Well, it's been a whirlwind of week starting with the bombings here in Kampala.
When I woke up Monday morning, I never expected the series of events that would ensue leading up to today. I didn't find out about the bombings until I opened my email at 8 am and had three emails from the US Embassy. At first I didn't even open them because I figured it was just a reminder to update my contact information or some pointless reminder about living in Uganda. I read all my other emails and then read the first email from the embassy which warned all US citizens to return home because of an "incident" at "the rugby club." The next email had more details about the two bombs and that at least 60 people were confirmed dead.
I spent all day Monday watching the news and reading articles on the terrorist attacks. I researched Al Shabab, the terrorist group from Somalia claiming responsibility for the attacks and listened to the news reports as the death toll slowly climbed higher and higher. Some of my co-workers here at the office lost friends in the explosion and everyone was concerned there would be more bombings.
I emailed friends, family, UNC officials and the Agradu coordinators back home to confirm the safety of all the interns here. Luckily, Scarlet and I are the only two who were in Kampala, and our neighborhood is located on the other side of the city from the sites of the two bombings. Our director assured us that we would be safe where we are, but after talking to my parents and different people from UNC, I have decided that the best course of action is for me to return home early.
It was actually pretty difficult to get my flight changed and Emirates made me jump through tons of hoops to finally get them to put me on a flight on Saturday afternoon. I was hesitant to change my flight right away because I wanted to wait and hear from the Embassy about their stand on the situation, but they have released no other statements since the first Warden's message on Monday releasing basic information about the bombings. After the discovery of a fourth bomb on Monday night at a local nightclub and various bomb scares all over town since then, I feel confident in my decision to leave. I actually went into town yesterday, and it was really weird. It seemed deserted, there were at most half the number of people who are usually out and the traffic was even less than that. Even though there were people were walking around, everyone seemed frightened and very wary of everyone else. Today Avery told me that as she was walking through town with her big backpacking-size backpack that people were asking her (seriously) if she had a bomb in her bag.
It's unfortunate that these are the terms on which I will leave Africa, but I don't think it will greatly tarnish all the memories I have made. I will miss Uganda, especially all the people who I have become friends with over the past two months. Rehema and Vaal gave birth to their babies today (Vaal had a boy, Ethan, and Rehema had a baby girl!) I was looking forward to seeing more of the newborns and hanging out with George and Immaculate at the office. It's been a busy 2 months here; full of grant writing, research, and intern projects. We successfully built tippy-taps, enhanced local sanitation clubs in Katosi and helped train women members of KWDT in book-keeping management and team-building. I've learned a lot being here and had some crazy cultural experiences, too many to count. Living in a foreign country where you are the only white person is an adventure everyday. Just going out to buy vegetables for dinner turns into a performance as children rush out of their houses to stare as you walk by. As much matooke and bananas as I've eaten here, it may be awhile before I even think about anything banana, but for some reason I think that I will actually one day miss it (unclear exactly when that may be)
I'm coming home laden with Uganda items and crafts and tons of pictures of all my experiences. I can't wait to see family and friends and have ice cream and strawberries and blueberries. I've had a fabulous time Uganda, for my first trip to Africa, you didn't do too bad.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
anecdotes
1. i really don't understand Canadian humor. it's a strange combination a dry-wit, crude jokes and rudeness. this, combined with the terrifying nature of bujagali falls in the Nile river, does not make for a pleasant experience with a Canadian "tour" guide.
2. i saw someone get shot while I was visiting a town called Fort Portal. the driver of a car of stolen goods refused to stop his car at a police checkpoint, and so the police barracaded the car, and then shot the driver in the leg. just goes to show that those 1995 ak-47's all the police carry around actually have bullets.
3. one time, a blind ugandan man literally sat in my lap on the matatu ride back to Kampala after doing some field work in katosi
4. dust is the equivalent of oxygen, although less desired and more unhealthy
5. bananas can be made into anything and are served at every meal. you can steam them, roast them, boil them, mash them, fry them, bake them, saute them, any-way-you-can-possibly-think-to-cook-something them
6. i've seen a whopping total of 2 stoplights in this entire country
7. mutant bananas are not rare and can often come in "twins". it's kind of freaky.
8. you can, in fact, be in two places at once (see photo for proof)
2. i saw someone get shot while I was visiting a town called Fort Portal. the driver of a car of stolen goods refused to stop his car at a police checkpoint, and so the police barracaded the car, and then shot the driver in the leg. just goes to show that those 1995 ak-47's all the police carry around actually have bullets.
3. one time, a blind ugandan man literally sat in my lap on the matatu ride back to Kampala after doing some field work in katosi
4. dust is the equivalent of oxygen, although less desired and more unhealthy
5. bananas can be made into anything and are served at every meal. you can steam them, roast them, boil them, mash them, fry them, bake them, saute them, any-way-you-can-possibly-think-to-cook-something them
6. i've seen a whopping total of 2 stoplights in this entire country
7. mutant bananas are not rare and can often come in "twins". it's kind of freaky.
