The other night we had our first disaster-free night of my cooking... The other times we tried, I nearly set the hotel on fire and got boiling water spilled on my leg. BUT two nights ago, I made pasta with homeade tomato sauce, garlic green beans and carrots, and icing for the cake my mom had made us that day! It was delicious, even though we attracted thousands of ants. Here is my list of Western foods I am perpetually craving:
BRIE, preferably with caramel and walnuts on top, and toasted bread and pear slices to eat it with
Grilled vegetables.... shish kabobs - yum!
Teriyaki salmon, broccoli on the side, or really any not-overcooked veggie on the side
Salad with homemade balsamic vinaigrette
Strawberries, pears, peaches, blueberries - blueberry pancakes!
Amish friendship bread... any of Mom's baked goodies
Moist, warm, melt-in-your-mouth brownie with thick ice cream on top... Ben and Jerry's Half Baked Frozen Yogurt
Parmesan cheese. On anything.
Fajitas!
Houston's spinach dip
Apples... available here, but too expensive. And applesauce...
Oreos, homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and a LARGE glass of ice cold milk.
Kona (Khona?) strawberry and crunchy shrimp and volcano rolls and edamame
Wiles Smith's or Sutton's chocolate milkshake!!
Yummmmm.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Christianity in Gulu
It’s so strange that our group is separated now! Rachel and Charity – come back!!
But back when all of us were in Gulu, we had a few interesting conversations with some fellow Americans in Uganda who were there for verrrryyy different reasons.
We came across a group of people around our age, all dressed in matching “MegaFest” t-shirts, at the one place in Gulu with good ice cream. When we asked what MegaFest was and why they were here, a girl with glittery eyelids said, “It’s just some singing and dancing and praying and praising’ God, you know. You should come!”
She told us they were a youth group from an American church that had started a church here in Gulu, though she didn’t know where it was. She was from California, and she had given up a chance to spend the semester in France to come here for a month – “God wins this one!” Apparently the trips, somehow, would have cost the same? I commend her for her choice; not many people would chose Uganda over Paris. She and her group left us, reminding us that the party would be really fun and we should definitely come… oops, none of us did.
The next night a few of us went to a little café for dinner, and we had an interesting encounter with a family of missionaries. A man, his wife, and their three kids sat at the table next to us, speaking in obvious American accents, so one of us asked why they were in Uganda. The father, a wiry sort of man with a gentle smile, answered that God had called them there to tell the people about Him and how they can all be saved. I asked if they were with the group that put on MegaFest, and they said no, actually, they were ready to beat those people for being so loud the night before.
They had gone on mission trips before, short-term stints in America and Latin America, and they had come to Gulu once to pour concrete for huts. Within two weeks, they saw “the great need” of the people in Gulu: Christianity. Oh wait, but not Christianity – that’s just another religion. Ugandans already have that (the country is around three-fourths Christian). But they just say they’re Christians; they don’t really know what it means. They don’t have Jesus in their hearts, he said.
So after their concrete-pouring adventure, they returned to Waco, Texas and started praying that God would send someone who really knows God to Uganda. They didn’t expect it, and they didn’t really want it, but God called them to move here for five years and bring the people to Christ. So they’re here, living in a house with a stove, oven, hot showers, a washing machine, and one-acre front yard with a garden. (Not that I blame them; I’d probably do the same, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to ignore some other great needs in the community.) They try to cook American food, and they occasionally go back to the States, but not too often. “It makes it a lot harder to come back to the living conditions here,” he said. Their living conditions sure sounded rough…
The man, the only one who has spoken to us thus far, asked us why we were here and what our faith backgrounds were. We said we were students interested in the conflict and post-conflict situation in the region, and we came to learn before we went into some career trying to address situations like it. He responded, “you know, I see a million NGO’s around here” but not a lot of impact. I wonder, why does he think his mission is any different than those trying to help Ugandans in another way; why will he have better results? Freesia said she was Jewish; I was raised Christian; Ashley wasn’t really religious. Before Rachel spoke, the preacher asked Freesia about Judaism.
“I’m curious: what do Jews do with Jesus? My generation of Jewish people had a lot of resentment toward Jesus, but I haven’t really spoken to Jews in my generation. I’ve met some Messianic Jews, and they have so much understading – understanding I don’t have!” Freesia said they pretty much didn’t address the issue, but there was no resentment at all.
