great the government of Rwanda is, and how in Rwanda there are no potholes in the roads and people do not live in slums and the government does not ignore people who have suffered from its internal war. I guess I’ll make my own judgments and report back. See you in a week!

I haven't been able to upload any pictures here, but I've been slowly putting them on facebook, so check them out there!

In Uganda, There are Strips of Road in our Potholes

^Apparently that is a joke that they tell in Uganda, and I have to say that it’s true. They also say that “if you see a car swerving all of the road, you know that he is sober, but if you see him driving in a straight line he must be drunk because he will hit all of the potholes!”

Into the second week of classes! I have a feeling that this week will be one of the hardest weeks to get through, because now that we’ve already had a week of classes and I’m aware of how boring they are, there’s no longer any excitement to get me through the days. At least not until this weekend, when I have plans to bake with my little brothers on Saturday and we go to Rwanda on Sunday!

We did have the opportunity to do some cool trips last week instead of sitting in boring lectures. First we got to go to a malnutrition center for children at one of the local hospitals. It was by far the most interesting and eye opening thing that we’ve done so far. First we listened to a talk by one of the nutritionists about what the children go through upon being admitted to the center. All children admitted there are below 70% weight for height, meaning that they are seriously malnutritioned. After the talk, we walked through the wards. It was unbelievably heartbreaking. There were babies less than a year old and you could see every one of their ribs. Babies so malnutritioned that all they could do was lay there and cry. Seeing those children brought up so many questions for me – how can parents let their children get this way? Extreme poverty and not being educated about what to feed your child, I suppose. I also wonder what can be done…that I don’t really have an answer for. I’m considering doing my Practicum (research project) with a center like this one up in the North because it would be something different and I think I would learn a lot.

We also got to visit the tombs of the Buganda kingdom and Buganda Parliament. In Uganda there are like 2 ruling parties: the president and the current Buganda king. The president has more power, but the Buganda king also rules the Baganda people. It all seems very complicated and I can’t imagine how having 2 people in power would help a country. The tombs were very pretty though – they were inside a GIANT hut and they were surrounded by all of these spears that had been given to the king as a gift. It was mostly just exciting to get out of the classroom and do a little site seeing.

The other fun parts of my week were spent playing around with my brothers – playing cards, showing them my gymnasty skills, including doing back flips off of little cement ledges onto the grass and doing handstands in their basement. They want to learn things before I leave, so I guess my coaching skills will come in handy here too! I also taught my brothers how to play MASH, and they had so much fun with it! Of course my little analytical brain was thinking about all of the responses they had in comparison to what mine were – for example they wanted to only live to be in their 50s because after that you get to old and someone has to take care of you. Also, none of my brothers chose to live in Uganda – they all wanted to live in places like Spain or the UK or New York. I can see where this whole “brain drain” thing comes from, seeing as how my brothers will probably be those children that grow up to be doctors and lawyers and priests and move to America. We also had to alter the word shack to slum because they didn’t know what a shack was. They were cracking up over everyone’s futures, but it was still another one of those eye-opening experiences for me. Everything here is (except for when we sit in class, ugh.).

Not too much else to report on here. Hopefully something new and exciting will happen this week!

Maama and Ttata

Today is day 3 of staying with my host family. I have a host mother and father named Robin and George, and 6 brothers and sisters, although only 4 of them stay in the house right now. Their names are Roger, George, Martin and Mark. I spend most of my time with the boys and really only talk to my host dad in the mornings on the way to school. My host mom is SUPER friendly, but she left soon after I arrived for Dubai. I hope when she returns I’ll be able to spend more time with her.

A typical day for me so far includes waking up at 5:30 am to wake up my brothers who go to school, then going back to sleep for 20-30 minutes until my next alarm goes off. Then I get ready for school and eat breakfast. Mealtime is the most awkward part of the day for me because of the house helpers who serve it. I feel like I get special treatment, especially during breakfast and evening tea because I get served more food than my brothers. For example, for evening tea last night I got a rolex (Chipati, which is like Indian naan bread, with a fried egg on top and some lettuce and tomatoes, rolled into a long tube then cut into pieces like sushi…it definitely is delicious) while my brothers got popcorn. It’s uncomfortable for me to always feel like I am being served and getting better treatment, but I don’t know how to address it. I know that other students have the same issue with their familes, and I hope that maybe it will go away as they start to treat me less as a guest and more as a family member.

