South Africa

As the plane approached the runway in Johannesburg, I felt an excitement I hadn’t felt in months... “I’m home!” was the expression that came to mind.

The last time I visited South Africa was in 1992. I was only seven years old, and I was there to witness/support the mayoral inauguration of my Grandfather (hero, icon, spirit guide). I had just lost very close friend, and was missing her funeral to be there.  An overwhelmed seven year old, there are only pieces of South Africa that I remember.

My parents emigrated from South Africa when I was just a baby. In fact, they had to delay their move because (surprise!) my Mom fell pregnant. So I was raised in America… By a very South African family who had a different set of values, and a different culture entirely than that of my American friends to whom I grew up with. I always felt confused. My South African upbringing made me feel somehow South African, though not being raised there, I didn’t feel as though I had the right to claim so. But I never felt American either… Always different. Somewhere in between.

So when I saw the landing strip 19 years later, I felt like this was my chance as a now adult to connect with the cultural identity I have always felt lost in.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Johannesburg was nothing like my young eyes had remembered it. My American accent was all too recognized, and my reunions with family members who said in some form or another “you were just a baby!” “We’ve never met!” “I don’t remember you!” made me feel even more disconnected.

I had the pleasure of spending this “homecoming” with my Dad and oldest brother, Paul. I loved seeing my brother’s face light up as we visited the old stomping grounds of his schools, but couldn’t help but feel a tinge of jealousy, as I myself, had no history in this land where I was born.

The first three days we spent in Johannesburg, visiting/meeting cousins and relatives from my Dad’s side of the family. This was great because I was able to see where my Dad came from, and put faces to the names I have always heard. The Wes’s were very funny people, and the conversations often went to our family history. I was delighted to learn that it is in the Wes blood to be a “Communist (or Anarchist) Revolutionary, and outspoken Jew.” Hmmm, maybe I DO belong in this family…

We also visited the house where my mom grew up, and the house to which I was born. There’s the dance studio attached to the house that mom taught in! Over the fence is the pool Paul almost drowned in. The puzzle pieces finally began to fit together, and I felt as though I was finally getting a sense of something I had always craved to know.

We stayed with my Auntie Hilary, another badass revolutionary activist, and her husband Tony. Boy was it nice to have running water… and cheese. I really enjoyed connecting to my Dad’s older sister who I’m in incredible awe of. She is now a psychologist, who started a nursery/psychotherapy organization on the outskirts of the Alexandre township. At Ubebele, she gives underprivileged children an unorthodox, and holistic education, providing them with the facilities of on-site psychologists who are involved in every step of the process.

After a jam-packed 3 days in Johannesburg, we spent the second half of our trip in the gorgeous city of Cape Town, in Hilary and Tony’s beach house. How in the world am I ever going to go back to Uganda? Having been sick, and still not feeling so great, this majestic place was the exact kind of rejuvenation I needed. Paul was the partier of our trio, so I really felt that if anything, my trip to South Africa was meant to give me and my Dad the time to hang out with each other and chill.

Mission accomplished.

It was harder to say goodbye than I thought, and I found myself continuing to gaze backwards seeing if my Dad was still lingering as I entered through security.

Maybe I’m not really South African. And maybe I’m not really American. Sometimes I think my desire to travel is in attempt to find myself and where I belong… and it’s certainly not in Uganda. Maybe I don’t belong anywhere, or maybe I belong everywhere. Maybe I was destined to be a nomad, constantly searching… but for what? As a believer in human oneness, there is a large part of me that believes my spirit chose this lifestyle, so that I could be a representative of the very message I am trying to ensue: that we are all just really citizens of the world.

Mom and Me

I can’t even put into words how amazing it was to have my Mom here with me in Gulu. And each time I’ve tried, the document has seemed to disappear into the abyss. So maybe in this case, I will keep our visit sacred, and share with you rather some of our silly photos:

Malaria, Bilharzia, and Mom

I now know what malaria feels like, so I wasn’t surprised when the stick that looks like a pregnancy test affirmed that I was indeed pregnant with parasites. Malaria feels like someone is burning your brain, and is usually accompanied by the excretion of your insides from either end. Having had malaria three times now, my body feels as though I’m becoming more immune… does this mean I’m an African now?

My body also seems to be resistant to the medication, as both this time and the previous bout, I didn’t respond to my first dosage, and the malaria strength seemed to increase. This is when malaria gets scary. If not treated, it can spread to your brain, and that is how people die from it. Regardless, I have adapted to this culture where malaria is seen as something of the common cold, and I have been more uncomfortable than I have been worried.

