Yesterday, Avery (the other UNC intern) and I arrived in the village we are going to spend the summer in, Katosi! I really really like the town, because it already feels like home. It is right on Lake Victoria, and it is so incredibly beautiful! I hope I can go on a boatride sometime, but I will not go swimming I promise!
I really like the house we are staying in! It is right behind the Katosi Women's development office, and is the home of one of the founders of the organization. We call her mama Gertrude! The house is really nice, even though we have no running water and no electricity (it may come back on sometime in June!!). It gets so ridiculously dark here, and at night I sort of feel like I am floating among the stars! I swear I actually saw the milky way. We also have to pee in a whole in the ground and shower outside, but we are getting used to it!
We also have some chicken and two cows, one is named Anna. They kind of scare me, because they are so huge, but today I fed Anna a banana peel, and now I think he likes me. There are women hanging around the house and patio pretty much all the time, and I can tell they are really hard workers and really care about the community.
After we settled in, we walked around the village! There are a lot of shops and markets, and I think I already made friends with a lady who owns one of them. I might go to her shop every day and drink lime fanta! There are also a lot of schools around the area, so hopefully I will get to work with as many of them as I can!
We walked to the top of a gigantic hill (maybe even a mountain) and saw the view of the lake and everything around it. The peace corps volunteer who is also working at Katosi Women Development Trust thought we could see all the way to Kampala!Katosi is pretty much a little village surrounded by the jungle, and I love it! We went to go feed some wild monkeys, but they refused to eat the banana I was trying to give them! it sort of hurt my feelings:) haha
A few days ago, we had our internship training to learn more about Katosi Women Development Trust. It was really interested and informative, and the more I learn about it, the more awesome I think it is. Basically the organization is made up of 13 groups of women around the Mukono district. The leaders figure out what the women need and then implement things like training sessions, agricultural programs, microfinance/loans, and water and sanitation programs. They try to break the traditional gender roles, but in a way that doesn't cause any problems (like they teach women how to construct gigantic cement rainwater collectors, even though women do not traditionally work in construction).
I can tell things are going to move sort of slowly here, but it is obvious that the development trust does get things done. I hope I can work on some of the community gardens and also implement the kicks for katosi (and maybe expand that to kicks for kampala) internship project!
So everything is going really well! The only hard thing is trying to cook, haha, which I am not very good at in the first place. Basically the only food here is rice, fruit, and vegetables. and some bread. I am a horrible cook in the first place, but with no microwavable food (there is a gas stove), I am even worse. Last night, Avery and I cooked Spagetti. It was yummy, but it took us over an hour to make! And this morning for breakfast, I ate the leftover cold spagetti with my fingers. until i found a dead mosquito in it. then i stopped, haha.
I love Uganda, and I will try to update everyone more soon!
Monday, May 31, 2010
International Criminal Court conference
It is cool being in Kampala near the time of the review conference for the International Criminal Court, though! But at the same time, I wouldn’t have known it was going on unless I had read about it back in the US. I think that is not really a good sign, but it is definitely a step in the right direction anyway! I am going to try to go to a public event, like maybe a screening of the film “The Reckoning” which is about the establishment, etc of the ICC, although I don’t think there is much the general public can do without being accredited ahead of time.
But I had an awesome conversation with the woman next to me on the airplane, who was going to present a paper on transitional justice at the conference. She was from Afghanistan and works for the country’s National Human Rights Commission. She said she mostly likes to set up conferences and meetings where victims around the country get together and work toward reconciliation and justice. I told her a little bit about Rwanda’s gacaca courts, which is the community-based justice system used after the genocide; she thought they were really interesting and I felt like maybe I contributed a little to reconciliation in Afghanistan (OK, not really, but you never know!!). She talked pretty openly about how hard forgiveness and reconciliation is in Afghanistan, especially because often the victims and perpetrators come from different ethnic groups and that are usually in different locations around the country. Or the perpetrator is the Taliban, or even international forces, and the victims are completely innocent people.
I asked her what the victims or people in general feel about the ICC, and her response was really interesting and I think was one that is probably the case in many countries around the world. The victims want justice, or at the very least they want the truth, and so they want the perpetrators to go on trial. But many people don’t actually understand what the ICC can and cannot do. Right now, the woman said the ICC is doing a preliminary investigation in Afghanistan. But it definitely does not have jurisdiction over anything that happened before 2003, when Afghanistan became a member. Maybe some more education programs or other ways to spread knowledge about the court would be useful?
