In the Land That I Live, That They Live

Where we live in Kampala, Kololo, is one of the nicest parts in the country. We have almost continuous electricity, running water, a water heater, and tall, barbed-wire walls and guards to shield us from the perils of the rest of the world. In the flats, we have our own little havens with mosquito nets, solid flooring, fans, stocked kitchens, and hot showers. Here, I do not feel as if I am in Africa, the so-called land of rampant extreme poverty. I just feel like I am at school, living with 16 awesome people. Nonetheless, when I go to my sites during the week, I am reminded that I am where I am.

On Wednesday, I went on home visits with a clinician from Reach Out and a community leader of the clan we were visiting. We took boda-bodas up the mountain and then walked the rest of the way up. There could not have been running water or electricity up this mountain. As we climbed up the steep, brown, dirt-covered incline, I saw kids with tattered clothing and many villagers of all ages striking piles of rocks with sticks to break them into smaller rocks. Stella, the clinician, informed me that they did this for a living. We continued upward, passing by women and children with yellow plastic jugs for collecting water to bring back to use in their homes. And then there were the homes.

I am not usually shocked by circumstances of poor housing, having seen the bad living conditions present in much of China. However, somehow, this village topped even that. The walls of the houses (or should I say huts?) ranged in composition from crumbling brick and cement to large wooden sticks filled in with the mud from the ground. Each place could not have been any bigger than 6 feet by 6 feet. Generally, there was one mattress and then room for a few belongings and a chair or two. If you were lucky, you had a solid floor with a mat to cover it. If not, you coped with the mud floor. The narrow walkways between residences were mounds of rocks and mud. It had rained recently, leaving sporadic puddles of murky water and slush on the ground. We visited a woman who was living by herself. She had left her family more than a year ago to come here and receive free treatment for her TB and HIV problems. Her hut had a curtained entrance. The ground jutted upward at the entrance. On it was a busy trail of ants. Inside, the withered woman sat on her bed, a mattress on the dirt floor. In a flowery traditional dress, she greeted each of us congenially, holding our hands in both of hers. I sat on the bench, facing her, with my feet on potato sacks used to cover the uneven ground.

As I was sitting there, looking at her, looking at the wooden planks for walls, looking at the corrugated metal ceiling, looking at the soiled soap on the ground, I felt an aching inside. Even now, it makes me slightly nauseous. Even in Uganda, I have lovely flats and clean bedding to return to every night. Waiting for me at home, I have a loving family with a big, sturdy house to return to. What did this woman have? Sickness, scraps of metal and plywood, fewer worldly possessions than would fit in my luggage bags for this trip. What could be done? What was my responsibility? Even if I gave this woman money to fix up her home and eat a little more, what have I really done? What happens when she runs out of money? What about all the other shanties in the village? In the country? In the world? This leads to the major question of our entire trip: How do we make a sustainable impact? It’s not enough to just donate time and money. You have to find the proper way to help out—the best way to really work towards bridging the gap between how I live and how they live.

 

The Nile: An Epic Tale

Yesterday, May 10, I traversed to the Nile River for a day of many adventures.

My day began at 6:00am at which time I woke up to get ready for bungee jumping and white-water rafting in the Nile. The large bus came to pick us up, so all of us piled in and began our drive at 6:45am. The roads were bumping, and people were drowsy. I had the whole backseat (4 chairs) to myself to sleep on! We arrived at 10:00am.

There were many foreigners a.k.a. white people at the site. We could see the Nile from a little viewing dock near the parking area. Then the people who signed up to bungee walked over to the tower and started to climb the many stories of stairs to get to the top. It would be a 44 meter drop. I waited impatiently as each jumper got their legs tied into a towel and onto the bungee before waddling to the edge and dropping into the Nile below. I could see how high we were in comparison to the Nile and felt like I was freaking out. However, I did it. Even though I wasn’t ready as the instruction shouted, “3…2…1,” I just jumped. Backwards.