When I finished the second round of medicine, and the malaria test proved negative, I was surprised and nervous by the fact that I still felt awful. Hating the five and a half hour bus ride to the capitol city, Kampala, I tried to figure out what the problem was at a local “hospital.” After hours and hours, with little assistance, I called the Peace Corps Medical team, who eventually convinced me to succumb to the trip. Not such a bad idea, I decided, as my mom was scheduled to come to Uganda the following week, and I had to head down that way anyway.  Well, after a few “in-pain” and “woe is me” phone calls to my parents, my mom, being the superhuman mom medicine that she is, flew in early to be with me.

So how in the world did I get Bilhariza? I don’t wash my clothes in dirty-standing water like I did in Kenya, or “bathe” with the snails like I did in Sri Lanka. I’ve become smarter than that dammit! Hmmm… maybe those baby ants in my bathing water must mean that the natural (but clean-looking, I swear!) water source I get my water from is in fact, dirty.

Bilharzia, or “the Schisto” as we call it here (Schistosomiasis) is a disease caused by parasitic worms. When people urinate or defecate in freshwater, it becomes contaminated by Schistosoma eggs. When the eggs hatch, they develop and multiple inside of the snails in the water. They then leave the snails and penetrate the skin of their victim. After a few weeks, these damn parasites mature into adult worms, and live in the blood vessels of their host while they reproduce!

...Yummy, huh?

Mom!!!

Bewitched

Someone tried to poison her. One of my girls!

This is not something she told me immediately, but something that came out when all the girls complained that they had nowhere to go-or nowhere they wanted to go during their one month school holiday.

It happened when a neighbor found out that someone was going to sponsor her for school. Such a thing is not uncommon as this woman was jealous since she could not afford to send her son to school. The solution? Poison? She gave Sarah vegetables, to which Sarah did not eat, but kept. The next day, the vegetables had turned charcoaled black. And when she threw them out, a goat was later found dead.

Such a thing is not uncommon, like I said. Neither is witchcraft.

When I was living in Wakiso during training, the neighbor child went missing, and never returned. It was believed, since this kind of thing happens here, that he had been kidnapped; the purpose to use his organs for witchcraft.

Now, without getting myself poisoned for posting this, I will say that I believe in energy, and the power of one’s mind. I also believe that extraordinary things are very possible. What I don’t understand is why using these powers for evil is so common here. Is it that the good spells go unnoticed? Or is hurting each other a direct result of living in a culture whose people have violently suffered since the beginning of humankind?

I have heard stories time and time again of things you and I might find unbelievable, yet things my Ugandan friends have seen-or claim to have seen with their own two eyes. Sitting beside my American friend, both of us bewildered by stories of recent, she reacted with a not so subtle: “are you sure you weren’t dreaming?” Ha.

So who knows what is what and which witch is which. Being here has made me crazier and crazier, and I’m not even so sure which way is up anymore, let alone, what to believe.

Two things I am quite sure of, however:  

I’m glad Sarah decided not to eat her vegetables.


And,

I won’t be accepting food as a gift any time soon…

The Water is Finished.

The water is finished. The power is finished… In all of Gulu. This means that the central water pumping system is out of service, and the tap I usually get my water from (or any tap for that matter) is dry. The line to get water out of the borehole wraps around the entire mosque it is in front of, and I don’t want to spend the next two hours being stared at. As it is, I have a pounding headache I cannot get rid of, and I’m stressed by every little (catastrophic) thing that each short day is filled with. For example, the day before last, I was unexpectedly involved in a funeral of a ten year old girl who died without known cause, after being sick for only a week (see previous post). The following day, I got told I was going to hell by my coworkers since I came out of the closet as a Jew. The same day, I watched a goat being slaughtered, and stood in the same compound three children were murdered in the night before. (The goat gets to go to heaven by the way). Today, I shifted through the dust storm to visit my girls at school, only to take one to the hospital to find out that she has E-Coli. Beyond that, the heat is killing me, and if I could find a semi “somehow” cold drink in town, I would automatically die and go to heaven. That’s it, I’m going to buy bottled water to “bathe” in (at least I have the option), and will throw the dirty aftermath into the “toilet” so that I don’t have to put on a glove and fish the toilet paper out like I did last night. Peace Corps is awesome!

