Happy New Year from Uganda!

I spent New Year’s Eve watching fireworks and listening to live music at a local hotel, and it was honestly so much fun! Everyone was cheering and dancing and there was so much joy. I am excited to see what this new year in Uganda will hold.

I spent Christmas with this family I love so much!

We started back to work this week, and it has been crazy busy. There are so many things to do now that we are back after a month off. School fees have to be paid for our scholarship kids in primary school, teachers have to plan for the new preschool year (the new school year starts in February here), new staff has to be trained, bills have to be paid, new supplies must be bought, etc. Starting this month, I have been given some more responsibility, including being added to the management team and helping oversee staff issues.

As the new year begins, we are working on improving policies and procedures for various departments in the organization. For example, we are planning out exact procedures for any emergency that could take place that would prevent a parent from being able to take their child home at the end of the workday. We already have some procedures set in place, but it is always good to be extra thorough, especially when we are responsible for 145 children. You never know what could happen, and we have to always be prepared and know how to ethically handle any situation that could occur.

It has been interesting learning the differences between social work in the States verses social work in Uganda. Social work here in Uganda is a fairly new profession, and therefore there is not a social work council that oversees and regulates the profession. In the States, there is an entire code of ethics and values for social workers that must be followed, but here in Uganda that doesn’t exist on a national basis. A lot of the universities teach the ethics and values used in the U.S., but there is not an adapted one for best practice in Ugandan culture. The profession of social work is also commonly not understood here. Social workers tend to be used for home visits and maintaining files on clients, but there is SO much more that social workers are capable to do. They can be counselors, advocates, mediators, managers, educators, and so much more. I truly believe that social workers can make a massive difference in the fight for equity and justice here in Uganda.

Watching a storm roll in as I walk home. The compound on the left is where I live!

A word I have been thinking about a lot since the new year started is advocate. I want to be an advocate for Ugandans. I want to advocate for their rights, and I want to advocate for them to use their voices. In a country that was once a British colony, many locals are taught in school that the white person is superior. I’ve had friends tell me that they were always told to do what the white person says, and to not talk back. Even though Uganda gained independence in 1962, the effects of colonization can still be seen today. I want to advocate for our staff and kids, and help them know that their voices matter. They should stand up for their rights, their opinions, and their beliefs. They are beautiful and strong humans who must be heard.

Rainy season in Uganda normally lasts about 3 months at a time, but this year it has been raining since April. Recently, in Western and Northern Uganda, a heavy rain caused mudslides and flooding. Roads were washed away, houses were destroyed, and people who survive off of their land found piles of rock and dirt covering every bit of land they owned. It is going to be very hard for them to recover. They lost all their belongings, their livelihood, and they have no bank account with savings to help them rebuild. The news, however, says that Uganda is not nearly as affected as several other East African countries. Please pray that the flooding and mudslides will stop. That the rain will slow down and that dry season will come, but that dry season will be a normal 3 months and not crazy long like this rainy season has been. Climate change is really affecting the weather here on the equator, and it has killed and affected the lives of so many.

On a more exciting note, I moved! My new home is actually right down the road from where I was living before, so thankfully I can still walk to work. I barely have any furniture at the moment, so I’m living out of suitcases and have bags lying in every corner. But I’m excited, over time, to make this place my home. I am living on the bottom level of basically a duplex. There is a pool in the yard, and I am really looking forward to swimming in it during dry season! I have a carpenter making me a table, couch, dresser, and a few other random pieces of furniture. He is making them all by himself, so it will be a long time before they are all done. My new place is slowly coming together. Moving here is stressful, and I miss having the luxury of a target to go get everything I need from, but there is also something uniquely beautiful about slowly curating a home where I get to design exactly what I want and find used items that can be repurposed. My goal over the next couple weeks is to search through central market to find a couple of gently used rugs.

