the amazing race to the last week...

As I’m nearing into my last week in Uganda for 2009, my head is filled with thoughts; of what I still need to do (why oh why do I leave some projects for the last minute), of who I need to spend time with, what placements I need to say goodbye too, when I’m going to finish off my school work stuff, what babies I’m going to try and fit in my suitcase.

My pace is a lot different compared to the rest of the summer now. As the majority of my close friends have left town already to go back to the UK or wherever, my nights out have toned down to good one-on-one or few people conversations, a few games of pool at 2 Friends or Reflections, or just staying at home and drinking tea on the sofa with my housemate Iain as we daydream about other travels and trips we want to do. I have ended up meeting and spending time with people I never would have anticipated- like the other night when I found myself getting drinks bought for me from one of the Mahdvani brothers- (pretty well the richest family in Uganda- V. famous over here. I think they own half the country or something). When you’re used to conversations with other development workers about village latrines and HIV education, it was quite a change in tune to talk about his private jet and the new hotel he’s building in Murchesin Falls. Interesting that even in a country ravaged by poverty there still seems to be the extreme wealth of western nations. ‘The richer get richer’ as they say..

Thursday I spent the night at Damali’s. She’s short of staff right now as a few of the people helping her have gone back to university and another girl quit, and of course all my volunteers are gone now (except Sandy and Tom). Anyway, I volunteered to spend the night with baby Steven so Damali could get some sleep. After a few hours of facebook stalking and eating meat and matoke we went to bed. Steven was pretty good- I only had to feed him 2 bottles (2am and 3:30am) however after the second bottle he thought it was play time and I spent an hour trying to lure him back into sleep; which eventually worked and I slept until 7am when a very lively Damali bounded into the room to say good morning.

About 2am Saturday morning I was woken up by my stomach in severe knots. This was followed by about10 hours of severe vomiting and diarrhea; which ruined my plans for Saturday of going to a Ugandan “Introduction” (the first of many marriage ceremonies) in Entebbe with Godfrey’s family as I was sick until about noon Saturday. I stayed horizontal the whole day as standing up and being vertical sent my head and stomach spinning. This also ruined my plans of having a Big Night Out and dragging Iain to Sombrero’s for the first time with Ellert and I; (which I believe he was more than happy to not happen) Instead we lay on Iain’s bed and watched the football match of Manchester United vs Arsenal and ate food from Zamo. (By 8pm I could stomach some toast and a few fries). So much for a big weekend on the town, but I was more than grateful to have someone willing to watch TV with me all day and keep me company.

Now it’s Sunday morning and I feel great- which would be even more exciting if it wasn’t torrential down pouring and I could actually go out and do some things. The rainy season has officially begun, especially on the days I plan to go outside and tan. So instead I am busy planning out my last week and crossing my fingers I’m going to be able to fit everything in. So far it’s filling up with a few days of family kit delivering, shopping and delivering donation items to a few placements, saying goodbye to placements, having staff dinners/dinners with friends in town, taking photos, visiting all my favorite restaurants (Aaswad, 2 Friends, Indulge) and spots (Bujigali falls, Adrift base) and a few places I actually have never been around here- like the Speke gardens and the town side of Lake Victoria.

I was discussing with my other housemate Ruth yesterday about how the first while you’re here (or anywhere new) you go out constantly- never saying no, because you want to make friends and make yourself a home here. But when it gets to the last week or two- you start to not care as much, not really wanting to put the effort in because that’s just going to be more people you have to say goodbye to. I’ve found that I do this all over the place- whenever I’m leaving Summerland, or the coast, or whenever I’ve been away travelling before to New Zealand, Australia or Uganda/Rwanda. I’m not sure if it’s good or not, if it’s somewhat preparing myself for the change that’s to come or what. Saying that and recognizing that, I’m going to make the effort this week to live as if it’s my first week here again (well, maybe not THAT crazy) but I’m not going to recluse and sit at home and watch movies for the fear of getting close in relationships and saying goodbye- again and again. I’ll be back in like, 9 months anyway. Tis better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all, right?

C’est la vie. See you all (in BC) in a week!
Xxx vicks.

