Four More Weeks of Training

Tomorrow is the start of week 7 in training, and this week we find out where our site placements will be.  I am excited, rumor has it that two out of the eight people in my language group will be assigned to Kabale to work with the Batwa pygmies...

The other week myself and fellow volunteer Shelley had a successful stint visiting current PC volunteer MJ, a 71 year old woman who has worked in Malawi, Tanzania, and Southern Sudan before coming to Uganda.  She previously worked as a nurse for 30 years and is now doing pygmy outreach through an Anglican hospital in Kabale.  We joined her on Tuesday evening after a ten hour bus ride from Kampala, and on Wednesday and Thursday drove around Kabale district to different communities doing health outreach.  Wednesday we traveled to a local health center with the three of us PCVs, a Clinical Officer (I understand this is about a Physician's Assistant), a nurse, and the driver.  MJ and her counterpart Mary gave a presentation on reproductive health to 18 pregnant women.  I was super pleased to have the task of doing blood pressures, fundal measurements, and checking fetal heart rates.  The next day we drove to a school that was closer to a Batwa community, however due to a local election that day many people did not show up.

There are some 7,000 Batwa people in Uganda, which is part of a ~70,000 pygmy population that spreads through Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo.  Reading up on them and talking with local people and Batwa themselves was interesting and surprising.  It sounds like for a very long time most of this population was/is nomadic and lived around the forests in this area of Africa.  As land has been claimed and forests have been protected, many of these Batwa have been left homeless and displaced.  There are issues with alcoholism and domestic abuse, land issues and extreme poverty, and a people that have had a really difficult task in dealing with integration into mainstream Ugandan society.

Anywho, I obviously don't have pictures, the people that I have spoken with have had a very difficult time loading stuff up so it looks like it'll still be a month until I have my own internet and am able to figure that out.  I am still with a host family for the next month.  Bucket bathing is getting easier, bananas are tasting better, and the weather is still fantastic.  Peace!