The Discovery Process

Discovery is an arduous, exhausting process. Part of this field attachment is to take in as much as we can and learn about certain key communities and the issues that they face, then determine an appropriate intervention. We have been to some communities that have such large-scale problems; you would have to change the mindset and social dynamics to have any effect on the health and economic issues faced by the community, not to mention political issues concerning the relation with the border to the Congo. It also feels weird to come in as an outsider and try to solve issues of a community that is not my own. However, I am so grateful that we are traveling with Ugandans. While none of them are from the area we are in, it is so useful to be able to compare my reactions with theirs and realize that just because I am from a more developed country a lot of what we are seeing is a shock to them as well and they really want to do something about it.  They are all very intelligent and passionate. Here we are at the equator.

I think that it is common for people to become so accustomed to their surroundings that they may no longer see just how many problems there are. It can take an outsiders perspective. Also, we are being guided by local people from the communities that we are working with. They are our educators and they know what their challenges are. We are also being taken to projects that have been very successful and are operating well. It is nice to see successful projects and it is necessary for generating the momentum and the energy for tackling larger issues. There is never one single solution. Issues of poverty, HIV/AIDs, mal-nutrition and food insecurity are multi-faceted problems.  People keep working so hard to simply treat the problem that they are unable to work on the root cause of the issues.

I am going to throw in a picture of me with some African Children just for the fun of it here to break up the text...This is at the fishing village. No sign of any guardians. They just followed us around. 

Our team keeps coming back to the concept of ownership. In some situations, it seems as if people have become too used to being given services for free. In a way it takes away from the value of the service and also the magnitude and implications of the problem. I’ll give you an example. HIV. The community that we all felt the most overwhelmed by was a fishing village called Kyanga. There are a number of factors that contribute to the state of this village. For one, it is fairly isolated with only one road in and one road out. Also, they are in Queen Elizabeth National Park, so there are issues surrounding land use. The Congo is on the other side of the lake and also relatively close by land. The village nurse’s best estimate was that roughly 30% of the population is HIV positive and there is a large issue with sex workers, both local women and women coming in from the Congo. Testing and ARV pills for HIV are given out free. The nurse stated that the general mood around HIV seems to be that it is just something that a lot of people have and that there is free treatment for it, so why worry about preventing it. Obviously this attitude will solve nothing. We are wondering if the level of free services provided for it is having a negative consequence of taking away from the magnitude of the disease.  

Amidst all of the heaviness, there is good. Today we visited a project called Give a Goat. Essentially they identify households in need and give them a goat. There is mandatory training provided before a household gets a goat and they are required to give the first offspring of their goat back to the center so that they can give it to another family. Up to this point they are working with 380 households, the majority of them headed by women. The families are also able to bring their goats to the center for breeding. The center also has a primary school for a small fee and a health clinic as well through which they enroll their members in a communal health insurance program. They also treat their water on site so there is clean drinking water. All of their electricity is generated with solar panels. They raise chickens, goats and pigs and cultivate maize, bananas, pineapple, coffee and eucalyptus. It was a really wonderful place that is making a noticeable impact on the rural community. 

This is the view from the property:

Here is one of their billy goats. Pretty cool lookin' dude. I think he posed for me. 

Annnndd.....I was in goat heaven. I grew up with goats and I absolutely adore them. It was so nice to be around them. Such neat creatures. He gave me a kiss!

I am going to leave it here for the sake of ending on a positive note. We have ended the discovery phase of the project and are going to move into figuring out what possible interventions would be for various communities that we have visited. I am excited to see what we come up with. 

Cheers from Uganda!

Love, Sadie