Coming Home

As I am sure you can imagine, hospitals in the third world are not like hospitals in the U.S. And if you have ever even had a head cold, and are anything like me, being sick makes you a little emotional and wanting for your family and close friends. Spending two days in a Ugandan hospital, being very sick, without my family or close friends was a testing experience. I have been very lucky that my country director Cami took very good care of me, she was supportive, comforting, and demanded that the nurses and doctors give me the best care possible.

Unfortunately malaria causes persistent vomiting which lasted about 36 hours before I was admitted to the hospital. Because of this, I was very dehydrated when I arrived. I tend to be a hard stick when I am healthy, so getting an IV in me while I am sick is always a challenge, but one I am used to and usually face with strength. Sunday, when they were poking me and moving the needle around trying to find my stubborn veins I was not strong, I completely fell apart. I was shaking from the pain and anxiety, and I cried, I cried hard. I cannot think of a time where I have wanted to be home more in my life. I was scared, yet I felt trapped by the situation, my illness giving me no other option but to stay right where I was. When I called my parents I tried to pull myself together and not let them know how scared and sad I was, but hearing the helplessness and fear in their voices made it even harder for me to keep it together. I have three very helpful, supportive, and loving parents, and it was hard not to be able to have them with me.

When they finally got the IV in, I calmed down a little, at least I knew I had a way to start getting better. I was receiving fluids, my anti-malaria injections, and some antibiotics for a secondary infection I have. Later Sunday evening my temperature started to climb very high and my head was pounding. I still was unable to keep even water down and the vomiting was becoming increasingly painful with each heave. The anxiety began to creep up again, I could feel myself sinking into depression, and once again I began to cry. Cami tried to calm me and let me know that I would get through this. My crying had stopped, but my insides still felt the same.

On Monday I had hoped to get out, but I was not improving the way the doctors wanted to see. Cami had to leave for a while to eat and go to some meetings. While alone I cried and cried, I could not stop myself. I called both my parents and felt no peace after talking to them, only more homesick. I then called my boyfriend, hoping that would help calm me down. He was so sad that he could not help me and extremely worried. After those three conversations I was even more depressed; not only was I lonely and sick but my situation was hurting the people that I care about the most. That is where the internal battle began: do I finish out my stay in Africa or do I go home early? I knew that everyone would support me in whichever decision I made, but that did not make it any easier. I began going back and forth, weighing out the pros and the cons, making a mental list, and trying to make a logical decision. I did this for hours, back and forth, back and forth. Suddenly I realized that I could not base this decision on logic, and I could not do what I thought was best for everyone else. This decision was about me and my health. Each time I would start arguing with myself as to why I should stay in Africa I would become very anxious and more nauseated, and each time I cried. On the other hand when I would argue to go home I would feel at peace. It became very obvious to me that I needed to go home and get myself better, physically and emotionally.

Don’t get me wrong, just because the decision was obvious does not by any means mean I was easy. I have loved my time in Uganda and so enjoyed getting to be a part of something so much bigger than myself. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have had to come here and I hope that someday I am able to return to Africa and help even more. But being depressed was making it harder for my body to fight off the malaria and the infection and being here sick is useless to everyone. Immediately after getting my flight scheduled to come home (thanks mom and dad for the help!) I could feel myself relax a little. Since then I have progressively been feeling better and was even discharged from the hospital today. I hate that I feel selfish for what I am doing, but I know in my heart that it is the right thing for me to do. I am coming home and I think it is time. I wish things had been different, but things don’t always go according to plan. I am trying to adapt and learn from every experience, even the bad ones.

I still love you, Uganda.                                                  

homesick

It’s been a packed few days so I haven’t been able to blog.

Wednesday morning nine of the people from the house woke up early and boda’d over to the taxi park. We piled into another crazy taxi, along with about 12 other people, and a few chickens. I get super motion sick and a little claustrophobic back home, so these rides are typically not very pleasant. I was up against the window, which has a bar running across it. Every bump we hit, which is about every 3 feet (not exaggerating), my arm would ram into the bar. It was painful! Actually it’s still painful because of the bruise it left. I tried to kind of zone out by listening to my iPod, little did I know that because I had plugged it into my new computer, I had erased nearly all my music. I was left with maroon 4, which helped, and Justin Bieber and the song call me maybe. Let me tell you that I am by no means a Bieber hater, but I also do not have Bieber fever, and that ride seemed just a little longer when every other song was JB.

