In Africa Together

I was working with Kristin (Brown) during the semester on her project in Uganda and Kenya. We had to create lesson plans for Dr. Page's class and do a report on our work with an NGO for Warner Woodworth's class. So what better place to concentrate on than Uganda. Our work in Kenya involved Koins for Kenya, the NGO that Kristin is a board member of. In Uganda we worked with Reach the Children to implement the Grow.Learn.Give Program, which Kristin and her mission companion Michelle had started. Anyway, I had expected merely to work with Grow.Learn.Give from Utah, although I knew that Kristin was planning a trip for November. In October, we came across the Fulton Fund for which an application was due at the end of the week. We decided to go for the grant as a long shot for both Kristin and I to go to Africa for free. Unexpectedly, we got the funding. The next step was to break it to Derek that Kristin and I would be going back to his mission in Kenya without him. I finally told him and we got to discussing possibilities of him coming with us. He did a lot of research to get funding to create a documentary on the Grow.Learn.Give Program and on Koins for Kenya. Most of the attempts were unsuccessful. In the end, I told Kristin about our dilemma, and she and her friends arranged partial funding for Derek to come and be our videographer. We had to buy equipment for Derek to use (which he later sold for a profit), but we were very excited to be going to Africa together for the first time. As we might have mentioned before, we first became interested in each other when we learned that we had both lived in Africa and could speak Swahili. Now we would get the chance to visit East Africa together. We left on Oct 28 and returned Nov 9. The first week was spent in Kampala, Uganda where we stayed in a nice (by Africa standards) hotel. We worked with two wonderful people: Patrick and Madinah. Patrick was the director of Reach the Children and Madinah had expressed the need for a program like Grow.Learn.Give which addressed menstruation education and supplies for primary and secondary school girls. We went around to different schools that had started to implement the Grow.Learn.Give Program and conducted interviews and focus groups to assess the progress. It was just wonderful to interact with the children and have them sing to us (see pictures below). On the Saturday of Derek's birthday, we took a trip to Jinja where we rafted the headwaters of the Nile. Sadly (and luckily) the waters were not as intense as I remembered from my previous trip to Uganda, as a damn had been constructed which slowed down the rapids. Grade 5 rapids are still intense, even if they're not as good as I remember. After completing our work in Uganda we left for Mnyenzeni, Kenya - a small village. It was quite a change from the fast-paced capital of Uganda. Kristin was there to represent the board at a neonatal resuscitation workshop. We didn't attend much of it, but went around to the village taking video and pictures of the people. Koins had implemented a program to provide lights for some of the best students so that they could study in their homes even after dark. Derek created some wonderful documentaries on the work done there, which we will try to attach to this post. It was so wonderful to speak Swahili again. The people have so much more respect for you if you speak the language. We also met a wonderful guy, Anthony, who directed the Koins for Kenya Program. One exciting event that occurred during our time there was the election of Barack Obama as president. All of Kenya went nuts when they heard that "their son" had become president of the United States. It was fun and inspirational to see. We reluctantly left Kenya at the end of the week and returned home. By this time I had some serious suspicions that I was pregnant as my period was late (sorry for underage readers)and I had begun to experience slight stomach problems. By the time I got home, my illness had become stronger, so I decided to visit the clinic. I found out that I was indeed pregnant and decided to surprise Derek. It was a difficult week transitioning back from Africa, having morning sickness, and worst of all, having to defend my thesis. But by Thurs. evening it was all over (at least the jet lag and the thesis). I was too sick to go out to a restaurant, so we ordered in, and I gave Derek a "birthday" card congratulating him on our pregnancy. He had a fun reaction. I wish I could have taken a picture. So that in a nutshell is our trip to Africa and the week after. I'm so thankful that we got the chance to do that together, as we may not be able to do something like that again for a long time.