I have spent the past two weeks in the field. The first week we were giving a refresher training for the village paralegals/disability and health advocates. The village paralegals are an amazing group of women who have taken on the responsibility of seeking out disabled women in their communities, educating them about reproductive health, and helping them navigate complex systems of law enforcement and health care. They also act as enumerators for the sexual and reproductive health research.
I spent the second week training research assistants and carrying out qualitative interviews to find out more about the lives of disabled women in various rural sub-counties of northern Uganda. We also interviewed small-scale DPO's (disabled people's organizations) to find out more about their work at the grassroots level. The goal of this baseline research is to get a better understanding of the issues facing disabled women (men and children, too) deep within the villages. I haven't done the analysis yet but from a preliminary overview it looks like sexual and reproductive health issues/HIV and general community stigmatization (hugely impacting education and health care access) are major issues.
Conclusion: Field work is exhausting, but rewarding!
training village paralegals on the legal avenues for rape and defilement cases
(crimes against morality)
Me with some of the Kamuli and Mpigi team on Lake Kyoga
The team getting ready to leave Kamuli district
What interviews in the field look like;
We are in a former IDP camp in Lira district.
This cow was intruding on my interview space.
He clearly wanted to be interviewed by me (probably for the transport refund and free soda!),
but unfortunately my translator didn't speak his dialect...
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