Update from Uganda

Two weeks ago we traveled to Queen Elizabeth National Park in Western Uganda. Because we were are not too comfortable with public transport and didn’t have much time, we took a private hire. The private driver drove us the 4½ hour drive for less than $20 each (imagine taking a taxi for that amount of time in the States…) National Parks are MUCH different than in the United States. When we think of National Park, we think signs and roads and scenic points and officially sanctioned and organized things. Things are just a little different here. There
is no transport within the park (which is hundreds of square kilometers) so you need a driver to take you everywhere. This is because it can easily be an hour drive to get to what you want to do and because there are animals everywhere and you can’t just walk around. Even on our drive in we had to stop of a group of elephants crossing the road.

Luckily we were right next to the visitor center and were able to figure certain activities out there. Saturday evening we took a boat ride down the channel. From the boat we saw herds of buffalo and elephants, tons of beautiful birds, crocodiles, a few monkeys, and breathtaking mountains. We rode right next to herds of hippos, which was both scary and awesome. The tour was very easy going but great. The landscapes were amazing. I had no idea how diverse the park would be. We had dinner at the hostel and had a relaxing evening just hanging out.

In the morning we woke up early because it is best to see animals at sunrise. Some people in our group went on a chimp tour, but myself and a few others decided to do something cheaper. We hired a driver to take us to a forest where we could do a nature walk, but as we were in the car he got a call from his brother who is a safari driver. He said they knew where a pride of lions was, which is rare and difficult to find. So we scrapped the forest and did a driving safari. Tons of other safari cars were there when we drove up to the lions, but we waited for all of them to leave so we could drive up closer. And by closer I mean I was a few feet from a lion. It was unreal. We also saw antelope, herds of buffalo, more birds, and mongoose on the drive. It was great because it showed us the more savannah side of the park.

After we returned, we went to the nice lodge near by for a good lunch. I got a cheese pizza which was HEAVEN. American foods like pizza, even something as simple as cheese, is unheard of. Then we took the same private hire back this afternoon. I can’t believe it all worked out as well as it did. It was very relaxing but we got to see tons of things and I managed not to spend loads of money.

The past two weeks of work have been good at times, bad at others. It is often difficult to be productive because things move at a different pace here. However, I was able to do a great amount of research about SACCOs and Microfinance options in Masaka. I was also able to go into the field to see some of the projects people need loans. My favorite was the pineapple farm that had 17,000 pineapples! I was given a delicious pineapple as a gift... yum!

The other place I have seen is Lake Nambugabu. This weekend was the midterm retreat for all the FSD interns, and so we all went to a nice retreat center on the lake. It was extremely low key and relaxing. It was awesome to just hang out in the sun, go out on the boat and be in a quite setting.

Thats a lot of information for now, but believe it or not I'm over half way done and will be home 4 weeks from today!
Hope all is well,
Erin

Update from Uganda

by Erin Byrne

I have officially been in Uganda for over 2 weeks now. Already I noticed a huge difference in my level of comfort since a week ago. My week in a nutshell consisted of a slow first week of work. It took a while for the people I am working with to warm up to me, but things have improved each day, and I am sure they are going to continue to do so. On Friday the other interns and I rented a hotel room for the night, went out to dinner, and had a good evening being just us. It was a much needed break for some people after 2 weeks in our host families. I, luckily, am having a great time with my amazing family.

Questions people have been asking that you might want to know about:

What exactly are you doing for work?
I am working for South Buganda Teacher’s SACCO Microfinace. (SACCO stands for Savings and Credit Co Operation.). This week was for observation. I was taught their paperwork process, shown the computerized system they are trying to move to, taught their accounting methods, and briefed by each person on what they did for
the organization. This first week was less than exciting, but in the 7 weeks I have left I am sure things will get better. I am responsible for identifying an issue relevant to the organization, thinking of a project to improve the issue, creating a proposal and budget for the project, implementing it, and ensuring it is sustainable. There are some pretty ridiculously inefficient and ineffective things about the organization, so there are many opportunities for me. I should have the opportunity to go visit clients in the field more next week, which is what I am interested in. I hope to make my project assist those that can’t get loans currently by helping start a group loan option in the organization.

