Kutamba AIDS Orphans School Video

Click on the link below to see a short video that I made during my visit to Kutamba AIDS Orphans School:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwXgNRm4WWs

I made it back to the States safely on August 11th.  Even though Uganda seems worlds away right now, the students, teachers, and community members that I met remain close to my heart.  More pictures and videos to come soon!

Saying Farewell (for now)

One of the great things about traveling is meeting all kinds of wonderful people.  The hard part is having to say good-bye when the journey ends.

My journey at Nyaka ended yesterday, as I said my farewells to the students and teachers there.  It was a good day though.  I spent the entire morning  with P-1 and P-2 students while their older counterparts were taking exams.  I spent much of the afternoon sitting under the mango tree, enjoying the afternoon breeze with other teachers.

Today, I made the 8 hour bus ride back to Kampala.  It’s amazing to think about how quickly these last twelve weeks have gone.  I have two days here before I fly home on Monday evening.

As sad as it was to say farewell to everyone yesterday, I tried to remind myself that having the chance to meeting the wonderful students and teachers at Nyaka makes the pain and sadness of leaving worth it.  And hopefully this trip will not mark my last time at Nyaka.  I do hope to return because they have so many exciting things going on.  The Nyaka AIDS Foundation is truly doing its part to lift entire communities out of poverty, and I cannot wait to see what changes their future projects will bring.

So now, as I sit in this busy hostel in Kampala, I am missing the peace and quiet of the village.  On Monday morning, I’ll wake up the sounds of cars and boda-bodas here instead of children running up the driveway to school.

But, like I said, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to have experienced Nyaka and to have spent so much time there.  Many many thanks go out to all of the people at the Clinton School who make these summer service projects part of our curriculum.  I cannot think of a better way to learn about world issues that affect us all.

Also, thank you to Jackson Kaguri, whose vision and leadership made Nyaka possible.  And of course, I cannot express enough gratitude to the children and teachers at Nyaka.  Despite being thousands and thousands of miles away from my friends and family, I never felt alone while I was at Nyaka.  From the moment I set foot onto the school compound, I was welcomed into the Nyaka family, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Even though this is the end of this journey, I know that there will be more awaiting me in the future.  And I can only hope that one of them will bring me back to Uganda, up and down those bumpy roads, all the way to Nyaka.

More pictures and video to come once I get back to a better internet connection.  Stay tuned!

PE with P-2

As the students at Nyaka begin taking their end of term exams, today probably marked my last PE class with P-2.  After showing off their “Hokey-Pokey” skills, playing a few rounds of “Mr. Bear,” and learning “5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed,” we thought it was time for a group picture.  So, here we are, proudly yelling “NYAKA!” after class.  My favorite captured shot is the little boy who’s four people to left of me in the front row…I think that he put every bit of energy he had into that yell.   What a great way to start the day!

One of those “good” days

One of the things that I’ve learned since being here is that some of the most meaningful moments can come out of experiences that I could have easily passed on.  Today was one of those days.  I woke up this morning planning to have a productive day working on my deliverable document and washing my clothes.  At about 9am, Shwenkuru (Grandfather) Kaguri showed up at the guesthouse and asked if I wanted to join him at church.  Now, I have to admit that my mind immediately went to the work that needed to get done and the dusty clothes that needed to be washed.  And, after spending about five hours in church yesterday with teachers and students, I wasn’t exactly pining to go to another service.  However, as I said already, I’ve learned that these are the kind of invitations not to pass up. 

So, about an hour later, Emmanuel, one of my P-6 students, showed up at the guesthouse.  He was coming along as my translator.  And so, Emmanuel, Shwenkuru, and I (a fairly unlikely trio if there was one), set off across the hills and through the banana plantations until we finally arrived at the bamboo-made, tarp-covered structure that was acting as the church today. 

The service itself was fairly similar to the others I’ve attended this summer.  I don’t understand anything that is being said, but I enjoy listening and clapping to the sounds of the songs being sung.  I’m fairly used to children gathering around me now; when I’m not looking, I’ll often feel a soft brush against my leg or my arm, and I know that it’s just a curious child wanting to touch the muzungu visitor. 