I am now on Christmas break from work! Here in Uganda people typically go to the village for Christmas and New Years to visit with family. Which basically means Jinja town is a lot quieter and shops close up for several weeks. We had a really fun staff Christmas party at work before starting our Holiday break. We played games and gave out gifts and ate yummy food. I am excited to have a break from work though and get to meet up with people I usually don’t have time to see, fix up my new home, and read some fun books. Christmas here will look a lot different than in the States, but I like that this culture is not consumed by materialistic goods at Christmas time. I bought a handmade nativity set in town and a small Charlie Brown looking Christmas tree. Christmas day I’m going to go to church in the morning, and then go spend the day with John’s family in the village. We will cook a big meal and enjoy time with one another. I am absolutely going to miss my family, but I am excited to see what Christmas is like in a village in Uganda.

Last week was one of those reminders that Uganda does not operate the same as the United States. I was supposed to pay for my work permit Monday and pick it up in Kampala on Tuesday, but when I went to the bank to pay they said I must fill out an assessment form before paying, which they no longer carried. They sent me to the Ugandan Revenue Authority, but they also no longer had the form. Even the Immigration office didn’t have a solution to the problem. There were also problems at the bank when I tried to pay some stuff for work. Efficiency is a not a value in this culture, and with unreliable network connections and ever-changing government systems, you never know what problems you’ll run into when trying to do small tasks. Not going to lie, I got very annoyed and frustrated, but I had to remember that this is a different country and culture, and I can’t expect things to happen the same way here as they do in the States. Laws and procedures are different here. It’s not always easy to adapt, but I am learning patience and letting go of my American expectations. Please join me in praying that I will be able to pay for my work permit and pick it up soon so that I don’t run into problems when my visa expires next month.

The highlight of the past month was getting to go to the coast of Kenya for a few days! When my grandmother passed away this year, she left each grandchild some money, and I knew I wanted to use it to travel, especially around Africa because she always dreamed of moving and working here when she was a young adult. I went to Diani Beach which had the clearest water and white sand. It was absolutely beautiful, and such a great time to rest and also see a different East African country. Kenya is far more developed than Uganda, and much bigger too. I got back to Jinja yesterday, and I have the gift of having a dear friend here visiting for a week. We lived together 3 summers ago here in Uganda, and it is so good having her back for a short time! I’m looking forward to time with her and other friends over the next few weeks. It should be an uneventful, rainy, and quiet break, but I am so thankful to have that time so that I can process and reflect on the last few months of life here.

Diani Beach, Kenya

It’s rainy season here in Uganda, and this afternoon is particularly rainy and cold (yes, the low 70s feels cold to me now). I have Christmas music playing in the background and African tea cooking on the stove. I have an angel made out of banana leaf fibers and a Christmas song quote written on my letter board, but those are really the only Christmas decorations I have so far. Christmas sure does look a lot different here on the equator.

watching the storm roll in

Something I have been learning to enjoy here is cooking from scratch. You can’t go to Trader Joes and buy frozen food or mixes to bake. Pretty much everything has to be made from scratch here. Recently I decided to make some bagels with the “everything but bagel” seasoning I brought. They were really good if I do say so myself, and I found some cream cheese in Kampala to spread over them. I’m hoping to do a lot more baking and cooking over my Christmas break.

Not gonna lie, it was hard being away from family for Thanksgiving. Thankfully, though, I got to celebrate here in Uganda. Since Thanksgiving is not a holiday here in Uganda, we still had a normal day of work. Afterwards, however, Tina and one of our cooks on staff made a delicious Thanksgiving feast for all the interns. We laughed a lot and ate delicious food, and it was really sweet to still celebrate even though we are all away from family. Tina even gave all of us a little goodie bag full of chocolate from the States! It was honestly the best gift haha!

I realized today that Jinja really feels like home now. In ways, it has already felt like that over my time here the past 5 years, but this time it’s more permanent and I’m really doing life here. It is not a vacation or trip. It is not always exciting and fun, but it’s real life happening day in and day out. I was awake at midnight last week vomiting from a parasite, and last month I had a bacterial infection, but I also get to hold the cutest babies and help empower women to sustain their own families. I get to worship God alongside people from all different tribes and tongues, and I get to have dinner along the Nile River with my fiancé. Life is hard and good and joyful and abundant.

