My 2 weeks in Namayumba village

I spent the past two weeks living in Namayumba, a village about 2 hours from Kampala. I had spent time in a rural community earlier this semester when we did our rural homestay, but this time I was by myself which was a very different experience. The Namayumba sub-district is a small town with many surrounding villages. Most of the people in the area are farmers and spend the whole day in the gardens, especially now that it’s the rainy season.

Namayumba Health Center

I stayed in a guest house at the Health Center (it’s about the equivalent of a small public hospital/ large clinic) with one of the nurse’s family. While living on the health center property I learned a lot about health care here in Uganda which further secured my passion for medicine and becoming a doctor. Every morning after taking tea, I’d walk down to the Health Center and find the place packed with patients. Some there for ARV’s (for HIV treatment), many with diabetes or hypertension, some extremely ill with a high fever (most commonly malaria), others with terrible wounds or skin infections, and so many others in desperate need of care. The first day I was there I was asked to assist with the triage center. I was responsible for taking each patients height, weight, BP and directing them to the appropriate wing of the facility. I realized very quickly that there was a serious concern: no one spoke English… Because most of the people in the community had not completed schooling, they never fully learned to speak English and spoke only the local language, Luganda. The few who could speak, did not understand my accent so they would just stare at me as I talked. I quickly learned to gesture to people and used the little Luganda I knew as much as I could.

Me and Nurse Celine (my host)

The nutritionist, Sister Martha set me up with a few people she thought could help me with finding participants for my study and I began looking for children that first afternoon. The biggest challenge I ran into was finding a translator who could walk around the villages with me and communicate well enough to conduct my study which included consent forms, parent surveys and the cognitive assessment. After a few stressful days of being literally lost in translation, I finally found the perfect guide Issac, who could speak English very well and knew the area very well. I realized right away that the results of my assessments in the village were very different than those in Kampala, indicating a huge cultural difference between the urban and rural environment.

The beautiful view of a village road (when it's actually a road)

I spent most of my days trekking through the villages carrying a height board and a weighing scale for measuring children. We walked from home to home looking for 5 year olds, both adequately nourished and stunted so that I could compare the two groups. Some days we managed to get 7-8 participants, and others we would spend over 9 hours in the villages and find only 2 children. We were able to work with Village Health Team members (VHT's) who helped us to locate many children within each village. Although it was difficult lugging all our supplies up and down each mountainside, especially in the pouring down rain, the air was so clear and the surroundings so breathtaking that it was worth it. After 9 straight days of looking for participants we managed to find all the children we needed, and all the hard work paid off. 

Issac giving a digit span test to a participant alongside a VHT

Rural poverty is very difficult to explain because in this area everyone would be considered “poor”. Everyday people eat posho and porridge, often their only foods because others are so expensive. Even foods like beans, potatoes, greens, rice, milk or silverfish are too expensive for people to buy on an inconsistent farmer salary. With the amount of starch in the normal diet it’s not surprising that the rates of diabetes follow the rates of malnourishment. It was hard to distinguish a difference between what mothers fed their children to explain why chronically malnourished children were stunted and other children who ate the same foods were not. Within a given family, the older sibling may be stunted while the younger one is normal height when they are fed the same foods. This phenomena was really strange to me and opened my eyes to the unfortunate truth that many of these children don’t receive enough food, but some are just more resilient than others.

One of the village homes made of mud.

The people there were so kind and welcoming, even though we could not fully communicate. Some of the people had never seen a white person before so I experienced many different reactions to my presence. Some children cried when they saw me, some were fascinated by me and couldn’t stop staring, some were really excited to meet me, and others ran away as fast as they could.

Here’s a short list of some great things that happened:

- One child who saw me ran inside his hut and pulled out a torn up poster of a white model. He pointed to it and then pointed to me and kept comparing the two.

-I could see the Milky Way and every star in the sky at night. I have never seen a sky so clear.

-I was proposed to by 3 men, one was my taxi driver which made for a very awkward bus ride.

-Rain+dirt= mud… I slipped and fell in the mud way too many times. I gave the village people quite the giggle.

-I met a woman with the same Buganda name as me, Namoli. She was 95, kept calling me twin, and the only English word she knew was soda.