I hope I get to experience some of the conference! I did drive by the national soccer stadium, where the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, and the Ugandan president Musseveni were playing a game of soccer to commemorate the beginning of the conference! sadly, I couldn't stop to see it:(
But I had an awesome conversation with the woman next to me on the airplane, who was going to present a paper on transitional justice at the conference. She was from Afghanistan and works for the country’s National Human Rights Commission. She said she mostly likes to set up conferences and meetings where victims around the country get together and work toward reconciliation and justice. I told her a little bit about Rwanda’s gacaca courts, which is the community-based justice system used after the genocide; she thought they were really interesting and I felt like maybe I contributed a little to reconciliation in Afghanistan (OK, not really, but you never know!!). She talked pretty openly about how hard forgiveness and reconciliation is in Afghanistan, especially because often the victims and perpetrators come from different ethnic groups and that are usually in different locations around the country. Or the perpetrator is the Taliban, or even international forces, and the victims are completely innocent people.
I asked her what the victims or people in general feel about the ICC, and her response was really interesting and I think was one that is probably the case in many countries around the world. The victims want justice, or at the very least they want the truth, and so they want the perpetrators to go on trial. But many people don’t actually understand what the ICC can and cannot do. Right now, the woman said the ICC is doing a preliminary investigation in Afghanistan. But it definitely does not have jurisdiction over anything that happened before 2003, when Afghanistan became a member. Maybe some more education programs or other ways to spread knowledge about the court would be useful?
I hope I get to experience some of the conference! I did drive by the national soccer stadium, where the UN secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, and the Ugandan president Musseveni were playing a game of soccer to commemorate the beginning of the conference! sadly, I couldn't stop to see it:(
Lingala! And sex and the city
I have really liked walking around the city, especially when I can speak in a different language!. Yesterday, I was walking around the craft market just minding my own business, and the owner of one shop just came up to me and said “I am from the DRC!” I was soooooooooo excited, since I have been taking the language they speak there, Lingala, for a whole year (yayyyyyy molakisi mpe baninga na ngai!) Anyway, I asked him if he spoke Lingala, in Lingala of course, and we had almost a twenty minute conversation in Lingala!
It was seriously my favorite experience here so far. I think the man was so excited that a white girl could speak Lingala, haha, and my friends that I were with thought I was speaking so fast! I asked him if there were a lot of people from the DRC in Uganda, since they share a border, but he said there were not very many. He came to Kampala two years ago, from the region near Lake Kivu. I didn’t ask, but I think he must have come because of the fighting that is going on in that area of the Congo. That is the area with a lot of spillover violence from the Rwandan genocide. Anyway, our conversation was awesome, I loved being able to speak with him in Lingala! (eboto mingi, molakisi!)
Tonight, a group of us went to go see Sex and the City! It felt really different than watching it in the US, especially because it seems so much more…uhhh…graphic than what is acceptable in Uganda. It was really interesting when two gay men in the movie got married, because there were a lot of scenes/conversations about homosexuality. But in Uganda, they just passed a law that made homosexuality a criminal offense that I think could be punishable by death! So those parts were pretty awkward, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the jokes or not. I am surprised the government did not censor those scenes! Ido know it is kind of bad to go watch an American movie, especially since tonight is my last night in Kampala, but it was so incredibly awesome!
Tomorrow, I will leave with Avery, another intern, to go to our internship site in a really rural village named Katosi, which is about an hour or so outside Kampala. We knew there would be no running water, only bathrooms outside, and pretty spotty electricity. But we just found out the electricity has been out in the ENTIRE village for a month and a half, because a transformer blew. If that happened in the US, people would be mad if it wasn’t fixed in like two hours. But a whole month and a half! And who knows how much longer it will be out. Anyway, I may not have much access to internet for awhile, but do not worry, I can travel to a nearby town during some weekends!
It was seriously my favorite experience here so far. I think the man was so excited that a white girl could speak Lingala, haha, and my friends that I were with thought I was speaking so fast! I asked him if there were a lot of people from the DRC in Uganda, since they share a border, but he said there were not very many. He came to Kampala two years ago, from the region near Lake Kivu. I didn’t ask, but I think he must have come because of the fighting that is going on in that area of the Congo. That is the area with a lot of spillover violence from the Rwandan genocide. Anyway, our conversation was awesome, I loved being able to speak with him in Lingala! (eboto mingi, molakisi!)
