Green Gentleness

It was the air that got me first, like a cool Californian inhale. The stuff you breathe near Half Moon Bay or Sebastapool, at San Gregorio and Pescadero; something earthy and damp, crisp and healthy. Within minutes of waking, of bringing forth the energy of the surroundings into my eyes, ears, nose, mouth and lungs, I was out of bed. Moving silently on foot over the mossy trails that edge themselves round the circumference of the island. The edge of my jeans were dewdrop drenched by the time I made it to the top of the nearest hill. I attempted to shade the early morning sun from both above and below as it plummeted from the clouds and at the same time reflected off the still water; I finally surrendered to just throwing my head back, eyes closed and letting my face enjoy the warmth. I stood silent and flat footed in a field of knee-high pink and yellow grasses, young corn stalks, and pockets of vibrant wildflowers that looked as though they’d slipped carelessly from an artist’s easel. This was Lake Bunyoni, this was a place that nursed my bones back white and my blood blood-red.


I had a lot of time for prayer over the last few days. Not a kneeling, penitent sort of affair; but focused moments for healing and gratitude. I found myself crosslegged on the dock, or standing at the waters edge or crouching atop the highest peak; thinking words of praise and thanks for my surroundings, for this place, her people, for my home, the people I love, the people they love. Wishing for a world brimming with peace and healthy people and compassion; then, realizing this isn’t the reality, settling for a world brimming with conscientious people and the ability to heal and forgive and create peace wherever it can be created. It felt good, who knows, maybe you felt it too.

I have been faced with an internal struggle recently, questioning my role here, or any good-willed foreigner’s role here. There are so many grey areas in aid work, so many ambiguous goals and objectives, so much dust swept under rugs, its suffocating. As someone who has had, BE SUSTAINABLE, engraved in her heart and probably on the back of her head for all she knows, its really difficult to look around everyday and see so much money being dumped into…exactly, who knows?
I try to tackle it slowly. ‘If there was an answer Shannon, do you think it would look like this? Do you think it would smell and taste and feel like this? No, there is not an answer, and this? This is most certainly not the answer.”
Its incredibly overwhelming, all the doubts, all the questions, all the frustration, even the rage… its boiled over into something cloudily condensing in my brain; I’m hoping having time in New Zealand will allow me to process, to sort, spring clean.


This is why being in Lake Bunyoni felt so good. My head felt clear, my skin was clean, I ate banana pancakes. I was and am so grateful for every opportunity I have to see clearly, to gain perspective, to reflect, to be humbled. I wish I could explain the quieting beauty of the place, but I can’t, and of course photographs can’t do it justice. I can be content living in the body it left me with, something strong, stable, free and ready to begin thinking of answers.

LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! FREE! FREE! FREE!

There seemed to be a management problem with keeping cues, perhaps it was just a particularly rowdy day, but I had a certain hunch that the blaspheming prefects threatening to cane the children wasn’t an everyday event. It was the kind of chaos one sees upon the release of a new Harry Potter, or if Brad Pitt was to stroll into a local restaurant… the sticky kind of fist flailing frenzy reserved for once-in-a-lifetime affairs. At first I was impressed, thinking this wide-eyed madness was a testament to my success, but as the novelty wore off, my vocal chords chafed against one another and I found myself threatening violence towards the hordes of teenagers I realized that perhaps I had bit off more than I could chew. It’s a dangerous game offering free services to those who have so little… but I forgave myself. How could I have possible anticipated free HIV testing would result in mass hysteria?
I sit basking in the somewhat lackluster glory of my S.H.A.R.E. program; the project that I’ve spent the last ten weeks developing and executing. It is over, the last child has been pricked, bled and counseled, the last corrupt CDC sponsored lab technician has been paid off…I now have time to be in Uganda, not just to stay here, but to be here.
The teacher training session went off beautifully in an off-green colored room on the second floor of the Cool Breeze Hotel. Questions were asked, interests were sparked, beers were served…Hooray Hoorah!
The next chapter consisted of executing the school sessions. The logistical swamp bucket that presents itself when trying to coordinate three autonomous bodies is thick and it is fierce. After much pleading, rationalizing and exhausted compromises each school finally confirmed a date that worked for both Soft Power Health (i.e. me…that wasn’t too difficult) and AIDS Information Centre Jinja.

tests waiting to be tested.