-During one day that we were in the field, we walked 25 km. I really wish my fitbit worked here…

-Most white people that come through the village are doctors, called Musawo. I kept getting called Muzungu Musawo or “white doctor”. I had a few people take off articles of their clothing to show me a weird rash or other ailments they were concerned with.

-One of the kids I tested screamed every time he saw me so I had to walk away while Issac worked with him. Apparently he associated doctors with immunizations, so muzungu=needles

-The last morning I was there, they needed me to fill in for a nurse so I ended up working the hypertension and diabetes station, giving insulin tests and monitoring blood pressure.

-This past weekend we went white water rafting on the Nile River to take a much needed break from our research. We finished our rafting adventure with some Nile beer on the Nile!

Enjoying our Niles after a long day of rafting!

My experience in the village was very isolating and challenging (especially with no electricity or contact from the outside world) but extremely rewarding. I learned so much about the community I lived in and about myself as consequence. Although it was only 2 weeks, this experience has impacted my life in so many ways and definitely changed the way I perceive the world.

I have less than 3 weeks left here in Uganda, during which time I will be finishing my research and reuniting with my 4 other classmates. I’m excited to be back in the US, but I still cannot believe I will be leaving here so soon. There will be more to come before I return!!!

Beginning my Research!!!!

So the last few weeks have been very hectic beginning our Independent Study Project (ISP). At the end of my program, I have 6 weeks on my own to conduct research regarding a relevant development topic in Uganda. The whole semester we have been preparing for this time, learning from lectures and just using our personal experience here to identify a topic we are interested in. I have always been interested in Public health and wanted to find a topic relevant to my interests so I decided to combine both of my passions in Neuroscience and in Public Health. My study focuses on the cognitive effects of malnutrition in children under 5. I am preforming cognitive assessments on children which test the prefrontal cortex and working memory, indicators of a child’s innate ability to process information and attention, which are essential to learning. Chronic malnutrition can impair a child’s brain development so I will be testing the effects of these impairments between well-nourished children and malnourished children. We have just begun week 2 of the project, and I will admit, it’s very stressful but I am really excited to conduct my own research and learn first-hand about an issue that effects over 33% of Ugandan children.

Now to a less serious note. Here’s a list of fun things I’ve experienced in the past few weeks, in between writing my 20 page…. Yep. 20 page proposal.

1.           Apparently Ugandans like research proposals to be almost as long as the final paper. My full paper should be about 30 pages
2.      I met a little kid wearing a Clearwater beach shirt (my home town!!!).
3.      Second-hand clothes are extremely popular here, so that’s where your goodwill donations eventually end up. I may even be wearing a skirt you donated….
4. Easter is not just one day. It’s a whole week here. People take off starting Thursday and take holiday until Easter Monday, which is very difficult when it’s your first week of research.
5.  Easter eggs are hardboiled eggs in a basket. I was really excited for an egg hunt, but it was literally just me looking for a basket full of hardboiled eggs (delicious nonetheless)
6.  Because 89% of the population is Christian, walking around the city during Easter is really weird. I had never seen an empty street in downtown Kampala until Sunday. Because every store is closed (except the butcheries, which are owned by Muslims) over 2 billion people just disappear completely.
7. I spent 3 hours trying to explain to my homestay dad what a “Jew” is… He still doesn’t get it.
8. I went to Jinja this weekend to visit friends and spend some time at the source of the Nile. We were really confused when the hotel bar was having an Easter Saturday party with “exotic dancers”… We realized very quickly that exotic dancers here are literally just girls in mid-thigh shorts and a tank top strutting around like runway models. Exotic dancers here do not mean the same as they do in the US.
9.  The Nile river is absolutely beautiful. It begins in Uganda and goes all the way through Egypt. If you are ever looking for a tourist destination in East Africa, definitely visit Jinja!
10. Appreciate your washing machine! Many families here have washing machines, but almost no one uses them because they prefer hand washing. It takes me about 3 hours and I have bruises from scrubbing all the dirt out of my clothes.
11. Additionally the rainy season has begun, and so my clothes that I spent all afternoon and evening drying on the clothesline were quickly soaked when a sudden storm came through.
12. The rainy season is absolutely amazing! When it rains it pours and the entire city can flood in less than two hours. Thankfully it has been so dry in the weeks before that by noon, all the water has dried into small puddles. It usually rains from about 4 am-10am which is actually very therapeutic to sleep to.
13.      The first day of the rainy season, I found a semi truck that had been buried in the mud past its wheels. It took 2 other semi trucks to pull it out. 
14. The little kids on the road by my homestay have started calling me Auntie Muzungu. Auntie is anyone older who you trust and feel comfortable around. It sounds weird but when they yell “HI AUNTIE MUZUNGU” it kinda warms my heart.
15. Mini golf exists here but is much harder. Mainly because the course is not by any means flat.
16. The movie theaters only show movies in 3D. They’re not exactly our version of 3D but they are really cool and only cost about $4.
17. With chronically malnourished populations, the people are often stunted. They are normal body proportions but they are shorter than normal. In the village I will be working in called Namuyamba, most of the people are either my size or shorter.