Tonight, a group of us went to go see Sex and the City! It felt really different than watching it in the US, especially because it seems so much more…uhhh…graphic than what is acceptable in Uganda. It was really interesting when two gay men in the movie got married, because there were a lot of scenes/conversations about homosexuality. But in Uganda, they just passed a law that made homosexuality a criminal offense that I think could be punishable by death! So those parts were pretty awkward, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the jokes or not. I am surprised the government did not censor those scenes! Ido know it is kind of bad to go watch an American movie, especially since tonight is my last night in Kampala, but it was so incredibly awesome!
Tomorrow, I will leave with Avery, another intern, to go to our internship site in a really rural village named Katosi, which is about an hour or so outside Kampala. We knew there would be no running water, only bathrooms outside, and pretty spotty electricity. But we just found out the electricity has been out in the ENTIRE village for a month and a half, because a transformer blew. If that happened in the US, people would be mad if it wasn’t fixed in like two hours. But a whole month and a half! And who knows how much longer it will be out. Anyway, I may not have much access to internet for awhile, but do not worry, I can travel to a nearby town during some weekends!
Uganda! And hanging out in Kampala.
We are finally in Uganda, after a long and cool trip. I love it, and I felt at home literally as soon as I stepped out of the airport. We were picked up by a man named George that works at my internship site, Katosi, and took about an hour matatu ride (which is a mini bus) to our hotel in Kampala. Besides getting stopped by the police because we looked suspicious with most of our bus full of bags instead of people, I really liked just looking out the window during the ride from the airport. I saw an Obama Salon, which I tried with utter failure to take a picture of.
Uganda reminds me a lot of Rwanda, but of course they are different in many ways too. Kampala is definitely a bigger, and sort of more “international” city than the capital of Rwanda was. There are a lot more Muzungus (white people/foreigners) than in Rwanda, for sure. Kampala is also slightly less orderly, but even though it may look chaotic on the surface, I definitely don’t think it is. It has the same sense of orderly chaos as I felt when I was in Tanzania. Like there are not many rules, but at the same time everyone has a shared understanding of common rules. Traffic looks so busy and even dangerous, with motor taxis literally weaving in and out of cars (sometimes within inchesss) and with people going ridiculously fast but still trying to avoid the enormous potholes in the road. But it just seems to work, you know?
I did start feeling a little strange after being here a couple of days. I think I was expecting it to be as hard emotionally as being in Rwanda and hearing about the genocide and visiting horrible memorials with thousands of genocide victim’s bodies preserved in limestone and mangled in the actual position they died in. Or as hard as seeing people with machete scars on the faces. Although there hasn’t been a genocide in Uganda in the past 15 years, a lot of bad things have still happened here, and I think I was over-preparing myself for being sad and upset.
Perhaps a lot of why my time here hasn’t been as emotional is just the nature of what I am doing. I am not taking classes, and I have not started my internship yet, so I have basically been hanging out and with the other interns. It has been fun, and we have done a lot of cool things (like exploring a local, really intense market called Oweeno that is basically like a covered, winding maze with people selling second hand things). But at the same time, what we have done so far hasn’t been as genuine (maybe that’s the wrong word) as I was hoping. I think we have been living more of a westerner’s life in Uganda rather than actually experiencing a Ugandan’s life in Kampala. We have hardly made any Ugandan friends, and everyone pretty much seems to want to hang out and party with other Americans they have met rather than actually learn about Uganda and the people that live here.
Some of the Americans are definitely even rude and culturally insensitive. Like one guy thought he was like an expert on Kampala, but he would say things like “oh, none of the cultural rules and customs apply to Americans (like not wearing shorts or not having dredlocks because they are associated with the LRA). Americans are the highest class in Uganda.” I literally almost punched him in the face. Even though seeing what western life is like in Kampala is definitely interesting, I hope I can connect with Ugandan people once I go to the small village where my internship is!
The trip over! And Dubai
The trip over to Uganda was pretty much AWESOME! It started out sad, of course, saying bye to my family and then waiting to get on the airplane by myself (and, by the way, I was basically taller than the airplane!). Anyway, then I found one of the other interns going to Uganda, Julia, and I felt much better. We flew to New York, and pretty much hung out in the airport for a loooong time. Of course, when I tried to listen to my ipod, I realized my headphones were broken. Thank god I was still in New York, so I bought some awesome Carolina blue ones to keep me company! I also read my Uganda guide book, trying to learn about Uganda’s history and all the awesome things that I hope I can do while I’m there (like going on a safari and hanging out with rhinos, hiking to a waterfall and exploring caves, and going on a two day rafting trip down the Nile!)
