Need is a 4 Letter Word

(Grace and Sandra)

(Charles' feet)

(this is their school office and in the background is there classes)

In an effort to defy my friend, who questioned if I was actually in Africa due to the absence of myself in any of the pictures I post, I am posting this picture. Here is a picture of me in the field in a very typical bursar’s office with one of our orphans kneeling down to me. But look closely at the picture, can you see them? They are there- creases on my face. There are creases from extended smiling sprouting from simple joy. There are creases from unfixable sorrow. There are creases of helpless frustration. There are creases of settled content. It is not unusual here for me to get ready in the dark with little water, but as I look in the mirror each day some how the slightly weathered face glowing from the heat, lined with dirt from the road, a bit exhausted from work, looks pleased and alive. Each wrinkle I have acquired on my face reflects my experience here. They show the dramatic swinging of emotions that are felt as I delve into the work here. It feels like love.

This week we began handing out school supplies and paying fees for our orphan and vulnerable children program (OVC). We have identified 200 children in 16 sub-counties covering 30 km of gnarly dirt roads and 150 schools. We start early and end at dark. Like most things in Uganda, the task in theory is simple- take jerry cans to tap, fill up and bring home; work hard in school, go to college; meet someone, get married; buy ingredients, make dinner; drive around to each school, pay fees and handout supplies. But like most things in Uganda, it never ends up being easy- life is simple but emotions and unaccounted factors are complicated.

At one school, we met with this orphan named Charles, we began going through the process of fees and distribution. Then upon closer inspection we noticed his feet were slowly being eaten away by jiggers, and his limbs were skinny and dry as the parasites have began feeding on his blood and water. The image alone is sad, but you know what makes this devastating and frustrating is the fact that his caretaker is a smartly dressed man who is in fine health. So this does not mean his household is unable to take care of themselves, this means that this boy is purposefully being neglected.

On the other side, yesterday we broke our record by meeting with 28 students and finishing almost 1 whole sub-county. At one school we met a girl who was pleading to attend, but we actually were delegated to support her sister. After talking to her though, we found out that her sister, decided to get married instead (at the age of 15) and is no longer going to school. We had the money and the supplies so we decided at that moment to sponsor her instead, not only for her education but also in hopes of protecting her from early marriage as well. The girl, smart and brave, left home to get her things with her school fees paid and excited to learn. It was a beautiful accident.

Ever since you are little you are told to eat all your food because there are children in Africa starving. I don’t mean to belittle or deny this fact, it is true. But you know, African children are starving for education. I don’t want to make this into “For a dollar a day. . . “ commercial because that is not the image of Africa I feel. For all the bad here, there is equally good. For all the lazy days, there are heavy days of work. The progress is in the experience, and hopefully the reduction of a little less bad.

Gangster's Paradise

(tea fields and teaching this little girl how to use a camera)
(our campsite)

(Don't you hate when you can't fit it all on the page)

I did two things that the typical Ugandans does not do- go camping and celebrate Valentine’s Day. As part of my internship, the other interns and I get to go on a mid-term retreat. For our retreat, FSD decided to take us to Ssezibwa Falls which is about 11/2 from Jinja. Apparently, Ugandans do not like to hike or camp, and in an effort to please the mzungus the office staff agreed to do both. We arrived late at night to a campfire and kerosene lamps lighting an open, covered platform where our dinner awaited us, with the assuring sound of the falls in the background. (Bear with me, when I tell you it really did remind me of Survivor.) When I awoke in the morning I was pleasantly surprised to see that falls were literally 50 yards from our campsite. They aren’t gigantic but are beautiful and mesmerizing. As the sun rose I ran along the back roads behind the campsite. I am pretty sure I frightened some poor villagers as they sleepily began their day with a random white girl running down the path by their house. After a cold, jerry can shower, we spent the day hiking around with a guide, sleeping on the cool cement of the covered bar and eating African bbq.

The next day being Valentine’s Day I decided to celebrate with my host family. Ever since I was a little girl and received a bag full of candy on the porch from my Aunt Peggy and a new pink and red outfit from my mom every year, I have loved Valentine’s Day. It is easy to overhype and reject this unknowing little holiday. But sometimes showing you care needs a little encouragement. So I decided, despite my family’s lack of interest in celebrating that I would do at least something small. So I made each one of them a ghetto card out of paper and crayons and then made sugar cookies with pink frosting. I ended up with enough left over that I could deliver a few to friends in the neighbourhood and take some to my co-workers. There was no lacy underwear or declarations of love by a secret lover for the holiday weekend, but Coleman tents and delivering cheesy cards seems like a pretty good way to celebrate any holiday.

