Daily Funnies

My Saturday started off with a gorgeous run through the Lugazi sugar cane fields, over the Namengo hill, and out to a pristine village set in a fishbowl arena of luscious green. Funny things happen every morning I run, as I am one of a handful of foreigners in the surrounding area, and people don’t generally run for fun here (though the Olympic gold medalist in the marathon this year was Stephen Kiprotich, a Ugandan!)- thus, I’m rather a spectacle.

-       A person I passed said “Mzungu! (“foreigner/white person”) Thank you for the exercise!” This is not uncommon for people to “thank” me for running. So cute.

-       Children often will join me on my run for a while. Laughing all the way- they think it is hilarious! Today these 3 girls who were about 10 years old joined me for about a quarter mile- barefoot, and carrying machetes. Yeah! They were on their way to gather firewood, and thus the tool. They were following me a few steps, and I laughed to myself thinking what this might look like to an onlooker.

-       I came to a muddy area, and nearly slipped a little. The onlooking kids giggled quietly. I recovered easily and kept on going. And then almost slipped in a big way- arms flailing and everything. The kids fell apart with laughter. As they should have. 

;l

Bubbles

People have asked if I get lonely living on my own in Uganda. Not a chance. I live in a compound with 4 other units. Everybody leaves their doors swung open, and we all are in and out of eachother’s homes during any given evening.

This post is dedicated to my two Ugandan “brothers,” Yusuf and Davis, who live next door.

Yusuf and Davis are remarkable boys. They are both 16 years old, and have come from “the village” (rural areas) to go to secondary school (high school). This morning, after cleaning my floors, Yusuf came by and was so disappointed that I had already cleaned them because it was a day off from school and he wanted to. YEAH.

Most nights the two of them drop in to my house bearing cut-up papaya, roasted peanuts, or sliced sugar cane. And then they get to try my experimental cooking, and always give raving reviews even if I sense they don’t love it. We chat about everything from politics and poverty to dating and all the girls who are currently chasing them. These boys have big dreams, and are working hard to get there. And, they are absolutely delightful—the video below will give you just a little taste of the fun they bring. 

This is a very typical evening in my kitchen. Behold Yusuf and Davis’s first attempts at blowing bubbles with chewing gum….

The Opening was Grand

Big day for Musana this week— the Grand Opening for our retail store right here in Lugazi! Over the past couple weeks, HELP International team members have been working hard designing a lovely display room utilizing ordinary local materials and turning them into real shnazzy display items (for example, with a little paint, they successfully turned a local sieve into a darling earring rack). Ultimate Home Makeover-Uganda.

True to form, the event scheduled for 10am began at twwwwelve, as we awaited some key components of the event to arrive. However, the delay was no sweat, as our local Musana Manager, Luta, had us rolling with his stand-up comedy act impersonating American girls, poking fun at funeral customs throughout East Africa, and having a dance-off with his cross-dressing friend (who honestly could move like MJ). One of our biggest expenses of the day was hiring the DJ and booming sound system—an essential component of any proper Ugandan event. This drew in a huge crowd of adults and kids from the surrounding village, turning it into a real community event.

Our 7 Musana women looked lovely- they wore their “smartest” dresses accented with each of their favorite pieces of Musana Jewelry. 

In attendance were the Mayor, Town Clerk, Village Women’s Representative, other members of the Lugazi Town Council, and several other influential people. Pastor Francis, Musana’s incredibly capable and dynamic Chairperson, led the ceremonies with the Ugandan and then American national anthems and a great talk on community development in Lugazi. He then concluded his speech with the most precious of shout-outs, “And last of all, I want to put out a personal request for Melissa to apply for a Ugandan citizenship so that she can buy land and live here. And as her Ugandan father, I am personally invested in finding her a Ugandan husband, so all of you single men out there will have to pass an interview with me.” Oh, Pastor!

