Ridiculous

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
-Napoleon Bonaparte

Some things about America are just really hard to people explain here. Yesterday, I was talking to my tutor about how it’s illegal to burn trash in cities in America. I was explaining the ozone layer, and how burning trash releases chemicals that are harmful to it. Then, I tried to explain the garbage collection system in most American cities. Ridiculous! Here, everyone burns their trash in their yard. To try to explain how, in America, we put our trash in bags and bins and leave it at the side of the road so that men can come around and collect it in a big truck… well, it just seems absurd. All you need here is a matchbox.

Also yesterday, I visited the home of a traditional birth attendant. A woman who had just delivered was there- I’m guessing her baby was only an hour or two old. With the help of my tutor, I asked them about how they name babies in Uganda- do they pick out a name before the birth, or after? Did this new baby have a name? The baby didn’t have a name just yet. I explained that, in America, many people pick out the name of the child before it is born. My tutor translated this, but I understand enough Luganda to know that she was telling them that Americans pick out a boy’s name and a girl’s name, and then name the child whatever sex it turns out to be. So then I told them, well, actually, we have a machine that’s used to see inside the woman’s body, so many people know in advance if it’s a boy or girl. Ridiculous! Can you imagine hearing such a thing, after delivering your baby on a foam mattress on the dirt floor of a house made of mud?

I never knew how literal the term “foreign concept” could be. There are some things that I simply cannot explain without pausing to think about how absolutely silly we are.

Work

It is worth it / Let me work it / I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it...
-Missy Elliot


It’s been a while…

For those of you wanting a rat update, you will be happy to know that I have seen no brother or sister or mom or daddy rats since my last incident. However, going along with the theme of athletic-creatures-in-higher-places-than-they-should-be, I did find a worm on my 12+-foot ceiling, in the middle of the ceiling, and I have absolutely no idea how he got there or how he was sticking to it. But, hey- worms, I can certainly deal with.

Several people have asked what a typical day is like. There is no typical day, week, or month here, but I had a really amazing work week last week, so I’ll tell you what I did:

Monday- Went to the AIDS clinic at the hospital in my area. This was the first time I had been there- finally met all of the right people, submitted all of the letters, got everyone’s permission. Hung out there all day and just observed how things work, it was really great! Everyone who works there is super nice and really committed, can’t wait to learn more about how they operate and see what I can do to help them out!

Tuesday- The clinic that I work with does immunization outreaches, where they go out to various villages, and give the kids in that village their shots. We have immunization outreaches on most Tuesdays and Fridays, so we get to cover several different villages. At first I just went along and held kids, greeted people, etc, but I felt like I wasn’t doing much. My counterpart and I decided that, while the health workers from my clinic were giving out immunizations, I would go and do home visits for people living with AIDS. My Luganda tutor (I’ll tell you about her in a sec) went with me to translate, as did the community health mobilizer for that village. We visited with a couple different people and both were really good visits! I don’t feel like I should talk about them on here for confidentiality reasons, but they were just good.

Wednesday- Had a Luganda language lesson with my tutor- one of my favorite nuns. She’s so great! She used to be the a counselor for the AIDS program at the area hospital, but has had diabetes for some time, and it’s really beginning to affect her. She can’t move around a whole lot. She no longer works, and stays in the “sick bay” wing of the convent. She’s been doing things like making baskets, which is really unfortunate, because she has so much knowledge and experience! (Not that making baskets isn’t a worthy pursuit, but… well, if I personally had nothing to do but sit around and make baskets all day, I wouldn’t be too happy. I think it’s the same for her.) So, it’s great for both of us that I’m here- I get a really nice tutor, and she has something to do! She’s also going to be going on all of the home visits with me- I worry that it’ll be too much for her, but she’s really excited that she can help out and do something worthwhile.

Thursday- Harvested maize! Scroll down to the next entry (8 Feb), I wrote a whole separate post about this!