A Funeral and a Parade

On the way to a “World Water Day” event, a colleague asked me if I minded if we “made a quick stop.” Thinking that this meant to buy phone airtime, or maybe a cold water, I obliged. I should know better by now that nothing is ever going to be what you think it’s going to be-or even what people tell you it’s going to be… You can imagine my surprise when we arrived at a burial. To my right, men were digging a grave behind the hut, next to the others. To my left, lay the house that carried the body of the girl who died unexpectedly, without known cause after being sick for only a week.  And in the distance, young school girls, no older than ten, wailed in grief by the loss of their friend.  After paying our respects to the family and to the body of the young girl that had passed, we proceeded on our way with the rest of the day’s program, like nothing had even happened. This nonchalant attitude expressed by the casualty of our “stopping by” reveals just how much death is a part of this culture. When I gave my sympathies to the girls’ uncle who I happened to know, his response, which I have heard time and time again was a mere: “these things happen.”


When we arrived at the “World Water Day” event, I was quickly whisked away, and randomly expected to be in a parade. Talk about one extreme to the other!  Still in a state of shock, my mood suddenly shifted as hundreds of kids fled their schools to join us on our March. Women ran out of their shops, singing their tribal call of enthusiasm for which I can only describe as “aye aye aye ayeeee.” Everyone around us danced, and I was overwhelmed by the beauty that came from such immense joy over what I would consider minimal, or even a little ridiculous...

Needless to say, the day was filled with extremities of emotion, like most days are. We were told that the Peace Corps would make you (more) bipolar, but I never expected to be crying at one moment, and dancing during the next. It’s something however, that I am getting used to… sort of.

Today’s events made me realize something about this culture that had not quite made sense to me before. Where days are filled with mundane tasks (fetching water, cooking food, washing clothes, working in the field, fetching more water, making the fire, worrying about money, stuck in repetition, only living to survive…) there is little time or need for what we would consider happiness. So when there is something out of the ordinary, it provokes a strong sense of emotion… whether it be wailing in grief, or dancing with joy. The emotion is only allowed to last a moment, for the moment after the parade ends, or the day after the burial, one is expected to move on, as there is no other choice. Life must, has always, and will inevitably continue.

A THANK YOU and AN UPDATE!

Greetings friends, family and fellow change agents!

I figured it’s time I give you an update. First, I’d like to add some names to my “Thank you" list. The following people are giving six teenage girls in Uganda a fighting chance of freedom, by allowing them the opportunity to be educated:

Robin Wes

Jodi Wes

Len Walker

Robin Negrin

Christina Lorella

Julia Miller

Selene Aswell

Sean Regmi

Stephanie Pipes

And Naomi Tajchman-Kaplan

Your generous donations have helped so much! Like I previously mentioned, we don’t have enough money to fund all six girls just yet, but in keeping the faith, we have decided to send them all to school anyway.

It has been a difficult process to say the least. The school system in Uganda is worlds away than what we are used to in America. Everything is based on the year-end exam. That score will determine which school one will be admitted to. I can’t believe the pressure these girls have been under, and can’t help myself from thinking that if I had had to go through the same educational system during my schooling years-that I would have never made it. I find it sad actually, that there is no consideration for other aspects of the student. “My" girls have no parents and are forced to take care of all their younger siblings; cooking, cleaning, working in the field… of course there is little time to study! Also, with what they have been through, there is an obvious level of psychological distress that inevitably gets in the way of their ability to focus. And what about the bad test takers? I used to freeze when it came to tests, and never felt like my test results reflected my intelligence. Many people sponsor school fees in Uganda, and most, I have found, choose their students based on their scores. My approach is different. I want to choose students based on their lives… the whole point being that they deserve a second chance.

So again, this process has been a difficult one, but I am learning... and we are well on our way! Melissa has started Senior 3 at Sacred Heart, and Joyce, Sarah, Grace, Brenda, and Scovia will begin school on Monday at Pope Paul II. They are all so excited, and so grateful to all of you who made this possible. I really can’t express my gratitude either. There is no way I could do this work alone.

Please continue to spread this message, so we can continue our work of empowering girls through education in Uganda. Currently, we are working on registering as an NGO so that we can begin to apply for grants.  But until then, we are relying on the generous donations of selfless people like YOU and the names I mentioned earlier. You don’t have to be on the ground to make these changes. Let me be your hands. “If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one.” -Mother Teresa

Donations can be made via Paypal: Dishywes@hotmail.com

Love you all!

~Jenna