velvet mud red & sweet banana green: Mzungu on the Run

Arrival

I arrived in Entebbe airport on Wednesday, May 26th at 8:30 pm after 22 hours of travel. i deserve a gold star for all that plane time. not my forté.

We--Kate, Margo, Rebi and I--had 4 days in Kampala at the Makerere University guest house to revive and recoup before making the 4 hour journey to the Rakai District of Southwestern Uganda (where we'll spend the summer working on our Master's practicums in HIV/AIDS research at the Rakai Health Sciences Program).

While in Kampala, we made an overnight trip to Jinja to go White Water Rafting down the Nile!!! it was my first rafting trip and was way too awesome for words. can't wait to go back and do it all over again. Adrift.ug, check it out!

Ended the day with a BBQ feast on the bank of the river, toasting over cold (a rarity!) Nile beers. Convinced into spending the night by the pleas of some fine lookin' river guides (who may or may not have used their intoxicatingly charming New Zealand accents on us), we camped out in tents on a cliff jutted out over the gushing white waters below. This, after a night of dancing & inspired musings atop the bungee jumping tower teetered over swirling rapids older than time.

Spent the rest of our days in style checking out the Public Health School, Mulago hospital, and all that the Kampala markets have to offer. if you know me well, you know that outdoor food markets are my joy. they had to pry me off the produce.

Wherever you go, there you are

I'll be working for the Rakai Health Sciences Program (RHSP) in Kalisizo Town, Uganda this summer, assisting in their research efforts.

RHSP serves the Rakai District of Uganda and is one of the largest community-based research and medical centers in all of Africa. Focusing on HIV/AIDS research, it provides a wide range of education, counseling and medical services to the estimated 500,000 people who make up the district.

Rakai District-
Population: approx. 500,000
Total Fertility Rate: 7.2
HIV prevalence rate: 11% (compared to a 6% national rate)
Languages: Luganda, Lunyankore, Lunyarwanda

Find out more!

Where there is no road...

that's where i will find my way.

potholes rule the road in Rakai. and i don't mean your average sissy bump on a log pothole. i'm talking bottomless pit of despair type craters that strike fear into the hearts of weakling mzungus like me. there are no familiar roads here. all paths are torn and ragged, battered by the mood swings of the elements. only certain vehicles can survive the long journey into the field.

we were assigned one such weathered coach/armored tank on our day out with RHSP's health education mobilization unit. since seat belts are hard to come by, tearing across an unpaved countryside is much the same as flying through the turbulence of angry skies. word to the wise: don't believe them when they tell you to drink lots of water. where there is no road also translates to "where there is no bathroom" which back translates to drink your water when you have a place to pee/aren't speeding across pothole craters.
or you will suffer like me.

it took us about 30-45 minutes of rough riding to get to the villages we were scheduled to visit. after introducing ourselves to the gathered crowd (everyone in the village was represented: from babies to town elders) in broken luganda and grateful English--"so they can hear your voice"--we sat through two community health meetings consisting of an information presentation followed by an energetic Q&A session. We were super impressed by the thoughtfulness of all the (translated) questions and especially by how readily each individual expressed very private concerns with the rest of the community. certainly not what we were expecting, considering the mix of genders and age groups. after each meeting, a political leader from the village took the microphone to officially close the meeting.

171 Community Health Mobilizers serve the 11 regions of the Rakai District. These volunteers are selected by their communities to serve as RHSP ambassadors, providing an on-ground link between the research center and community. Each RHSP health ambassador receives compensation for their services and an intensive 5-day training, refreshed every 2 years, in order to provide 24/7 health support and resource referral to his/her community members. They are present at each outreach meeting and keep RHSP informed of community problems, concerns and needs as they arise.

RHSP requires an 80% attendance rate from all invited religious, community and political leaders for outreach meetings. If attendance is lower, RHSP brings in the DRAMA SHOW, the crowd pleaser, the catch-all. they know where the power lies.

so, the play's the thing. and the reason i'm here this summer.

though we'll be finalizing our practicum projects tomorrow, i've pretty much established that i'll be designing data collection tools for the health education mobilization department during my stay. RHSP has never evaluated the community or individual-level impact of their large group health education drama show OR their newly implemented small group outreach efforts (financed through PEPFAR funds), which target high-risk groups such as commercial sex workers, adolescents and boda bodas--motorcycle taxi drivers. my task is to create the quantitative and qualitative instruments (survey and focus groups) RHSP will use to collect this raw data. this is done in order to see if arts-based initiatives are actually effective here (PEPFAR personnel remain skeptical).
it is done in order to prove their worth (my bias) & ensure the sustainability of such efforts. and so it goes. Monitoring and Evaluation, here i come!

something shared

the delicious glow of something sacred. the bursting of something good and raw and ripe. that's what it feels like to cross the world and find someone who shares your dreams. Stephen Mugamba, leader of RHSP community health education mobilization and our guide into the velvet mud red of the field, has spent his life attempting to marry music and public health outreach, working on the same types of initiatives I have been diving into through theatre. He's currently collaborating with a number of nationally recognized producers on promoting health messages through song and promised me a tour of the studio he is working out of in Kampala during my stay. Maybe i'll get to make a little music while i'm here...
(check out Stephen's song about male circumcision by pasting this link into your browser: file:///Users/priyachalam/Music/iTunes/iTunes%20Music/Unknown%20Artist/Stephen%20Mugamba/01%20Male%20Circumcision.mp3).

RHSP is one of three African research centers that participated in the recent groundbreaking study on the preventative effects of male circumcision in developing countries. Study results showed that male circumcision protects against male acquisition of HIV during heterogeneous sex by 50-60%. These findings were published in 2007. Since 2004, RHSP has provided free community health education about the benefits of male circumcision and counseling services to all villages within the Rakai District. It also covers transportation costs to and from its medical center, circumcision surgeries and follow-up counseling and care for all men aged 12 and up in the Rakai District who agree to have the procedure done. Studies are currently underway to look at the protective effect of male circumcision on herpes and HPV acquisition among both men and women.

Yup, this pretty much sums it up. On jogging in Kalisizo...

MZUNGU!

Uganda, the only place i've ever been labeled "white"

labeled and reminded 50 times a day.

Mzungu! Mzungu! when i walk, when i run, when i smile, when i dance, when i send my "oli oteayah" greetings out into the universe. i have become the "white person" the "foreigner" the mythical beast of childhood fantasy. the unicorn that rarely comes out to play.
i am hilarious and terrifying all in the same breath. the unknown. the unpredictable.

it's exhausting. there is no way to blend in, which is strange yet similar to the feeling of growing up in Virginia and spending my summers in Cape Breton. somehow different, somehow the same. forever sticking out like a sore thumb.

but instead of being met with fear, we are met with the most beautiful smiles i have ever seen. followed and serenaded by our own paparazzi of fruit laden 5-year-olds. i've never experienced such immediate warmth, openness and trust from strangers. kalisizo already feels like home. the good mix of hard fast and easy slow.

warriors

"You've lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible. Honorable. Sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth. There are plenty of warriors that I know and love, people far more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in advance that they will fail. True, they're less successful in the most vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead."

-arundhati roy