The man then told us his faith background, the perfect conversion testimonial. He was raised in a Christian home, but “no one ever told me about grace, about forgiveness!” He went to church, obeyed all the rules, and by the time he was 17-ish, he was sick of it. He abandoned the rules, drinking “because everyone else was doing it” and eventually getting into drugs. He was a cocaine addict at 20, and then, in a desperate attempt to avoid “total destruction,” he turned to Christ. He started reading the Bible (we should really look into the Bible, see who Jesus really is, in the month that we’re here. Jesus “isn’t good at playing hide-and-seek") and changed his life. He married his wife, who had come out of the womb a true disciple of Christ, and they had their three adorably blonde curly-headed children. Then the mission trips started, culminating in this one.
They eventually want to build a church, they said, but right now they are just building small groups, “discipling them like crazy.” They chose to start a new church instead of working through an already existing one because it saves so much time, effort and money (sounds just like the NGOs and aid he said were doing so little). It’s too hard, if something is going in one direction, to completely turn it around, he said. Preachers are “crawling all over the place,” but they don’t really know God, so they have to start from scratch. Hell, at home in Texas, if you ask what someone is reading, he’ll have a ready response with what Scripture is “working at his heart.” Here, they don’t even know they’re supposed to read the Bible!... Nevermind that the vast majority of the population can’t read, and they have more immediate concerns – most people don’t have electricity or running water, much less ovens and washing machines. But anyway, they are building up these small groups to eventually have a congregation for their church.
“Jesus said some crazy things,” he was telling us, now abandoning any pretense of NOT trying to evangelize. He used the lying-crazy-or-telling-the-truth argument, saying we should find out for ourselves: “Ask, ‘Who are you, Jesus?’” He was one of the literal interpreters of the Bible, and he reminded us that “the wages of sin is death” and the only way to be with God when we die, “in a place we call Heaven,” is by believing in Jesus. Because none of us know what Heaven is, of course!
Rachel and I had to walk home, so we left around that time. After we left, they gathered around Ashley, placing their hands on her shoulders, praying for God to heal her stomach problems so she could know God’s work. There are no coincidences, they said, so if she got better it was surely the Hand of God. If she didn’t get better, well, even Jesus had to pray twice sometimes, so it wouldn’t mean God doesn’t exist. They just had to try again!
Then Ashley left. They turned to Freesia and told her what they had discussed during our whole dinner – she was the one, out of all of us, whom God had “chosen” to reach… they knew a lot about what God was thinking, apparently.
I wonder, with all the divine wisdom they imparting to the people of Gulu, what they’ve learned from those who “don’t know what they’re talking about.”
I know I sound resentful of that family; I am. It frustrates me to see these people come in, thinking they have the right and the duty to help these people by bringing them to their family's way of thinking, the only right way of thinking. But it's not only religion that does this - so much of our "help" to Africa is just imposing Western values and ideas on different cultures. That arrogance, whether on the part of religion or anything else, is what bothers me most.
Sidenote: On Good Friday, we were visiting a former slave-trading center in Uganda… and when we drove up, someone stopped us and said, “You can’t park here, we’re trying to crucify Jesus.” They were all dressed up in costumes, beating a man with a wig carrying a cross, filming a Passion-esque movie. I’m pretty sure we were in the background of their shots the whole day… we’re movie stars!
But back when all of us were in Gulu, we had a few interesting conversations with some fellow Americans in Uganda who were there for verrrryyy different reasons.
We came across a group of people around our age, all dressed in matching “MegaFest” t-shirts, at the one place in Gulu with good ice cream. When we asked what MegaFest was and why they were here, a girl with glittery eyelids said, “It’s just some singing and dancing and praying and praising’ God, you know. You should come!”
She told us they were a youth group from an American church that had started a church here in Gulu, though she didn’t know where it was. She was from California, and she had given up a chance to spend the semester in France to come here for a month – “God wins this one!” Apparently the trips, somehow, would have cost the same? I commend her for her choice; not many people would chose Uganda over Paris. She and her group left us, reminding us that the party would be really fun and we should definitely come… oops, none of us did.
The next night a few of us went to a little café for dinner, and we had an interesting encounter with a family of missionaries. A man, his wife, and their three kids sat at the table next to us, speaking in obvious American accents, so one of us asked why they were in Uganda. The father, a wiry sort of man with a gentle smile, answered that God had called them there to tell the people about Him and how they can all be saved. I asked if they were with the group that put on MegaFest, and they said no, actually, they were ready to beat those people for being so loud the night before.
