Lessons from a two year old.

If you are a new mother you will learn a lot of things on this journey. The things you didn't even realize from your much younger siblings that you saw grow.  I think memory does us a disservice when we can't remember most of such things from a young age. Like how you grew up and later on your siblings. 

This is when parenthood or in my case babysitting, comes in handy. There's a whole new dimension of growth you experience in the care of a child. Watching a child grow is most definitely one of the things everyone ought to experience in their lifetime. 

My baby made two years recently and not only has he been a pain in the butt, but an educator, an uplifter, a comforter! 

Here are some of the lessons you will most likely learn from babies;

• Being your own cheerleader. 

We adopted this thing of telling our baby "good boy" to encourage him to do things. So every time he did even the obvious things like eating his food, we showered him with praises of "good boyyy". We have subsequently slowed down on the cheering because trust me, it gets exhausting but this has not stopped him from cheering himself on! 

You will hear him in the kitchen shouting " a goodu boyy" after stacking the plates together, finally wearing his pants right and not in one leg. 

This goes on to say that even when no one is in your corner, cheer yourself on to keep you back on track. Most at times, we crave people's support but the most meaningful support will always come from within us. 

• Relentlessness. 

If you have taken care of a baby you know their relentlessness is on a whole other level! If he wants your attention, you will have to give it to him or else you will never do anything else. 

So this baby has this thing where when he wants to talk to you, he will call your name and if you don't respond he will not stop calling. Even if you are looking right at him, he wants verbal consent. 

This has taught me that we can always get what we want if we become relentless, cry if you have to (but please do not cry ugly). If they can't see the weight of our grievances, they might see the need in our persistence. 

• Accepting that you need help. 

When this baby can't afford to reach something he wants, he will drag you by the clothes to where he sees the thing.  He still can't open the fridge so whenever he wants something from there he drags you right to it and says like one word of what he wants. 

Yes, we don't want to look vulnerable but where will your strength lead you when you can't get the things you want, and yet someone could help you if you asked? 

Accepting that you need help is one of the great things you will ever do for yourself, your mental health, general well-being. 

• Always being alert. 

You know when babies ask for something and when you deny them, they cry right away? Yeah, every baby does that. What this one does though, is that even if he can't breathe from the crying, he will always respond whenever you call him. He always leaves room for "what if they change their decision". 

Whenever life knocks you down, don't completely shut down and fail to realize when another opportunity opens up because you're sulking. Grieve but do with attentively. 

• Appreciating personal space. 

I don't know whether we should be worried but this baby will go out and play for 30 minutes then come inside and rest for three hours. Just seated alone on the couch relaxing and possibly watching TV. This goes so much far as to depict how he appreciates personal space and maybe rest, we are still figuring that out. 

Spare some time to yourself once in a while, just you and your thoughts. You will appreciate how great this can affect your life with time. 

Well, being around kids will teach you lots of small things that you will never have expected to learn. 

The Ugandan medical interns strike

Medical Interns on strike

If you're in Uganda l probably don't have to go through the details of the medical interns strike and the outcomes of them being fired. But well about 3 days or so ago the ministry of health sent out a decree that all the medical interns, who have been on strike for an increase in their pay, have been fired and are supposed to get out of the hospitals within a week. 

This doesn't come as a shock though we pretended to be shocked. Workers striking in Uganda for increased pay, better system organization is not a new thing, just recently, the doctors themselves were on strike, the nurses, and we don't even need to talk about the teachers because we've sung that song and we are now very sure of the beats and the lyrics. 

Anyways, let's look at how the internship system works in Uganda and this is information you will not find online so you better pay me for it. 

So if you are doing any university course, be it a certificate, diploma, bachelors, am not sure about the masters l think let's leave the generals' issues but well, for any education course you are subjected to a mandatory internship training that has to contribute to your general score (CGPA). This internship is managed and regulated by the university, you could do three internships for a three-year course or two or even one according to the teaching guidelines of the university. 

It is to be noted that all these internships are free, the student is not entitled to any pay or allowance, it is only up to the goodness of the hiring company to give you a small stipend but we can not cry or demand it. Some courses are only required to do research and not the practical internship but you could end up spending large sums of money doing that required research, the money you will never get back in any form. 

This brings me to the medical interns and their cause for the strike. After talking to someone in the medical field, (l will never write about something l know nothing about) l was told that medical students after graduation are employed by the government for a year on an internship basis but with like a small pay assigned to them. You know those lines your parents used to lure you into doing medicine "doctors get employed right out of school" but you still didn't fall for it? Well, this is it, so every graduate doctor, after the 5 years of university is mandated to do a one-year internship training to fine-tune their skills, even if it were me l wouldn't trust a doctor who has just got out of school to open me up. Not when l know, from first principles, the state of our education system. 

