Tis the Season!

While many of you are bustling about with Christmas shopping, and praying earnestly for a white Christmas, we here in Masaka are celebrating a different kind of season – that of the Ensenene (grasshoppers).

With the rainy season come these delightful creatures, much loved by everyone from child to adult (at least everyone local!) Not only delicious and nutritious, they are also an economic boon. Selling at 5,000shillings a cup, some people are able to buy cars off of their ensenene season earnings. I’ve tried my best to document all the steps involved in this much anticipated time of year.

1.) Put up the catchers - all around Masaka and Nyendo, you see these contraptions. At night, they rest huge metallic sheets against the supports, and put on floodlights. Attracted by the lights, the unsuspecting ensenene hit the sheet and tumble down into the barrel, from which they have no hope of escape. Somehow, even if the rest of the neighborhood is without power, they manage to keep the floodlights lit, and the ensenene look like snow falling as they swarm overhead.









2. Pluck off the feathers - The next morning, the catchers bag up the ensenene and sell them off in smaller lots. The buyers usually hire cheap labor (including many of our street kids) to pluck of the legs and wings of the (live!) ensenene. They really rip them off, paying just 200shillings for them to pluck a cupful, but I’ve noticed that all the boys have gained some weight this month as they shell out their earnings for all kinds of snacks and treats. Lots of new kids also come to the streets at this time, which is not good.









3. Go around selling them – Buckets full of raw (and still wiggling) ensenene bodies are carried around the streets and sold by the cupful.










4. Fry em up – Once you buy them, you fry them. No need to add any oil- their own juices do the trick quite nicely!










5. And enjoy – After frying, it’s time to enjoy the crunchy consistency and savory flavor. See how much I’m loving it? ;)








To be honest, I’ve only eaten 1/3 of an ensenene to date (made my colleagues take of the head and bottom.) The flavor is nice, but I can’t get over the mental image of having ensenene exoskeleton stuck in my teeth. I know my friends here might be disappointed by that, but what can I say, I’m still a muzungu at heart, with a taste for a different kind of holiday treat…



Holiday fun: when Jenipher had her bushes trimmed I grabbed a clipping to serve as my official Christmas tree!

Kids, the best entertainment

I just wanted to share some LOL (that's 'laugh out loud', for the uninitiated) moments from the last several weeks, courtesy of the kids in my life here.

Mukiibi
One day while I was coming home from work, I ran into Jenipher and Mukiibi on the road. She was going to visit a friend (an older lady who is like a jia jia to Jenipher), and persuaded me to come along. When we got there, I was offered some soda. When they brought it out, Mukiibi had a little fit because he didn’t get one. He started sobbing and carrying on in a way that was so obviously fake and beneath his advanced age of four years, that I could only look at him, perplexed. The ‘adults’ relented and brought him a soda, but for the rest of the evening he had to endure Jenipher totally mocking him, “wah, I want a soda, wah!
Image: Mukiibi, one cool dude.


On the way home from visiting Jenipher's friend, we stopped off at Fred's place. Although it was late, Fred of course insisted on serving us tea. He put out the hot water and a loaf of bread. While he was out of the room getting the tea and sugar, the loaf of bread fell over, and several pieces landed on the floor. Jenipher and I exchanged glances, and I hurriedly picked them up and put them on back on the plate before Fred came back in. We went on to serve ourselves tea, but Mukiibi was the only one that took bread. After he was served, he made a great show of wiping off each side of bread before dipping it into his tea. Jenipher and I almost died laughing, and Fred of course was just confused.

Joy
For a couple weeks after her house girl quit, Sara (the accountant at Buddukiro) had to bring her three-year-old daughter Joy with her to work. Now, Joy is an assertive person, to say the least. She was ordering me, the other staff, and the street kids around like a little sergeant, and we were all loving it. Here are three giggles courtesy of Joy:

We have a number of educational posters hanging on the walls at Buddukiro, related to things like child labor, health and hygiene, and personal safety. One very graphic poster depicts a traditional healer running off carrying the head of a child, his bloody and headless body visible in the background. (Child sacrifice and witchcraft are still problems here, and we actually warn the street kids to sleep in groups to minimize the danger of being targeted.) Ok, so that’s not such a LOL topic, but it somehow became one when Joy looked up at the poster , pointed at the man, and shouted, “YOU STOP IT!” Out of the mouths of babes…

Joy was playing outside the Center for awhile, and when she came back in we noticed that she kept trying to put her finger up her nose. I scolded her to stop it. When she persisted, a couple of the boys tried to reach up to see if they could find whatever she was trying to fish out. They managed to pull out a few petals. Turns out, Joy had gotten it into her head that it would be a good idea to stick a daisy up her nose. Unfortunately for her, the central yellow part was really wedged up there, and it took a trip to the clinic to get it out! Ooh, that can’t have been pleasant!

Each day, Sara would try to lay Joy down for a nap, which she usually vigorously opposes. On one particular day, she must have been exhausted, because Aunt Cissy was only halfway through feeding her her porridge when she started to nod off, cheeks completely full of porridge! Joy is staying with an Auntie in Kampala these days, and we all miss her (and her antics) terribly!
Image: Joy with her cheeks full of porridge

Neighborhood Kids
Ok, I can only think of one story here, but it was pretty hilarious. There’s a school right behind the Nyendo drop in Center, and I get a lot of attention from the kids there. They often crowd around the door and look in to watch what I’m doing and say ‘bye Muzungu!’ One day, they were particularly eager and exuberant. One little girl of about three really outdid herself waving and craning her neck. Unfortunately for her though, the ground was uneven, and before she could catch herself, she lost her balance and totally face planted in the mud. She of course started to cry, so I came out to pick her up and brush the dirt off her face and out of her mouth (!). She immediately stopped crying, in awe at being touched by the muzungu!