The freefall was pretty scary, so I closed my eyes. I was going to open them again, but then I realized I’m going to be plunged head-first into the Nile, so I better not open them and lose a contact. Therefore, I waited for my body to be submersed into the murky waters and back up in the air before I opened them to see the view before me. The Nile landscape is so pretty. After the bungee steadied a bit, I was slowly lowered to the raft below, where they let me drop onto and unhooked me from the cord. I was taken to the nearby outcropping of land, where my friends who were taking pictures and who had jumped before me were. It was such an adrenaline rush! Afterwards, I could hardly believe what had just happened.

After this little excursion, we headed to the preparation area, where we got our lifevests, helmets, and paddles for rafting. I was grouped into the Punk Raft because we wanted to be more safe on the course ahead. We had to walk down the side of the bank to get to the rafts barefoot. I teetered a few times from stepping on a jagged edge here or there. Once we got on the raft, I was put in the front because I was the only one who had rafted before. Kelly and I were the leaders. Big job.

Our guide, Big J, was so funny. He explained all the procedures to us and answered all of our questions. We had many. Then he decided we needed to practice flipping over in the raft. I have never flipped in a raft before. I thought he was kidding. But no, we had to practice because there were several rapids ahead where the chances were 50/50 for the raft flipping and spilling all of its contents a.k.a. us into the Nile.

So we humored him and practiced. First, we went through some limpy rapids. Then we hit our first class 3. Our raft made it through rockily, but right side up. Our other 2 rafts did not have the same fate. The first one flipped during the rapids accidentally. Then the second flipped on purpose. Ravi orchestrated this, of course. Both “Bad Ass” teams got banged up pretty badly in the waters and rocks below. Suckers.

We hit a couple of class 5’s that morning, but the worse one was Overtime. Our plan was to get down in the raft, paddle backwards, and sale through the left of the falls, where there is not a vertical drop. However, in the middle of our efforts to paddle backwards, we get stuck on the rock past which the rapids go straight down. Big J said, “We didn’t make it.” We didn’t make it. Instead, fear flashed across each of our faces as we slowly inched off the rock toward the vertical plunge ahead. It didn’t help that we were backwards on the raft, unable to see how deep the plunge would be. And then it happened. We fell straight down into the rapids but somehow did not flip over or lose a passenger. We were praising Big J at that point. He had saved us.

Another raft was not so lucky. One flipped so that one of the people got stuck right at the base of the falls so that the water falling kept pushing him down into the water. Every time he tried to go up for air, the water pushed him back down. It was pretty scary. All we could see was a red helmet bopping up and down. Fortunately, he was able to get out of the cycle, getting to the safety boat safely–sans shorts, that is.

So in the morning, we went through 6 rapids, two of which were class 5’s. We felt pretty experienced in the realm of rafting at that point. After the 6th one, we all rafted to an island for lunch: sandwiches with avocado, mystery ham, potato salad, and pineapple…YUM. We bulked up on food and lathered on more sunscreen for the last half of our journey.

in the afternoon, we had lots of time to just chill without our helmets or lifevests on. We also swam quite a bit in the lovely Nile. The first rapid in the afternoon was a class 5, but we felt pretty confident about our skills in the water, but most importantly, about our guide’s skills, so we went through that one with no problems. We had also adopted the “Well, Moses did it” philosophy to keep up from being scared of anything at that point. The next couple rapids were class 3’s. Then the final rapid, called the Bad Place, was, from the top, a class 6. However, no one can raft it without flipping and being pushed around for a bit, so we got out of the raft to walk to the calm bottom part of the rapids. We took an easier side route of the rapids, so our raft was tossed about for a bit, but no flipping occurred. Upon completing the last rapid, our raft was able to say that we were the only ones from our group to not flip over. Our journey was perfect in that sense. 6 hours of rafting had come to a conclusion. Our lives were complete.

 

A Day Unlike Any Other

Today is a milestone. Today I saw a dead person for the first time. Today I saw someone die for the first time. Today is a day unlike any other.