It should be noted that every graduate doctor is employed, more like placed in a government hospital to do this "paid" internship. Keep in mind that it is not easy to get an internship placement for every course, some companies even ask for a payment before they train you, but well that's not today's topic. 

During their medical course of study, they do most of their practical work from the school hospitals. That's why most medical schools usually have a hospital too and this works like their laboratory though with real specimens. So this post-graduate internship is to equip them with hands-on skills to make them well prepared to handle people's lives better.  Yes, they end up doing a lot of work because they already had some skills, and the professional doctors come in to collect the wins but should we forget that this is still on an internship basis? That you are in some type of way still under the education system?

This reminds me of the lawyers who after their specified course have to do a 2-year course, what we the non-lawyers know as LDC, that you still have to pay for before you can get hired as a lawyer. So why do the medical interns have a payment structure allocated to them? This all stems from how the country values the specific education courses, placing science education high and mighty superior to arts education. The students in the different fields come out with the belief that they are entitled to better pay, better working conditions, better lifestyles! This is what has corrupted the young minds and so bred entitlement in their careers.

 Don't get me wrong am not against medical interns being paid because they do the work and should be compensated for it but so does a graduate trainee working in coca-cola company (or any other company) in the manufacturing sector, in the human resources department but because they don't work for the government and are not entitled to that pay, we never hear their cries. 

The other day l saw a tweet that someone who did a Bsc. in Stapling and Office Management wondering why the medical interns need to be paid and yet he wasn't for her internship. It carried a lot of sarcasm implying that the Management intern doesn't need to be paid because their course is easy (well to my interpretation of the tweet). My point is, as a country we should look further than depriving medical interns of their allowance to improve the education system and creating a smooth transition to the employment world after education, where we have terribly failed as a country. Also, the fact that because the medical interns fill in for the already inadequate doctors should be addressed from the grassroots of why the doctors are inadequate, to begin with. 

Pose these questions to yourself, how many doctors have you produced in your family, later on in your clan, village? What stopped you from doing medicine? Why would you talk your little siblings out of doing medicine? I know answers like, medicine is hard, it's expensive, the schools don't even teach the science subjects well, they have no laboratories will come up and it all takes us back to our education system. The moment we as a country start investing in our education is when we will get answers to our grievances. 

But well, firing the medical interns is low for us as a country but were the interns themselves dramatic with their strike demands? I would say a little! 

Thriving in STEM amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

 Fundi Girls champions talk series. 

So today, 11/12/2021, l had the opportunity to speak at a Fundi Girls event about how we can encourage more young girls to get involved in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics). 

Well, let's start from what Fundi Girls are, this is a community program under Fundi Bots that works towards encouraging more participation of girls in STEM creating a safe space where these girls can interact, share, network, and get mentorship. Throughout their almost  5 years of existence, Fundi Girls has impacted over 6000 girls all through Uganda! 

Anyways, back to the champions talk. the keynote speaker was Captain Farida Ashaba, a private pilot, TEDx speaker, philanthropist and CEO of bambinolife256. 

How can we young girls be encouraged to take pursue careers in STEM harnessing their full potential even with the constraints the pandemic has imposed on us? 

STEM has always been an undeniably hard field to navigate but with the right mentorship, and guidance it can be seen through. the following are some of the points that were shared on how to smoothly ( okay a little) navigate through STEM. 

• Make the right company of friends surround yourself with friends that want to see you grow in STEM,  the company you hang around will most likely keep you or drive you off your desired path. true connections should come from within and not from what you expect to get from the people. 
• Be true to what you want to achieve and work hard towards achieving it no matter how hard it gets. do it scared but do it! once something scares you, it's indication enough that it will help you grow. 
• leverage communities that help people thrive in STEM for example Fundi Girls, Fundi Bots.
• Be in the know of what activities that support STEM are taking place and show up for them. how you get to know of such activities is by getting yourself in STEM circles and communities. 
• Continuously work towards achieving your goals, it is a journey you will not achieve overnight but rather step by step. 
• Be an ambassador of STEM communities you know, preach them to everyone that shows interest in pursuing the same path and you never know how beneficial it could be to them. 
• Don't dwell on the pandemic, it's almost 3 years and new variants are coming up day by day so when will you wait for the storm to calm down before you can get back to working towards your goals?
• Find a balance between feeding your career and your personal/social life. do everything in the time it needs to be done, party, code, and pray!
• Invest your time wisely, know your worth and know when to walk away from an environment, a situation that's no longer fostering your growth. 
• Preach equality but do the work. just because you're a woman will not open for you every door, men are working tirelessly for these positions and so should you.
•  Do not compare yourself with others, your journey is personally tailored for you. you are the innovator in your journey and at the same time the problem solver of all the obstacles you encounter on that journey. 
• Be authentic to yourself, take on what you can manage, find a balance and this will keep your mental headspace clear. 
• Do not succumb to pressure and societal expectations, set your own expectations and work towards meeting those expectations at your own pace. stop looking at your age mates who are happily married and you don't even have a boyfriend, the ones with steady jobs and yet you are still volunteering, do what you love and do it with passion. there's no amount of time wasted in doing what you love. 
• And all in all, be good to others for that same goodness will come back to you in forms you don't even expect. 

