Still Learning...

After nearly three weeks of learning more about IDIWA, my project is finally underway! We are working with a group of Persons with Disabilities (PWDs) in a nearby sub county, giving them agricultural training, seeds, and tools to grow their own crops and hopefully improve the food security of their respective households. We will also train them in cooperative marketing so they can work together to sell excess produce and earn a source of income. After this initial period, the hope is that they will be a self-sustaining group, meeting with each other monthly to solve problems, pool resources, and develop marketing strategies. Their nominated focal person will conduct monitoring and send monthly reports back to IDIWA.

These weeks have been filled with more lessons, the serious (leprosy, a disease I naively thought to be confined to Biblical times, is fairly common in villages here and often goes dangerously untreated), the simple (as I and the neighbor boys have come to agree upon, Drunken Master is one of Jackie Chan’s best movies---definite bonding moment), and the sweet (I have scoured the grocery stores and Twix is the only candy I can find containing legitimate, non-nasty-anti-melting-agent induced chocolate). I will sadly admit I am already craving non-Ugandan meals, and the originally charming bucket baths are becoming slightly less so, but delicious, ripe, juicy mangoes for a mere 10 cents, finally improving, albeit slowly, in my washing laundry by hand skills, and madly joyful children who call me “Bessany” escorting me to and from work (or wherever else I may happen to go) will never, and I mean never, get old.

Highlights of the Week!

One twisted, traffic violation-filled, wild car ride later, we interns ended up in Kampala (the capital city of Uganda) to view an incredible dance performance. A group of men and women performed traditional Ugandan dances from various tribes throughout the country. The most memorable dance involved the women balancing pottery on their heads, adding pot after pot after pot as we looked on with amazement. Eventually each woman was forced to kneel down so their partner could, standing on tiptoes, stack on yet another piece of pottery. At one point, each woman had over SIX clay vessels teetering on their heads as they still managed to glide rhythmically across the stage, with flowing arms and twisting hips.

Our first agricultural training workshop has been held! It was a definite success; maize, onions, bugga seeds, and cowpeas were planted and one compost pit was constructed on the focal person’s land. Throughout the next week, with help from family, friends and neighbors, each of the other project members will develop their own gardens and pass on their training to others. We will be returning to monitor each household and make sure everyone has been successful, then once the seeds have germinated, a workshop on cooperative marketing will be held. All were enthusiastically involved in the planting of these first gardens, and found some way to get down and dirty, whether it be through the hard physical labor of hoeing, or the necessary contribution of sprinkling seeds and breaking up stubborn dirt clods. Though obviously tired, it was clear that everyone was impatient to get home and begin working on his or her own land!