What I've been eating

I'm just in Kampala for a few days right now, picking up the research approval documents I've been waiting for! I should be able to get them tomorrow at 10am, and then I will take the bus back to Fort Portal.

It was nice on the way to Kampala because I caught a ride with a German woman who's been volunteering in Fort Portal, and she was on her way to Kampala to pick up a friend who is coming out to visit her. So we had a lovely drive down the highway, and took a detour through some villages to bypass a bad part of the highway. The scenery was lovely.
The highway is also a road for cows, goats, pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, cars, SUV's, trucks, tractors, matatus and buses!

Here we are approaching the city outskirts:

In Kampala, there are many good places to eat, so I treated myself to Lebanese chicken shwarma and tabouli salad. It was great.

I eat quite well in Fort Portal - there are lots of wonderful vegetables, beans, fruit etc.. that you can buy at the market, and I usually eat them with spaghetti or rice. Once in a while I'll treat myself to fried fish.

Here are a few pics:

This is dodo (a local green) and cabbage:

I love making tomatoe sauce with the flavourful fresh local tomatoes and peas:


I eat a lot of bananas and the avocado's are amazing:


My passion - Passion fruit:

A delicious "fast food" they sell on the side of the road: Roasted banana... amazingly sweet:

Earthquakes, sunsets, dogs, baby ducks and goats..

As I was laying in bed one night last week, I awoke by a sort of rumbling... it was only for a few seconds, so I remember in my sleepiness that I thought it was either a big truck rumbling down the road, or a small tremor/earthquake. They are not uncommon here as Uganda lies within the borders of the African Plate and there are areas of volcanics nearby. I didn't think much about it, as I had felt a few the last time I was here. And the next day when someone asked me if I had felt a small tremor in the night, so realized it must have been real one. An interesting aspect of this amazing land.

I also saw a beautiful sunset the other night, behind the mountains. I think the rainy season is coming to an end, because we've had less and less rain lately, and hotter, sunny days with clear skies. Usually in the evening, the clouds are too thick to see the sun set behind the mountains, but this night there were some beautiful colours.


Sometimes at night I have trouble sleeping because the dogs in the yard are whining and barking. The people that own the guest house where I stay, have these two dogs as guard dogs. But the poor things are locked in a shed all day and night for days on end. Sometimes they let them out, but they've never been trained, and are quite "wild" when they are out. I kept asking the boys at the house if they could let the dogs out so that they could run around and get some exercise, and then maybe they wouldn't bark so loudly at night. So after a few days, they did let the dogs out and I found them roaming around the yard in the morning. They had broken through the fence that keeps the animal section of the yard blocked from the regular yard. They have some chickens and ducks they keep as well. So they were roaming free, and looked quite intimidating at first, but they wagged their tail at me and I immediately won a place in their hearts when I went inside and brought them a few slices of old bread to eat. They gobbled them up immediately and then every time I walked outside they came running up to me thinking I had more for them... But once they had been corralled back into their shed, I found out that there had been a "problem" with the dogs and one of the hens and one of the ducks (eaten!)... so as you can imagine, the dogs haven't been let out for quite some time now. Generally, Uganda and probably most of Africa is not a place for those who love dogs - they are typically starving and pitifully roaming about. Rabies is a huge problem too. Carol told me that when she was in hospital for a few days due to her bad back, she was in a room where a young boy was dying of rabies, and for those of you who aren't aware, it is typically a horrible sight. She said that even the nurses were afraid of him, and he would convulse and no one would tend to him. So she would limp over to his bed and try to sit on him to hold him from falling off the bed. A few days later he died - rabies is always fatal if not treated immediately - and he likely did not seek treatment quickly after the bite (as sometimes it can be prevented if Rabies Immune Globulin and rabies vaccine is given immediately). He was bitten by a dog. So most people fear dogs, and their sole purpose is to either guard homes or eat garbage.

But to balance the distress I feel from the dog's circumstances, I do enjoy seeing the chickens, ducks and goats. They are usually quite content and well fed, as the fatter they are, the better! And the more meat they will offer hungry mouths!

One of the ducks in the yard had babies, and the three little ducklings waddle around the yard. They are too cute!