Right of Way

You know you are in Africa when. . .

(apparently this cow has picked this unfinished house to live in, ironically, this house is nicer than the one most people in the village live in)

Sunday I attended a funeral service with my host brother for my host mother’s grandmother who passed away. I was told it was not a formal event and from the outside appearance of the location I agreed, until we entered the tent and found everyone in gulus (traditional Ugandan dress) and church clothes. Luckily we were able to sneak in the back row of plastic chairs. It was turning out to be a typical Catholic service until a heard of cows began crossing through the aisles and out the other end followed by a lady in a form fitting, strapless black gown and high heels shooing them along, which was then followed by a pack of screaming children running after a gathering of hens who were making their way through the other side. Everyone sat calmly through the whole escapade. Things continued on as normal until people began giving speeches. One woman got up and thanked the muzungo (me) for coming and everyone turned in their plastic chairs to look at the back of the room where I was sitting in my discrete spot and began clapping and taking pictures. I did my best to graciously accept the attention, noting to always were a skirt when attending a public event and not take the isle seat.

10 km Banana Bread

(Annette cooking dinner at the house on a standard characoal stove)
One of my favourite people in Uganda is Annette. Annette is the daughter of my host mother and the impromptu head of the household. Annette is quick with facial expressions, has no shortage of ridiculous stories, laughs from her belly, widens her eyes with excitement and tells me things as honest as they are. She is more beautiful with a shaven head, which accounts to well-set facial features and makes me incredibly envious. Her fashion sense is impeccable and her purse collection makes her cement room come alive. Even her casual houseware is brightly colored and tailored. She is the headmaster of her own school and runs her life accordingly. I love my biological sister and would never replace her, but if I could adopt another sister is just might be Annette. When I found out it was Annette’s birthday I naturally started planning a birthday treat. Though Annette and I disagree on spiciness we both have a soft spot for sweets. The first time I met Annette she offered me cake; when I gave her chocolates from America she talked about it for a week. So when I say birthday treat, I mean birthday TREAT.

I instantly became inclined to make banana bread with lots of chocolate frosting. The only problem being the fact that there is no oven in my entire village or anywhere in the surrounding 10km area. I knew I could use the oven in the FSD office in Jinja but that would require me leaving after work in rush hour, taking the taxi 10km, baking it in the office and then coming home in the dark before dinner. I was explaining this to a friend online and he said, “Well your banana bread is delicious, so I imagine banana bread that requires you having to go 10km tastes even better.” I decided to test his theory.

After some persuasion I was able to recruit my host brother as my co-pilot. So Thursday after work I rushed to the post office, waited 20 minutes for Steven who had a million other things to do especially considering the electricity and water in the entire village had gone out again, waited 15 minutes for the bus, then decided to take boda bodas to the main road, then waited 15 minutes for the taxi to fill up and leave, then manoeuvred through town to buy the remaining ingredients for the bread, then finally walking to the office. The office, luckily, was quiet and the baking went very smooth thanks to Steven’s mixing skills. Finally the smell of two pans of warm banana bread filled the room. Steven and I wrapped it up, leaving a little bit for the office staff and then headed home. At home, we told Annette of the surprise, so she decided to buy sodas for all the kids (very rare treat) and everyone all sat around to the table to eat and celebrate (another rare occurrence, usually the children eat in the kitchen or on the floor). Annette’s anticipation for the treat was gratifying but it was little Daniella who blessed the cake in the dinner prayer, that made me think all the hassle might be worth it. After dinner, I handed out birthday gifts, following Aunt Peggy’s tradition, everyone got an "unbirthday gift" in the form of a bracelet special for each person. As I handed each person their bracelet, everyone clapped. Such appreciation for little round items. Then it was time. I unveiled the banana bread and prepared to frost. As I pulled out the frosting the kids began to ask me what it was. At that point, I experienced cultural shock. Give me squirters instead of toilet paper, fried terminates as treats, overstuffed cattle cars as taxis and marriage proposals at bus stops and I will be fine. But an ignorance of frosting is simply shocking and disheartening. As a frosting connoisseur I was happy to introduce them to this delight of fluffy, spreadable, delicious cream. I added an extra layer of chocolate, cut the cake into pieces and put it on squares of tin foil to be passed around. In Uganda, if the food is good you do not talk while you eat, so as silence descended and all that was heard was the crinkling of foil, I realized that travelling 10km really does make banana bread taste better.