After getting to Hospice Africa Uganda this morning, the lady in charge of us volunteers told us we could go with a nurse named Charles to Mulago Hospital. We jumped on the opportunity to do anything besides paperwork and sorting. Charles goes to the Child Cancer Institute of Mulago Hospital every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We went with him on the trip today. In the van were the driver, 2 American volunteers, Uganda doctors and nurses, and 2 British doctors (they were women). The ride there was long and bumpy, but that’s the usual in Uganda. Time is relative. Streets are bad. When we finally arrived at the old part of Mulago, we saw a small, one-story building of thin walls. Windows and doors were open to the hot outside. People were lined up along the outside on blankets and sheets. The sign read “Child Cancer Institute.”

Inside the shoddy building, we see a small entryway bordered by 2 small rooms for medical professionals and their supplies. Children were receiving treatments through their pick lines in this entryway. Then past this point, the room was long and divided so half was to the left and half to the right. We ventured to the left. The room probably had 12 beds of sick children and some of their mothers laying very close to one another. Most of the kids were sleeping or resting. The other side of the ward had these lines of beds as well. A young doctor by the name of Michael talked to us about the condition of this tiny little boy, tiny from malnutrition. He had cancer in his lower leg. When the mother flipped over the sheets that covered the leg, I could not believe the size and deformity of the huge growth on this weak little boy. When it started out, the mother thought it was just a little wound, but then it just kept growing. The boy is now undergoing chemo.

A lady came up to the doctor to alert him to her sister’s son, whose bed was right beside the other little boy. This boy, who was a bit older, had an IV that had come out. The doctor left to find some gloves and returned with the gloves and tape to adjust the IV. The boy’s eyes were half open, and he was breathing very heavily on the bed with his mother sitting over him. At some point, the mother started crying strongly. The tears kept falling as she kicked her legs back and forth beside the bed. She was worried about her son.

The doctor said something about getting his some Vitamin A, so the aunt carried the sickly child to the entryway for an injection. Afterwards, she brought him back to the bed. We (Alex and I) left the room to see where the doctor went, but wandered back to the room of beds when we heard screaming and howling from a couple women. Upon coming back into that room, we saw the little boy on the bed not heavily breathing anymore, but very still. He still had his eyes partially open, but that was it. He was dead.

The doctor had gone into the room to make sure this was true. Then a nurse bundled up the body with cotton sashes and the sheets he was laying in. All this time, the other children in the ward were looking on. People from outside had crowded around the window nearest the dead boy. The female relatives were howling and bawling and running around. The mother was so pretty, yet so devastated. It took all my strength not to break down in tears as well. When the doctor walked by us again, he said, “That’s the way it is.”

That’s just the way it is. In Uganda. In the impoverished economy. It’s just not fair.

 

In Uganda–Really?

I still have to remind myself all that time that I’m here. This is my 5th day. I love it. Leaving will be a sad and miserable day and a half.

The people here are suprisingly friendly, always taking your hand and wanting to talk about your life in the states. They’re also very helpful when you’re looking for the taxi park or nearby internet cafe. They’re not people who have been defeated by poverty. Everyone still smiles wide and has fun. My dad always said he was at his happiest as a child living up in the depts of poverty. Maybe we’re just so full of nice things and tools in our lives that they distract from the meaning and feeling of just being happy–happy because we can, not because we earned material items. It is just so American to care about what we have, how we look, etc. Being here and not caring about whether my clothes really match or if I really got all the shampoo out of my hair is so…relaxing. Maybe the key to happiness is living simply, without worries, only new ideas and developments of life ahead.

I admit it. I stress way too much. I’m already freaking about bungee jumping and water water rafting this Sunday–OVER THE NILE! But that’s a legitimate stress, right? I’d like to think so. Well, more blogging will appear as I bring my journal to work here!

 

Pre-Renaissance Lack of Realism

According to John Willats in Art and Representation: New Principles in the Analysis of Pictures, the noticeable lack of much realism in art before the Renaissance may be contributed to factors outside of the scientific knowledge of optics at that time. Early Orthodox art was purposefully created in inverted perspective or other projections, such as horizontal oblique and vertical oblique, in order to flatten the image and confine icons to the two-dimensional surface of the picture. These perspective systems were used to reduce any realistic characteristics of Orthodox art in an effort to prevent Christian followers from idolizing these icons. By making the figures appear so flat and symbolic, artists were attempting to imbue the icons with a sense of being other-worldly and not grounded in our three-dimensional space. The sixth-century’s Scenes from the Life of Abraham at Ravenna and the fourteenth-century’s The Numbering of People in Istanbul are illustrations of inverted perspective in Orthodox art.