It’s very weird to me that I only have 6 weeks left here I Uganda. Although I am very busy working on my ISP, I am trying to take every moment I can to appreciate all that is around me. The people here, although the cultural differences can be sometimes frustrating, have taught me so much about what it means to be a part of community and what genuine kindness looks like.

It wouldn’t be a Study Abroad in Africa without all this

So the last few weeks have been jam packed with travelling as we finish our classes before starting our research and practicum time. We started our trip in Rwanda, then moved to Western Uganda, back to Kampala and then East to Jinja. Luckily we were able to mix work and play, learning so much as we got to experience life in the many places we visited. I decided I would summarize the cool things I’ve seen over the last 3 weeks. There has been so much that I could write a blog post about each one, but instead I’ll save you the trouble by just giving you the highlights:

The view at Lake Kivu

In Rwanda we got to spend two days at Lake Kivu, one of the most spectacular places I’ve ever seen. When sitting by the water you couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began because both were so blue. We went for a hike through the mountains and made a bunch of cute little friends as we walked through the surrounding villages. The air was so crisp and the view was breathtaking. Unfortunately my happy vacation in Rwanda was made into a little moment of terror. I was standing outside on the patio of our hotel one night when a black snake slithered across my feet. For anyone who knows me well, I HATE SNAKES…. After screaming at the top of my lungs and running over to my friends crying, they alerted the hotel staff and killed it (we didn’t want them to kill it, but I think things got lost in translation a little). Were still a little unclear as to the status of the snake. The locals claimed it was a black mamba but we have other snake enthusiasts who claim otherwise.

The last of the sprinting children

On one of our excursions we went to one of the Millennium Village Projects sponsored by the UN. We got the opportunity to visit a school where a bunch of little children greeted us with a song and dance about butterflies. As we were leaving, a few kids decided they wanted to chase our van down the road. A few seconds we looked back and a swarm of children flooded the street all running to catch the Muzungu van. At first our driver Godfrey slowed down because we thought it was cute, but the kids were a little too fast so we had to go full speed (once they started climbing on the car it started getting a little dangerous). A few of the kids actually managed to keep up for a couple hundred meters, and we decided they’re going to be the next Olympians.

In Western Uganda we got to spend the night at Queen Elizabeth National Park (the biggest game reserve in Uganda). Apparently they spread the big 5 throughout the different National Parks to promote tourism throughout all of Uganda, so we didn’t get to see giraffes or zebras. We went on a boat ride to see the wildlife around Lake Albert where we saw hippos and crocs and lots of buffalo. We spent the night in a house within the park, and were warned that we could wake up to some animals in our yard. Early in the morning we heard the sound of trees breaking and falling, we looked out the window and realized it was a couple elephants walking away from us. When we woke up in the morning we looked again and found a momma and a baby hippo right outside our window casually strolling by…

Sitting on top of our safari van

The game drive was the stereotypical African safari experience, with animals all around us. We got to climb up on the roof of our van for a better view, which was slightly terrifying at first but really fun! The view was absolutely breathtaking, and although we couldn’t find the lions we saw a bunch of elephants, hyenas, hippos, kobs, monkeys, birds, warthogs and buffalo. Apparently Rafiki in Swahili means friend, and Pumbaa means silly or foolish. However, we noticed that the Lion King is a little inaccurate because warthogs are actually very fit and not very large at all. Swahili is very common in this region so we really liked saying hakuna mattah to all the kids, although they’ve never seen The Lion King so they were kind of confused.

