So I thought I'd start this blog with a view of the taxi park.  All those small white things are the minibuses we take most days to and from work.  We take one from the hotel to these steps then walk down into that mess to find a 2nd one to take to work and do the same in reverse in the evening.  It's a madhouse down in the park so it's always interesting finding our minibus.
     Next I thought I'd show you some pictures of an outreach clinic I went to on Monday in a small town called Semuto which is about 60 Km from Kampala.  To begin with here are some of us crammed into a TASO van which we ride to all the outreach areas.  Next is a picture of Mathias, a counselor, with a group counseling session in the back of the building, which we borrow from the community health center, and set up under the trees.  Counseling and medical care takes place under these big trees and inside the building we set up a pharmacy and a small lab.

TASO STAFF IN THE VAN



Mathias and a group of clients in a counseling session



Medical staff at the tables with clients sitting in front waiting to be seen

In the pharmacy drugs are handed out through the front window

This is the traveling pharmacy set up in the building

This is the lab

And here is our van at the front of the building which we use

I won't do much of a narrative this week.  I want to show you what I did this weekend which was a trip to Murchinson Falls which included a rhinoceros sanctuary, a jeep safari, a boat ride on the Nile, a climb up the path beside the falls to the top, and chimpanzee tracking.  This was all done in 3 days so lots of activity.

The chimpanzees were very hard to photograph as they kept moving away from us either in distance or in height!  They were pretty amazing to watch as they mostly played and ate in the trees above us.  That's it for now  I love you   Anita

 

Uganda Wedding

Yesterday I went to a large wedding.  It was at the Anglican Cathedral in town.  A very pretty stone church built in the 1880's.

 
  The ceremony was the same in some ways and different in others.  After the vows and several sermons or talks in Uganda, one by the bishop, the couple stood in front and everyone came up and congratulated them and put money in a basket.  I don't know if that was for them but I think not, I think it was a church offering.

  Then a bunch of people got up and followed the clergy and the couple through a door in the back and we all waited and talked and then they all came out and the couple displayed a marriage certificate and everyone clapped and yelled.  We all left then.  Here is Nalongo and Salongo and a friend leaving

and the reception was across town 3 hours later.  My friend, Nalonga has a catering company on the side and was catering the reception for 700 people!  Nalonga, like most middle class folks here works really hard to support her family.  She has 2 bachelor degrees and 1 masters, counsels full time at TASO and does this side business which she says makes more money than her counseling job.  Her husband also seems to be always working.  They have 2 sets of twins so 4 boys , 2 who start university this fall, 1 in medicine and 1 in architecture. So back to the reception, lots of folks in fancy clothes.  Here is one who was adorable!

The reception had some differences from wedding receptions I have been to in the states.  The part I especially liked was when the bridal party got there (about 1 hour into the reception, they all came in kind of dancing to the music.  A "runner carpet " made of papery plastic had been laid down and strewn with petals and the church choir stood along the edges singing and dancing.

The wedding party walked in in small groups moving to the music being played with everyone clapping in time and calling out and making cheering noises.  It was fun.

  They also had a professional singer to entertain and a couple of MCs who told jokes and entertained people.  All in Luganda so I didn't get any of it.  But others did, there was lots of laughter.  I was there for 3 1/2 hours before I started to droop.  Hard to sit and listen and not understand a thing.  I either had to leave before dark or go home with Nalonga who, as the caterer,would be the last to leave so I bailed early.  Before the cake and the dancing!  I'm sure it went on for hours.  Ugandans like long loud parties but I'm not always up for it.  Another interesting thing was that the wedding food was exactly what many Ugandans eat twice a day, every day just a bit nicer.  I've met few cultures which eat so much of the same thing every meal.  They call it their staples and they really are.  Not like in the US, we say wheat is our staple but we don't have it in exactly the same form 2 or 3 times a day.  We have tremendous variety in our diet, even Americans like my parents who essentially had "meat and potatoes" every dinner.  The type of meat and potato at least changed.  Not here!  Below is a picture of my plate.  What you see starting at 10 o'clock and going clockwise is squash, rice, fried potatoes, more rice, matoca which is mashed green (unsweet) banana with a groundnut sauce, green beans and carrots, and chapati and a dab of greens.  The 2 rices and 2 veges made it special.  Everything else is served every day, 2 meals a day.

 So the last picture of the day, I'm heading home and Nalongo is heading back to supervise.

One last note and this one sad.  For you who don't know, Dee Bean, Steve's step Mom died on Friday.  She was a courageous lady who lived the last years of her life with amazing strength and an incredibly positive attitude in a tough situation as she had muscular dystrophy.  Here is a picture I took of her that she especially liked now several and maybe more) years ago.  I will miss her.     Love to all  Anita

Free time

So because I said this morning that I had no free time, I thought I should add a few pictures of some free time things that I have done.  On July 3rd Anand, another intern and I, visited an Ananda Marga project about 1 hour east of Kampala.  Dada Aksovananda runs a 400 person school and also takes care of 15 orphans in a  small village outside of Lugazi.  No electricity, no running water, no one in the village owns any motorized transport.  Dada is thinking of trying to buy a motorbike but everyone walks or bicycles.  The village is 25 minute motorbike ride from Lugazi so it's pretty isolated even though by US standards not that far from a big city.  The school was not in session on a Sunday but here are some pictures of the school and the countryside around it.
Here also are a couple of pictures of my friend Nalongo, a counselor at TASO.  We had lunch at her house after a short outreach day where dates got mixed up so few clients showed up.  Next week Nalongo has gotten me an invitation to the wedding of her pastor.  It should be very interesting and I will put up some of those pictures if I can take some.

