Be Still and Know

Among the many lessons, facts, and words I have learned in Uganda, arguably the most important is the meaning of Psalm 46. I have, by necessity, had to learn to be still. Anyone who knows me can attest that this task is quite difficult for me. I don't like to be still. To the contrary, I enjoy filling every minute of my life and calendar. Some may call it an addiction to busyness or masochism... I call it efficiency. I want to get the most out of every minute I have on this earth, and sometimes I misguidedly pursue that mission by trying to do everything. Unfortunately, God created us biologically, spiritually, and emotionally to need rest. When we neglect that need, bad things happen.


As I have noted, work proceeds slowly. I have ample downtime in the afternoon and on weekends. Even during the day, I sometimes sit and read or catch up on email because I'm waiting on the girls or there is simply nothing I can do. At first, I felt anxious and guilty that I wasn't busy, making myself useful. While that feeling remains, I'm starting to ease into the notion that things happen on a different time-scale here... that it's okay to relax.

Even in conversations with people, we feel the need to fill our pauses with "um"s and "like"s, and every silence is an 'awkward silence.' Here, it's okay to just be. It is satisfying enough to just be in the presence of others, to walk along the dirt road or sit under the mango tree without filling the empty space with meaningless words.

Amid the chaos of American life, God's whispers are drowned out by everything else screaming for my attention. Noise fills the space between me and my Creator. But when I can just sit and be still, God begins to speak. Well, I guess He's been speaking all along. I just couldn't hear Him. Here, I can know Him. I can look out at His creation, the beauty that all of our technology and artistry fails to grasp or recreate. The beauty that springs up from the ground and just happens. Not for any explicit reason. Not to add some color to an apartment complex or a border to the street. It's just there. Because God made it. Because He delights in beauty. Because He delights in His creation.

I was especially convicted of this when visiting Baker's Fort with the InterVarsity team (a group visiting from America) last weekend. Just a 20 minute drive from the Centre lies a national historical site. The Arabs used this fort to hold, sort, and execute slaves until Samuel Baker, a European explorer looking for the source of the Nile, overcame the fort and freed the slaves who were imprisoned there. The stories and sights were heart-wrenching, imagining starving women being forced to live in a 2-foot tall cavity under a rock and seeing the ax marks in the stone from countless murders of those 'unfit' to be sold. Despite all of the horror that happened there, the site was paradoxically beautiful and peaceful. I sat on a rock with this as my view and just relaxed into the beauty and quiet of nature.

God even left some of His own works of art at the fort. Among them, a rock in the shape of a shark and a stone slab in the shape of Africa. Two cracks run down the center and top of the African map suspiciously close to the Tropic of Cancer and Prime Meridian, and when it rains a puddle naturally forms at about the analogous location of Lake Victoria.

Another adorable work of nature, our new house guest is much more appreciated than the rooster. Michael is keeping his new puppy at the guest house until he takes her down to Kampala. She's so adorable. I gave her a bath on the first night, and she was not happy about it. But about 5 shampoos later, she was clean and happy.

As I briefly mentioned, there are visitors here from InterVarsity New England and Focus (the Uganda analog to InterVarsity). It's great to have some Americans to share with, and they have been so kind to me. I have enjoyed their sessions and company and will certainly miss them when they leave on Tuesday. An added surprise, Petek (the MIT InterVarsity staff) is on the trip! I have received many emails from her and heard her name on campus, but I just met her here in Uganda! It truly is a small world after all.

Among my other adventures this week, I learned to make samosas and mugati malim (sweet bread). I also ran my 2nd test with the girls-- a much simplified and adapted version of the Wisconsin Card Sort Test. It calls on many aspects of executive function, most prominently the function of task switching. In this exercise, the participant sorts a series of cards into 3 piles labeled with a red triangle, blue circle, or green square. The sorting cards are any permutation of these 3 shapes and colors. The participant sorts by color or shape, with the instructions switching every 12 cards. This task is actually much more difficult than it appears. When the instructions change, it is easy to continue sorting using the previous instructions (a mistake called a perseveration error). The frequency of these errors indicates the development of various executive function processes, including inhibition and attentional control.

