End-of-March Update

Work has been pretty busy during the past two weeks. We’re starting a supplementary feeding program, which is only a very small part of the ongoing home-based care program for people living with HIV/AIDS and orphans and vulnerable children. We need to identify, refer, and follow-up with children aged 0-2 who are moderately or severely malnourished. In order to do this, we have to train the community caregivers (CCGs) on how to look for signs of malnutrition by identifying edema (swelling) in the feet and other parts of the body, measuring mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC), and looking at other physical signs. Last week we trained the first group of CCGs here in Sembabule, and I think it went fairly well. Only health centers are allowed to actually treat malnutrition, through in-patient and out-patient care and by distributing ready-to-use therapeutic food, a peanut-based paste-like food that comes in a packet. So while our CCGs can’t actually treat malnutrition, they can identify people who need to go to health centers, follow-up with them after they return from the health center, and provide nutrition education and support. We still have to train the CCGs from other faith/community-based organizations (FCBOs) that we work with, so this process will be on-going for the next couple of months.

In a couple of weeks we have to submit a report to USAID about the number of clients we’ve served over the past six months. In order to do that, we need to have complete data from our F/CBOs with information about services provided to the clients in the communities. Ideally, the CCGs would be filling out their forms and submitting them back to the F/CBOs on a regular basis, but unfortunately this is far from what actually happens. Even when some of the forms do make it back to the F/CBO offices, they’re not always entered into their databases by the F/CBO staff on a timely basis. They do their best, but for several reasons, their databases are not up-to-date. So, we’ve been playing catch-up with the F/CBO data and helping them enter what forms they do have, and also stressing that they desperately need to get all completed forms back from the communities. This isn’t the most glamorous aspect of working on a development project like this, but it is extremely important and necessary that services given are documented – otherwise we have virtually no proof that our projects are actually doing what they’re supposed to do. This process will keep us (particularly Suzanne and I) very busy for the next couple of weeks.

A typical Saturday or Sunday here goes as follows: wake up a little later than usual (around 8:30 or 9), make instant coffee, try to go online if it’s working, start soaking some laundry, eat breakfast (bread and peanut butter, or muesli, or cereal, or eggs), read (currently reading: Atonement), watch some TV episodes (just finished Grey’s Anatomy season 2… for approximately the eighth time in my life), read, watch something else, try to go online again, rinse my laundry, do a yoga DVD, hang up my laundry, [possibly] shower, read, watch some more TV or a movie, eat a late lunch/early dinner, sometimes receive a phone call from my parents, listen to a podcast (Radiolab is my current favorite), go to sleep around 11. Fascinating, right? But I thought maybe you’d like to know what I do during my quiet weekends here.

I recently finished one of the best books I’ve read here: The Invisible Cure, by Helen Epstein. It’s a fascinating, easy-to-understand book about the AIDS epidemic in Africa and why fighting the disease has been so difficult. I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to understand why AIDS is so devastating in Africa and why western intervention hasn’t worked.

A few things I’ve been missing lately: nail polish, shorts, salads, my coffeemaker, Thursday night NBC shows, Minneapolis, and my besties.

Photos from safari

a lion couple in the ngorongoro crater

a hungry hippo in the serengeti

baby baboon getting a free ride in tarangire national park

herds of zebras in the serengeti

a particularly verbal zebra

lion siblings in a tree at lake manyara national park

Tanzania summary

I am overwhelmed by the amount of things I should write about in here, as it’s been several weeks since I’ve written and a lot has happened in that time. Since I last wrote, my parents visited me in Tanzania and we did all kinds of fun things that I’m sure I should go into more detail about but the idea of doing so makes me sleepy. So, I will try to summarize the past few weeks of my life as best I can.

When my parents first arrived, we spent two nights at KIA lodge, a pretty upscale (especially by my budget African standards, where anything more than $10 a night seems expensive) hotel located only a couple of miles from Kilimanjaro airport. We spent a whole day just relaxing and catching up, and it was really nice to have that time and not start rushing all over the place.

