It has been exactly 1 year, 3 weeks, and 2 days since I was last in Uganda, and boy have I felt every day of it. Since my great friend Alex recently stole this blog post idea from someone else, I figured I’d join in on the chain and steal the idea for myself on the one year anniversary of my staying put. So here you have it folks, seven big things I have learned about myself (and the world) – my seven traveling truths.

1. Food.
I travel by taste. I’ve found that acquainting myself with local food, street vendors, and markets is one of the best ways to get to know a place. Food staples and cooking styles often speak a lot to the way of life in a certain place. For example, much of the food in Uganda is designed to fill you up for a long time – like kal (millet bread) or matooke (crushed plantains). I’ve also found that the most delicious meals are had in friends (or strangers) homes. There’s nothing quite like being gorged on traditional Ugandan food and then taking the long way home to walk off a few (hundred) extra calories.

Vendor selling fresh caught fish in a small trading center in Luzira - December 2008

2. I come out of my shell.
It’s true that traveling breaks down some personal barriers and allows you to feel comfortable with things that you might not have before. A prime example of this is my inner haggler that comes out when being cheated by a matatu conductor. Sure, it’s only 10 cents to me, but it’s the principle of the thing, right?!

3. I uncover some truths about myself.
I find myself challenged to uncover who I really am. Without my friends, comfort foods, technology, or familiar surroundings I find myself having to peel back the layers to who I really am with all of that distraction getting in the way. Sometimes I’ve been disappointed in the truth about myself while at other times I’ve been impressed with my ability to keep my composure in challenging situations. Usually I’ve had to dig deep and uncover talents and skills I never knew I had.

4. I miss home.
I’d like to think of myself as the big macho traveler who never gets homesick, but like Alex, I find myself gaining a much greater appreciation for my home and how it’s connected to the rest of the world. While before Knoxville might have seemed like a po-dunk town with too many rednecks (well it often is), I also found myself reflecting on a chic Appalachian city with a fascinating history and cultural life to be proud of.

5. I enjoy medium sized cities.
I find that I get bored easily in the country side, but if I have a nice medium sized city with things to do plus amenities and not too much traffic, I am in heaven. Small towns tend to be too difficult to penetrate into the real fabric of the place whereas a city has many different aspects from which to fit in or discard. It’s nice to have the choices.

6. I love history and ruins – mostly ruins.
I seek out historic monuments or sites in almost every place I visit. It makes me feel more connected to a place when I can get familiar with how and why it was built, what happened there in the past, and most of all – who built it. When I went to Antigua, Guatemala in 2009 I couldn’t have cared less about the infamous jade – I wanted to see the ruins on the outskirts of town!

7. I don’t get car sick.
Here I get car sick at the drop of a hat. I’m that friend that sticks her head out the window and demands that the AC be turned on full blast in order to avoid puking my guts out on your fine leather seats. But abroad I can withstand the longest, bumpiest, hottest, most crowded bus ride without the slightest bit of nausea.

Those are my seven traveling truths… what are yours? Here’s to more adventures and more blog topics in the exciting year to come!

So if you are one of my friends on facebook or you follow me on Twitter, you have been endlessly reminded of the Bouncing Cats film screening that Jazz for Justice has partnered with Red Bull to bring to UT tomorrow night. So yes, I’m writing about it here because facebook and Twitter don’t give me enough space to tell you how COOL it’s going to be!

Bouncing Cats is a film that tells the story of Abramz Tekya, founder of Breakdance Project Uganda (BPU), and Crazy Legs of the infamous Rock Steady Crew as they travel around Uganda teaching breakdance and hip-hop culture for positive social change. Not only is the film inspiring and educational, it’s one of the most accurate depictions of Uganda and the incredible efforts that the youth are taking to better the social atmosphere in their country.

When I went to Uganda in 2008 with a group of other UT students, I met Abramz and the other b-boys, and we even got to take some dance classes from them. Since that time, we have all stayed in touch with Abramz and he helped us to select b-boys from BPU Gulu to teach breakdance and Acholi dance in the CreatEd:Pilot Project. Several of these dancers are featured in the film or at least make appearances. It’s always been one of my biggest wishes to bring all of my closest friend and family to Uganda and show them this place that has become such a big part of my life, so how incredible is it that you can all see this film that brings a little bit of my Uganda life to Tennessee?!

The event will be tomorrow night in the University Center Auditorium. The doors open at 6:00, local breakdancers perform at 6:30 and then the film begins at 7:00. Afterwards, we’ll have a Q and A session with Religious Studies Professor Dr. Hackett; Tony from the local crew; Crazy Legs from the film; and then me!

I hope you can make it…. I can’t tell you how much it would mean to share a little more Uganda with my friends and family here in Tennessee.

Here’s the INCREDIBLE trailer if you’d like to check it out!

Though I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to get into the whole TOMS One Day Without Shoes debate, I couldn’t resist after I saw the genius counter-campaign, A Day Without Dignity. So in honor of speaking out against a bad aid idea, here is my contribution to ADWD.

I’m not a fan of TOMS in general or this campaign in particular. Let me just highlight various reasons why.

1. There is no shoe shortage in the developing world.
2. If you really wanted to help someone without shoes, you could empower them in a skill so they could afford to purchase their own.
3. Massive amounts of donated goods decimate local vendors, who are selling affordable shoes.
4. It makes impoverished children into subjects for sympathy rather than creative and intelligent young people (Thanks Wanderlust for that one).
5. It’s pretty insulting to have 18 pairs of shoes and choose not to wear them for one day and pretend you know the “plight” of those living without shoes.
6. Okay so you’re raising awareness for people who don’t have shoes. Who DOESN’T know that there are people in the world who don’t have shoes? How is the fact that you aren’t wearing yours going to do anything about it?
7. Hand outs are almost always a bad idea, except in emergency situations.

So now that you have an idea of why I don’t like TOMS or ODWS, let’s talk a little more about #7 and why handouts suck. Now I want to make it clear that I am not against emergency relief, but most of the time hand outs just make a bad situation worse and have more long term bad effects than the actual crisis situation.

It’s really kind of humiliating and disempowering for the recipient. It feels horrible to be unable to provide for yourself or your family. Additionally, campaigns focused on hand outs often neglect to do any kind of capacity-building, creating a dependency on the free stuff rather than enabling an individual to acquire goods on his or her own. Rather than spending time and money giving goods to poor people, why not invest more money and time into helping them not be poor in the first place?

This leads us to the case of Uganda. As you may know, northern Uganda recently emerged from a two-decade civil war that devastated the region. People were forced into displacement camps and were made unable to provide for themselves. During most of this time, the World Food Programme donated food to camp residents. It was necessary, but it had detrimental effects. When people began moving home and were expected to obtain their own food and supplies, they still expected the WFP to bring them monthly supplements. Some people didn’t even know how to farm anymore. A long-term reliance on hand-outs created a culture of dependency. In essence, TOMS is doing the same thing – making people dependent on hand outs. I might also mention that even in this highly impoverished war-affected area, there are at least a dozen vendors in the market with crates of unused, affordable shoes. They cost around 5,000 UGX (about $2.50), which is a reasonably affordable price, but yes there are some people that could not afford even that. If TOMS must distribute shoes, the least they could do is buy from these vendors and stimulate the local economy. Their current campaign takes money away from these local salesmen.

If you really want to help, find an organization that works on capacity-building or entrepeneurship and donate to them instead. I implore you to just wear your shoes tomorrow and not to buy a pair of TOMS just because you think you’re helping.