Katosi Visit

18 March 2009
Quick update with the potentially dangerous items I’ve seen children playing with in the last few days. Razor blades (this was at the VOLSET school; teachers use them to sharpen pencils. I’ve searched in vain for a pencil sharpener to replace the blades), plastic bags (over the head is always fun followed closely by eating them) and finally a monkey tail. At first we thought it was a rope the boys were hitting each other with, but soon realized it was the tail of the monkey killed behind our house 10 days ago. We heard a lot of commotion, dogs barking, people yelling and word went out they were after a monkey. I wasn’t too concerned for the monkey, after all they are fairly adept at climbing trees and since these men didn’t have guns how were they going to kill it. Yet an hour later they paraded out of the jungle (I use that term loosely here) with one boy holding the hands of the monkey and another holding the feet. Simba, our neighborhood dog was in on the hunt and returned home with a nasty gash on his head but was rewarded with monkey dinner. The boys were rewarded with the tail. From what I can gather people don’t like monkeys about as they tend to steal crops- if you hang up a dead monkey it also serves as a deterrent for other monkeys. The boy was very proud to have his picture taken with the tail.
On Sunday Zach, Jane, Doreen and I all walked to Katosi on the shores of Lake Victoria about an hour and 20 min walk from home. We met up with Deborah, Peace Corps volunteer at the end of her 2 years, who showed us around the town and brought us to see some monkey’s up close (they’ll come out of the trees for bananas). Deborah has done some great work for the community. She works with a woman’s cooperative and taught them how to make and sell soap and how to construct water filtration system using sand and bacteria. Not only do the woman (and larger community) now have clean drinking water, they can go to other communities and build the filtration systems which gives the woman income and other communities access to cleaner water. We then did a short hike up a hill to get a view of the lake (picture above doesn’t do it justice) and did the walk home.
On Monday I returned to the VOLSET school for the morning (and reconsidered my views on corporal punishment… only slightly kidding. I could never, never, never be a nursery school teacher. At least in Uganda where there are no doors on classrooms or fences in the school yards and keeping the kids in the classroom is a big challenge. Although no one seems to care if they do stay in the classroom).
On Tuesday I returned to the secondary school in Kysoga to give a talk about HIV/AIDS. We had about 250 students at once which makes it difficult (especially since I’m loath to lecture and prefer doing an activity) as does the language barrier. Students learn English but their comprehension varies and is fairly limited. Mary and others interpret but I’m never exactly sure what she is telling them so it’s hard to follow up or add a comment. We were scheduled from 3-4 and had enough material for that hour. We ended by having the students write down questions so we could better formulate next week’s lesson. As we started our goodbye’s the headmaster asked us to remain for another hour! Fortunately we had the questions so we could answer some of them.
Many of the questions were not about HIV/AIDS but about sex, pregnancy, contraception. Festus has said to me “we do not talk about condoms, our president doesn’t want us to talk about condoms and so we won’t.” This is a man not shy to talk about sex or HIV/AIDS transmission, but he believes (due in large part to his 7th Day Adventist faith) condoms should only be used by married people and everyone else should abstain. The headmaster at the school told us he has a problem with girls having to drop out due to pregnancy and would like us to talk about that in the future- women’s reproductive health, pregnancy…. I just don’t see how we can avoid talking about condoms and how we can ignore the truth- these kids (and probably most other teenagers) are sexually active. The fact we believe them too young for such pursuits is beside the point and I believe we do them a great dis-service if we only talk about abstinence as a means of birth control and as protection against the HIV virus.
It seems many people expect and accept people engaging in sex at an earlier age. I was doing some reading about child abuse in Uganda and a study found that parents were less likely to contact authorities about abuse if the child was over the age of ten! Girls over ten are considered “mature and ready for sexual activity.” Then we should at least be providing teenagers 14-18 information about condoms and birth control. In my opinion.
Tomorrow I head back to the primary school where I gave the child abuse talk last week. Lighter topic this time, personal hygiene and sanitation. I’ll be a tourist this weekend heading into Jinja (the source of the Nile) to do some white water rafting with other Real Uganda volunteers as well as enjoying some COFFEE! And maybe eating something other than beans and rice for lunch and dinner. Fortunately I really like beans and rice. Otherwise I’d be pretty skinny or pretty unhappy.
And yes, another picture of Gloria. I arrived home the other afternoon to find Deborah preparing some peas while she and Gloria shared ear buds and some music. Gloria is a hoot but when she returned to the hospital for a tetanus shot yesterday she had lost weight since the last time she was there. In my research on nutrition I found that mal nourished children’s upper arm circumference is 13.5 cm or less. Gloria checked in this morning at 13.5cm. It also stipulates that healthy children should eat all day, at least 5 times a day and mal nourished children more. My stock of Cliff bars won’t last the entire time I’m here and even supplementing her diet with those is not enough calories for her. I’ve even thought about leaving a donation earmarked solely for her food/nutrition but I don’t think it’s an issue of folks not being able afford food to feed her, it’s just not in their culture to eat often or a lot.
PS- MOM, no need to send email to Lee. It’s difficult to check and send email. I’ll get your news when I get home and can readily get to email. Love you!