Goodbye Party

Before leaving the Rakai area we had a goodbye party with the host families in Masaka.  There were many speeches and lots of dancing, including the seeming requirement that you dance on your way to the front to make your speech!

Special thanks go out to Fred, Agnes, Stephen and Eric at Rakai ... this never would have been such a success without all of your help!

Service Project Results

Eventually these will all be stitched into a panorama, but for now use your imagination!  The students paid to have the wall whitewashed and then designed and painted a mural.

More Pictures -- Service Project

Some pictures of the students doing the service project at the school last Saturday, Jan. 14.

Reflection Blog: Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC)

The end of our home stay and the day at Ssese Island marked the halfway point of our trip. This happened to also be the time when we ran our reflection session. Instead of focussing entirely on our theme topic of OVC, we decided that this was a great opportunity to reflect upon the experiences we had in the first half of the journey and those that are coming up in second half. For example, we discussed the lessons we learned throughout the home stay that changed our perspectives on topics that we easily take for granted. In particular, after the home stay many realized how important it is to conserve water in the rural areas, and how we greatly abuse the amount of water we use due to luxuries such as indoor plumbing and showers. 

While we were working at the Rakai Project, the group started to delve into the controversial topic of research and medical ethics. Since it spurred such a heated but interesting debate, we decided to mention the topic again in our reflection session. Therefore, we asked questions such as, "would you rather donate your labor for a volunteer project, or just your money?" and "would you rather work on treatment for HIV/AIDS patients or work on preventing HIV/AIDS with behavior change?" After the discussion of these questions, we concluded that there is no right or wrong answer to these questions. It's a matter of what you personally value and the intentions that you have.

For the second half of our stay in Uganda, we are giving a lot of attention to our theme group topic and presentation. After having a very eye opening experience in the rural village of Rakai where the prevalence of orphans (especially from parents who were victims of AIDS) is very obvious, we are looking forward to finding comparisons of the treatments of orphans in a more urban setting. Tomorrow we are visiting a very popular orphanage called Sanyu Babies Home and then we plan on visiting smaller, more typical orphanages during our free day in the city on Thursday.

Conducted Sunday, January 15, 2012

Reflection Blog: Water and Sanitation Group 2

Our reflection session occurred the day after each group got to spend the entire day shadowing their home stay families, an event that we were all both anxious about and looking forward to. Prior to the reflection session, we had a quick debrief in the morning about our experiences and we already noticed a difference in gender roles. The boys in the group clearly had entirely different experiences than the girls in the group. The boys were not invited by their families to participate in chores, cooking, and housework, whereas the girls were taught how to peel matooke, crack groundnuts, sweep the compound, wash clothes, clean dishes, etc. The extent of participation the boys experienced was limited to observing processes such as making barkcloth, which is a cloth made from the bark of a tree that is used for arts and crafts, and as a sign of respect during a burial. For the most part, the girls in the group were able to interact with the women in the household whereas the boys were only able to interact with the men. Observations were also made about gender roles within the household; aligned with their cultural standards, women and girls in the family would kneel when greeting people and would eat on the floor apart from the men and guests.

During the reflection session, we opened by asking each group to briefly describe their day with their families and something new they learned. For the most part, people picked up new Ugandan words and phrases, different types of agricultural products, and household skills. We were happy to learn that everyone's initial impressions of their families had changed for the better and over the course of just a few days, people had developed strong relationships with their families. A fun question we asked was about the most interesting members of the families. Many people told stories about rambunctous and mischievous children who were always at the center of attention. When asked about the goals they had in the beginning of the home stay and whether or not they achieved them, people had very positive responses, whether their goals were to form bonds with members in the families or to successfully bathe with a basin of water. Some goals that were not achieved were usually due to the gender divide because the interactions the boys in the group had with women in their families were very limited. 

Since we are one of the Water and Sanitation groups, we asked some questions focusing on water usage in the households. Most groups were taken by their families to visit water sources that the households used and some were even able to participate in the collection of water with jerrycans, which proved to be quite a laborious process. Everybody gained a new appreciation of water and awareness of their own habits with water compared to the households. One person spoke about how they realized in their American home, they would leave the faucet running while brushing their teeth, but in Uganda they learned how to conserve water and use it more efficiently.

Everybody had a very successful experience with their home stay families and formed lasting bonds with them. Not only did we all discover new things about Ugandan culture, we also discovered aspects of ourselves that proved to be resilient and adaptable.

Conducted Friday, January 13, 2012.

Water & Sanitation Group 1 Reflection

We led the group in an open-ended discussion consisting of questions related to our first day in the rural home stay.  Stories, shared by all the members (Makerere and JHU students), depicted images of too much food heaped on plates and anxiety over novel living quarters.  Interestingly enough, many of the program participants admired the generosity of the host families and stated that they "felt bad for not eating all the food."  Furthermore, the discussion sessions concluded with statements of goals that the students wanted to achieve during their village home stay.  From establishing long-lasting relationships to surviving a rural home stay, all of the students seemed really determined in making the most out of this experience.

Conducted Tuesday, January 10, 2012

School Service Project

Today we spent our last morning in the Rakai area painting a mural on a local school.  Here's a picture of all of us with some of the students just before we left for Masaka, hot showers, and a goodbye party!