After several hours of the service, the church leaders began to “auction” off the various commodities that their patrons had brought as a way to fundraise for the church.  At this point, Shwenkuru suggested (through Emmanuel) that I go home for lunch, seeing as though this process can take hours.  After already having experienced these auctions, I took him up on the offer.  So, Emmanuel and I set off for the school, while Shwenkuru stayed and basked in the limelight of being in the front row with his friends.

On the way back, Emmanuel and I talked.  At his young age, he’s already lost both of his parents and the grandmother who took him in following his parents’ deaths.  Today, he lives with another grandmother (not his own) and children who are not his own brothers and sisters.  Though he’d love to turn his love for football (soccer) into a profession, he knows that if he was to ever make it to the Premiere League, he’d probably have to be in one of their reserve camps by now.  So, now he’s determined to focus on his studies and become a doctor.  And, I have no doubt that he’ll do it because despite all the obstacles that have faced him, Emmanuel stands near the very top of his class and he’s masterful with his English.

As we neared the school, I could feel my stomach growl.  I knew that I had a meal waiting for me at the guesthouse, but at the late-lunch hour, I wasn’t sure if the same was true for Emmanuel.  So, before parting ways, I suggested that we walk up the hill to one of the handful of stores in the village so that I could treat him to a snack for helping me today.  When we got there, Emmanuel got a grape Miranda soda and I got a Mountain Dew, and together, we sat on a bench outside the store, shared a bunch of bananas, and talked some more.

After our snack, we walked back down the hill.  I gave him the extra bunch of bananas that the woman at the store had given to me for free.  Before he took off on the path towards his home, Emmanuel turned to me and said, “Surely, you’re doing a good thing, Madame.”  I don’t know if he was referring to me buying the snack or sharing the free bananas with him.  I don’t know if he was talking about my teaching or just being here in general.  Whatever the reason, his words stopped me in mid-stride and made me smile.  More than anything else I’ve heard or seen or experienced, his words assured me that I came to the right place this summer. 

Again, I was reminded of how lucky I am to be here, of how much I’ve learned from this experience.  And, even if the one “good thing” I did today was treat a helpful, young boy to a soda and a few bananas, then I’m glad that I was here to do it.  So, even though there is still work to be done on my deliverable, and even though my dusty clothes still wait for me in the plastic bin, I’m so glad that I took Shwenkuru up on his invitation to go to church.  Today was just one of those good days.

Visit to Millennium Village

This week, I traveled about four hours to Mbarara, Uganda’s second largest city.  It was a successful journey, and I even navigated the public bus system all by myself!  By the end of the trip, I was buying mangoes straight out of the windows just like everyone else.  You really can’t beat getting a dozen delicious mangoes for less than fifty cents.  Anyway, I went to Mbarara to visit the UN’s Millennium Village Project (MVP) in Ruhiira, which is about a hour out of the city.  For more information about the MVP, you can see one of my earlier posts or visit the website at:

http://www.millenniumvillages.org/aboutmv/mv_3.htm 

Though I’ve done a lot of reading and research about the MVP, I was a bit unsure about what to expect.  Part of me was thinking about the movie The Truman Show, in which Jim Carey’s character lives in a producer-created world and unbeknownst to him, he’s the subject of a hit reality show.  I am not at all suggesting that the MVP is in any sort of way “entertainment” for people in the development world.  But, in some ways, these villages are experiments (really, they are pilot programs), and the people behind them are trying to illustrate how quick-impact investments in specified fields can lift communities out of poverty and help them to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).  The whole idea behind the MVP is intriguing, and there is much debate out there about whether this kind of development aid can be scaled up for entire countries. 

My day at the MV in Ruhiira was packed with adventures, and I owe big thanks to my contact at the UNDP in Kampala who set up the trip, as well as the staff members who showed me around.  While there, I visited one of the schools, the UNDP field office, the village health center, community center, SACCO (bank), plant nursery, and the home of a family who’s greatly benefiting from the gifts of goats and agricultural seeds.  It is probably too soon to tell whether or not this model is a sustainable solution, but for sure, my trip to the MVP offered me a new perspective about development in rural areas and the possibilities that exist.  Rather than write about all of these things, here are some pictures.  If you want to learn more about the MVP in Ruhiira, you can visit: http://www.millenniumvillages.org/aboutmv/mv_ruhiira.htm  

Below, you’ll find some of the plants from the village nursery.  The bottom half of the plants are lemon and the top half are orange.  People in the villages are learning how to use grafting tape to bind certain kinds of fruits together to speed up the growth process.  So interesting!