When we arrived to Bududa, we went on a short walk through the village and dropped our stuff off at David Zalles’ House. He and his wife were so welcoming and excited to have us. In his house, David runs a nursery school for the children in the village, there is not enough room, but he makes do with what he has in order to help the children. We walked down to a field where there stood a half constructed building made of tree stumps and long branches and an iron roof. We got to work right away by taking huge balls of mud and filling in the spaces between the branches, basically building the walls and insolation for the school. We were filthy, but playing with mud reminds you of childhood and is actually super fun. However, it quickly becomes pretty exhausting! Building a school is a lot of work, who would have thought? Haha After working for six hours it began to rain and we couldn’t work anymore because the pile we were getting mud from was getting too wet and becoming a puddle. We went back to David’s house and bathed, sort of. We more rinsed the dirt off with a little bit of soap. I was still pretty gross, but it felt good to get some of the mud off. They offered us some hot tea made with mild straight from the cow, not for me haha. But we went into the kitchen and I heard a crunch and a slurp.  I looked down and this little girl was chowing down on a chicken foot, claws and all. It was soooo disgusting. We were all dry heaving but trying to pull it together out of respect.

We played card games for a few hours and David’s son Dezi even taught us how to play a popular Ugandan card game. It was a lot like Uno, but with a few extra rules. We were so tired but had to stay awake for dinner, which wasn’t until 9:30 at night! It was a struggle to stay awake but it was worth it in the end. Everyone gathered in the living room for dinner and David gave a speech which melted my heart. The best part was he told us it was his 69^th birthday that day and that it was his best birthday ever because HELP International had started building him his school, which he has been dreaming of for many years. It was touching and rewarding to see how much of an effect our work was having. If not for HELP’s fundraising efforts, David would not have had the money to build the school for many more years, if ever. He is a very cool man, and very different from many of the other Africans I have met here. He is very into giving everyone a good education as a foundation for life. In fact, David has 7 children, and all but one have gone the University. That is pretty much unheard of in Uganda. The one that will not go to University has Down’s syndrome, and the fat that David and his wife, Elizabeth, still take care of him is also pretty unprecedented. Most people with mental disabilities get ignored and are outcasts in society here. Even more amazing, they have taken in a child they found on the streets who has special needs because his family didn’t want him.

The next day I wasn’t feeling very well, I was just kind of sleepy but I helped build the school from 9 til about 2. I then went back on another exciting taxi adventure with my maroon 5 and Justin Bieber. I slept most of that day and nearly all of Friday. I thought I was feeling better so we headed to Jinja, a town 2 hours away, for a little weekend trip to raft the Nile River. When we arrived at our Hotel, called Adrift, we were shown to our room which was dorm style with bunk beds. They had a little outdoor bar and restaurant overlooking the Nile, it was stunningly beautiful. We ordered some American food, which we waited over and hour and a half for, but it was pretty worth it. I had a pizza that was absolutely delicious.

The next morning we got up and climbed up a big tower over the Nile where we were going to Bungee Jump. I was super excited but still feeling kind of weak. I became very shaky and nauseated, and I thought I was going to pass out. At the time I thought I was just too nervous to jump and I ended up chickening out. I was super disappointed in myself. But then we got in the car to drive to rafting and the shaky and nauseated feeling was not subsiding. We got to the shore of the river and I was noticeably shaking and my friend said I had become very pale. Soon after that I began throwing up and we decided not to go rafting. After a few hours of throwing up and shaking we decided to go to the hospital, which was one of the sketchiest places I have ever been. I felt like I was in a horror film. I tested positive for Malaria, when the doctor told me I immediately had to hold back tears. It is hard enough to be sick, but especially when you are thousands of miles from home. I started laughing to keep the tears back, how could this be happening. I have been a little homesick recently but suddenly I felt like I needed to be home. I received an injection for the Malaria and was given two more to take back to Mbale with me. I am back in Mbale now and still pretty miserable. I haven’t been able to keep anything down, including water. I have a fever and a persistent headache and I am so sleepy. I hope I start feeling better soon so I can enjoy my last two weeks in Africa.