I got to speak next. I talked about how the name “Musana” (“sunshine” in Luganda) is symbolic for our mission of illuminating the inherent beauty in women—revealing potential that was there but was not visible before. Working for Musana is not just a job, but is a training opportunity that builds women’s capacity. A “Musana Woman” is one that is productive, creative, timely, literate, community involved, financially responsible, and a nurturing mother. And (this was my favorite part)… a Musana Woman is STRONG. Not strong like a man, but strong like a woman. Our goal of empowering women is not to replace men’s role in society, but to build and work together with men to elevate homes and communities.

Last of all, the Mayor spoke half in English and half in Luganda. He talked about how good it was the Musana had remained small over the past 3 years and established a strong foundation to now expand upon. Many organizations in the area start very large, and quickly topple without the proper infrastructure. He affirmed his support of Musana in our new focus to expand to employ additional women over the next few months (meaning…. granting our proposal for a plot of land to build our own place on!). He then invited me up to cut the ribbon and then the cake (wedding reception-esque) with him, to signal the official opening of the store.

The public was invited in to view the jewelry and we had a bunch of sales right on the spot.

The event went on for a couple more hours with the Musana women performing a couple of dances (one traditional dance, and one together with HELP girls to “Girls just wanna have fun”- darling), and a dance-off with some local kids that have serious moves.

What a day.

Back to Ug

Back in Uganda, and am LOVING the chance. A few bumps along the road getting here, but all is well!

I met up with my coworker and good friend McCall in the London airport, and we got to run around town for a few hours with our 12 hour layover.  Then on the way over to Africa, I bit into a roll (yes, bread) and half of one of my molar teeth just… fell out. So weird.

We landed in the Nairobi airport, and due to a miscommunication, our local ride that was going to pick us up didn’t…. so we had to navigate our way to a hotel in the crazy bustling city with 5 huge suitcases in tow. I next found my way to a dentist’s office for a root canal! Yeah. Such a singular experience. It was a Christian dental clinic, so when the chair reclined back for the dentist to check my teeth, there was a poster plastered to the ceiling that said “I am with you always.” Between this and the 90’s Christian rock music (a fusion between Amy Grant and Air Supply- priceless), I was feeling good about life. We ended up staying in the home of this wonderful girl named Oprah, who is an LDS girl around our age that is now running an orphanage that we got to visit.

She also took us to this cool organization in Nairobi (Kazuri Beads) that employs over 300 impoverished women from the slums to make this gorgeous clay bead jewelry (got you one, mom!). I asked the man that was showing us around a bajillion questions and had some good take-home lessons to help us in running Musana Jewelry in Uganda. And I pet a cheetah.

Which contributed (though the Nairobi traffic was the main culprit) to us missing our flight to Uganda, resulting in some crazy large fees that I still don’t want to talk about. So pretty much, Nairobi rocked us over.

Being back in Lugazi, Uganda is a little piece of heaven. And I kind of mean that literally. I imagine heaven to be a place of the most joyous reunions with people we love. This time returning to Uganda, I have realized that perhaps beyond any of the work we do here, it is the personal relationships built that are the most important and impactful. It is actually pretty limited what "mzungus" (foreigners) can really affect long-term around here, but being able to connect with and work alongside and learn from local people (the real change-makers) is maybe why we come. I think foreigners often promise to return, but often (understandably) can’t. So that may contribute to these reunions being that much more sweet.

McCall and I got to spend our first day walking through the town with Pastor Francis, one of the most forward-thinking, genuine, pure-in-heart people I know. This man is radiant. We were hunting around town to find housing for the HELP team coming in a couple of weeks, but the best part was getting to chat and laugh with him. Within no time, he was asking and then counseling me in my dating life. We are that tight. This man has such a realistic vision for the progression of his community. I love asking him about his ideas. These range from turning garbage into fuel pellets, to empowering women in the home through teaching men about their societal role. His favorite book is “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” and he shared with me some things he was personally working on to implement into his life from the book.

Wilson and Luta are dear dear friends around my age who have been managing Musana Jewelry. My first encounters with each of them included a lot of jumping and hugging and laughing with disbelief. Luta kept pinching me and saying “Is it really you? You are really back?!” These are guys that have not come from lives of privilege, but have been able to find ways of getting to college while also running projects to empower youth to serve within the community through an organization they founded "The Youth Outreach Mission."