This girl was in childcare at the James Place when I was here 5 years ago, and now she’s all grown up and in primary school!

As I head into my last week of work before Christmas break, I am thankful to be here. There are days where I really miss my family and friends back in Nashville, and all I want is to hug my mom, but I also have so much peace about being here. I am learning so much about working cross-culturally, and the differences of best practice in America versus Uganda. Social work looks so much the same and yet also so different between the 2 countries. I am excited to continue to dig in here and learn/grow more over the next 2 years. I can’t believe it’s already been 3 months!

After some major writer’s block, I am back to update you on all the cray life things happening here in Uganda. The past few weeks have held a lot of growth and good conversations.

Working cross-culturally is so much harder than I remember it being. Maybe that’s because the first time I was here I just helped in childcare, and now I am trying to improve and grow the social work program. But wow, it is not easy navigating cross cultural friendship and work relationships when you have over 70 employees (all but 4 being females) and American interns coming for various amounts of time. How do I push the social workers to be more productive without offending them? How do we start counseling staff in a culture where mental health is not understood? It makes me think through decisions more intentionally and has been such a growing experience.

Things have been crazy around the James Place lately. Tina, the founder and executive director, arrived on the 8th and is here for the next month. Our preschoolers are taking exams this week, the pottery ladies are busy making lots of nativity sets to send back to the States for Christmas, and most of the interns are finishing up their last few weeks here. This year we have 4 weeks off for Christmas, so everyone is hurrying to finalize projects and assignments before we go on break on December 7^th. I am looking forward to a break from work to be able to rest and visit with people. Most of our staff goes to the village for Christmas to be with all of their family, and the town of Jinja is a lot more quiet than usual.

The James Place- HEAL’s compound in Jinja, Uganda

It has been raining a lot longer than normal here. Usually rainy season lasts around 3 months, but this year it has been raining since April. Farmers are suffering from too much rain, and the threat of food shortages over the next year are becoming more and more serious. Climate change has definitely affected the weather here in Uganda over the past several years, and for people that live off of the crops they grow, it is a very real threat here.

There have been some really great highlights from the past several weeks of life here:

1. We had a 2 week break at work, and I got to spend the night at a hotel in Kampala with one of the interns from work. We have become great friends, and it was so nice to have time together in the big city! Our hotel room had air conditioning (it was amazing!!) and we got massages and laid out by the beautiful pool.
2. One of my college roommates just moved to Uganda and is working with an organization in the Western part of the country. Thankfully she spent about a week in Kampala buying supplies and adjusting before heading to the village where she will live. I got to meet up with her for the day over the weekend, and it was so so good!! We ate yummy food, found some American candy, and caught up on how our past 2½ months have been. I am so happy that she will be in Uganda for the next 2 years, and I look forward to more meet ups in the big city!
3. Last but not least, I got engaged!! Crazy, I know. I met John back in 2014 when I first came to Uganda, and we spent many weekends with a group of friends watching movies, playing card games, having bonfires, etc. I slowly got to know him more over the following years and hung out with those friends whenever I came back to visit. In the summer of 2017 he asked me out, and at first I told him no. He was gracious and kind, and after a few weeks I came back to him with a changed mind, realizing that I didn’t want to live my life out of fear or choices that were comfortable and safe. So that summer we went on some dates and got to know each other more. I still had 2 years left of school though, so we kept in touch but didn’t really have any idea of how it could work. I went back for a month in July 2018, and that’s when we really started dating. The past year with him has been the best. He has helped me learn to use my voice and to stand up for my opinions (something this enneagram 9 often struggles with), and his tender yet strong heart is my safe place to run to. He loves the Lord and truly lives out his faith more than any guy I know. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in May, and he loves to fix anything and everything. John is the greatest example of redemption in my life, and the fact that we are standing here engaged today is a testament to the Lord, because we could not have ever gotten here on our own accord. There were way to many roadblocks for this to happen because of us.  I will still be working at HEAL for 2 years, so this won’t change any of that. John is still working as a mechanic with a local non-profit, but he is also looking for a better job with bigger companies around town. We are super excited to see what the Lord has in store for our future!

