Go to Uganda! Feel like a rockstar!

So here's what I learned: if you ever want to feel like you're serious hot stuff... visit an Ugandan highschool as a mzungu.

You all remember who Straight Talk Foundation is, right? Because you actually made it through that obnoxiously dense "Why is Daniel in Uganda" post, right? Riiiiiiight. So STF's real gig is promoting health in adolescents (we're just using their clubs for our own financial-education ends). They do this in a variety of ways: monthly newspapers, radio programs and on-call visits, to name a few. For the project I'm working on with them, I need to get an idea of what STF actually does and what the clubs actually look like.

Sooooo a couple Fridays ago, I was invited along with some of the STF staffers for an on-call visit to a highschool on the outskirts of Kampala. For these "on-call" visits, a member of a club contacts STF and asks them to basically come do a presentation for the school (or just for the club, if it's an out-of-school club). "Cool!" I thought "I'll get to sit down and chat with some club members and learn about what they do and how to make our little financial education intervention work!". Well... not so much. But more on that in a moment.

We arrived at the school and were greeted by the headmaster. The school itself was... sobering. I would have liked to take pictures to share, but I decided that being young whitey in the middle of a school in the middle of the school-day taking pictures miiiiight seem a little bit exploitative/insulting. So you'll all just have to share in my mental images. See them? Think reeeeeally hard - I'm sending them your way.
Honestly it's kind of hard to describe in any concrete terms. Just imagine, well, a really really run-down school. If it's indicative of anything, the "urinal" was essentially a gutter running along one wall of the "bathroom" with little walls separating spaces.

The headmaster ushered us into the assembly room and called all the kids in the school to file in. After an extended introductory thank-you-for-coming speech (Ugandans value politeness almost to a fault) and a lively we-love-our-school song (Ugandans seem to love making songs for everything), the headmaster asked us to introduce ourselves. Our little posse consisted of 5 STF staffers and myself. They introduced themselves one by one (Ugandan school-kids do that strange all-somehow-know-to-say-the-exact-same-thing-at-the-exact-same-time-in-the-exact-same-tone-in-response-to-adults-saying-things thing just like Amreican students!) - greeting the kids, saying their name and what they did. Each one got a polite bit of applause/thank-you, and then (dim the lights, cue the suspenseful music) MZUNGU DANIEL!

Seriously. All I did was say "I'm Daniel. I'm from Innovations for Poverty Action and I'm just here to listen and watch." and the place ERUPTED. I mean, we're talking Justin Timberlake walking into an all-girls boarding school. We're talking Leonardo Dicaprio immediately post-Titanic at my elementary school. We're talking The Indigo Girls anywhere in the Bay Area.

MADNESS. It was a solid 3 minutes of continuous cheering. To the point that the headmaster tried and failed to get everyone to shut up, and just had to wait for the tide of mzungu Daniel-inspired hysterics to run their course.

I have arrived.


So THAT was the biggest ego-boost I've had in a little while (just a little while, though). The rest of the visit was pretty entertaining, if not terribly helpful for my goal of learning more about Ugandan adolescents' financial needs. Turns out that teenagers in Uganda want to talk about the EXACT same thing that teenagers in America want to talk about: sex. And genitalia. And sex. And reproductive health. And sex. And relationships. And sex.

The group was broken into older and younger, and the older group into boys and girls. Each group was facilitated by an STF staffer, who had the students write anonymous questions on papers and pass them up. I rotated around among the three groups and, while maintaining my blank observer exterior, found myself giggling internally quite a bit for how much the whole deal resembled 8th grade health class.

I did come away with a good amount of respect for what STF does. They very much focused their approach on minimizing STD risk (particularly AIDS), unplanned pregnancy and unhealthy relationships. I was glad to hear that their approach is, well, realistic: rather than preaching all abstinence all the time, they acknowledged that some of the students are sexually active and focused on making sure that they were at least equipped with the knowledge to be healthily so. Kudos, STF.


This week I will actually be doing some more traveling around in preparation for my other project. Unfortunately, I don't think I can expect the same sort of uproarious welcome from microfinance bank staff... but who knows?
Tomorrow to Kamuli (a couple hours east of Kampala), spending the night in Jinja, then to Iganga (I think about an hour north of Jinja) Tuesday, then Kireka and Kawempe on Wednesday and Thursday (both on the outskirts of Kampala). Should be interesting! Daniel gets to wake up tomorrow and put on his big boy pants and pretend like he knows what the hell he's doing. Stay tuned!


Aaaaaand because every blog post should have a photo or two, Lisa and I on Halloween:




And the Nile: it's not just a river in Egypt... it's a river in Uganda too!