Role Call

(shoe repair)
(the market in my village)

(typical construction in Kampala)

(backyard, route to work)

I realized in talking with my dad the other night that either he is not reading my blog or I have not been very descriptive about my everyday living environment. So I thought I would just give a quick account of my so called life.
I begin waking up around 5:45 with the prayer call broadcasted from the Muslim mosque three plots (houses or grouping of huts) down from my house. Then I completely awoken by the sounds of the kids in my family opening up the metal gate and doors and bringing in the jerry cans of water from the tap about ¼ a mile from our house.
At 6:00am I am up and out of my house to go running. It is still fairly dark but the eyes are quick to adjust and the moon is usually enough. It also allows for an amazing sunrise view. I walk down an eroded dirt road past a field, row shacks, cows, trash dumpsters, and others going to the tap. My runs take me through the sugar cane fields, around the factory, down the main road, up the hill, anywhere I feel like. On the way back I occasional will help someone coming back from the tap with the jerry can.
I come home to the house busy with cooking and people getting ready for school.
My house has no running water, but several large wash basins in each room. I shower in the bathtub using my wash basin and cut out jerry can as a pourer. Sometimes I am given a quart of hot water to use as well.
Our house does have electricity; most of the village does not. But the power goes out probably 3 days a week. We do have solar power that we use as a backup that works fairly well.
We have no house phone and the 10” TV works sometimes to show an Indian station.
As I explain in the other posts, we don’t have an oven, standard stove, washing machine or any modern appliance. This is very common in most villages.
My clothes are washed by hand every weekend, I thought this wouldn’t be necessary, I don’t wash my clothes that much in US but with all the dirt and heat and rain it really is pertinent. They string all the clothes in the courtyard behind our house.
For work, I walk the 1 ½ mile through the main market part of the village and then by the center roundabout that connects the village to the main road, factory and Indian property, and then along the sidewalk to the factory and up around. The walk is routine but never boring, there are people everywhere, babies, factory workers, boda drivers, school kids, market workers, cows, goats, and plenty of my neighbors to greet.
At night, any number of family members will usually play cards, sit around and talk, prepare food, occasionally watch a movie with my tiny laptop, read, walk around, play with kids, nap.
We eat dinner about 9-10pm which is typical for Uganda. After which I usually go to bed. Usually the entire village is quiet about 11pm, but up till then it is full of life, in the house and outside.
Meals are kind of interesting. Usually one or two people will eat with me at the table, the younger kids usually sit in the floor in the dish room or family room or outside. No one really eats all at the same time unless it is a special occasion.
On Sunday evenings we go to the local “hotel” where they project the European premiere soccer league games on the side of a large wall. (European soccer is HUGE here, to the point where they watched a league game over the African Cup championship game) Everyone sits around in the dark on coke crates or plastic chairs and cheers for their favorite team. Mine being Manchester United.
Basically, wherever I go there are people, kids and animals. Privacy is nonexistent. My bedroom is suppose to be my own space, but my window faces the back courtyard of the house where everyone hangs out so I am always fully aware of what is going on. If my light is on, then I am free game. Even while I am bathing people are always yelling things to me through the window or door. For someone who comes from a big family I find a level of comfort in it all. I think when it comes time I am really going to miss all the little quirks that have become my African life.

Sweet Gig

(Orphan caretakers in the field)

(on the way to work)

(the sugar cane fields next to my house)

(sugar from the factory)
So I realized besides my previous post I haven’t really explained what I am actual working on here in Uganda. So what am I doing? Hunting lions and fair-trade fur exporting. . . .
Okay, really, I am doing an internship with a local nonprofit called KORD, Kakira Outgrowers Rural Development. KORD is a unique partnership between the Kakira Sugar Works factory and the farmers, basically each entity gives a certain amount of money to the organization based on how many tons of sugar cane are brought to the factory. In exchange, KORD focuses on improving the life of the outgrowers (farmers and families) within a 30km radius of the factory through various projects. Most of the 30km catchment area is only accessible by rural, damaged dirt roads and contains 16 sub-counties with numerous vulnerable children, farmers and households who are dependent on the crops and live in poverty. KORD works on the following projects: orphans and vulnerable children projects, malaria prevention, construction of schools, rebuilding of rural roads, solid waste management in the villages, diary improvement through create of feed, construction of a fuel station, a farmer’s loan project, income generating activities workshops, school scholarship fund for orphans, water purification and access and installation of improved cookstoves.