Day to Remember

Malembe! That means hello in the language Luganda.

Not a lot happened today but the things that did were awesome. I woke up this morning and soon found out the fundraiser for the health clinic reached its goal of 7,000 dollars. That is huge!! We honestly didn’t know if the health clinic was going to survive and this ensures that it will. It’s amazing how such little money here goes so far! You can barely walk into an emergency room in America for that.

After that we went back to the internet café we visited yesterday, this time they had both internet and food. We did some more research on HIV/AIDS and created an outline for our class. Personally I was only expecting to see maybe ten women show up to class today, but when over thirty showed up I was thrilled. I realized that these women really want to learn and that they appreciate our help. We talked about what HIV is and how it progresses to AIDS. We discussed the symptoms, transmission, and prevention. We also went over some general symptoms of other STI’s that they should see a doctor for. It was such a great thing to be able to share with them. They asked lots of questions and we really involved. It was awesome because we knew they were paying attention and were interested in what we were teaching. Some of the questions were kind of hard to hear because it really showed how lacking their education had been growing up. I cannot wait to go back next week and get to share more with them. We actually went about 30 minutes over class time because there were so many questions! At the end all the women clapped and shook our hands. It was really moving how much they appreciated what we taught. I hope that the information we shared may help protect some of them and help them protect their children.

When I got home there was a little puppy here. Although he does not compare to the rest of the day he didn’t hurt either. He is a rescue puppy that our team leader got and he is so freaking adorable. I was holding him and he fell asleep in my arms. It really made me miss my puppy back home though.

I am loving it here more and more every day. However I want my little sister Alexis to know that I miss her a little extra today and cannot wait to come home and see her. I know things are a little hard right now for her but she should know how important she is to me! <3

JAMBO

JAMBO!

Sorry for the short break in blogging, but my weekend did not seem interesting enough to deem its own blog. I pretty much slept and read all weekend haha. It was nice to relax a little and catch up on sleep after my hectic week of traveling and working. Ann and I did get massages for 12 dollars! It was super nice but they are not modest at all here so that got a little awkward. Last night we got to go out and feed the street kids. It was the first time that I have been allowed to go out in Uganda at night and it was really interesting to see the town after dark. Things were so much different. The street kids were all boys, most of whom had ran away from bad homes and some were orphaned. It was really sad seeing them but it felt rewarding being able to give them a hot meal. We organized them into circles and one of us stood in the middle of each circle and handed out a bad of posho and beans only to those in our circle. It was frustrating seeing the kids hide the food you had just given them and then begging for more, claiming they never got any. But it was also a little heart breaking, these children honestly have no idea when their next meal may be coming. At least we could do a little something to help, it’s never enough though.

Anyways, today was much more active. The three other new volunteers and I got up early this morning to go to Chat n Chino, the internet café close by, so we could do some research for our class that we are teaching tomorrow. The internet at the house is pretty sketchy sometimes so we thought the internet café was our best bet. We thought wrong, their internet had expired for the month and the owner had to go to the store to load more internet time. It was kind of hilarious. Then my friends order yogurt and fruit and they said we needed to wait so they could go to the market and buy fresh food. In America people would be so angry but it was honestly just funny. We sat there patiently, in an internet café, with no internet and no food. Perfectly Ugandan.

After our lacking experience, we went shopping and headed up to Miriam nursery school to finish the outlining. We are almost done and we get to start painting next week! I am thrilled by the progress we are making and the teachers are loving it. We have a serious of pictures and different stages, it’s going to be so exciting to see the before and after. This is one of the only projects here that we new volunteers get to see from start to finish and be so involved in and it’s thrilling!