Oh right, but about my day. We leave for work/school/classes at 6:30 am. We drive 2 of the boys to school (the other 2 go to boarding school which starts next week) and then my host dad drives me to his shop. From there I have about a 15 minute walk through downtown Kampala. So far we have had different classes all day, learning Luganda in the morning at the resource center, then going to the University to listen to some guest lectures. Some of the professors are good – well one has been very funny, but the one we had yesterday afternoon was just obnoxious. At the end of every sentence he would say “the what?” and then finish the sentence. Even when we obviously didn’t know what he was going to say at the end of the sentence. For example, he would say “And the neo-classicalists believed in a what? A free market. And they believed that governments should what? Should not what? Should not interfere.” Listening to this for an hour and a half gave me a headache!

After all of my classes are done, I walk back to my dad’s shop (from the University it’s about a 30-40 minutes walk) and catch a taxi back home. It’s not such a long drive, but the traffic makes it take over an hour. Last night was my first night trying it by myself, and while I didn’t have any trouble finding the taxi to get on, I completely missed the stage (stop) and went all the way to the end of the line! It was getting so dark, and I had to ask the conductor when we passed the “pump stage.” Luckily he was very friendly and understood that I was a lost Mzungu, so he let me stay in the car and told me where to get off on the way back. After all of that, I still had to walk up the ENORMOUS hill in the dark to get to my family’s house – which I almost couldn’t find! It was a scary adventure, and my brothers made fun of me for getting lost, but now I think I will know what to do in the future.

When I get home the boys and I usually take evening tea (just like the Brits!), I shower, we play cards, we eat dinner, and then I’m in bed by 10 pm. I think this schedule may get somewhat monotonous day after day, but luckily we only have 3 weeks max at a time with this schedule. As it is, we only have 2 weeks until we go to Rwanda and Western Uganda, where I’m hoping we’ll at least get to sleep in til 7:30!

About my homestay family: I think that they are very wealthy, comparatively. For one, they own 2 automotive shops and 1 motel. They have 2 house helpers, a cook and a gate keeper at night. Their house is bigger than mine at home! It’s something that I feel kind of awkward about, as well. Their house is built among other smaller, slum-looking houses, which seems to be a theme among wealthy Ugandans. All of the boys want to be doctors or lawyers or priests or business men, and it seems that with the track that they are on in terms of education, it will not be very difficult. Being with this family does not really correspond with what I have learned about Ugandan culture, so I hope that maybe my rural experiences will show me a different side of Uganda.

I guess that’s all for now about my family, I’ll have more to write when my host mom comes home!

Weraba!

Mzungo in Kampala

Time for a real update, finally. Where to begin? It's only our 3rd day here, but I finally feel like I have a good feel for the city. I'm even using the little Luganda that I know to talk to other Ugandans. I can have the most basic conversation, but it's a start. I know how to say:

How are you - Oli Otya
I'm fine - Gyendi
Thank You - Weebale
Goodbye - Weraba
White Girl - Mzungo (kind of similar to "Gringa")

And that's pretty much it. It's a start! We start our classes tomorrow, which is really exciting because we'll finally start having a little bit of a routine. I have my first Luganda class at 9 am tomorrow, with only 6 other students, which is a little daunting, but I hear that I have the best teacher and that he is very funny, so I'm looking forward to that. Even though we start our full schedule of classes tomorrow, we still only have less than 2 weeks until we go on our Western excursion to Rwanda! I've also learned today that we get to go on a game tour on the way back from that, so we'll get to see lots of cool animals.

Tonight we're meeting our homestay families. I know so far that mine is a bussiness man and woman and that they have 6 children - 3 who are 6-13 and 3 who are 18+. 5 are boys and 1 is a girl! It will be very exciting to meet them and I hope they speak at least a little English so I'm not completely lost trying to communicate.

