Week One, Done.

Wow, this week has flown by. I'm an amazed at how much fun I am having with these new experiences.
On Monday I mainly worked in the office and met more of the people that I would be working with, they are are very nice. I learned more about what I would be doing for the organization and what to expect when I go to the field school. ProMeTra has an area in the Mpigi district which they call the forest school, which is where the traditional healers participate in their training. So, every Wednesday the healers come to the forest school from their small villages to meet with other healers and to go to the classes. The healers are also grouped into village groups, which is a smaller group of healers in the local village areas that share a garden. We decided that we'd leave Tuesday morning, visit four of the village groups, go to the forest school for the usual training that takes place on Wednesday and then finish building the nursery there on Thursday then head home.
I got to the office at 9:30 on Tuesday morning, ready to leave for the villages at 10:30, which is what was decided on Monday. I soon found out that, as one of the local interns said, the East African Clock runs slower than the rest of the world. We ended up leaving at about 12:45. The forest school is very close to the town of Mpigi, but all of the villages we visited were all over western Uganda. I am amazed at all of the plants that these healers know, some had 400+ in their gardens. One of the villages, which was called "The Islands" because we needed to cross a road that was made through a lake, could only be accessed by a very narrow one lane road through very dense jungle. The majority of the people who live in these villages grow coffee as a cash crop, but interestingly enough most Ugandans I've met can't stand the taste. On the way to the islands we needed to pass a coffee truck which was at more than double capacity and almost tipped over, so to do so we pulled the car we were in into the forest and helped to push the coffee truck so that it was vertical again. What an experience...While driving, we passed several termite mounds. They are gigantic.All of the people here are so nice, every village that we visited gave us some sort of food, mostly fruit. Mangoes, papaya, avocado and something called jack fruit. I had never had it before, or even heard of it, but it was delicious. It grows in trees and looks like something that would kill you if it fell on your head, but once its open it looks like large honeycomb. You only eat the seed pods in the middle of the fruit, which are surrounded by a very sticky sap that can only be removed if you rub butter all over your hands, but its worth it. I am becoming pretty good friends with the interns from Makerere University in Uganda, and they were all amazed that I hadn't seen a jack fruit before.
After all of the field visits we headed to the forest school, on the way we stopped by a market. This was an interesting place, you could buy just about anything you want: any sort of meat on a stick, any of the 10 types of bananas prepared any way you want and just about any sort of soda that you can imagine. Because Uganda is on the equator, it is dark for almost exactly 12hrs so night here is sometimes more busy than the day and this was the case for the market we visited.
We got to the field school at about 930pm, it was a dorm set-up the a kitchen/fire area just outside the main door. I met a bigger woman there who everyone calls Manager, she is sort of the mother around the forest school. She oversees all of the food, does the cooking and organizes the sleeping arrangements for whoever is there. I shared a room with two of the Makerere interns, David and Emma (short for Immanuel). When I was getting ready for bed, Emma saw me take my contacts out, he thought that I was trying to take out my eye...we both laughed and he was intrigued by the contacts.
The next morning I got to see a lot more of the forest school, it was a very large area with a functioning banana plantation, cows, and maybe 50 acres of forest. I also visited a school and talked to a class of 11-15 year-olds who seemed to be infatuated with my hair. They asked how I kept it so brown and if I saw a hair dresser, haha.
Wednesday was training for the healers, they start each weekly session with a general assembly. This is where Umar (a spiritualist the works for ProMeTra) presented me and the gifts that I had given to the organization. All of the healers where very happy with them, thanks to all of the people at home who gave me stuff. Several of the healers started to dance around and the head of the forest school gave me a hug. Umar also gave me my Buganda name, Mirembe meaning peace and my clan, Enyoni which is the crested crane the bird on their national flag. When I was going from class to in the forest school, it began to poor. We ended up going to the building that the clinic usually is in and waited out the rain. 2 hours later we went to go find the classes, they were all very interesting.
In the last class I visited, the spiritualist class, Umar had some patients there who wanted to be healed so they were there consult Umar's spirit and to visit the clinic. In this class, I entered by eating two coffee beans (one for myself and one for my ancestors) then all of the healer who were sitting in a circle started to beat on drums and were all dancing. Umar then began to jump around was being controlled by his spirit I guess. He then took my hands, shook them, then looked at the crease lines on them and told me that I was indecisive and that the problem would be fixed if I dreamed about my ancestors....I haven't dreamed about them yet.
After observing the classes I went to the clinic with Umar to see how they practiced the traditional medicine. There were several people there, I think they saw 40 patients in less than 2 hours. Most of the patients that were there visited the "Western" hospital first and they were unable to do anything for them, ans most of those who had not seen a "Western" doctor were referred to them.
Thursday was a work day, the interns from Makerere are forestry and ecology students so as a project they were building a nursery. It was hard work, but I was sort taken aback when thinking about all of the people that needed to do this on a daily basis. It looks really good, we took a piece of land that was covered in vegetation and turned it into a nursery.
On the way home we stopped by the equator, it was not a interesting as I thought it would have been. It was basically a small monument just on the side of the road. Everyone who was in the car wanted to take a picture with me.
Friday I worked in the office, an began to develop some of the projects that I will be working on. One will be doing interviews and a questionnaire for the healers, one questionnaire for the patients of the clinic and a third project being to find a better way to document the patient visits at the clinic. Those should take up most of my time here.
Saturday I went into town, I needed to buy some things at the store. I bought this 'groovy sponge.' haha I invited some of the people who work in my apt building, the only person who could go was Zurah, the receptionist. I'm glad she went, she showed me this very good chicken restaurant in downtown Kampala for lunch.
That was a summary of my first week here, I'll blog again soon.

