Experience: Larissa van den Wijngaert, Uganda and Ghana

After finishing my Bachelor Psychology I decided to do something different. I wanted to do voluntary work and heard about AIESEC. My idea was to go to Africa for 3-4 months. Unfortunately most projects were only 6-8 weeks. Somebody suggested: why not two internships in two different countries? Yeah, why not? So I decided to go to Uganda (East Africa) and Ghana (West Africa), all by myself.

Before I came to Africa, I had this image that we, Europeans, see on TV: sad kids, sitting alone outside with no home, no food... The image I had about Africa was not correct at all. Of course there are some kids who live like that. But where I lived, the kids made their own playground and played like they were the happiest kids on earth.
In the beginning I was a little bit overwhelmed by the kids running to you, touching and hugging you and being called ‘Mzungu’, which means ‘white person’ or foreigner. From miles away they saw me coming and started shouting ‘Bye Mzungu!’. It felt like I was famous
sometimes.
In Uganda I lived in the MC house together with around 15 people, with a lot of different entities. That’s the good thing about AIESEC, getting to know a lot of different cultures, just by living together! The house was located in the slums, which was a good experience. You get to see how those people live. I have to admit that it was confronting to see people live in those conditions. A little culture shock was the result. Kampala, the capital city, was better developed than I expected. You can travel with public transport by mini bus (matatu) or motorcycle (boda-boda).
The matatu is actually for 14 passengers, but a lot of the times those taxi’s were overloaded. And they all drive like crazy! It made me realize how extremely well organized my own country is.
During the weekends I got the opportunity to discover Uganda. What a beautiful country. Waterfalls, National Parks with amazing birds and wild animals, boat trips, safaris, rafting... I also attended a national AIESEC conference with the slogan: ‘Believe, together we achieve!’
My project, the Hill Preparatory School, was a special school. There were ‘normal’ kids, but also kids with special needs. I thought I would have to deal with only ‘learning disabilities’, as written in the description. I found out their idea of ‘learning disabilities’ is a little different from ours. There were kids with Mental retardation (for example Down Syndrome) ADHD, Autism, and, indeed, Dyslexia (a ‘learning disability’ as I know it in my country). It was difficult in the beginning because they have different standards and ideas about the needs of those children. Schools are pretty unorganized in Uganda. Kids went out of class, were sleeping during class and I even saw some teachers
sleep during their class. My job was to teach the children with special needs. Teaching the alphabet, numbers, shapes and simple words using games. A challenge, but a good challenge. The first day I came to that school there was a boy who touched my arms to see if my skin color was real. The funny thing was, that he lifted my jeans leg to see if my legs were also white! They were also fascinated by my birthmarks. My school was pretty luxurious... They had their own swimming pool and a swimming teacher!

After my internship in Uganda, I went to Ghana for my next internship. This internship didn’t start so well. There was some trouble with the visa. I spent 5 hours at the airport! Fortunately the people from AIESEC were very nice to me the first days and made me feel like home. The first few days I spent in Accra and Cape Coast, both pretty big cities. My project, on the other hand, was in a village called Moree. When I started there I had a real culture shock. I thought I had made the wrong decision by choosing this project and wished I was home. A village is very different from a city. It was very primitive. Back to basic. I did have some electricity but no running water, which means no normal toilet and shower. The toilet was a latrine: a hole in the ground. But I was ‘lucky’ because our latrine was ‘tiled’. The ‘bathroom’ was an empty, small wooden room with
spiders and some reptiles... I had to bring a bucket with water from my room to the ‘bathroom’ and shower with a cup. After a week I was ‘used’ to the smell of the toilet, showering with a bucket and the bad hygiene.
The second week we travelled around the country. I did a ‘Canopy Walk’, visited Nzulezo (a town on water), saw waterfalls, visited the biggest market of West Africa and enjoyed the beautiful landscape. We also went to a National Park to see elephants. All we saw were some kobs and
monkeys/baboons. In West Africa are not that
many wild animals as in East Africa. Luckily I
already saw a lot of wild animals in Uganda! What Ghana has and Uganda hasn’t, is a sea, with beautiful beaches. Since the temperatures in Ghana are pretty high, a breeze from the sea was very welcome.
I started the first two and a half weeks with another intern. She taught me a lot about the life in the village. Where to get food,
how to go to the city, things about the culture etc. In Uganda I was called a Mzungu. Here I was an Obroni. After she left I was the only white person in the village. Pretty weird, being stared at every time you set foot out of the door. The kids even came to my room to see the Obroni. They had never heard about privacy I guess...
My project was called the FreeSpirit
Foundation, a library. After school the kids came to the library to read books, make homework and learn more English and maths. It was difficult sometimes, because some of the kids could only speak their local language, Fante. The kids who came to the library were in a ‘culture group’. They danced! I was fortunate to see a performance of them. Every week they practiced. It was beautiful to see how those kids enjoyed their dancing. Especially because Moree, the village where I lived in, is a very poor and bad developed village. There are no roads and inhabitants buy water from several wells and spots where water pipelines are led. There is electric power supply, but most houses are not connected. Because of the poverty, a lot of the kids in this village don’t go to school: they
have to help at home or take care of younger siblings. Washing and cooking is mostly done outside. Big families live in houses/huts that are too small and very bad developed.
Doing these internships definitely developed my personality. Meeting a lot of new people, dealing with culture differences, having good conversations with people, bargaining about prices, talking in front of people, taking action, doing something for society, seeing the beauty of Africa, give love and receive love etc. It makes me appreciate more what I have and that I shouldn’t just take everything for granted. Life is what you make it... 

