Grandmother's words again ring true

Sickness far away from home makes one thankful for two of the greatest comforts in life: chicken noodle soup with crackers and mom. Both of which, of course, are conspicuously missing here in Jinja. Looking on the bright side of things while sweating profusely under a mosquito net and trying to block out Congolese hip hop music that’s blaring from the neighbor’s radio, it is also easy to be eternally grateful for antibiotics!

Moving on from my stomach’s first encounter with Ugandan bacteria, life in Jinja continues to welcome me. The pineapples taste just as juicy sweet, the Nile runs just as bold and steady, and my work at TASO remains both challenging and rewarding.

At TASO I completed two additional project proposals to supplement my original one. The first new proposal is for a Pen Pal Project. The goal of the PPP is to empower youth in Uganda through Life Skills learning and cross-cultural exchange between students in Uganda and students in the United States of America so youth in both countries are equipped with the skills to successfully prevent further spread of HIV/AIDS. There will be a writing competition component to the PPP also, in which students are encouraged to submit pieces on a variety of topics including, but not limited to: HIV/AIDS, future aspirations, culture, individuality and youth empowerment. My goal is for a panel comprised of the PPP’s stakeholders to judge the writing submissions and award small prizes to the most outstanding submissions. Writing competition submissions will be published on a TASO-designed blog, acting as another forum for open discussion, an extension of the PPP goal to parties within and beyond participating students.

The second proposal is for a Child Testimony Project. I want to consolidate a number of child testimonies of children affected and infected by HIV/AIDS and publish them on a TASO blog as well as in hardcover. The project will give children a chance to share their stories and know that they are not alone, a form of psychosocial healing. The published book will also be sold to raise money for school fees for the infected and affected children.

…Of course, all of this depends upon the support I hope to receive from TASO headquarters…

The original project I began with is still in the works. I identified several rural secondary schools with administrators who have expressed enthusiasm over the HIV/AIDS and Life Skills course I am currently designing. An independent volunteer, partnering with TASO for three months before he attends medical school, happily agreed to collaborate with me on the project. We will start teaching the course mid-September when the students return from their holiday. We’re enjoying being each other’s sounding board and comparing notes when culture shock strikes!

I attended a formal Introduction ceremony with my host family a few weeks back; the event definitely prompted some “comparing notes!” In Uganda, the Introduction ceremony is a large cultural event every bride-to-be hosts. It’s a ceremony for the bride and the bride’s family to introduce her fiancé to her family and the community at large. Introductions are just as, if not more, important than weddings here in Uganda. Friends, family and co-workers are often expected to contribute to the funding of the event. Actually at a staff meeting here at TASO we discussed at GREAT length—literally about 45 minutes—the appropriate way to ask for money for the Introductions of staff members. We discussed who should be included (only sisters, close friends and cousins or distant relatives and friends of friends?), if the amount donated should be noted on the list, whether or not the host should ask people individually for money, should the donation be mandatory, how much money should be given, should non-donors be revealed, etc, etc. Needless to say, it’s a pretty big deal.

After breakfast the morning of the Introduction, my family gave me the honor of wearing a traditional dress. I struggled to wrap myself up in the long, white and flower-printed fabric that I tied several times around my waist. I put on the jeweled-strapped top and tied another long piece of flowing fabric around one shoulder. Coming out to the car (waddling actually because of my inexperience walking in the thing), I met my mom and two sisters, my baby niece, and my brother all dressed up in their traditional bests. We looked pretty “smart” (the popular phrase meaning a person has great style), I thought. The two and a half hours it took to reach Kaliro after getting lost in the bush, weaving our way around herds of cattle, goats, school children, and boda boda bicycle taxis, was only a warm up for the lesson in patience I was about to enroll. As we journeyed deeper and deeper into the village, past the mud huts, rice fields and huge mango trees, my mom exclaimed with a laugh, “this is the end of the world Erica!” I smiled and forced out a concerned laugh.

We pulled up to the bride’s village, dust clogging the view through the car windows, tickling my nose and slicking my throat in dirt. My sister Maria was getting her daughter Michelle situated with a new pamper and when the brown mist settled I noticed how many eyes were pointed in my direction. At least forty children and some ten adults were staring at me from my position in the rear window seat of the car. “They’re happy to see you,” my mom reassured my apparently visible hesitance. I felt a brief surge of self-consciousness, but remembered my family was with me. We meandered (in my experience, Ugandans seem to like a slow-paced stride) over to a mango tree with a medium-sized mud house situated behind it. Following my sisters’ lead, I knelt down on the ground to show respect to the twenty local women who were seated with their children upon colorful woven mats on the dry earth below and greeted them in Luganda. My family and I sat down on an offered bench and waited for the Introduction to begin. In retrospect I say “waited;” at the time I really did not know what we were doing. But after a few hours passed under the mango tree, with the group of people not saying much at all (and when they did speak, in the local language, I was clueless) I realized we were just waiting.