Literally an Elephant crossing

My homestay grandma peeling matoke

We also went to a rural village in the West for our village homestay experience. Rural areas in Africa in some ways look very different, but in other ways are just like home. Other than the lack of electricity and toilet facilities, the rural homestay was actually very normal. Our home had real walls and a roof, and even a yard for kids to play in. I learned what it actually means to walk 5km to school and how time consuming life can be without electricity for cooking food (ie shelling ground nuts, then crushing them to powder, then making sauce and then cooking over a fire… for each dish) and transportation to get around. However, the simplicity of my few days in the village was actually very relaxing and pit latrines are very comfortable once you get used to them (it’s the natural position anyway!!). The last night we were there, we played with some of the neighborhood kids as we cooked dinner over the fire. The kids decided they wanted to sing for us and preform a traditional Ugandan dance. As I sat there holding a little baby with kids all around me, I looked up and was able to see every star in the sky so clearly. I was awestruck and amazed by the beauty of the moment. The kids dressed in rags, sang the East African Anthem with all the pride and joy in the world. This moment was unique to Uganda, something I could have never experienced anywhere else.

These kids loved taking selfies

One of my family members during my homestay saw me helping to prepare dinner and then washing dishes. She came up to me laughing saying “It must be hard cooking and cleaning for yourself for the first time.” Apparently it is commonly thought that all Americans have a house help that cooks and cleans for them, as many middle/ upper class people have in Uganda. I kindly informed her that I learned to cook for myself a long time ago, and am completely responsible for my own food and dishes at school. She was absolutely shocked, but was happy to know that Americans knew how to take care of themselves, even if cooking and cleaning is much simpler in the US. Another common misconception was that America is only made of white people (apparently they think Obama is from Kenya?). I was happy to share something new with about life in America, while learning about their lives at the same time.

I was able to teach and play Frisbee with a bunch of the village kids. As we said goodbye, we left them our Frisbee which made them so happy. Apparently they are now obsessed with it and play it all the time! My host mom made us all matching dresses, which we proudly wore all morning before we left.

Candid village family photo

Although the travelling was exhausting and uncomfortable at times with the conditions of many dirt roads, this trip helped me to appreciate what it is I love about this place. No matter where I go, I am always learning or experiencing something new. The people here are so loving and are just as interested in America as I am about Uganda.

Also, here's a video of cute kids at one of the schools we visited:

Education in Uganda!

This post is dedicated to my mom’s 5^th grade classes. Apparently she likes to read them my blog posts so I thought I would write about the schools here for them to learn about!

The education system in Uganda is set up based on the English system with Primary school (our elementary school), Secondary school (our middle and high school) and University. Primary education is available to the public, but there are not many public secondary schools and University is only private. Kindergarten is not a part of Primary school, so those children go to a separate pre-Primary school.

Science Posters in the Library

Just like in America students study Mathematics, Reading, Science, Social Studies, and Geography, but they additionally study Religious Education in public schools (they learn about both Christianity and Islam since those are the two main religions in Uganda). They sometimes participate in school agriculture projects, planting trees and growing vegetables to sell for the school. Children regardless of the school they attend wear uniforms every day. At the end of each year, students take National exams that determine whether the child is able to move to the next level in school. The exams are very challenging and many children don’t pass the exams, especially the exam promoting an individual from primary to secondary school. Because the national exams are so difficult, students may be required to go to school on Saturdays, which we obviously don’t have in America.

Students learning about science

Uganda is mainly in the southern hemisphere so the school year begins in February and ends in November, with summer break from November- January (in the southern hemisphere the earths position is in a different relation to the sun, so the seasons are opposite). Uganda also does not have an official language, so students are taught the first three years of primary school in their local language (in my region the language is called Luganda) and taught in English starting at Primary 4 level. This means that for most children English is their second language, making it much more difficult to learn in a new language. Additionally, in public schools the class sizes can range from 50-100 kids per teacher. Imagine having a classroom 3 times as large as your own, and all trying to learn from one teacher.