Above is The Old Testament Trinity from the Tretyakov Gallery of Moscow, Russia (c. 1410s). In these pre-Renaissance depictions, depth and proportions were distorted so that they seem to lack a fitting perspective. With the perspective out of whack, the picture does not appear realistic. In The Old Testament Trinity, one can clearly see that each figure’s body parts are not proportional. All three figures are the same size even though one is farther than the rest, which disagrees with the rule that objects of the same physical size will differ in visual size when they are at different distances from the viewer. The dimensions and location of the table and chairs are also very confusing. The farther figure’s knees are under the table while the two closer figures seem to be partially sitting on the table. Looking at the top half of the chairs, they seem to be directly facing the table. However, the bottom half of the chairs show that they are angled from the table. On the left, the chair is drawn with a vantage point from the left. On the right, the chair is drawn with a vantage point from the right. The contradictions of depth and proportion allow this visual scene to look highly unrealistic. Therefore, it fulfills the goals of the Orthodox church to portray saints and other religious figures as impossible to visualize in our physical world since they are not of this world but something more.

 

Do you see what I see?

After learning about the perceptual experience of seeing colors in class and how we can never really know what anyone else is actually seeing, it can seem like we could never agree with another person on color perception and we probably could never get anywhere with research on the topic either. However, there are still some things that can be studied and compared among people, which brightened my spirits on the matter.

In ScienceDaily, researchers discovered that we assign colors such as yellow to the same wavelengths of light, showing that we normally are agreeing on the colors that we see when we label them. Subjects were told to adjust a light to the purest yellow they believed it to be. The results were very similar, so each person chose about the same wavelength of light as pure yellow. This held true even though people have different distributions of long-wavelength and middle-wavelength cones in their retinas. Despite the variation in retinal composition, the brain was able to process the information so that the subject perceived the same yellowness. I found this idea very comforting. My world of colors is still intact and not just a figment of my perceptual imagination.

However, the researchers in the article went further to test perceptual changes upon adaptation to seeing the world tinted. Subjects were instructed to wear color contacts that colored their worlds differently for four hours each day. After weeks of contact use, their normal color vision began to shift as they adapted to this differently colored world. The wavelength that normal visioned people would choose to be yellow was not so anymore for these color contact wearers. Therefore, color perception is dependent on our experience with color in the world. We may decide that the same color is yellow, but our actual perceptual experience of that color may be different. I can never actually see what you see.

Darn, I guess that brings me back to square one. Well, enjoy these illusions while I continue to ponder the dilemma of color perception.

 

Epic Battle of Nature vs. Nurture

Are our lives predetermined by the nature of our genetic make-up and inherent traits of our character? Or are our lives shaped by our various experiences and the nurture of our environments? This question of nature vs. nurture has been studied widely in the sciences, especially in biology.

The nature of each organism’s genes does determine a lot about the organism. In humans, it determines the person’s natural gender, hair color, eye color, skin pigmentation, etc. It can predispose someone to certain personality characteristics, such as a bad temper or a quiet nature. Many aspects of vision can also be pre-determined. Red-green colorblindness occurs at birth from a mutation in the X-chromosome. Some people are also born with congenital eye disorders, such as astigmatism, cataracts, myopia, hyperopia, and glaucoma. Therefore, the physical presence and production of visual elements have a great influence from the nature of the person.

However, nurture has proven to have an impact on visual development as well. Accidents can cause damage to visual areas of cortex as well as the eyes themselves, causing visual impairment. The environment that we are raised in can also affect the development of our visual cortex. Humans have something called the oblique effect, where we have tendencies to prefer seeing horizontal and vertical lines or borders as opposed to oblique lines. The theory for this effect is that we are brought up to see and to recognize so many vital objects with straight, perpendicular edges–objects that are usually man-made. This recognition skill is important for identifying houses, furniture, roads, signs, and many other useful items. Infants have also been shown to possess the oblique effect, an example of nature’s influence. However, this inclination can be altered depending on the organism’s subsequent experiences in life.

