From the field: Bugembe on my mind

At home in Bugembe with some of the kids

Dara Carroll is an SIT Study Abroad Uganda alum and a 2010 Alice Rowan Swanson Fellow. Carroll will be a featured blogger from October – April, sharing stories from her project site in Bugembe, Uganda. Check back to follow Dara on her continued work in Uganda.

As my departure date draws closer my mind is drifting back towards Uganda, to my life there. I am returning to my Bugembe home in Uganda thanks to the Alice Rowan Swanson Fellowship, which has given me a grant to continue working on mental health issues there. During a total of a year in Uganda I have lived with, worked with, and learned from families dealing with mental health illness in both the capital city, Kampala, and the much smaller town of Bugembe. Although there are many challenges, I was struck by two, one being particular to Bugembe. The first was that in the process of care, many family members and friends were limiting the patients’ opportunities for personal growth and agency. The second was that the only mental health worker in the Bugembe area, Emmanuel Mufumba, a psychiatric clinical officer, was forced to work in a storage closet. A small one.

Fortunately, the Rowan Swanson Fellowship Fund is designed to help young people like me address these types of issues. The grant I received, in combination with personal donations from my friends and family, will provide  funding for a new mental health clinic, where Musawo (“Doctor”) Mufumba can more effectively treat patients with mental illness in an appropriately private setting. The new building will also provide a home for the mental health support group, Atanekontola. The group, founded by Mufumba, has gotten family members, patients, and community supporters involved in efforts to decrease the stigma of mental illness. As I have no experience designing and building clinics, my days will be filled with the work of Atanekontola rather than setting bricks. My hope is to involve group members in an effort to promote the rights of patients to make decisions about their lives and treatment.

All that still seems somehow far away, however. I know that in a matter of days I will be deeply enmeshed in conversations about patients’ rights, and the best possible color for the new shutters. But for now I am thinking of a little house a few kilometers up the hill from the clinic and my work. It is the home of Mufumba and his large, welcoming family. It will also be my home for roughly the next six months. Having spent a month there last summer, I know I can reasonably expect to be greeted by several things. Certainly there will be one of jjajja (grandma) and Mama Rose’s delicious stews. From the children I have been missing there will be a mixture of frightened delight (as a white woman is still an unfamiliar sight there) and sticky kisses. Most certain of all, there will be many, many surprises. For that, I am grateful, scared, and immensely excited.