Yesterday, Luta took me around to visit each of the 7 women employed by Musana Jewelry. I personally knew Eve, Florence, and Christine in 2009—so showing up at their door was such a treat. I’m not sure if heavenly reunions including screaming, but everything else was there. The other 4- Rosette, Betty, Susan, and Harriet- were hired on after I left, so I have only seen pictures and heard stories about them. Rosette was so cute, as she met me for the first time, she exclaimed “Melissa, I really love you!” and I replied that I had loved her for a long time without having met her. Harriet made some very touching comments about how her life has been affected since working for Musana. She is HIV+, and explained how it is near to impossible for her to get a job once people know her status. She was elected from among the women as the women's Representative of Musana, and is by far the hardest worker, and has done amazing with her new responsibilities to lead the women.

I visited the Musana ladies this morning as they were hard at work in the rented storage unit. These women are masters at the womanly skill of multi-tasking- rocking babies, chatting (in English! Many of them couldn’t speak English before they started with Musana, but have learned through our English classes), while creating gorgeous jewelry.

In fact, our new line of jewelry has recently been featured in a photo shoot with a French model. It resembles jewelry you would find for $200 at Anthropologie back home. And it is really unique in Uganda, so we are starting to scope out potential tourist and ex-pat hot-spots that we could sell it at here locally.

Many of my buddies are working on convincing me to stay forever. Maybe I will.

Turning veggies into pickles, and women into entrepreneurs

One of the first requests that we received upon arriving in Hyderabad, was a plea from the local LDS Branch President to find a way to empower the poorest women in the branch. Many of these women are the sole providers in their home, but lack the education and skills needed to work at a job with a liveable wage. Despite these difficulties, these women and their children are active contributors in the branch, often at great sacrifice.

Working through the Relief Society, we were able to identify and bring together those with the greatest need. At our first meeting, we asked each woman what her skills and talents were. It actually took a bit of prodding as these women didn’t feel that had anything marketable to contribute. But it was fun to help them discover just how their skills could be turned into an income-generating venture.

After a sifting process, the women together decided on making (drum roll)… pickles! Yes, that’s right. They felt that pickles were something they could make better and cheaper than the going pickles in stores.

Pickles in India are unlike anything I’ve tried before. Definitely an aquired taste… which I am actively aquiring. They pickle most vegetables and many fruits. A load of salt and oil mixed with exotic delicious spices and chilis to make quite the flavorful celebration in one’s mouth.

Next, we came together to decide on a name. We threw around Telegu names such as Surya (sun) and Maradalu (sisters), some iconic names such as Obama or Mona Lisa (envision the logo as Mona Lisa holding a pickle- so many possibilities!), but ended up on following the pattern of many NGOs here and forming a rockin’ acronym: WEE (Women Empowered through Employment) Pickles. Next, Casey on our team designed a lovely logo. And thus, the birth of India’s latest and greatest pickling venture.

Here are the two main women producing the pickles, Rani

and Kumari,

at our inaugural sale. We tied gold bows on everything from the bottles to our hair, to make it “auspicious” (my favorite India-specific word meaning an event that is “important, favored by fortune”).

Working through the finances...

Roopkala (not pictured) is a very educated and wise woman who has been wanting to find a way to help her fellow branch members, and so has joined and was voted as our fearless group leader. She is absolutely essential to the sustainability of the project, so we are so grateful to have her on.

Within the first week, all 17 bottles of the vegetable pickles sold right out of their home, leaving only 12 chicken pickles on the shelf.

Here.... WEE..... go.....

Livin the Sibling Dream

One of my favorite things about being in India is my kid brother, Sean. While people might assume that I dragged him here with me, that ain’t the case. Last year when Sean and I were living at home together, we would often talk late into the night about going out and solving the world’s problems with his engineering skills and my public health/development passion. Shortly after accepting my position as country director for HELP International’s program in India a few months ago, I was approached by Matt Colling, a founder for Sain Terre (www.sainterre.org), about building “Soilets” in India.

