Saturday, June 27, 2015

Starting Over

Starting over is never easy.  You have to say goodbye to friends, family, loved ones and a place you love.  In the past year i have had to do this twice - first coming to Peace Corps and second leaving my site in Southwest Uganda where i was supposed to be for my entire service.  After about a month of having no site, i finally moved into my new home in early May.  It all happened so fast, I went away for a week on vacation to Zanzibar, Tanzania, came back and had a new site within a week! I was so happy to finally have all my things again and my own home.  I am now living in Eastern Uganda in a village about 20 minutes outside of the popular tourist town, Jinja, home to the source of the Nile.  I am working at a private health center which my supervisor, Tabitha, opened on her own several years back.  Tabitha is not your typical Ugandan woman - she is extremely educated, has her PHD, has traveled and worked in Europe, works as a professor at Makerere university Jinja campus, is very progressive and open to any and all ideas for my work, is not married and has no children (not because she doesn't want either, because she can not find a man who matches her intellectual level!). She opened this health center using her own personal funds and continues to partially fund it from her monthly salary.  I admire her and have a lot of respect for her, its rare to find a woman of this caliber here! The clinic is still very small with 2 nurses, a lab technician, and her mother who has worked as a midwife her entire life.  As of right now most of my work is within the community and getting to know the place.  I was connected to a well respected local elder of the community, Mr. Steven, who is an older man in his late 60's who spent his entire life working in civil service and was once a member of the local government in that village.  He has been crucial to introducing me to the community and connecting me to the schools and already organized groups such as a woman's savings and loans group.  He has been so welcoming to me, inviting me into his wife and his home and also inviting me to an introduction ceremony for his nephew.  I attended with some girls from camp GLOW who came to stay with me.....photos of me below..... Anyways back to my work.  I am working with 2 of Tabitha's students who are doing their internship with me in the community for 2 months.  We have already done many outreaches to the primary and secondary schools within the community of the health center in the areas of HIV, Family planning, Primary health care and sex and gender.   We are working to create a youth group where youth meet at the health center once a week to learn information in the areas of health and life skills.  My goal is to create young leaders within the community who are passionate and motivated to go out and be the ones to facilitate lessons and teach others in these areas.

I live and work in 2 different villages (they are next to one another).  This has its pros and cons.  Pro's- work and personal life are separate, greater area of people i meet and can become friends with Cons- 25-30 min walk to work every day, sometimes feel disconnected from the community i work in since i dont live there.  Overall i like it though.  My walk everyday is beautiful, so green, and has allowed me to meet many people who live along the way who i would never have met had i lived near my work.  I live in a compound with two buildings which have 6 units in each.  Each unit has 2 rooms, a front living area and a back bedroom.  I have electricity but no running water.  I down-graded a bit from my last house to a latrine and no shower with running water, but thats ok! I never expected to have running hot water when i came to Peace corps!  This means i now have to fetch my water, lucky enough for me we have a tap inside the compound, so my walk to fetch water is maybe 20 ft.  There are several families living within the compound as well as a couple teachers who work at the secondary school up the road.  My direct neighbors next to me are great and i couldn't be happier to live next to them.  They are a young muslim couple, the man works as an engineer in town and the woman stays at home caring for the kids for now, but hopes to go back to work soon in the saloon.  They both speak english well and have 3 kids - Shaima (3.5), Sultan(2) and Abdul (9 months) (no family planning as you can see, but she says they are now finished!).  I immediately fell in love with their kids.  From day one they were always excited to see me and didnt have an ounce of fear for the new omuzungu.  Sultan is by far the funniest child i have ever met.  How do i even begin to describe him? He is very stubborn (in the Ugandan sense), he gets into EVERYTHING, does the silliest things, is constantly making me laugh while at the same time driving me CRAZY, but one thing i can always count on from him is a giant smile and a big hug every time i see him.  His poor mother definitely has her hands full with him and i feel so bad for her sometimes!

My new site has had its challenges, the first being my home was broken into within the first weeks, during the time my friend Brenna was visiting me.  Long story short, i wasn't home but came home and caught the boy in the act and nothing was stolen.  He somehow got a key to my door (we think from the prior tenant), but immediately the next day a welder was here to change my door and i now lock it with a padlock.  I am safe and lucky nothing was taken.  That was a huge upset for me and has really made me feel un-trusting of anyone here, but unfortunately thats just the way it goes.  Simply being new in a community has been hard, especially hearing "omuzungu" everywhere i go.  Ive worked hard to teach people my name "kyomugisha", and have made good progress, especially with the kids, however some days i just dont have the energy to correct people and just try to ignore it.  Some boda men at the roadside have also decided to give me a local name, "Nangobi", so where ever i go i hear either kyomugisha, nangobi, omuzungu or chelsea.  I really have acquired many names, but the one i mostly go by and tell people is Kyomugisha.  It became my identity and i like it much better than nangobi.  Also another challenge has been trying to learn a new language, Lusoga.  It is also a bantu language like Runyankole/Rukiga (the ones i studied), so there are some similarities.  I've got the greetings down and as i tell people, "i am learning, slowly slowly!".  So, a lot has happened in the last month and overall i am generally happy and feel like im making progress much quicker here in my work! My life generally is much easier here- I live much closer to a big town which makes it easy and cheap to go into town for things, i am closer to other PCV's which is great for emotional support and simply my sanity, however i do still miss my life and my friends in Kitanga.  Thank goodness for phones which make it easy to stay in contact!

Heres a BUNCH of pics from the past month and half at my new site....

Zulah and Irene (campers from camp GLOW) came to visit me in Jinja for a weekend :) 

Irene


Zulah re-arranging my food shelves (apparently i wasnt organized enough)

Irene preparing dinner :)


We went to a traditional introduction ceremony in the community i work in.  Here i am wearing a gomezi- the traditional wear of the Busoga people.

Zulah in her gomezi 


We decided to jokingly enlarge my bum (put a pillow in there) since they told me it was too small under the gomezi



The thing they put under the gomezi to make my bum look bigger :)










The bride




Stubborn Sultan and Shaima 

Heading to our outreach at the primary school 

handwashing session at the primary school 

Mercy (one of the nurses) and I 
Brenna's visit to Uganda!
some girls from camp GLOW 




ziplining through the mabira forest 


This is Tony.  Probably my closest friend in my new community.  He is in P6 and is so curious with such an appetite for learning.  He is well mannered, respectful, translates for me and loves teaching me Lusoga. He is an orphan- his parents died in a car crash and him and his sister are now cared for by their grandmother. She is always welcoming me with open arms into her home giving me tea and snacks and always sending Tony with mangos, avocados and beans for me.  Its amazing how people who have so little are SO much more generous than people who have so much!

Me, Tony and his grandmother
Elsie, one of the interns i have been working with 

Samuel and Elsie (interns).  When it rains here, the dirt roads become SO muddy that sometimes its just better to go barefoot!


Sultan enjoying my new couch 

Playing games with the kids at the primary school 

HIV session with P6

Learning about HIV


Some of my neighbors, Sharifah and Joann 

Free condoms for our outreaches!

Sultan being silly in my rain boots









1 comment:

  1. Love the pics. And I finally got an explanation about your grown-up bum!

    ReplyDelete