UFV publicity

I just submitted this to my university publicity and media department as per their request. thought i would share it on here...(seeing that i did ALLLL that typing already)
"Growing up in the small town of Summerland, BC formed the importance I now have of relationships, accountability and community support. I lived in the same house my entire life with my parents and 2 brothers (one older, one younger) until I graduated from Summerland Secondary School in 2003.Unknowing of what I wanted to pursue other than travelling, I spent a good four years off and on working from home as a lifeguard, waitress and ballet instructor ---and living/working/studying in New Zealand and Australia until spring 2007.
I first came to Uganda as a volunteer with Canadian NGO GIVE International in April 2007. I came as an optimistic, wide-eyed 21 year old who thought she knew a bit about travelling and ‘Africa’. My experience was life changing; not in a sappy, “I’ve Made A Difference” sort of way, but in a way that actually changed the direction of my life and formed my desires for a career in the future. Reflected in the fact that I re-directed my former strictly Theatre study path to the Sociology/Anthropology degree at UFV (still with an extended minor in Theatre).
When I was offered the position this summer of “Volunteer Coordinator” for GIVE International (whom I volunteered with in 2007); my heart leapt at the opportunity to get my feet wet in my first PAID work in International Development. I arrived in balmy Uganda in June, and arrived back to the town/city of Jinja at the source of the River Nile (about 2 hours from the capital of Kampala); the same city I volunteered in in 2007. I stay in a Guesthouse run by Busoga Trust; a water development NGO from the UK. It’s always full of people from around the world who are working on different projects, which is an excellent setting to meet people and make connections.
Basically I am in charge of the ‘First Time To Africa’ Canadian volunteers who come over for various amounts of time as I did two years prior. My job is not to smother them with rules and regulations or babysit them; but to help orient them with Jinja, with Uganda, with the people and culture. I set up work/volunteer placements for whatever their field of interest is- GIVE has links in several different health clinics (we get a lot of nurse and doctor volunteers), schools, and orphanages. I arrange where they stay, help out with transport and direction for the first week-ish and kind of set them off on their way- always checking in on them to see how they are doing and if they need any help with projects or dealing with sticky-interesting-African situations. I am in charge of working with the GIVE finances here in Uganda, communicating daily with my boss in Ontario and working closely with our local Ugandan staff (of which we currently have 3 paid and another handful of volunteers who help out when needed). I constantly am in meetings with people- directors from our placements, potential new placements, possible link organizations and projects. The focus of GIVE is to support locally run projects that could use an extra set of hands, especially in Jinja’s surrounding villages.
All the while I’ve been doing this the past few months, I have also been working under the supervision of UFV Sociology instructor Stephen Piper (via email!) on a field study for Sociology credits on the concept and phenomena of “Volunteerism”; doing an analysis of different NGO’s I come across everyday here in Uganda. This will work in my favor for a concentration in Global Development Studies (to add on to my Sociology/Anthropology major), when the program gets off the ground at UFV.
While I’ve been here this second time around I’ve thought a lot of the future and what I plan to do, and why honestly I am here in the position I am in. To many people it may seem ‘noble’ or ‘worthy’ or ‘Good Samaritan’-like work that I’m doing; but to me it really is a career path that I actually, truly enjoy and love to do. If I really enjoyed and loved working with computers, then I would do that; but I don’t. I love working abroad. I love different cultures. I love the adventure, I love the people. I love the confusions and the frustrations that come with the cultural boundaries and differences I have to work through in order to do my job well. I like living under a mosquito net with the geckos, fishing the ants out of my honey and riding on the back of motorcycles through bumpy red dirt roads and mud hut villages that most people only see in World Vision ads on TV. I like believing that somehow, something positive is happening, and I like being a part of it."

cheers from "The Field"
xxx vicks.

goat trip!!

long story short about this photo.
betsy, the girl who was doing my job before me, did some work out in a village called bugembe (near jinja) with this grandmother called jaja aminah, who apparently was looking after 19 orphans. i think what happened was one of jaja's goats died, so betsy's mom (a grade 2 teacher in ontario) and her grade 2 class raised enough money to buy jaja 2 more goats.
guess who got the job of finding and buying the goats and delivering them???
(well, actually i got some local help...)
but it was a riot. and jaja, now apparently looking after 34 orphans (!!!!!??) was estatic with her new twin goats.
in the photo is me and tanu, with jaja, the goats, and a lady who was helping jaja out.
there you go betsy, i did it!!!
xxxx vicks.