East Secondary School- November 5th at 10:30 am
The AIC staff arrived one hour late to our meeting place, thus we arrived nearly 2 hours late to our appointment. It didn’t seem to be any skin off the Headmaster’s back as he was lounging under a mango tree eating jackfruit when I arrived in my long-skirted American “I heart efficiency” guise. We lumbered into a concrete classroom with dirt floors and twiddled fingers as the students scuffled in. The presentation went nicely, my favorite moment was when a cocky 18 year old raised his hand to say, “You said that condoms they should be thrown in the pit latrine. But me, I fuck in the bush, so what then?” The AIC HIV counselor was kind enough to take that question for me; I cowered backwards and resisted the urge to kick him in the mouth. We tested 70 students.

Lubani Secondary School- November 8th at 1pm
The AIC staff arrived one hour late to our meeting place, thus we arrived nearly 2 hours late to our appointment. It didn’t seem to be any skin off the teacher’s backs as they were lounging under a grove of pine trees, “We have just released the students for lunch. You wait for some 40 minutes.” So we began the presentation at around 4 pm, at which time I was introduced by one of the younger teachers as his wife. This set the students into such a fit it took canes and cursing of all sorts to quell them. This particular teacher, my husband, has taken to text messaging me late at night to tell me he misses me, that he needs my personality or to ask me “ware you b?” I gave the presentation to just under one thousand students. Outside. Without a microphone. These are times when I thank my theatre career… projection, annunciation…pause, punch and attitude…you got it! We tested 97 students before we ran out of vacutainer needles and the sun went down. This was the most chaotic group of all the students, I sustained several minor injuries that evening as well as coming to the conclusion that I don’t ever, ever want to be a schoolteacher. The electricity at the campus was shifty at best and we realized about thirty minutes before dark that the special hire car we were riding in had no headlights. Henry, the driver, and I had a friendly little chat where all I could think about was that he had a huge problem of misusing the word “generally”, ‘Well, generally, I have no lights. Oh, yes, generally I will go get another car.” This was not the end of the “Henry screwing me up” saga.

Trinity College- November 12th 1pm
By this point I’d like to think I’d worked out most of the hitches. I told the AIC people to arrive four hours before the program began and this time we were only about 20 minutes late. I educated the students in a really beautiful shaded arbor; pine trees, eucalyptus and palm all collected in a strange kind of partnership to provide a cool and calm space in which to talk about viral infections and condoms. We were able to test 100 children and make it home before dark. I felt good, I felt really proud driving home around dusk, the pink sky burning into the sugar cane plantations, the amueze rising as a fingernail in the sky.


St. Stephen’s Secondary School- November 14th 10:30 am
I almost don’t want to talk about it. But this, as much any of the pitfalls and obstacles, was part of my experience, part of the reality of getting things done or not so done here. I received a text message from the HM from St. Stephens at about 10 am the day of the program, something along the lines of, “Please cancel your visit. We are too busy. Thankyou.” Keeping in mind please, that this is after two months of planning, of confirming and reconfirming of sticking to a date and time that he suggested. And so I kindly asked him to reconsider based on the fact that the program had already been paid for, the counselors had been hired etc etc. His response was, “Our position is final and unchangeable. Your program is not as important as our students learning. Thankyou.” The story concludes with me rolling up to the school in a heated fury and laying in on the administrative staff, using my big English words and all.
Over, done with, unfortunate. Thus the lackluster aspect of this whole sha-bang.

But now I have about a month to learn this place. Learn the ebbs and flows of her land and people, the things I’ve been biking past too fast to notice. The weather has been peach, plum, pear perfect lately; cloudy sunshine days, breezy, beautiful. The living here is easy and I’m gonna take an HIV load off and enjoy it while I can. Christmas is coming in fast this year.

"Don’t you see? ...Our city, it is shining.”

It does shine in places too. Samwiel wants me to observe how it shines in the buildings blessed with electricity. The Indian supermarkets, petrol stations, in the Christmas lights strung across the outside of the Mayfair Hotel & Conference Space. But I watch it shine elsewhere. Shone in the worn faces of the shop vendors and tailors, fragmented in caverras of vanilla flavored water, absorbed in the women’s cotton clothes and in the boda boy’s motorbikes, it reflects. The current that propels through this place is one that doesn’t rely upon wiring and circuits; it is passed by word of mouth, through Ugandan handshakes and customary greetings, in local eateries and convenient shops that all sell the same products for the same prices. It smells of the cast iron used by entire bloodlines, deep fried cassava and mandaze, poor sewage systems, people’s sweat. It is complacent and overused, tired and unfair, it is ancient and it is unchangeable. But there are other elements too, sensory components less perceptible to the untrained pallet. Sounds and tastes that cause a double take. What I perceive, the poverty, the impossibility of it all, contrasts starkly with the reality. The perpetually playing children, the mothers gossiping beneath doorjambs and jack fruit trees, the consistently fertile land and gentle weather.