It was hot. I could feel sweat collecting between my crossed legs. I could use a drink of water, I thought as I pressed my parched tongue against the roof of my mouth.
I did learn that one of the women we were seated with, dressed in a bright purple kanga, plastic flip flop sandals and a floral head wrap, was actually a bit different from the rest. Apparently I was in the presence of the former Vice President of Uganda, Dr. Specioza Wandira Kazibwe! She had flown in for the event all the way from Boston, where she is continuing her education at Harvard. I was impressed by her humility and her obvious love of Ugandan culture. The other women cheered her on as she swung her hips, smiling and dancing to the music floating over from the nearby grassy field where the Introduction ceremony would eventually be held.

Another hour or so passed under the mango tree before a truck drove by and villagers started yelling “ayyyeeayyyaayyyyeeeeayyyyaaaeee!” My sister informed me that this means the groom had arrived—and people were excited.

We gathered in our seats still waiting for the Introduction to begin. The contrast of a big tent, a large speaker sound system, flowers and decorations, well-dressed guests with the rural setting and ragged-clothed villagers surprised me. The celebration did eventually get on, and kept on for nearly five hours! I sat in my seat listening to Luganda spoken loudly through a microphone, trying to decipher some meaning out of the customs. There was cultural dancing, drums, carloads of gifts presented including pineapples, an entire cow carcass, millet, matooke branches, bags of rice, gift bags with their contents made secret, lots of shouting between the bride’s family and the groom’s family seated across the field, lots of Ugandan recorded music blasting from the speakers, role-playing and lots of drama performances and hundreds of villagers crowding around the tent to watch.

It was interesting, and simultaneously a monumental test of patience. How many hours could I go just sitting and listening to a foreign language I didn’t understand. How long could I focus my attention on the event and not my thirst and growling stomach? How long could I “appreciate” the culture without feeling agitated? I found myself trapped in a cycle of first feeling bored, thirsty, hungry, itchy from the mosquitoes biting me and shocked that nobody else appeared to share my irritation at the fact that breakfast was a LONG time ago (about 11 hours). Then I would feel incredibly guilty when I realized that so many of the villagers were used to eating one or two meals a day and nobody else was complaining. Then I would tune into the Introduction again, only to find my thoughts turning again to a sip of water and then again to the guilt of my impatience.

Soon enough, however, all four hundred or so guests were served a huge plate of local food and the party really began. Music encouraged everyone to get up and dance, the tent was illuminated with Christmas lights, sodas and beers were flowing—celebration was in the air. After filling our stomachs hurriedly as if we hadn’t eaten in weeks, my family and I dragged our weary selves into the car at about 11pm to drive the few hours it took to reach home. After the car broke down, we got out to push it along, failed, and recruited some roadside residents to help; I eventually collapsed into my bed.

On Monday at work, a TASO co-worker and friend of mine was laughing at my description of the experience at the Introduction. He told me that when you’re connected to the bride’s side (which my family was), it’s part of the culture, the custom of the event to “suffer.” There is so much of Ugandan culture I have yet to learn, study, discuss.

The familiar saying my Grandmother always wisely offers in response to unpleasant or unplanned events comes to mind, “Well, it was a good experience.”

Nangobi Nakadama

Drum roll please…after a full month of observation and needs assessment at TASO, I have come up with at least a tentative project goal. Following TASO’s 2008 theme, “scaling up HIV prevention among adolescents, the future leaders,” my goal is to work with youth in rural areas on TASO-related themes through partnership with secondary schools in the targeted communities. I’m expecting two more weeks of thorough needs assessment at four identified rural secondary schools after which I’ll develop a very specific workplan for the year. I’m thrilled! Having direction is egregiously underrated!

Beginning to find my place at TASO this week has come at a perfect time. This afternoon the three other interns, our two program coordinators and I will be traveling about five hours east of Jinja to Sipi Falls located in Mount Elgon Natinal Park in what’s called Kapchorwe District for a weekend retreat. We’re planning on taking what I hear is an epic hike past several waterfalls, enjoying the spectacular views, and relaxing by bonfires at night. I am excited for the rest and change of scenery!