Some children, starting as young as 6 years old, may attend boarding school. Unlike in the United States, it is very common for children in Primary and Secondary School to live away from their families at the school they attend. My homestay sister who is 15 attends a boarding school about an hour away from my home (she is in the equivalent of 9^th grade). The reason so many children attend boarding school is because Uganda does not have school busses to help children get to school, like in the US. Instead, many kids walk up to 10 kilometers to get to school, or must ride in public buses (we call them taxis) in order to reach school, which can take hours (the school may either be very far away if you live in a village, or the traffic may be very bad in Kampala).

We got the chance to sit in on a P5 class

The school day usually goes from 8 am to about 4:30 pm, and most schools do not have PE in their schedules for the day. When students get home they are usually responsible for taking care of their younger siblings and completing chores for the household such as feeding the chickens, fetching water from a local stream, or helping to prepare dinner. I’m sure not many Americans are responsible for retrieving our own water because we have plumbing, or feeding chickens for that matter. The biggest difference between public schools in Uganda and the United States is that many children go to school without food for the entire day. In Uganda, parents must pay small fees for their children to pay for books, teachers’ meals and uniforms. For many families who don’t have much money, these fees are too expensive and so the parents must sacrifice their children’s food in order to pay the fees. Unlike the US, lunch is not provided for those who cannot pay (because too many children in public school cannot afford lunch) so these children must go through the entire day without lunch, after walking miles to school or travelling for hours. Imagine going through an entire school day without anything to eat. Wouldn't it be difficult, or nearly impossible to pay attention during class while hungry?

Regardless of the difficulties children face going to school, it is still considered a privilege to be able to attend school and gain an education. Not every child is able to go to school or finish their education with lack of funds, so children are very grateful for the opportunity to learn. Kids are always on their best behavior and highly respect their teachers who provide them with such a valuable skill. Education provides them with the opportunity to pursue their dreams and earn a better life for themselves, and the students know it is the key to their future.

This is just half of the giant class full of students

As a person who grew up and attended school in the US, I am now realizing how lucky I was to have the opportunities for education that I did with caring teachers, small classes, lunch every day, and the ability to go to school free of charge. Because school was not a privilege but a right, I did not appreciate my education as much as I should have. For those of you who are lucky enough to live in the United States, just imagine how different your life could be if you had to go to school in a different country. One of the big differences between Ugandan school children and kids in America, is that in Uganda the students are very well behaved and are always very respectful of their teachers. They know that their teachers are there to help them and want to learn all they can from them, so that they are able to pass their exams and eventually pursue their dreams. Ugandan children still love to play games like soccer and capture the flag, have similar interests and career goals to students in America. They are really just like kids in the US, but are growing up in a very different world.

I hope you all are able to enjoy learning about school kids in a different place who are just like you, and that you all are able to gain a new appreciation for the place in which you are growing up and able to attend school. I hope that you all will work hard enough in school so that you will one day have the chance to study abroad like I am and see the rest of the huge world we live in!

The computer lab has 2 laptops for student use

Some of the students at Kyanzee Public School

My Journey to Rwanda

*Warning* this is not the world’s most happy blog post, but I feel it is necessary to discuss this experience so that others can understand how the West impacts the rest of the world.

Rwanda is a tiny landlocked country to the West of Uganda. It is best known by the genocide that occurred there in 1994 (For those of you who haven’t heard about it please Wikipedia it). The second we crossed the border of Rwanda, we could immediately see differences between the two countries. For example, Ugandans drive on the left side of the road and Rwandans drive on the right. Other things such as the way people grow crops, the mountainous green landscape and the infrastructure of the newly paved roads. We spent our time in Rwanda in Kigali, the capital city. Kigali is a huge city that has developed very rapidly over the past 20 years. It looks more Western than some American cities, with really cool pedestrian crossing signs with timers (like an electronic person physically walking, and then stopping when it’s time to stop). We were shocked as we walked through the city and saw so many places that resembled a Starbucks or an H&M, so much so that we forgot we were in Africa for a minute (until we would see women in traditional dresses, at which we would quickly snap back to reality). After a day of taking it all in, we woke up the next morning with an eyrie feeling as we got ready to visit the many genocide memorials, which I quickly realized I wasn’t prepared for.

