Mountain Tops, Mud and Bodas...best trip ever!...Maybe

So last week I got back from my trip to Eastern Uganda, I’ve just been really busy and haven’t had a chance to type this up yet…

Anyway… I was really not looking forward to this trip East. Before my trip to the West and Rwanda I was really excited and couldn’t wait to get out of Kampala. But before this trip east I had finally started really enjoying Kampala and feeling at home there. I knew when I got back that I would only have a little more than a week left in Kampala before my practicum started so I was not excited to leave. I didn’t start packing until about 15minutes before I had to leave my home-stay…if that says anything about how much I didn’t want to go.

And of course, because I packed in a rush, I forgot a lot of things that I wanted to bring, so when I showed up at the group meeting place I was tempted to turn around and go back home to stay.

I am saying all this so you know my state of mind before the trip, so that when I say that I had an amazing time. I’m really not just saying it. The way I felt about the trip before hand meant that it was going to take a lot for me to have a good time and I had more than just a good time.

Here now is a good time to warn you that this will probably be another long entry…Also I tried to upload pictures but it wasn't working so I will try again soon...

Mbale

We left Kampala on Sunday morning and drove to Mbale. We got there at about 2 and proceeded to have what I think might have been the longest lunch of my life only because it took over an hour to get our food. The food was good though. Then we went to the guest house…it was run by the Church of Uganda…aka the Anglican Church (they changed their name I think because of some of the issues in the international communion…someone told me that but I am not sure)

Then before dark we took a drive up this mountain. We were in two taxis and we were driving through this wet patch and you could feel the car fish tailing underneath us…it was fun. I was in the first van and we were able to make it through the mud but the second one got stuck. After a couple of attempts of trying to reverse and drive through the mud a crowd had gathered. And a bunch of kids helped to push it out of the mud. It was pretty awesome.

TASO Mbale

One morning we visited TASO aka The AIDS Support Organization. Its an organization in Uganda that works with people who have HIV/AIDS mostly through counseling. They also distribute medication and provide clinical services for their clients. It has done a lot of work to combat the stigma of HIV/AIDS in rural communities. There is a lot more that can be said about the organization but overall it is considered to be a really successful organization and similar organizations in Africa have tried to model themselves off TASO Uganda.

The have a dance group that is made up of some of their HIV Positive clients and they go around to different communities and perform pieces that raise awareness about the different aspects of HIV/AIDS. They performed for us and then a few shared their stories with us about how they became infected or how they decided to get tested and how they dealt with the results. The stories were pretty incredible but for me what I was most struck by was their strength and ability to confidently tell their stories in a place were not very long ago it would have been taboo to talk about with severe consequences.

Sipi Falls

After in Mbale we drove to Sipi Falls and stayed at a place called the Crows Nest; an adorable place on a mountain. It had all these little cabins that were very cozy. The cabin I stayed in looked out onto the Mountain with the falls. I think there are three of them. Everytime I go someplace in Uganda I think to myself ‘How could this country get more beautiful?’ and then I go to the next place and am again amazed by how beautiful the country is.

We went hiking twice while we were at Sipi and when I say hiking it wasn’t exactly walk in the woods…it was intense…people have broken bones. And to make it more difficult the rainy season had started there so it was really wet and slippery.

On the first day we hiked to the first waterfall. It was scary and I was slipping every few steps but luckily I was able to catch my balance every couple of steps. Once we got to the Waterfall it was so worth it. It was amazing watching the power of the water crash into the rocks. We stayed there for a couple minutes and then we had to hike back again.

The next day we hiked to a different fall. And again it was really slippery as we climbed up what seemed like vertical mud and then through a creek. And then we got to a cave type place where the waterfall was. And then we climbed down into the waterfall. It was hard to get down to it and the water was freezing but being there in the falls was this amazing feeling. You felt so alive and all you could do was yell and laugh. (Sidenote now that I am back safe and sound, we weren’t allowed to go in the cave because recently someone got Marburg from one of the caves in the area)

As we were hiking back we were walking along this narrow muddy ledge and I slowly started slipping and next thing I knew I was slipping down the mountain and grabbed onto a root. A couple of friends grabbed my arm so I didn’t fall and then I had to pull myself up again. Afterwards I was really happy I had almost fell…it was exciting!

That night we sat around the campfire and some of the guys at the hotel taught us traditional dances most of them which are performed during circumcisions, some of them for female circumcisions. It was a lot of fun and you were able to gain an understanding of the cultural role circumcision plays whether you agree with it or not.

Then at like 11pm me and a friend climbed up the mountain with our pillows and blankets to sleep. I really wouldn’t recommend climbing up a mountain at night carrying anything. That night about 10 of us slept on top of a mountain. We had a 360 degree view and there was a full moon. In one direction we could see mountains with the falls and in another we could see a huge lake. Over the lake there was a lightning storm. It was amazing. I woke up more than a few times in the middle of the night and the stars were awesome, so big and brilliant. I have never seen stars so big. That morning I woke up just before the sun rise and could still see the moon set as the sun was rising in the other direction. I don’t think anything else I write could do the view justice.

