Nutrition Training at Magunga

Hello everyone! I'm still having a hate-hate relationship with my new smart phone. I thought I had the blogger app figured out, so I typed up a nice long post, added some pictures, and hit save. Ha, it is three days later and the status still says "saving". Now I'm on the clinic computer and that post is nowhere to be found. I guess I will not be counting on the Samsung to keep my blog up-to-date.

One of the nurses from the clinic giving a health talk in the village.

 So anyway, finally, post about some of the work I am doing over here. I have been working with the Peer Educators on the tea estate to help the folks in the labor villages improve their nutrition. I have found that people are not starving over here, but they are severely malnourished. The local diet is very starchy. They fill up on posho (corn flour and water) millet, potatoes, or rice. They love fried dough (chapatti, which is like a flour tortilla and mondazi, which is like a very dry doughnut). The adults and maybe the older children eat beans, which is good, but little else for protein. The ones with some money have chickens, but in the labor camps, that's really only the village leaders. 

What their diets are severely lacking are vegetables. This is caused by their culture as well as their lack of access to fresh produce. Culturally, they were not raised to eat many vegetables and they are not, for the most part, adventurous eaters (like me). They eat the same thing every day and are content. When I have tried to introduce one of the locals to something different, they don’t like it. I have heard many times that my style of preparing food is way too spicy. The village women will cook one onion and one tomato to “spice” ten cups of rice. Yes, the food is very bland and that is the way they like it. Greens like dodo (the local version of collards) grow like weeds. I have them all over my garden and trust me, I did not plant them. I have eaten them sautéed with garlic, onion, red pepper (or any combination of spices I am lucky enough to have received in care packages from the US), and olive oil, and they’re not bad. The locals eat them too, but not in the quantity that could improve their nutrition. Of course, they do not add in all the wonderful spices, so if a local offers me dodo, I know I will have to swallow it fast because it is bitter cooked alone.

The lack of vegetables in the diet here confuses me a bit, because we have market day every Friday and the locals have piles of tomatoes, onions, carrots, pumpkins, and eggplant for sale. All of this is sitting beside the potatoes, yams, cassava, and beans. There are lots of bananas, pineapples, mangos, and watermelon too. The market sells baskets of stinky dried fish and fly-covered meat too, but I won’t encourage the consumption of that stuff; it seriously turns my stomach! So, why are the farmers selling all of this stuff and not eating it? And who are they selling it too? Lack of access is obviously not what is causing the country-wide problem of malnutrition.

Of course, I do not have those answers to those questions and I am only dealing with workers living in the labor villages, which, I’m told, cannot afford to buy from the markets. They fill up on rice, flour, and oil bought at the company canteen. Therefore, here is where I come in (to save the day… hahah, not hardly) I have been working with the Peer Educators to give health lessons in the villages. To support our nutrition lessons, we are planting gardens so the workers can eat what they can grow, no need to go to the market. Great solution, huh? Eh, we’ll see. First we need to teach them why they should eat vegetables. Then we need to teach them to garden and how to protect what they grow from the free roaming chicken and goats, not to mention the baboons! Yeah, the novelty of having baboons in my back yard has worn off. They are scavengers. The village people throw rocks at them to keep them away. I’m told they eat everything, even baby chickens and during avocado season they make complete pigs of themselves!

So far we have planted kitchen gardens in two of the eight labor villages. The fist one has a few things ready to harvest; the second one we have just finished sowing the seeds. The true test will be what the gardens look like a year from now. The people need to take ownership of their own tiny plot and harvest their own seeds for future crops. The initial seeds were bought by the tea estate, but I know I cannot ask them to do that on a continuous basis. One of my challenges here is to make the actions I initiate sustainable. Whew, big challenge!

Here are a couple shots of a health talk in the Magunga labor village. We just set up class under a tree and people wonder in and listen. The Peer Educators are a tremendous help. I could do none of this work in the villages without them (the language barrier is just too much). In this lesson the three with capes are the food “super heroes, Go, Grow, and Glow”. This is not the way nutrition in the taught in the States, but here it is very simple. Go is a starch; your carbohydrates that give you “energy to run and play all day”. Grow is your proteins that make you “grow big and strong”. Glow foods are the fruits and vegetables that “make your eyes sparkle and your skin shine”. This is how they teach it. It’s cute and it’s easy and all we ask is that people eat at least one item from each food group every day. Then we go through all of the local foods and test them on which group they belong to.

Our Peer Educators giving a nutrition lesson.

Our Food Group Super Heroes.

Working Hard

Still trying to figure out my new phone so this is only a quick post with a picture to test the blogger app I was able to upload. Actually, I have done a few small projects this past month. .. it's not been all laying back in the sunshine, but there has been plenty of time to relax.

