From Home

I am back to being a graduate student again. Today that entailed a prolonged discussion about language (precisely the stuff that we get great pleasure out of referring to as mental masturbation – oh, the joys of pleasure for pleasure’s sake/knowledge for knowledge’s sake). As I sat in the classroom I listened to myself commenting on the use of language to express more than the meaning captured in words and expressions; language as our way of claiming (or not claiming) a place in the world. I referenced Uganda – specifically, the countless times I swallowed words, sat in silence or was spoken over by a man who inevitably managed to use an excess of words to say a dearth of anything yet commandeer all the physical, intellectual and social space. Suddenly I felt a familiar, briefly forgotten, yet always overwhelming surge of frustration and anger swell within me.

I’ve been back from Uganda for nearly four months. More often than not the six months I spent there seem like a distant, surreal memory. Part of that is obviously natural; with time everything fades. However the larger part can best be described as deliberate denial. It’s reached the point where I have dozens of unopened emails in my inbox – all from friends, acquaintances and strangers in Uganda (if any of you are reading this all I can say is: I am very sorry. I will write back, I promise). The best explanation I can offer is that for now I want to exist as if that time in my life did not exist. For just a little while I want to forget how suffocating it felt as a woman to constantly be looked at and yet through. I want to refuse to remember that it took great energy to walk out the door every morning. I want to forget how regularly I felt silenced and how often I silenced myself. I want to not have to remember the frequency with which I questioned why I was there, what I had to offer and what everything I was seeing, feeling and experiencing meant. I want to forget the absolutely desperate want I had to come home and how I refused to admit this to most everyone. I want to not have to remember how far away I felt – from home, from myself and from everyone else.

People often asked and regularly assumed that it must have been hard for me to be in Uganda – both while I was there and since coming home I’ve heard many variations of “isn’t it/wasn’t it depressing?” I did not understand my experience to be depressing as I was living it. My heart ached for many of the people I shared time with, my mind struggled constantly to understand the reality around me, my gut wrenched often with dread and frustration as I tried to navigate my world, my eyes swelled with tears at times for no apparent reason. And yet I constantly registered my time in Uganda as an incredible experience.

I can’t really explain any of this. Perhaps in the stereotypical way that many people speak of, I am only just now beginning to process my experience and understand the impact it had on me, on decisions I made and on questions I am continuing to ask myself. I am sure that little of what I am feeling is unique. In fact, it was comforting to recently hear from a professor that her decision to enter academia – as opposed to a career as a humanitarian worker – had a lot to do with the profound discomfort she experienced as a woman in the field. At least I am not the only one.

Everything I can’t see but that is there

* * *

Rebel forces abducted him when10 years old. He spent years in the bush fighting against the government army until a “poison bullet” pierced his right shin – the wound was small but caused the flesh on most of his leg to rot. In 2004 he was captured by government soldiers and brought to an NGO “reception” center.

He told me that there is “no difference really” between life in the bush and life outside - except that inside the bush you have nothing (the most common thing to eat is mud) and you have no expectations, outside the bush you have expectations but still nothing.

* * *

Rebels abducted these girls too. Once in the bush they were forced to become “wives.” Upon escape/return they are now girl-mothers. Their children are known as “Kony’s {the rebel leader} daughters/sons.”

I wonder: How did these girls/women find themselves in the bush and how did they find their way out? (Boys and girls say that they were often forced to brutally kill those caught trying to escape). What have their eyes witnessed and their bodies endured?

* * *

The geography of the camps and their surroundings tell a story - the government’s strategy of interning people (both by force and by fear) in the name of security comes to life as I imagine how millions of people came to find themselves crowded within inches of each other in grass-thatched huts with nothing to do and no where to go.