My camera has been locked up in the resource center ever since we got here, so I haven't been able to take any pictures here yet. We've also been advised that Ugandans don't like to have their pictures taken, especially without asking, so it may be awhile before I can get some good pictures of the city and everything else around here. Since I don't have pictures though, I thought I would just say a few things that I've learned about Uganda so far.

First of all, there are no stop lights or street signs pretty much anywhere, other than signs that say "give way" which aparently means yield. Sometimes there are cops out directing traffic, but most of the time the taxis and cars and boda-bodas (motorcyles that are like taxis that take people around the city) just drive wherever they feel like it. It makes being a pedestrian kind of scary, especially when taxis drive over the medians and boda-bodas drive on the sidewalks! Most of the time we try to follow other Ugandans because we figure they know best where they're going.

I've also discovered that while most places do have electricity and running water, it doesn't really mean too much, as the running water is usually only a trickle and the electricity goes on and off during the day due to the rolling blackouts. It's still better than nothing, however, and we've been spending most of our days outside, so I don't mind.

One kind of scary thing - almost every kind of security guard or policeman or authority figure of any kind carries an AK-47 around everywhere. They're posted all over the city, mostly in front of banks or fancy stores. It was kind of freaky to see the first time, but now I'm used to it. It's interesting that that's the kind of detterent that is used to prevent crime and theft, at least at important economic places.

Lastly, there are many people here who say "You are welcome" before you say thank you. It's an interesting way of doing things, but at least it lets you know when you're supposed to say thank you!

Other than that, I think that Uganda is a beautiful place - the trees are green, the roads are brown (although there are plenty of paved roads), and the people are so friendly and helpful, even with the language barrier. Especially when you start speaking to them in Luganda, it makes their faces light up. It's really neat to hear everyone's story and be able to say that we are students at the University here, rather than tourists. I can't wait to see more of the country!

Oh, and good news! We have permission to go to parts of the North to travel or to do our Practicums, and Gulu, Lira and Kitgum are three of the districts that we're allowed to visit. I'm SO excited, given that there are so many other restrictions on things that we can do. I'm starting to get ideas for my project - maybe something with kids and education in the IDP camps. In any case, I'm just so excited to get to go to the North.

I'll write again at the end of the week to talk about my classes and my family! I miss you all!

7 Minute Update

Oli Otya!

That's how are you in Luganda. I'm slowly starting to learn some key phrases, and that one has been most important so far.

Only 7 minutes left at this internet cafe, so I'll have to be quick!

We arrived in Uganda yesterday, and it's hard to even begin to sum up what is happening. Lots of orientation, and I love our Academic Directors. They're really funny, even when they make us sit there all day and talk about orientation. The program is going to be very strict, and all of our time is planned down to the minute. Especially once we start classes, we will be very busy. We have lots of assignments but also lots of fun excursions planned. Tomorrow we'll be moving in with our home stay families and getting a tour of Makerere (pronouced Makelele).

Hopefully I can give more updates soon on what life in Uganda is like...it's all so different but I'm starting to appreciate it more today after having slept for 14 hours last night! Alright times up, bye!

Here!

I made it!! I don't actually have time to write anything of substance because I only have 3 more minutes left at this internet cafe, but I wanted to let you know that I got here safe, and it's SO cool here and I can't wait to share pictures and stories and everything. Love and miss everyone!!

XOXO
K

Misconceptions

I've been thinking a lot about the different stereotypes and misconceptions that people have of Africa in general, and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular. The most common questions I've gotten have been: 1. Will you live in a mud hut? 2. Will you have electricity or running water? and 3. Are the people civilized?

Ridiculous questions, right?! At the same time, I really don't have a good response to them, seeing as how I really have no idea what conditions I actually will be living in. Obviously, the people are civilized, I'm pretty sure I won't be living in a mud hut (not in the middle of Kampala, anyway), and I'm fairly certain that the majority of places in the city have running water and a good amount of electricity. But I really won't know until I get there.

For these reasons, I'm really excited about finally getting to Uganda and being able to say exactly how it is there, at least from my perspective. At the same time, it pretty much JUST hit me that I'm leaving tomorrow night. After it feeling like the trip is years away, it's finally here, and I don't know how to process it! I guess I won't really until I actually arrive in London, and then Entebbe.

Until then, happy February! See you on the other side of the world!