Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I have been volunteering my time at the Sol Café Restaurant, one of Musana’s sustainability projects. All profits from the restaurant go directly back to the orphanage and help cover basic needs like food, utilities, books, clothes, etc., The Sol Café does pretty well and I was brought in to help get it organized and help with bringing in new audiences on slower days. It has been a challenge because business is not my forte and I am new to the culture and attitudes of Uganda. For the first two weeks, I have been observing and learning. I help balance the books and clean and occasionally serve. It wasn’t until this past week that I wrote up my list of recommendations. I hope these will help the Café become one of the best running businesses in town.

My true passion is health care, as many of you already know. I did my first health lesson with the Musana kids Sunday afternoon about hand washing. When I have an audience, it is my sole responsibility to keep them entertained and learning. We talked about what germs were, where we can find germs, and when to wash our hands. I know this is only the beginning for sustainable health at Musana, and it helps that they employee a nurse full-time. It was a lot of fun and all of the kids washed their hands at the very end. It was great to see them scrubbing in-between their fingers and under their nails.

We each have $500 towards a project of our choice at Musana. Already I have mine dog-earred; a second well with an electric pump to have running water to sinks outside of the bathrooms. The bathrooms at Musana need some work. Right now, there is a single building with 12 individual stalls that open to the outside. They sit on top of a cement slab. Each stall has a rectangular hole cut out opening to a deep black abyss, your typical pit latrine, a good bathroom in these areas except when they have no faucets/running water to keep them flushed and clean. The kids (and myself from time to time) aim for these holes and oftentimes miss. The feces and urine sit outside the hole, attracting winged friends and creating a most unpleasant smell (as you can imagine). It doesn’t help that one of the endemic diseases in our area is diahearria, possibly because of this cycle of uncleanliness and poor sanitation from the pit latrines.

If you would like to help contribute to my project (or any others!), you can donate online at Musana.org (make a note for it to go towards sanitation projects). They currently have one pump well where they fill up large yellow jugs and truck them around to various areas like the kitchen (doesn’t even have running water!), the showers (a good 30m walk away) or the bathrooms (which I’ve never seen done). The kids wash their own clothes by hand on Sundays outside with the older kids helping the younger ones. It is quite adorable. The staff at Musana have truly done a lot since starting. These kids go to school for free every day, any supplies/clothes/shoes they need they are given, they have three meals a day, clean water, matrons who look after them, beds and sheets and mosquito nets, a social worker, a nurse, and a lot of people who lose sleep at night thinking about their health, well-being, safety and education. We just need good bathrooms, that’s all, and considering that some households don’t even have latrines and go outside, we are already a huge step ahead.

UGANDA

I know I haven’t submitted in quite some time. To summarize, I ended my service a week late, on top of my month long extension. I was just too busy that week tying up loose ends and doing a few final health lessons that I felt that the next week would be much easier to navigate my trip to Rabat to COS. I got permission from our country director, and then we forgot to tell everyone else I wasn’t coming in. Fail.

Omar, Gala and I traversed the country for the next month post service and enjoyed our vacation/leisure time. We visited Omar’s sister and family in Khenifra, then headed on to Ourzazate, Essouaria and Imlil/Toubkal outside of Marrakech. I was in a new transition state and did not know how to feel emotionally. I was sad to be leaving Peace Corps for sure, my service was pivotal in directing my future endeavors. Not to gloss or glamorize, but PC has and will forever change my life in my perspective of other cultures, languages, and ways of living.
We left for Uganda from the London-Heathrow airport on June 28th and arrived the morning of the 29th. We exited the plane in Entebbe via a metal staircase platform into a beautiful and humid setting. When waiting for our luggage to come, I couldn’t help but notice the amount of large plastic containers. It seemed that they outnumbered regular luggage. I watched one man I picked for a southern Baptist missionary load 5 onto a cart and head out into the sunshine. Uganda was having an early Christmas.

We were picked up by Robert and Selima, two of Musana’s employees. Robert is a driver for Musana and takes kids to the doctors, employees to functions and people to and from the airport in Entebbe, a short drive past the capital of Kampala. Selima is the Ugandan volunteer coordinator, kind of like Sally’s counterpart. She lives in the volunteer house with us. Both have easy smiles and thick accents. At least I was on repeat, “What? Excuse me? What?!” in the beginning. I still have a hard time deciphering African English and do a poor impression of it (unlike my Moroccan English accent! It’s not too bad!). I had changed my way of listening completely in Morocco. It was a part of my survival. It is fascinating what body language and small clues you start noticing when you aren’t completely sure what is going on. You also pick up on normal every day greetings and questions, what question follows what answer.

We stopped on the way in a small roadside town and were immediately flocked by people selling all sorts of goods to us through the windows. Beat that McDonald’s! They were literally RUNNING to meet cars pulled over. They sold us roasted salty chicken on a stick (which we sucked clean), whole baked bananas (hard exterior, warm soft interior), soda, samosas, chapatti (fried bread similar to Morocco’s lmslmen), and bottled water. We had shit food on the plane so these unexpected tasty treats were a great welcome!

Some of my first observations were that both men and women were out and working. Whether it was selling us food, working in the fields, behind cell phone counters or hanging clothes up for sale, it seemed as if the workforce was on equal footing. The verdant rolling hills sometimes broke away into sugar cane or tea leaves fields. Water seemed to be everywhere. Whether it was stagnant run off in ditches, small streams, irrigation in the fields or whole rivers we crossed over. There seems to be persistent, stolid clouds. The sun comes through occasionally but it never seems to be as oppressive as it was in Morocco despite our proximity to the Equator. People over the age of 15 seem indifferent to us. The younger kids point at us, yelling out and sometimes running full distances to come greet us, “Muzungu! Muzungu!” (White person! White person!) and come and give us only what can be described in our culture as “dap” or a knuckle bump called a “bunga,”. Sometimes they walk with us, holding our hands. Most the time it seems as if they had only gotten half-dressed that morning, their little cheeks a fun goodbye when we part ways. They also seem to have done some morning exfoliating, their faces and exposed skin caked in the red dirt. I tell you what though, despite the dirt and nudity, they are about as cute as you can get.