Experience: Niels Wiskerke, Mityana, Uganda

From October 11th until November 26th 2010 I was an intern with Childine Uganda.Childine Uganda is located in Mityana, West of Kampala, the capital of Uganda. It isabout 70 kilometres from Kampala city center. A two hours drive by minibus, becauseof the very bad roads.Childline Uganda is a very small, local organization. There are about fivepeople ‘fulltime’ working for the organization. They cooperate with other organizationsin Mityana. The most import goal of Childline is: “Helping people lead better lives.”The main activities of Childine Uganda are education about hygiene and sanitationand education about HIV/AIDS. For me, it was a bit unclear how they get theirfunding, however I did understand that they didn’t receive any regular funding.

I was the first non-African intern working for Childline. For the people in Mityanait was very special to see a mzungu (white man) in town. So when I went on thestreets there were a lot of children yelling and waving to me. When I started with theinternship, there were about eight other interns from Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda.The other interns lived in two very simple rooms, of course without toilet, showerand gas for cooking. My room was situated near a complex where other Childlinemembers live. Together with the others interns we prepared diner (local style).

At the morning we started with a breakfast (two parts of cassava and tea) at theChildline office in Mityana. Office is a nice word for a small, dark room with a veryold computer. Often it was unclear what we would do during the day, however ata certain moment during the morning this would be explained. Often we went to apart of Mityana for education about hygiene and sanitation. We just visited randomhouses to speak to the people who were at home. We checked the situation, forexample if the latrine and the ‘shower’ were clean and if they had drying racks andmalaria nets for their children. A couple of times we went to schools in the Mityanaarea for education about body change and HIV/AIDS.Most of the time, we went back to the office at the end in the morning. So we workedonly 2 or 3 hours per day. After ‘working’ we went to the local rolex shop for lunch. Arolex is chapatti with two eggs rolled into it. The rest of the day there was not muchto do in Mityana except relaxing with the other interns and buying and preparing foodfor diner.

As you can read, working for Childline was a bit disappointing because there wasnot much to do. After a week, I didn’t think I would be very happy to stay there sevenweeks, so I spoke to the Childine director and we agreed that I would also staysome weeks in Kampala. In Kampala I could try to find some recourses for fundingfor Childline. I found some potential funds for Childline, one of them was the DutchEmbassy in Kampala. However, I doubt that Childline can get the appropriate fundsin the future.Maybe the last week of my internship was the most fun, because we did more work(cleaning of the local hospital, counseling of HIV/AIDS patients) and there were twonew interns from Denmark. However, also these two Danish girls and a Dutch girlwho was arriving a short time after then, didn’t stay at Childline Uganda. There was
simply not enough work to do and the communication between Childline staff and theinterns was pretty bad. Often we did a lot of waiting and when you did criticize theway things went, they didn’t really listen or respond.

Living in Mityana however was a unique experience. It was a rural area with a lot ofpoverty and very friendly people. Being together with the other interns was awesome.Especially because I learned a lot about life in East-Africa and the differences amongthe East-African countries.
They weeks and weekends I didn’t work in Mityana, I stayed at the Aiesec MC Housein Kampala. The MC House was a nice big house, surrounded by a large wall. Apartfrom the interns, the people of the Uganda MC also lived in the house. From theoutside the house was very nice, however all the money went to the rent of the houseand it seemed that there was no money left for furniture. It was nice to stay there withother (mostly female) interns from all over the world. The people from Aiesec Ugandawere also friendly and hospitable. An exception was the very, very bitchy Germanfemale president of Aiesec Uganda (none of the interns liked her).Almost all of the weekends I went with other interns to beautiful places in Uganda. SoI managed to see al lot of amazing places in this really beautiful country. Togetherwith other interns I also went to the Aiesec conference in Kigali, Rwanda. It wasawesome to visit this very special country. I experienced that Aiesec in East-Africais really different from Aiesec in The Netherlands. They have a lot of special habits,like dancing together and using Aiesec language. So, after two days conference,I wanted to do something else, and together with some other European guys wevisited very impressive genocide memorials in Rwanda.

