Kikandwa is my new home!

Today I departed from the capital city of Kampala for my new home in the rural village of Kikandwa. We left around 6:30 am…a rude awakening for a guy just getting over jet lag. Next to me was my new roommate for these next two weeks, Jim Ley. While my body wanted to do nothing but nap, my mind was going crazy. I had memories of the past few days mixed with excitement-filled thoughts of these next few weeks. I had been to Uganda a year ago, but I knew that living amongst the people with whom we have been in close contact with would bring a much more raw experience. I knew that I was about to begin an experience that would give me an unbeatable look inside the life of a rural Ugandan community.

We first arrived to the local church for service. While there, we saw the progress with the construction of the health clinic. Within just a few days of breaking ground, the foundation had already been set and concrete almost ready to pour. We were completely blown away by this progress. You can’t really describe the emotion that accompanies a sight of a year’s worth of blood, sweat and tears being translated into a physical structure. Whatever emotion it was, it felt pretty damn amazing.

Afterwards, we continued to our new host’s home: the house of Galabuzi James. He is the father of Dr. Jimmy Senteza, a Drake University Professor of Finance and native to the village we are currently living. While we won’t be living in the same house he grew up in, it still stands in the front of the property. Both Mr. Galabuzi and his family gave us the warmest welcome, and after a quick meal we sat down to discuss the agenda for our visit. It was time to start digging into the reason why we were there.

After strategizing with multiple community elders, we made a handful of key plans for the first week in the village:

1) We will spend the entire morning at either a local primary school or secondary school. This will allow us to observe the topics that are being taught and the manner in which the teachers in the village do so. Upon entering the school classrooms, we will be introduced and our intentions will be stated: To see how education is approached in Uganda, which will help improve future outreach efforts through the health clinic. It is important to note that neither “health education,” nor possible future improvement in the schools is mentioned here. We decided to leave those parts out because of the possibility of teachers not acting as they normally do within the classroom. Doing so would certainly sway our research and impact the reliability of the findings.

2) We will spend the afternoons visiting the people within the community surrounding the schools. Using our hosts as translators, we will be able to effectively communicate even if the community member has very limited knowledge of English (which can be the case of much of the poorer population). This will also mean that our intentions will be correctly conveyed throughout our visit. We decided to focus on the areas surrounding the schools in the interest of time, and planned so that each day we will focus on a different area of the community to paint a full picture.

3) We split up the school and the village members between the two parts of the day in order to hit both age groups in a practical manner. The students are mainly in school in the morning while many adults are working in their fields. Then, when many of the students are returning from school in the afternoon, the adults are also returning from the fields.

4) We will only plan for one week for flexibility’s sake. After this week, we will reconvene with the elders to reflect and strategize for the next week’s stay.

While I am happy with all these plans, I do have a few concerns. Perhaps my largest is that people of the community will be apprehensive about providing truthful answers because of the way they view the village elders. As Sarah from TASO told me, these elders are the leaders of the community, and often sway responses to questions, especially about health.

I am also concerned with the openness of communication. While we will have one or two of the elders each day to serve as translators, women are often EXTREMELY hesitant to talk about their issues with men (and vice versa). Throughout the week, I will try to find my way around this concern, perhaps by asking for the aid of younger members of the community who speak English well. This will allow for effective communication as well as the avoidance of intimidation.

Sorry to go on for so long, just thought I would be as descriptive as possible to help you get an insight into my mind as well as my plans. Please offer insight and guidance and post any questions or comments! Look forward to another update tomorrow night as well.

And on another note: Simani luganda bulungi nye gezako...meaning “I don’t speak luganda well, but I try.” I found this phrase gets a ton of laughs, especially when a lot of these people are meeting a silly mzungu.