The Bittersweet Return

For those of you I'm not facebook friends with, I realize I may not have specified that I am safely home and happy! I went to the doctor on Monday and have the pleasure of saying I am disease-free! My first few days were a blur of jetlag and hugs, but now that things have calmed down I'm starting to process my return a little more. I have been having trouble reconciling my Ugandan world and my American world into one. It's difficult to remain conscious of the fact that the place I lived really exists in the same world as where I am now. But I think I'm realizing many more of the differences now that I'm back in my quotidian American life.

I have also been struggling to shake Ugandan habits off. I have caught myself forgetting that certain actions are only appropriate in Uganda and not in the states. Here are a couple embarrassing anecdotes of my re-integration troubles.

1. Littering
1. I threw a soda out the window of my car this morning. I didn't think twice about it and then the second it was out of my hands I felt so remorseful. In Uganda everyone litters all the time. There are very very few public trash cans and no recycling bins. I finally caved and started littering too last month because I got tired of carrying around soda bottles until I got home and could throw them away.
2. "Sorry!"
1. In Uganda, the people around you say sorry whenever you feel sympathetic for something bad that happens. You trip on the sidewalk? "sorry sorry sorry!" from all the passerby. A member of your family dies? "Oh sorry sorry!" from the person you are telling. The food you ordered is cold? "Sorry bambi!" from the waiter. All. The. Time. Unfortunately, I have picked up the habit and am probably confusing everyone I talk to by apologizing to them all the time. 
3. Normal Handshakes and Hugs
1. A Ugandan handshake is slightly different than an American one and I'm having trouble remembering to do the American version. 
1. here is a video of the handshake: https://vimeo.com/93711800
2. A hug is also slightly different. Ugandans like to hug to one side, then pull back and hug on the other side. I keep expecting it when I hug friends or family members who I haven't seen in a long time and then get more surprised when it doesn't occur.
4. Other Muzungus driving cars
1. Whenever I see a white person driving a car I get tempted to shout out "muzungu!" to my friends to alert them of the fellow expat. I think it's because everywhere else I understand that I'm in the states because the environment looks so different, but, in the car I still feel like I could be back in Uganda.
5. "Do you have change?
1. In Uganda, asking for change is asking for someone to break up a bigger bill for you. When you want to get change back for something you ask for balance, not change. 
1. I was visiting someone this morning and brought them a coffee. They asked if I had change for a $20 bill and I didn't so I said no. It was only after I'd already left that I remembered that change means something entirely different here. Instead she insisted on giving me the 20 and I gave her a 10 back, unclear what she wanted the 10 for. I think I was just confused by her wording because the whole exchange really makes no sense now. 

Brain Tree "One to One" Project (Recently renamed The Maddie Project by Shipley)

The Shipley School is now starting a project at The Brain Tree Primary School in Uganda that I envisioned after my visits to Brain Tree. The school has a small library donated by Shipley. Just having a library is quite rare in Uganda and places Brain Tree in a exclusive group of primary schools. But, because books are so rare, the librarian has to be careful to guard her library. Thus, the kids can only read in the hour they get each week allotted to library time. They are not allowed to take any of the books home to read, or curl up with them for a few hours and get truly engrossed in the book. We are starting a project to purchase waterproof bags for the library so that all 200 students can get their own bag to take books home in. To the left is a picture of the bags we are purchasing.

Another problem with the library is the amount of books they currently have. Imagine your favorite book. Or maybe your top 5. My current favorite is Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Now scroll down to the image below of Brain Tree's library shelves.

How likely is it that you will be able to find your favorite book here?

The second part of the project that we will undertake is stocking of the library's shelves. There needs to be enough that each child can have their own favorite book.. Shipley is having a dress-down day to begin fundraising for the bags tomorrow and will begin book fundraising in the Spring. I am still looking into how I can engage the Emory community in this project, along with a few other philanthropic causes I have in mind throughout Uganda.  If you have any other fundraising ideas or would like to contact me to get involved you can email me at mhnorri@gmail.com.

Finally, I can't thank everyone enough for reading this blog throughout my time in Uganda. I started it as an archive, mostly for myself, to remember the experience. But the feedback I continue to get inspires me to keep sharing my experience from my time in East Africa. It really has been an incredible adventure and I am so grateful for everyone who has believed in me and helped me along the way. This trip has taught me so much, particularly that I am capable of so much more than I was set on believing before. To quote Winnie the Pooh, I am "braver than I believe, stronger than I seem, and smarter than I think." Thank you all for being there for me throughout this journey and inspiring me every day to keep pushing myself.

