Work Dayz

After a bit of a rocky, anxiety-ridden start, my internship situation has finally been sorted out and I’m now working a steady 9-5. I’m proudly interning at TEENS Uganda, a pretty sweet organization that deals primarily with youth advocacy and health. They run a Teen Health centre in Kawaala (a tiny suburb of Kampala) on top of spearheading conferences and ‘Think-Tanks’ to encourage youth participation in politics and social change. My internship deals mostly with planning and policy, so I develop proposals and concept notes for whatever initiatives the organization requires funding or partnership with other NGOs.

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Working hard...hardly working?

My colleague, Notorious P.I.G.

 My first office job. This is not exactly how I imagined my first office though. The wall is spotted with what look scarily like bullet holes, and adjacent to our room is a pig pen housing a very chatty, very pregnant pig. I am however, thoroughly enjoying myself and learning a lot about how African NGOs function. 

This sure beats our Grade 2  Butterfly Unit

Occasionally I accompany the team at the Youth Center on their community outreach  programs to local schools where they give talks about safe sex, HIV/AIDS, hygiene, etc. I'll probably stop doing this, since instead of listening how to use a condom/bathe daily, the kids just end up staring at me and laughing...probably wondering what the Muzungu is doing here, and why she's taking pictures of the cockroach poster.

Winner winner, chicken dinner.

Andy, proud father of Muzungu the Chicken.
The chemistry between these two is undeniable.

Muzungu,
You may have been Andy's chicken, but I loved you like you were my own (and since I named you, I like to believe that you loved me more than you loved him). You were a strong chicken, a beautiful chicken, and though you bore us no eggs to eat, we appreciated that you were a modest chicken, needing not to noisily announce your presence each morning like the rooster a couple houses down. May you seek greener pastures in chicken heaven. You will not be forgotten.
Note: 
Muzungu: the Swahili word for white folk
Translated literally means "confused person wandering about". This suited Muzungu to a T. The pictures documenting the killing/cooking/eating of Muzungu have been tastefully kept out of this blog.

A well in Jinja

A couple weekends ago I tagged along with the AIESEC Kyambogo team on a trip to Jinja (surprisingly no red-heads here), a town about 75 mins outside of Kampala. The drive up was absolutely beautiful; rolling green hills, tea plantations, and Mariba Forest (one of Uganda's largest rainforests which you pass right through on the way to Jinja). The AIESEC team was conducting some community outreach work for a village that has recently had a massive well built for them by the organization SOS Malta. The organization was annoyed to find that the well has yet to be used since its construction, and thus asked AIESEC to meet with the villagers and rectify the problem. We learnt that the villagers were weary of the cleanliness of the water in the well, and fearful of their children falling down the hole. Here is the AIESEC team hard at work trying to engineer a practical solution.

My beautiful new BFFs, Ema and Daniel. Jealous?

 Although on this trip we stuck to the villages, Jinja is also home to the source of the Nile which is apparently beautiful. Ghandi even had some of his ashes scattered here! Must visit again to see if it's a request worth adding to my will.

East Africa's latest dance craze.

 Last Thursday was my first night 'out on the town' in Kampala, and true to their reputation, the bars were absolutely wild. The next morning Meshack, a fellow intern, was complaining about being tired. I asked "Why? Because of your hangover?"
He replied, "No, because of bendover."  See link below.

Be warned, content is....animalistic.

I'm expected to learn this before leaving Uganda. The robot just doesn't cut it over here.