It was difficult to know which way to look as I walked around the camp. I wanted to take in everything and yet I also needed to avoid stepping in a pile of steaming feces or on a precious pile of fresh beans. As I navigated, I managed to notice a few centrally located watering taps lined with jerry cans. I saw hut after hut with a doorway decorated in red, white, blue – when flattened and hinged together the tin from USA soya cans apparently makes a perfect door. I glimpsed “Being a human being is not easy” scribbled on a shop wall. I greeted countless barely clothed and mostly barefoot children as mucus poured from their noses and sat unnoticed on their lips. I watched women walk to and fro around me or sit idly on straw mats. When I smelled the harsh, rank odor of local brew I also inevitably saw one or a few men huddled close by. My ears registered the quiet – although hundreds of thousands of people are living within inches of each other it seemed as noisy as a suburban street in America on a summer evening.

* * *

There is a tremendous amount of “finger pointing” here – so much so that HIV positive women and men people often stay alone inside their homes isolated from family and from community. Many women are chased away and a majority of men quietly die in hiding. Many people talk about the disease as if women and girls are its repository – infection is most often said to be caused by girls getting “spoiled” by soldiers and then making themselves look good and “sharing the bed” with another man. However in the quiet corner of a room, men tell me that they “realize that it is our mistake” and they explain how an HIV positive result makes them feel exposed to their market (women). For fear of losing their market, men blame women for bringing the disease into their home. Without hesitation, women tell me that if they had a way to support themselves and their children they would never be with a man. They explain how it is necessary to “pay” (with sex) either a husband or another man so that children can eat and go to school. If they could go back in time, men say they would reduce their libido and women explain that they would stick to one man. Right now, everyone is afraid of dying alone.

I am constantly in awe of the courage each of these women and men shows in testing their blood, coming for treatment and boldly declaring their HIV positive status.

a glacier

I spent a recent afternoon in Kawempe. It is a neighborhood located on Mulago Hill - in the heart of Kampala and on the doorstop of the city’s main hospital. Community members call the area a “slum” - this is not a word you hear often in Kampala. After an afternoon in Kawempe, I would agree that the area is worthy of the term.

Our first stop in Kawempe was the home of a woman by the name of Tina*. Among other things Tina is a drama group member, a community counselor and a multi-purpose trainer. In the simplest terms, she is a very active member of the community. Tina does not live more comfortably nor has she been spared any of the suffering that fills the neighborhood. She is simply determined, like many others, to do what she can amidst the hardships.

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While I stood on the mud pile that constituted a “doorstep” Tina slipped into a neighboring house through the cloth that hung in the form a door. As she did this I glimpsed a woman lying inside on the cement floor. I worried if something was wrong - was this woman ill, did she need to be taken to the hospital?

A moment later I was warmly welcomed into Elysia’s home - a dark, damp room. There was a cushion-less sofa in the “sitting room;” the rest of the room/house lay hidden behind a sheet hung from the ceiling. Boxes, jerry cans and stray objects covered the floor and filled much of room’s perimeter. Elysia was not ill but she was suffering.

As we chatted Elysia sat on the floor, her five children huddled close by. The oldest looked to be about seven and the youngest still young enough to suckle on Elysia’s limp breast. Tina explained to me that Elysia and her husband are a discordant couple – Elysia is HIV negative and her husband is HIV positive. The fact that Elysia struggles to feed and clothe her five children was visible. One of the boys sat naked as we spoke. I was told that none of the children are able to attend school. Elysia has no way to support herself and her children, aside from the little that her husband occasionally provides. Her husband comes and goes – he will often leave for 2 weeks, 3 weeks, even 4 weeks at a time. When he returns he throws 1,000 shillings at Elysia to feed the children with. He is often violent. He quarrels with Elysia all night long now. “Quarrelling all night” is another way of saying that he asks for sex and when she refuses he insists. He refuses to use a condom despite the fact that he knows that he is HIV positive and she is negative. Elysia tested negative one year ago – there is no guarantee that she is still HIV negative.

As desperate as this situation seems, I was told that it is an improvement. Initially the husband insisted that Elysia and the children leave his home. He asserted something along the lines of: “I am a waste. I cannot take care of you.” With counseling from community members, he was eventually convinced to stay with his family. However, according to Tina, his strategy now is to starve Elysia and the children. He provides very little and insists that it is enough.