with all this said, pose these questions to yourself;

What have you done to empower young girls back in your hometown? 

Are you ready to take on the challenge to be a mentor to that little girl that has a passion for STEM?

For more details about the event, visit the Fundi Girls social platforms. 

The grey area between sexism and feminism.

 So the other day two people in a group chat am in disagreed on a certain topic and before we knew it, words were flying here and there and we were hooked! Can you blame us? Who doesn't like group chat drama, lol. 

All through the words exchange, oohh did l mention it was between a man and a woman? Anyways, the man kept starting his chats with "dude" to reply to the woman and the fight then shifted to how the man was personally assigning a gender to the woman that she didn't identify with, that you rather call people "they" than assigning them a gender. 

In the man's defence, he said he didn't know the gender of the other person plus her username didn't give off her gender so he used dude because and l quote "in these times even with the numerous gender definitions, l still see everybody as one, l don't see gender".

That quoted statement up there opened a fuel tank of emotions and words we had not seen for the day 😂. The other person came out to say how sexist that was, and a number of females also come up to convict the man of sexism, lol. This left me wondering whether feminists know what exactly they are fighting for. Don't get me wrong l am all for gender equality which l presume makes me a feminist but could we have lost sight of what we expect from this battle? 

That man saying he sees the world as one, to me depicted he saw all genders equal but how "feminists" interpreted that as sexism is what l still don't understand up till now. 

We didn't have a q&a session after but l wish such matters could be followed up next time😂.

Anyways what do you understand by the term "sexism" okay in a lay man's understanding because at this point l don't trust the Google definition. And in your gender equality knowledge, what do you think was wrong with the man's reply? 

Who is to blame for the raging teenage pregnancies during the COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda?

It has been reported that the number of teenage pregnancies recorded between March 2020 and September 2021 is five times higher than the number of positive COVID cases reported in Uganda with Wakiso  and Kampala taking the first and second positions respectively. On a daily, you are likely to spot at least five pregnant teenagers.

With the closure of schools which is almost nearing 2 years (from March 18th 2020 till date) that has also made Uganda go down in history as the country to have schools closed for the longest time ever, we have seen a worrying rise in the number of teenagers getting pregnant. 

Most of the students who are now mothers have not shown the desire to go back to school once the schools reopen. They have opened another chapter and while some are raising their children in their parents' homes, others have got married and are now fulltime house wives.

A teenager with her baby

This leaves the pondering question of "who is to blame?" 

We know the times have been hard, parents have lost their jobs and have had to sit at home with their children who have come back from school, people have contracted COVID, people are depressed, but to what do we exactly pin the cause of these pregnancies? 

To the government for closing schools for all this long?

To the teachers that are supposed to have equipped these teenagers with sex education at school?

To the teenagers themselves for their ignorance and negligence?

The healthcare system?

We have, to a certain point, addressed some of the causes at least the ones that are within our "addressing range" but since COVID is not disappearing soon it leaves us baffled whether this whole fiasco will ever end.

We need to evaluate the parents' contribution to the problem since they are now the sole groomers of the children considering teachers are out of the picture. What have parents done to reduce the teenage pregnancy rates? 

With constantly being confined in homes with their children, parents have subsequently grown reluctant in disciplining and checking in on the behavior of their children. 

Children stay out late without the knowledge of the parents, almost every school going child has acquired a phone in this pandemic and the parents don't even ask them how they got the phones or how they manage to get money for airtime and data on a daily basis. It is small overlooked issues like these that have made young girls to run to men in their ignorance leading to pregnancies. 

