Home Sweet Home

Its raining today. And has been raining for the past 4 days straight. Rain is nice because it makes everything cool. But the trade off is the intense mud. I was actually surprised when I got here to see so many lawns. Lawn mowers aren't common but grass is kept short by cows grazing it or in lieu of that by men with machetes. Anyway while grass is prevalent many places, it is not anywhere around my house. We have dirt front and backyard. And we are on a hill. So when it rains and everything becomes a big mud pit it is extra slippery because it is on a slope. Anyway all the Ugandans are wearing rubber shoes or boots. I am protesting (Stephanie Wisbrock style) and wearing my Birkenstock sandals that I always wear.

I got home to Mukono yesterday from an amazing 11 days in Kapshorwa. I stayed with a family in the Sipi Falls area. Google it. Its so beautiful. I lived near the top falls and we hiked down a couple times to the bottoms falls. The house I stayed in was beautiful and my family was sweet and loud and fun. They were really excited to teach my things which was a welcome change from my Mukono family. I learned to make chipati, mandazi, posho, roasted g-nuts and coffee from the berry. We did a ton of hiking and visited swimming holes with little waterfalls. My host mom is a midwife at the local health center. I helped her give HIV tests to pregnant women and vaccines to kids. She taught me how to feel the belly to figure out the position of the baby. It was amazing to see her work. She went to university and is one of the only educated women in the area. Its fascinating to me that having lots of children is so highly valued in this culture and yet pregnant women are not at all valued. I talked with some of the women and made a fuss over their big belly or their newborn baby. They seemed to think I was strange but amusing. I was just happy to hold little babies!

My last night with my host family a women in labor showed up at our house. She was 25 and on her 4^th child. Throughout the night I learned that she did not want this baby and husband was the one who wanted it. My host mom had talked her out of getting an abortion in the beginning of her pregnancy but she had never gone for any checkups or anything. The woman, Alice, gave birth at 3:30 in the morning on a mat on our dirty kitchen floor. My mom caught the baby boy when he popped out and handed him to me. I cleaned the cord and cut it with a sterile razor blade. There was tons of blood from the birth. It ran in a stream down the floor and out into the hallway out the door. As soon as she delivered the placenta everyone started mopping up blood. I held the baby for hours because Alice was in too much pain to take him. Birth in Africa didn't seem like a beautiful miracle. It seemed painful and primitive and natural. No clean white hospital room. Just our dark kitchen with a charcoal stove warming tea in the corner. The baby was wrapped in an old shirt and a towel. He wasn't weighed or poked or prodded, he was just there. It seemed much more simple, good and bad, than in America. In the morning, after everyone had slept a couple hours it seemed more miraculous. Somewhere along the process I forgot that the end result would be a brand new person. They asked me if Kelsey was ever a boy's name and I said technically yes… So the baby boy is named Kelsey and he sort of looks like an alien. Before I left I got to see mom and baby bond. She had a look on her face like "maybe that was worth it…"

Anyway the trip was amazing. Its nice and somewhat frustrating to be home now. But that I will save for another post. Write me emails updating me on your lives! And Elizabeth if you are still reading I cannot find your blog.