Webale nyo bamukano gwange, (thank you my friends).   

One Week Left in Uganda

It’s been a full month since my last post, and a lot has happened in that time:

• My laptop crashed and I had to borrow one of the ones I brought for Brain Tree because the only Apple store on the continent is 3,360 miles away in Cape Town.
•  Brain Tree and I collaborated to make an amazing gratitude video for The Shipley School, but it is stored on the crashed laptop. All my pictures and videos from this trip are also stored there as well. So here's me desperately hoping that the Apple store at home will be able to save them. 

Me and some of the stars of the Gratitude video

•  My Independent Study Project has sucked all the creative energy out of me. I’m 40 pages down and using the very last of my creative juices to write something other than typhoid findings.
• I interviewed 55 slum dwellers about their handwashing practices (pretesting included) and have entered and analyzed way more SPSS data than I would ever have imagined. I also learned that SPSS is incredible and statistics is actually pretty fun.  

A picture of my translator and I interviewing a woman in Kisenyi

• I have a two week extension on my paper because my academic director is incredibly kind. She decided on two weeks since I lost a week of work from not backing up my documents regularly enough and a week of work searching for a replacement laptop.
•  I’ve gotten quite homesick. My dreams have started to center around being back in the states. They range from eating a bowl of raisin bran in front of the TV; to seeing my family waiting for me at the airport; to jump-hugging my best friend when I get back to Atlanta. 
•  I’ve started making plans for when I’m going to return to Uganda. Currently planning on coming back the summer after I graduate as a gift to myself for finishing my med school apps.
• We went white water rafting on the Nile River. It was an incredible day and we ended it by drinking Uganda's Nile beers on a Nile beach (except I cheated and had a Club beer instead because Nile is too dark for me).

Some Reflections:

At first when I stepped into Kisenyi, the slum community in which I did my fieldwork, I was shocked and afraid of the poverty I found. I was afraid that I would never be able to live my life without debilitating western guilt after seeing what I saw. I was now aware of the lie that is the Western Liberal belief that “while they may be poor, they are happy.” While I applaud it for being a paradigm that helps people not look down on the culture of the poor, I find fault in its ability to make an excuse for people to escape the guilt of privilege. 

I have no intention of living a life like Paul Farmer, an American doctor who resides in Haiti for six months out of the year at the hospital he built there. He is the only American for miles and works from 5am to late in the evening treating the patients no one else will help. I wish I could live such a selfless life, but I simply wouldn’t be happy. So I was afraid that I would return to the states, guilty for the ignorantly privileged life I lead, and more guilty for my inability to rise from that guilt and become a Paul Farmer. 

My perspective has evolved over the four weeks I spent in the field and mulling over my data sets. I can't be sure what my return to the states will really be like, but I am less afraid of crippling guilt than I was at first. Will I find American wastefulness disgusting? Absolutely. Will I still be able to carry out conversations about The Bachelor and How I Met Your Mother? Definitely. Will I speak of people in Africa as an “other,” almost like they live in a separate reality from my own. Absolutely Not.  And will I allow myself to whine about the injustice of the world when my laptop crashes in the midst of the largest paper of my life? Not Anymore. I think the biggest challenge I will face in my life is learning to live with knowledge of the world, and give back in a way that works for me. I will never allow myself to intentionally forget anything I've gone through here and I think that simple act of mindfully remembering will be enough to make sure I live my life not thinking only of myself.   

The Rules of The Road in Uganda

A picture of "the jam"

1. There is no such thing as being overzealous with the car horn.
2. A safe driving distance is anything over 5 centimeters.
3. Driving on the sidewalk, while not encouraged, is completely allowed, and occurs on a daily basis.
4. Eating or drinking while driving is culturally taboo.
5. Driving on the opposite side of the road is fun and can be done as long as there isn’t a cop around to catch you.
6. Turn signals are optional. It’s encouraged to use your arms instead because they’re easier to see.
7. Seatbelts are a rarity (sorry mom).
8. Reading a newspaper while driving is ok in the morning because the traffic is so bad.
9. Having a TV replace your rearview mirror so that the driver can watch TV and drive is awesome. Only the coolest and wealthiest people have it. We can all thank the Chinese for this fad apparently.