In an experiment where a kitten is raised in a cylinder with a whole wall of only vertical lines of various widths, the cat’s neurons were later recorded to show that most of the neurons preferentially responded to nearly vertical lines. The same was found of a kitten raised in an environment of only horizontal lines. Its neurons mostly responded to nearly horizontal lines. Therefore, although an innate neuronal preference such as the oblique effect may be present, nurture can alter it during an early critical period in development.

Despite that the debate of nature vs. nurture in the visual system seems complex depending on multiple conditions and factors, it seems to follow certain guidelines. In another book of Neuroscience, the authors explain that there are critical periods in visual system development, in which permanent alterations in the visual system can occur from early visual experiences of the organism (i.e. the effect of nurture on nature). Beyond these early critical periods, neural circuits are pretty much solidified and do not change much more. Therefore, experiences beyond the critical point have a much smaller effect on the visual system. Of course, there are boundaries of how much the visual system can change during a lifetime, bound by the nature of the visual elements at the onset of life. For example, a blind individual cannot practice in order to see better. In the end, nature determines the individual’s boundaries in which nurture can act, especially during the critical period (if there is one for the particular part of the visual system), after which the effect of experience decreases dramatically or may have no effect at all. The interplay between nature and nurture can be quite mind-boggling.

 

Seeing through Albino Eyes

When you think of albinism, you normally think of the pale white skin, silvery blond hair, and shockingly light eyes. People with albinism have a genetic disorder that causes them to have no pigmentation. One would think this only affects their outer appearances, but it actually affects their vision as well.

At the very back of the retina, there is normally a pigmented epithelium, and melanin, the pigment that gives color to skin, hair, and eyes, is normally found in the retina’s macula. The melanin allows for migration of photoreceptors to the center, forming the foveal pit. However, in people with albinism, their retina’s do not contain this pigment, so during the retinal development, the photoreceptors do not shift inward as much, and a foveal pit is not formed. Because of this reduced clustering of photoreceptors at the fovea, the number of photoreceptors per unit area in this crucial area of the retina is much lower than in normal eyes. Therefore, people with albinism do not have very sharp vision and many are blind.

In the article “Albino Like Me,” Lee Laughlin, co-founder and national conference chair of the National Organization for Albinism and Hypopigmentation, talks about her struggles with albinism and the possibility of raising kids with albinism as well. With her impaired vision, she cannot see details and fine print very well, but can see large objects at a distance. Her eyes are also very sensitive to light and glare because of the lack of pigmentation in her irises. She needs to have sunblock constantly.

Because her husband has the same type of albinism that she has, their children would receive the albinism genes as well. Before deciding to have children, she had to contend with whether or not she wanted her children to have to deal with the social aspect of looking different and the physical aspect of poor vision. She concluded that everyone has challenges to face in life, and albinism is just another one of them. However, she hopes that when her children begin to have their own families, they might have the chance to decide which attributes of albinism to keep, such as the light skin and hair, and which to eliminate, such as the sensitivity to sun and impaired eyesight, with the help of new developments in genetic engineering.

Of course, having albinism is not all bad. In fact, one famous model with albinism made her traits work in her advantage. Connie Chiu, a Chinese woman with albinism, was a model in the 90’s and even starred in Recoil’s music video “The Stalker,” according to Wikipedia. I think she is quite stunning.

 

Cortical Magnification and Efficiency

Cortical magnification refers to the disproportional amount of magnification of the representation of the retina’s fovea in the cortex of humans and many animals. If each portion of the retina were equally projected in the cortex so that the visual cortex had equal surface area for equal parts of the retina, then the surface area that is receptive to information from the fovea would be much smaller than it actually is. In fact, the magnification of the fovea’s cortical representation is about 100 times that of an equal part of the peripheral retina’s cortical representation, according to Wikipedia.

This idea of cortical magnification may seem odd at first, but it is actually very important for the efficiency of our visual system. By magnifying the cortical processing of the photons that strike the retina at the fovea, which relates to a receptive field that is directly in the middle of our visual field, we are able to discern with great detail the items that we are directly looking at. This makes sense because the part of the visual field that you are most interested in and which you would like detailed information about is probably the portion in the middle of your gaze. Although it would be nice to be able to see everything in the visual field with clarity at all times, the information from the periphery is not so important because one can move the eyes quickly and easily to place the peripheral objects on the fovea and obtain the information in that way.

Magnifying the entire visual field to the extent that the fovea is magnified would require a lot of resources and energy. Our brains would have to be whole lot bigger to contain the cortical surface area and neurons needed for the extra processing. This organization of the visual cortex would also need much more energy to run and sustain, since light received on any part of the retina would need to be processed to the amount of detail that our fovea now receives, and each neuron needs its own supply of nutrients and materials to work properly. Our peripheral vision is just not that important to put that much material resources and energy to magnify it in the cortex.

Therefore, cortical magnification of a small, but highly-important area of the retina allows for the efficiency of the entire visual system. Nature did not come up with it for no specific reason. It serves a crucial purpose in the best way to allot resources where they are most needed. This is true in other sensory systems as well, such as somatosensory cortex of star-nosed moles. A star-nosed mole’s somatosensory fovea lies in the 11th digit of its star-shaped nose. As a result, whenever it needs to better discern the tactile features of an object, such as a food particle, it moves so that the 11th digit is in contact with it. This digit’s representation in the cortex is magnified much more in the cortex than the other digits, allowing for more processing of detail enacting on that digit. In the same way that the visual system’s fovea has cortical magnification, a somatosensory system’s fovea can also have cortical magnification for the same evolutionary reasons.

 

The Eye’s Freedom and Limitations

“The eye is at once the master and slave of vision” is a wise quote from Roger Carpenter. The eye can be a powerful tool into knowing about the external world that extends beyond where we could possibly touch. However, depending on the properties of your specific eyes, you may not be able to perceive as much or even the same things as another person or organism could. The wonderful world of vision is possible because of the eyes, but it can also be limited by them as well.

Most people are able to use their eyes to see the world around them, but there are those who cannot because of blindness. In this case, they are “slaves” of vision in that their eyes have greatly challenged their lives and abilities to perceive the materials around them. In an article from the Boston Herald, Eva Wolchover describes how some of those who are degeneratively blind may be able to enhance their eyes so that vision is possible.

A bio-electronic device is in its final stages of development. This device can be implanted behind the retina and will transmit light that is conveyed to the brain through a very thin connector. The resulting eyesight is not perfect, but it can provide information on the general surrounding of objects or obstacles in the person’s way. Developers hope that, in the future, the device can be improved to allow for face and expression recognition as well. Also, not every patient with blindness is a good candidate for this prosthetic and surgery. The patient needs to have been able to see in the past and needs to have partially intact optic nerve cells.

However, I still think it would be amazing to allow people who are gradually losing their eyesight to have an option that would restore it. As the article stated: “Roughly 2 million Americans suffer from age-related macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of blindness in the industrialized world. Some 1.6 million people worldwide have retinitis pigmentosa, the leading cause of inherited blindness in the world.” It could help out more people that you might think.

The eye is a device that “masters” vision in that, if working properly, vision is clear and informative. The eye is also a device that is a “slave” to vision when it is not working to its potential, as seen in visually impaired people. However, it can also be a “slave” to vision in that there is usually more to the world that is perceivable with any two eyes. For example, birds of prey can see ultraviolet light that we cannot. Rattlesnakes can sense infrared radiation that we cannot. Some insects have compound eyes that form pixelated images. Snails have simple photoreceptors that only distinguish light from dark. Each organism’s vision is determined by the mechanisms of their eyes, and no one can see everything there is in the world. Each organism has behavioral techniques that are specific to their survival, so their eyes have developed differently to suite them. Therefore, no eye can be a true master of vision and all that can be seen in this world.