All Day Confidence

You all shouldn’t be surprised, at least I am not, that my plans changed multiple times since my last blog. After a few days in Iganga, it became clear that there was no way we were going to be able to do the health project right then particularly because my supervisor decided not to come up at the last minute and we only had one motorbike to get around and visit the women, which was already in use. The planning is extremely lax here sometimes and there’s no point in getting too attached to anthing. Rather than spend Thursday through Sunday in Iganga with little to do, I opted to return to the city with one of the women who works in the office because she had to be back here for a meeting. Today (Monday), I am heading back out to Iganga but this time with the health coordinator, and rather than spending a month doing this project we are going to just do one training on Thursday. We are going to go up and plan for the first few days, and then actually meet with about 15 women to train them about hygiene, and then they will go out to the villages to train the other women.

 

As I am back in the Kampala office waiting to leave, I thought I would leave you with some pictures from the past week.

This car is pink, which is funny, but the great part is that it is actually a feminine pad ad. I'm not sure a man would have "all day confidence" driving this thing around...

Next up we have the beautiful fields that line the road heading out towards Iganga. To the right is sugar cane plants, and to the left I have no idea what that is. I keep meaning to ask someone, but I always forget until I look at the pictures. Hopefully, on the road up today I'll remember this time.

 Oh in a funny TIA moment, I was super excited about having a brand new fridge up in the Iganga office until we actually went to put yogurt in there. It turns out that while the office is linked to the power grid, something is wrong with the transformer in our area and there is not a lot of power going to the office. In fact, in order to print something or charge a phone, we have to turn on the generator. Why a fridge would magically stay cold with this power situation beats me. So now there is a beautiful brand-new LG fridge in a small office in Iganga, Uganda where the inside temperature is actually warmer than the outside temperature.

This photo here is of Roveinah and I. She is on the staff in Iganga, and among her jobs she cooks lunch for everyone, cleans the office, cleans up the toilet when it floods approximately every two days, and does various tasks around the office. She is super nice and really makes staying in Iganga a pleasure. On the walls of the office there are two posters dedicated to the other intern and I. They say welcome to Iganga basically, but each of the 5 staff members signed them or wrote a little note, or in Roveinah's case, wrote about 20 little messages. She signed each one, and it looks like we have a million fans, but really it's mostly just Roveinah.

Here is the last photo for today's post. It is a roster of the women in the BfL group in Iganga, and it lists their account balances and such, but the interesting part is in the last column. Since many of the women out here are illiterate, they must have some way to sign official documents, and the way to do it is with a thumbprint. BfL trains the women on signing their name, but it can take a while. Interesting to imagine not knowing how to spell your own name, yet be a perfectly competent and capable adult.

That's all for now, but I am sure I will have many stories after this week.