Back in Uganda

All is excellent in Uganda. I arrived in Kampala on Friday night without a hitch. All of our baggage showed up on the turnstile and we had a car waiting outside to drive us to town.

As I type “we,” I realize that I haven’t introduced my travel companions for this summer. MHIRT at CBU has two Uganda programs every summer: one team goes to Gulu to look at aspects of mental health (which has evolved into an art therapy study) and another team goes to Mbarara to research the interaction between indigenous and modern medicine.

Gulu Team:
Lanie Smith
Tai, Art Therapist
Lily Harmon-Gross, Research Intern
Me, Lindsay McClain, Research Intern

Mbarara Team:
Julia Hanebrink
Tesfa
Kara Miller, Research Intern
Joy Nolte, Research Intern

Since I’m involved with the Gulu team, most of these blog entries will relate to the people at that site so I’ll tell you a little bit about each of them. Lanie traveled to Gulu last year with MHIRT as a research intern, and she is now co-leading the Gulu site. She’ll begin a master’s in art therapy with Pratt University this summer, so she’ll be leaving Lily and I in mid-June to return to the U.S Tai is an accredited art therapist from Northern Carolina who also participated in last year’s MHIRT site in Gulu. She’ll arrive in Uganda in early July. Lily just graduated from the University of Tennessee with a master’s in anthropology. Her thesis research involved a stint in Ethiopia interviewing Eritrean refugees about the refugee process and torture.

On Saturday, Lanie, Lily, and I bought all of the art supplies for the first half of the study which will run until mid-June. We met with Vincent, my artist friend who teaches art a Naggalama and has traveled with me to Gulu before, and he gave us feedback on our outline and on where to buy supplies.

On Sunday, we all went to the Bahai temple and the man who hosts visitors inside the temple remembered me and was very gracious with answering questions and letting us look around. That night we went to Ndere Center and watched a montage of Ugandan traditional dances.

Today, Lily and I are waiting on Lanie to pick up our research permits, and then the three of us are heading up to Gulu. Never before have I left for Gulu so quickly after arriving in Uganda, and I’m happy to be getting settled there so soon.

More to come soon on the layout of our study in Gulu.