The next part of our trip was from New York to Dubai, which was a ridiculously long flight on a ridiculously awesome plane. I got my own touch screen TV with literally over 300 movies and a LOT of TV shows. I watched like 10 episodes of Friends, and I think I may have disrupted the entire plane by laughing so much I almost cried. I slept a lot under the roof of the plane that had a “starry night” theme, and it was good because I had been staying up late packing and everything. There was a camera under the plane, so we got to see below us the whole time, which was especially cool when we were landing in Dubai. It was the perfect farewell USA plane ride.
Dubai is pretty much the coolest place ever (although I was only there for like 12 hours). It sort of reminded me of Singapore, because it is a really big, really clean, really safe, and really wealthy city (not all of it of course). We got to our hotel just in time to take the night city tour, which was so cool, although I do wish I could have seen Dubai in the day too. We saw the tallest building in the world, which was actually really really skinny. I felt like I was looking at a gigantic needle! The architecture is definitely as awesome as I had heard. On our tour, we stopped outside the sailboat-shaped hotel, which happens to change colors and cost at least $15,000 per night! I got to put my feet in the Persian Gulf too! It was insanely dark, so I couldn’t see that much. I did however, see women swimming in burqas. I also collected seashells to give to people back in the US, since I thought it would be cool to have a seashell from the Persian Gulf!
We also drove up and down the palm tree islands (which are a bunch of man-made islands that form the shape of a palm tree if you look at them from above. I got to see them from the airplane, and it was AWESOME). At the end we stopped and took pictures at the Atlantis hotel, which has rooms that cost up to $36,000 dollars a night!! What. What?!? I was talking to the lady next to me on the bus about how that is more than most people’s yearly incomes in the US, let alone soooo much more than most of the world will ever earn in their lifetime. It sort of makes me mad, all of the excess and luxuries. I mean, is a $36,000 hotel room really necessary? There are people suffering and dying all the time; that money could be put to a much better use.
There are definitely some things I found interesting about Dubai, especially what our tour guide told us. Like the fact that only 20% of Dubai’s population are actually from Dubai and the rest are foreigners! That sounds so ridiculous, but I definitely believe it. Aside from the rich neighborhoods that we drove through, I felt like there was no one there. It was sort of an eerie feeling. I also thought some of their marriage laws were interesting, because local men are allowed to marry foreign women, but local women are not allowed to marry foreign men. And if a local man marries a local woman, the government gives them $25,000! I guess that is maybe to encourage population growth and mitigate foreign influence on the local population? Of course, I still don’t like it since there are different laws for women and men. But Dubai is definitely one of the more liberal places in the Middle East. When I saw a McDonalds next to a mosque, I realized there is probably a lot of tension between “westernization” and religion and customs.
Overall, Dubai was a cool experience, and I am glad I got to see it for myself. The only bad part was when I was trying to fall asleep alone in my hotel room, and my gigantic 50 pound backpack fell off the couch. It literally scared the living daylights out of me.
The next part of our trip was from New York to Dubai, which was a ridiculously long flight on a ridiculously awesome plane. I got my own touch screen TV with literally over 300 movies and a LOT of TV shows. I watched like 10 episodes of Friends, and I think I may have disrupted the entire plane by laughing so much I almost cried. I slept a lot under the roof of the plane that had a “starry night” theme, and it was good because I had been staying up late packing and everything. There was a camera under the plane, so we got to see below us the whole time, which was especially cool when we were landing in Dubai. It was the perfect farewell USA plane ride.
Dubai is pretty much the coolest place ever (although I was only there for like 12 hours). It sort of reminded me of Singapore, because it is a really big, really clean, really safe, and really wealthy city (not all of it of course). We got to our hotel just in time to take the night city tour, which was so cool, although I do wish I could have seen Dubai in the day too. We saw the tallest building in the world, which was actually really really skinny. I felt like I was looking at a gigantic needle! The architecture is definitely as awesome as I had heard. On our tour, we stopped outside the sailboat-shaped hotel, which happens to change colors and cost at least $15,000 per night! I got to put my feet in the Persian Gulf too! It was insanely dark, so I couldn’t see that much. I did however, see women swimming in burqas. I also collected seashells to give to people back in the US, since I thought it would be cool to have a seashell from the Persian Gulf!
We also drove up and down the palm tree islands (which are a bunch of man-made islands that form the shape of a palm tree if you look at them from above. I got to see them from the airplane, and it was AWESOME). At the end we stopped and took pictures at the Atlantis hotel, which has rooms that cost up to $36,000 dollars a night!! What. What?!? I was talking to the lady next to me on the bus about how that is more than most people’s yearly incomes in the US, let alone soooo much more than most of the world will ever earn in their lifetime. It sort of makes me mad, all of the excess and luxuries. I mean, is a $36,000 hotel room really necessary? There are people suffering and dying all the time; that money could be put to a much better use.