As we spoke, a man entered the home. Without hesitation he sat amongst us. This was Elysia’s husband. He looked healthy and well dressed – he even wore a gold watch. As his wife struggles and his children go hungry, he is clearly well taken care of.

I left the house wondering: what would tonight be like in this home? Is Elysia’s heart heavy with dread every time her husband walks through the door? Does she hope that maybe this time will be different? How can it be that it is best for Elysia to stay with her husband despite the little that he gives her and the constant risk of HIV infection? What does this man need? What would convince him that he is not a waste; that he can live; that he must not only live but also give his wife and children a life? I slipped out past the curtain with a heavy heart.

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Back at home that evening, my friend asked me: if people in Kawempe could have anything, what is it that they need? I had no response for him. I was reminded of the analogy I often hear – HIV/AIDS is like a glacier; the disease’s causes and effects extend far beyond what is initially apparent. Remarkably, it is not illness that the people I met are suffering from. Although many are infected with and all are undeniably affected by HIV/AIDS it is not better health services that they need. (This may be because they live within meters of one of the largest HIV/AIDS service providers in the country).
If not health services, what is it that would make their life better? The opportunity to not live in impoverished conditions, the means to feed their children, the possibility to send their children to school; the freedom to control if and how they are infected with HIV; the luxury to live free of the economic and the emotional devastation of HIV/AIDS.

*I changed all names.

traveling up-country

Several Ugandans have told me that in one month I have seen more of their country than they have. I spent the past four weeks traveling from one corner of the country to another – similar (in distance alone) to traveling from one end of Pennsylvania to the other.

I spent a week in the southwestern corner of the country (as close to the Democratic Republic of the Congo as you can get without actually crossing the border). To get there we sped over the equator and by a herd of grazing zebras. Crossing into the region was a bit like crossing into Ireland - in every direction were rolling hills and constant green; banana trees are like grass, they cover every inch of land.

Another week was spent in the eastern regions of the country. There my eyes were drawn often to the slopes of Mount Elgon – the peak of which forms the border with Kenya. In town, the buildings, arcades, wide streets and roundabouts brought one word to mind: colony. The central landmark, a clock tower, is dedicated to King George. I half- expected to run into Meryl Streep and Robert Redford strolling down the street (a.k.a. “Out of Africa”, circa ~1910).

****

Much of my time “up county” (whether north or south, in the mountains or on the plains anywhere outside of Kampala is referred to as “up-country”) was spent traveling to the homes of people infected or affected by HIV. As we sped through towns, up hills and past homes there was so much to take in. I searched for clues of what people are doing; how they are living; and if they are living better or worse here than the last place we visited. I saw men gathered in trading centers sucking local brew from a shared pot (at 10am), women emerging from the fields with bushels of beans atop their head, children tugging at cattle and twisting at goats, men pushing bicycles weighted down with dozens of water cans, children lugging their weight in firewood, women hunched over small basins pounding the dust out of clothes, men playing checkers in storefronts, women nursing babies while grilling maize, small children carrying even smaller children, men packing flour into sacks, women dusting the dust off of dust.

When finally we reached our destination – often after walking up a small path, driving down a dirt road, turning off of a paved road – for a few brief moments I could see and hear more closely how people live. I noticed the quiet. I was surprised to step inside a rectangular mud hut and see walls; it is not just one big room. I smiled to see the outer walls of many homes adorned with “Happy Christmas” written with chalk in a child’s handwriting. I realized that what looks like sitting from the road is often people hard at work – shelling beans, braiding hair or tending children.

****

People barely have drinking water and surely don’t have electricity and yet even the most remote villages are part of the Coca Cola versus Pepsi battle. Red and blue posters and placards abound; a smiling white face says –without speaking a word – that all of these black faces would presumably be happier if they had a bottle of Coke (or Pepsi) in hand. These people have no money – how can they be profitable to Coke or Pepsi? At the very least couldn’t the same truck that brings the posters and coolers bring improved seeds and mosquito nets?