They had gone on mission trips before, short-term stints in America and Latin America, and they had come to Gulu once to pour concrete for huts. Within two weeks, they saw “the great need” of the people in Gulu: Christianity. Oh wait, but not Christianity – that’s just another religion. Ugandans already have that (the country is around three-fourths Christian). But they just say they’re Christians; they don’t really know what it means. They don’t have Jesus in their hearts, he said.
So after their concrete-pouring adventure, they returned to Waco, Texas and started praying that God would send someone who really knows God to Uganda. They didn’t expect it, and they didn’t really want it, but God called them to move here for five years and bring the people to Christ. So they’re here, living in a house with a stove, oven, hot showers, a washing machine, and one-acre front yard with a garden. (Not that I blame them; I’d probably do the same, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to ignore some other great needs in the community.) They try to cook American food, and they occasionally go back to the States, but not too often. “It makes it a lot harder to come back to the living conditions here,” he said. Their living conditions sure sounded rough…
The man, the only one who has spoken to us thus far, asked us why we were here and what our faith backgrounds were. We said we were students interested in the conflict and post-conflict situation in the region, and we came to learn before we went into some career trying to address situations like it. He responded, “you know, I see a million NGO’s around here” but not a lot of impact. I wonder, why does he think his mission is any different than those trying to help Ugandans in another way; why will he have better results? Freesia said she was Jewish; I was raised Christian; Ashley wasn’t really religious. Before Rachel spoke, the preacher asked Freesia about Judaism.
“I’m curious: what do Jews do with Jesus? My generation of Jewish people had a lot of resentment toward Jesus, but I haven’t really spoken to Jews in my generation. I’ve met some Messianic Jews, and they have so much understading – understanding I don’t have!” Freesia said they pretty much didn’t address the issue, but there was no resentment at all.
The man then told us his faith background, the perfect conversion testimonial. He was raised in a Christian home, but “no one ever told me about grace, about forgiveness!” He went to church, obeyed all the rules, and by the time he was 17-ish, he was sick of it. He abandoned the rules, drinking “because everyone else was doing it” and eventually getting into drugs. He was a cocaine addict at 20, and then, in a desperate attempt to avoid “total destruction,” he turned to Christ. He started reading the Bible (we should really look into the Bible, see who Jesus really is, in the month that we’re here. Jesus “isn’t good at playing hide-and-seek") and changed his life. He married his wife, who had come out of the womb a true disciple of Christ, and they had their three adorably blonde curly-headed children. Then the mission trips started, culminating in this one.
They eventually want to build a church, they said, but right now they are just building small groups, “discipling them like crazy.” They chose to start a new church instead of working through an already existing one because it saves so much time, effort and money (sounds just like the NGOs and aid he said were doing so little). It’s too hard, if something is going in one direction, to completely turn it around, he said. Preachers are “crawling all over the place,” but they don’t really know God, so they have to start from scratch. Hell, at home in Texas, if you ask what someone is reading, he’ll have a ready response with what Scripture is “working at his heart.” Here, they don’t even know they’re supposed to read the Bible!... Nevermind that the vast majority of the population can’t read, and they have more immediate concerns – most people don’t have electricity or running water, much less ovens and washing machines. But anyway, they are building up these small groups to eventually have a congregation for their church.
“Jesus said some crazy things,” he was telling us, now abandoning any pretense of NOT trying to evangelize. He used the lying-crazy-or-telling-the-truth argument, saying we should find out for ourselves: “Ask, ‘Who are you, Jesus?’” He was one of the literal interpreters of the Bible, and he reminded us that “the wages of sin is death” and the only way to be with God when we die, “in a place we call Heaven,” is by believing in Jesus. Because none of us know what Heaven is, of course!
Rachel and I had to walk home, so we left around that time. After we left, they gathered around Ashley, placing their hands on her shoulders, praying for God to heal her stomach problems so she could know God’s work. There are no coincidences, they said, so if she got better it was surely the Hand of God. If she didn’t get better, well, even Jesus had to pray twice sometimes, so it wouldn’t mean God doesn’t exist. They just had to try again!
Then Ashley left. They turned to Freesia and told her what they had discussed during our whole dinner – she was the one, out of all of us, whom God had “chosen” to reach… they knew a lot about what God was thinking, apparently.
