DAY 7 - Wednesday July 12th
Ready…go. 32% battery left so this will have to be quick. Today was another beautiful day in Africa. If I haven’t already said that I’m probably going to say it at the start of every entry. I know my vocabulary is limited in Uganda but that’s the way it should be – every day is just beautiful, amazing, heart wrenching and wonderful.
We started the day with our second Rootoro lesson. It was mostly review but good practice. I learned how to say “tip” – acasema – so that I can help the people at the Internet café understand why I always give them a little extra when I’m working there. The ladies know me by now and definitely give me VIP status…the electricity flickered on and off all day. Usually it just goes off for the day and comes on the next, but today it was up and down. I would have had more power on my laptop but we used it to download music to the iPod. Tomorrow we have our first day of teaching slash dancing and playing music and we made a few playlists. It’s going to be nothing less than out of control.
Anyway after Rootoro we drove just outside of town and met the Holy Cross district officers in Ft. Portal. They are five young educated African men and the coordinator Terisoi, she is great. They do family counseling for people in the village and also do a radio show 6 times a week. “The family that prays together, stays together” is the Holy Cross motto, and it seems to be working. They said their radio show touches many people, who often call and write, asking for advice and thanking them for their work. I asked what were the most common problems the families faced, and the answer was so funny. The guy said that sometimes it is as simple as “the way the man or the woman squeezes the toothpaste,” or when someone answers the cell phone in front of the family or talks too loud on it. We all got a kick out of that – universal marriage and relationship problems to say the least.
The meeting at their small office was great, but heartbreaking. We talked a lot about working with the elderly. Jonnie, our adviser Sara’s mom, spoke of the hardships that the elderly face in the United States – being dumped in nursing homes by their families and being left behind by their government. “Sometimes they bump into me on the street and don’t even realize I’m there, it’s like I’m invisible.” She broke it down though. “The Republicans don’t believe spending money on health care is something a government should do, so when they get in power they cut all the programs.” The man who works specifically with the elderly said that the Ugandan Parliament is debating elderly care and social security right now, because there is no policy in place. “If the government fails to provide this social service, then it is no longer government,” he said. You can’t get any closer to the truth than that. He asked a lot of questions about how America deals with the issue. This was the first time we had an opportunity to talk about American policy, and it was a conversation I knew we would have at least once. It was so sad to try and explain how the government in the US leaves its elderly behind. We told them about the breaking Social Security system and the plans to just leave it to the for-profit medical centers and the stock market. We also told them about the enormous medical expenses and that basically insurance was for those who could afford it. They related to the cost but were shocked that such a “rich” country would have the same basic problems and that it was so expensive for basic medical care.
The Holy Cross members told us that the elderly in Uganda are especially burdened because they are often widows, and because they are the only ones left to care for the many children who become orphans when they lose their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and cousins to AIDS. It reminded me a little bit of the Hispanic population, whose elders often raise their grandchildren when the parents are unable to do so.
Jonnie also asked about and talked about the elderly and depression. She said that people in America view the elderly as a burden, and she couldn’t be more right. I thought of my godmother Regina, whom I visit as often as I can in New Mexico, who is left at the nursing home, depressed and lonely except for visits from her daughters and grandchildren, who struggle with their own lives and problems.
I’ll have to finish this post later…battery is about to be dead and no electricity back at the house.
We started the day with our second Rootoro lesson. It was mostly review but good practice. I learned how to say “tip” – acasema – so that I can help the people at the Internet café understand why I always give them a little extra when I’m working there. The ladies know me by now and definitely give me VIP status…the electricity flickered on and off all day. Usually it just goes off for the day and comes on the next, but today it was up and down. I would have had more power on my laptop but we used it to download music to the iPod. Tomorrow we have our first day of teaching slash dancing and playing music and we made a few playlists. It’s going to be nothing less than out of control.
Anyway after Rootoro we drove just outside of town and met the Holy Cross district officers in Ft. Portal. They are five young educated African men and the coordinator Terisoi, she is great. They do family counseling for people in the village and also do a radio show 6 times a week. “The family that prays together, stays together” is the Holy Cross motto, and it seems to be working. They said their radio show touches many people, who often call and write, asking for advice and thanking them for their work. I asked what were the most common problems the families faced, and the answer was so funny. The guy said that sometimes it is as simple as “the way the man or the woman squeezes the toothpaste,” or when someone answers the cell phone in front of the family or talks too loud on it. We all got a kick out of that – universal marriage and relationship problems to say the least.
The meeting at their small office was great, but heartbreaking. We talked a lot about working with the elderly. Jonnie, our adviser Sara’s mom, spoke of the hardships that the elderly face in the United States – being dumped in nursing homes by their families and being left behind by their government. “Sometimes they bump into me on the street and don’t even realize I’m there, it’s like I’m invisible.” She broke it down though. “The Republicans don’t believe spending money on health care is something a government should do, so when they get in power they cut all the programs.” The man who works specifically with the elderly said that the Ugandan Parliament is debating elderly care and social security right now, because there is no policy in place. “If the government fails to provide this social service, then it is no longer government,” he said. You can’t get any closer to the truth than that. He asked a lot of questions about how America deals with the issue. This was the first time we had an opportunity to talk about American policy, and it was a conversation I knew we would have at least once. It was so sad to try and explain how the government in the US leaves its elderly behind. We told them about the breaking Social Security system and the plans to just leave it to the for-profit medical centers and the stock market. We also told them about the enormous medical expenses and that basically insurance was for those who could afford it. They related to the cost but were shocked that such a “rich” country would have the same basic problems and that it was so expensive for basic medical care.
The Holy Cross members told us that the elderly in Uganda are especially burdened because they are often widows, and because they are the only ones left to care for the many children who become orphans when they lose their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles and cousins to AIDS. It reminded me a little bit of the Hispanic population, whose elders often raise their grandchildren when the parents are unable to do so.
Jonnie also asked about and talked about the elderly and depression. She said that people in America view the elderly as a burden, and she couldn’t be more right. I thought of my godmother Regina, whom I visit as often as I can in New Mexico, who is left at the nursing home, depressed and lonely except for visits from her daughters and grandchildren, who struggle with their own lives and problems.
I’ll have to finish this post later…battery is about to be dead and no electricity back at the house.
posted by Jake McCook @ 6:49 PM
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