We then went to Namatala to mobilize in the community to let them know about the class we are teaching tomorrow. Because there were three of us we had to split up, two people on one boda, and me on the other. Of course we ended up going a different way than usual and I almost got lost all alone in Uganda, TERRIFYING! Not to mention a little boy pointed at me saying “Mizungu, bang bang” making a gun with his fingers. It was the first time since I have been here that I felt truly uneasy. However, immediately an adult scolded him and my boda driver apologized, as did the other adults who witnessed it. Luckily my dad has passed down his wonderful sense of direction and I was able to find my way to Child of Hope without much problem. When I arrived the other girls were not there and after waiting for 10 minutes I began to be very worried. I wasn’t sure if they were just lost or something had happened to them. I was panicking a little on the inside and was very unsure what to do without a phone and no way to contact them. I waited another 15 minutes and told myself that if they didn’t show up within the next five minutes I would ask my translator to go with me to look for them, and if that failed I would go back to the house to see if maybe they had gone there. Just as I got up to find my translator they pulled up, and thank god because I was a few seconds away from hyperventilating. They had gotten lost in the slum and had to find a new driver to get them to the school.

Even though I was able to see Namatala a few times last week, my experience today was a lot different. It was not all playing with children and observing the main roads, but rather a much more cultural experience. I was able to go much further into the slum and visit with the women that lived there. Once again everyone was so welcoming and loving. When we arrived at each house, the children would greet me and try to find me somewhere to sit. It is amazing the amount of respect the people here show. The translators would tell them about the class and the women would get very excited. Every single one we talked to promised to come and said thank you and many of them hugged me. It was a very emotional experience. Here were these women, all of them with many children, living in little huts made of mud, thanking me and hugging me for wanting to teach them. I wanted to thank them and hug them for welcoming me into their world. It is obvious here that I am an outsider and yet most everyone shows me love and respect, but in America where we have much more than we need we do not treat foreigners graciously and it angers me.

Every day is an adventure

It was extra dusty today! We traveled by boda to Miriam nursery school, which is about a fifteen minute ride. That is the school we painted cream on the first day here. Today we started planning out the murals we were going to paint on each wall. We started outlining in pencil. It was such a cool experience. The teachers watched as we began the transformation of their classrooms. The expressions on their faces gave away the excitement and appreciation they were feeling. What were once dirty, concrete walls, with no visual aids for the children are becoming something so much more! In each classroom we are painting letters and numbers. We are also painting words which the difficulty level reflects the age of children in the classroom. In one area a girl on our team drew an entire jungle scene with an elephant and leopard and crocodile and giraffe and more! It was amazing. I am sooooooooooooo excited to see what the project looks like when we are done. So far the place doesn’t even look the same. It is such a simple task, but it will make such a huge difference in the learning of these children.

We also went to the Namatala slum again today to meet with Phillip, one of the staff at Child Of Hope. We told him we would like to start teaching a class to the women of Namatala on Tuesday afternoons and asked him what he thought would be the most beneficial. According to him the biggest problems the face there in the slum are: HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and family planning. IT is not uncommon for men here to have multiple wives and be very abusive. IT is sad because there really are little resources for the women here to get help. When the women do leave their husbands they usually are very poor and live on less than 500 shillings a day, which is about 20 cents! In order to provide for their children they often will have sex with men who are passing through for money. Because of the lack of family planning, this often leads to more children being born. Many of the mothers in the slum are single mothers and the average number of children is six per family. Imagine trying to feed, cloth, and take care of six children by yourself with 20 cents per day! It is heartbreaking to hear, and being here seeing it is even more painful. Anyways, we have decided not to teach a class on domestic violence. The cultural differences are just too vast and there is not really anything that we could teach them that would be of help to them. They cannot just call the police, there are not shelters that can handle that many women and children, and confronting their husbands is likely to make the problem worse. As hard as it was to decline, we did not want to worsen a problem that is already so prevalent. However, we will be teaching a one day class on HIV/AIDS, one day about family planning, and a third day about a topic of the women in the community’s choice. I am very excited about this project! It is the first thing since I have been here that us new volunteers can really take ownership of and make a positive impact on the community.

After our long day most of the house went out to dinner together at a local Indian restaurant. My friend and I shared chicken fried rice, paneer tikki masala, and garlic naan. OMG it was delicious. We also had sodas and it only cost us about 6 dollars a person.