The last few weeks here in Jinja have been rolling along smoothly. I feel I am integrating into my host organization and host family more and more as the time passes. The TASO drama club has even given me a Lusoga name, “Nangobi.” It makes me smile when I’m on my way home from work everyday and patients of Jinja Hospital (TASO is located right next to the hospital grounds) call out “Nangobi, Nangobi, Olyotia!” Of course, I also introduce myself as “Nakadama,” or daughter of the Kadama family, my host family name. It’s customary here to call people by their last names…So in addition I hear people calling out “Williams” as I walk around TASO grounds!

I had the privilege of traveling with TASO’s outreach team to a rural village to carry out a base-line survey. TASO works in partnership with 14 different communities, providing Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT), Home Based Care (HBC), support for income-generating projects, peer support groups, counseling trainings, and other activities. This particular community, Idudi, will be the 15th. We were collecting information on what the community members know about HIV/AIDS, where they get their information, and what local and cultural issues factor into the psycho-social components of the disease. We traveled a few hours away from Jinja, about 25 of us jam-packed into a taxi, to meet one-on-one with community members and ask them a series of TASO-developed survey questions.

After I met with a few community members, a young man named Grace showed me around the village. We strolled down the dirt roads hand-in-hand (Ugandans, like Cameroonians, love the strictly friendly hand-holding) passing the mud huts, boar holes, piles of mud bricks drying out in the sun, the maize fields, mango trees, and smoke clouds rising from families’ traditional kitchens. After a few minutes of meandering, we came upon a group of about 10 people who were mourning the death of a loved one. Grace explained to me that the large cloth canopy raised a few feet off the ground was the telltale sign of mourning—the family buries the body under the cloth canopy. I learned that it is a Bantu tribe custom to bury the body underneath the canopy until proper mourning is completed, after about one or two weeks. Once the relatives have mourned the death of the loved one, the cloth is lowered back down onto the ground.

As I sat around with the group and explained (through Grace, acting as my translator) that I was working with TASO, I ended up conducting an impromptu HIV/AIDS sensitization. The community members had so many questions: can a person get HIV if they wash an HIV-positive person’s clothes, can an HIV-positive mother prevent her newborn baby from transmission if she immediately turns the baby upside-down after birth, once a person starts taking ARV’s do they still have to wear condoms, is there a cure for AIDS in America, can TASO build a clinic in their community? It was disturbing and simultaneously fascinating to listen to the community members’ concerns. I was overwhelmed at how much misinformation they had, but inspired by their apparent desire to learn more about HIV/AIDS. I was emotionally moved by the welcome this group and several others offered me as Grace toured me around to greet the village in Luganda and Lusoga.

I am so grateful for the kind embrace I’ve received here in Uganda. Walking around Idudi felt like a unique homecoming, finding family among strangers.

"You are welcome"

Glacier International Airport, 8: 15 am on June 12--- another gorgeous Montana morning bids me goodbye. No fellow Peace Corps Volunteer travel companions, no family members to quiet nerves about the program ahead, no personal ties to abandon at home… and no regrets.

Entebbe/Kampala Airport, 8:15 pm on June 13---warm Ugandan darkness welcomes me back to Africa. A certain vow occupies my thoughts as I step off the plane: remain open, brave, positive and dedicated to being as useful as I can to the community I am here to serve. Oh the possibilities of second chances, the opportunity in a fresh start!

*******

I have been in Jinja now for a little over two weeks. The first thing I have to say…. I absolutely LOVE it here! The next thing I must note is how much easier African culture shock is the second time around (bucket baths included).

I woke up very early on my first morning in Uganda to the sound of torrential rain; in the strangest way it was comforting and familiar. Lying under my mosquito net listening to the rain pouring down on the tin roof of the Guest House that I had checked into the night before, I felt more content and “at home” than anxious. I had the luxury of being able to remind myself, “Hey, you’ve done this before.” Actually the majority of my daily journal entries since touching down in East Africa begin with a statement about how excited, grateful, and content I am to have another shot at living and volunteering on this beautiful continent.