****

While in a town in eastern Uganda, I listened to a group of 13 – 16 year old schoolgirls voice their questions, concerns and ideas about sex. The latest statistics report that young people in Uganda have “adequate” knowledge of HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. I was flabbergasted to hear what apparently constitutes “adequate” and what the USA insists on addressing by not mentioning sex:
“If you have sex and then you wash your vagina with coca-cola you won’t get pregnant. You can’t get pregnant while having sex standing. If you take Tylenol and you play sex you won’t get pregnant. Is it true that when you have sex and sperm enters you can drink coke soda and you will not get pregnant? Is it true that if you play sex with a virgin girl it cures AIDS? If someone pocks your anus you won’t get infected with AIDS or STDs? If you play sex when you are bored you won’t get AIDS? If you are 20 years old and a virgin you are abnormal? Is it true that if one does not have sex when 8 – 10 years old you are abnormal? People say that being a virgin is being remote and not knowing what the world is all about so I feel small to speak in public.”

****

Alongside traveling, I have also been working on a paper, the gist of which is…

The main driver of the continuing HIV/AIDS epidemic in Uganda is high-risk sex - precisely the kind of sex that “real men” have. I have been told by several men (married and single alike) that men like to “sample women” - they like to see what sex is like with a fat woman, a skinny woman, a woman with big hips, a tall woman, etc., etc. And that they never get tired of sampling. I have also been informed that condoms are unsatisfying as well as “foreign and artificial;” having more than one woman makes for “more of a man;” and that men are just doing what they can to be sure that every Ugandan woman is loved.

Given what I’ve heard and witnessed since being here I am convinced that the HIV epidemic will never end unless people start talking to men. The ways that so-called “risky” behavior is linked to masculinity need to be addressed. Both women and men are dying from HIV/AIDS and yet very few people are talking about men's roles, responsibilities and vulnerabilities. Men are not the problem per se but they do have an important part to play – in both the problem and the solution.

northern Uganda

Yesterday I returned from a week in the northern regions of Uganda. This is the part of the country that suffers from devastating poverty and the highest rates of HIV/AIDS infection. It is also the region that has experienced 20 years of armed conflict; the area where tens of thousands of children were abducted and forced to serve as soldiers and sex slaves; and the region where 53 camps were constructed so that hundreds of thousands of individuals could live indefinitely in inhumane conditions while the government attempted to kill rebels. It is the part of Uganda for which a peace agreement is currently being negotiated, a process that has brought a hopeful but precarious state of security.

My first destination was Masindi, a town 200 kilometers north west of Kampala. At first glance Masindi is a quietly quaint village nestled amidst lushly green lands. Coming from the chaos of Kampala, it feels like an oasis. That is, until I looked and listened closely enough to see that children are thin from malnutrition and that the adults carrying them are weak with hunger or HIV or very likely both.

I spent Tuesday sweating under the sun with the over 100 women, men and children that turned up for an HIV/AIDS outreach. Over the course of the day, several female Drama Group members shared stories of being abandoned by their husbands. The Drama Group’s eldest member - a frail and graying old man – proclaimed that HIV/AIDS is not just a disease of the young. He told us that he is HIV positive and his wife is HIV negative – he made public his pledge not to infect her. A 13-year old girl brought tears to my eyes and many others as she described that at birth she lost her mother and her health to HIV/AIDS.

Previously, people getting tested for HIV, sharing stories about HIV infection, or pledging not to infect loved ones with HIV would not have struck me as exceptional. However what I saw and heard in Masindi forced me realize otherwise. I learned that here HIV/AIDS is commonly thought to be an ailment of the bewitched. The small percentage of people who have the privilege of accurate information often choose not to get tetested. One reason is that lack of medical treatment and knowledge means that whether they test positive or negative makes no difference. An equally as common reason is that they cannot afford the few dollars it costs for transport to a free testing site. For the very few who do get tested, a positive result is cause for instant transformation into being a “walking corpse” often alienated from family and community. In light of all this, my co-workers and I were thrilled when 83 people streamed to the tent for free HIV testing on Tuesday afternoon.