The other day I went with David to deliver some school supplies to a family in the village that they help support. At this small home, a grandmother and her blind son care for 23 children. The grandmother had 13 children, and 10 have passed away from HIV/AIDS. She cares for their children and before they received support, they were struggling to survive. Now the children are in school and there are three of them are at the top of their class. They helped fix the house, provide proper beds (they sleep in triple decker bunk beds), and they have enough food now. The also got help to purchase goats they are now raising and they grow some food in their yard. Some donors from the US sent the kids some small toys and things, so we delivered those as well. David had to show them what play-dough was and that they shouldn't eat it! The kids were thrilled with a new soccer ball. Carol sometimes feels frustrated when people want to send toys, because these kids really need help with school fees and supplies, and they can buy good clothes and shoes for them in town as well as farming equipment. So she wanted David and I to take some photos of the kids to show how their shoes wear out quickly and that just small donations of money can buy new shoes and new farming necessities like hoes and seeds. The kids loved modeling for this!

David showing the kids what play-dough is...

David demonstrating how to be shoe models:


Loving the goats:


The digging tool models: W.L.D. = We LOVE Digging !!! (digging means anything related to farming and harvesting the land)

Survival of the fittest or the ones with the most connections.

This week I'm still waiting to hear about my final approval to come from the President's office. I can't start the research project until then, so it's a bit painful to be waiting, but that's the way things go here! You have to make sure that "patience and flexibility" are your middle names! I think I'm not too bad in the patience department, but I'm nothing compared to the people we saw yesterday at the regional hospital waiting to be seen. There you can wait days and days before someone will see you. I was at the hospital with Carol and David and a little boy we found at one of the homes they help support who had fallen out of a tree while fetching wood for the fire, and had broken his arm. So we loaded him up in the van and set out for the hospital. It was a Saturday, and sometimes that can be even more problematic, because a lot of staff may not be around on a Saturday at the hospital. But luckily Carol knew one of the medical assistants and he was able to get the young lad into the xray within a few hours wait. There was another man waiting for x-ray and an abdominal scan, and he was in rough shape - really bad abdominal pain. You could tell that he and his family had come in from deep in the village. He had an IV started, but no pole, so we all took turns holding the IV solution up for him. After our young boy had his arm x-rayed, we asked the medical assistant to help this man. It looked like they could do an x-ray, but not his ultrasound, because they had run out of ultra sound jelly. I'm not sure what happened to the poor man, but the medical assistant reassured us that if nothing showed up on x-ray, they may just open him up surgically and take a look. If you had seen the operating room, you may have prayed for more ultra sound jelly for this man. But that's life over here. You have to hope that "survival of the fittest" means you, or hope that you have friends in high places.

So we had an x-ray of the boy's broken arm, but the swelling was still a bit too much for a cast they said... they told us to bring him back on Monday. So back to his home he went, and on Monday he waited all day to get a cast. There wasn't much progress, so his aunt called Carol again, and she stopped by the hospital to see what the problem was. The problem was that the casting man needed help, as he was the only one there. So she went over to another part of the hospital to talk to a physiotherapist that helps her with her back, and asked him if he could help with the cast. He could. So after an entire day's wait, the boy got his arm casted in 15 minutes and off we went.

So other than that, I've been keeping myself busy with doing some prep work for the research, reading, and course planning. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will get an email soon from the approval office in Kampala, and then I can get down to the research business!

Some Photos of Solomon's House

Solomon and some of his brothers. They are so proud of the new school books we brought them.

Some of the vegetables trying to grow in their garden - tomatoes and red peppers.


Here the boys are cooking some matooke (cooking banana) over the fire. Their kitchen is in the background.

