Early March Updates

Hello everyone!

So I think this post I’m going to try and fill everyone in on stories and anecdotes I haven’t been able to share with people yet.  Firstly, for the past two weeks we’ve been in Kampala doing our normal schedules with going to class and living with our homestay families. We split up into groups for electives and have been taking these more specific, focused classes at Makerere University with Ugandan students, which has been really neat. Makerere is one of the best schools in East Africa, and its pretty nice to be on a college campus again. This week however we’ve been doing a few more site visits to see our subjects firsthand and do some interviewing. We went to Jinja (the area with the source of the Nile) and a few other rural towns a few hours outside of Kampala and talked with people in the villages about their experiences with microfinance loans, self help groups, etc. It was really nice to be in the villages and get to talk these people, everyone was so nice!

 As for acclimating, I’m becoming slowly more and more assimilated and not feeling like such an outsider/white tourist. I’ve learned the importance of knowing the local language, as it drastically affects how some Ugandans treat us. I love being able to formally and informally greet people, ask how much things cost, tell the taxi where to stop, bargain, etc etc. From my experiences, as soon as you greet someone in Luganda they just immediately brighten up and become so welcoming and talkative, as opposed to assuming you’re a tourist. Also, when you ask how much the taxi fare is going to be in Luganda I’m WAY less likely to get ripped off because it shows I know what I’m doing. Multiple times when the “conductors” have jacked up the price I tell them exactly what I’m going to pay in Luganda and then they back off. One of my favorite things ever is when I say “Masawo”, meaning “up ahead”, for where I want the taxi to stop and everyone in the cab turns around and stares because they can’t believe that just came from the white girl. I’m also a lot less likely to get harassed when I respond to people yelling “mzungu” at me with “oli otya” (“how are you”) and they’re shocked expressions are priceless. I even got told today that my Luganda pronunciation is “very good” so I’m feeling good about that aspect of getting accustomed to Uganda.

An interesting part of being here is learning about the Buganda culture, which is the largest tribe in Uganda and makes up the majority of Kampala’s population. They are still very into their old traditions and culture, and it’s been really neat to experience that. For example, they still have a Buganda king who they personally respect and admire more than the President (which isn’t hard when your president is Museveni, but anyways…). Also, they are all divided up into clans, and each clan has a totem which is your symbol and identification. For example, my family is in the Mamba (snake) clan because that’s what my dad is. You aren’t allowed to eat your totem or your mother’s totem (no worries, I wouldn’t be eating snake anyway), and you also can’t intermarry within your clan because they’re all supposed to be your cousins/aunts/uncles. Also, there’s a huge importance put on formal greetings and respect to your elders within the culture, so I’m expected to greet people formally when I have the time for it. This includes:

1. how did you spend the night/how did you spend the day

2. how are the people at home

3. thank you for the work you’re doing

I even have my favorite chapatti stand lady who I greet every morning this way on my walk to school. Also, when you greet someone formally you’re supposed to kneel to the elders and not make eye contact. Luckily, I’m not expected to do that, but my homestay sisters kneel when they serve my parents dinner or when they return home from work. I’ve also seen my homestay mom kneel to women who are her elders, and at the graduation party I went to the graduating boy kneeled to his mom in appreciation. So I don’t find it sexist or demoralizing, but I think it’s a really cool cultural practice that I’m glad has lasted through globalization.

As for the food, it is a very interesting experience being submerged in that part of the culture. For those of you who assumed I’d lose a lot of weight coming to Africa, think again. The majority of the average Ugandan’s diet is like 90% carbs and its based on the basically the same 5 things over and over again. The main staples are white rice, matooke (mashed plantains…equivalent of eating sour lime-green thick mush), posho (porridge), irish potatoes, and beans. Then if we’re lucky in my homestay we’ll get vegetables (I’ve never craved vegetables so bad in my life) and these could include tomatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato, carrots, cabbage, avocado, greens, etc. My favorite meal we’ve had in my homestay was this past Sunday when we had rice, beef (we only have meat on Sundays), sweet potato, pumpkin, and greens. Most nights its usually matooke, rice and probably beans. Sounds appetizing right? The good news is there’s lots of mzungu food in Kampala so at school we normally get delicious things for lunch. For example, one of our favorite spots is La Fontaine by school where you can get amazing chicken burritos. Thank goodness for these places or I’d probably be really cranky all the time.