My Research and Some Epiphanies

I'm going to start out by talking about my Independant Study Project and some of the specifics of what I am doing. Please read to the end of this post (or skip to the end if you want). I have realized some really important things in the past two weeks and want to share them with you all.

The first seven weeks of my program were devoted to classroom work and site visits. Yes we travelled around, but we were still working from a curriculum and writing assignments for class. Two weeks ago started the portion of the program called the ISP, or Independent Study Project. Each of us has picked a development topic we want to research in depth for six weeks and write a 25-50 page IRB-approved research paper. So we hugged our homestay families goodbye, packed our bags, and spread out across the country on our own, like actual adults....crazy, huh?

For my ISP, I am staying in Kampala, working in two of the cities largest slums on the risk perceptions of typhoid and challenges to hand washing in a community with such limited resources. Back in March, Kampala had the largest typhoid outbreak the country has ever seen, so I decided working with typhoid would be particularly interesting and relevant to study. There is a small excerpt from my ISP about the background of typhoid in the paragraph below if you want to know more about it:

• Water-borne diseases (such as typhoid) are the largest killer of children under 5 in Uganda, with a mortality rate of 28%. Despite this astronomical number, a much greater focus of health among Ugandans is the prevention of Malaria and HIV with death tolls in under 5’s of 19% and 4% respectively. Annually there are 17 million cases of typhoid worldwide and a fatality rate between 13 and 20%, if untreated, this can cause up to 3.4 millions deaths per year. The World Health Organization gives this description of typhoid’s cause and transmission: Typhoid and paratyphoid germs are passed in the feces and urine of infected people. People become infected after eating food or drinking beverages that have been handled by a person who is infected or by drinking water that has been contaminated by sewage containing the bacteria. Once the bacteria enter the person’s body they multiply and spread from the intestines, into the bloodstream. Hand washing with soap is the strongest preventative measure against typhoid and other sanitation diseases.

*There are pictures below that some may not wish to see*

The largest percentage of these water-related deaths are from the slum areas of the country. This is where the most significant sanitation issues lie. There are open water pipes, heavy amounts of fecally contaminated water, and huge economic barriers to boiling water and purchasing soap for hand-washing.  Here are some pictures from the area I work in.

Above is one water supply that runs through the community. When someone does not have money to use the public toilets, they will often relieve themselves near this water supply. Very very few use this water for bathing or cooking, but I am sure there are some that do. The biggest worry is that because it is the rainy season, flooding is common so the contaminated water can come up to the doors of houses and leak inside.

These are two of the houses in the area. The residents do not own the land they live on so almost no one chooses to build permanent structures.

Working within the slums has already taught me a lot about public health limitations that I never would have considered on my own, such as the importance of covered shoes, and the economic barriers to boiling water so it is safe to consume.

It has also again reminded me to stop myself from staying within the walls of my fears. I have looked upon these slums for the past two months and never once considered entering before I chose my research topic. I was afraid. Just like I was to come to Uganda in the first place. The people living in the slums were in a closed-off bubble that did not touch my life, so I did not have to think about them. In my few weeks working in the slums, I have been reminded that people are people, and are nothing to be afraid of. It is that same revelation that keeps coming to me in my time here: everyone's reality is as big as my own.  

Reminding myself of that helps when a boda boda driver cat calls me and I get angry. It helps when Ugandan english makes it sound like someone is ordering you to do something. It helps when women my age ask me why I'm not married yet, and if I am planning on being an old maid. It especially helps when I am berated for having no religious convictions.

I can't think of people as stupid or ignorant. That's not a fair judgement. People are very much the sum of the cultural environment in which they learned to form their identity. In a world where people are deemed "good" if they attend church and believe in a God, I have to forgive them for being slow to figure out where I fit in that paradigm.

So, remember this in your lives too. I sit on the bus and imagine a fog surrounding each other passenger's head, representing the reality that is entirely theirs. Just because I can't see it in real life, in no way means it's not there. How can all of these worlds possibly fit inside that crammed box of metal, or to extend the metaphor, to the society we live in? I can't answer that. All I can do is remember that no person has any smaller a reality than my own, despite the struggle I may have to understand their motives, and be mindful of that when I pass judgements.