There are definitely some things I found interesting about Dubai, especially what our tour guide told us. Like the fact that only 20% of Dubai’s population are actually from Dubai and the rest are foreigners! That sounds so ridiculous, but I definitely believe it. Aside from the rich neighborhoods that we drove through, I felt like there was no one there. It was sort of an eerie feeling. I also thought some of their marriage laws were interesting, because local men are allowed to marry foreign women, but local women are not allowed to marry foreign men. And if a local man marries a local woman, the government gives them $25,000! I guess that is maybe to encourage population growth and mitigate foreign influence on the local population? Of course, I still don’t like it since there are different laws for women and men. But Dubai is definitely one of the more liberal places in the Middle East. When I saw a McDonalds next to a mosque, I realized there is probably a lot of tension between “westernization” and religion and customs.
Overall, Dubai was a cool experience, and I am glad I got to see it for myself. The only bad part was when I was trying to fall asleep alone in my hotel room, and my gigantic 50 pound backpack fell off the couch. It literally scared the living daylights out of me.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Almost time to leave for Uganda!
Oh my gosh, I am leaving for Uganda tomorrow! I think I am still in shock from school and everything, and it hasn’t completely hit me that I am going to be halfway around the world before I know it. I’ve traveled a pretty good amount in the past (to places like Singapore, China, and Rwanda), but of course I am still really nervous about this summer. I have never really gone to another country without an adult, and I have lived my entire life in Chapel Hill. I guess spending two months in Uganda this summer with a bunch of other awesome UNC students will make me grow up a lot.
On the way to Uganda, I even get to spend the night in Dubai! I am going to arrive there pretty late, and I will probably be soooo tired from the plane ride (which is actually my favorite part of traveling because you get to just sit in one place, sleep, watch TV, and have people bring you food!). But anyway, I am for sure going to go exploring in Dubai. How could I be there and just go to sleep in my hotel?? I cannot ignore Dubai's palm tree-shaped islands and buildings with rotating floors. I do not care if I am up all night, I AM going to have an adventure in Dubai. The next morning, I am flying through Ethiopia, then I’ll arrive in Kampala and stay there about a week before I head off for my internship in Katosi. How baller!
I am going to miss Chapel Hill so much, but I think I am ready to experience something new and exciting! Since the semester ended, I have been frantically running around saying bye to my friends, hanging out with my family, and spending my entire life savings on every possible thing I could ever need in Uganda. I have a tendency to over-prepare and over-think things, especially when I am traveling. I pretty much been living with a mountain of things to pack in my room, which has almost given me a nervous breakdown a few times, haha! So at this point, I have done all the preparing anyone could possibly do. I think I am so meticulous about getting logistical things ready because I know there are so many other things I cannot possibly prepare myself for. I am going to be sad, homesick, and probably incredibly lost at some point during the summer, but I also know that, no matter what happens, I am going to learn so much.
I will update you from Uganda!
love colleen
On the way to Uganda, I even get to spend the night in Dubai! I am going to arrive there pretty late, and I will probably be soooo tired from the plane ride (which is actually my favorite part of traveling because you get to just sit in one place, sleep, watch TV, and have people bring you food!). But anyway, I am for sure going to go exploring in Dubai. How could I be there and just go to sleep in my hotel?? I cannot ignore Dubai's palm tree-shaped islands and buildings with rotating floors. I do not care if I am up all night, I AM going to have an adventure in Dubai. The next morning, I am flying through Ethiopia, then I’ll arrive in Kampala and stay there about a week before I head off for my internship in Katosi. How baller!
I am going to miss Chapel Hill so much, but I think I am ready to experience something new and exciting! Since the semester ended, I have been frantically running around saying bye to my friends, hanging out with my family, and spending my entire life savings on every possible thing I could ever need in Uganda. I have a tendency to over-prepare and over-think things, especially when I am traveling. I pretty much been living with a mountain of things to pack in my room, which has almost given me a nervous breakdown a few times, haha! So at this point, I have done all the preparing anyone could possibly do. I think I am so meticulous about getting logistical things ready because I know there are so many other things I cannot possibly prepare myself for. I am going to be sad, homesick, and probably incredibly lost at some point during the summer, but I also know that, no matter what happens, I am going to learn so much.
I will update you from Uganda!
love colleen
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