Annie says we can’t ever get it. We aren’t capable of understanding the resilience because it will never be our reality. She likened it to leaving the Rwandan Genocide Memorial, the church where over 20,000 people were massacred. Where babies were killed by being thrust into concrete walls. Where men and women Tutsis kneeled frantically praying against plywood pews and violently digging plastic rosaries between thumb and forefinger until the last moment, the final blow. She said when she left, despite the disbelief and the horror, she still felt a blatant disconnect, a barren void that could never be breached because she wasn’t one of them. These weren’t her people. For her, September 11th drew more remorse, anger, sadness. Because we are tribal, communal animals, I wonder how significant it is to our conscious to be a member of the global community. Are we wired to be dedicated to our people, our countrymen, our tribe. Does this prevent us from ever really adapting to another culture? Will I ever be able to challenge these foreign demons as my own battle? Simanyi. I don’t know.


My village is poor, undeniably poor. Children are withdrawn from school because of shortage of funds (the fees are roughly $8 per term), my host sister has two hand-me-down dresses and a math compass to her name, we don’t buy toilet paper here. And yet we are fine, a self sustaining agrarian community, we fear no famine, no flood. Wednesday November 8th I witnessed a new face of Uganda. Soft Power was commissioned to do a special malaria outreach program. We drove the two hours to Kampala to facilitate it. Because of the distance, it was one of the first times SPH had allowed the local social workers to mobilize the community. When we arrived we knew immediately that this had not been done successfully. As we waited for the frantic last minute shepherding of local men and women we observed our scenery.


Nomolago rests awkwardly in the shallow valley between two upper class Kampala suburbs. Its knock-kneed shacks and sun bleached tenement structures rub eachother raw in the twenty kilometer rift that was originally allocated for catching runoff and waste water and providing a barrier between the two high caste communities. The body-stocking tributaries of the community run lengthwise through the valley, obviously over worked and poorly cared for. There is no electricity, no farming, no clean water source and no bathrooms. Immediately upon arrival you are kicked in the face with open sewage, the smell that can only come from a place where the nearest latrines are miles away, cost money to use and close at sundown. Sickly looking ‘Land Ducks’ tread heavily about the place scavenging for food, searching for water, picking at pieces of discarded plastic and old bicycle tires, not unlike the local children. Every child I say had Tinnia Capitus, a fungal infection of the scalp that causes small pocked white scabs to form on top of the head, later leading to open sores and further infections. Ultimately about twenty battered and jaded women showed to our session, they had been told we were giving the mosquito nets for free, when they realized this wasn’t they case they became restless, distressed, pushy and irrational. Me and the other three mzungus were shuffled hastily back into the van and promptly removed from the situation. An Israeli doctor who is volunteering there said that about 15,000 people lived in the slum. All illegally. All without healthcare. All without public schools. These weren’t refugees, they were just the ‘children of poor people’, I can only imagine what that implies about these people’s children.
On the drive back I half-listened to Dane Cook on my ipod. Distressed and unsettled. Dane Cook told jokes about people shitting in closets and ‘Karen the bag of douche’; I thought about the ugly differences between urban and rural poverty and how part of me hated myself for being relieved that I wasn’t the one that worked there, that it wasn’t my mess to manage. But for now, I am okay with that. I am easing in, mpola mpola, into this endeavor. When stakes are so high, I feel content with entering toe first… plunging carries with it too many unknowns and potential emotional breakdowns. Needless to say, I was relieved as we arrived back in Jinja.
‘Don’t you see?’, I asked myself, ‘This city, it is shining.’

We are somehow XTREME!