Friday- Another immunization outreach day, went on another AIDS home visit! This one was really great- I was with my counterpart, the community mobilizer for that village, and the woman we were visiting, and I asked if they had an AIDS support group for their village. They said no, but would I be interested in helping them start one? And I said OF COURSE! I’m so excited! I feel like I’ve finally been around long enough where people have started asking me to do stuff… definitely NOT the case at first. Anyway, they’re going to organize their people, and our first meeting is going to be the last Sunday of this month! In the late afternoon, I went to the hospital for a staff meeting of the AIDS clinic. I was so inspired- the director is awesome, and just has a really good understanding of the whole situation- the needs of the people, the frustrations of donor funding (another post on this to come…), ways that the AIDS clinic can improve. I can’t wait to discuss some ideas with him! He’s busy, so it may be a while, but all the more time for me to learn a lot about the clinic first. The staff meeting ran late, but afterwards, I went out to the main road and caught a taxi to my PCV friend’s house in another village, and made it there before dark.

So, that was my really really really good week of work. Maybe it doesn’t seem as startlingly good to you as it did to me, but all previous weeks have been nothing like that. I haven’t been writing about work, because there is nothing interesting to write. I’ve kinda been doing nothing and it’s been pretty frustrating/boring. I’ve been doing things like… sitting. Reading. Holding kids. Reading. Organizing things. Reading. Cleaning. Reading. Doing my laundry. Putting off doing all of my laundry, because if I finished doing all of my laundry, then I’d TRULY have nothing to do.

My weekends are usually fantastic, because if people aren’t here visiting me, then I’m visiting them. The weekend before last we had a birthday celebration at my house, and this past weekend I went and had a really nice time with my closest PCV neighbor at her site. This coming weekend, I’m going to Kampala to hang out with some friends there.

I’m really excited, because this week is off to a fantastic start as well… the students have come back from holiday, so I get to start teaching life skills/health classes next week. When I got back from my friend’s on Sunday, I had a really great meeting with the headmistress of the school I’m going to be teaching at. Then, right after that, I was telling another nun friend about that meeting and she was like, “Oh, those classes would be SO GREAT for my students, can you teach at my school too?” (She also runs a school, for catering.) I’m going to be teaching at night, so that way I’ll still have time during the day for all of the other stuff. Can’t wait! I think that, even though I really want to be a doctor, I will always be a teacher in some capacity— I can’t seem to help it! (Side note- my students in Thailand graduated from Legacy Institute on the 4th, and I am SO PROUD of them!!!)

Today I went to an assembly at the school I’m going to be teaching at (the first one), had brunch with the headmistress, and then talked to my counterpart and looked up stuff for the water tank grant. After that I had lunch with the sisters, and talked to my favorite nun friend about religion. After lunch, I went to the hospital to hang out at the AIDS clinic again, and I learned more about some of the software they’re using to handle all of their data. On my walk home, I randomly met the hospital’s surgeon, who was out for an evening walk! He’s super nice; I can’t wait to go observe surgeries and stuff! He and I also ran into some people from Germany who have just arrived and will be working here at the deaf school for the next couple of months. There are a couple girls my age, should be fun!

Let’s hope my lucky work streak continues… :)

Sister

I see God in every human being.
-Mother Teresa


People here are always and forever telling me that I should become a sister/convert to Catholicism, and while I try to laugh it off, it does get a little annoying. Ok, REALLY annoying. (Maybe you should pray for me not to become a nun, because, let me tell you, I have a whole army of nuns praying that I WILL become one.) Some of them are absolutely convinced, despite my gentle reminders that I’m not Catholic and that I have an awesome boyfriend. But, I was talking to my best nun friend the other day, and she told me that it’s a really good compliment. She said that when people say you should be a nun, it’s like saying that you conduct yourself very well, and that they would be privileged for you to join their community. She told me, “It’s as if they’re saying that, through you, they see God.” So, that somehow made me feel a whole lot better. It can still be annoying, but now I have a much better attitude about it- I know that people are saying it because they want me here and because they appreciate what I’m doing. All a matter of perspective, I guess.

