Dennis has long been concerned with the environmental degradation in Ligingi he has witnessed over his lifetime. Now, Dennis contends, Ligingi is facing further hardship from a changing climate, threatening the environment, livelihoods and food security.

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The Australian-based International LCLC team strives to actively support the Ligingi village’s journey of change toward vibrant self-sustainability and global interconnectedness. With this in mind the team held a planning day on Saturday 11 February. It was the perfect opportunity to take a moment, reflect on our accomplishments and start planning for 2012 and beyond.

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I felt ready to take the next step in gaining further qualifications and really carving out a ‘wellbeing’ type of career. I started dreaming about my new ‘nutritionist’ title. I devoured every magazine dedicated to nutrition and wellbeing research, enrolled in a Masters of Nutrition and became devoted to knowing the healthiest ways to fuel the body and mind.

Ligingi shook this all up for me.

In Ligingi, food is a blessing. It is also a means of fuel after hard, hot, physical hours spent on the land or walking incredibly long miles to get to the next town for school or looking after your large family, cooking, cleaning and nurturing from the early to late hours, day in, day out.

Working the fields

Cooking

Strong, healthy, fleshy bodies are celebrated in Ligingi. Any meal is devoured as a necessity. You eat with wholehearted thanks, enjoyment and dependence on whatever food is available.

Emily with Ligingi's local butcher

Food is increasingly harder to come by in Ligingi, due to significant increases in food prices in Uganda. Most families have anywhere between 5 and 13 children. With only a small portion of land per family, family produce needs to be stretched a long way in order to feed the family every day. Parents spoke to Anna and I about how it is getting harder and harder to feed their large families. Many expressed real concern that there is less opportunity for varied meals due to minimal produce being on offer.

In our community consultations, Anna and I learned of the soaring health issues affecting the Ligingi community. Villagers spoke of family members being wiped out by AIDS, malaria and undiagnosed illnesses due to limited-zero access to medical care and drugs. We also gained particular insight into the effects of poverty and high birth rates on women and families, through the educational family planning programs run by the passionate, inspiring nurse assistants at the poverty-debilitated Ligingi Health Centre.

My interest in ‘Wellbeing’ magazine suddenly seemed entirely self-driven compared to entire families being plagued by disease and poverty. My gym membership and interesting facts about when to eat carbs and protein became increasingly ridiculous in the Ligingi environment.

An interest in studying Health Promotion was borne. I could see the real impact health education, awareness and disease-prevention could have for the Ligingi community and communities and populations all over the world. Good nutrition and physical activity are of course critical components of good health. And I am still deeply interested in these areas in a health promotion and personal context.

My time in Ligingi made me realise, however, that I was very much a child of the West, carrying an idolisation of a calorie-counted, gym-scultped, controlled body. I had been obsessed with more of an individualist, self-improvement type of health. Sadly, I’m sure that a part of my motivation for studying Nutrition was to ensure I’d stay on top of my game and in control of my body at all times. I know I am still far from perfect in this area and may not have changed my behaviour in obvious ways. But Ligingi certainly knocked some hardcore perspective into me, really in every way.

It was a deeply humbling experience to get beyond myself and encounter major community, life-threatening health issues. Also to see the incredibly positive, visionary work the nurses at the Ligingi health centre are doing through their own health promotion programs. I’m looking forward to tackling all sorts of community and population health issues through my newly defined Health Promotion orientation.