When I received an offer letter from Global Health Corps (GHC) for the Communication and Documentation Fellow placement at Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) Uganda my wife only heard me shout “No way” from her dressing room and came running to me in the living room. She asked “honey, who has blocked your way,” I meekly hugged her and whispered in her left ear, “myself!” “Well, I trust you know how to navigate the barriers you put to block the way,” she smoothly whispered in my left ear. You may be wondering if I applied for this position, yes I did – three positions to apply for remember!
Six weeks later, I was at the US embassy interviewing for a visa to attend two weeks of GHC training at Yale University, to prepare with the other 128 fellows to work in our respective high-impact health placement organizations in the US and Africa. The American lady behind the glass at the Embassy asked me what I was going to do in the US. With excitement, I replied loudly, “I am going to attend a two weeks training as a global health ‘corpse’ fellow” (me with my then pronunciation of corps). “As a global health what?” she asked. “Corpse,” I replied ardently! She smiled and asked me to come the next day for my visa. I was confident – as an upcoming communication specialist – to have convinced her to grant me a visa with just a sentence, yet others spent so much time in the interview room! You should have seen my face when I heard ‘corps’ pronounced correctly on the first day of training.
On my arrival to EGPAF Uganda, my supervisor told me to focus only on writing (documentation) in my role during the fellowship year. “Oh my goodness, I wont be EGPAF’s ‘mouth piece’, yet it’s what made me shine at the US embassy”. I thought this was going to be a totally boring one-year fellowship for me. On the contrary, I have realized writing is what I needed to objectively have one-on-one interactions with those that the organization serves, coupled with acquiring a program wide understanding of implementation strategies, successes and works in progress.
I have had seven fulfilling months of documenting program successes in technical implementation areas of HIV prevention, care and treatment, as well as quality improvement interventions, in the 13 EGPAF supported districts in southwestern Uganda. The most exciting documentations were the individual in-depth interviews I conducted with four adolescents in HIV care, three mothers in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) support groups and 6 health workers. This has helped me understand the program impact from the clients’ eyes, connect with them at an individual level and write about program successes from the perspectives of clients, service providers and implementing partners. Its been rewarding to understand program operation bottom-up. It turns out that I blocked my way only to find my desired path of career growth in global health arena.