Gone da Uganda: (This time for Africa)

It is now my 6^th week in Uganda and time is flying! I only have one and half more weeks of living with my family before I get to move around the country on my own for research. I’ve grown to absolutely love my family and I already know it’s going to be hard to leave them.

The rainy season is slowly coming and we’ve been having increasing short showers for the past two weeks. You can see the rain clouds in the distance for a few hours before they hit no matter where you are even though it’s sunny and hot until then. Besides the mud though, I’ve enjoyed the weather as it has been much cooler and less dusty. Also, falling asleep to the sound of rain on our tin roof is nothing to complain about.

Last Sunday, it rained on and off all day, so naturally, we (my siblings and I) decided to have a dance party in the house. We started off listening to the Ugandan club music and then they switched to the CD mix I brought them from home. The obvious favorites were Jordan Sparks, Taylor Swift and Eiffel 65, which we proceeded to play on repeat almost 3 hours. Anyway, by the end we were all sweaty and out of breath, but we had a ball!

After the dance party, my family wanted to teach me how to cook. We made chapatti, which is a thin, fried pancake. It’s kind of like an unsweetened crepe. Our favorite thing to get for lunch at school here is called a “rolex”, which is a veggie omelet rolled up in a chapatti like a burrito. They’re delicious and so addicting. I can’t wait to make chapatti and rolex’s at home!

This week has been fun. I’m still taking my politics and grassroots class, but this week instead of being at the university, we’ve been going on site visits to different self-help groups, microfinance institutions (MFI’s) and beneficiaries of these different MFI’s. Most of them were located east of Kampala in very rural villages, which meant a lot of driving on long, bumpy dirt roads for a few hours. I enjoy these beautiful drives which feel like off-roading through different terrains of rural village and jungle and countryside etc. It’s true that Uganda has one of the most diverse landscapes. We even saw a few monkeys and tropical birds on our drives!

My favorite visit was our focus group discussion with a women’s self-help group. They were SO excited to see us arrive, as they rarely have visitors, let alone muzungu visitors. They sang a song for us as we drove in to thank us for coming, which was beautiful. We sat with them on woven mats under a tree and spoke with them through a translator. The group was organized by the Nile Vocational Institute, which essentially trains them on basic home economics and vocational skills after conducting a needs based assessment to determine what would be the most beneficial to them in their situations at home. As a result, they had all began small businesses, mostly agriculture based, including tomato farming, rice farming and coffee farming. The women told us that the best skill they gained from the training was how to save money and to keep it circulating within their group. For the first time in their lives, the women had a pool of savings that they kept in case someone in the group needed it for an emergency. They had all been empowered through the institute and were proud to speak to us about how far they’d come.

It has been really interesting to explore the different approaches to grassroots development because I’ve been able to see aspects of the various drivers of growth that are clearly working and those that are not. Actually, I have become very critical of microfinance institutions. Unfortunately, it seems to me like the ones I have visited (not naming any names) are purely profit-driven and that in the long run, their clients are not actually benefitting from the loans. But, I realize that’s a broad generalization and hopefully they’re not all as corrupt.

Overall, I feel I’ve become almost 100% adjusted to life in Uganda. Even though I still can never finish the huge mound of food my family serves be for every meal, I’m learning my way around the cultural norms and feel like much less of a muzungu on the inside.

As I’m typing, I am eating a bowl of pineapple, papaya and jackfruit. I just learned that in addition to the jackfruit tree outside my house, we also have two avocado trees and a mango tree! HOW AWESOME.

Kbye!