The main project in which I will be using my seed grant and focusing on is the installation of improved cookstoves. Mostly all of the population in the peri-urban and rural areas of Uganda still use wood burning or charcoal stoves to do all of their cooking. As you can imagine there are numerous consequences by using these type of natural resources and form of cooking on a daily basis, such as destruction of forests for firewood, dramatically poor health from smoke, increased pollution, inefficient burning and cooking times, burns and fires from stove accidents, etc. There is currently a large push in India and Africa to replace the stoves with more efficient ones and the possibility of biogas. As a result, KORD has received a nice grant from AFREPREN to facilitate a pilot project of installing 8 improved institutional cook stoves in 6 schools in the outgrowers’ catchment area where vulnerable/orphans attend. I will be facilitating this project and grant. (more details to come!) I will also be working on assisting with the orphans and vulnerable children projects which include handing out schools supplies, paying school fees, facilitating a sports and psycho-social support event, and helping caretakers with income generating activities. In addition to writing grants for more projects, helping improve the website, recruit volunteers and develop a fundraising program.

The office is nice due to its partnership with the factory and they have a nice consistent source of funding and several successful grants, but there are only two main staff and an infinite amount of need from the outgrowers. There is lots of work to be done and I am busily working between the office and the field. I will give updates as they come.

Jerry Can

I can safely say that at least half of my immediate family has the website gizmodo on their internet browers’s “favorites” list. If they continue to have articles with life saving, ingenious ideas like this,
http://gizmodo.com/5129971/solvatten-solar-jerrycan-purifies-water-using-nothing-but-sunshine
then maybe I will bookmark it too.

The organization I am working with has created an agreement with the organization Solvatten to distribute a trial sample in the surrounding villages. I am going to help them find and write a grant so we can have money to purchase them. I hope to see some of those yellow cans, replaced by black cans with a sunburst on the side.

Sharp End of the Stick

(coloring with some of the kids, Patience is on the left)

The amount of kids who flow in out of the house I live in is impossible to count. Just when you think you got a firm grasp of who actually sleeps there, another one joins the bunch and one disappears. Neighborhood kids are particularly habitual about coming over to stare at me. One day as I was sitting on the couch a little girl, Patience, came up and sat right next to me. Continuing to read, no longer was an option. So I pulled out some paper and we began to color. She was attempting to use a pencil that was determined to remain unusable. I remember I had a pack of brightly colored unused pencils sitting in my bag that my coworkers so lovingly gave to me. I went into my room and grabbed a nice purple one and brought it out. However, Patience is quicker than me, while I was gone she had run home and returned a few minutes later with a brand new, plastic razor blade wrapped in paper and sent from Japan. Seeing my new pencil, she opened up the package and handed the razor to me. I had to admit, I had no idea how to use it. So she grabbed it, sharpened her own pencil and went back to drawing. I picked up the sharpener, and mimicking the 7 year old’s actions, sharpened my very own pencil by hand for the first time. Satisfied with my slow handy work, I carved a “P” on the side of the pencil and gave it to Patience for teaching me how to sharpen a pencil at the age of 25.

Gossip Around the Water Cooler

I know some of you do not read the Book of Mormon. And these verses may not be the typical introduction, but they do embody what is valuable about the BOM, that in the simplest of lines you find meaning you did not expect.

Alma 8:14-32, particularly verse 27

You can find the verses here, but I will summarize. In this chapter, Alma is on his way back to the city to once again preach the word of God, when he meets Amulek. Faithful Amulek, instantly knew that he was the man of God that he is suppose to nourish him. So he did just that. For several days, these two great men tarried together in the home of Amulek before setting off to the city to do the Lord’s work. There is no detail about what went on in those few days. But in the progress to do the most important task of sharing the gospel these two men took a few days to linger. Without explanation, I am sure there were many significant reasons why.
I am always in a hurry. My body and body functions on ultimate capacity. I start my day early, make lists and go from place to place. Like at home, each morning, I wake up very early and run. Each day I run by several watering holes where all types of people in the village come with colored jerry cans to get water for their every day needs. As I run by they stare and as I run back I see individuals straining to carry them the distance to their home. The other day, I saw a older skinny man in black rain boots carry two jugs, one in each hand, 30 feet, stop. Then, go back 30ft. and pick up one jug and carry it the 30ft to meet the other two. Then pick up the other two and repeat the process. I stopped and stood there, contemplating my limited time and my desire to finish the last ½ mile to my house. For once I was the one staring. Then I put my ipod in its plastic bag and walked over to the man and picked up the one jerry can. I then followed him up the dirt hill, down the ditch, along the road, through the alley of mud houses and to his front door. There were no words exchanged beyond an acknowledgement and directional grunting. At his house, his son came out brushing his teeth, laughing.
“Hello! Thank you
“No problem, have a nice day.”
I walked the rest of the way home and did not look at my watch.
This is not a big or unusual act and Ugandans do things like this every day. Ugandans take life at a good pace and maybe with good reason. I like the opportunity to become a little more Ugandan each day.