8. you can, in fact, be in two places at once (see photo for proof)
Kampala bomb blasts
If you follow international news you may already know this information.
Last night, two bombs went off in Uganda's capital, Kampala. The bombings were at two bars where people were gathered to watch the final match of the 2010 World Cup. At least 64 people are confirmed dead and many others are injured. Police are still investigating the source of the attacks, though the largest suspect is a group called Al Shabab, a terrorist group from Somali that has threatened Uganda in the past.
All of the interns are safe. Scarlet and I were the only two in Kampala at the time and their house is safely located on the other side of Kampala in a suburb at least 20 minutes away from the bombing sites. We are still waiting to hear from UNC and from the US Embassy if it is safe for Americans to remain in Uganda.
I just wanted to let everyone know that we are all safe and no one is any immediate danger.
Last night, two bombs went off in Uganda's capital, Kampala. The bombings were at two bars where people were gathered to watch the final match of the 2010 World Cup. At least 64 people are confirmed dead and many others are injured. Police are still investigating the source of the attacks, though the largest suspect is a group called Al Shabab, a terrorist group from Somali that has threatened Uganda in the past.
All of the interns are safe. Scarlet and I were the only two in Kampala at the time and their house is safely located on the other side of Kampala in a suburb at least 20 minutes away from the bombing sites. We are still waiting to hear from UNC and from the US Embassy if it is safe for Americans to remain in Uganda.
I just wanted to let everyone know that we are all safe and no one is any immediate danger.
Friday, July 9, 2010
to: my friends
excerpt from a NY Times article, "Friendship in an Age of Economics"
Friendships worthy of the name are different. Their rhythm lies not in what they bring to us, but rather in what we immerse ourselves in. To be a friend is to step into the stream of another’s life. It is, while not neglecting my own life, to take pleasure in another’s pleasure, and to share their pain as partly my own. The borders of my life, while not entirely erased, become less clear than they might be. Rather than the rhythm of pleasure followed by emptiness, or that of investment and then profit, friendships follow a rhythm that is at once subtler and more persistent.
...
Friendships, although lived in the present and assumed to continue into the future, also have a deeper tie to the past than either of these. Past time is sedimented in a friendship. It accretes over the hours and days friends spend together, forming the foundation upon which the character of a relationship is built.
...
Of course, to have friendships like this, one must be prepared to take up the past as a ground for friendship. This ground does not come to us, ready-made. We must make it our own. And this, perhaps, is the contemporary lesson we can draw from Aristotle’s view that true friendship requires virtuous partners, that “perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good.” If we are to have friends, then we must be willing to approach some among our relationships as offering an invitation to build something outside the scope of our own desires. We must be willing to forgo pleasure or usefulness for something that emerges not within but between one of us and another.
We might say of friendships that they are a matter not of diversion or of return but of meaning. They render us vulnerable, and in doing so they add dimensions of significance to our lives that can only arise from being, in each case, friends with this or that particular individual...
- todd may
Friendships worthy of the name are different. Their rhythm lies not in what they bring to us, but rather in what we immerse ourselves in. To be a friend is to step into the stream of another’s life. It is, while not neglecting my own life, to take pleasure in another’s pleasure, and to share their pain as partly my own. The borders of my life, while not entirely erased, become less clear than they might be. Rather than the rhythm of pleasure followed by emptiness, or that of investment and then profit, friendships follow a rhythm that is at once subtler and more persistent.
...
Friendships, although lived in the present and assumed to continue into the future, also have a deeper tie to the past than either of these. Past time is sedimented in a friendship. It accretes over the hours and days friends spend together, forming the foundation upon which the character of a relationship is built.
...
Of course, to have friendships like this, one must be prepared to take up the past as a ground for friendship. This ground does not come to us, ready-made. We must make it our own. And this, perhaps, is the contemporary lesson we can draw from Aristotle’s view that true friendship requires virtuous partners, that “perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good.” If we are to have friends, then we must be willing to approach some among our relationships as offering an invitation to build something outside the scope of our own desires. We must be willing to forgo pleasure or usefulness for something that emerges not within but between one of us and another.
We might say of friendships that they are a matter not of diversion or of return but of meaning. They render us vulnerable, and in doing so they add dimensions of significance to our lives that can only arise from being, in each case, friends with this or that particular individual...
