Day 4 - HIV testing and some amazing kids
Day 4 in Uganda. We are currently doing work with Africa Youth Ministries in the Western part of Uganda, in Bushenyi District fairly close to Rwanda. South-West Uganda is very pro-Museveni - he was born in the region - and every store has his picture up and we have eve seen a few kids wearing Museveni buttons. So no protests here.
Our trip to Bushenyi was totally unexpected. Sal, who had arrived in Uganda a day before and Mr. Albert Kunihira, Director of AYM, picked my mom and I up at the airport and we had to make a virtual split-second decision whether we would join Mr. Kunihira in Bushenyi rather than travel to Gulu, where we are supposed to do our research. Because of the expected protests/riots throughout Uganda, we decided to delay our trip North. We were off to Bushenyi without even getting out of the car.
Having been told that Bushenyi was roughly three hours from Kampala, we went along somewhat reluctantly but with a positive attitude. However, when (too many) women piled into our van at successive stops along the road to the outskirts of Kampala, we started to become a bit sketched out. When the trip stretched from three, to four, to five, to six hours of third-world toilets, roadside roasted plantains and narrow, bumpy roads we realized that this would be more of an adventure than we thought. Finally, well after midnight, we arrived at the West Ankole Diocese, a simple, guest house. After a cup of tea, we retired for the night, not sure exactly what the next days would hold but convinced that if we made it this far in decent shape, we would be ready for most of what might come our way.
One of Africa Youth Ministries’ projects is HIV/AIDS prevention and testing. They partner with community centers across the country to do their work, in this case, we are working with Compassion International, a group that sponsors orphans and other “helpless” children, as they seem to be known locally. The work in Western Uganda seems to be largely done through Born-Again Christian churches (and American donors), and this background strongly influences their approaches to dealing with HIV.
Their screening program is relatively straightforward. After explaining why we are here, we ask all the children interested in “knowing their status” to line up for testing (which consists of a small prick to the finger, which is then pressed on a test strip which reveals a positive or negative result). There is also an educational component for both youth and adults separately. For the youth, the focus is almost exclusively on abstinence. Despite these efforts, there continue to be pretty high rates of HIV prevalence in the region. We have been recording the test results and we estimate that between 5% and 10% of the population is HIV positive.
My mom is the star when we go to these centers. Those who hear that “the doctor” has come with her portable ultrasound machine line up for hours to be screened. Most problems seem to be dietary and thankfully most issues are not very serious. It has been inspiring to see the difference a person can make, for both those who leave with a better understanding of their condition and for those who leave with the comfort that their ailments are minor.
Sal and I, while working on parts of our research have been keeping the kids occupied. It has been a lot of fun. Today, we helped Daisy, one of the AYM counsellors, conduct an HIV/AIDS seminar with teenagers. We’ve played soccer and volleyball, we’ve danced, and we’ve even picked up a few words of Ankole, the local language. And we’ve laughed a lot as it seems everything we do with these kids is somehow embarassing. They especially like our hair and love to touch it because all the kids have shaved heads. But they are all so cute! And they're happiness and resilience in spite of the fact that many are orphans and some even HIV positive, is truly inspiring.
The hardest part has been food…they don’t eat fruits or vegetables other than bananas and every meal seems to consist of the same few ingredients - banana/plantain, millet (dense wheat), cassava (dense potato)… basically everything very filling but pretty tasteless :( Sima is eating a lot of goldfish…
We have pretty infrequent access to internet but we’ll update as much as we can.
Miss you all!
Jabo (bye in Ankole)!
- Sima and Sal
Our trip to Bushenyi was totally unexpected. Sal, who had arrived in Uganda a day before and Mr. Albert Kunihira, Director of AYM, picked my mom and I up at the airport and we had to make a virtual split-second decision whether we would join Mr. Kunihira in Bushenyi rather than travel to Gulu, where we are supposed to do our research. Because of the expected protests/riots throughout Uganda, we decided to delay our trip North. We were off to Bushenyi without even getting out of the car.
