Summer In Thailand..now Uganda

Thailand

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Week 6

21/06/2010
Today I felt completely defeated and hopeless. I felt as if nothing that we could do here, or anyone else for that matter could make a difference in the health and quality of life in the communities here. We were dragged to the president’s rally today in Kbale, about 4km away, where he was campaigning for the elections next year. The day started out bad. We knew better than to be ready at 0800hrs when David said he would pick us up, but we were anyway, since he had shown up early when he picked us up in Kampala a few weeks ago. He showed up at almost 1000hrs and decided he would eat breakfast, which would need to be prepared. We left about 1100hrs. I brought my camera under the naïve assumption that we would be able to take pictures and document what would be a social event and it would be a good exercise in understanding how politics affects communities. When we arrived, the first thing I noticed was a portable metal detector by the edge of the road and that the venue was the open area behind it. I thought how ridiculous it that. As we approached it, the officers asked if we had cameras and thinking nothing of it I said yes. I thought they wanted to just ensure that the metal detector would not go off, but instead they said no cameras are allowed at the event. I felt insulted. I can go anywhere, well almost anywhere, and take pictures in the US. Who were they to tell me I couldn’t take pictures. David reinforced that I could not bring it and I should leave it in the car. I thought about going back to the hotel with Charles when he went to pick up some others that were waiting for transport, but in the interest of staying with the team I reluctantly gave Charles the camera to hold for me and stayed. Needless to say, by that point, I was pissed.
The president has been in power for 26yrs, and I saw exactly why today. Chris referred to him as a democratically elected dictator. They do hold elections here and they are probably accurate in counting votes, so it is fair enough to say that he is elected into office, but the underlying conditions holds the details and the devil. He is called his Excellency by the people and at first I thought well maybe it’s just a difference in culture and they don’t mean to give him what I would consider a description for a hierarchical figure. While waiting for him to arrive there were several local schools that performed songs in his honor in the local language. Not just one school, all of them. I know this not because I have learned enough of the language to understand, but because each verse of the song mentioned his name and the accompanying choreography seemed to give him praise as well. A few things struck my while watching these kids. They had nice clean clothes, uniforms and decent shoes! Strangely enough many other school kids in the area are barefoot and their clothes are usually in poor condition. This went on for the nearly the three hours that we waited under the blistering sun for the president to arrive, with brief interludes by the master of ceremonies reviewing the program how things would happen when the president arrived. Particularly that no one should hand the president any documents that had not been properly submitted thought the appropriate protocols, announcing the arrival of local government officials, and having people move from areas that were considered restricted.
He arrived like a rock star. His new luxury SUV rolled through the opening in the crowd as he stood in the sun roof waving with his cowboy hat on. At the same time I noticed a pickup truck came around the back of the field, whose sole purpose was to serve as his podium, and a new, large, armored, tactical command truck that parked behind the tent he would be sitting in. The people cheered and whistled for a few minutes until he settled into his throne like chair under his tent. We had been sitting in a tent for the fairly common visitors, but unfortunately David had arranged for us to sit in the tent where his supporters sat, apparently. It’s good politics for David to be seen with the muzungos that he brought to help the community. I was concerned that Kbale is one of the areas we wanted to study and now the entire community had seen us smoozing with the elite and presidential cronies. The dog and pony show continued with the local government officials speaking about how much they appreciated what the president had done for their communities and more performances from local groups and school kids praising him. One of the officials talked about an electrical grid project that the president had promised in 2006 and how appreciative he was that it was coming to fruition. He went on to say that he knew of the plans being started and that he hoped that the project would be implemented soon. Four years and there was nothing concrete and they were thanking him for it. After all the sucking up by local officials, he began his speech to the public. He perched himself on top off his “podium” pickup truck and gave his speech. We still haven’t gotten anyone to tell us exactly what he said. He was very dry though in his delivery and enthusiasm and charisma were not present at the microphone with him. His speaking seemed matter of fact with little reaction from the crowd. At one point he called one of the local officials forward to list the funding that was provided to the sub-county over the last several years, as what I can best describe as tooting his own horn. We all nodded off throughout the speech, probably because we couldn’t understand and likely because of his monotonous tone. I’m sure if we understood, many more criticisms would have arisen. After his speech there were more songs by a local school and upon their completion he walked over, ever so slowly to allow his media team to capture his generosity, to the school leader and handed him an envelope and said when he came back to his seat that he would renovate the school. Of course the crowd cheered. After that an official introduced a group of about 50 men that were part of the opposition group that were there to convert over to his party. I don’t know what to make of that except it seems like they lost hope of anything changing and said if you can’t beat them, join them. As we talked afterwards I learned from Dustin that there are squads of plain clothes police officers that show up at opposition rallies to beat the opposition party participants as if they were public citizens and the police monitoring the rallies do nothing about it. I would probably give up too. I certainly felt like it, but I was glad to have Veronica to talk to. The analogy that she gave me was that you can move a mountain one spoonful at a time. It’s corny but it helped me feel better.

Thoughts for research question;
• Is poverty a disease?
• What are the symptoms?
• Can education change the course of an impoverished adult’s life?
• What are the ways social construct, socioeconomic status, and political climate influence stagnation in poverty over multiple generations?