Image: Some of the schoolkids near the drop in center.

HIV/AIDS: One Family's Pain

Last Monday was World AIDS day. There was a lot of activity around here, including marches, speeches, and free testing and counseling. There was also a lot of coverage in the media. The article below is transcribed directly from the local newspaper, and though a bit melodramatic, the story it documents is really not that uncommon. As one of my colleagues said, there is really almost no family here in Uganda that has not been impacted somehow by HIV/AIDS.

Daily Monitor, Monday Dec. 1, 2008, pg 5
By Evelyn Lirri

Fewer families have felt the pain that can be inflicted by HIV/AIDS more than that of 64-year old Rose Odongpiny of Layibi Division of Gulu District. Ms. Odongpiny has seen seven of her eight children, and most of their spouses, succumb to AIDS.

She had to start taking care of the 13 grandchildren whose parents were snatched by the cruel hand of death. She soon learnt that six of the grandchildren were infected with the HIV virus.

One of Ms. Odongpiny’s infected grandchildren, an 18year-old girl, the eldest of the orphans, posed an even bigger challenge. As if the HIV infection were not bad enough, she was also pregnant.

Looking after her grandchildren would not have been a problem, had Ms. Odongpiny not discovered three years ago during one of the home-based voluntary testing programs- she too was infected.

According to Ms. Odongpiny, she is likely to have contracted the virus while taking care of her children when they were bedridden. Because she HIV/AIDS can only be spread through sexual intercourse, she did not take any precautionary measures while nursing her children.

With no one else to turn to, Ms Odongpiny- who lost her husband in 1972- must once again fend for her family, except this time she has been weakened by the virus and needs as much help as the very children she was supposed to take care of. Ms. Odongpiny’s ordeal mirrors that of many grandparents who bear the enormous emotional burden of caring for their grandchildren who have been orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

Statistics from the Demographic and Health Survey 2006 indicates that Uganda has over 2,000,000 orphans, most of whose parents died of HIV/AIDS and about 110,000 children who are less than 15 years are living with HIV/AIDS.

Ms. Odongpiny’s first agony is where to get food. “Food is a constant problem. It has become even harder nowadays because I don’t have anything to feed these children on. I don’t have money.” She said.

If she is lucky, she eats one meal a day, usually a meal of green vegetables and bens. Yet at times she has endured more than two days without food. Milk is out of the question for her, while meat is a luxury she can only afford once a year.

According to the regional HIV/AIDS special for Save the Children in Uganda, Mr. Edmond Kero, access to HIV/AIDS services and increasing awareness among people living with HIV/AIDS, especially children, is a top priority. Kero said over the years, Save the Children Uganda has undertaken a project identifying children with HIV/AIIDS and enrolling them for the various preventative services like access to antiretroviral treatment from the communities like that of Ms. Odongpiny.

Although here are no specific statistics of how many children are living with HIV/AIDS in Gulu District, the Uganda HIV/AIDS report 2007 puts the northern region to have the second highest prevalence rate in the country at 8.2 %, compared to the national average of 6.5 percent.

Ms. Odongpiny and her grandchildren are not yet on the life prolonging ARVs, but have been put on spetrin prophylaxis to prevent opportunistic infections.

Heatlh Alert, an organization that is undertaking preventative programs for HIV/AIDS in Amuru and Gulu District, has been assisting the family to access treatment at the health facilities.

According to the project coordinator for Health Alert, Mr Francis Oubutu, the project, with support from Save the Children in Uganda, has been supporting children with HIV/AIDS and their caretakers by making followup visits to their homes.

Mr Obutu said, for the most vulnerable people like Ms. Odongpiny, Health Alert has come to provide some basic requirements like sugar, soap, and milk for mothers who are on the prevention of mother to child transmission program.

Ms Odongpiny’s granddaughter is one of those HIV positive young mothers enrolled with Health Alert to not only cope with HIV/AIDS pregnancy, but also access information on how to prevent mother to child transmission.

But Ms. Ondonpiny’s despair is not only where she will get her next meal, she also worries about her grandchildren’s education. As she reflects on her life, Ms. Odongpiny says the worst consequence of the epidemic for her is not the death it has come with, but the helpless orphans that are being left behind.

The faces of potential

Last Friday we had a 'Users Meeting.' Once a month, Buddukiro brings the boys from the Masaka and Nyendo centers together to give them information and advice, and have them share about any issues they're having.

When my turn came to give them a little 'soundbite' of advice, I mainly stressed how much potential we see in each of them, and how important it is that they take advantage of, rather than waste, the opportunities Buddukiro presents them with.

Here's a photo of the group, including BCA staff. behind each set of eyes, there is a story- trauma and hardship, but also dreams and oodles of potential. For example, Ronald, in the middle with the red and blue striped shirt, is an orphan. He lives with an aunt who has taken in several other orphans from different members of her family, and they all live together in Nyendo. Though he has a place to stay, his aunt can't afford to pay school fees for all those kids. So, although extremely bright, he's been out of school since last May. We're hoping Buddukiro can sponsor him to go back when the new term begins in February, and in the meantime he's been joining Buddukiro's education sessions each day to try to keep his mind sharp. I killed me to hear from him during a recent group counseling session, when we asked why his week had been a good one. He said that it was a good week because he because his family held the last funeral rites of his mother over the weekend(one year after death), and he had gotten a lot to eat that day.

I know it's a little hard to see, but it would be awesome if you could take a little time to look at each face, and pray for each boy, that he will safely navigate this crucial time in his life, and become all that God created him to be...

Note on pics: I'm having the toughest time getting any photos to upload recently, hence the blank spaces in some of these entries. I'll keep trying though...