Having been told that Bushenyi was roughly three hours from Kampala, we went along somewhat reluctantly but with a positive attitude. However, when (too many) women piled into our van at successive stops along the road to the outskirts of Kampala, we started to become a bit sketched out. When the trip stretched from three, to four, to five, to six hours of third-world toilets, roadside roasted plantains and narrow, bumpy roads we realized that this would be more of an adventure than we thought. Finally, well after midnight, we arrived at the West Ankole Diocese, a simple, guest house. After a cup of tea, we retired for the night, not sure exactly what the next days would hold but convinced that if we made it this far in decent shape, we would be ready for most of what might come our way.
One of Africa Youth Ministries’ projects is HIV/AIDS prevention and testing. They partner with community centers across the country to do their work, in this case, we are working with Compassion International, a group that sponsors orphans and other “helpless” children, as they seem to be known locally. The work in Western Uganda seems to be largely done through Born-Again Christian churches (and American donors), and this background strongly influences their approaches to dealing with HIV.
Their screening program is relatively straightforward. After explaining why we are here, we ask all the children interested in “knowing their status” to line up for testing (which consists of a small prick to the finger, which is then pressed on a test strip which reveals a positive or negative result). There is also an educational component for both youth and adults separately. For the youth, the focus is almost exclusively on abstinence. Despite these efforts, there continue to be pretty high rates of HIV prevalence in the region. We have been recording the test results and we estimate that between 5% and 10% of the population is HIV positive.
My mom is the star when we go to these centers. Those who hear that “the doctor” has come with her portable ultrasound machine line up for hours to be screened. Most problems seem to be dietary and thankfully most issues are not very serious. It has been inspiring to see the difference a person can make, for both those who leave with a better understanding of their condition and for those who leave with the comfort that their ailments are minor.
Sal and I, while working on parts of our research have been keeping the kids occupied. It has been a lot of fun. Today, we helped Daisy, one of the AYM counsellors, conduct an HIV/AIDS seminar with teenagers. We’ve played soccer and volleyball, we’ve danced, and we’ve even picked up a few words of Ankole, the local language. And we’ve laughed a lot as it seems everything we do with these kids is somehow embarassing. They especially like our hair and love to touch it because all the kids have shaved heads. But they are all so cute! And they're happiness and resilience in spite of the fact that many are orphans and some even HIV positive, is truly inspiring.
The hardest part has been food…they don’t eat fruits or vegetables other than bananas and every meal seems to consist of the same few ingredients - banana/plantain, millet (dense wheat), cassava (dense potato)… basically everything very filling but pretty tasteless :( Sima is eating a lot of goldfish…
We have pretty infrequent access to internet but we’ll update as much as we can.
Miss you all!
Jabo (bye in Ankole)!
- Sima and Sal
ps - we will also post some photos soon!
ReplyDeleteThis is so great! I was wondering how you guys were doing. Keep us posted :)
ReplyDeleteP.S. Hope the food starts looking up?
Sima, thanks for sharing so far!
ReplyDeleteI've got you on my bloglist now so I'll be following your every move.
Keep well and eat lots of tiny bananas ;)
Sima!!! We miss you SOOOOOO MUCH!!!! ur blog is soooo good and really cool!! :)
ReplyDeleteTalk to you sooon :)
LOVE <3,
Alisha
ps. baba says Ignatieff has been hired by the Munk centre =P
Hey sim,
ReplyDeleteIt really sounds like an amazing trip, and your style of writing is good, casual and easy to follow but still educated sounding....with a slight bit of humour. Baba laughed so hard about the "the doctor's here" comment! haha keep the blog going, we're really impressed and I'm loving reading about everything. Feel free to skype this weekend cause all I'll be doing is studying for my four aps next week!!!! ahhh!!! but dont you wry about me! ha k luv ya, and say howdie to mommy for me!
~LEILA
hello,
ReplyDeletemy name is amchkupobudo and i am from a remote village in the jungle about 30 minutes outside of new york city.
i just want to say, in my village, miss slime tree is a hero. we support your study of peace and conflict studies, and maintain that studying such studies is important given the lack of studious studiers in the relevant fields of study across the universe (-john lennon).
Goodbye for now miss tree.
My testimony on how i was heal on HIV/AIDS by one doctor called DR CUBA.
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