“You are welcome” is a phrase I now hear incessantly. It is not an acknowledgement of a “thank-you,” but rather offered to me by Ugandans whenever I arrive at work, return home, sit down to a meal, speak in the local language, or even decide to move from one chair to another. I think the phrase says a lot about Ugandan culture. I have been received so warmly by so many people and continue to be impressed by the friendly nature of my host-family, new friends, co-workers, and even strangers I greet on the street. Ugandans give hospitality a whole new meaning. Sure the children still get a kick out of screaming “Mzungu” at me wherever I go, pointing out the foreign white person who definitely sticks out from the rest. But, rather than being a negative response, I have learned it’s simply an observation of fact, of a plain and simple reality. Not unlike how my host-family continually tells me, “you are going to get SO FAT,” or “When you go back, everyone will say, Erica you are SO BIG and FAT!” Yes, like in Cameroon, being full-figured in Uganda is considered the highest beauty ideal. Time will tell if in a year I can measure up!

After a fairly uneventful week of training, the four other Foundation for Sustainable Development interns and I moved into our home-stays the weekend before we started work with our respective host NGO’s. Well, I guess it wasn’t so uneventful, as I did manage to walk through a park with monkeys at my feet, see crested cranes, crocs, African buffalo, rhinos, mambas; drove through Mbira forest; crossed over the Nile; rode on a bicycle boda boda (the common taxi form here); picnicked at Bujigali Falls; took a boat (canoe) tour on the Nile; cheered on the Cranes during their football match against Angola; went running by the “Source of the Nile;” got acquainted with the local cuisine; tried the local beer and learned some basic Luganda!

In other news, I completed my first workweek at TASO. I am thoroughly impressed with the organization as a whole, and also with the staff and patients. My first Monday was spent meeting my supervisor and beginning to absorb all the activities TASO does. In the afternoon I sat in the waiting room and chatted with clients waiting either for their ARV’s, counseling, or medical appointments. I heard several very powerful stories, simultaneously sad and inspiring. The next three weeks at TASO I will spend in observation and needs-assessment. I am so new to Uganda, the culture, TASO and the population it serves that I can’t pretend to know right away how I can be most useful. After this month-long period, I’ll develop a work plan and submit a grant to FSD’s San Francisco office. I feel so lucky I could commit to a year here in Jinja so that I can ease into the work plan gradually. In one week I have already learned so much. I’m reminded often of how I felt in Cameroon, with each day seeming to bring a whole lifetime of new, colorful experiences!

A few highlights from the week:

-Accompanying the TASO drama club to visit Wanyange Girls School, outside of Jinja Town with a view of Lake Victoria, where they did an HIV/AIDS sensitization. The 200 or so girls in the room were so excited, hootin' and hollerin', getting up off the benches to dance, as the drama club was singing, dancing traditional Ugandan dances, performing a play and poems about the realities of HIV/AIDS for Ugandan youth. I had chills watching the performance; it was so moving to watch a real attack against this killer disease.

-Cooking outdoors over an improved cook stove (basically a pot on the ground with a cavity to load charcoal and for smoke to exist) with my host sister. So far I’ve learned how to make chapatti (a thick fried tortilla equivalent), matooke, and groundnut sauce.

-Meeting with a local student about an AIDS club he wants to work with me to start up at his high school.

-Editing a TASO newsletter...I knew an English degree was the way to go!

-Attending TASO’s newly formed adolescent drama club’s Saturday practice. I had tears in my eyes watching the kids, all HIV positive ages 12 to 18, dance, sing and recite poetry under a big mango tree about how to prevent infection and live positively after infection. They are so full of hope and life that one would never guess they are sick. I am so proud of them and am in awe of their strength. Even though I have always felt absurdly lucky in my life, hanging out with these kids has just breathed new life into that feeling. I am truly speechless, dumbfounded for the lot in life I’ve been given.

I knew I was going to learn much more from my experience with TASO than I could ever imagine giving, but I don’t think I could have prepared for this. These kids’ smiles say it all.

Erica in Uganda!

As most of you know, I am no longer in Cameroon and have not been for some time now. I was caught up in an ugly bureaucratic mess with the Peace Corps that shipped me home to the U.S. before I could understand the extent of the lies, cover-ups and spinelessness of some of the Peace Corps administration I encountered.

Cameroon, tu me manque beaucoup!

***

On June 12 I will happily turn over a new leaf and travel to Jinja, Uganda where I will spend one year in parternship with a local NGO called The AIDS Support Organization (TASO). The U.S. organization I am volunteering with, and who facilitated my relationship with TASO, is called Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD). If you are curious, please be sure to visit TASO's website at www.tasouganda.org.



My new address in Africa is:

Erica Williams
FSD
PO Box 1722
Jinja, Uganda

Thank you to my dear friends and family who have supported me through my unexpectedly short Peace Corps experience and in my decision to return to Africa. I am forever grateful for your kindness. I'm eager to share what's next with all of you!