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         I always complain about blogs that stop before people get home but mine almost turned out the same.  It's so hard to go back to writing once you get home.  I've been home 2 weeks and it now feels like I was gone a long time and that I never left.  I am glad I took lots of pictures so I can go back and look at them when it feels especially unreal.
         I had to write final reports for my experience for 3 differernt organizations so thought to make it 4 I would put a "final evaluation " up here too:

GHFP Final Report

Accomplishments

I participated in the following community and center activities at The Aids Support Organization (TASO) Mulago Center:

·         Three day orientation with the TEACH attaches (3 week internship program for professionals from any African country),

·         Five Outreach clinics,

·         One day of home visits,

·         Four staff trainings,

·         Two visits to USAID and the US Embassy, one with the Ambassador to Uganda,

·         Three  Community Awareness/Mobilization Drama Events with free HIV Testing and Counseling  available,

·         Two School visits,

·         One orphanage visit

·         Two  community CD4 blood draws and medical evaluation clinics,

·         Seven  days at the Mulago Center clinic,

·         Two lab visits,

·         Ten Community Drug Distribution Point clinics

·         One day of home care visits

·         Two days in the childcare Mother/Child clinic

·         One day of medical visits

·         Three days participating in the pharmacy

·         One planning meeting

·         One job interviewer panel for Nanny position

·         Two community volunteer meetings

·         One day of Home Based HIV Counseling and Testing visits

·         Three staff meetings

·         One day of  Prevention of Maternal to CHild Transmission clinic

·         One day participation in a Gender Based Violence Training

·         One day visiting Sustainable Livelihood Projects

Through the above activities I gained understanding in:

·         How a low resource setting organization, TASO, functions as a model for low resource setting organizations throughout Africa,

·         How donors’ goals and  changing objectives enhance and restrict an organization and the process which occurs in the organization to meet it’s responsibilities to its donors,

·         The cultural values in Ugandan society which enhance or prevent the behavioral change needed to decrease and/or eliminate HIV infection,

·         The use of drama, song, and dance as a tool for awareness, education, and mobilization for HIV prevention, testing and treatment,

·         Traditional and evolving gender roles in Ugandan society and how these roles impact HIV/AIDs,

·         Strategies to move prevention, testing and treatment services to non-centralized urban sites to increase the availability and accessibility of these services to specified high risk groups, such as newborn children of HIV positive mothers,  adolescents, rural communities, and low poor urban communities, and  

·         The use of trained community volunteers to increase client access to educational, preventative, medical and counseling services and projects for sustainable living.   

Contributions to the Development of My Global Health Career

I gained a great deal of information on the projects and programs of TASO, and how TASO, as a system, carried out its mission and goals.   On a personal level I also learned or became aware of many challenges I will personally face in my goal of an international public health career.   I think a successful long term, in-country international career which has always been my goal is only possible if I can reflect, assess, and then change the situation, or change my attitude, or be more accepting of about these aspects of this choice. These include:

·         The length of time it takes to reach an understanding of a culture, not my own.

·         Problems in accepting some of these cultural values.

·         Problems in communication and understanding because of language barriers.

·         The physical and emotional stress and tiredness of working day to day in a culture in which you are an outsider

·         The transportation issues which exist in much of the developing world.

·         The knowledge and frustration of knowing that most projects treat the symptoms but do not address the underlying causes of global and local disparities and the issues of social justice.

·         My feelings, personally, at being perceived as old because the average age of death is low in Uganda and other developing countries.

·         The cultural differences in time sense values

Aspects of the Internship Which Were Beneficial

Almost all aspects of the experience were beneficial.  I learned from both the positive and the negative.  I think the most valuable aspects of this internship and the aspects which made it different from all other internships to which I applied were the length of time of the internship, and that the internship placements were in indigenous organizations such as TASO.  In other internships I would have been working for a short time, for an American organization with American goals, objectives and time frames.  I would have gotten little real information about the culture but would have brought my tasks and done my expected outputs in a framework that was superimposed on this culture.  I might have been more comfortable, more efficient and less confused but I would have learned far less.    

Aspects of the Internship Which Were Least Beneficial

The thing I found the most stressful, which is different from least beneficial, (see above) was the enormous amount of time where I just didn’t do anything, and that the not doing anything was not under my control.  Long commutes, work transportation issues, staff  work time be done before community clinics, all of this lead to a great amount of my time feeling wasted. I continue to believe that it was something I needed to learn about the Ugandan and perhaps all African culture but I didn’t enjoy that part of the learning. {END OF REPORT}

     Back to the end of my trip The flight home was fine. We stopped in Amsterdam for 6 hours and took a train into town for a few hours. We visited a coffee place and meandered around the canals. Nice to get out of the airport and walk around.  We arrived in DC hot, tired and without 1 of my bags Of course the 1 with my clothes in it and a big presentation to the high ups in USAID scheduled for Tuesday. I borrowed/bought /
clothes and we all got prepared. The security at USAID, the Ronald Regan building, was heavy, about the same as the US Embassy in Kampala.
     We finally got to the room, I got out my flash-drive out with my presentation on it and…….the room we were in, in the largest government building in the US, began to sway. The strongest earthquake in decades made the floor suddenly move. So we all evacuated the building and spent 1-2 hours in a small park close to the building and then were allowed to return to the building for 45 minutes to pick up our things and then went back to the PHI offices several blocks away. I’m glad I hadn’t put a lot of time into my presentation as I would have felt really bad. Oh well we ate well that night!

Kampala street, last day in Uganda



Sustainable Livlihood Program



Sustainable Livlihood Program

Saying goodbye to Patience

New Hairdo, Uganda style

visiting Santa Fe  Steve, Anita, Sharada, Anjali , and Anjali's partner, Noah

Wedding reception

I had an uneventfull trip back to Albuquerque and a great time with my family last weekend at a wedding of a family friend.  Here are some pictures of my last days in Kamplala and my first days home.  This is my last blog for this trip.  I hope you have had a good time reading about an experience that I'll never forget.   Love  Anita