friends from canada

two years ago here in uganda i met this girl- lindsey seegmiller, and another girl, leslie lappalinen, both from ontario. the three of us got super close and have been trips back and forth across the country to meet up in the past few years since. this was the best reunion though- back IN JINJA, where we met, lindsey and her two friends devyn and eric were on an east africa tour and stopped in jinja for a few nights.
epic!

a mournful update

baby kelly died the other night.

basically, she had a huge heart defect, or hole in her heart, plus the pnemonia and whatever else she had, plus being 2 months pre-mature.

she was doing better, which was the hard part. my volunteers and the staff at sonrise had been taking shifts with her, she was monitered and fed by a tube 24/7. brenda, the doctor volunteer who is here with her son tanu, especially got close with her...and brenda had a difficult time with the lack of hospital facilities here to deal with such a case.

basically she went into respiratory distress the other night (monday) and stopped breathing- brenda gave her CPR and mouth to mouth, tanu apparently lost it and started hyperventilating and throwing up and they ran out of their room at zamo (where we have been taking care of her, to not expose her to the other children's illnesses in her frail state), screaming for someone to drive them to the hospital, running out into the street and luckily a neighbor was pulling out their driveway and took them to the children's hospital, where brenda nd the doctor tried to continue CPR but it was too late.

i was at damali's with kelly and sarah for their last night, we were having a big dinner with them and the kids, when damali got a phone call from tanu freaking out saying emergency..emergency... damali got off the phone and immediatly broke into the biggest wail i've ever heard- which set off the ENTIRE staff, as well as kelly and sarah...I got back on the phone to tanu who was weeping and hysterical and tried to get him to breathe and tell me exactly what was going on and finally he could calm down enough to tell me that yes, she was dead, and they were at the children's hospital and to come immediatly.

so i had to tell the news to the staff that yes, she was dead. the noise of hysteria that emerged from that household that evening should never be heard by human ears and I tried to hold myself together as someone needed to organize this chaos- damali threw her phone at me and i ordered a car to come get us, called the probation officer who brought us the baby to meet us at the hospital and notify the relatives... notifyed the other volunteers, our boss, damali's friends... packed up everyone's things and basically pushed them all into a vehicle.

we arrived at the hospital and ran to the emerg room, where brenda was there with the dead baby...the screaching ugandan woman can do is the loudest noise i've ever experienced. brenda was actually calm, i think in a state of shock..but also because she is a doctor and knew the medical history and the likelyhood of survival..but still she got emotionally attatched. a few hours later at the hospital still we got word from the probation that the father could not come and pick up the body , so damali and some other staff got a vehicle and took the body out to the village. the rest of us went home.

yesterday morning sarah and kelly left for the airport, on quite somber terms as you can imagine. i took brenda and tanu to meet a van in town to bring us out to the village for the burial. the amazing thing was the community support network that exists for damali- growing up herself in an orphanage has given her a huge community of "brothers and sisters" who were all there- as well we stopped to pick everyone adn anyone who slightly knew of this baby.. adn stopped at the grandmothers house in Iganga, about 1 hour away from jinja.

the burial process was an entire day long event. the guys dug a grave in the back undeneath some banana and coffee trees, and put in bricks and poured in cement...we had stopped on the side of the road to buy a coffin as well. 16 year old tanu grew up immensley that day. he mixed the cement, and dug the grave, he helped place in the coffin and he stood up and spoke a few words at the ceremony. (as did myself and brenda, the pastor, the father and the probation officer). we finally drove home about 4pm.

what i think was the hardest for me, was watching the volunteers go through their first experience with first hand african death that happens every day here...but such a surreal culture shock to them. the same with damali- since sonrise opened they have had nothing but good luck and amazing things happen...so to have the first bad thing happen really threw them for a loop...it was a reality check of life here, and i believe that the honeymoon period is now over- for sonrise, and for the volunteers. which in a way is good to happen- as damali is going to have to be strong for this kind of thing is going to happen to her if this is truly what she wants to do with her life.