I caught my reflection in the glass of a notebook store the other day. We have no mirrors in my house so I’ve developed a ‘pretty pretty Peggy Moffit’ complex over the last month or so, eyeing myself in mucky sewage puddles, windows of supermarkets, car doors. The short glimpse set me into a mild self-centered fit; I looked fat. There is no doubt that I’ve put on a few subsisting off an entirely carb and starch diet, but it was discouraging none the less. I asked Samwiel, my new friend and trusted late night boda driver, if he thought I was fat. “Em, no.” he said, “You are somehow…medium.” Brightened my day a bit I suppose. Better medium than fat. Ugandans will also comment on how I’ve “increased” since arriving… also flattering.

It also highlighted one of the many quirks of the Ugandenglish vernacular, the use of ‘somehow’ instead of ‘somewhat’…I think.
I may ask, “Samweil, how was the day?” He replies, “oh, it was somehow ok.”
I think I have mentioned “the what?” before. This is a convenient tool employed to encourage audience participation during a conversation as well as stall your fellow converser so that you may think of what you are meaning to say next.
For example: “To make amagi amafumbe, yes please. First you do what? You go to buy eggs. You move from where? The Ivnamba trading center. Then you put them in the what? The boiling water. That you do what? You eat them… and they are somehow good.”
I’ve found myself parroting these techniques recently in order to communicate more efficiently, because in Rome you do what? As the Romans somehow do.

The Fam. Mama Rose on my right and sister Edith on my left.

We rafted the Nile yesterday. What I really mean is, we rafted the $%&!@*&^% Nile!!! It was a 12 rapid, 6-hour extravaganza; complete with three raft upheavals and subsequent passenger spewage, a guide who kept saying things like, “Oh god! We gonna die!” and “Here comes the shit falls!” and, as far as I’m concerned, my closest encounter yet with death. The run we did consisted of 2 grade II, 2 grade III, 4 grade IV and 4 grade V rapids; I was the only one in my group who’d ever even been in a raft before, needless to say there was a lot of screaming, panic struck faces and lost paddles. It was a really fantastic day though, one of those indirect sunlight days; pleasantly warm with thunderheads always looming just beyond us. I didn’t run into much difficulty or mental chaos throughout the day, until the last rapid. Itanga Falls, its called, “the bad place”, a massive 300-meter froth bowl famous for its “washing machine” maneuvers. We were the only raft out of 5 that decided to go down; of course we didn’t know this until the end because we went first. Two of our group of 7 removed themselves from the boat pre-rapid with a pleasant smile and a “yeah, hell no.” The first wave didn’t topple us, but we got stuck and there was this fleeting moment when I thought, ‘Wow, we didn’t flip, that’s incredible’. Little did I know that within seconds I would be toppled beneath the raft spinning in violent head over feet flips, one after the other after the other, I didn’t know what was up, who was down, if I was alive… my breathe had been knocked out of me upon contact with the wave so having to hold it wasn’t really a concern. I surfaced for a brief moment coughing, only to be sucked back down, it was this second round that ripped off both my shoes and jammed water so far up every orifice I think ill be crying Nile water for a month. When I was finally spat out centuries later a safety kayaker, I like to think of him as my guardian angel boater, pulled up along side of me, shouting at me to swim quickly to the raft so he could find my shoes… find my shoes, in this hell hole? Ok. I choked and spat my way to the raft only to have the guide say, “Hold on, feet up, feet up! Lots of rocks, lots of rocks!”… By this time my head was pounding so hard from all the water pressure in my nose and ears that comprehension and listening skills were rendered moot. Sometime after that and before sun down we made it back to land. It’s all kind of a blur of forced juice boxes and compulsive attempts at popping my ears. Two hours later after spending a crying fit in our dorm room shaking my head to one side, plugging my nose and blowing, tugging on my ear lobe…I had surrendered to the unbearable pulsing pain. My girlfriends came and got me and told me a raft guide knew just the trick. He heated up some olive oil, soaked two cotton balls in it, twirled them up and jammed them into my ears. He motioned for me to leave them there and then disappeared. Slowly but surely the pressure subsided and I was granted the privilege of having a chit chatty night at the bar reliving the rapids and telling the tails of my brush with death with my cohorts… we were Team Extreme. Our shirts are going to say, “TEAM EXTREME: We are somehow extreme.” Oh, and my guardian angel boater found my shoes, both of them…

"But, money is the most important thing"

I beg to differ.
...quoted from my boda driver this afternoon in response to me telling him that having a big house was not the most important thing. sigh.