- todd may
july snapshots
some pictures to help you visual what i've been working on during july!
trio primary school students. these kids were a handful and a half (they wanted me to ake videos of them all "kung-fu fighting"), but their postcards were beautiful!
postcards for progress project with Katosi C/U sanitation club. we are helping to set up pen-pals with students from schools around Katosi:
bio-sand filters for clean drinking water, constructed by women masons at KWDT's masonry in Katosi. three of the women's groups are receiving these as awards for their excellent records keeping:
1/5 successful tippy taps built at St. John Bosco Primary School in Katosi. all in a days work with the sanitation club!
at the women's leadership/book-keeping conference. the workshop i held was on team and trust building. the game we played was called "mine field":
trio primary school students. these kids were a handful and a half (they wanted me to ake videos of them all "kung-fu fighting"), but their postcards were beautiful!
postcards for progress project with Katosi C/U sanitation club. we are helping to set up pen-pals with students from schools around Katosi:
bio-sand filters for clean drinking water, constructed by women masons at KWDT's masonry in Katosi. three of the women's groups are receiving these as awards for their excellent records keeping:
1/5 successful tippy taps built at St. John Bosco Primary School in Katosi. all in a days work with the sanitation club!
at the women's leadership/book-keeping conference. the workshop i held was on team and trust building. the game we played was called "mine field":
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
blender chicken
Blender chicken. No, that is not some weird type of Ugandan smoothie. It is actually in fact a breed of chicken that looks, believe it or not, like it went through a blender. Blender chickens usually have no feathers on their heads or necks, and then the rest of their body is sporadically covered in a spotty coat of decrepit, dirty feathers. Easily the strangest domestic animal.
Wednesday night: Scarlet and I are back in Kampala. We left Kampala early Monday morning to go to Katosi for field work for the past three days. This weeks work consisted on initiating pen-pal programs in two primary schools in Katosi. The program is called "Postcards for Peace" and is an initiative to use art and music to promote relationships between children in different countries. The 55 students that we interviewed and collected postcards from will be paired with students from Rwanda where another UNC student is working on the same project. The first day we went to Katosi C/U Primary School where we met with Christopher, the head teacher, who helped us immensely with coordinating the students and their music. We recorded the whole class singing a few songs such as their school anthem and their sanitation club song. Then Scarlet recorded each individual student singing their favorite song while I worked with the class on creating postcards with a picture on one side depicting something that represented them or their family and a letter on the other side introducing themselves.
It was really fun to work with all the kids and they drew some great pictures and wrote even better letters. Things got a little chaotic when I brought out the stickers and then even more so once I brought out the camera, but it was still enjoyable despite feeling minorly claustrophobic as the kids crowded around me to see their picture on my camera.
After working all afternoon, Colleen showed Scarlet and I this awesome path up to the top of the cell-phone tower hill overlooking Katosi. We sat on some big boulders at the very top of the hill and just enjoyed the view for a while. After we returned to the KWDT compound on the main strip of Katosi (downtown Katosi is the equivalent of approximately 100 little shacks selling random things; either produce, kitchen goods, CD's, food or some other random necessity. Our Ugandan friend Dorothy came over and we had dinner and watched the movie "17 Again" with her (Katosi finally got power back this past Saturday!)
Tuesday morning we went to Trio Primary School to set up the pen-pal program there also. I spent the morning assisting kids with decorating and completing their postcards while Scarlet recorded their personal songs. After the kids realized that I could record videos on my camera they all wanted me to take videos of them doing Kung-Fu fighting? At first it was funny and then I felt somewhat uncomfortable condoning violence so I ended that by telling them that my battery was dying (sorry kids!), but I did get a lot of good pictures of the kids working on their postcards.
In the afternoon we went to St. John Bosco to help Colleen and Avery work on some keyhole gardens with the sanitation club their. We were hoping to build 4 gardens on Tuesday, but one took a long time and a lot of effort, so it looks like it's going to be a longer process than expected. Although, this is good because it gives the sanitation club an ongoing project they can work on! Colleen bought seeds for them to plant, but the P-5 teacher, Martin, said it would be better to wait until August to plant after the rainy season has started because the soil is too dry now.
When we got home from St. John Bosco, Mama Gertrude showed us how to deep fry some small plantains and cut up some avocado for us to enjoy. Typical Ugandan snack!
Today's Matatu ride was one of the more uncomfortable 4 hours of my life due in part to the immense heat, the persistent dust cloud that stained my face and my blue t-shirt and red hue of clay, and the taxi seats that could potentially be classified as torture devices. We also had to wait for at least an hour for the taxi to even leave Katosi before we set out on our journey; however, we did finally arrive back in lungujja around one, only to find a completely empty office. Some kind of meeting happened today that everyone went to, so we set about hand washing our clay-stained clothes for the next hour and half.
It's been a wonderful week so far. I can't believe I'm only here for 2.5 more weeks. I'm currently reading the book "Three Cups of Tea" about a guy named Greg Mortenson who builds schools for girls in Pakistan. It's an incredibly inspiring story and a very well-written book, so if you're looking for some good summer reading, I highly recommend it!