I am a muzungu.

This post was intended to be up on Monday, but the Internet in my apt building was out.

On Saturday I went downtown with Zurah, she took me to a store called Nakuamatt which is a giant department store, bigger than any I had seen at home. It was interesting to see all of the things that are the same as they are in the US, a lot of the canned foods looked familiar. One thing that surprised me was the price of furniture, there was a small glass patio table that I saw their was 300,000 USh (Ugandan shillings) or $120. I was amazed at the price; it is definitely the most expensive thing I’ve seen since I’ve been here.

Sunday was overcast and rained in the morning, all of the people that I talked to said how cold it was. One woman I talked to, Hamidah, who works in the restaurant, was so interested when I mentioned that I have cousins in Canada (HAHA @ Susan) and that it rarely gets about 0 Celsius for months at a time. She asked, “How do they grow things?” “How do they walk to school in such cold?” and “How do they do work?” It’s interesting, some of the things we take for granted other cultures are astonished by.

Sunday afternoon I whet for a walk in Kawempe, the neighborhood I live in. I walked to the police station and back, because that marks the start of the main road. Along the way, all of the children would shout muzungu and wave at me, I thought it was funny so I’d waved back. I later found out that muzungu is, literally, the word for outsider, but it has come to plainly mean white person.

Because it had rained earlier, there was a lot of mud on my walk so when I got back I needed to clean my shoes. I asked Zurah how I should do it. She went and found a boy named Ishmael. When I tried to clean my own shoes, he wouldn’t let me. In talking with him I found out that my building had a health club and that he was a personal trainer. He is 21 years old and wants badly to go to university so he is trying to work and save money. He showed me the health club and told he that a lot of younger people use the facilities, and when I asked to see what was in the first aid kit I noticed that there were no Band-Aids. I happened to have a box of spider-man Band-Aids (Thanks Brenda), he was flattered when I offered them to him. Ishmael wanted to talk more with me so he invited me to have lunch with him in the health club, I obliged. It turns out he wants to improve his English and because I want to improve my Luganda, we worked out that we would try to meet for lunch every Sunday.

Every time I meet someone new, they don’t think I am an American. This is what happened with Ishmael, he thought I was English because I didn’t sound like other Americans. We figured out that he was talking about people from the East Coast and the South who usually are hard the locals to understand because of their accents. WIN for the Great Northwest!

Sorry about the lack of photos, the wireless in my room was down so I needed to use satellite Internet to update my blog this time, that is why I couldn’t include any. I will put a ton in next time.

This week I will be at the field school from Monday afternoon to Thursday morning so I wont be around a computer as regularly as I am usually.

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for 5 days already, my time is going to go by very fast.

New Friends

As I was getting ready for bed and finishing up the last post, I found these guys waiting for some bugs to fly to the light just outside my room.

My first full day.