On Thursday I traveled north from Masindi to Gulu. Unlike Masindi, which experienced an influx of internally displaced people but did not experience direct violence Gulu knows armed conflict very well. It was the center of conflict and is now the epicenter of much of the rebuilding.

There is one (mostly) paved road that runs north through Uganda – this is the road we traveled on. As we crossed into Gulu district my co-workers announced that we were entering “Kony [rebel leader]’s land;” they described the ambushes that occurred along the way; they pointed out over-crowded internally displaced camps as we passed through them. All along the way the roadside was lined with a steady stream of women, men and children on bike and on foot carrying wood, water and a hoe. With the recent lack of violence, hundreds of people walk many kilometers each day from camp to their land and back again in hopes of harvesting at least enough food to eat.

We reached Gulu Town - a bustling center of people and activity – on Thursday afternoon. There was a level of energy in the air that was palpable. Aside from the large number of people mingling in the streets and the appearance of a Ugandan army convoy carrying a white-flag reading PEACE, the most visible manifestation of the town’s hopeful transition from war to peace is the overwhelming presence of non-governmental organizations. Ninety-nine percent of the vehicles we passed were land-cruisers with one of any number of NGO names boldly on display: World Vision, Save the Children, Care, Medecins Sans Frontieres, etc., etc. There is no doubt that the resources for rebuilding are present; the questions remaining are: will the resources go to good use, will the peace be sustainable?

Conversations I had with co-workers, clients and by-passers alike were marked by comments like: “since the war ended” or “if there continues to be peace.” One of the clients I spoke with was a man who recently tested positive for HIV/AIDS. Without work or land he has no way to feed himself or send his children to school. However now that “the war is past” he wants to go back to his land – the only thing stopping him is his ill health. Despite her reluctance this man is committed to remarrying his first wife, a woman who is also HIV positive (as he put it: “sometimes when a woman says no she means yes”).

After a short time in Masindi and Gulu, the picture I have of Northern Uganda is one in which the devastating impact of poverty, malnutrition and AIDS fills the foreground while violent conflict is slowly shifting to be an important but obscured backdrop. Unfortunately poverty and HIV/AIDS don’t make headlines or attract funding quite the same way war does.

an average day

A few people have expressed an interest in knowing what a typical day is like for me …

My alarm clock rings every morning at 6:37am. It’s this or nature’s alarm clock – a rooster - that rouses me. Typically I’ve slept well on the sturdy foam that is called my mattress. That is, except for the nights when there has been a mosquito incident. Imagine a mosquito buzzing in your ear all night - it incites something akin to what it must feel like to go mad. If only I could negotiate with a mosquite, I'd shout: "bite me as much as you want, just SHUT UP!"

My routine from the time I step out of bed to the moment I step out the door depends entirely on where in the electricity rotation we are. Actually, rotation is not quite the right word - rotations are consistent and reliable. This is not. It is supposedly “24 hours on, 24 hours off” however what it actually amounts to is some days we have electricity and some days we don’t. Therefore some mornings I have the joy of a warm shower and other mornings I make use of my newly acquired rinse-quickly-while-standing-on-the edge-of-the-shower skills; some mornings I savor warm toast smeared with ground simnut while other mornings I am content with bread and peanut butter.

In Kampala the run-down, barely-running version of a Vespa is called a boda-boda and is one of the only means of transport, particularly if you don’t want to sit on top of someone else in an overcrowded taxi bus in the middle of the city’s traffic jam for hours on end. On the many mornings when I don’t get up early enough to walk to work I indulge one of the countless men on every corner who call after me: “my sister!” I pay the lucky man to speed through the dusty, crowded streets of Kampala on his boda-boda with me side-saddled behind him– but only after I have insisted that he drive “mpolla, mpolla” (“slowly, slowly”).