Mukwano means friend in the local tribal language called Luganda.

I have this mukwano. She is beautiful, strong, honest, and kind. I met her 5 years ago when I was first in Uganda. She works at a shop in town selling hand-made items to tourists that come through Jinja. At the time we first met, she was pregnant and the other interns and I would come visit her when we were in town and buy gifts from her shop for family back home. Little did I know, that relationship would blossom into a beautiful friendship over the years. I have had the privilege of watching her son, now 4½ years old, grow up. He calls me Auntie Bekah and runs and jumps into my arms when I see him. Sometimes I take him to get ice cream, and he tells me what he is learning in pre-school. He is funny, stubborn, friendly, and full of energy.

Whenever I am on main street I always try to go spend time with the two of them. I sit on the wooden stool and we talk about our day and anything that is happening in town. We talk about what God is teaching us. We talk about trauma and the scars that we carry from people who have hurt us, and how we carry on and process and grow from those hardships. We encourage each other to choose forgiveness, and we remind each other that love is not easy but it’s worth it. Our lives have been so very different, and yet so similar at the same time. We both want to be known and loved. We both desire friends who are kind and loyal. We both want to have fun and enjoy life. We both love our families dearly. Our day to day might look so different, and our cultures teach us different values and norms, but at the end of the day we are both humans who want to love and be loved and share the beautiful redemption of Christ with others because it has transformed our own lives. I am so thankful for my mukwano, and I am excited to see our friendship grow even deeper over the next 2 years.

At HEAL we have 80 kids in preschool, 65 in childcare, several women in our artisan program, and around 75 staff members. There are always a lot of people on the property, which means a lot of people for our social work department to help. I have so many ideas/dreams of things for the social workers to do at HEAL. I would love to see counseling increase, start grief therapy groups, social emotional groups for the preschoolers, education about the effects/preventions for childhood trauma, lessons on self-care, and so much more. I know a lot of these things will not happen over my two years here, but I am hopeful that I can work with the Ugandan social workers to implement some of them. I am excited to see HEAL grow over the next 2 years and see the ways we can provide more resources for the women and children that enter our gates. No organization is perfect and we definitely have ways that we could improve, but I wholeheartedly believe in the mission of keeping families together. The mothers we work with adore their children, they just need some help figuring out how to provide for their family.

I don’t have any pictures of the kids/staff at HEAL yet, and that is because I am getting to know them all first. We have a strict policy here that you must get to know people before you can take any pictures. I absolutely love this policy and I wish it was followed by everyone visiting countries in Africa. Way too often there are pictures on social media of adorable African kids posted by people who don’t even know the names of the children or have the child’s permission to post. Africans are constantly being exploited, so we have a policy at HEAL to try to prevent that from happening to our staff and kids.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of spending a day with another organization called Sole Hope. They are a local NGO working to educate and treat the problem of jiggers here in Uganda. Jiggers are a parasite that burrow themselves into the skin and lay eggs, spreading the number of jiggers that someone can have from 1 to hundreds. Jiggers are very stigmatized and are a huge issue here. Sole Hope has been educating Ugandans on how to prevent them and treat any patients they find who have jiggers. Every Thursday they have clinics where the staff goes out to a village, oftentimes a school/community center, and they remove jiggers, educate, and provide shoes. I’ve gone on a few clinics before, and I always really enjoy them. The staff are great and I love getting to see what other organizations here do.

HEAL does a great job of partnering with local organizations and referring people to other NGOs that could help if we are not able to help their needs. Several kids from a local orphanage come to HEAL for pre-school, and we send children with special needs to Ekisa. Jinja Pregnancy Care Center refers their single mothers and babies to us once the child is one year old. Partnerships are key to providing the best all-around care to the people of Jinja. I have seen a great improvement in organizations working together over the past 5 years that I’ve come to here, which is really encouraging to see.

Confidentiality is a HUGE part of social work, and therefore there is a lot that I do that I can’t share. It is important to keep a client’s information and story confidential. There will be times where I can share a story from the day, but my priority is and will continue to be the protection of the women and I children I work with. So just hang in there with me and know that I am working my best to safely explain what I am up to at work.