My homesickness here doesn’t come in fits as I remember it from childhood. It accompanies me as a slow undercurrent, a subtle sort of white noise I’m disengaged from most of the time. Speaking with Dr. Judith yesterday, a pretty & petite 24-yr-old from southwest Uganda, I encountered a loss for words when posed, “what sorts of differences do you observe between your country and ours?” I struggled with this one. How about, are there any similarities? I think it’s easy to avoid stumbling into a pit of yearning for home when there are so few stimuli to pique my memory of the place. Sometimes there’ll be an onslaught of reminiscence; the dinner party in Rwanda…the salad, the wine, familiar music, that particular incidence was really overwhelming, but we mustn’t dwell, must we?
Bbbuuuuttttt……


I miss my home.
I miss ice cream, my family. I miss good beer, I miss my queen bed with the tableside denim lamp, I miss electricity. I miss good roads, comfortable drives, having a sweetheart, dancing. I miss my favorite kind of ethereal trippy flow music, walking through the property, privacy and my long hair. There. Done.
I had a hot shower this weekend. My first in a month or so, I couldn’t believe how consumed I was by it. I never wanted to leave. Granted it was a rusted metal spigot in the confines of a dark cement room, granted there were cockroaches on the floor and hoards of lake flies… but it was a hot shower, and I felt clean, and warm and sexy and it was great.

This past weekend, the other FSD mzungus and myself fled eastwards towards Sipi Falls for our mid-term retreat. Mid-term…yup, week 6 of 12… that shit trips me out. The place was beautiful, a common theme in this part of the world I’ve found. Rich soulful plateaus freckled with ancient caves that were inhabited by the local tribes worlds ago. The falls itself comes teeming over the edge of one of these cliffs, all white watered and roaring, plundering into a damp valley. Eucalyptus groves, banana plantations, burbling creeks and tributaries flanked by delicate purple-white flowers and kawa plants. Everything: GREEN. Everything: GREEN. We each paid 50,000 Ush to repel down the side of the beast; edging fearful and exhilarated 25 feet to the left of her, at the same time being spat away and seduced towards her violent coursing artery. That was fun, that was really fun.


I'm the little red spot to the left, and that big gushing thing is the waterfall.

Monday night I facilitated my HIV education seminar for the secondary school teachers. I had assumed that we would start at about 7:30, after all, I’d told them to show up at 6:30, its called African Time. When I got to the hotel at 5:30 I’d set out to practice, set up, calm my nerves and my newly arrived bout of nausea…what do you know? All the teachers were there, sitting, waiting patiently. That blew my mind. I was really impressed, impressed by the honoring of their commitment to come, their timeliness, their motivation…it was really inspiring, it made me feel like perhaps I’d gotten this one right, perhaps I’d tapped into something that they really wanted, that they felt could help them make a difference. I’d asked the hotel to provide refreshments on my bill… you know, coffee, tea, sodas… so when I saw all the teachers kickin’ back with cold beers I knew the communication barrier had once again gotten the upper hand. I paid nearly three times more than I’d budgeted for, but the heated post-seminar roundtable discussion on teaching techniques was a lot more fiery thanks to the happy glowing buzz the teachers were feeling. Everything happens for a reason?


I spent that night throwing up (beers were not involved in this I assure you) and wasn’t able to go to work on Tuesday thanks to a number of GI issues. All I wanted was sleep, the temperature in my solar oven house to drop below 90 and my host-mom to please stop offering me fried macaroni… and then down the path to my house comes trotting a whole band of cohorts. My clinic was worried about ‘the sickness’ and so they all decided to abandon their health profession posts for the afternoon and come visit me; needless to say it was the first sick-in-bed day I’ve ever spent surrounded by a doctor, two nurses, a lab tech and a cook…just in case.

Feeling tip-top now though, will go to Kampala (nation’s capital) on Friday and partake in gluttonous carousing theatrics… determined to catch Ugandan premier of “Superbad”…we’re a little behind the times. Its better than Jinja though, our local theatre here is playing Anaconda (circa 1996- feat. J-Lo {before she was J-Lo} and Ice Cube), mmmm mmmm quality film.

saving little pieces of world

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to harbor 64% of the world’s HIV infections and that number is growing 12 times faster than anywhere else on the globe. Uganda’s rural youth are becoming an increasingly high-risk demographic with over 80% of new infections attributed to unsafe sex. At this moment 7% of Uganda’s adult population is living with HIV/AIDS and that percent is on the rise…