I had first learned in depth about the Rwandan genocide when I took a course on Humanitarian Aid and Sexualized Violence my freshman year at Emory (if you are interested, Ghosts of Rwanda is a really great documentary!). During the genocide from April-July 1994, Hutu (majority ethnicity in Rwanda), massacred over a million Tutsi (minority ethnicity) and Hutu sympathizers. In 4 months, over 10% of the population was killed and many to this day remain refugees in the surrounding countries. The genocide was committed not only by the government, but by neighbors, coworkers and friends of the Tutsi people. Before I get into the genocide there are two very important things to note: First, the terms Hutu and Tutsi were created by the Belgians under colonial rule to separate ethnicities so that they could rule Rwanda more easily (with the Tutsi as the minority in a position of power, and the Hutu as the subordinate working class). Second, the genocide did not begin suddenly. Instead tensions had grown over decades and the genocide was the culmination of many historical underpinnings. 

During my day we attended 3 memorials: the National genocide memorial in Kigali, and 2 memorials at churches where genocide was performed. The first explained the social history leading up to the genocide, the timeline of the genocide itself, artifacts remembering the events, and stories of victims and perpetrators. Although it is not culturally appropriate to cry in Rwanda, it was impossible to look at images of children with machete cuts through their heads without breaking down. One of the rooms of the memorial had a wall full of missing persons posts and photos remembering loved ones. I came across a birth certificate of a baby whom was killed that’s birthday was December 22^nd, 1993 (just a day before mine). The reality was that my world in the US was so inherently different than this baby whom was my age and never got a chance to grow up because of the place she was born. The 2 church memorials were full of coffins for the bodies of the lives lost, clothes of the victims and the weapons used during the genocide. The churches remained exactly as they were left with broken stained glass, bullet holes in the wall, hacked through doors and even blood stained floors. Churches became the primary place for killing as many Tutsi sought refuge within their walls (which disgustingly was more convenient for the Hutu). Crosses were used as weapons, and even some priests committed genocide. I will stop my explanation to spare you the trauma, but as you tell the genocide was horrific.

One of the Genocide Memorial Churches. Out of respect for the bodies within, we were not allowed to take photos inside

The worst part of all of it, was that the genocide was not committed in masses like the gas chambers of the Holocaust, but instead on an individual level (victims knew their killers). The social history and propaganda engrained so strongly within individuals that they were able to gruesomely take another human life. If you are now asking yourself how the UN or the United States could allow something so horrific to happen, I am sorry to say that they knew. The UN not only knew about the genocide, but they knew it was being planned months before, and after the genocide began they chose to pull out peacekeeping troops. The US took 5 months to define the word “genocide” which now many political officials within the government attribute to the lack of interests the US had in Rwanda. Instead of helping, Americans (all but one) fled the country while Rwandans working for the US Embassy were slaughtered. The international community’s response to the genocide is almost more tragic than the event itself.

I am writing this post because I feel it is important to understand what happened to this country and maybe even more so how a nation can come together to rapidly develop into modern day Rwanda. I have realized that often Americans live in their own little bubble, but there is a huge world around us with many other nations and cultures. The genocide went on so long because no one knew, and those who knew chose to ignore. We are Americans but we are also human beings, and the interests of the individual should never come above the interests of humanity. If you get a chance to go to Africa and want a tourist-friendly, more western version a Sub-Saharan African city, Kigali is a beautiful place to visit. Since the genocide, the people have worked hard to move past and reconcile, focusing on development as Rwandans, not Hutu and Tutsi. Although it was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, I’m glad I got a chance to see the past and the present in person so that I may share this story with you and learn for the future. 

Weddings and Celebrations!

As I finish my 3^rd week here I have had the opportunity to attend both a Wedding Introduction and a Birthday party, and let me tell you Ugandans go all out for their celebrations. People in the family start cooking days in advance so that there is an endless mass of food. As I mentioned before, my homestay family has a cake business and the cakes made for these occasions are both elaborate and absolutely delicious. Although in Uganda the “vanilla” cake is actually a brown cake made with real vanilla (not extract) and has raisins in it (it’s less sweet, but the frosting here makes up for it).