So hope all is going well  Take care  Anita

Saturday, July 9

Well its been awhile since I posted.  I'm going to paste a few sections of my reports back to the various organizations I report to (both UNM and PHI, USAID who is paying for my internship.  It will give you an idea about the work I'm observing/doing, both the great things I'm learning and the challenges.  Then I'll put a few pictures up and give some info on what I'm doing in my spare time.
      I must tell you spare time except for the weekends is minimal.  I get up at 6:30 leave the hotel at 7:30 to get to work by 8:30 to 9am.  Get home usually between 5:30 and 7 pm.  It makes for very long days plus food shopping, clothes washing (we need to wash everything by hand), cooking, trying to read up on HIV/AIDS, occasional exercise.  You get the picture.  Much like the states but without transport everything just takes so much longer!  I can't seem to get time to do much else and am having some trouble with being too, too tired.  I think that will pass as I just get used to the schedule and the work place.  Being confused at work much of the time (where do I go, when will we leave, where is everyone, how long is the ride to where-ever, what will we do when we get there, how many clients, what paper work, when will we get home? ) Mostly I just wait by the van till people show up, get in and find out all the other stuff when I get there.  Otherwise I overwhelm people with questions.  They all know what's happening but I don't and they just don't think to tell me. It works and I'm getting very interesting experiences but the constant lack of pre- knowledge can be also be tiring.  I'm trying to at least ask the type of the outreach, how far it is and when we'll be back.
     Do I sound tired?  I am, but really, I"m really doing OK just being whinny.  No one said this would be a vacation - it's work!  And I'm learning incredible amounts of new things and people are as supportive as they can be.  They really want me to have a good experience.   So on with some journal entries:

Today is Thursday and it was a new experience.  We went to what was called “CD4 bleeding”  Taso is partnered with  communities where they do much of the HIV care in the community.  We went to the district office of this community where 30 people were waiting for their bi annual CD4 testing.  We all sat in a circle and everyone went around the circle and introduced themselves.  The foreigners were welcomed and then they were given 15 minute review on living positively with HIV.  The way talks are done the speaker says something like.  “The CD4 rate is very important, and the CD4 is  what?   --important”, and everyone says “important.”  Every few sentences they do this call/response and it really sounds beautiful and gets everyone’s attention.  None of it was in English but the speaker would also translate briefly what he was saying.  Then the work really started.  One person drew blood, the medical person saw the client for a medical review and then the counselor saw them for counseling.  We again observed as no one spoke much English.  It was a great set up for the community.  One woman with a bad cough told them that she had gone to the community health center for her cough but they only had 1 antibiotic which she couldn’t take.  The health center suggested she go to the pharmacy and buy an antibiotic but she didn’t have any money so couldn’t. The counselor explained that community had started a small “NGO” through the Taso Sustainable Livelihood Program.  Some TASO clients (HIV+ people) got a grant to run a small produce stand to make money for people in her situation.  The treasurer of the NGO gave the woman enough money to buy the drugs she needed.  Seemed like a wonderfull way to empower the community to meet their own needs.  I was very impressed.

I’ll tell you a funny experience that happened this week.  I was following the Assistant Counseling Coordinator, Patience, which is what I often do, when we suddenly went to the manager’s office and the small board room attached.  Patience and David who is head of HR and I sat down and I was suddenly in the midst of deciding how we were going to interview applicants for the preschool teacher position at the child care center.  I was told since I was a nurse I should ask something related to healthcare and we began.  Not only did I ask questions to the applicants but when we were done, I was requested to give my opinions about the candidates and also vote for my top applicant and my vote counted equally with the other two.  Fortunately, we all agreed on the top candidate so we didn’t have to have a long discussion.  I was really surprised.  Suddenly I’m part of a hiring committee for TASO, can’t see that happening anywhere where I have worked, that a short term student intern gets to make employee decisions.  It was great!  

I went to a high school for a “sensitization” meaning the drama group presented, then they broke down the students into small groups to discuss any questions they had, then anyone over 16 that desired, was tested for HIV.  Because the kids spoke English, I could fill out the forms and do simple counseling which was great.  I only counseled those who were HIV negative, as the message is simple but did join one of the discussions.  A lot of the questions were health related like why do I get pain with my periods?, what’s masturbation?, and what’s orgasm?  These were 16 and 17 year old girls.  They don’t seem to get much information about their bodies from school or family, based on what they were asking so it was really good for them to get a chance to ask.  They were given some answers that I disagreed with and I tried to address some of them to get in another perspective but found it difficult.  Don’t know when to interject what I know is factual when rubbing up against cultural differences.  Comments like abortion is bad, if you get pregnant you should have the baby or you can get Candida from a toilet seat or by being dirty so personal hygiene is very important. They also said to get medicine every time you get any problem.  Hygiene is important; sometimes medicine is needed but is it really the cause of infections or needed all the time?  I don’t think so, but maybe that is how it’s done here.  I couldn’t push in because I didn’t know.  Maybe that is the way you treat every thing.  I’ll try to get some answers but sometimes time passes and the questions never do get answered.  One of the frustrations with watching a culture from the outside but not always understanding “basic things” that every one else knows from being inside the culture.  Just have to keep observing, and questioning, and reasoning out things for myself.

So hopefully that gives you a little glimpse of my days, both the good and bad.  Here are a few pictures of some of the outreach I've done.

Drama Group

 

Staff with message tee shirts

Counseling and Testing at local church

Testing, same church

CD4 Bleeding

Emmy counseling.  He perched here until owner came back.  At CD4 bleeding

  We are going out so I'm going to post this.  Will try to add more very soon  Love Anita