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.