My JaJa during the negotiations

Wedding introductions are basically the US equivalent of an engagement party and are considered to be as important, if not more important than the actual wedding itself. In the traditional Buganda culture, the wedding introduction is the time when the bride and groom’s family discuss negotiations for the marriage. The groom must pay the bride’s family a bridewealth in order to marry her. The bridewealth is important to the Buganda culture because it signifies the transferring of the bride to her husband’s clan (which follows the husband’s lineage) and it pays respect to the family who raised and invested so much into their daughter’s upbringing. The introduction I attended was for my mother’s cousin and JaJa was the paternal aunt (who is the representative for the bride in all the negotiations, and basically runs the whole show). The feminist in me thought it was a little weird that the entire ceremony was about the groom’s gifts to the bride’s family, yet the bride herself was allowed to do very little. Until the negotiations are made, the bride must sit on the floor to eat (traditionally men and elders are the only ones to sit at the table) and cannot take part in any of the negotiations regarding her future. After the negotiations are made, she is presented and can join the ceremony with her fiancé. The women wear gomezis and the men wear canzos as traditional dress.

The infamous cow

During the ceremony which was about 5 hours long and in Luganda (so I’m not exactly sure what happened), many generations and family members danced and gave blessings to the groom’s family. About halfway through the ceremony, a stray cow walked in the back and ran into a bunch of the parked cars, setting off a bunch of car alarms. Apparently that’s normal, but my aunties found it hilarious that Maddie (my school friend) and I were so amused. Someone eventually got the cow and tied it down, so of course we did what any normal American would do and took selfies with the cow in our traditional wear. There was also a crowd of village children that came to watch the wedding, but an even larger crowd showed up when they spotted the 2 muzungus wearing traditional attire. There might have been 50 kids watching us take pictures with a cow who crashed a wedding, which to them seemed absolutely ridiculous. The actual bridewealth part of the ceremony was so elaborate, with almost an hour of family members carrying baskets of gifts for the bride’s family. The gifts ranged from cases of soda, to fruit, to suitcases, to a lifetime supply of laundry detergent, some chickens, and even a cow. The gifts filled the entire room, and just as you thought the gifts were finished, ten more would come out. The ceremony was very different from anything I’ve ever seen in the US, but it was amazing to me the tradition that is preserved within the introduction. One of my aunties told me that after this ceremony, the marriage is considered valid in the Buganda kingdom, and some don’t even have an official wedding with a marriage certificate. Ugandans know how to throw a great ceremony!

Bringing the gifts for the bride's family

Yep. That's a rooster (the guy is wearing a canzo)

One of the other students on the program invited all of us to his homestay brother’s 1^st birthday party earlier this week. He also invited me to bring my little sister Grace who was in the same class as his other sibling Amos. After class, we went to the Primary school to pick up Grace and Amos, who were so excited to see us. I have to say that we probably gave them a really great popularity boost because all of the kids were stunned to see their Muzungu siblings, however it kind of looked like we were kidnapping them with the 5 of us walking around with 2 little children (we got some confused looks on the street). The party itself was relatively small, mostly just family and us, but we had a blast hanging out with all the kids and just being together. Birthday parties here are kind of like at home: loud music, dancing, so much food (although it’s Ugandan… I mean matoke food), cake and overall just a time to have fun. The one thing that is very different here is the way the kids are treated. The children are always served last. When it’s time to cut the cake, the kids must walk around and serve cake to all the adults before they are allowed to have any which was super strange to me, especially at a little kid’s birthday party.

Overall it was so much fun and it was nice to have a celebration amidst all the negative outlooks on development we have been learning about in class. Because development is so complicated we are constantly learning about the things that don’t work and the many issues Uganda faces, which makes things very bleak and difficult to come to terms with reality. However, the more time I spend with people here and the more I experience the culture I realize the many things that are going well and right. Despite the corruption of the government, conservative social atmosphere, and poverty that affects so many, the people in Uganda are the opposite of hopeless. They are hardworking, community oriented and overall joyful people. My experience thus far has taught me the many challenges that are in front of me and African development, but has also inspired me in so many ways through my daily interactions.

