Moving In

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As this month is one I’m used to spending at home with family and friends, it was a perfect time to move into a new type of home. Wednesday, December 15^th my friend Basoga put the last touches of paint inside our new mental health center. I’m not sure if it was the paint fumes or my emotions, but my head swam and I found myself blinking back some minor waterworks. We’re still not completely finished with construction on the outside of the building, but finishing the inside means we are now fully operational (if not outwardly polished).

 

Although the chaos of Christmas (the majority of Ugandans are practicing Christians) means that we won’t get much done until after New Year’s, we were at least able to precede the distraction of the holidays with some fireworks of our own.

On Tuesday, the 14^th we held a “launching/ fundraising/ community awareness event”. The plethora of titles resulted from both a need to be strategic in our advertising as well as our attempt to cram as many missions as possible into one day. The “launching” was overshadowed by single-minded, opportunistic politicians making speeches, and our “fundraising” was about 1/6 what we hoped for, but I ended up with the feeling that the event was more successful than we could have planned.

Once the hopeful candidates began to leave, or quiet down at least, the day greatly improved. By that time several hundred community members had gathered around. The Atanekontola drama group performed a poem and a short play about a man whose son is suffering from schizophrenia. The story unfolds almost identically to those of many of the families within the group. The distressed man is counseled by his family to visit a traditional healer, while a neighbor persistently tries to convince him to take his son to a hospital. In fact, the testimonies that members gave afterwards mirrored the play. We closed the event with a short speech by our director, Emmanuel Mufumba, and planned to pack up. We were happily surprised, however, when several onlookers asked Mufumba to stay and began peppering him with questions about mental health, which turned into a public discussion.

At the end of the day I went home with a lot learned and a lot more to think about regarding how to promote mental health and the work of Atanekontola. I hope we also gave the community a lot to think about mental health, and good reason to keep us busy at the center.

We’re still fundraising to install power- as I told Mufumba, “All I want for Christmas is a solar panel”. So if you love sustainable energy, community mental health promotion, or BOTH, check out https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=8UJRJ84Q4Q7HS&lc=US&item_name=Atanekontola%20Mental%20Health%20Center&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted