Monika volunteered at Nyaka for two months in Spring 2010. She conducted a nutritional assessment for our students at the Nyaka School and children in the surrounding community so that we could assess the success of our school lunches and nutrition program. Her work would also help determine whether continueing our work on the Desire Farm will produce measurable and substantial benefits for the whole Nyaka community. We will be posting the findings of her work on this page as well as the Nutrition Program and Community Gardens Page.

Monika Dietrich is a student in the Nutrition College at Michigan State University. We congratulate her on her recent graduation from MSU!

Read Monika Dietrich's Blog during her work at Nyaka by following this link.

See the Full Photo Album of the Nutritional Assessment and Monika Dietrich and learn more about what our students eat by following this link.

Monika Dietrich's Testimonial

It is difficult to summarize my experiences in Uganda; when I reflect upon my six weeks there I can't pin down one description of the time. Instead, I remember a jumble of emotions and events that come together in my mind as a representation of the school.

I was at Nyaka to carry out a nutritional assessment of all the children there, measure weight, height and arm circumference. Indeed, being at Nyaka was so much more than my project. It was perhaps the most concentrated learning experience I have ever had. While I was often regarded as highly knowledgeable due to my university education, I found that I was the student of those around me. Every hour of every day I was in a culture very different from my own, interacting with people who had lived very different lives.

The most important lesson I learned hit me at some point during my first few days. All my life my only impression of Sub-Saharan Africa had been of sad, depressing images of starving children, of an unrelenting virus that infected much of the continent, and of statistics so grave they seem unreal. Can I be blamed, then, when I was utterly surprised by the smiling, happy faces I saw everywhere I went, by the people working so hard to feed their families instead of being beaten down by their situation, by the extreme generosity and good-heartedness I encountered in every village I visited? I don't know what it is I expected, but learning about Africa from a foreign perspective had somehow made me forget that, no matter where you are or in what situation, people still have lives to live, just like every single person on this Earth. However clichéd it may seem, it really hit me that we are not Ugandans or Americans, and we are not wealthy or poor: we are people. We are sad, we are happy, we mourn, we celebrate, we laugh and we cry. I thought I would be consumed in sadness to be surrounded by so many children who had lost parents to an unforgiving disease- who had gone through so much. Instead on the first day of school I saw smiling children running into the school grounds, girls sitting together and chatting under the shade of trees, boys playing a thrilling game of football. They screamed with joy at every goal.

What I think is terrible is with all of the negativity we encounter regarding Africa in the United States, it is easy to forget this humanity. This humanity is exactly why schools like Nyaka are so important and so good. My time at Nyaka was amazing in many ways, and the lessons I learned will stay with me, and will come back to me when I am thinking of those living in areas of the world so different from my own.

Monika Dietrich