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.