Here are a couple pictures of my apartment! I got curtains made and hung up some beautiful baskets on the wall. I’m getting a new/bigger bed made and also furniture for the porch so that I can sit outside and eat/read. I’ll post more pictures once they are done!

Hello from Uganda! I have been in Jinja for 10 days, and tomorrow I have my first day of work. I am super excited and ready to have something to do.

I am so thankful that my dad was able to come with me to Uganda and stay for a week! I loved getting to show him around Jinja and introduce him to all of my friends here. He was able to see where I’ll be working and meet all of the staff. We even got to spend a day at an amazing lodge built on a small island in the middle of the Nile River!

Wild Waters Lodge

Since my dad left I have been trying to get the apartment all ready and check things off my to do list. Some of the kitchen drawers needed knobs, I got a water filter, refilled the empty gas tank, and deep cleaned the whole place. There is still more I want to do to make this place feel like home, but it’s coming along and I’m beginning to settle in. I am thankful to be only a 10 minute walk from work!

It has been raining almost every day this past week. The rain here stops just about everything. Everyone goes indoors and there are no bodas (motorcycle taxis) to be found. The roads that aren’t paved turn into clay mud. I enjoy the way things slow down when it rains and everyone must surrender their plans until the storm lifts. Because it has been raining so much, it has been cold all week! I’ve worn long sleeve shirts and/or sweatshirts almost every day. Coming from the heat and humidity of summer in Nashville, I have been really cold and snuggled up in blankets as I drink coffee each morning. I am soaking it all in while it lasts, because I know dry season is coming.

I have loved getting to reconnect with friends here. Ruth still has a shop in town and her son Elijah is growing up so quickly. She was pregnant with him when I first met her, and it has been a gift to see Elijah grow over the past 4 years. Aaron told my dad funny stories from some of my summers spent working with him. Timothy is enjoying university and asked me to help with a social work assignment. John took my dad and I to visit his wonderful family.

I am doing well and have lots of peace about being here. I am excited to see what my first week of work will hold. I am just so ready to have a job where I get to do what I spent the last 4 years studying.

I can’t believe that in just a few days I’ll be on a plane heading to Uganda!

It has been 5 years since I first went to Uganda for a gap year before starting college at Belmont. Lately I’ve been thinking back to that experience and the naïve 19-year-old version of me that I had no idea what I was doing. Those 8 months in Uganda opened my eyes to so much, and I left with a passion to empower and fight for the equity of vulnerable and marginalized people. That is what led me to study social work at Belmont. I learned so much from my professors and cohort about how to step into crisis, support one another, fight for equity and social justice, and see the strength and gifts that lie in every human.

I got my BSW!

As I enter the workforce in Uganda, I am so thankful for an education that equipped me with the skills and knowledge I need to do this job. I will be working as a social worker with HEAL Ministries, a nonprofit I interned with during part of my gap year. HEAL’s goal is family preservation, a cause that is very important in Uganda because about 85% of the kids in Ugandan orphanages have identifiable and traceable family. HEAL walks alongside single mothers and equips them with employable skills while also providing childcare so that children have a safe place to learn and play while the mothers work or go to school. As one of the social workers on staff, I will be helping make the social work program more efficient and create more resources for the families at HEAL.

I am so excited to return to a culture and community that I love. If you know me well, you know that my face lights up every time I talk about Uganda because I love it so much. Living cross culturally makes me a better human. It pushes me out of my comfort zone and challenges my ways of thinking and living. It forces me to confront and work through my biases and ethnocentrism.

As this summer comes to a close, I am so thankful that I had time to relax, play, and prepare for this transition. I spent a lot of the summer nannying a little baby, and I had the honor of being in 2 weddings of dear childhood friends. I had lots of family time and was able to spend my final weekend at the lake, my favorite place to be.

It was a joy to celebrate Kristen marrying her best friend!

I have a mixture of emotions as I prepare to leave. Goodbyes are hard, but I am also hopeful and excited to see what the next 2 years will hold. Transition is bittersweet to say the least.