However, assigning blame will not do much to curb these growing teenage pregnancies, combined effort to raise these teenagers is greatly needed. Look at that pregnant girl like she was your sister, daughter, niece, grand daughter, what would you have done to prevent her from getting pregnant. Did you give her the required sex education? Did you listen to her when she had personal issues or you didn't even realize she had personal issues, did you notice her staying-out-late episodes and not call her out.

The moment we start addressing this issue on a personal level is when we will see a positive change. 

 It is also time to stop sheilding these young boys and girls against sex, because they have the internet at their disposal. Have honest and sexual conversations with them, let them be aware of the consequences. 

Let's strive to put an end to teenage pregnancies together. 

Is asking for an HIV test a red flag in a relationship?

HIV/AIDS (human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is a virus that attacks cells that help the body fight infection, making a person more vulnerable to other infections and diseases. 

Though it can be transmitted through many ways like from mother to child at birth, sharing of sharp equipment, the prevailing way still stands at through unprotected sex with an infected person.

The first rampancy of HIV in Uganda reported 11% of positive cases in pregnant women, in 1985. UNAIDS reports that by 2019, about 1.5 million people were living with HIV in Uganda.

Symptoms of HIV can include fever, joint pains, sore throat, skin rash which can as well be symptoms for common infections. This makes it hard for people to truly tell whether they have HIV or just a random infection. Many people just brush the symptoms off for fear of being stigmatized when they are tested positive with HIV. 

This stems from the fact that there has not been a cure developed for HIV and so once once tests positive, they will have the virus for the rest of their life! Others have the fear of succumbing their lives to drugs (ARVs, antiretroviral drugs) that help to slow down the multiplication of the virus and prevent one from transmitting it to the others, and these drugs have to be taken every day to achieve maximum results. The thought of having to take drugs every single day keeps some people away from having a medical test to find out their status.

Because of the ARVs, many people living with HIV are hard to detect from plain sight and this has increased the spread of HIV through unprotected sex since one will just think the other person is fine. People will even say they are negative yet they have not tested in while and have probably been "sleeping around".

So should it be considered a red flag if someone you are sleeping with asks for an HIV test?

  A friend of mine recently came to me with an issue about how a guy she has been sleeping with asked her if they could have an HIV test. And she said "we had even never had unprotected sex nor showed the interest that l wanted it and out of the blue he asked for a test!" 

Her point was, he didn't trust her, he thought she was sleeping with other people even when they were not exclusive. 

To consider this a red flag, we need to first guage the nature of the relationship y'all have. Is it defined? Have you agreed to be exclusive? Have you set rules for how to sleep with other people? Or is it just a hook up? No matter how hard it is to keep up with the use of condoms ( l know you can relate even if you don't say it, lol) it is very important to keep the sex protected when you are in an undefined relationship or arrangement. 

So if the other person asks you to get tested, l feel it shouldn't really be considered a red flag. It is rather going to keep both of you safe and free from worry and y'all can possibly end up ditching the condoms after all! Win win if you ask me. 

Though, this doesn't mean you start dragging someone to a health facility if you want them tested, you can bulk purchase self testing kits from a pharmacy and store them right next to the condoms for emergency!

The more we make self HIV testing a habit, the more we will curb it's increasing transmission rates. Stay safe, take control of your HIV status. 

Starting at the bottom to build your career.

I bet you've heard the phrase "start at the bottom" a numerous times. 

This is normally worse when it comes to defining your career path. You will hear things like,even if you start out as a tea girl, take it seriously and you never know what doors could open for you as you serve those top officials with tea, that those top officials started from the bottom too! 

When it comes to fresh university graduates, it's unheard of for a graduate to turn down a job even if it absolutely has nothing to do with what he studied or what he likes. "It will help you build your career",they will say. "It's during these small jobs that you will meet someone influential and they will steer your career, plus it will be giving you some income for the time being" all these are statements l have heard not once,not twice, and,l bet you've heard them too. I'm not saying that you should under-look jobs or that you have to launch your career from the roof and rather the foundation, all l say is be conscious enough and distinguish which foundation/bottom you are trying to build your career on.

How do you know this is the right bottom to start then? 

Just like any career principled person,you will have to be true to yourself with what you want to build. If you are looking to build your career in fashion,how will "starting at the bottom" as a tea girl in a Tech company help you further your fashion career? And don't give me that bullsh$t of "the manager could be a high-end shopper and their choice of style could influence your fashion career".

On the other hand,when we look at starting at the bottom as a tea girl in a fashion house, this could ultimately help jump start your fashion career! 

All in all, especially to my fresh graduates, when they say "start from the bottom" know which bottom to start at or else you will forever be at the bottom.