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!

The Mundane Versus the Strange: Uganda and the US

 The Mundane:

1.    Farm animals

a.     Almost every house owns at least one kind of animal here. Every day on my five minute walk from the bus stop to my homestay, I pass by at least ten chickens wandering around people’s yards or the road. You can consistently find cows and goats grazing on the side of the road or in the front yard. At my homestay we have seven goats that we let out into the front yard every day. I now understand just how touristy I was being taking so many pictures of animals my first few days!

2.     Hand holding

a.     Girls and Boys of all ages will casually hold hands walking down the street (as long as they’re the same sex). There are teenage boys holding hands all the time here. I have to reign in my discomfort every time one of my aunties decides she needs to hold my hand for a full ten minutes. The only caveat to this is that it is considered taboo for a boy and a girl to hold hands because that is too sexual.

3.    Breastfeeding

a.     Women will breastfeed in public all the time here. I have seen mothers on the bus next to me start breastfeeding in the middle of my ride home. Breasts are much less sexualised here so it is ok.

4.    Greeting strangers

a.     Saying hi to everyone here is common courtesy. If I’m in Philadelphia and a stranger asks me how I am I assume that they’re about to ask me for money or to come to their club or something. Here it’s often simply because people are being nice.

5.    Being Multilingual

a.     Every Ugandan I have met who went to primary school is at least bilingual. They speak their local language (of which Uganda has 52) and English. The majority of the population is also able to speak Swahili and understand a few other local languages. All of the languages of the South of Uganda are Bantu, so once you know one, it is much easier to pick up another. It would be like an Italian picking up French easily.

The Strange

1.    Casual eating

a.     Eating any meal is a formal sit down event. Food takes a very long time to prepare here so it is impolite to not sit and eat slowly to appreciate the meal. People also do not eat or drink walking or even standing up. That morning coffee Americans rely on has to wait until you’re at the office here. If you drink in the car or on the bus people will stare.

2.     Running

a.     In general, exercise is not a normal thing here. There are a couple gyms but in my seven weeks I have only seen about ten people exercising, and all of them were men. What they say is that if you’re running, they assume you’re running FROM something or being paid for it.

3.     Following the rules of the road

a.     Everyone here thinks they are Speed Racer. There are always tons of cars on the road and in-between the cars there are Boda boda (motorcycle taxis) that weave throughout the traffic. It’s not uncommon to see a care driving on the sidewalk during a traffic jam.

4.     Not being religious

a.     Every Ugandan I have met proudly identifies either as Catholic, Born Again, Protestant, or Muslim. It is a very important part of life here so it has been difficult for me to explain that in the US it is common to meet people who do not identify with any religion.

Public Health Challenges of Uganda

I had an assignment to journal during my six-day public health elective last week and it doubles as an easy blog post! Dr. Paul was our program coordinator and we did the elective with three Makerere students, Lisa, Badru, and Moses.

During the first three days of the program, we went to lectures on the salient public health issues of Uganda. These included safe motherhood, HIV/AIDS epidemiology, nutrition, and issues of gender violence in a conflict setting. There was so much that I learned and I would love to share, but it is not exactly blog-worthy material. If you want to learn about any of these topics please let me know and I would be happy to send you my notes! 

The second week of the program was spent in Jinja, learning about healthcare on the ground level. We first visited the Jinja waste management facility. The biggest difference between American trash and Ugandan trash is that almost all of the waste here is organic. Thus the facility can be entirely devoted to composting waste. In theory, they were effectively dealing with the city’s waste by ensuring that it did not remain in the streets the pollute the water, nor get burned by households and pollute the air. But, despite the good intentions, the local government was struggling for the funding to keep the project running and the facility had deteriorated to the status of being barely operational.

On Tuesday we visited a health center IV (the highest level of village health center)  that served the Jinja population. Badru, Moses, and I started a discussion with the patients and caregivers in the waiting about Malaria and Typhoid because those diseases can be reduced in risk by increasing personal hygiene and the sanitation of living quarters. We learned that the majority of the patients were coming in because their children had a fever they assumed was malaria. When asked if they slept under bed nets, the majority said that they did but did not like it so they forgot sometimes. Others reported that the government distributed bed nets were of poor quality so they used them for other purposes such as covering nursery beds and protecting their chicken. 