A few weeks ago we had to do a village mapping assignment and paper to make sure that we understood and grasped the layout/socio-economic distribution of the village we’re living in. Luckily, my mom set me up to do the assignment with our Local Council member, Richard. (Side note: Local Councils are the decentralized government system, which I like a lot more than the corrupt national government. There’s 5 levels and they’re in charge of their zones and listening/handling the problems of their village members.) He’s the lowest Local Council level and is in charge of Mpererwe zone where I’m living. We walked around the entire village for about two and a half hours one afternoon, and it was one of the coolest experiences ever. He was so insightful and informative and he took me through the slum, the richer parts, the agricultural parts, etc. It was really interesting to compare the income levels and issues within the 2 mile by 2 mile zone and it was a cool hands-on look at development issues. When the slum area floods (every rainy season), the sewage in the drainage system floods above the banks and into people’s homes, where Richard said even some children drown in it. One thing that’s amazed me while being here is that people would rather come from the village and live in an unsanitary, dangerous slum that floods seasonally just to be close to Kampala and its job opportunities. I don’t blame them, it’s just so hard to see so many people living like this all for the chance to be closer to employment opportunities, schools, and what not.

So for anyone who hasn’t heard of Invisible Children, it’s a well-accomplished, really important organization that has aimed to end the violence and now recover and seek justice in the Northern part of Uganda where an atrocious war waged for over two decades. The atrocities were led by Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and they are infamous for abducting child soldiers (more than 25,000) from rural areas and forcing them to work in the army, kill their own families, terrorize populations, and much more. The sad part is that while these things went on, the world was extremely ignorant on it because it was happening in such a small area of the world and Westerners commonly like to write off African wars as tribal conflicts that will just go away. I’m telling whoever reads this about it because I’m finally learning more about the conflict and feel it’s an important time to share because Invisible Children just released their new video about making Joseph Kony a household name so that he can finally be brought to justice. I highly encourage everyone to check out this video, because knowledge is power and informing ourselves on current events outside of America is really something that can change the world. Here’s the link: http://kony2012.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/ The International Criminal Court has indicted Kony and many of his top commanders, but he is still yet to be found and punished as he hides with his exiled remaining troops in the Congo. A lot of negative press and criticisms are coming out about the organization and its dispersal of this video, but no matter what complaints are brought up, the organization is still doing something AMAZING by having that many people over the entire world watch the video and get informed. People are entitled to their opinions, but I don’t know what there is to complain about that, because all of the recruited child soldiers who had their lives destroyed finally have a chance at having a voice. Yes, the war’s height was years ago, but Kony and his army are still living as free men while Northern Uganda still has a long way to go for full recovery as thousands of people went through more traumatic atrocities than we could ever wrap our head around. In general, it’s a human rights precedent and it could set the stage for holding people who commit mass human rights atrocities accountable for their actions, so that they have to fear justice and face the punishment.

On another note, we’ve been really lucky to meet and become good friends with a few of the guys that Invisible Children has found and put a spotlight on in order for them to share their stories. A guy in our program is really involved with Invisible Children at home, and one day in Kampala he ran into Jacob who’s in several of the documentaries and we’ve all been hanging out since. For those of you who watch the Kony video above, Jacob (now much older) is the young boy who cries in the first few minutes about losing his brother. Also, we’ve become fast friends with Tony, who one of the organization's documentaries is based on. When we go out in Kampala on the weekends we go out with them and they watch out for us all night long and make sure we get home safely, which has been a huge help. I even took my first boda-boda ride (the motorcyles used here for like 50% of the transportation) last night with Tony on it as well on the way home from the bar last night. It’s safer to take them at night because there’s no traffic, and it was suchhhhh a cool experience. (Sorry mom and dad!) The link for the documentary on Tony can be found here, if anyone’s interested. http://www.invisiblechildren.com/frontline-tony-documentary Also, they live part time in Gulu in Northern Uganda, and I think that’s where a lot of us are doing our practicums/internships at the end of the semester so it will be really awesome to have them to show us around. I can’t wait to live in a smaller city where I feel like I know the whole area on my own! But all in all, its been really cool to make real friendships with Ugandans, especially with such amazing people!

Yikes, sorry for such a long post! Sunday we leave for our Eastern Excursion where we get to do our rural homestays and I absolutely cannot wait. I’m corn-rowing my hair tomorrow because I’m not sure what the bathing situation will be, and my big sister volunteered to do it. So that will really different, but exciting. We’re getting paired off and get to do our own research projects for the week, so it should be a really great experience! Also, I get to take a picture with my Terrible Towel at the source of the Nile in Jinja :).

Until next time!

Jessamy