Below, one of the lab specialists is showing another staff member how they test blood samples for HIV/AIDS.  Since health centers in the village began offering such free services, more and more villagers are getting tested, which is one of the first steps towards reducing the transmission of the disease.

One of the last stops of the day was at a village community center.  There, groups of women are being trained how to make a variety of crafts.  One of the organizers showed me the paper bead jewelry that women are making.  I might have purchased some following the visit!

As always, it was a good trip, but it’s especially nice to be back at Nyaka.  I have about one more full week here before I head to Kampala for a couple of days, and then it’s back to the States!  More to come soon!

Celebrating Good Times and Student Achievement

Today we had a feast!  To celebrate the teachers and the wonderful work that they accomplished last school year with the P-7 students, the school’s inspector, Christine, invited the whole staff to the school for a delicious meal.  We feasted on goat, matooke (cooked, non-sweet bananas), rice, potatoes, ground nuts, and chapati (kind of like tortillas).  It was wonderful to be included in the celebration, and once again it was so motivating to be surrounded by such hard working and motivated people.

Last year, 21 out of 22 P-7 students passed their Primary Leaving Examinations, which is an incredible feat for a rural school serving the area’s most vulnerable children.  In some areas, those passing numbers are as low as 30 to 40%.  Here, though, no excuses are made for the students.  Teachers and staff promise that this year’s results will be even better!  In addition, Nyaka provided the financial support needed to send all of those students to a secondary boarding school, and the one student who did not pass was given support to attend vocational training school.  The future, which once looked dark and bleak for these children, is now opening up to a world full of bright possibilities thanks to Nyaka.  Here are some pictures from the wonderful afternoon:

Teacher Alice was ESPCECIALLY excited for the meal.  As Kaaka Freda said, her eyes had “hunger” in them.  Here is her “before” shot:

And here is the “after” shot.  She always has a smile on her face and a laugh ready to make everyone else smile.  I can’t get enough!

Christine giving her pre-meal speech of gratitude and thanks to the teachers and staff.

My Nyaka “family” have all been so welcoming to me since the moment I arrived.  Words simply cannot express the gratitude that I feel towards the staff here.  I have so much respect for what they are doing, and I will miss them tremendously when I leave in a couple of weeks.

It was a nice day and a good reason to celebrate.  Tomorrow means the beginning of another school week here at Nyaka.  I’m excited to see my students!

A Week in Pictures

Here are some more pictures from the week:

I made another visit to the Nyaka’s Community Library and Vocational/Agriculture Training site.  Teacher Agaba proudly showed me all of the work that is being done by local laborers who are busy tilling the soil.  They have done so much in just a few weeks time.  Given the normal distribution of labor here, many of the workers are women, some with babies tied on their backs.  It never ceases to amaze me how strong these women are!

Some of the newly tilled land.  The Foundation aims to plant crops such as maize, beans, cabbage, and eggplant, which will help sustain the school’s Nutrition Program.

I got into the action a little bit.  My days in AmeriCorps*NCCC came in handy.  Really, I didn’t do much there today, except make everyone laugh by trying to dig with them. 

Some members of the Anti-AIDS Club bringing back goodies after Sunday’s performance.  Sensio is carrying a large jackfruit, while Emmanuel, Nicholus, and Comfort are enjoying fresh sugar cane.  Mmmmm!

The Nyaka AIDS Foundation attended the Clinton Global Initiative’s 2008 Conference.  It is an honor to be chosen to attend CGI, and it demonstrates the great work that Nyaka is doing.  The CGI plaque went up in the guesthouse just a few weeks ago.  Everyone here is very proud of it!

Millennium Village Visit Next Week

Today marks an end to another school week here at Nyaka.  As always, it’s been busy and eventful.  I’m still working on completing the school’s model plan, which will be my main deliverable to the organization at the end of the summer.  The Nyaka AIDS Foundation is doing so much to try to uplift these rural communities, and I face the task of compiling everything into one concise document.  The project is going well, though, and at the end of these two weeks, I hope to hand over something that will benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

Next week, I have the opportunity to visit the Millennium Village Project (MVP) here in Uganda.  The MVP is a program led by The Earth Institute at Columbia University, Millennium Promise, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).  The project aims to provide quick-impact investments to rural, disadvantaged regions to illustrate how these small-scale investments in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure can lift entire communities out of extreme poverty.  In villages of roughly 5,000 people, the MVP launches a five-year effort to achieve sustained long-term growth by spending $120 per villager per year.  Half of the financial support comes from private philanthropies and the government of Japan, but NGOs, local governments, and communities pick up the other half.  It’s an interesting concept, and on a small-scale, Millennium Villages have demonstrated great progress.  Information about the MVP can be found at http://www.millenniumvillages.org/aboutmv/mv_3.htm .

During the spring semester, I met a gentleman from Kampala’s UNDP office at a Clinton School event.  I have remained in contact with him, and he has kindly arranged for me to visit the MV in Ruhiira, which is about 3 to 4 hours away from Nyaka.  The main reason for my visit is to gather ideas and information that could help Nyaka grow and expand.  Just as the MVP aims to help entire communities, Nyaka uses its school model as a center for community development.  I’m looking forward to spending a couple of days there learning and listening to all of the things that are taking place.

Fun in the Sun!

I’m back into the normal swing of things here at Nyaka.  End of term examinations are just a few weeks away, so all of the students and teachers are busy preparing.  Today, I got to teach one of my favorite science lessons with my P-4 students: using shadows to measure time.  We learned that shadows change throughout the day and that we can look at those changes to help us tell the time.  It always helps to move around a bit, so we took the lesson outside to measure our shadows.  It was mid-day, and the students saw that their shadows were very short.  Later in the day, we saw how the shadows moved and became longer.  Here are some of the pictures.  Flat Stanley even got in on the shadow action!

No Saints Required

One of the books that I’ve read this summer (courtesy of the Nyaka guesthouse collection) was Melissa Fay Greene’s There is No Me Without You.  Greene tells the true story of Haregewoin Teferra, a middle-class woman in Ethiopia who took on her country’s crisis by opening her home to AIDS orphans.  Over the years, hundreds of children, many of whom were HIV-positive, made their way through Haregewoin’s home on their way to being adopted by loving families.  The real-life protagonist is not a saint, and Greene writes about the some of the controversies that surround her work.  Yet, as Greene explains in the Q&A section at the back of the book, “You don’t have to be a saint to rescue other people from suffering and death.  You can just be an everyday, decent enough sort of regular person, nothing extraordinary, and yet turn lives around.”  There is so much truth in those statements.  You don’t have to be a saint to help people.  Too often public service gets characterized as something only “some” people can do, and clearly, that is not the case at all.

The book also provides an in depth look at the history of HIV/AIDS and the struggles that it took for ARV medicines to become more widely available and affordable for patients.  It is shameful to think that millions of people lost their lives because drug companies fought to keep their patents and the $13,000 per year price tags on medicines.  Jonas Salk never patented his polio vaccine.  He didn’t become a billionaire, but today polio has nearly been eradicated worldwide.  “There is no patent,” he said.  “Could you patent the sun?” 

Unfortunately drug companies like Glaxo Wellcome and Bristol-Myers Squibb did not share Salk’s view.  The same triple drug cocktail that reduced the AIDS death rate in the US by 47 percent in only two years, was long kept out of the price range of people in developing countries.  By the mid-1990s, AIDS was no longer a main media topic in the US, but in places like sub-Saharan Africa, it was claiming the lives of entire generations.  Thirty-nine pharmaceutical companies went so far as to sue Nelson Mandela and the South African government when the leader tried to legally bypass the patent restrictions so that he could make cheaper drugs available for the 4.3 million people in his country with the disease.  Seriously, suing Nelson Mandela?

I know that the world of research and medicine is complicated, and I am certainly no expert on the economics of it all.  I also know that what’s done is done, and thankfully, ARVs are now widely available and affordable.   Many countries, like Uganda, offer the drugs free of charge for children and adults.  People’s livelihoods are improving, and people’s lifetimes are expanding.  However, it’s also important that we don’t forget or overlook the mistakes that were made.  The extreme loss of human life could have been prevented.  The children at Nyaka and Kutamba Schools, along with millions of others around the world, should be growing up with parents.  However, the greediness of some and the apathy of others contributed to a health crisis that will take generations to mend.  Eventually, the world woke up to this crisis.  Let’s hope that it doesn’t take so long next time.