Brussels was an easy connection, i thought it was funny that they painted a fly in the urinal...to limit spillage I guess. ahaha
I love this place, the journey was long but so worth it.
When I arrived last night, it was dark so i couldn't see much, but there was so much going on.
Three of the people who I will be working with met me at the airport, Kato, Deda and Sadat. All three of these guys were very happy to see me, but that is because they thought they were late and that I had left that airport already. HAHA
Getting though customs was easy, we just waited in line for the customs officer to see us, then we payed the $50 for the visa and I was off.
It was about an hour drive from the airport to my apt. During the drive we had sort of a question and answer session about life in the US compared to like in Uganda. I tried to explain Maple Valley to these three guys and talked about the night life in Maple Valley compared to what I saw in Kampala, but Kato replied "It sounds like you live like chickens, waking with the sun and going to bed at 10." We all laughed.
We first went to the PRO.ME.TRA. office where I received my first gift from Sadat, an avocado from the tree in the front yard. We then went to my apt building, Bulongo's Apartments, where I met Zurah. She is the receptionist at the apt buliding, she made us dinner; a chicken sandwich. It was a nice introduction to Ugandan food. Then I was off to bed, mosquito net and all.
I didn't sleep well, but I guess that is because I was nervous for my first day in the office and was battling jet-lag.
At 5am I found out that there was a mosque behind the apt building with the call to prayer. I also found out that there is a school there, by the sounds of children playing and also a goat.
The surroundings are completely different in the day time.
At 8:30 Zurah knocked on my door and offered me breakfast, which is now know i included in the cost of my room. I had freshly made bread, pineapple, papaya and what they call African Tea. This is possibly the best tea I have ever had.
At breakfast I talked with my server, Disire. He just started working 3 days prior to my arrival. He started teaching me some Luganda, the local language. I hope to be able to carry a conversation by the time I leave.
After breakfast Zurah walked me to the office, because I probably wouldn't have been able to find it again. Kato met us half way in the car.
At Prometra I met Laura, an master student at the University of Montana and another intern. Sadat and Deda were there too.
In all of these introductions, Laura pointed out that Luganda doesn't have the English "L" or "R" sounds, the locals call her Rora and I think they have been calling me Tyra. haha
Kato, Laura and I then went to Makerere University, which had 70,000+ students, to meet with a professor who focuses on the geography of tourism. Prometra has a field school where traditional healers are trained about 65km (~40 miles) from the city, and it is a current goal to increase tourism to this field school. I met several interesting professors at the university and an anthropology prof offered for me to sit in on some lectures.
On the way back we stopped by the bank and a store, their currency is so beautiful...not just green.
After this meeting we went back to the office where I met some other interns who are from Makerere, Emma (short for Immanueal) and Diana who are all forestry students. Diana was listening to Katy Perry, Medi was listening to Cher. haha I also met Medi and Umar, both of who work for Prometra. We had a meeting with everyone, which I guess is usual for Fridays. Everyone talked about their goals for the upcoming week and what the want to accomplish at the forest school. Also, FYI I wont be checking my computer from Tuesday night to Thursday morning each week because I will be at the forest school. In the meeting I think I found a possible project that I will be working on, writing a report evaluating the success of Prometra over the past 10 years. I think I'm going to do this through interviews with the traditional healers at the field school.
After our meeting I was asking about getting a call phone, it is a good thing I brought my phone from home, the SIM card was only 2000 shillings, less than a dollar. The whole country runs on a pay-as-you-go system, its really easy to use. If anyone finds themselves in Uganda, my number is 078-113-2250. :)
The jet-lag caught up with me, I fell asleep in the office. I walked back to my apt with Laura, who has an apt about 400m away. I then took a long nap, then headed to dinner. Before dinner I visited Zurah in her office, and she started to give me Luganda lessons, today was counting and the name of food stuff.
For dinner I had millet or talapia with some Irish Potatoes (as compared to sweet potatoes) and a glass bottle Coke. It was pretty good and only 9,000 Shillings or $3.90.
Now its 10:15 pm here and I am just finishing my Coke as I blog, we'll see what tomorrow has in store.

Safe!

I made it here safely...so many new experiences and stories already. But I'm too tired to blog, I'll tell you about them tomorrow.

Made it to Philly!

I'm here... had a sandwich and am ready for the journey to continue.
One leg down, two to go.

My Adventure Begins!

Hey everyone,
I hope it was easy to find this, chances are you got it in an e-mail from my Dad. :)
I am sitting in Sea-tac watching all of the people go off on the summer adventures. As i was checking in the guy at the ticket counter, who apparently has been working at Sea-tac for 25 years, said that he had never check-in anyone heading to Uganda before.
This truly is a once in a life time experience.
I am so exited for the adventures that lay ahead, but lets get all of this flying out of the way first.
I'm due in Uganda in 25 hours, by way of Philadelphia and Brussels.

Hopefully everyone can come here to follow along, but I will also be on facebook and e-mail the whole time.

See you all in September.
Now off to explore the world!
-Tyler