This information probably isn’t very surprising, probably didn’t even make you blink. These are the sort of statistics that ooze out of journalists in high rises and news broadcasters backdropped by flat screen images of desolate villages teeming with gaunt children. This is the kind of news we file in our brains with the new Iraqi casualty count and North Korean refugee figures…we’ve heard it all before.
And yet our subconscious apathy… or helplessness or disinterest or confusion towards the matter doesn’t change the should-be-shocking reality that our globe’s poorest nations are being ate bone dry by this pandemic. In India, the Caribbean and Africa the tributaries of this infection are slowly but surely working and winding themselves into every community… flooding entire families, entire villages, and soon entire islands, countries and continents. No, this isn’t the bubonic plague; it isn’t a thief that comes in the night and ravages a populace. But considering HIV/AIDS has been on the forefront of confounded medicine for nearly thirty years and the western nations have been watching their numbers drop for ages now, there is obviously an identifiable disconnect between developing countries and developed countries with regards to this issue (among countless others). I don’t want to ramble on about that, but this is clearly different than not being able to fight corruption or develop industry…and it isn’t necessarily a shortage of money (the U.S., France, UK, Scotland, Canada…etc. all donate billions of dollars to the ‘fight against AIDS’ in SSA) as much as it is a misstep in distribution of funds *surprise surprise*. Musevini, or M7 as he’s known here, basically blew his whole foreign aid wad on one campaign: the ABCD’s- Abstinence. Be Faithful. Condoms. Or Die!! Clever marketing I think. Blech. Anyways, the bottom line is that despite how tired of an issue HIV/AIDS may seem over yonder, its so evident here you can touch it, it looms over homes and children like rain clouds.
A virus is a small infectious organism that needs a living host cell in order to reproduce. The virus often attaches to a specific type of cell, releasing its own RNA or DNA coding information in to the cells decoding machinery. The virus hijacks the host cell’s equipment so that components of the virus are manufactured and reproduced with in the host cell’s machinery and subsequently released into the host where the cycle restarts.
Normally, when a virus enters the body, your immune system (white blood cells) is able to attack and destroy any infected cells. Immunity from viruses can only be achieved by receiving a vaccine. Babies receive vaccines for polio, measles, rubella and other awful difficult to combat viruses. However once contracted, there is no cure for a virus, bits of it will always be lurking somewhere in your system like a drug addict waiting to score.
HIV is a virus (hence the V). It’s a smart virus. A very very smart virus. It has evolved or adapted or come to be by happenstance in such a way that the specific host cell it feeds off of and destroys is the very cell your body needs to combat it…see the problem? The CD4 lymphocytes, or helper T-Lymphocytes are the Godfather’s of your immune system. When something infiltrates your body (a bacterial, fungal or viral infection), it’s their job to call their friends, cousins and other mobster white blood cell cohorts and coordinate the subsequent destruction of said infiltrators. When HIV enters the picture it handicaps that mode of communication, activation and coordination. Everyone starts to panic, doesn’t know where to go, who to kill…Montague vs. Montague, Capulet vs. Capulet…the immune system begins to commit suicide.
Meanwhile the host is chillin. Maybe a fever here, a headache there…nothing a joint and a Simpsons re-run couldn’t quell. If the host isn’t looking for them, it can take years for your CD4 counts to drop low enough to recognize abnormal symptoms…you can see the issue with sexual transmission; if you don’t know your HIV+ you probably don’t think your HIV+ so your pledge that your “clean” to your partner isn’t necessarily a lie as much as a fatal error.
Ultimately, despite the best efforts of ART (antiretroviral therapy- which aims to abolish viral RNA reproduction), your body is no longer able to defend itself. AIDS is categorized by the development of rare infections and cancers: thrush (yeast infection in mouth, vagina or esophagus), pneumonia, tuberculosis or Kaposi’s sarcoma (red/purple raised patches on the skin); though there are many more. 95-100% of HIV infected people will develop AIDS at some point, though it may take more than 10 years.
Last week my supervisor wanted to demonstrate how our HIV test kits in the clinic work. He carelessly grabbed a blood sample from the dozens of test tubes perched on the counter and dropped a blot on a tiny receptor strip. Ten minutes later we went to check it out and it had read positive. The random lab sample, the older women in the hall who’d complained of dizziness was living unknowingly with HIV. We couldn’t inform her I was told, as its illegal to test for HIV without consent. So I sat and stared at the test for a few minutes until the doctor came and threw it in the rubbish bin. I bid the woman a safe journey and refilled my water bottle. Those are things I don’t know what to do with.