I wonder, with all the divine wisdom they imparting to the people of Gulu, what they’ve learned from those who “don’t know what they’re talking about.”
I know I sound resentful of that family; I am. It frustrates me to see these people come in, thinking they have the right and the duty to help these people by bringing them to their family's way of thinking, the only right way of thinking. But it's not only religion that does this - so much of our "help" to Africa is just imposing Western values and ideas on different cultures. That arrogance, whether on the part of religion or anything else, is what bothers me most.
Sidenote: On Good Friday, we were visiting a former slave-trading center in Uganda… and when we drove up, someone stopped us and said, “You can’t park here, we’re trying to crucify Jesus.” They were all dressed up in costumes, beating a man with a wig carrying a cross, filming a Passion-esque movie. I’m pretty sure we were in the background of their shots the whole day… we’re movie stars!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Hospitals and Sicknesses... Rambling Train of Thought
We had a drop-off one of the first days in Gulu, and my group’s assignment was to investigate the health care in Gulu. Our last stop, after a hole-in-the-wall laboratory services clinic, small but clean Universal Medical Center, and pharmacy, was the Gulu Regional Referral Hospital.
We walked down the dirt road, past women selling cassava and bananas, through a gate, and into the hospital compound. Past children’s cries to the right, emanating from the Children’s Center and Women’s Center, and a sign to the left: Gulu and Italian Partners in Health, or something to that effect. We turned left, into what we correctly assumed was the main wing. Stepping through the front door and two steps further, we were in the center of the hospital – no waiting room or reception desk, no one to welcome us or tell us where to go. A small bench signified that where we stood was the entryway, a door straight in front of it, maybe 5 yards away, leading outside.
The building was one long hallway with beds on either side. Men and women filled every bed and the spaces between them, lying on mats on the floor. The windows were open, ventilating the sticky heat of the room, and flies buzzed around patients’ heads. A group of black and brown and white people, clad in white lab coats, stood in a circle discussing something. They looked worried, except for a cheery nurse who left the clump to attend to a patient. She told us to wait a moment, she would get someone to talk to us.
I couldn’t help but look at the person’s dry, cracked feet right in front of me – the blanket wasn’t long enough to cover them. The person waved a fly away and caught my eye. I looked away, but someone was calling us anyway.
We were shuffled to the central office, where we spoke to the Medical Superintendent. This is what he told us:
Gulu R.R. is high on the hospital food chain. It is one of 15 regional referral hospitals funded by the government, and the only higher level is national referral, of which there are two in Uganda. One is in Kampala, the other in Mbarara (I think).
The government provides 80% of the hospital’s supplies, which are sent from a national pool system. Services are free.
The hospital serves the North, from Gulu to Kitgum to Pader – a total of around 2.5 million people, and the hospital is designed to hold 250 beds. 400 beds line the hallways now, but the number of patients is near twice that. They operate on 78% of the staff they need, with only 17 doctors. He sad that attracting doctors here was difficult because the Ugandan salaries for medical doctors are low, especially in the North; many med school students go to other regions, if not other countries, to practice.
70-80% of patients come in with malaria, and the second most common disease they see is AIDS.
I’ve heard of the stories; I’ve seen the statistics of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, the child mortality rates. A few people on the program have gotten malaria, but it seemed like nothing – a simple doctor’s visit, decidedly NOT to Gulu Regional Referral, some medicines, bad flu-like symptoms, then it’s over. But when my homestay sister Belita got sick with malaria, I learned what those statistics actually meant.
Belita is almost two years old, and she has had malaria three times, twice since I moved in with her family. When I first came, this little girl was a bundle of energy, and surprisingly consistently happy for a girl close to the Terrible Twos. But she got a cold at first, or that’s what we thought, and became a perpetually fussy toddler. Mama gave her cold medicine, wiped her little button nose, and put her to bed.
But giving her cold medicine is no easy feat – Belita is a fighter. She starts crying as soon as Mama sits on the floor and calls her over, before she even sees the brown bottle. She kicks and screams so much, Mama has to pin her little legs between her own and her arms to her sides. Belita throws her head back, sobbing and trying her best to escape, and Mama holds her nose and pours the stuff into the little mouth, forcing her to swallow. Little Belita gets so mad, she walks to the nearest person, usually me, and climbs onto his/her lap with tears running down her cheeks and an injured look on her face. If she doesn’t throw up the majority of the drugs, which is the usual case, she falls asleep instantly.