After seven weeks, I went to Kenya for traveling. I’ve been in Nairobi, Mombasa,Lamu and the Maasai Mara. It was really nice to see and experience anotherbeautiful country and to meet a lot of fellow travelers.

I can write a lot more about my 10 weeks staying in East-Africa. About the veryfriendly people in Uganda, the beautiful environment, all the special animals I’veseen, the way of living in Africa, the horrible traffic, etc. Being in Uganda, Rwandaand Kenya was a fantastic experience I’ll never forget.

Experience: Damiaan van Ballegooijen, Kampala, Uganda

I went to Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, for 8 weeks. During this period I did an internship at the Capital Markets Authority (CMA) in the first part of the day and a Microfinance and Entrepreneurship (MFE) project in the afternoon. I wanted to gain another international experience and do something totally different, therefore I was especially eager to go to Africa. AIESEC was able to give me this opportunity and guided me through the search process. I applied to different Traineeships, this process took a lot of time and was frustrating in the sense that some TN managers took a long time to respond. But when I came across the TN in Uganda and got a positive reply quickly I was very enthusiastic, and was able to “make a match”.

A couple weeks later I was on my way to Uganda, I flew via Dubai and I stayed there for 10 days, so that was a good start to my journey. I arrived in Kampala a couple weeks before my internship started and I had already booked a safari for the first week. I chose to go earlier because I wanted to travel around in the country as well and I expected that I would not have the opportunity to do that during the internship.

After I travelled around I still had one week left before the project started and I met with the LC for the first time to set expectations and go through all the things I needed to know. Unfortunately, they were not very clear about the EP’s role in the MFE project and they still had some difficulties with the internship but I was assured everything would be fine. Which in the end it was. The housing was not yet arranged so I stayed in a small hotel in the centre of Kampala, where I stayed the rest of my stay because I was able to make a nice deal with the owner, and because it was very close to work.

The other interns from the MFE project started to arrive as well and my internship at the CMA started with only one week delay. I was a research intern and assisted in data entry and other daily tasks of the senior research officer, I also had to write a report on the Influence of the African Monetary Union on the Integration of the Capital Markets in East Africa. It is a very interesting time in East Africa, as they are in the process of becoming an integrated trade block.

When all the other EPs had arrived the MFE project also started, there were around 20 local students attending and 8 international EPs. During 6 weeks, the students were given lectures from professionals from the field of Entrepreneurship and Microfinance. Although the role of the EPs were unclear in the beginning, we had to give presentations when there was no technical facilitator. We also acted as facilitators in discussion and role plays. At the end of the project all the participants had to write a business plan and incorporate the things they had learned during the project.

During the course of the exchange there were some situations where the cultural differences became apparent. For instance, before the project started, I was supposed to meet a couple of LC members to recruit students for the MFE project on campus at 2 pm. I was at the university right on time and started to call some members to tell them where I was and confirm our meeting, they said that one of the members would be there very soon and that they did not know where the others were. Time went on and reached 3pm, still nobody, I started calling again, but nobody picked up their phone, and I decided to wait for another 20 min or so… After 15 minutes one of the members called and they told me that nobody could make it… and that we will start recruiting tomorrow! Normally “African Time” meant a little later but not that they did not show at all!

The local AIESEC community was very active and organized all kind of activities. There were a couple of universities where AIESEC operated and they all had EPs over for the summer. So we were with a big group of interns. Next to the weakly drinks at the local bar Mateo’s, they also organized a conference in Entebbe, one hour away from Kampala, where we stayed for a whole weekend and all kind of activities were organized. The interns also organized their own activities, we went rafting in the Nile in Jinja with a big group for instance. And a lot of people travelled to Kenya and Tanzania. I went to South Africa with two other interns during the World Cup 2010 where we visited the games USA-Ghana and Netherlands-Slovakia.

What did I Learn?

First of all, this experience gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of new people, not only from Uganda but from all over the world. You hear a lot of different life stories and learn about many different countries. But of course I learned most about the Ugandan culture, not only about their timing, but also about their view of the world and for instance the importance of their religion. During my internship at a formal government organization I learned about the Ugandan business culture, which I experienced as formal in official business and with superiors, but at the same time very relaxed and fun between colleagues. 

Next to that I experienced first hand the difficulties that people from my age experience when they grow up in a country where the possibilities are less than what we are used to. This changed my view of the world that we live in.

The advantage of doing an exchange with AIESEC is that you are not on your own. During the summer there were approximately 40 international interns in Uganda. I have made a lot of new contacts and already met with a few of them a couple of weeks ago. AIESEC also facilitates a lot of projects like the MFE project where you can put your knowledge you gained in practice. I gave a lot of presentations and taught others what I have learned during my studies which was a very satisfying. Another good thing about an AIESEC project is that you can have influence in the way it is organized because it is all done by students. Therefore I have learned how to organize a project and especially have learned from the things that went wrong. I can only say that it was an amazing experience, and that I would recommend it to everybody!