OUUUU and I got caught in my first Ugandan rain storm today! It was amazing, the streets flooded in a matter of minutes and thunder shook the buildings. We were soaked to the bone but I loved it. As we rode home in the dark, soaking wet, I began to shiver… I never thought I would be cold in Africa! When I finally got home I wiped off a film of dirt from my face and body. It was disgusting but its Africa and its perfect. :)

Every day is an adventure here and I cannot wait to experience more! I really miss my sister, my boyfriend, Tara, my parents, friends, family and my puppy!! Love You <3

Slummin It and Lovin it

Day three was amazing, just like the rest. I feel like this is already going by too fast!

I forgot some things from yesterday. I have been so focused on the amazing people here I have been forgetting to mention the projects we are working on. Up in the mountain village that we visited yesterday HELP was assisted them in organizing a Village Health Team (VHT), that goes out into the community to help teach them about health and refer them to the clinic when they are sick. We were able to make them some visual aids to help them teach the people in the village. Then later in the day our team taught the VHT’s about CPR, how to take heart rate and respiratory rate. It was such a magical experience. It seems so simple, but to them it was all new and very valuable information. We gave them the ability to not only teach but actually be able to help in emergency situations.

Today I got to sleep in which was awesome! I finally feel like I am adjusted to the time and well rested. I know you don’t care but I also got to skype with my wonderful boyfriend Andrew, which was something I really needed. We then went to an internet café called Chat N Chino, the guy who owned it lived in Texas for 6 years, so they have lots of American food. SO EXCITING!! I wasn’t too hungry so I just had a chocolate milk shake, it tasted like home.

Later on we went to the slum in Namatala. It was such an enlightening experience. We were there to teach a pre-natal class to the women. Today we taught them about the benefits of breastfeeding and how to solve some common breast-feeding problems. It was disturbing how little they knew about the subject and the lack of knowledge about pregnancy and family planning in general. You can tell how badly they want to learn and change how they live. They want their children to be healthy and they want to be able to control how many children they have. It was amazing to see how big of an impact it was having, being such an easy thing for us.

We took a tour of the slum. At first it was heart breaking seeing how little these people had. But as I continued to talk to the people and the children I realized that they lead much happier lives then many of the wealthy people in America. They are always smiling, and they are happy to see us. IT is really very heart warming. We also hung out around the school in the slum called Child of Hope. The school is a private school started by some people from the U.K. that provides the children with an education that would otherwise be unattainable.  The children were playing outside and it was so fun to watch. They do not have all the things we have in America, but they played harder and with more enthusiasm than I saw in all five years working at the elementary school. They made balls of plastics bags and drew hopscotch in the dirt. They danced and sang and ran around, smiling and laughing the whole time. I could not stop smiling.

At the school I met a ten year old boy named Egessa. His favorite game is futbol, his favorite color is red, and he likes the number 1 because he is number 1. He told me when he grows up he wants to be an electrical engineer. I was so thrilled to hear that he had such a awesome dream. But then he broke my heart. He said that in order to achieve his goal he was going to have to leave Uganda and that it would be nearly impossibe to be able to afford this. He wants so badly to go to school in the U.K. or U.S. so that he can come back to Uganda with a great education and help his people. Tears came to my eyes, I want to help him, I just do not know how. He has such a beautiful spirit. I am envious of the person he is, having grown up in a slum, with no money and being so virtuous at such a young age. He makes me want to be a better person. He asked me if I would come back and see him next week. I got the impression that no one had really ever listened to him talk about things like this. I will never forget this little boy and I hope that I may be able to figure out a way to help him reach his goal! It is not news to me that children are people too, but he just reminded me how wise and inspiring children can be.

I was scared that my excitement and passion from yesterday was going to ware off. That was not the case, nothing about my second day in Uganda was disappointing.

Last year the program I am with, HELP International, built a health clinic in a remote village on the side of a mountain. The people here had never had access to health care any where near them and thus most illnesses were left untreated until they become very serious. HELP still participates in the running of the program, as well as many other projects to improve the community. Today I was able to visit the village. My journey started with a long taxi ride in a van with 5 benches packed into it. At one point there were 22 people in the taxi, yes 22 people! It was insane and definitely very cramped! Most of the roads here are not paved and the dirt roads are not well maintained. Lets just say we got very cozy with those sitting next to us and there was a lot of flailing limbs. After an hour and a half in the taxi we arrived at the foot of the mountain for a steep hike.