please continue to pray for damali and the staff at sonrise as they deal with their first child death at the home, and for the volunteers.

kelly victoria!

the newest addition to Sonrise babies home...Came in today, 3 weeks old and very pre-mature and malnurished and very sick. the mum died a week after giving birth and the father cannot take care of her. she had no name, and since kelly (one of my volunteers) and i were there damali decided to name her after us!

please be in prayer for this new little one as she is going to need extra special attention to bring her back to health.

alex and i on safari

big grins for big game rides in murchisen falls national park.

volunteers....

thought i would try and post more photos of people i've been spending time with. this is kelly, miko and sarah, the morning miko and james left jinja.

claire and vicki paint

claire, jem and i helped charlie paint room for music and art at the school he was teaching at...

baby stephen

say hello and wave goodbye

When I pick up new volunteers, it’s always interesting to hear their first impressions when they get off the plane, and then on the 3 hour drive home to Jinja from Entebbe. Sometimes they ask me a million questions on the way home, sometimes they are silent. I try and not overwhelm them with information unless they ask for it- because usually the first day everything I say is erased by jet lag and then repeated the next morning.

On Wednesday I picked up Brenda, a doctor, and her son Tanu (16) from Vancouver Island. We drove all the way back to Jinja almost in silence, but not uncomfortable silence. It was silence of them watching everything go by out the window, absorbing their first taste of Africa. When its times like these, I either get bored and start texting people telling them I’m on my way home, or I force myself to look outside and pretend it’s my first time in Africa again as well.

It’s the things now that I take for granted, or that I have become so accustomed to that I don’t notice that they are ‘different’ from ‘normal’ anymore. Things like the burning smell of garbage and plastic sizzling on the side of the road. Like the charcoal fires burning and cooking maize and cassava. Or that the bunches of green bananas aren’t really bananas, but matoke, which tastes light an odd version of mashed potato when cooked. Or that there are no traffic lights, or stop signs, just a few roundabouts in the capital city. I no longer think that women carrying everything including the kitchen sink on their head is fascinating (that is if they had kitchen sinks, or kitchens, for that matter). I no longer notice that the fields we cruise by are of sugarcane and tea and coffee, things that don’t exist in Canada. I have stopped wondering what air conditioning might feel like and what I would do if my back wasn’t constantly a pile of sweat. I no longer think in conversions of shillings to dollars or worry about getting run over by 6 million bicycles and motorcycles and cars and busses when I casually walk across the street.

When a coming volunteer asked me if there was anything I wanted them to bring me from Canada that I missed, I could not think of one single thing. (except people, of course)

When we got to Jinja I did the usual with the new people- settle them into the hotel, walk them into town, exchange money, point out good places to eat, go over jinja facts and street smarts..meet Damali for lunch, meet the other volunteers and staff, take them around the market and show them how to use their money…organize everyone I know/volunteers/friends/staff to meet at 2 Friends for their first meal out so they can meet a bunch of people..and make it start to feel more like home than a foreign country.

On Friday I did it all again- back to Entebbe, back to the airport with my GIVE international t shirt, a sign with the new volunteers names on it, and a big ‘Welcome to Uganda’ smile plastered on my face. Larry and Mike (father and son team) arrived in good spirits though they were (and still are) minus one bag…

The goodbyes come into play this weekend as well again. I have said goodbye to too many people to count so far this summer and I feel as though this weekend marks the last of the original “crew” I met and hung out with when I first arrived in June; as Mike left yesterday and India leaves Monday (Claire and Jem left last weekend- following Charlie, Mark, Alex….etc etc) . Of course this meant we had epic adventurous last nights on Friday and Saturday; and now I will have to remember that I’m actually quite an independent lady and will survive the next month without those I’ve been with everyday for the past two.

Maybe that means I’ll get more schoolwork and work work done before I return to Canada for the mass craziness of moving/starting classes/attending weddings/trying to deal with jetlag which will ensue within the first few days of touching down in Penticton on September 7th.

less than a MONTH! yikes...
vicks xxxx