From KIA lodge we went to the Makumira farm and coffee project in Mt. Meru, where we were able to tour the farm and the coffee fields as well as see how they process the coffee they grow. It’s pretty cool, because they only export coffee to Milwaukee, where it is then roasted and sold. The coffee costs a little bit more than other coffee might cost, but the money goes back to pay the workers fairly.

From Mt. Meru we went to Tarangire National Park, where we did a game drive, spent one night at a lodge, and then did another game drive in the morning. We saw all kinds of animals, but especially a lot of elephants – oh, and lots of baobab trees! We also saw a few baobabs that had huge holes carved into them, which was the work of poachers, who would carve the holes in order to hide in the trees. Depressing. Although now, according to our guide, poaching isn’t as much of an issue as it used to be, due to a crack-down by park rangers. Our driver and guide (who would be with us for all of our safaris), Mapesa, was very knowledgeable and we enjoyed his company. We stayed at Elephant Tented Lodge, which was in an extremely remote area and had wonderfully friendly staff.

In the afternoon, after our second game drive in Tarangire, we went back to Karatu, which would then serve as our base camp for the rest of our time in Tanzania. Mom and Dad were able to stay in the WellShare guest house with me (and Rick and Sharon, two other volunteers) which was extremely convenient and comfortable. We had a day off to relax in Karatu, and then took a day trip to Lake Manyara National Park, which has a completely different landscape and topography than Tarangire. I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to (I guess I had low expectations because it’s a smaller park) and we saw a lot of animals, including two adolescent lions lying in a tree right next to the road. I think that the varied landscape of Lake Manyara might be my favorite of all the parks we visited.

After Lake Manyara, we had another full day off in Karatu. One of the volunteers, Amy, was holding a training for taxi drivers on the topic of what to do when they transport women who are in labor. This happens a lot more than you’d think, and it puts the taxi drivers in a difficult position of suddenly having to act as an impromptu midwife as well as driver. The drivers had a lot of questions and were really interested in the topic (they were especially grateful to receive plastic sheeting to put over their seats so that the women in labor don’t get blood everywhere), and Amy did a great job explaining to them what to do in certain circumstances, i.e. if the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby’s neck, or if the mom is bleeding a lot. It was very eye-opening to observe the training.

The next day, we left for the Serengeti. We spent two nights in the Serengeti at Seronera Wildlife Lodge, and both the lodge and the park were absolutely incredible. As expected, we saw a LOT in the Serengeti – lions, leopards, crocodiles, elephants, giraffes, all kinds of birds, hippos, tons of zebras and wildebeest, ostriches, buffalo, impala, gazelle… Describing in words doesn’t do it justice. If the internet here was strong enough to post pictures, I would, but for now, see my facebook for pictures of what we saw.

Side note: one of the highlights of the trip was my realization that the Beast in Beauty and the Beast was most definitely designed based on a wildebeest. Google pictures of each and then agree with me.

From the Serengeti, we went to the Ngorongoro Crater, which is the world’s largest unbroken caldera (collapsed volcano). We spent a night at Rhino Lodge, which had a great atmosphere, great food, and enormous buffalos eating grass right outside our rooms at night. The next day we went into the crater, which is touted around these parts as the 8^th Wonder of the World. It really was amazing, and the concentration of animals inside the crater is astounding. There is an abundance of water and grassland on the floor of the crater, so although animals can move in and out, they crater is kind of like an oasis for them.

We had one more full day in Karatu, in which we relaxed and ate at our favorite restaurant, Happy Days. On Thursday we were driven to Arusha and all three of us went to the airport – me to fly back to Uganda, and my parents to fly back to the US a few hours later.

I’m so grateful that I was able to spend time in Tanzania – the whole thing really felt like a vacation, but I also learned a lot. Now I’m back in Uganda, where we have a new international volunteer (Suzanne), so I will hopefully stop talking out loud to the one (only ONE, not so weird) stuffed animal I brought along. Suzanne has finished her coursework for her MPH at Tulane, and she’s here for her practicum. She’ll be here until November. I only have a little over two months left here, which is crazy. As they say, time flies when you’re taking bucket showers.