Tuesday, January 31, 2012
When I first took this position of site director in Karagwe for Amizade, I was excited to know that I would be based very close to where I spent my first experience in Africa, Masaka town in Uganda. During the summer of 2008, with the help of the Stein scholarship from Susquehanna University, I participated in an internship with an organization called the Foundation for Sustainable Development. We had one week of orientation in Masaka, and then I spent eight weeks in a small village called Kiwangala living with a host family and working at a small microfinance bank. During that time, I created strong bonds with my family and my co-workers and I have been fortunate enough to visit them after that first summer.
Paul and I left Kayanga, Tanzania early yesterday morning to travel to Kiwangala. After five modes of transport, we arrived in the early afternoon. We first walked to the bank to see my old co-workers and surprise them. They were so excited to see me back. It’s not every day that a mzungu who once lived here, returns to visit. Visiting with Andy and Jon at the bank proved to be a pretty big ego-boost. Evidently, there was another mzungu who lived with my same host family and worked at the bank, and she did not try to integrate or social with people at all. Andy said they never spent time together outside of work, and one day he asked that she share her biscuits and she said, “No, this is my food.” Lol, I cannot imagine. Hajji (my host father) told me she would sit in her room and eat biscuits alone for dinner. I guess it’s easy to look great next to that example.
We planned to meet Andy at 7pm to enjoy some beer and snacks later that day, and then we continued on to home. Hajji met us in the town center with his new motorcycle and gave each of us rides to his home. Abu, the young boy who was my host brother, ran out of the compound when I arrived and jumped up to give me a hug. Hajjet (my host mother) also came out with open arms and welcomed me into her home. It was good to be back. We sat and talked a while, giving updates of our families and countries. Paul and I gave them the donation we collected from the guests at our wedding and some matching funds from Paul’s church, St. John’s Lutheran Church in Center Square, PA. All in all it was $800, which is a large amount of money for this family. I am hoping it supports Abu as he starts secondary school.
Since we have arrived in Kiwangala, I have reflected about being back and comparing my first experience in Africa to our job in Kayanga with Amizade. When I completed my internship in Kiwangala, I thought I was done with Africa. I told myself, “I am definitely not one of those people who come and fall in love with the continent.” And yet, I have returned twice since then. I began my relationship with Africa wanting to take the path less traveled and somehow change the world. Since obtaining a Masters in International Development, my view has become much more grounded and I have started to focus more on how I can change attitudes back home than change lives abroad. I like Amizade’s approach of focusing on intercultural exchange, sustainable development, service-learning, and global citizenship. I also really enjoy teaching. We will see where we go from here. After re-visiting my past in Uganda, it makes me wonder where we will be four years.
Kiwangala and Hajji’s house are so much different than Kayanga and Misha Guest house where we are living now. Kayanga is rural, but it is a growing town where modernity is slowly creeping in and people are visiting from many far places. Kiwangala is much more traditional and isolated, where many children run around the town center without shoes and women and children kneel to show respect to elders. Women wearing trousers are not in Kiwangala. Hajji’s house has no running water, and so whenever we use water here we know that is more time Abu (my host brother who is now 14) must spend fetching water at the nearby borehole (well). Hajji has gotten electricity in his house recently, but last night there was a power outage all over town, and we did not have electricity until right before bed. In Kayanga, we have our food catered from a local restaurant and tell Egbert when we would like to eat. Last night, we did not eat dinner until 11:30pm after we had all bathed. As much as home stays are good for an authentic experience, I am enjoying staying in a guest house where we are on our own schedule. But, this is a good reminder that most of the people we meet and greet even in Kayanga do not have electricity or running water. You wouldn’t think so, but it is easy to live here and not know and understand the daily struggles of people if you do not nurture relationships with local people. I will take measures this semester that ensure that I create relationships and struggle to understand the lives, complete with joys and struggles, of the people living around us in Karagwe.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Once Paul and I arrived in Kampala, we continued our journey on to a small ‘suburb’ called Kajjansi, located between Kampala and Entebbe. Some of the Bbosa family now resides in this more urban setting, along with Daula and Nazifa, whom I lived with in Kiwangala back in 2008. I was excited to visit them and meet their Mom and aunts for the first time. Our visit really highlighted for me the pros and cons to urban vs. rural living in East Africa. Daula and Nazifah moved to Kajjansi to live with their mother instead of their grandparents in order to attend a good secondary school, and go to university in the city. Their mother and aunt own a medium-sized shop where they primarily sell Western-style clothes. The family lives on a busy street with congested traffic sputtering exhaust fumes continually outside their door. They live behind the shop in cramped quarters where they cook dinner in the same place where they are to sleep, making the room very hot. What a change. We traveled directly to Kajjansi from Kiwangala, and the differences were startling. Kiwangala may have very sporadic electricity and no running water, but there is room to breathe and exhaust doesn’t fill the air. It was easy to see the trade-offs necessary for people who travel to The City for better opportunities. Now that we are in Kampala, Uganda’s capitol, while we wait to pick up our students on the 7th, Paul and I are anxious to get back to our more easy-going rural home of Karagwe.