We asked them to identify the main causes for malaria and typhoid and they could only identify malarial causes. The patients claimed that they had no knowledge of how typhoid was spread, how to prevent it, nor the symptoms to recognize. One man said that the doctors do not even tell them the disease they have; they simply give a prescription with no explanation.  We then went to the lab and asked them how they test for typhoid and malaria. Sadly, it is too expensive to perform a typhoid or malaria blood culture so they simply do an antibody match for typhoid diagnosis and malaria. The problem with typhoid is that there is salmonella (the bacteria that causes typhoid) in any food that contains eggs so the test is not accurate. The only accurate measure they can use to diagnose typhoid is when there is a large population that is sick so they can identify the epidemic as typhoid. Until that point, they never assume that the sickness is typhoid.

The only examination bed in the hospital

All health center IV's have this sign outside

The waiting area of the Health Center IV

That afternoon, we culminated all that we had learned in the Public Health elective by teaching reproductive health in a secondary school. We split up into teams of two and I was with one of our guides from Jinja so I essentially taught alone. We wrote notes beforehand on the common STI’s and contraceptive services so we would teach a uniform curriculum. Many of the students had never had an open conversation on sexual health so the more information we could illuminate, the better. After lecturing the students, we passed out paper so they could write down anonymous questions about reproductive health. The types of questions we were asked were astonishing because they enlightened us on how uninformed the students really were. They ranged from how exactly sex works, to whether birth control protects against STIs, to how to help a friend who is HIV positive. Aside from technical questions, I also had to debunk many misconceptions the students had on sexual health matters such as condoms causing cervical cancer and washing genitals with soap causing infertility. The most surprising thing I learned was that most kids did not understand the mechanics of how condoms can prevent pregnancy and STI spread. There is so much lack of communication that kids begin having sex before they have a conversation with an adult about how sex works.

Meredith and Moses teaching about reproductive health (that cylinder drawn on the board is Moses' attempt at explaining the female condom)

Visiting the school was a wonderful conclusion of everything we had learned in the public health elective. Much of what we learned in our lectures was that lack of power and education are drivers of poor health in Uganda and this was illustrated perfectly by what we saw in the school. Most students were unaware of the dangers unprotected sex can really pose and many girls feel that they did not have the agency to demand the use of a condom during sex. Knowledge of reproductive health is essential in increasing the health of the Ugandan population. With this knowledge in their arsenal, young people and adults alike can prevent themselves from contracting HIV and unwanted pregnancies. HIV/AIDS, illegal abortions, and families with a large number of children they cannot financially support or feed are huge causes of death in Uganda. Effective reproductive counseling at an early age can prevent all three of these conditions and improve the country’s public health.

A Week of Unforgettable Moments -Refugee Camp, Safari, and Rural Homestay

Sorry for the posting delay! We've been crazy busy since we've gotten back form the rural stay. Only ten days left until I have to submit my Independent Study Project (ISP) proposal (ahhhhhhh)! I will be working with the Kampala City Council Authority and the Slum Aid Project on sanitation practices and safe water in the slums of Kampala. This project would be particularly relevant due to the typhoid outbreak currently hitting Kampala. For those of you who don't know, the ISP is what takes up the last seven weeks of my program. We spread out across the country and either do independent research or work in an NGO to write a forty page research paper on our topic of choice. It has to go through both Emory's and SIT's Institutional Review Board and I will be working on that next week, so once again I will be insanely busy. We also leave our homestays and either live in an apartment here in Kampala with other SIT students, or, if we are travelling around Uganda for ISP research, we base ourselves in an apartment there. Oftentimes, students are alone for the entirety of ISP, but I think most of us want to do work within an hour of Kampala so we will get to meet up frequently.

Refugee Camp
On Monday we went to Nakivale refugee camp, near the boarder of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We toured the camp and met with different ethnicities of refugees (Somali's, Congolese, Rwandians, Ethiopians, and Burundese) to hear about what life in a refugee camp was like. Many of them had been in the camp for over ten years. It was especially surprising to hear that seemingly peaceful countries like Ethiopia and Burundi had so many refugees. There were over ten thousand Burundese in Nakivale camp alone and eight camps throughout all of Uganda. The camp had schools, but only primary ones so the children's education ended at seventh grade. The schools were also taught in English and the local Ugandan language so many refugee children could not understand. We met one 22 year old Hutu Rwandan who came to the camp in 1994 as a baby and had not left once in his life. He was invited to return back to his country but so many Hutu's are still afraid to return in fear of resurgent violence and an unfriendly reception.