My workday begins at 8:30am. Inevitably by the time I arrive there are already dozens, often hundreds, of people seated under the canopy flanking the building’s front door. Women, men and children are there to receive anti-retroviral drugs, to see a doctor about a painful cough (or any number of other ailments), or to talk with a counselor. The first floor of our building is a clinic, the top floors are where staff plan budgets, write strategies, and design interventions. I spend my days upstairs. From where I sit, looking past my computer and through the window, I watch the line of people grow and then diminish as the hours pass. I listen to children laughing, and crying, throughout the day.

Most of my friends at the office are women in their mid to late 20s. Some of them are staff and many more are volunteers. It is extremely difficult for university graduates to find work in Uganda – you are considered one of the lucky ones if you find a fulltime volunteer position that after a year or two may turn into a paid position. Some of my friends are married – if they’ve been married for more than a few months it’s a given that they have at least one baby. Other of my friends have a baby yet no man. Others still have neither a man nor a baby – they call themselves “single and searching.” Like in most places among women our age, the day is punctuated by chats about babies, a visit to the salon, a family obligation this weekend or a trip to the market last night. Surprisingly we don’t often talk about men.

At 1pm each afternoon I venture to the canteen next door for lunch. It is here that several of the female HIV/AIDS clients from the clinic earn money by cooking and serving lunch to anyone willing to pay 1,500 Ugandan shillings. For less than US.80 cents I eat my fill of rice, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, kale, pumpkin, beans, groundnut sauce and matooke. Matooke is mashed bananas (imagine the consistency of mashed potatoes but with a different taste and color). It is a staple in this part of Uganda – in fact when someone refers to food they are talking about matooke. People fill their plates with many other things, including chicken and beef, but the only thing that qualifies as food is matooke.

At approximately 4:30pm the workday ends and I begin my walk home. The afternoon means disappointment for the boda-boda drivers – my response to their “Let’s go” is always “Nayda sebbo” (“no sir”). Instead of riding I opt to walk the 30 minutes between my work and home. The walk begins along a dirt path amongst barely-standing homes and roaming livestock; it ends on busy, barely-paved roads past small stalls and big homes. All along the way children shout and adults comment: “muzungu, muzungu!” (“white person, white person!”). I am greeted with “hi, how are you?” by countless schoolboys and girls. Often I have to explain to a persistent man that my husband would not like it if another man walked me home. You can imagine how much I despise having to pretend that I belong to one man in order to keep another man at bay.

The walk isn’t all uninvited commotion though. There are the two women who sell grilled maize and small sweets on the roadside and who unfailingly greet my attempts to converse in their language with huge smiles and warm laughter. There is the woman at the thatch stall where I buy tomatoes, avocado, eggplants, onions or whatever else is needed for the evening’s menu – her young son is in awe of his mother’s new friend. There is also Lucy – the woman who runs the food stall on our block. Lucy is there to welcome me home each evening, to tell me about her day and to listen as I share the events of mine.

Just like the mornings, once at home my evening routine is determined by the electricity situation. A gas stove ensures that we can eat every night. The question is whether we chop tomatoes, fry eggplants and steam rice by the dim light of a kerosene lantern or not. Regardless of how well we can see each other, after cooking most hours of the evening are spent gathered around the dinner table recounting the days mishaps or debating about why Ugandan men do the things they do or speculating about something like the relevancy of the United Nations.

The day ends with hot Ugandan tea and sugar.

the week through my eyes

I spent the past week in Jinja, a city about 50 miles north east of Kampala and home to the source of the Nile River.

I was in Jinja for a workshop on HIV/AIDS and food aid. If I had to categorize 3 days of insights, challenges and lessons learned in one sentence: some individuals are relieved to get a positive HIV/AIDS test because this means they may qualify for food aid; they will fall sick in a few years but at least they will eat tomorrow.

Above are photographs of some of what I saw and the people I met. In this small village 26 women and 4 men (all HIV positive) have formed a group in hopes that together they can pool enough resources to grow food for their families, support the orphaned children and support each other through the distress of HIV/AIDS.

(click on the images if you want to see them bigger)