Pictures to come. Promise.
ps - found out margaret's husband is a member of Uganda's parliament?! yeah. this past sunday, margaret invited us to join her and her family for a small celebration in a local village about one hour south of Kampala. It turned out to be a campaign rally for the elections next year and we got to experience some Ugandan politics! On the way home we stopped at the equator (took some pictures, obviously) and then got stuck in traffic trying to get back into Kampala for 3 hours. At one point, Margaret and I got out and walked for about half a mile just to stretch our legs. On the upside, we got back too late to make our own dinner so we got invited over to Margaret's for dinner and gossip girl. Best internship ever.
Wednesday night: Scarlet and I are back in Kampala. We left Kampala early Monday morning to go to Katosi for field work for the past three days. This weeks work consisted on initiating pen-pal programs in two primary schools in Katosi. The program is called "Postcards for Peace" and is an initiative to use art and music to promote relationships between children in different countries. The 55 students that we interviewed and collected postcards from will be paired with students from Rwanda where another UNC student is working on the same project. The first day we went to Katosi C/U Primary School where we met with Christopher, the head teacher, who helped us immensely with coordinating the students and their music. We recorded the whole class singing a few songs such as their school anthem and their sanitation club song. Then Scarlet recorded each individual student singing their favorite song while I worked with the class on creating postcards with a picture on one side depicting something that represented them or their family and a letter on the other side introducing themselves.
It was really fun to work with all the kids and they drew some great pictures and wrote even better letters. Things got a little chaotic when I brought out the stickers and then even more so once I brought out the camera, but it was still enjoyable despite feeling minorly claustrophobic as the kids crowded around me to see their picture on my camera.
After working all afternoon, Colleen showed Scarlet and I this awesome path up to the top of the cell-phone tower hill overlooking Katosi. We sat on some big boulders at the very top of the hill and just enjoyed the view for a while. After we returned to the KWDT compound on the main strip of Katosi (downtown Katosi is the equivalent of approximately 100 little shacks selling random things; either produce, kitchen goods, CD's, food or some other random necessity. Our Ugandan friend Dorothy came over and we had dinner and watched the movie "17 Again" with her (Katosi finally got power back this past Saturday!)
Tuesday morning we went to Trio Primary School to set up the pen-pal program there also. I spent the morning assisting kids with decorating and completing their postcards while Scarlet recorded their personal songs. After the kids realized that I could record videos on my camera they all wanted me to take videos of them doing Kung-Fu fighting? At first it was funny and then I felt somewhat uncomfortable condoning violence so I ended that by telling them that my battery was dying (sorry kids!), but I did get a lot of good pictures of the kids working on their postcards.
In the afternoon we went to St. John Bosco to help Colleen and Avery work on some keyhole gardens with the sanitation club their. We were hoping to build 4 gardens on Tuesday, but one took a long time and a lot of effort, so it looks like it's going to be a longer process than expected. Although, this is good because it gives the sanitation club an ongoing project they can work on! Colleen bought seeds for them to plant, but the P-5 teacher, Martin, said it would be better to wait until August to plant after the rainy season has started because the soil is too dry now.
When we got home from St. John Bosco, Mama Gertrude showed us how to deep fry some small plantains and cut up some avocado for us to enjoy. Typical Ugandan snack!
Today's Matatu ride was one of the more uncomfortable 4 hours of my life due in part to the immense heat, the persistent dust cloud that stained my face and my blue t-shirt and red hue of clay, and the taxi seats that could potentially be classified as torture devices. We also had to wait for at least an hour for the taxi to even leave Katosi before we set out on our journey; however, we did finally arrive back in lungujja around one, only to find a completely empty office. Some kind of meeting happened today that everyone went to, so we set about hand washing our clay-stained clothes for the next hour and half.
It's been a wonderful week so far. I can't believe I'm only here for 2.5 more weeks. I'm currently reading the book "Three Cups of Tea" about a guy named Greg Mortenson who builds schools for girls in Pakistan. It's an incredibly inspiring story and a very well-written book, so if you're looking for some good summer reading, I highly recommend it!
Pictures to come. Promise.
ps - found out margaret's husband is a member of Uganda's parliament?! yeah. this past sunday, margaret invited us to join her and her family for a small celebration in a local village about one hour south of Kampala. It turned out to be a campaign rally for the elections next year and we got to experience some Ugandan politics! On the way home we stopped at the equator (took some pictures, obviously) and then got stuck in traffic trying to get back into Kampala for 3 hours. At one point, Margaret and I got out and walked for about half a mile just to stretch our legs. On the upside, we got back too late to make our own dinner so we got invited over to Margaret's for dinner and gossip girl. Best internship ever.
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