Now it gets exciting!!!!!!!- Safari
On Tuesday we were able to go on two safaris and spend the night in Queen Elizabeth National Park. We got to the park at around 4 pm and got on a boat around 5 pm for an "evening game drive" in which we rode on a boat and got to see all the animals using the river. We saw plenty of Buffalo, Hippos, Crocks, and even some elephants! I think I took over 100 pictures of Hippos, because they were sitting around every corner.

We slept in a little house in the middle of the park and kept getting woken up by loud foot-stomps and trees rustling. The next morning, we woke up at 4:30 to go on a "morning game drive."  As we were leaving our house, a family of hippos crossed the backyard to go to the watering hole for the morning. There were only about 10 feet away from us! We began our safari around 5 and, admittedly I had a really tough time staying awake before the sun came up around 6, but it was incredible being awake and watching the world wake up. We were able to sit on the roof of our van while we drove around searching for animals. It was surreal riding around on a roof in the middle of the savannah, the wind flipping my hair all around, and the sun peaking up over the horizon. It was one of many moments I've had in the past seven weeks of "I can't believe this is my life."

Rural Homestay

After our safari, we drove to the town of Bwera in the west of Uganda to prepare for our three day rural homestay. We then drove into Kyanzi (pronounced chon-zee) and met our homestay families. SIT had us grouped into two houses to help us cope with the culture shock. Meredith, Krissy and I stayed in a family that had three mom's married to a late husband. We were the "daughters" of one of the oldest sons in the family. Our mother (his wife)'s name was Agnes and she had a three year old daughter Martha who lived at the house, and two older children who lived with their father in a slightly larger town. All together there were 12 people living in the house including us. The home was pretty large in comparison to some of the other homes in the village. Like my current homestay, there were bare brick walls and no ceiling under the tin roof. But the home had no electricity and no plumbing so we lived by candle and cellphone light after 8 pm. There was a pit latrine outside that was essentially a mud hut for going to the bathroom. 

We were focused on learning about the healthcare challenges faced by the rural poor so we visited a traditional birth attendant on the first day. We also visited a rural school, the regional referral health center, and a traditional healer. 

As a going away present, our family made us each a BEAUTIFUL traditional dress.

With the traditional birth attendant 

A third grade classroom in the rural school. 

Mashing ground nuts to make sauce (kind of like peanut butter)

Mommy Agnes cooking lunch

All of our siblings!

Our three Jajas with us in our traditional dresses

Meredith and me with Agnes showing off our fashionable dresses.

All the neighborhood kids would come over to play with us whenever we were home. This was our crew for the week. 

We spent the majority of our time at our home either helping to cook dinner or playing with the neighborhood kids. When it got dark out I would get out my headlamp and put on a shadow-puppet show for the kids. They taught me all the Lusoga words for common animals and the sounds they make here (cows don't go moo, they go mehhhh here?) On the last night a huge group of neighborhood boys sang and did traditional dance for us around the firelight. They sang the East African Anthem in Swahili and the Ugandan national anthem. Again, I had that moment of clarity where it seemed like life had stopped around us while we were in this magical story. I can remember looking up when they sang and seeing the clear, bright stars above us, so undiluted by city lights we could see colored planets among them. Our whole family had gathered around the fire and clapped in a circle while the boys sang and danced. 

Here is the link to the East African Anthem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RUcwvStL7o

The Ugandan National Anthem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tr2QtUNhwLI

My Week in Rwanda

I'm back from two weeks on the road! It has been an amazing adventure and I cannot wait to post about it. I am going to start from my week in Rwanda in this post and do a separate post about going to the rural homestay and the refugee camp.

*Warning: this post details some of what I saw at the genocide memorials*

Monday, February 23rd:

On Monday we drove the 8 hours to Kigali, through the equator and around the Ugandan and Rwandan countryside. I took about 50 pictures of the rolling hills of Rwanda that all look incredibly similar, but I just could not get enough. We arrived at Kigali late at night and already could see the development differences between the two cities. A significant difference was that Kigali has subsidised electricity (unlike Kampala) so the city was lit up and looked very modern. They are also incredibly strict about recycling and throwing away trash.  One could go to jail for littering so the streets are immaculate. Plastic bags are literally illegal. The other huge difference was that Kigali had 100 times more Muzungus (foreigners) than Kampala did.

