PARASITE!!

Some of you may or may not know this, but about three days after I got to Gulu, I was plagued with Giardia, a horrible horrible horrible parasite. It was awful. When I first got sick I was staying in a hotel with no toilets, just open latrines outside of the rooms. Giardia + latrines + having to walk far-ish to get to the latrines in the dark= worst combo ever. I finally switched hotels when I found one outside of town that offered a better deal and self contained rooms with TOILETS. Glorious. After the switch, I visited Norma, a Texan missionary, at the Favor of God clinic. She loaded me with meds and hydration fluid packets and told me not to worry about cost because the meds were from Jesus. I should have saved them to sell on Ebay. Then we prayed together.

Being sick here sucked. I tried to get some work done, but I mostly rested and organized my research on my computer. And being alone and sick is the worst, because sickness just perpetuates the problem of being alone by not being able to meet new people. But the people at my hotel checked on me and Lucy, the main tailor at One Mango Tree, kept calling to convince me to let her come visit me. Kate's ex-boyfriend's sister from Kampala is here interning at a psychiatric ward (very interesting - she sees a lot of PTSD cases from the war and Ugandan psych treatments are quite different from the ones in the U.S.) and she somehow heard that I was sick and called to check on me, which was super super nice. We met today and got along well so yay, another friend!

More about my hotel… I'm one of only four guests and the people who work here treat me like a princess. Ex. I get escorted to my room at night (I don't think they get many whities here). Oh and they have a band associated with it which performs in an outdoor, open to the public concert every Friday and Saturday. They practice everyday, all day and sound like bad, loud karaoke. Last Friday, the concert started with a Ugandan dressed in a plaid button down shirt tucked into Levi's with a cowboy hat lip-syncing to country music, climaxed with a sloppy traditional Acholi dance party in the rain, and ended with a town blackout. The concert attracted a huge crowd and I felt really out of place when I first sat down to watch, so I decided to get up and help the girls fill drink orders - they were my only friends there. As people drank more and more, the concept of a white girl serving drinks became more and more hilarious. People patted me on the head and obsessively shook my hands. When they needed drinks they would call "Munu!" (munu = white in Acholi). The drink serving ended quickly. Then came the dancing… the girls tried to teach me the traditional dance moves and of course failed. The dancing is incredible - these girls put Beyonce to shame. They assured me that my body "will move properly" by next week's concert. I doubt it. I only saw the end of Saturday's concert, but the two main performers stuffed their clothes to make them look bigger, put white powder on their faces, and lip-synced to various songs for awhile.

I'm continuing to work with One Mango Tree and am enjoying it. The tailors are incredible and I love being able to look at textiles all the time.

At the One Mango Tree Stall

I had a weird day yesterday. Someone who I had met at the Through Art Keep Smiling Center called me to ask if I would speak to a group of kids. I was confused at his request and asked him what he wanted me to speak with them about. He said that he had told the kids about me and that they were really excited for me to speak to them. He wanted me to tell them that they can do anything that they put their mind to. And why did he choose me? I'm not a motivational speaker… at all. He kept telling me that the group was waiting and excited for me and I figured that it was a group of kids, so I went. He led me to this beautiful field area in a village where we sat under a tattered UNICEF tent with about 15 people in their early twenties… not what I was expecting. I told them a little bit about myself and then asked them to tell me about their group. It was an evangelist group with a band and they prefaced all of their comments with "praise be to God." After people spoke, they would each ask if I could sponsor/find a sponsor for the group. They needed computers to record songs, wanted to know my church so they could contact them, and wanted to know if I had friends from the U.S. in Uganda. Basically, I said that it seemed like they had a great support group there and that they were surrounded with great minds and resources and should take advantage of each other to pool ideas and creativity - a roundabout way of denying sponsorship. But it seemed like the only hope they had was depending on outside sources.













Observing these attitudes of dependency, which I've seen with organizations and individuals here, has been interesting. I've been questioning a lot of the principles behind aid and the western definition of "development." It's hard - while I try to make Ugandan friends, after giving my number or email, I'm often flooded with sponsorship requests. Even my closer friends that I trust have asked me for sponsorships. It's gotten to the point where if some one is nice to me, I suspect that it's only because they want a contact in the U.S. for sponsorship. And while it's frustrating, it's also the reality of the situation here. Maybe they really are stuck and maybe its necessary to lend a helping-hand every once in awhile. Friends asking for sponsorships shouldn't be annoying to me, because it makes sense in context. And the children in the slums of Kampala – they really do need sponsorships and they really do need to be in school. My conscience is confused. The situation here is desperate… or is that just my American perception of things? There's plenty of food here, a growing agriculture industry, and small-scale tourism, so it seems like there are plenty of resources for self-sufficiency. I don't really knowing what I'm saying. I probably should leave these questions until I finish school