Crossing the Equator

Look at me! I'm on the equator!!! Spending a week in the Southern Hemisphere and loving every minute of it.

 

I'm here with my two co-volunteer friends, Charlie and David. We took a taxi (minivan stuffed with 21 people) to a town very near Queen Elizabeth National Park called Kyambura. Along the route we crossed the equator and the driver kindly stopped so we could get a quick picture. We asked one of the locals who was stuffed in the van with us to take our picture, hence the crooked shot and the thumb. 

More Elephants

I wanted to share another picture of the herd of elephants that crossed right in front of our vehicle. Look how little the baby is, barely comes up to its mama's knee! Sooooo cute. 

Awesome timing that we were driving down this trail at the same time about fifty elephants were crossing. A few of the medium sized ones walked toward us, as if to say "that's close enough, mister", while the big ones and the babies crossed. What an amazing sight!

Now This is Africa

Eight months in country and I've finally seen some wildlife!

This is at Queen Elizabeth National Park. Two other volunteers, David and Charlie, and I hired a guide to take us through the park on a game drive. It was an amazing day. In addition to the elephants, we saw water buffalo, Kob, warthogs, hippos, Waterbucks (they look like reindeer with straight antlers), lions (very far off in the fields, thank goodness I had my binoculars), and the Crested Crain (Uganda's national bird, the one on its flag). I was hoping for zebra and giraffe too, but I'm told they are in different parks. Means more sight seeing trips in my near future!

The only way to travel on a game drive! It took a big chunk of our volunteer allowance, but worth every shilling. 

Water buffalo. These guys were huge and not one bit afraid of us. 

Hippos, just lazing in the water about ten feet from the shore. We were able to stand right at the water's edge. None of the locals seemed to care about these creatures (we were in a fishing village inside the park). People were coming and going on boats and kids were running along the shore, no one was paying any attention to the hippos but us. 

These are the Waterbucks. They seemed so well placed in the open savanna, exactly as you imagine Africa to be like. Hahaha, just like Busch Gardens except on a massive scale and no fences. The Kob were all around as well, but they were smaller and much more skidish so I couldn't get a good picture. 

The lions were out there too, we counted seven of them, all female, creeping through the long grass. We watched as they stalked a water buffalo that had become separated from his herd. We were hoping to see them take down their prey just like on the nature shows, but after an hour we grew bored. Our guide told us they would probably toy with the lone buffalo until sundown and then make their attack. Either that or they weren't really hungry, just stalking prey because that's what cats do. 

The worthogs were really cute running through the fields on their stubby little legs, looked just like Pumba. Well, so ugly it made them cute. 

So far, fabulous trip. Our next stop is Lake Bunyonyi. I'll try to get some more pictures to share. I'm afraid my iPhone is on it's last legs but I'll post the best shots I'm able to get. 

Hugs and kisses from Uganda!

Worst Christmas Tree Ever!

I know I shouldn't criticize... but seriously, have you ever seen balloons as Christmas ornaments? 

These are pictures from the children's Christmas party hosted by the tea estate for the families of the company's management class (there were more parties in the worker camps but I did not go to those; I'm sure there were no balloon trees in the camps so I should feel quite privileged). 

It was a cute party, and all of the kids were dressed up and excited to see Father Christmas (they don't call him Santa Claus over here). 

So, this is a strange custom. Myself and this man (I have no idea who he was) were the guests of honor of this children's party. Of course, I had no idea I would be the guest of honor. I just stopped by the party to watch the kids for a minute or two; you know, get a little holiday spirit. Anyway, when I showed up I was asked to say a few words to the kids. Yikes! What the heck am I suppose to say!!! Well, rather than talking, I launched into a round of "If you're happy and you know it," and the kids knew the song! Yeah, I was a hit, thank God. Anyway, being the guest of honor also meant I couldn't skip out nonchalantly, I was stuck for the duration. After the meal, this man and I had to cut the cake with the youngest child at the party. This picture makes me think of a wedding picture of a couple whose child came before the "I do's". Hahaha, and the frosting on that cake was so hard that we could not even cut into it, what a mess!

After the party it was time to teach the kids the fun of "selfies". They loved it!

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas from Uganda

Merry Christmas!

Obviously I am not having a white Christmas, but the reds and greens on the tea estate are amazing. 

I am truly thankful to find myself in such a beautiful location and surrounding by such a kind and welcoming community. I am also blessed to have the love and support from my family and friends back home. Thank you for the care packages, gifts, emails, and text messages. I miss you all. Happy Holidays! I wish you an abundance of joy and peace in the New Year. 

Side note, canna lilies are planted in the tea fields to correct the acidity in the soil. Any place the tea bushes are not growing well, they plant canna lilies. You can see the fields in the background have many patches of these flowers. To have a field full of red flowers is a bad sign for the tea company, but for me, they are gorgeous.