So. I’m here for 3 months (1 of which is gone with the wind). I’m not going to eliminate AIDS from rural Ugandan communities. But I’d like to think I could take a stab at educating, informing and testing my district, my community; with the hopes and idealistic longing that my efforts will propagate themselves elsewhere in the country. With the money I raised at home, the money that was donated so generously to this project by my dear friends, family and even distant acquaintances; I’ll be implementing a pilot project for Soft Power Health.
The project is called S.H.A.R.E.
Sharing HIV Awareness through Resources and Education (I think it’s a title rule of acronyms that you don’t use the acronym in the full name, but alas). It’s a three part project, whose wheels and wings are already rolling and flapping with the wind at our back…wind being generated by a people who know the situation, know what they need and are willing to work to get it.
I’ve been coordinating with 4 rural secondary schools in the Butugaya and Budondo sub-counties of Jinja District. My goal is to make HIV education, resources, testing and post-test counseling readily available to those who need it most at no cost. Those who need it most in Uganda are the youth (15-24) living in rural areas… so highschools in the bush it was! Here’s a basic breakdown.

Part 1: A teacher’s information and education seminar conducted by Soft Power Health (i.e. me) aiming to educate and train teachers from each of the four selected secondary schools about the HIV virus, transmission, treatment and prevention; as well as equip them with the skills and framework to initiate an HIV based curriculum in their schools. The program will serve as a great opportunity to build the resource capacity of the schools, clear up any HIV/AIDS misconceptions and equip the teachers with the knowledge to be an on-campus HIV education resource for their students.
The free teacher training and education session will be at
6:30 pm on Monday, October 22, 2007
At the Cool Breeze Hotel in Jinja

Part 2: Soft Power Health and the AIDS Information Centre will facilitate an on-campus HIV prevention program at each school. The program features an education and information seminar, followed by free on-site voluntary testing and post-test counseling for teachers, students and the local communities. Soft Power Health will be partnering with the AIDS Information Centre in order to offer the highest quality services. We hope the program will help the students and their communities gain a better understanding of HIV and the risks associated with its contraction and transmission, as well as provide a free testing service to the community in the hopes of stopping the spread of HIV. This program will occur at each school on a day that works for AIC, SPH and the school; we prefer to conduct the program between November 12th and November 30th.

Part 3: The creation of a savings account that will generate funds in order to pay for 2 Soft Power Health staff members to become HIV post-test counselor certified. I had originally intended to pay for and have the trainings completed by the time I leave, but I’ve learned it’s a much more involved and expensive process that Id thought and so ill just be setting the wheels in motion. Once SPH has their own post-test counselors, we wont need to rely on AIC to provide their own staff to carry out the testing and counseling… it’s a way to make SHARE a SPH dominated project so that they can be more self reliant.

So that’s it. The calling I’ve been waiting for. I visited Lubani SS and Trinity College this morning and met with the entire staff of both. I was showered with cups of tea and mandaze (African doughnuts). Everyone I’ve worked with thus far has been so responsive and I’ve been more efficient here than ever at home, despite the stigmas attached to getting things done in the ‘third world’. I was fortunate enough to wander into the AIDS Information Centre in Jinja (the JFK of Ugandan AIDS work) in my first week of work just to ask a few questions. I ended up in the manager’s office, describing my project and having him offer to provide all of the testing equipment for the program. Nearly $6,000 worth of HIV kits, needles, test tubes, gloves, tourniquets etc. So I’m just trekkin along. I’m really enjoying it thus far. I anticipate huge pitfalls, but as the program director of FSD handed over 1.2 million shillings for SHARE this afternoon I was flying pretty damn high. Ill be creating posters, pamphlets and other various text-y things in the next week and then we’ll just hold our breath and jump I guess. Its pretty exciting to find yet another thing that makes my tick though. I always was one to tick.