22/06/10
Today we visited an NGO called Pacodet (non-governmental organization) that is near the town of Kibaale about 12km away. Liz, the Peace Corps volunteer that we met a few days earlier accompanied us there, since she had been there before. It was a little out of the way down a very narrow path that few cars travel. We learned that it was started about 20 yrs ago in as a community funded and directed organization with the help of university students. It was very inspiring to hear how the community came together to help solve their health problems, which was at the time the high rate of infant and maternal mortality. The director also expressed a very positive attitude of progressive change, reassessment of needs on a regular basis, and he has produced literature on needs assessment for his community. They also train community nurses to handle low level health problems at the village level. Initially the training was free in the early days of the program, but now there is a fee for the training, which helps support the education and clinic. I left there feeling positive and looking forward to sharing Pacodet’s successes with Agule clinic.
Later in the evening we went back to Liz’s house where she prepared pasta and garlic bread. We were all very appreciative, me especially. I needed to eat something different then the rice, plantains, and meat that taste the same regardless of the type.

Thoughts for research question;
• Can health be relative within the context of African associational life?

23/06/10
Today we headed back out the area in Agule near the lake, with Dustin this time. We stopped by the Agule clinic to drop off about 10 mosquito nets, since ironically their patients who are admitted for malaria treatment currently sleep in beds that have no nets. When we arrived we headed directly to the home of an informant from our previous visit, which is near the church we parked at in hopes of finding him there so that he could help us with translation as we visited others in the community. Throughout the course of our previous interview he indicated that he made his money by selling his crops, so we expected to find him there. Interestingly his wife told us that he was at school teaching. That raised the question in my mind as well as the rest of the team, as I later found out in our evening debriefing, if we were getting good data or if people were making themselves appear to be in worst situations in order to elicit aid.
A local teenager showed us the way to the school where he worked. We drove because he said it was far. The path, not road, to get there was extremely precarious at times and the SUV was leaning at angles that made everyone anxious. Luckily we arrived without having to find a way to roll the vehicle back on it wheels. He greeted us and, as we usually are, we were the spectacle. He took us to say “hi” to the school kids who clapped as we entered and were very happy to see us. I have mixed emotions about this, because on one hand you can see genuine curiosity of the kids in meeting someone new who is, in their perspective, so different from themselves. On the other I feel like we are contributing to the conditioning of the kids to place other cultures, most of who they see as whites, as being providers to be celebrated.
He was able to have the other staff tend to his students and he joined us as we visited other homes in the area. We walked about 1km to where we conducted the first focus group and then about 3km more to the second. At both we heard the same themes as before except we heard about a child who was thought to have epilepsy, a woman who had a history of miscarriage, and dehydration for the first time. The first interview was conducted by Chris and the second by Veronica. Chris had facilitated once on the other occasion that we were in the area and I had facilitated twice, so they were given the opportunity to practice.
My role as was Dustin’s was to observe and take notes. I realized as we reviewed our day at debriefing that I had a lot to learn in observation. I have to change my perspective of observation to one that is an active pursuit in which I am constantly generating questions during my observation rather than a passive one of just looking.
Thoughts for research question;
• Poor health is cited in literature on Uganda as a source of poverty. Is the idiom “if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime” applicable to health as it is too food?
• Can health and health sufficiency be advocated in the context of a system that fosters chronic poverty and lack of confidence?

24/06/10
We had planned on conducting more focus groups today, but with the team building/retreat week coming up soon we needed to catch up on our writing, transcriptions, and reading. Dustin also needed to plan the upcoming week’s events and accommodations, so we stayed at the hotel preparing and catching up. Dustin had sent the team several articles about aid organizations to African countries and the impacts. It made for some very interesting reading and it helps put the attitude of dependency that we frequently encounter into perspective.

25/06/10
We packed smaller bags for this one week retreat and put the rest of our stuff in one room to store it while we are gone. We left Pallisa about 1pm and stopped for gas and food in Jinja, which is on the Nile, at about 3pm. We ran into traffic as we approached Kampala, the capital, so we didn’t make it to the hotel until about 1830hrs. Everyone wanted to take the opportunity to eat something different while we are in Kampala, so Dustin took us to an Italian restaurant. The food was excellent and the pizza had real cheese which is hard to find. After that we went to watch Soccer at a sports bar and then to dance clubs. The first club was unusual in that there seemed to be at least one foreigner (muzungos) for every Ugandan. There also seemed to be a lot of Ugandan women being very forward with foreign men. We were there for a while and then went to another club and hung out there for the rest of the night until about 5am. I didn’t drink anything after the wine I had with dinner, because I was feeling a little under the weather, so I was able to observe people. Social research if you will. I thought of how bad the HIV rate here is reported to be and wondered how many of the people that were there that evening had been exposed to education.
26/06/10
We stayed at the hotel most of the day working on papers and doing lit review. At night we went to eat dinner and watch soccer. It’s the thing to do right know. We hung out again at some local clubs after that.
27/06/10
Today we got our stuff ready, we were picked up about 2 and we headed to Entebbe. We were spending the night there because, Becky, Dustin’s wife arrives early and then we head to the Ssesse Islands, Kalangala to be exact. It is a chain of islands within Lake Victoria. When arrived about 1 hour later and Veronica and I continued working on our papers and Dustin and Chris went into town to watch the game.

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