Me and my homestay mom

Also, I am leaving tomorrow for Rwanda and Western Uganda so I won’t have internet for a week or two but there’s more to come! 

For All the Foodies Out There

Like nearly every other culture, food is very important in Uganda. The days here revolve around sunlight and meals, and everything else works around that schedule. Like home, there are 3 mealtimes, however  breakfast is much earlier (around 6 am) and dinner is much later (between 8-10 pm). The food we eat is determined by what is available locally and what is in season. Since we are on the equator the products grown are very consistent throughout the year. Uganda’s main foods grown are bananas, coffee, wheat, avocado, tomatoes, potatoes, greens, onions, mangoes, ground nuts, rice, passion fruit, popo (a giant fruit that has a strange taste), watermelon, sweet potatoes, jackfruit (kind of slimy fruit), tea, sugar cane and pumpkin. As you can see there is quite a variety of food and everything we eat is locally grown.

Prepared matoke

Bananas are the most prevalent ingredient in food and there are many ways to prepare it in dishes. In the unripe form bananas are called matoke and they are mashed up and cooked (like mash potatoes). Ugandans are obsessed with matoke. They literally eat a mound of it every meal and it is always their favorite food (to me it tastes like bland heavy starch with a strange texture). The matoke is usually accompanied by 2 other starches: rice, spaghetti, bread or potatoes.  This part of the meal is the “food” and the other parts that have flavor are considered “sauce” (beans, veggies, spices etc). Lastly the meat if available (usually chicken, but sometimes beef or goat) is killed just before eating.

Last weekend my mom took me to my JaJa’s house (grandma: pronounced juh juh) to visit with the extended family while she ran errands for her mother. JaJa is the definition of a matriarch and everyone in the neighborhood treats her with great respect. Most of her family is not biological family, but extended family of her “children” that she has taken care of at some point, so they now look after her and work for her. She is like the boss that orders everyone around and supervises (the family has a cake business and sells chickens on the side). JaJa does not speak very good English, but was very kind and we spent hours learning from each other while we sat under a tree drinking tea. As we were sitting there a chicken walked by and I admired it. A few hours later while we were having lunch, I complimented the food and she proceeded to tell me that the chicken I was eating was the chicken I had admired. I was slightly freaked out, but she was so proud of it that I quickly came to terms with it.

Cakes my family made. (All of it is cake!)

The reason they day revolves so much around food is because of the time it takes to prepare a meal. So much effort is placed into each meal, that it is considered very rude if you do not finish your plate. The only problem with this is that the portions are HUGE, like a giant pile of food on your plate and if you are served the food, you must eat it. The meals consist of so much starch and very little meat or veggies, so I’ve had to learn to ask for katano (Luganda for less) rice and matoke with my meal. Even the “salad” here is really coleslaw, and vegetables are not considered food but instead are “vitamins”.  “Food” is that which fills you up and sustains you; vitamins, sauce and meat are additions to the food. Ugandans generally eat so much because many have very labor-demanding jobs which burn a lot of calories, so by the time you get to the meal you are very hungry. Additionally, bigger is better here and people want you to look “fat” to signify that you are well fed. Fruit is generally a snack, dessert or made into juice. The fruit tastes so much sweeter and fresher here, it’s by far one of my favorite things to eat.

This is what the normal meal looks like here

People never eat on the go here and meals are not rushed. Because meals are respected, people must sit down and take their time eating, sometimes meaning that your meal can take hours. If you get street food such as kabobs or chapati (like a pita) you must sit at a table before you can eat it.
The biggest thing I miss from home is the amount of vegetables I can have in a day. Because of this, my friends and I usually will go to the market and by avocados, tomatoes and other veggies to make salad for lunch every day. The food is so fresh, and almost nothing is processed here. Even the wine is Ugandan (although it is passion fruit wine, not grapes), and the beers are all from Eastern Africa.

The most important detail that I forgot to mention is that I can eat gluten here! The way they process gluten is different here and doesn’t make me sick so I am able to eat bread, and anything with flour as long as it is from Uganda. I never used to understand the locavore craze, but now that I am eating only foods that are grown locally I must say that the quality of food is much better and cheaper! 

It's not unusual to see a slab of meat lying around in the living room. (this is a cow thigh)