Stories from the Field: First days in Kazigo A Village

By Lindsey Anderson


The first week in Kazigo A has been an interesting one. Both good times and bad. One of the first things we noticed was the interesting arrangement between our neighbor’s kitchen and our shower. The ventilation for the kitchen looks right into the shower! That could create some awkward situations…


Our house is right next to a school, so about 30-40 kids come up to our house every evening asking for “Sala.” We later found out that almost all of them are related. But anyways, they love Sara. She does gymnastic tricks for them like cartwheels and backbend flips and they love it. They laugh and cheer and even gave her mangos to thank her for spending time with them. Yesterday, all five of us went out and played with the kids and we exchanged songs. They sang us a welcome song in English that ended
up getting stuck in our heads for the rest of the evening. One of our favorite lines was, “we sank our god, who brought you here, on this great occasion, today. Welcome!”


On one of the first days in our village, Felix made a joke saying that one day we were going to have chicken and I was going to have to be the one to slaughter the bird. I laughed and thought to myself that that would never happen. A few days later, we were having chicken for dinner and Felix gave me the knife! We all went to the side of the house, getting ready for me to slaughter the bird. Felix gave me tips, Naomi stood back, and Sara had my camera, taking a video. The video ended up being 3 minutes of me hesitating and gathering the courage, and 30 seconds of me cutting the head off of the chicken while saying, “sorry bird!!” I never thought that I would have been able to do that, but I guess I had the courage in me.

A couple of days ago we all did laundry for the first time. Naomi laid out 3 basins of water: first wash, second wash, and rinse. It was so difficult to scrub our clothes! We all had sore legs afterwards from crouching so much for each article of clothing! Naomi ended up helping us a lot. By the end, we were all picking carefully which clothes we HAD to wash, and which could be worn a few more times.


Yesterday, Sara, Derek, Felix, and I took boda bodas into Nabitende to get some dinner to bring back because we were mostly out of food. As Sara and I were waiting for Derek and Felix to arrive, we saw a little girl about 6 years old crossing the street. As she was almost to the other side, a speeding boda boda slammed into her and she was thrown to the side. The boda didn’t even stop. She was rushed to the nearest health center, we assume, but we know nothing of what happened afterwards. This was a difficult experience for both Sara and me, one I’m sure we’ll always remember.


Felix, Derek, Naomi, Sara, and Lindsey are volunteers in Kazigo A village working on the Healthy Villages Program this summer.