July 6, 2007 Busoke Village

This morning I slept in until 8 (we were supposed to leave at 8:30), so I threw on pants (that I’ve already worn several times without washing-but they didn’t look too dirty) and a shirt and got ready really quickly. I went to get some breakfast and the first thing that Festus says to me is “Oh! Nantongo! Your pants are covered in filth! How can the villagers think you are a smart dresser if you are dirty? Do you not have anything else to put on?” I stood corrected, apparently my standards of cleanliness and Ugandans are very different. The only thing I really could think of to say was “Yeah? Well you stink!” (because although Ugandans look clean-they smell to the contrary), but realizing that this probably wasn’t the most mature response I said nothing and went and changed. When I came back he said “Oh! Nantongo! How smart you are! This is much better.” Gee thanks Festus, so much for polite indirectness.

After breakfast Festus asked if he could use my video camera. I couldn’t come up with a good excuse for why not, except that it was mine and not his (once again probably not the most mature response) so I showed him how to use it and asked him to be very very careful, but I am still pretty nervous.

Right now I am sitting in Busoke outside someone’s house, and there is a little kid at my feet, to young to talk, playing with my shoes and examining my very hairy legs.

Today will be the same as yesterday, but we are just waiting for people to show up, it is too early (10 am) and people are still doing morning chores, so we will wait. How unusual.

Later…

Once people began to show up they did another HIV/AIDS presentation for the villagers, after that I helped take information and then started counseling again. It was basically the same procedure as yesterday, but I forgot my cheat sheet of questions, so I had to do it by memory (thankfully it has been ingrained into my brain permanently because of yesterday). Everyone today seemed to fit into three categories: young single men, young mothers, or old widowed women.

The young guys were in their early 20’s and had girlfriends still in school. They weren’t using protection and had other partners. I tried to stress the importance of using condoms for not only spreading HIV or other STD’s but also to avoid teenage pregnancy (which is a huge problem here). It seemed like these things had never entered there head, so hopefully some of the things I said stuck. We loaded them up with condoms and tried to reiterate why they were important to use correctly and consistently. 

The young mothers (who brought their babies with them-which was completely distracting. One baby got a hold of my hand and was apparently teething because it was using my hand as a chew toy, which actually really hurt, all the while I was trying to tell the mother her test results and keep a straight face). The problem with the young women is that it isn’t them that is putting themselves at risk, it is their husbands. It is totally acceptable here for husbands to have multiple partners outside of marriage or even several wives. And the husbands refuse (more often than not) to be tested or to use condoms. So the wives are left completely vulnerable and there is nothing they can do about it (because there are financially dependent on their husbands) which makes it almost impossible to suggest how they can better protect themselves.

The old women were almost funny because unless they got it a long time ago, they really aren’t at risk for HIV, but they make up about 1/3 of the testers. And you have to go through the line of counseling questions with everyone, so I ended up asking 70 year old women how many sexual partners they had and if they used protection. One woman though, when I asked her how she’d feel if she was positive, she said she wouldn’t worry because God would cure her (which is a very common belief). This was really difficult, and we went round and round while I tried to tell her that while, yes, God did have the power to cure her, that it didn’t mean He would. And that there have been millions of people world wide who have had this disease and no one has ever been cured by man or God. But she wouldn’t budge; she just thought that everyone else didn’t pray the “right” way (which is also a very common belief here). So I eventually just said that it was good that she believed God would cure her and wished her the best. There was probably a better way to deal with it, but even with my extensive training, I was at a loss for what to tell her to convince her that she needed to find a different way to take care of herself than just prayer. Like medication.

Once again, I’m just so emotionally exhausted I can barely move. We finally finished around 4pm and got lunch in Busoke. It was a pretty corky restaurant (which is saying a lot because most restaurants here are pretty strange). We ordered our food and sat on benches inside a wooden lean-to, and the whole time there was a mass of kids from the village peeking through the gaps in the wood “walls.” They brought the “food” (which is either rice, posho, or matoke) and then we ordered beans for a “sauce.” So instead of bringing separate bowels with the sauce (which is either beans, meat, or fish with sauce of some kind), they brought a plastic bright blue sand bucket full of beans. The we all ladeled hoe much we wanted out into our bowels. I couldn’t decide what was stranger, the fact that they had a sand bucket, or the fact that I was being served my lunch out of one.

After lunch we headed back to Ntenjeru, it was about 1 ½ hour drive on a dirt road, so it was pretty bumpy, but also beautiful. The plant life here is really lush and the trees are huge and all shades of green. My favorite part though is driving by the tea plantations. They are a vibrant green with dark undertones (they look like hedges sort of, only low to the ground). I don’t know what it is about them, but seeing them against a mountainous backdrop covered in lush jungly forest and the vast blue sky above it all is simply breath taking. My school is right next to the tea plantations, and so that is my view out the classroom window everyday. Oregon is beautiful and green, but Uganda is on a whole other scale of beauty. Besides the people, I think the scenery is one of the things I’ll miss the most.