Also while staying at Sipi Falls I visited with this community who had been pushed off their land because of the establishment of Mount Elgon National Park. The government pushed them off the land without providing any sort of resources or support for them to resettle. Now some still live in the park where they have to hide from park officials so as not to be shot all because they cannot afford to leave. Some park officials also rape the women in the surrounding communities. Overall it seemed like a problem that was largely ignored by the government, even the areas own MP. Its strange to think that Mount Elgon is a place that draws tourists and the whole time you are there you could have no idea that these people are suffering for the sake of someone’s vacation.

Rural Home-stay

After the time at Sipi falls we drove to Busia (which is right on the Kenya border and near the village where Obama’s family lives!)

From there we were divided into partners and were taken to our rural home-stays. In the taxi I kept hoping that I would be dropped off last so that I could see where everyone else was staying…and of course I was dropped off first.

My friend and I walked to my family’s compound and was greeted by our home-stay mother and shown to our hut where we would be sleeping. Then we sat awkwardly outside as the children gathered staring at us. One started crying when she saw me but I was assured that it was because she has never seen a white person before.

After we got bored of sitting awkwardly we asked the mom if we could take a short walk around the village and she said we could go to the borehole with the kids. Most of the kids didn’t speak English or only knew the few words they had learned in school so it was hard to talk to them. But amazingly when it comes to playing games there is no language barrier. So during the walk we ran around chasing them and having fun.

My rural home-stay family was amazing though. My home-stay father was the secretary of defense for the village (and after many questions I still have no idea why the village needs a secretary of defense). There were 2 wives but we only met the 2^nd wife. And there were so many kids in the family; I would guess 15. Lets see their names were Esther, Irene, Beatrice, Sara, Patrick, Peter, Dennis, Adrian, Francis, Kate (the one who cried), Patricia, Raphael, Mukaga, Godfrey, Sharon and John. Ya I think that’s all of them.

The kids were adorable and each one with their own unique amazing personality and my favorite would always be the one that I was playing with at the moment. They were so happy and the little ones who were too young for school would just play all day. It was amazing the way they could entertain themselves and how they could just run nonstop all day. Every kid in the family had this amazing smile too. They were so beautiful. They would smile at you and get these really big eyes and you couldn’t help but smile back and forget how dirty you were or that a hen slept under your bed all night, or that there were rats living in your thatch roof.

Our last night there we were dancing and playing with about 6 or 8 of the kids and had a sing along where we taught them different songs; just singing outside on the compound under the moon and starts singing “He’s got the Whole World in His Hands.”

More Stories from the Village

During our stay there we were supposed to be practicing our field research skills using Participatory Rural Appraisal and/or Rapid Rural Appraisal, so the next day we visited the hospital which was a 3km walk from the homestead and also visited the primary school. The following day we visited a lot of homesteads and went to a secondary school. Most of these visits confirmed a lot of things that I had read about or learned in classes such as the successes and failures of the governments Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) and agriculture issues but at the homesteads it was fascinating talking to people about their individual hardships.

We came to this elderly family, a man and his 2 wives, who were probably in their 60s. They described to us how their children had died, most from AIDS, and that now they were taking care of their children’s children. They found this particularly difficult because they depended on agriculture to generate income but at their age the intensity of the labor was too much for them. They only use a simple hoe. They asked us if we knew of any organization that supported the elderly who were taking care of orphans and I couldn’t think of anything. I have always heard so much about AIDS orphans at orphanages but I have never heard of any organization that was working to help families that were trying to take care of the orphans…If anyone knows one please let me know

We me another man who was a widower trying to take care of his family. His compound was so clean and you could tell that he was trying his best to play the role as both father and mother.

There was another young woman that we talked to whose husband had died a couple years ago from AIDS and she too was HIV positive. She talked about how hard it was to make a living in agriculture when it was just her. She was also worried about her children’s future because when she dies she doesn’t know who will take care of them because she doesn’t have any family.

Lets Talk Poverty

So I talked to my friends here and many of them were blogging about the intense poverty in the village. And its true there was a lot of poverty. My family there never changed their outfits the whole time I was there. And ripped torn rags could qualify as an everyday outfit. And as you visited the homesteads you could see malnourishment. And you could see that farmers were having trouble increasing production of their crops for kinds of reasons and even in the schools all the hardships that teachers and students face just so that you can get a basic education. The poverty there is exactly what you might think of when you think of rural Africa…

But in the village there is something else. The same sort of feeling I got when I was in Southern Sudan. A simplicity that can’t be ignored and denied. Living off the land, eating what you grow and selling the surplus. Spending the night singing under the stars because there’s no electricity. Dropping what you might be working on to welcome a visitor into your home and offering food when they themselves have so little.

The village faces real problems or poverty that need to be overcome but at the same time there is something about that way of life that is beautiful and that in the process of development should not be lost. Too often I think muzungus come to a place like Africa, especially in the village looking for what they can fix. And there are things that need to change. But I think we shouldn’t focus on what needs to be fixed. I think when you go to the village you should look for whats there. For whats beautiful. For what works. And gain an understanding and appreciation for their lives and it is from that point you can encourage change to eradicate the poverty.

My First BodaBoda Ride

Yep, that’s right I rode a boda!! In order to get from my village back to Busia town I had to bet on a boda (motorcycle for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about) It was awesome, riding through the dirt roads, speeding past all the bicycles, wind in my hair. I loved it and can’t wait to ride one again…but I still will never ride one in Kampala.

Ok well this entry has been long enough. Thanks for reading!