Things I Miss About 'Murica

Wearing shorts when it’s hot out- Here women do not show skin below the knee, even when it’s 100 degrees outside. Unfortunately, I only brought maxi skirts because I was too stubborn to buy skirts that stop just below the knee when I was at home because no one under 40 wears them in the states. That was a bag idea because they would have been perfect here. So, the difference between the skin color of my arms to that of my legs  is big enough that I look like I’m two completely different races. Today I was called Indian if that’s any proof that I’ve gotten darker here!

Free wifi- I was born at the dawn of the digital age and do not remember a time when I did not have access to the internet. Here I have a modem with very limited internet so I have to be careful how much I am online. There are a few places in Kampala with free wifi, but they are expensive restaurants and the wifi is also very slow. So, sorry if I’ve been behind on my snapchat game, everyone!

Pizza- I’ve mentioned already my distaste for Ugandan pizza. I’m sadly still going through pizza withdrawal

Blending In- It’s hard to ever retreat into my own head here and become another anonymous human here. Wherever I go that isn’t a so-called “Muzungu hangout” I’m stared at or called to by others. I don’t want to whine about being a privileged minority because I know that being a minority in the states is a much greater burden to bear, but I feel like I understand why celebrities like to wear sunglasses and hats all the time so they aren’t recognized. Sometimes you really just need to be anonymous. 

   Netflix and Spotify- I’m a 21 year old girl, what can I say, I miss music and movies!  My most frequently opened tabs online are Netflix and facebook. Thankfully I didn’t go to China where facebook is blocked, but Spotify and Netflix both cannot be accessed from Uganda. So I’m living off of my iTunes (which has not been seriously updated since about 2009 so I've resorted to my middle school music tastes [listening to Shut Up and Drive right now]). Thankfully you can buy movies and TV show seasons for 50 cents here so I’m not suffering too much from the lack of Netflix.  They don’t have the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt though, so I’ve had to binge on my allotted amount of internet to watch it. But that show is the only exception because sometimes it's nice to have a reminder that I can be strong as hell like the women in that show.

College. - I miss those careless nights hanging out my friends, talking about nothing, or grabbing midnight snacks from Dominos. I miss my sorority, I miss my gymnastics family, and I miss my school. I didn’t realize how much I loved Emory until I no longer was there.

Link to My Interview with Brain Tree Scholarship Recipient, Ivan!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/115940230058790538073/posts/2K3Yty7V2ki?pid=6132327023113768802&oid=115940230058790538073

Ugandan food: A Carbivore's Dream, An Atkinz Dieter's Nightmare

Ugandans are very proud of their food and have a right to be. Families spend a lot of time cooking the day's meals and you can tell from the finished product. It's all very filling and delicious, I'll definitely be craving g-nuts and Chapatti when I get back to the states. The tricky bit of cooking in Uganda is that refrigeration is not available to the majority of the population. Even to those to whom it is, it is too expensive to be used all the time so it is usually kept at a temperature slightly below room temperature simply to cool drinks.

This means that the foods they prepare are quite limited compared to the western diet, and consist mostly of carbohydrates because they can be stored for a long time. The food we eat is also determined by what is locally available (for example the staples are different in Northern Uganda) and what is in season. In most households, the cooking is done outside on a small camping stove heated by coal or stripped wood.

Their main crops are bananas, matoke (green bananas), coffee, avocado, tomato, onions, peppers, ground nuts, rice, passion fruit, jackfruit (huge fruit that tastes like candy!), mangos, popo (a giant green-ish fruit that's the texture of mango), sugar cane, pumpkin, potato, cassava, cotton, tea, and corn.

Popo fruit

Most of my meals consist of 75% starch and 25% beans or meat (which they call soup). But I became a vegetarian four weeks ago so most of my meals are heavy on the beans. Sometimes there are some vegetables on the side when they're available. Breakfast is a cup of tea with two slices of bread and a non-refridgeratable "medium fat spread" (butter-like thing) called Blue Band. This breakfast is almost ubiquitous throughout Ugandan homes.
One big thing that has been difficult to adjust to is the timing of meals. Like in the states there are three meals throughout the day. Breakfast occurs whenever you wake up, but lunch and dinner are pushed back about two and a half hours from American times. We eat lunch around 2:30 or 3 in my house and dinner occurs around 10 or 11. A saving grace in this is that Ugandans also like to "take tea and bread" around 7 pm so by the time dinner rolls around I'm not completely famished.