What am I eating?
The food isn’t bad. Meals consist of what they call “food” and “sauce”. Food to them are basic starches like matooke, potatoes, yams, and rice. Then the “sauce” is the beans, nut sauce, or chicken broth you mix with the “food”. They taste fine, really, and things could be much worse if they served food that was crazy gross or didn’t settle with my stomach. But they don’t understand the concept of variety. It is not a matter of money- they really just don’t think a meal is acceptable unless it is served in this format. They could easily cook chicken with spices and steamed veggies, or mashed potatoes, or sliced bananas, or sandwiches, or pasta, but they have no desire to. They like to serve the same foods prepared the same way for both lunch and dinner, especially matooke. Matooke is a banana like food that comes in big bunches which they bake on coals wrapped in big leaves. The result is a pile of mush similar to mashed potatoes but with less
taste. Literally they make it twice a day. It isn’t easy or quick to prepare, it doesn’t stay good long, and it doesn’t have much flavor, but everyone here SWEARS by it. I don’t get it. Generally I have African tea (which is milk tea with tons of sugar= delicious) and bread for breakfast, a traditional meal as described above with my host family for dinner, and for lunch I usually buy a few oranges, a
chocolate bar and water because I am trying to diversify my solely carb intake. Other food related thing to complain about: eating times. Lunch is around 1 or 2 pm, tea is served around 730 or 8pm, and dinner around 930 or 10pm. On the weekends this is all even later. There is also no concept of snacks or leftovers that you can eat between meals (other than perhaps a slice of bread) and it is impolite to ask for food outside of meals. So my stash of peanut m&ms, nature valley bars, goldfish, raisins and peanut butter has been key to my survival. I
have been doing a pretty good job or rationing.  Craziest thing I have eat? Fried Grasshoppers. They are in season now and a delicacy. They aren’t my favorite, but if prepared right I can eat enough to be polite.

What do I do with my free time?
There is not that much free time like in the same sense in America. That is because it takes a long time to do anything here. Getting places takes about 20 to 40 minutes walking from my house. But the culture is generally very relaxed and I have rarely felt stressed.  I walk to town normally every day for work or to go to the internet café. At home, I usually watch NTV which shows ridiculous dubbed
Spanish soap operas, a few random American programs like old seasons of American Idol or America’s Next Top Model, hang out with my precious 2 year old sister, or spend time reading, journaling or watching Friends in my room.

I think thats enough information for now. Hope everyone is doing well in America (or Ireland or wherever you are that you are receiving these emails)!
Love Erin

On 20 September 1845, The Nation advertised: 

Frederick Douglas [sic], recently a slave in the United States, intends to deliver another lecture in the Music-Hall, Lower-Abbey street, on Tuesday evening next, 23rd instant, at eight o’clock.  Doors to be open at half-past seven o'clock. Admission, by tickets, to be had at the door.  Promenade - fourpence. Gallery - twopence.

The 27year old Douglass, an escaped slave, had rendered himself famous with the publication of his bestselling Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave. He arrived in Dublin in August 1845, and he stayed in Ireland for four months. He delivered highly successful and well-received abolitionist speeches in Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Belfast. His flamboyant and hard-hitting oratory, combined with sensational props - whips, handcuffs, and chains - made him a hit.

He met his hero Daniel O’Connell in September 1845, who introduced him to a Repeal Meeting as ‘the Black O’Connell’. Douglass had long admired ‘The Liberator’ for his principled stand against the ‘foul stain’ of American slavery, and the leading abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison had named his newspaper The Liberator, in his honour. O’Connell had contemptuously dismissed Irish-American money from slave states: ‘I want no American aid, if it comes across the Atlantic stained in American blood’. O’Connell never wavered on slavery, and sought to link Irishness and opposition to oppression ‘wherever it rear[ed] its head’. He asserted that  ‘Ireland and Irishmen should be foremost in seeking to effect the emancipation of mankind’, because the Irish ‘had themselves suffered centuries of persecution’. With Douglass in the audience he uttered the powerful words: ‘My sympathy with distress is not confined within the narrow bounds of my own green island.  No—it extends itself to every corner of the earth.  My heart walks abroad, and wherever the miserable are to be succored, and the slave to be set free, there my spirit is at home, and I delight to dwell’.

