Notes from Africa (Uganda January 20, 2008)

Map of the Nile.

Michelle at the Source of the Nile.

Wild monkey feasting on jackfruit (I tasted it -- has the mouth feel of calamari and the flavor of papaya).

Pam with Makmoud first wife.
Makmoud house geocoded.

Typical rural Ugandan home (framed with wood branches, secured with mud, roofs made of tin denote higher SES).

Colewaters with Makmoud family and some village children.

The trip is as expected in one respect - meeting filled! Our colleagues in Uganda are clamouring for what I know (as well as what the faculty have to offer). Tomorrow I'll be facilitating a session on grants management/administration (Pam will help!).

Today we visited a hospital and a demographic surveillance site (DSS) in rural Uganda. The need in that hospital quieted me to the core. There was only one doctor servicing 100s of people in the entire hospital. Deep despair was simmering in many of the faces. I didn't want to pretend the people were invisible as we toured the facility but I couldn't smile either. I tried to look at everyone purposefully and with respect as if to say: I see you! The air was thick, hot and rank with human body odor. For a time I tuned out so as to remain conscious (the sickness and the stench made me think I was going to pass out).

This is all exacerbated by the fact that we are staying at a four+ star hotel on the Source of the Nile in Jinja. We slept with mosquito nets last night out of necessity. As we were walking around the compound last night I was delighted to see a few turquoise blue-balled monkeys. They were like the deer in the Poconos and the pigenons in NY -- at once endearing then gross in their lazy meandering.

This afternoon we visited a DSS in Ianga -- here they collect data on families (births, pregnancies, deaths (including verbal autopsies -- medical autopsies are unheard of, illness, marriages, migration, socioeconomic status, number of people in households, etc). This data is coded and assigned a geocode based on the longitude and latitude of the family's house. Then the household is tracked every four months (sort of like a detailed census). Each reported house has a number painted on the front of it (so that surveillance workers know who lives there and all their business). We then went out into the country side to visit one of the tracked households.

There we met the Makmoud (sp?) family headed by a Muslim man of about 70 (who was quite handsome and in good health). He was from Busoka, of the Basoka people and spoke Lusoka (this is a common linguistic practice in Uganda - Bu=region, Ba=people and Lu=language). He had three wives and thirty children! We were welcomed to sit on wooden benches in the red dirt courtyard in front of their compound (a series of mud and brick structures with no electricity or running water). His wife sat behind him on her knees, the second wife sat behind her and so on. The girl children sat behind and around them as he spoke through a translator. The sons sat on benches that encircled the courtyard along with us. Immediately I was overwhelmed with emotion at the sight of these beautiful, very different women, men and children. I couldn't help it -- I began to cry!

Our "delegation" numbers about 10 -- we introduced ourselves to the family after the father introduced his wives, his head daughter (the eldest unmarried daughter) and his sons. When it was my turn to speak again I was overwhelmed with emotion and became a little weepy. Mostly out of gratitude to have the opportunity to experience this family in such a genuinely open way.