Solomon's Story

Yesterday I was invited to join one of the people who works with YES Uganda go visit a family they support, and who I now help sponsor. So I tagged along with David, and we head out to a village north of Fort Portal, about a 20 minute drive. When we arrived at a small mud brick house on a small piece of land. This is where I met Solomon.
Solomon is 16 years old, but lost his mother and father when he was young. He and his 7 brothers and sister ended up living with his maternal grandmother on this small piece of land. She struggled to provide enough food for them, as their land does not produce large quantities of food. When he arrived at YES Uganda, Carol described him as suffering greatly from malnutrition, and his hands and feet were infected with "jiggers" a type of parasite. So YES Uganda came in to help this family, built them a bore hole for water and repaired the home, and paid for the children to attend school. Solomon is now in about grade 9 and is at the top of his class. He is a strong, silent type, an old soul. You can see in his eyes that he has had a hard life, but you can also see that he has deep wells of strenght that keep him going to help support and care for his brothers and sisters. He told me that his favourite subject in school is Biology- they study anatomy and physiology.. and he hopes to be a doctor. If he keeps his marks up, he will probably be able to win a scholarship for University.
The recently tragic part of his story is that his grandmother was murdered by his uncle a few moths ago. Apparently the uncle has a drinking problem and came one day to the home in a drunken rage, and accused the grandmother of hiding money from him. He beat her to death. So now at 16, Solomon is the lone head of the family. They burried the grandmother in the garden next to the house, and I saw her small grave. The uncle was chased out of the village, and has not returned. If he does return, Carol informs me that he will either be chased out of the village again, or killed. They reported the murder to the police, but as you can imagine there is not really any type of legitimate police service out in the villages. The police did not do anything, because his grandmother was just a poor, old woman.
So Solomon goes on. He attends a boarding school, so when he is in school the 6 other younger children are cared for by foster parents Carol has found for them in town. One of the foster parents is the security guard at their offices, and the other is a woman who works as a counsellor at the offices. Solomon was off on holidays between semesters, so that is why we found him and his brothers at home, trying to tend their land and keep the weeds under control. Now there is no one to tend the land when they are away, so you could see that the garden was not producing much food, and the banana fuits were very small, as the trees were not getting their regular pruning. But the boys were out working hard when we came to call on them, and trying to cook some matooke over a fire.
We visited with them for some time, and Solomon's eyes widened when I tried to describe my home city - he was curious what my city was like. He knew about ice hockey and where Alberta was. They study geography in school and know all the provinces and major cities of Canada!
We left the boys with some supplies, soap, toothpaste/toothbrushes and some snacks. Solomon said he would not eat the buscuits because they hurt his teeth. I think he has some infected teeth/or cavities, but there are no dentists to speak of here.
So as we were leaving, Solomon came up to me and thanked me gratiously for visiting him, and that he would pray for me, that I would be safe, and he thanked me again. It made the tears start flowing, because he was so genuine, and I felt like saying "this is the absolute least I could possibly do!" It was difficult to find words to express my feelings, and I wished I had had the strength to say that I was so sorry for his loss, but I could not - or else I'd be a mess crying even more, and I did not want to scare the little boys! So I just gave him a hug, and told him to keep up the great work he was doing, and that I'd be praying for him as well.

I took some pictures of the boys and thier home, but this internet connection is too painfully slow to load them today, but maybe on Monday I will be able to put them up for you to see.

Fort Portal Photos

Flowers in the garden.


The view from the driveway of my guesthouse.


My guest house - I stay in a room in the little cottage to the left.

The road to my guest house.

Cheerful Bus Rides

I arrived in Fort Portal on Saturday afternoon, after a cheerful bus ride. Even though the public bus rides can be lengthy, sweaty and sometimes bumpy, they are always entertaining! I just love the people watching. I love how the local people travelling by bus are always dressed in their best clothes - this is typical of most people in Uganda when out and about or travelling. There was an elderly man sitting just ahead of me, wearing a worn, but lovingly cared for light blue suit, his white shirt and around his neck a large cross necklace. He had jolly eyes and graying hair. I think he must have been a man of the church, because about 3/4 way through our journey we came upon an overturned truck that seemed to have taken a corner too fast and tipped over. He went outside and seemed to pray for the men trying to un-turn it, and/or blessed them. The men working shook his hands gratefully and proceeded their work.

There were also small children on the bus, and they are so quiet and well behaved. A young girl of about three, dressed in a lovely yellow dress, and black polished shoes, sat so patiently on her mother's lap for the whole journey, looking curiously at the "muzungu" (white person) sitting across the aisle with big, wide eyes ;-)

I arrived at the bus park just before 10am, and we left just before noon. You end up waiting a while for the bus to leave, because they won't leave the bus park until the bus is full. It was hot sitting in the bus, but I had a good chat with a young man next to me, travelling home from his college classes, asking many questions about Canada, what foods we eat, what sports we like. He was kind and showed me where the public washrooms were - as you're never sure how long the journey will take and if the bus will stop, I had tried to dehydrate myself, but still had to go.

Then people purchase snacks and drinks for the journey, the bus engine rumbles and the driver honks the horn letting people know that we are about to leave. The huskers that walk up and down the bus aisles selling medicines, lanterns, food, drinks, toys, combs, belts, purses ect... quickly rush to get off the bus before it leaves.

And then we were off. The road to Fort Portal has been paved, but they are still fixing it just outside of Kampala, so our initial journey was slow. The bus actually had an old Chinese brand of TV mounted at the front, and the driver played various videos - some Ugandan music videos (the famous local artists being KuKu and Chameleon), some 80's music videos (Cindy Lauper!), and religious music videos. The music pumped through the bus, and put everyone in a jolly mood.

