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