In July 2018, I had the privilege of completing an internship with HEAL Ministries in Jinja, Uganda. The main focus of my internship was child-care, helping children in Uganda learn English and helping women learn how to sustain their children through learning to run their own small business. However, throughout all this one of the things I noticed most is just how much culture differs around the world, and while living in a new place for a month I learned so much.

As a Public Health major, I had to take Anthropology 102: Understanding Other Cultures, as one of my major courses. This has ended up becoming one of my favorite classes as I am able to connect so many cultural concepts anthropologists talk about to analyze my experience in Uganda. Throughout the semester we have been learning about many different terms that I can relate back to my time in Uganda. One term we discussed is the psychic unity of mankind, which is the idea that all humans share a basic framework. This is the idea that all humans regardless of culture or race, share the same basic psychological and cognitive makeup. This was something I found myself being reminded of often in Uganda. Although there were many differences I noticed, there were so many similarities. For example, as noted in my journal (Artifact 1) I wrote about how children in Uganda still fight over toys just like American children do and can still be disrespectful to their parents. An assumption I had coming in was that because many of these children did not have access to certain things, maybe they would be kinder in sharing toys with their friends, but the innate feelings not to share and to say the toy is “mine” was still there. I also was brought back to the idea that all humans share a basic framework through the idea that everyone wants to be loved. I also kept note of this in my journal one day (Artifact 2). Here I describe a situation where I was talking to a Ugandan woman named Kacey. Kacey and I talked about how marriage differed so much from the United States. Kacey told me about how many women in Uganda do not date and rather they just marry and when they do it is typically for money. Typically, only the wealthy people in Uganda find themselves to be married, which is incredibly different from what we experience in the United States. Kacey described to me how she wanted to be married someday for love and how she dreamed of coming to the United States. This goes back to the idea that all humans share a basic framework of wanting to feel loved.

There were also many differences I noted during my time in Uganda as well. Such as the idea that I had to take my shoes off any time I entered an important building, home, school, and even under a gazebo. Also, how people would wash each other's feet and shoes as a sign of gratitude. However, as noted above I saw the ways in which we were alike relating back to the term in anthropology, the psychic unity of mankind. There are certain things we all want and understand.

This semester in my anthropology class we have the opportunity to participate in the Community Action period through publicanthropology.net. I got to work with a group of students from other countries in order to share differences in our culture. We were able to come together to also find similarities. During this time we were able to bridge the differences in opinion on important issues. Attached is my letter and conversation on climate change. (Artifact 3). In my Anthropology 102 class, we had the opportunity to write a letter to someone else around the world on our views on climate change and were able to discuss the issue in a manner of coming up with a solution everyone can do to help make a difference. Working together with people around the world and bridging our differences brought me back to my time in Uganda when I found similarities with people in a very different culture than me. I also took part in enculturation which is the process by which culture is learned and transmitted. I was able to learn and transmit information about other cultures and transmit it into my own thoughts.

From these experiences I have come to understand how important it is to emulsify ourselves in other’s cultures. I also realized how important it is that instead of looking at all the differences it is so important to also find the similarities. I plan to actively engage myself in educating myself on other people’s cultures, while not looking too hard into the differences. I hope to teach others around me to do the same and take this with me into my career. As a nurse, I will see people from many different backgrounds and I hope to truly understand their culture and not always look at how different we may be, but also find similarities. I want to meet my patients' needs based on their cultural beliefs as well, and I think these opportunities have given me a great start to doing so.