Along the path up the mountain there were little houses made of mud and banana fibers and many people. The children would get very excited, yelling “mizingu! Hello how are you?”  Unfortunately the hike got very steep and the ground was very uneven, causing my ankle to roll and swell. I took a boda the rest of the way up the mountain, one of the scariest moments of my life! Riding two to a dirt bike up a steep dirt road definitely got the adrenalin going. At the top was a school and the children rushed out to greet me. I felt like a celebrity. Here I waited for the rest of my group, taking in the beautiful scenery in front of me. Over and over I took pictures, but they could not capture the essence of what was before me, it was breathtaking. It was not the Africa depicted in the lion king, but rather a mountain covered in rich, luscious tress and crops. When my group got to me we hiked down the side of the mountain to the village where the health clinic is located. On the path were three bridges bade for logs and a tree that had been cut into planks. Being the chicken I am, I was scared to cross them, and as we went across they wobbled, but we all made it.

When we arrived there were children on break from school. Most of them in worn and torn clothing and no shoes. They were playing soccer with a ball that had been fabricate from some rags rubber-banded together. At first I felt sad seeing how little they had, but then part of me was almost jealous. Being raised in America, I was always just given the toys I wanted and the clothes I needed. If I lost a ball we got a new one, if my clothes ripped we went shopping. I know I should feel lucky for having this luury, and I do, but I also am envious of how joyed they are by the simple things in life, something I have not observed working with children in America. They have a completely different perspective, they do not complain about what is missing, but rather enjoy those things which they do have.

Seeing the health clinic in person was magical. Here is this little building, probably the size of many of the waiting rooms of clinics back home. We were given a tour of the clinic which was run on a station system, allowing the people who work there to be more efficient. By 3:30 the clinic had seen over 60 patients, and it was a slow day! Can you even fathom that? This clinic is able to service over 60 people a day! Most days average in the high 80’s to 100 patients. That amazes me. They have such limited space and resources and yet they are helping a huge amount of people. It made me feel like America has the wrong idea. We go to see a doctor, with an appointment, wait for usually a half hour minimum, and leave after a five minute consoltation with the physician. When I shadowed a doctor in the U.S., he had another doctor in his office and many nurses and assistants, and he only saw an average of 20 to 30 patients a day. How is this possible? How are there so many people who need access to health care in the U.S. and cannot get it? How can a country as wealthy as America not figure out how to better take care of its citizens. I would not consider myself a socialist, I believe in having a good work ethic and earning what you need. However, I also believe in unity among people and brotherhood. I believe that in order to make ourselves better we should help those around us. Why can we not come together and help those who really need it? Why is there no sense of the greater good in America? We have so much more than so many others in the world, and yet we always want, want, want. We do not know how to share, we do not understand the concept of pulling together. When tragedy strikes, we are great at making a team effort, but why does it have to come to that for us to be able to work with one another. We say we are  country under god, but I don’t see it. The people here believe in god and they believe we are all united under him and thus we should help our brothers and sisters. Even though I am not religious, this makes more sense to me than how America “practices’ religion. Okay sorry about that little rant, Uganda has just inspired a lot of thoughts in me.

Anyways the adults and children in the village were all so welcoming and happy to have us there. They gave us a tour of their village, thanked us for coming over and over, and even invited us into their homes for lunch. We had a delicious meal of matoke, beans, pocho, and cabbage. It was very weird because you eat with your hands. The hot food burned at first, but it was so delicious it was hard to wait.

After lunch we talked with a few men from the village. There names were Timothy, James, and William. Timothy was referred to as papa by many of the people, he was one of the oldest people I have seen since I have been here. HE thanked us for coming and told us he loved us. “You are not foriegners, this is now your home. You have put your heart into this place and we love you. You are welcome here and we want you to stay. You are our brothers and sisters. Thank you.” Tears came to my eyes as I realized what we were doing here was so appreciated. I finally realized this trip wasn’t just a trip but I now have a second home among these people. I love my home in Colorado but this is special. Never did I think I would feel so welcome, I thought I would always stand out as a foreigner.