Day of the African Child

Rainy season is finally upon us (granted, a few weeks late). The mornings are cool and foggy, and the Ugandan staff come to the office with winter coats on. They would not survive in Boston! Haha. But the cool weather is a nice change. And Uganda is even more beautiful in the rain. The landscape turns a darker shade of green, and light reflects off the water droplets hanging on every leaf.

Last week was slow. Not much to report, work-wise. On Friday, one of the ChildVoice staff brought over his projector and Iron Man 3 (in Kampala, they sell movies that are still in theaters). We ordered pizza and had a movie night! The rest of the weekend pretty much consisted of watching Big Bang Theory on my computer (I finished Season 1 and part of Season 2) and walking around town, buying gifts to bring home.

We are also pet/meal-sitting Michael's chicken... which turns out to be a rooster. It is kind enough to make sure I'm awake at 5am.. and every 15 seconds thereafter. I think its voice box is going bad too. I swear, sometimes I think there is a pterodactyl outside my door.

Yesterday was the Day of the African Child (well, technically it was Sunday, but it was celebrated yesterday). Gulu hosted a celebration with the theme: "Eliminateing Harmful Social and Bad Cultural Practices That Affects Children: Our Collective Responsibility." Each school presented a song, dance, speech, or skit.. or all four.. or several of each. It was meant to start at 8 but didn't actually start until 12 or so. Africa Time strikes again. I loved seeing the traditional dances and little ones trying to sing through a 10 minute song without running out of breath. There was even a comedian, who painted his face white and dressed like a hillbilly. The Ugandans were hysterical!

Some things that I learned this week:

1. Mono is another word for Mzungu (white person). The kids kept calling me Mono, so I finally asked and figured it out.
2. A restaurant across town, called Sankofa, makes Banana pancakes! Best find yet.
3. Jack fruit is delicious.
4. White people are treated like pregnant women. Okay, I already knew this, but it is especially prominent here. If I'm standing for more than 60 seconds, someone quickly brings a chair for me and forces me to sit. If I even try to lift something, one of the girls takes it from me. And no matter how hard I try, I can't get anyone else to sit in front in the van.
5. Gulu has yoga! I saw this place on my way to Sankofa, and apparently Hope comes sometimes. Definitely going to try this out. My makeshift mini workouts in my room are not cutting it.
6. Cassava is actually a root. I always thought it was a leafy green.
7. Among the many Acholi superstitions, there is a loosely-held belief that going outside in the rain makes one grow!
8. Being unable to pronounce Acholi words is a great way to make friends with the girls. They point to something for me to name and then laugh hysterically when I butcher the name. At least we're conversing!

Unexpected advantages of living in Africa:

1. Cold showers feel amazing after a long day in the sun.
2. My callouses are finally coming back! I haven't been dancing barefoot, so my feet are weak and get cut easily. But walking all day in unsupported shoes is making my feet strong again.
3. The malaria medicine gives me awesome vivid dreams. I usually don't dream (or don't remember my dreams, for the technically-inclined reader). However, the approximate doubling of my sleep time may play a role as well.
4. Everything is so cheap! Movies are 2500 shillings ($1) and a TV show season is 5000 shillings ($2). I can get a huge plate of rice, posho, sweet potatoes, and beef for 5000 shillings ($2). Mangoes fall from the trees for free, and roasted maize is sold on every street corner for 500 shillings (20 cents).

 More pictures from the center:

The girls in Saloon class

One of the girls with her sons

Making delicious sweet bread

Photoshoot with kitty

Kitty being an Asian emoticon

Kitty being silly

Research in Uganda: a work in progress

I'm beginning to understand why I couldn't find much literature of research in Africa. From language barriers to far-less-than-ideal experimental conditions, collecting clean data is near impossible. And "African time" is living up to its reputation. A week and a half since arriving here, I finally started my project. I'm very quickly learning to be patient and to tame my type-A need for efficiency and busyness.