The equator line.

Me in front of the landscape of Rwanda.

Tuesday,  February 24th:

This was one of the hardest and most important days of our trip. We visited three of Rwanda's four hundred genocide memorials throughout the day. Our first stop was the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum, the largest memorial in the country. It detailed the events leading up to the genocide, gave testimonials of those who survived and saw their friends murder or be killed, and the success Rwanda has had at reconciliation. The worst part of this was the room full of children's pictures. Each exhibit had the last picture that was taken of the child, a few fun facts such as favorite food, favorite toy, best friend, and then how they were killed. Most were  "hacked by a machete" or "bashed against a wall."

We also visited a small church memorial (5,000 deaths took place there), and a cathedral (12,000 deaths in one night massacre).  There were piles of dirty clothes in these churches, abandoned belongings of those who were killed, and mass graves at both of these sites. The tour guides encouraged us to go inside the mass graves and see for ourselves the brutal markings on the skeletons that showed the proof of the torture they endured before death. In the small church, there were hopeful messages from the local people written on hung up sheets inside. These were often hung next to blood stains on the wall. 

Finally, we finished visiting memorials and went to the SIT Rwanda Resource Center to meet with our counterpart SIT students studying in Kigali. At the Resource Center, one of the Rwandan staff members began a peace circle with us. We spoke of the horrors we had witnessed that day, what it meant for our view of humanity, and how to deal with returning home to the States and sharing what we learned. That is why I think it is important to post explicit details of what I saw in Rwanda. Before I went to Rwanda myself, I believed the propaganda that the genocide had been a result of tribal violence and was something the West had no hope of stopping. All I had been able to picture were people who looked no more human than dolls fighting, not millions of individuals just like my family and friends who became murderers.  

The outside of the small church.

This was the kitchen in the church. It was left exactly how it was found after the massacre.

This was the Sunday school room. The stain is from where the babies were smashed against the wall. 

Wednesday,  February 25th:

This day was pretty uneventful. We sat in class all day and learned about the history of Rwanda, colonialism in Rwanda, and the political tensions leading up to the genocide. The most important lesson I learned this day was that the terms Hutu and Tutsi were invented by the colonial Belgians to differentiate between the rich and poor Rwandans. Any Rwandan who had more than 10 cows was a Tutsi and was given a ruling class status. Any Rwandan with less than 10 cows became a Hutu. Before colonialism these distinctions DID NOT EXIST, yet the West claims the genocide was a result of tribal tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi. We also learned about Kigali and some of the successful development initiatives their president, Paul Kagame, has put into place.

Thursday,  February 26th:

On Thursday our director decided to give us a break and take a trip to a Rwandan vacation town at lake Kivu. On the way, we stopped by a town with a huge business enterprise started by a Rwandan that was employing 400 locals. The business made juices, wines, donuts, bread, and chilli sauce. While it definitely highlighted a way to development, I think we mostly stopped by the town to have an excuse to go on our vacation. After about a three hour drive, we arrived at the beach and hung out by the water. We are not allowed to go in any body of water here because Schistosomiasis (a water borne disease), but being at the beach was still really fun and we got some much needed relaxing time after all the talk of genocide.

Friday  February 27th: 

We spent Thursday night at a beachside hotel and in the morning went hiking around the surrounding mountains. Then we drove back to Kigali.

Saturday,  February 28th

We left the city on Saturday to go back to Uganda. But on our way out we got stopped by the police at a checkpoint. It turned out it  was national community service day and we were being required to participate for the three hours of community service required by citizens! Rwanda has this on the last sat every month, and has since the genocide. Our SIT Rwanda friends told us that most of their host families hide out inside all morning so they can't be forced to do the community service. Outside of our car we saw that there were in fact a lot of people milling around. Mostly they were picking up trash. Thankfully, our academic director, Charlotte, talked us out of it and we drove out of Rwanda.

***

In light of such a sad post, I would like to share with the Shipley community my sorrow for the tragedy that occurred over the weekend. It is with a heavy heart that I wrote this post and with the same heart I feel for the family and friends of Caymen. In the words of the Basoga, the tribe of my homestay family, Nga kitalo, I am sorry for the loss of a life.