But after the medicine episode and going to bed, she seemed better the next morning, and the next. But by nightfall she would fall asleep in my arms, sweat pouring down her chubby little cheeks. Mom took her to the doctor, who diagnosed her with level 1 malaria (still no idea what the levels mean).
We got some more medicine from the clinic near our house, and continued the twice-daily torture of administering it to her. But she never really got better; in the morning she’d be fine, but still, every night, she’d sweat and refuse to eat. Her little limbs started losing their chubbiness and her sleeping habits completely changed, and she was constantly on the edge of tears, all within a week.
So Mama took her to the doctor again, more worried this time, and came back with the news: level 3+ malaria. They gave her a shot at the hospital to start fighting the disease. Apparently, if Belita didn’t improve in two days, she’d have to go back to the hospital and be put on a drip.
Listless and quiet before, Belita would scream and holler her loudest as soon as she knew medicine was coming. But this time, the doctor told us to keep giving her more if she threw it up – she HAD to get enough in her system. Belita would vomit, still crying, grape purple spit hanging from her pouting lip, and Mama would hold her nose again until she opened her mouth for more medicine.
It was awful, and I felt almost worse for my mom, who never got a break from this duty. Even when Dad was home and had Belita on his lap, he’d just hand her over when the bad-guy part came and wait for his good-guy moment when Belita would come to him for comfort. And I would hold her legs or pinch her nose, but Mama still had to deal with it the most.
Mama was sick too, and pregnant – I don’t understand how she does everything she does, and with a baby on the way and the flu, too! I tried to help around the house, but she really only let me go to the market for her.
Belita fell in and out of sleep on the couch for almost two days. She wouldn’t eat unless Mama threatened to give her medicine before every single bite.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what my mom had told me when I refused to take my billionth serving of posho, “People will think you want to die if you don’t eat!” And I couldn’t stop thinking about that insurance policy that people here have – they have as many children as possible because they expect to lose two or three. It sounds so dramatic, but I was terrified, and it made me homesick for the first time since I’ve been here.
Finally she had enough energy to go outside and play for a few minutes; then she started eating more. When Dad came home from his weekend at school, she instantly brightened. The next day I left for Kampala.
I’m living in a hotel for the month of our independent research, so I went home yesterday to visit my family. Belita greeted me, playing outside in her underwear, and giggled incessantly when I picked her up and tickled her. She was chubby again! I can’t even express how happy I was to see her back to her lively, happy self.
I finally understand this culture’s approval of “fat” people. If you’re too thin here, you’re sick. Most likely with malaria or AIDS… my mom was so happy to tell me I was getting fatter and no longer looked like an AIDS victim. Oh, Uganda! SO different from the States.
We walked down the dirt road, past women selling cassava and bananas, through a gate, and into the hospital compound. Past children’s cries to the right, emanating from the Children’s Center and Women’s Center, and a sign to the left: Gulu and Italian Partners in Health, or something to that effect. We turned left, into what we correctly assumed was the main wing. Stepping through the front door and two steps further, we were in the center of the hospital – no waiting room or reception desk, no one to welcome us or tell us where to go. A small bench signified that where we stood was the entryway, a door straight in front of it, maybe 5 yards away, leading outside.
The building was one long hallway with beds on either side. Men and women filled every bed and the spaces between them, lying on mats on the floor. The windows were open, ventilating the sticky heat of the room, and flies buzzed around patients’ heads. A group of black and brown and white people, clad in white lab coats, stood in a circle discussing something. They looked worried, except for a cheery nurse who left the clump to attend to a patient. She told us to wait a moment, she would get someone to talk to us.
I couldn’t help but look at the person’s dry, cracked feet right in front of me – the blanket wasn’t long enough to cover them. The person waved a fly away and caught my eye. I looked away, but someone was calling us anyway.
We were shuffled to the central office, where we spoke to the Medical Superintendent. This is what he told us:
Gulu R.R. is high on the hospital food chain. It is one of 15 regional referral hospitals funded by the government, and the only higher level is national referral, of which there are two in Uganda. One is in Kampala, the other in Mbarara (I think).
The government provides 80% of the hospital’s supplies, which are sent from a national pool system. Services are free.
