Practicum Already!

So it seems like practicum has been this far off thing the entire trip… and now all of a sudden its here. Practicum officially begins today, but I will be leaving on Tuesday or Wednesday. I had several meetings last week to set up what I am doing. So, I will be working at Reproductive Health Uganda at their branch in Gulu. The organization used to be called Family Planning Association of Uganda, and I was completely unaware of the name change but I’m really glad because this means I’ll get to focus on more than just family planning. In Gulu they have also recently launched a program that I’ll get to help out with, called: “Between Two Fires: Ensuring Comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights for People in Conflict Situations,” which is basically what I’ve wanted to study this entire time. So, if everything goes as planned I will be interning with RHU and helping out with this program and doing fieldwork with women and youth in internally displaced persons camps.

Gulu is in the north, near the Sudanese border, about a five or six hour bus ride from Kampala. About seven other people from my program will be doing their internships or research in the Gulu area, so I will travel with them and a bunch of us are planning on getting a house together, so I am excited for that. I’m a little nervous never having seen Gulu before, but having spoken to other students who have been there, they all seemed to enjoy working there. When I tell other Ugandans that I am going to Gulu I get a lot of unfavorable reactions, like looks of horror or disgust, but I’ll make my own judgment.

So until then, I am just packing, finalizing things, spending a last few days with my host family which is sad in theory but I’ve still never spent more than a solid 15 minutes with my hostmom so…whatever. This past week began very stressfully but got better as things fell into place. Surprisingly, I had a really good time trying to find RHU in Kampala. The directions I had were really wrong, so I got to meet a lot of nice people who helped me out, and in the end I found the place, and everyone that worked there was very nice as well. Friday night was someone’s birthday so we went to a nearby restaurant that has some of the most amazing pizza I have ever had, and we all ate about 5000 pounds of pizza and then went out dancing, but we are pretty lame and tired so we didn’t stay out that late. And on Saturday a group of us went to volunteer at an orphanage that my friend Abbey will be doing her practicum at. It is caused Raising Hope for Uganda, and this twenty-year-old guy who grew up on the streets himself directs it. Now he runs this place, which by day is a school for kids who can’t afford public school (deceptively very expensive despite being “free”), and by night they house about 40 kids who would otherwise be living on the street. So basically this guy Patrick and his coworkers are amazing, amazing people. They have made this their entire lives and are absolutely in love with all of the kids. We came to help build a house for an HIV positive mother and her 6 children so that they have someplace to live, especially after the mother passes away… so in the morning we did a lot of carrying bricks and sand and logs, and then we had lunch at the orphanage and played and danced with the kids which was great. I’m not a huge “just go play with the kids” person but these kids were adorable, and just ran up and gave us these unconditional huge hugs, and we exchanged lots of dance moves, and got really humiliated because some of these 8-year-old girls can shake their stuff way better than I can. If I were going to be in Kampala longer than I am, I would definitely go back again, but alas. It’s weird to be leaving this area so soon, just as I am forming relationships and learning places, but oh well, I’ll get to do it all over again.

So, for the next 6 weeks I am very unsure of what my internet access will be… I’ve heard it’s very shady in Gulu so we’ll have to see how often I get access. So, until then!