My name is Tara. I am a Recreation Therapy degree student
going into my third year of studies at Douglas College. I am doing my practicum placement in Uganda
at a maternity and learning centre called Shanti Uganda. Shanti is located in the small village of
Nsassi (which is in the greater district of Luwero), an hour and a half drive north
of Kampala.
Beyond being an accessible,
holistic, maternity and birthing centre, Shanti offers many other community
programs including outreach workshops designed to empower teen girls, a
demonstration garden with agricultural workshops, and a craft-style skill
development group which enables women living with HIV / AIDS to generate an income
by making bags, purses, and jewelry, which Shanti then sells overseas in
Canada. Shanti means peace, and most of
their programs offer an emotional / spiritual element in which the women learn and
practice yoga. The property itself is also
incredibly peaceful, nestled among large trees, and surrounded by the sounds of
chirping birds.
During my time at Shanti, my two
main assignments are to facilitate two sessions of the teen girls empowerment program
(while students are out of school on break), and to complete an assessment to
determine the needs of teen mothers who have given birth and are no longer
attending school. In the future, Shanti
hopes to develop a program designed to help teen mothers in similar situations (and
I have discovered there is no shortage of these girls living in our area of
Luwero).
Thus far, I have experienced
many challenges working overseas.
Adjusting to another’s cultural norms takes time, as does the familiarizing
oneself with new daily routines. In
Uganda, nothing happens fast. Meetings
which are supposed to start at 1pm, begin at 3pm (if you’re lucky). Load sharing means that the power is
inconsistent and unpredictable, therefore, it is necessary to keep appliances
and aids such as computers and cell phones charged as frequently as possible (to
date, 72 hours was the longest we have gone without power, which coincided with
5 days of no running water – something not worthy of recounting to locals who
view tap water as a luxury). In town,
there is no such thing as a quick trip to the store. Ugandan culture strongly values social
interaction, and walking into a store without first chatting for 10 minutes is
deemed to be rude and borderline hostile.
There is also no anonymity being a mzungu (white person) living in a
small, rural Ugandan town. Upon stepping
out of the locked compound where we stay, children follow in droves yelling “bye
mzungu!” “hi mzumgu!” (often in that order), with the younger ones calling out something
which sounds more like “mugugu!” It is
not uncommon to for them to reach out and want to touch your skin – something
which can be un-nerving when trying to cycle past them without running over
their bare feet. One neighbourhood child
even climbs a jackfruit tree outside out walled compound, and while poised in
the tree’s limbs calls out for us “mzungu!” when we are doing laundry on the porch,
or trying to do work indoors in the living room.
Children and animals are
everywhere. Initially I felt like I was
living on the set of a World Vision commercial.
In Canada, child welfare would be called if a 2 foot tall child was
caught playing with and caring for an infant in the street. (I describe children according to their
height as ages are difficult to determine with many kids being malnourished,
while their faces appear much older than they are, perhaps due to the
significant responsibilities which are bestowed upon them). As the days pass, however, I find myself
becoming complacent to such scenes, and upon reflection, I am shocked by the
fact that I now see unsupervised children in the streets as typical and normal.
Everywhere, a lack of resources
is an ongoing issue. It is difficult to
articulate how little facilities (particularly government run institutions) are
able to offer. As an example, we taught
the first session of the Teen Girls program out of a local school room. The packed dirt floor provided an uneven base
for which students could sit on blue and white plastic chairs which the students
carried to the room each morning from a locked storage facility located on the
other side of the property (there are no desks or tables on which the children can
work). The walls made of clay brick were
bare, and offered no chalk boards or even hooks on which one could display visual aids. Without electricity, light shines in through small
open windows which provide little protection to students when torrential rains
begin. This is a typical rural Ugandan
classroom, ordinarily accommodating as many as 200 students (each responsible
for purchasing their own school materials such as notebooks and pencils).
It is easy as a foreigner to
come here and forget just how much you have, and the opportunities such privilege
affords. While we take weekend trips
to national parks, immersing ourselves in amazing Ugandan scenery, and
experiencing African wildlife firsthand, it must be acknowledged that these opportunities
are out of reach for most locals. I fear
we are not always sensitive to this fact.
After watching Disney’s the Lion King on computer with a young Ugandan
woman, we spoke about the animals so prominently featured in the film. She had never seen or heard of a warthog,
though she excitedly described seeing a lion once in an Entebbe zoo. To put things in perspective, it would cost
her 10 months salary to purchase a 1 day park pass to go gorilla trekking (the
price of which is going up by 50% in the near future), and that cost doesn’t
include paying for the mandatory guide, transportation, accommodation, or food.
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| Children playing with jerry can cars near a local borehole. |