The hospital serves the North, from Gulu to Kitgum to Pader – a total of around 2.5 million people, and the hospital is designed to hold 250 beds. 400 beds line the hallways now, but the number of patients is near twice that. They operate on 78% of the staff they need, with only 17 doctors. He sad that attracting doctors here was difficult because the Ugandan salaries for medical doctors are low, especially in the North; many med school students go to other regions, if not other countries, to practice.
70-80% of patients come in with malaria, and the second most common disease they see is AIDS.
I’ve heard of the stories; I’ve seen the statistics of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, the child mortality rates. A few people on the program have gotten malaria, but it seemed like nothing – a simple doctor’s visit, decidedly NOT to Gulu Regional Referral, some medicines, bad flu-like symptoms, then it’s over. But when my homestay sister Belita got sick with malaria, I learned what those statistics actually meant.
Belita is almost two years old, and she has had malaria three times, twice since I moved in with her family. When I first came, this little girl was a bundle of energy, and surprisingly consistently happy for a girl close to the Terrible Twos. But she got a cold at first, or that’s what we thought, and became a perpetually fussy toddler. Mama gave her cold medicine, wiped her little button nose, and put her to bed.
But giving her cold medicine is no easy feat – Belita is a fighter. She starts crying as soon as Mama sits on the floor and calls her over, before she even sees the brown bottle. She kicks and screams so much, Mama has to pin her little legs between her own and her arms to her sides. Belita throws her head back, sobbing and trying her best to escape, and Mama holds her nose and pours the stuff into the little mouth, forcing her to swallow. Little Belita gets so mad, she walks to the nearest person, usually me, and climbs onto his/her lap with tears running down her cheeks and an injured look on her face. If she doesn’t throw up the majority of the drugs, which is the usual case, she falls asleep instantly.
But after the medicine episode and going to bed, she seemed better the next morning, and the next. But by nightfall she would fall asleep in my arms, sweat pouring down her chubby little cheeks. Mom took her to the doctor, who diagnosed her with level 1 malaria (still no idea what the levels mean).
We got some more medicine from the clinic near our house, and continued the twice-daily torture of administering it to her. But she never really got better; in the morning she’d be fine, but still, every night, she’d sweat and refuse to eat. Her little limbs started losing their chubbiness and her sleeping habits completely changed, and she was constantly on the edge of tears, all within a week.
So Mama took her to the doctor again, more worried this time, and came back with the news: level 3+ malaria. They gave her a shot at the hospital to start fighting the disease. Apparently, if Belita didn’t improve in two days, she’d have to go back to the hospital and be put on a drip.
Listless and quiet before, Belita would scream and holler her loudest as soon as she knew medicine was coming. But this time, the doctor told us to keep giving her more if she threw it up – she HAD to get enough in her system. Belita would vomit, still crying, grape purple spit hanging from her pouting lip, and Mama would hold her nose again until she opened her mouth for more medicine.
It was awful, and I felt almost worse for my mom, who never got a break from this duty. Even when Dad was home and had Belita on his lap, he’d just hand her over when the bad-guy part came and wait for his good-guy moment when Belita would come to him for comfort. And I would hold her legs or pinch her nose, but Mama still had to deal with it the most.
Mama was sick too, and pregnant – I don’t understand how she does everything she does, and with a baby on the way and the flu, too! I tried to help around the house, but she really only let me go to the market for her.
Belita fell in and out of sleep on the couch for almost two days. She wouldn’t eat unless Mama threatened to give her medicine before every single bite.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what my mom had told me when I refused to take my billionth serving of posho, “People will think you want to die if you don’t eat!” And I couldn’t stop thinking about that insurance policy that people here have – they have as many children as possible because they expect to lose two or three. It sounds so dramatic, but I was terrified, and it made me homesick for the first time since I’ve been here.
Finally she had enough energy to go outside and play for a few minutes; then she started eating more. When Dad came home from his weekend at school, she instantly brightened. The next day I left for Kampala.
I’m living in a hotel for the month of our independent research, so I went home yesterday to visit my family. Belita greeted me, playing outside in her underwear, and giggled incessantly when I picked her up and tickled her. She was chubby again! I can’t even express how happy I was to see her back to her lively, happy self.
I finally understand this culture’s approval of “fat” people. If you’re too thin here, you’re sick. Most likely with malaria or AIDS… my mom was so happy to tell me I was getting fatter and no longer looked like an AIDS victim. Oh, Uganda! SO different from the States.
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