Rain rain go away, come back some other day. In southern Uganda, I guarantee that the rain will be back by tomorrow or the next day for sure. It’s the middle of rainy season here and it rains nearly every day for about an hour or two. You can see the clouds come rolling in and the thunder announce that the sky is soon going to fall out. Although it can rain at anytime of the day, Madame Sky has an uncanny ability to send rain exactly when you are ready to leave work and go home. On occasion, when the air hasn’t turned into a solid sheet of water, I will walk home umbrella in hand. But most of the time, I do what the Ugandans do – hang around until it stops. Most people don’t even bother carrying an umbrella with them.

So here I am sitting in the office, waiting for the rain to cease and trying to remember stories from this week. Today I borrowed an old laptop from the office to use at home for the evening since the modem at the guesthouse refuses to cooperate with the operating system on my new laptop, Vista. Does anyone actually like working with Vista? The laptop I borrowed, however only has one USB port, which means that I have the singular option of plugging into the internet, (the internet actually connects through a USB connection), OR using my flash drive to open my files OR using the mouse. None of these three things can be used simultaneously. In order to open files stored on my USB, I have to unplug the internet, open the file and then try to log back on. Of course half the time, the line is busy, so it’s a pain to keep disconnecting and reconnecting. Now normally, I wouldn’t even bother with a mouse, but this laptop is so old it doesn’t even have a touch pad. Instead it has some tiny red maneuverable knob in the middle of the keyboard which is totally frustrating to drive.

Much of the time, these kinds of small inconveniences – poorly functioning technology, power outages, fuel shortages and the like are common nuisances that you put up with. As a comparatively rich foreigner, I am by and large sheltered from the real difficulties of life in a developing country. I live in a guesthouse on campus; I walk 7 minutes to my office which is also on campus and staffed with educated Ugandans. I travel by 4X4 up into the hills, across rutted roads, to sit in on meetings being held by health volunteers. But when you know 4 people from your organization who have lost an immediate family member within the span of two weeks, the tenuousness of life in a developing country seems real, immediate. Poorly functioning technology and pockmarked, muddy roads that slam your brain into your skull again and again as the car bounces up and down make for funny stories that everyone back home can relate to – it makes for a light read.

Here is a story about hard realities. In Uganda, death can steal your loved ones so easily. On Tuesday, I went to the funeral of my supervisor’s father. It took place at their home, food was served for the entire community, donations for the family solicited, mass conducted and finally the burial close to the house by the banana trees. Two days ago, I jokingly cajoled a colleague about him slacking off from his responsibilities and returning to the office when he was meant to be in town getting some preparations done. His response to my teasing: “My brother just died.” The day before that, I had been up in a very rural community where I learned that the husband of one of the village health volunteers had been killed by an opposing clan and 7 houses had been burnt. A couple of days later, I asked why one of our colleagues wasn’t in the office that day. Well, he had gone to his hometown for his brother’s funeral. And here I am, preparing a research proposal, stressing out that my research design won’t stand up to academic scrutiny.

Perhaps my sampling methods have introduced a bias. At times like this, my research on village health volunteer motivation seems sanitized, barren against the grisly realities; yet, I cannot discount the possibilities of what ‘community ownership’ and ‘community empowerment’ could bring, by supporting incremental, but sustained change through community-based program development. These buzz words and development paradigms are more than sparkly phrases studding the pages of academic journals. They exist, outside of books. Organizations like Healthy Child Uganda are doing good work – not just charity work – but helping to lay a path for sustainable change. For two dollars a month, or four dollars per pair of volunteers in each village, local residents volunteer their time to do home visits to counsel mothers on newborn care, acute diarrhea (which most people would never know is a major cause of child mortality), prevention of malaria, nutrition, make home-made puppets and costumes to capture the attention of their communities while putting on health education dramas, bringing their community together to build proper latrines and hand-washing facilities, etc… Such little things, such a big part of better health.

Category: Uganda // Add Comment »