The bus did stop about half way through our journey at a town called Mbende. It stops for a few minutes so people can take "a short call" (ie: bathroom break), and buy some refreshments. As soon as the bus stops, it is swarmed by a huge crowd of people selling chapatis, roasted plantain, peanuts, barbequed meat, chicken, yoghurt drinks, soda, water... It's quite the site. You just stick your hand out the bus window, and they pass you your treat, and then you pass them some cash. I had a chapati and 2 roasted plantains... yummy ( total cost $0.33).

And so I arrived in Fort Portal about 41/2 hours later. The green, lush rolling hills, spotted with tea plantations, rich vegetation, flowers, small farms with cows, goats, chickens running about, people on their bicycles transporting matooke (cooking bananas), and then the town. Busy with activity and commerce, women dressed in their colourful fabrics. It's a beautiful place. My guest house is lovely as well. The back yard overlooks the rolling green hills, and you can see the mountains in the background. It really is paradise.

First Day in Kampala

I had a good journey from Calgary, and arrived in Kampala last night about 7:30pm local time. It was a long journey - about 48 hours in total between the two flights and a 22 hr layover in Amsterdam. But it was nice to have a day to walk along the canals in Amsterdam, explore the flower market and take in some of the art at the Rjikes Museum.

So today I woke up early, and enjoyed breakfast of fresh fruit (locally grown bananas, papaya and pineapple), fresh squeezed passionfruit juice and Ugandan coffee. It is a nice treat that breakfast is included at my hotlel, and it has a terrace restaurant that overlooks lush green gardens. I could have sat there all day...

I already had a taxi adventure - I was going to walk to a few of my appointments, but got talked into a taxi from the reception at the hotel, as they thought it was too far to walk...so as I am jet lagged and fighting off a cold I caught on the plane, I caved. Big mistake! I arrived at the Mulago Hospital grounds to meet Dr.Konde-Lule, but he was in meetings. I was only gone 10minutes and when I came down, the taxi driver's cab had a clamped tire (placed on it by security for illegally parking). There was quite a heated debate going on about why, how and what happened that the security guard felt he needed to clamp the tire. By talking to another witness, he told me that the taxi driver had not heeded the security guard's two warnings, and had almost ran over the security guard when he gave a third warning, and clamped the tire. So the administrator of the office had to come down and listen to both sides (the taxi driver being at fault here, and having to pay a fine of $10 US to free his taxi). I wasn't going to pay, but felt bad that my taxi ride had caused such a commotion...
Anyhow, the taxi driver did take me back to the hotel, I paid him for the ride back and forth (too much for what the whole ordeal was worth) and I decided I would now walk to wherever I needed to go! I'm pretty centrally located in Kampala, so it shouldn't be much of a problem.

It's fairly overcast today, but still very warm, and I'm already sweating just walking around from the humidity. When the sun does peek out, it is really hot on my skin. Kampala hasn't changed too much from my first visit, although the traffic is a lot worse. Many more cars on the road than I remember, and the diesel fumes burn the nose. I'm looking forward to the fresh air of Fort Portal already ;-)

What the project is about!

In this small, qualitative study we are going to use photovoice as a participatory action research method (PAR) to explore the experience of orphaned, HIV sero-positive children living in a group home setting in Fort Portal, Uganda. Very little research has been done on the psychosocial health of this population. The little literature that exists suggests that orphaned, HIV-sero positive children experience significant challenges to their psychosocial well being due to multiple losses and due to stigma and discrimination (Culver & Gardner, 2007, Bikaako-Kajura, Luyirika, Purcell, Downing, Kaharuza, Mermin, Malamba & Bunnell, 2006, Stein, 2003, Atwine, Cantorl-Graae & Bajunirwe, 2005, Nyamukapa, Gregson, Lopman, Saito, Watts, Monasch & Jukes, 2008).
Photovoice is a PAR data collection tool that provides the participants in the research the opportunity to create and discuss photos as a way to share their views, ideas and experiences, and to record, reflect, critique and take action on personal and community issues (Wang & Burris, 1997). The participants are active in every stage of the process. PAR impacts the participants through the process of reflection, finding a voice, personal growth and impacts the community by increasing their awareness of issues, inviting them to engage and potentially to be a part of social change. The results of this study will be used to guide future research on the psychosocial health needs of this population, and to provide recommendations for policy, programs and interventions to support the needs of these children.

I'll be working with about 8 children/youth aged 12 -18. They are supported by a local, non-governmental, charitable organization called YES Uganda (Youth Encouragement Services Uganda) and they live at the Manna Rescue Home. You can check out their website at http://www.caroladamsministry.com/manna_rescue_home.html

There is a registered charity in Edmonton that helps to support the work they do at YES Uganda. You can find out more, or how to donate at the HEAL International website http://www.healinternational.ca/index-5.html