Drinks:
AFRICAN TEA- This delicious concoction is like a chai tea late that you can make at home. They simmer water, black tea leaves, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon sticks, and sugar then strain the liquid to make the tea.

BLACK TEA - This is the same as in the US, but they often add some powered ginger spices to add a kick to it. They also tend to pile on the sugar, adding about three spoonfuls to each up.

SODA- The biggest soda here is still Coke, followed closely by Fanta and a drink called Miranda. Mirinda comes is a ton of different colors and fruity flavors, and like most sodas here, it is almost exclusively in a glass bottle. The other local soda is called Stoney (bottled by Coke) and it's a ginger soda. It takes a little funky in my opinion, but it works wonders when you have that traveller's tummy trouble.

COFFEE- Coffee is a big crop here and locally brewed coffee is wonderful. Surprisingly, most Ugandans don't use the locally grown coffee beans, but buy instant coffee at the supermarkets.

ALCOHOL-  The best thing about Ugandan alcohol is how cheap you can buy it. The local beers such as Nile or Tusker can go for about 80 cents to $1.50 max. The local beers are just as good as a classic Budwiser or Corona so I have no problem saving money and going for the cheaper alcohol.





Starch
MOTOKE- In Central Uganda (the region in which I live) the staple food is definitely matoke.
This is prepared by peeling sweet green bananas, mashing them together and steaming them inside a blanket of banana leaves. Here is the finished product.

IRISH POTATOES- This is self explanatory, we have them in the US. I have to say the Uganda version is yummier, though.

POSHO- This is a corn flour steamed into a sort of porridge consistency.

Irish, Posho, Matoke, and rice

MILLET- This is the same thing as posho but instead of corn flour, they use millet flour

RICE ON RICE ON RICE- There is a love affair between Ugandans and rice. It's a constant with every meal.

CHAPATI <3- There is a love affair between me and chipati. This is by far my favorite food I have discovered in Uganda. It's like a greasy, thick tortilla that has small bits of carrots, onions and peppers in it for flavoring.

Cassava- This is a root that is also very starchy. Definitely my least favorite Ugandan food. Whenever I eat it I have to drink three or four glasses of water as well to be comfortable.

YAMS- I know that Things Fall Apart occurred in Nigeria. But the obsession with Yams has spread to the other end of the continent. They are a prominent part of the Ugandan diet as well.

SPAGHETTI- It's still yummy in Uganda. There is only red sauce though, no pesto or alfredo :(

g-nut sauce on matoke

PUMPKIN- I have learned to loooove steamed pumpkin here. I have never eaten any part of pumpkin except for the seeds and the sugar-diluted pumpkin mash in pies, but I now know I've been missing out.

"Soup"

Eating dry food is a trial not to be endured in Uganda. they pour "sauce," in the form of beans, meat or fish broth, or ground-nut sauce on the dry food. Ground-nuts are kind of like peanuts but the sauce is not at all like peanut butter. It's much less thick and in my opinion, much better (but I'm biased because I have zero taste for peanut butter).

Ugandan avocado vs. American avocado vs. egg

Fruits and Vegetables
The vegetable selection here at provided meals is pretty limited. Ugandas cook with onions and tomatoes, but are not fans of eating vegetable by themselves. When we are served vegetable they are usually in the form of fried cabbage, kale, or spinich. But, the fruits and vegetables sold at the market are amazing. The avocados and mangos are double the size of those available in the US!

Snacks
G-nuts
The most popular snacks here are pretty filling and can work as a small meal. My favorites are triangular thin pastries filled with either peas or meat called sumosa. There are also mandazi which are yummy triangular donuts.

Rolex

My favorite of all is something called a rolex. It's a rolled up chipati filled with a scrambled egg white mixed with peppers and onions. Definitely a useful college survival food to know of.

People here joke to Muzungus that the difference in Uganda is that when you are eating meat one night, the animal was probably slaughtered that same morning. From what I have seen so far, this is strongly true. Everything really is as fresh as it can be. On more than one occasion, I have been walking with a Ugandan and they have grabbed a jackfruit or mango from a tree beside the road, and started to eat the fruit!