O’Connell called for ‘speedy, immediate abolition’ in 1831 and attacked the white republic and American hypocrisy, remaining consistent and principled on this issue even when it hurt him with the Irish-American constituency. In his opinion, shared oppression should have nurtured a political affinity between Irish Catholics and African-Americans and he was puzzled as to why the Irish embraced ‘cruelty’ in America by supporting the slavery cause O’Connell personally declined to set foot in the USA while it remained a slave society. His efforts were recognised within America. In 1833, the African American church in New York held a meeting honouring O’Connell: ‘the uncompromising advocate of universal emancipation, the friend of oppressed Africans and their descendants and the unadulterated rights of man’.

Douglass was enraptured by his Irish experience:  ‘I have spent some of the happiest moments of my life since landing in this country.  I seem to have undergone a transformation. I live a new life’. He was also heartened by the success of the edition of his narrative printed in Dublin by the veteran abolitionist Quaker R. D. Webb.

Douglass had long wanted to visit Ireland. He credited his escape from Baltimore to the advice given him there by two Irish dockers, and he trained himself in oratory through studying the speeches in an American publication –The Columbian Orator of 1797 [‘Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book’], modelling his speaking style on that of Arthur O’Connor and Richard Brinsley Sheridan: ‘I met there one of Sheridan's mighty speeches, on the subject of Catholic Emancipation’. He was also inspired by O’Connell and the style of African-American oratory was forged when this flamboyant Irish tradition fused with the call and response and testamentary preaching style of the African-American church. Douglass bequeathed that style to Martin Luther King, his great successor in the civil rights movement. In turn that style also informs the oratory of Barrack Obama, who lists Frederick Douglass as his historical hero and role model. When the President spoke at College Green, he stood in front of a building, the Parliament House which could be regarded as the birthplace of his speaking style, and he spoke warmly of the relationship between O’Connell and Douglass.

In the same week, the direct descendants of Frederick Douglass were for the first time visiting Ireland, at the invitation of Don Mullan. His great great granddaughter Nettie Washington Douglass and her son Kenneth Morris were warmly greeted by the president of Ireland, attended the launch of a new Dublin edition of the Narrative, and visited Daniel O’Connell’s residence at 58 Merrion Square, now owned by the University of Notre Dame. It was a poignant moment. Like their ancestor, the Douglasses felt warmly treated in Ireland. On their taxi trip in from the airport, they were astonished when the driver refused to take a fare, saying that he regarded it as a honour to have them in his car.

‘Hangover Part 3’ could be made in Dublin

Speculation has begun on the location for the third installment of the “Hangover” franchise, and rumors are surfacing that it could take place in Dublin. The wolf pack could live their third and final wild night in the streets of Ireland’s capital, following their outlandish Las Vegas and Bangkok experiences. The star of the movie Bradley Cooper, said that although he did not want people to “get ahead of themselves” regarding a sequel, he admitted that he would “definitely” consider Dublin as their next destination. "We're just going to wait and see what happens with the second one,” he said. “Hopefully people will like it, but right now we're just focused on getting the second one out there." Although critics were not at all impressed, “The Hangover Part II” broke records for a comedy film’s debut in the United States by taking in $103.4m (€71.5m) over the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend, and an impressive $2.1 (€1.5m) in Ireland. Warner Bros is remaining tight-lipped about the possible third movie, but one executive was quoted as saying that a "third movie is all but a given." "I think if there is going to be a third one, it will be the final one," co-screenwriter Craig Mazin said. "We've got a couple of ideas we're kicking around." One of those ideas might have Dublin as the city of choice, which would surely please the cast members. If the movie executives choose Ireland’s capital as the next location, the Irish community is in for the queen of all “Hangovers.”