Gone ta Rwanda

The drive there was majestic. Simply. Purely. Truly. Cruising blissfully through Mother Nature…her valleys and ridges, her peaks, hills, gorges and effortless endless curves. The drive from Jinja to Kigali, Rwanda takes about 10 hours; and as it’s Africa many of that ten hours is spent circumnavigating surprise potholes, goats and toddlers or muscling your vehicle, fists clenched, lungs pursed over the boulders, stumps and other odd solid masses that have been mistaken for smooth concrete by the public works ministry. Upon arrival we were told by the ‘Cavern du Auberge’ that unfortunately a group of 6 mzungu girls traveling from Kampala that very day had been mistaken for our group of 6 mzungu girls traveling from Kampala and thus our reservation had been surrendered mistakenly to the wrong group. Which is all fine and well when you can freely glide across the metropolis that is Kigali asking each friendly Rwandan where might there be alternative lodging… however when their first choice language is Kirwandan, the second Swahili and the third French… I find it a tit bit more difficult. In any case we bunked up across the street at the Dream Inn for a few dollars more, had running water, two double beds, flushing toilets (!!!) and a television that broadcasted CNN world, French golf and low budget Rwandan hip hop videos.
This experience was intermingled with the kick in the mouth reality that there were no ATMs in the entire city and that the following day was Sunday meaning no banks would be open. Four of seven of us were unable to withdraw money the whole trip, keeping reckless spending to a minimum and alcohol consumption violently stunted. Despite my pauper status I was able to score three beautiful Rwandan fabrics and am now on the market for a Ugandan tailor to craft me some style.
An honest ‘sad truth’ about the whole trip was that the food was maybe my favorite part. You must understand however that food takes on a different kind of meaning in your life when you are confined to cabbage, potatoes, matoke, rice and beans for every meal…such is my eating reality in Uganda. We met up with this really fun cute couple from U of O who had just graduated and decided they’d play house for the first time in Rwanda (whatever you’re into I guess)… anyway they were Kigali experts and the first night took us to an UH-mazing Indian restaurant complete with Mango Lassi and every muted color curry you can imagine…heaven. The following evening they hosted my favorite kind of yuppie wine, salad, pasta, bruchetta party; I remenesced about yuppie parties past. I was a little homesick, a little tipsy and sufficiently stuffed as we departed; it made me happy to know that half way across the globe I can still find a few conscious Americans who want to step out of any present catastrophes and bask in wonderful indulgence.
Monday we drove 3 hours east towards the DRC to Volcano National Park, only to be met with a firm “no, I’m sorry, it’s not possible” upon request to a private guided volcano hike…only 1 hike leaves a day, and that is at 7am. Somehow we whined and lied and puppy-eyed our way into the system and before I knew it we were trekking upwards at a pace that me and my “I’ve been sitting on my ass in Africa for a month” thighs were not prepared for. The ascent to the top of the volcano whose name I can’t remember was 3800 meters, and took about 3 hours. About 100 feet from the top, it started raining…sorry, I meant pouring…sorry, I meant hailing. My mantra of “wait till you see the view from the top” was immediately dashed upon summiting. I realized that my only view was of the thick envelop of cotton ball mist and the thick bowling ball raindrops wailing in front of my hooded view. We all kind of half-smiled at each other, choked down some donated glucose biscuits and prepared for the descent. This experience I may add, was perhaps one of the most challenging I’ve encountered and demanded from me supplies of patience, focus, strength and humility that I had never tapped into. Going down took longer that hiking up as each step had to be calculated perfectly keeping in mind hill grade, mud viscosity, leg shaking vibration gradients and how-close-to-tears measurements…all in all a very scientific experience. All I could think about was how I wished I’d brought a helmet and how I had no medical insurance in this country, it was great. We did see two gorillas though (normally a $500 event, seriously); they were hanging placidly in the big huge jungle trees making noises I’ll never be able to replicate despite my tireless efforts.




On our first day there we visited the Rwandan genocide memorial as well as Niyamata, a memorial church. It’s hard to speak about what that was like. How it affected me. How it changed or broadened or shed light on or confused my perspective of Rwandans. The whole event was nothing but devastating, nothing but utterly horrifying. The brutal itching scars of colonialism coming back to haunt a culture years and years after their occupation. It makes me sick. It makes me wonder how a Rwandan could ever look at a mzungu with anything other hatred. I don’t quite feel up to describing the experience right now, but I will and I ought to. But I really encourage people to do some research into the history of the genocide in Rwanda.

We saw zebras on the drive home. They were grazing by the side of the road. So free, so wild…we were able to slide the windows back in our taxi-bus and I could feel the cool equatorial air whip at my face and my chest. My ipod was playing Neil Young I think. It felt good, one of those “I love Africa moments”…