The Soilet is a simple, inexpensive, and really innovative toilet system that employs really basic technology (like earthworms) to dispose of waste in a self-contained “mini-ecosystem” right there on-site. It is the perfect solution for places with little infrastructure (like sewer-lines), is much cheaper than septic systems, can be made with local stuff by local folks, AND… doesn’t smell.

While many underdeveloped nations have a great need for basic sanitation amenities, such as clean water and toilet facilities, India’s problem is exacerbated by cramming a billion people into this country.

So Sean is a tinkerer. Before he was old enough to ride a big wheel, he had the most insatiable curiosity for how things work, and a love for “inventing” all sorts of fine handicraft out of everything from toilet paper rolls to broken computer chips. So the minute the lightbulb went on that I may have an “in” to make our sibling dream happen, I called him up and told him all about the soilet. And he was a goner at that point.

Check out his rockin blog to see how he has taken flight with the Soilets:

http://seanhelpsindia.blogspot.com/

As you can see, he has now completely revamped the Soilet to make it Indianized, and in the process cut the cost and building time in half. I’m so proud of him.

Having Sean here makes it seem like home. Like, I could live anywhere if I had m’Sean. Early mornings we hit the streets on a run through the traffic and the less-than-awesome smells, for a few laps around the military field and finish it off with a rip-roaring session of laughing yoga with a big group of 60-year-old men. Most nights we take five times longer brushing our teeth cause we have too much to say through the foam about the funny or frustrating things that happened that day. He knows just what to say to make me laugh at any given moment when I’m stressed. He’s actually making a mango smoothie for us to share right now.

Aw. This is my Ode to Sean.

My lucky rupee

The other day I was at a stop light in an auto-rickshaw, when 2 men approached us begging for money. These gents were adorned in women’s sauris, with lipstick and earrings. Yes, these cross-dressing men are commonly called the “3^rd gender” in India. They make a living from begging, sometimes prostitution, and… party-crashing (weddings, specifically). They are said to be good luck to have at a wedding, and so they will show up in big groups demanding food and money. And people have to give it to them, or amen to that marriage. Or so I hear.

Begging is a difficult conundrum here in India. It is much more intrusive, persistent, and prevalent than any place I have been. It is a constant debate in my mind as to what to do about it. I have talked with a couple of NGOs here that focus on the most vulnerable populations. All have insisted that resources are available (such as shelters), but begging is much more lucrative for many of them.

In the past couple of months there have been a few stories on CNN online about the uncovering of the current issue with gangs in India kidnapping children, maiming them, and then forcing them to beg. I certainly don’t want to feed that kind of system.

And above all, everything that we are pushing for here in India is to build self-reliance and sustainability, rather than enabling dependence.

On the other hand, every day I am passing human beings that are hungry. Yes, it may not even go to them at the end of the day. Yes, there may be some other resources available. Yes, contributing to the practice may help perpetuate it. But these are people with needs, undoubtedly.

I don’t have a good answer as to what to do at this point.

Ok, back to my story. So, there they were reaching into our auto saying “Money, money, give me 10 rupees” with the typical accompanying hand motions, but much more adamant than common beggars. My friend here said that when you don’t give them money, they yell curses upon you. However… I guess for fun I said “You give ME ten rupees.” Thinking I didn’t understand, one pulled out a one-rupee coin and repeated it, and I replied the same. He smiled and said “Ok, one rupee. Give me one rupee.” I said “Oh, that rupee is for me? Thank you!” and held out my hand. At this point, the light changed, and suddenly, he dropped the rupee in my hand, burst out laughing, and blew me a kiss as we drove off. YEAH. I got money from a beggar. I don’t know what this means coming from a 3^rd gender, cross-dressing, wedding-crashing beggar. But I think it has got to be some kind of good luck.

(Note: The only thing this picture has to do with this blog post, is that I'm the only woman in this picture. I watched these "ladies" do some traditional dancing... then met them and realized...)