1st week - delayed blog

7.8.06 - This is getting posted late because of difficulties in getting to the internet (power outages, etc.)




It is now day 6 of Jen and my trip – we have gotten in touch with some genuinely helpful and knowledgeable people already and I am optimistic that we will accomplish all we set out to do this summer.
I won’t go into much detail but please take this advice – never ever travel on Ethiopian Airlines! The bag I checked in Washington arrived in Uganda 3 days after I did, and because our first flight was delayed by 3 hours (for no apparent reason) we stayed a night in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and arrived in Uganda one day late. No big deal, but their operations just seem to be extremely inefficient.
After arriving in Uganda, we first met with the program coordinator of Friends of Orphans, the Community based organization (CBO) that will be hosting our internship program in the years to come. We discussed our plans and the logistics of the internship and our stay here. Between then and now, we’ve been making many calls and sending many emails in order to meet with groups and individuals around the country.
Tomorrow morning, we plan to visit a CBO in Kasese, which is in the most Western part of Uganda (a 7 hour drive). A few days later, we will travel to Jinja, where we will speak with the communities that we aim to help in order to become familiar with any new developments there. From there, we will visit two communities in Eastern and Southeastern Uganda called Mbale and Busia as well as a community outside of Kampala called Mukono. In each place we have contacted CBOs that do community advocacy that we can learn a good deal from. After that, we will visit a friend of mine in Nairobi, Kenya who is working with another Carolina program called Carolina for Kibera, and then we plan to visit several districts in Northern Uganda for a few days to see the empowerment programs that Friend of Orphans is running (apparently, it is much safer now in the North than it has been for many years)*. Afterwards, we should have a couple of days in Kampala to wrap things up and meet with anyone we didn’t have time to see. Throughout these travels, we will be meeting with various other contacts such as the coordinator of NUPI – Northern Uganda Peace Initiative, and the Red Cross.
We are currently staying in Kampala with an extraordinary woman named Mahnaz who directs a Johns Hopkins – Makerere University (Kampala) partnership program here called MuJhu. I met her last summer here and she happened to be back the same time as us. Her hospitality and insight about the health and economic situation in Uganda is amazing. She has in fact led an amazing life herself is a source of strength and positivity to many people, including myself. For example, her 14 daughter plans to start her own organization called Income Generation Across Borders to provide a market for MuJhu craft making projects.
Today, Jen and I visited the very organized MuJhu program and were very excited to see how they operate. They started as a clinic addition to Mulago hospital providing ARVs and psychosocial support to HIV/AIDS orphans and families affected by the disease. Eventually, they adopted a more holistic approach and began craft making projects for women who were treated at the hospital. As I’m sure many of you have heard me say before, it is much better to teach one what is necessary to help themselves sustainably rather than to simply help them for a limited time period. Something I heard a couple of times from MuJhu members was “treat the people, not the disease.” This approach of first providing services and through that avenue organizing income generation activities is definitely something to think about for the internship program. A good friend once told me that anything that is to be sustainable and create self sufficiency in a community must “organically develop.” Makes sense.
One of the most striking and encouraging parts of the program was the resulting awareness in the children (I think ages 5-15). These kids are extremely educated about HIV/AIDS and its dynamics…I mean they know a lot more than the average American OR Ugandan citizen. They sang songs about it and even did poetry! One 13 year old girl, a leader of the children….man, she could spit! Apparently, she was even invited by the US Congress before and testified about the situation many people face here.
Women who join the MuJhu crafts program are trained to make crafts from local materials such as banana leaves, paper and another dry leaf. The handbags, baskets, jewelry (picture) and other items they produce are of amazing quality, especially considering the low cost of input and relatively small amount of training needed.
The craft collective started with only 20,000 Ugandan Shillings (about $11), and their collective saving now stands at about 500,000 Ush (about $300), which of course only includes what’s been saved. Pretty amazing. They have even been able to start a microfinance scheme through their savings which has been successful.
One of the most interesting parts of their program is the ‘organic gardening’ which is ideal for the Jinja communities that the internship program will seek to assist. After being trained, one can grow cabbage, onion and many other produce out of a rice sack filled with soil. This means that owning land is not needed for one to produce their own food. This is ideal for Jinja communities because most people living there have a background in agriculture, however lost their land in the war and do not have enough land to farm where they now live.
Jen and I plan to meet with the committee chairs of the MuJhu program soon to discuss in depth how their programs have found success and the logistics involved. We can learn so much from them because the people in the program have truly become the driving force behind their success.
One last thought – this being my second trip here, I feel much more at home and it is easier to get along. However, when observing projects in communities and considering how we can help, I cannot shake the feeling of being an outsider. Of course I knew that I am an outsider, and although I know we are approaching our work with the right attitude in recognizing that any success must come from the motivation and ideas of community members, I still hate coming in from the outside as if I know something they do not. Truth be told – I simply am lucky enough to have the capacity and time to devote to studying what can be done and trying to spread and organize those ideas.

Thanks for reading and feel free to respond. Peace be with you.

*according to several sources, it is now common for people traveling to the North to ride without military protection, which used to be necessary. In fact, if you check the news (check Uganda – CAN website), the LRA and Ugandan Government are supposed to be starting “peace talks” in Southern Sudan soon, which are to be mediated by officials from the Sudanese government. Everyday, there is a new headline in the Ugandan newspapers about the latest developments in the conflict/negotiations.