(But, maybe you should still pray that I won’t become a nun. Ha!)

Maize

Today I went to a far away village to harvest maize! Well, I say “far”- I think it’s about 25 miles away, but it takes 2+ hours because of the bad dirt roads. My counterpart has a farm for the clinic there. My convent owns a huge amount of land right in the area that we live, but my counterpart has the farm in this particular place, because the community there is incredibly poor. She farms there to give the local people jobs, to give the local people food, and to get food for the sisters who stay in the sick bay. I harvested maize all day, along with my counterpart, another sister, several workers we brought from the convent, and several members of the community. The village kids came to collect corn for their families- they are so cute! This might possibly be my favorite picture that I’ve taken here (I swear it’s not staged!):
They were walking out of the field with the maize that they were taking home for their families.

The people of this village live in mud houses with thatched roofs- the mud here is really great, so the houses actually stay together and keep out rain fairly well, from what I can tell. (Bugs are another matter, but that’s just how it goes. I have bugs in my house too, and I live in a palace of a convent.) One thing that is perhaps most bothersome about their living situation is that they don’t have access to clean water. They literally drink pond water. They boil it first (as everyone in this country should- even the running water is not so safe to drink without boiling), but in the end, they’re still drinking pond water. A borehole (aka water pump that pumps water from underground springs) has been tried, but the underground water in this area is just too deep- the boreholes stop working. A major way that people get clean water in Uganda is by collecting rainwater in big tanks- they put a gutter system around the tin roof of a house or building, and run it into a tank that sits beside that building. The tank usually sits on a slab of concrete so it’s raised off of the ground, and there’s a spigot low on the side of the tank. A year or two ago, my counterpart wrote a grant proposal for a building and tank, but her proposal was rejected… proposal writing is quite difficult when you’re not familiar with the way that donor funding works. (I’ve found that most people here aren’t very familiar with it.) So, I told my counterpart I would help her- there’s a specific grant I know of here that we can apply for, so I’m hoping the grant committee will also see the need and help up with getting a tank! It’ll be a long process, but I will be SO happy if it works out. My counterpart showed me one of the places where people get water, and it was even worse than I expected. Not only was it dirty, it was opaque. It was the color of coffee with creamer in it.

It’s always difficult to help people here, because they see your white skin and automatically think that you personally have thousands (or, at the very very least, hundreds) of dollars at your disposal. It is incredibly hard to convince them otherwise. People constantly ask for money. Even if you do convince them that you are not personally rich, they can never be convinced that you don’t have good connections with very rich people. (And, perhaps they are right about that one.) The definition of “rich” is also much different. If you’re reading this, you’re rich. And if you’re reading off of your own computer and with your own internet, you’re unfathomably rich. (I know at least one of you is thinking, “Well, I’m stealing my wireless right now, so it’s not really my own internet…” If you can make that statement, sorry to break it to you, but you’re still unfathomably rich, ha!) It’s also really hard as a volunteer here, because most foreigners don’t just come to volunteer- they come to volunteer plus give money to whatever they’re volunteering for. Most organizations that foreigners are working with are funding organizations. The Peace Corps is not a funding organization. If you’re in a community that has ever had another foreigner, you have to constantly explain that, while that foreigner may have come to give money, you just came to give your time and expertise. While time and expertise are perhaps better in the long run, that’s hard to explain to people who need money, now.

Anyway, with this particular community, I feel like I’m only going to be confirming their stereotypes of muzungus. I’ve been there just once, and now I’m planning to get them a water tank. But, in this case, clean drinking water is really more important to me than disproving any stereotypes. But… now I guess I can’t complain when people automatically think I’m loaded.

I've decided I'm going to be better at posting pictures, so here you go-

My counterpart and I in the field:

Me and really cute little girl from the village. The other workers were laughing at me because she was 8 years old, and they thought it was funny that I would choose to hold her and not one of the smaller kids! She was adorable, though:

The fields:

Me enjoying some roasted maize at the end of the day! My counterpart had my camera, I didn't know she was taking a picture of me right then!