After an extensive lit review and conversations with Winnie--the center's counselor-- I've decided to look primarily at the possible executive function (EF)* deficits resulting from intense prolonged childhood trauma. Yes, that's pretty vague, but so is the literature. So I'm starting broad and will hopefully be able to narrow down to more specific problems as I collect more data. I started yesterday with the simplest and oldest EF test in the book-- digit span**. I'm glad I did, because running that simple test was far more complicated and confound-ridden than I expected. In designing the next tests (which will undoubtedly be more complicated and more sensitive to confounds), I will have to take great care to make sure they run as smoothly as possible. I'm trying to minimize use of the computer in these tests (as most of the girls are not familiar with computers), which adds another difficulty in design and data collection... wish me luck.

In other news, I'm settling into life here. Bosco (our driver) is teaching me some Luo (the language of the northern Uganda Acholi people). Most of my vocabulary consists of food names and random greetings (which I butcher), but I'm determined to successfully carry a short conversation with a Ugandan by the end of the summer.

P.s. I'm at a cafe right now about to watch the Uganda Cranes play Liberia in football. Who do I cheer for??

And finally, more pictures:

Our stray kitty. We feed her our scraps, but she runs away every time we get close. I'm determined to hold her by the end of the summer.

Adorable kitty in a tree

The Acholi people have their fill of superstitions. Frogs, like caterpillars, are assumed to be poisonous. They say that they will hold a snake before holding a frog!

More of beautiful baby Ivan

Blessing loves hanging with the Mzungu (white person)

Just chillin'

Classic dish- posho (ground maize/white corn) and morongo (beans)

* Executive function is a broad term used to refer to frontal lobe cognitive processes, such as planning, decision making, working memory, and attention.

** The digit span task is a simple test of working memory-- the kind of memory you use when holding information in your mind (for example, reading a phone number and remembering it until you walk across the room to your phone to dial it). It presents you with a sequence of numbers, which you then repeat from memory. The length of the sequence increases by 1 until you can no longer remember all of the numbers-- hence giving an estimate of your working memory span (or how many pieces of information you can hold in mind at once).

Lukodi Centre

It's Saturday here, and Monday is a national holiday (Martyr's Day, which I'll try to explain in another post)--which means, 3 day weekend! I went out to the Centre yesterday, where I will be spending much of my time working with the girls. It's about a 20 minute drive from the town, and it's absolutely beautiful!

We arrived at the center around 8:30 am, left at 3:30, and lounged around for most of the day. Things here definitely follow "African time." I met with Winnie, the counselor, and watched as she interviewed 3 of the girls, gathering their stories to aid in their healing process. The girls' children were running around everywhere, being adorable as always.

It's mango season, so there were mango's falling all around us. One missed my head by about an inch. Winnie swore that she would eat 50 by the end of today and tried to get me to do the same... I only got to 2, but they were delicious!




The struggle of the day at the Centre was... Caterpillars! They are terrified of them! Haha. Spiders, snakes, lizards-- they don't mind, but don't dare ask them to touch a caterpillar. They tried every method possible--which pretty much consisted of pouring various poisons and liquids on them--to get rid of them and finally just resorted to setting them on fire...that worked.

I have a lot of down time in the afternoon and have already finished one of my books (Kisses from Katie-- highly recommended). It has been cool, and the skies have been tempting us with rain, but none yet. I'm currently sitting in the Coffee Hut (think-- Uganda alternative to Starbucks) enjoying the free wifi. Even here, I need my coffee. :) There are significantly more white people here than I ever saw in Liberia, and this seems to be the place that most of them hang out. Way to fulfill those sterotypes! Haha.

My American friend, Gary, has been showing me around. He works for ChildVoice and has been here for several months. He's attempting to grow some vegetable in the backyard. The sweet corn may be done by the time I leave in August! Last night, he made chili--which is a significantly more impressive feat here. Everything takes about 10 times longer to cook.

Grace has been cooking for us and cleaning our beautiful home. Charles keeps watch over us day and night.

Our backyard

Uganda is already very different from what I expected, but I'm loving it! It's beautiful and busy and friendly, all at the same time. The people are kind and loving. The kids are adorable. The dirt is red. And the sun is warm. I'm looking forward to getting started on my project and getting to know the girls. For now, Happy Martyr's Day!