Written on 2/09/10

Another very special day in Uganda. Since I didn’t sleep the night before, I slept like a baby last night- 10 hours! I mistakenly set my alarm for 7PM instead of AM, so I slept right through yoga. I woke naturally at 8am with just enough time to shower, pack my belongings, and eat some breakfast before departing for the birth center in Kasana.

$150K of the money raised last year is going to an organization called, “Shanti Uganda,” started by a woman named Natalie Angell. Natalie is from Vancouver and studied Ugandan history in college. She decided to travel to the country a few years ago and discovered that the birth practices in Uganda were very aggressive and negative. She wanted to provide women with information about safe and supported birth practices. When she connected with Off the Mat, her dreams of building an eco-birth house were realized. She chose the village of Kasana because of her connection to the current birth center there, started and run by a nun who is also a midwife. Natalie’s intention is for the new birth house to be a training center for midwives and dualas throughout Uganda. Women can visit, learn, and bring the information back to their own communities.

Kasana is an extremely remote village about an hour north of Kampala. Now we’re starting to see parts of Uganda that we imagined in our heads: the bush, the scattered mud homes and narrow, blood red roads. Usually when people need an Internet connection they have to drive to Kampala! When we arrived, we checked into the volunteer house, which is much nicer than any of us expected. I am sharing a small room with Sarah, one of the fellow seva participants. I feel lucky to have her in my room because she is a Duala back in the states and these next couple of days will be simply incredible for her.

After check-in, the group traveled about five minutes to get to the current birth center, to meet Natalie and the women in her “Women’s Group.” The group is comprised of 26 HIV positive women, chosen out of 600. Some of the women have children, some are pregnant. All of the women are on ARV’s while they’re in the program. They make necklaces out of recycled paper beads as well as fabric handbags for profit. Natalie makes sure everyone is paid equally each week, that the women learn to manage and save their money, and provides business training. After a certain period of time the women will graduate from the program and receive a certificate of completion. They set short term and long term goals together. They are encouraged to improve their nutrition while in the program. It took a while for the women to come together peacefully. Often, women are in competition with one another because polygamy is practiced in this part of Uganda. In the beginning, women were stealing from each other and trying to get others kicked out of the group. They’ve been together for a year now and because of the high standards that Natalie sets for them, things have become much better.

Forty years ago, Americans and Europeans came to Uganda and told the women that their birthing techniques (squatting and birthing at home) were not correct. In order for the health professionals to make more money, they told women that they must go to hospitals to give birth. Normally, they are simply told to get on a table and push. There is no support. A lot of Ugandan women fear hospitals and C-sections, and because of the typical birth practices, women often end up having c-sections. After one c-section is performed, it is very difficult for a woman to have another vaginal birth. Women here usually have between 4 and 10 children, and there are only so many c-sections a woman can have before she dies in childbirth. Shanti Uganda aims to change that, finding a balance between home and hospital. One woman is paired with a midwife for the duration of her pregnancy and the baby is brought into the world safely and thoughtfully. They’ve even building a birth pool in the new center for women that don’t want to squat.

Natalie told us that the husbands normally don’t want to be involved in their wives pregnancy and birth, so unless a woman has a birth center nearby, she has little or no support. Often, women do not want to have a lot of children. It is the husband’s desire to have as many children as possible, as it is a sign of status. If a man owns land, he also requires children to work the land. Of course, the men control everything, and if a woman wants to be on birth control, her husband or guardian must sign a waiver.

Although midwifery is illegal in Uganda, the village of Kasana has approved the center. The government officials will not support the center, but they have agreed not to shut it down. Due to the presence of the center, the value of the homes in the area has gone up, which is very good for the people there. It only cost five thousand dollars for Shanti Uganda to purchase the land.

Most of the women that come to the center will be HIV positive, so it is essential that they be provided with the medicine necessary to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child. Shanti Uganda will provide this to all of their mothers. The mothers will pay a very small fee for prenatal care, food from the organic garden, a private room to stay in for as long as they need after giving birth, and any medicine they require. There are about 50-70 births a month at the current birth center, and Natalie hopes to accommodate 40-50 births a month at the new birth house.

They hope to have the birth center up and running by the end of March of 2010! Our donations pay the Ugandan’s working on the site, a new vehicle to transport pregnant mamas, and the building of the center. It costs $50,000 to build the entire birth house! It really shows you how far $150K can go in Uganda.

The current birth center recently acquired a microscope so they can test for malaria onsite rather than sending the women somewhere else. As all of the women in the current women’s group have HIV, a secondary disease like malaria can be deadly, so testing and treatment can now be provided immediately.

The women greeted us with a lively, upbeat song. Everyone was beautifully dressed for the occasion. We immediately started singing and dancing with them, as we were lead into a small pavilion, women tossing recycled paper bead necklaces around our necks along the way. The nun/midwife that started the birth center was there and she gave the women a lesson in safe birth practices while we watched. Then the women sang two more songs for us and we sang one back. I got some of this on video! It’s simply beautiful. We were all laughing and dancing together, happy to meet one another. They had made us an intricate fabric banner with beads sewed in that said, “THANK YOU OFF THE MAT!” Many of us got teary, considering how long it must have taken to make the banner. I can’t remember smiling this much in a long time.

After our heart-felt greeting, we all sat down to lunch. The women cooked us delicious, hot Ugandan food- even better than what we ate yesterday for lunch. There’s this awesome purple peanut sauce that you can put on anything!

After lunch we split into groups to learn how to roll beads (I rolled 2 decent beads!) and teach yoga to the women. I taught Warrior 1 and even with the language barrier, we all did really well. It was really fun to just play in the grass, yogaing and dancing to Suzanne’s drum.

After several hours with the women we returned to the volunteer house to clean up. Sarah, my roommate, stayed behind to deliver a baby in the birth house! That evening we were split into groups of five to have dinner with one of the women from the group. It was like Thanksgiving! We ate a lot of the same food we had at lunch- beans, white rice, potatoes, mashed banana with peanut sauce, squash, spinach, watermelon, pineapple, pumpkin, passion fruit juice, cabbage, and more. There is a lot of starch in the Ugandan diet, so the hopes and dreams I had of losing weight on this trip are completely dashed. The house we ate in was very small, with just enough room for all of us to sit around a small table, packed with the food. There wasn't any electricity, so all we had was a small, battery powered light blub to see our food. The woman that prepared the food for us was so gracious and spoke little English. She did not eat while we were there, and she did not let us help set up or clean up. Ugandan hospitality is out of this world, and I found it hard to simply receive.

On our bus ride back to the volunteer house I thought back to how nervous I was about this trip, only a week ago. It seems so silly now. Each moment has held beauty all it’s own, I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s only been three days and I already feel forever changed. This journey is one of the greatest blessings of my life.