The blog is called “Diary of a Muzungu”, and a
British woman named Charlotte authors it. Charlotte started this blog five
years ago as a way to document her journey and volunteer initiatives in Uganda.
She joined an international development charity called VSO (Voluntary Services
Overseas), which strives to find a long-term solution to global poverty. The
four main focuses of VSO are health, participation and governance, secure
livelihoods, and education. This development is a holistic approach to global
issues through fusing human rights and health together. These emphases are the
same focuses of public health, as public health analyzes health determinants in
a holistic way. Because I strive to join the public health field, “Diary of a
Muzungu” is incredibly useful to me.
Not only does this blog parallel with my area of
study, but it also matches my passion for serving others and bettering the
global community. This blog holds a mirror in front of my face, as I started my
blog with the same intentions. I want to understand Uganda and what contributes
to the overall well being of Ugandans before I begin global health volunteering
in May. My blog has a very short-term goal of detailing my learning and
experiences in Uganda. However, Charlotte’s blog showed me the enormous
capabilities of my own blog. The blog may start out as a small-scaled means of
Ugandan research and volunteer initiatives (just like hers), and then expand
into a massive outlet to build future learning off of. Thus, I am interested in
Charlotte’s work and any insight she has to offer about her volunteer journey.
Ultimately, VSO partnered Charlotte with the
Uganda Conservation Foundation in 2009. She spent the next 5 years at Uganda
Conservation Foundation with the goal of “achieving the balance between human
development and wildlife and habitat conservation”.
Since then, she has dramatically expanded her
blog and provided organized sections called “Adventure”, “Conservation”,
“Diary”, “Society & Culture”, “Travel Tips”, “Travel”, and “Volunteering”.
Because she posted monthly (or at least once every few months) for five years,
this organization is important. No one wants to read through 5 years of posts
without a sense of the changing topics between each post. Her organization addresses
this by filtering the posts by topic. This way, readers can choose a topic and
read through posts that are specific to their interests. The functional nature
of her blog might be one reason why her blog is popular. More than half of her
page viewers spend 2.5+ hours reading her blog. The average viewer looks at her
blog 3 times a day, depicting how her interesting posts draw people back to her
site.
Charlotte’s strong voice is another reason her
blog caught my attention. Her words captivated me and sparked my interest in
both the work she was doing and in who she actually is. I see a kind, humorous
soul in this blog, and I want to know more! I never really thought about the
importance of voice until starting my own blog and discussing voice in class.
However, I’ve realized how finding your voice is tremendously important. The
voice behind the words is the inspiration that charges the words with purpose.
Charlotte’s blog is very encouraging to me
because I can see how greatly she has grown over the past few years. She started
her blog with a shy, noob-like tone saying “I’m just learning the ropes here with blogging but thought
you might be interested in hearing about my journey ‘pre-departure’.” Her only
tag was “Uganda” and she had no links to support the networking aspect of her
posts. This is exactly what my noob blog looks like, as I am still finding my
voice and figuring out how to contribute to the social network with my ideas.
However, today I see a strong, humorous voice that appeals to
both common readers and academic scholars/ professionals. Charlotte appeals to
professional audiences because she supports her ideas with facts. Her posts
depict quality content because her volunteer experiences are portrayed through
the lens of research and understanding. In fact, her blog is cited as a main
source for a Wikipedia page on Muzungus. On the other hand, the way she
delivers this content and the insertion of her personality makes her blog
attractive to the common reader. Thus, all readers can enjoy “Diary of a
Muzungu”.
Examples of some
of her interesting posts are:
This post appeals to the common
reader part of me who just wants to know what to look forward to when I go to
Uganda. Maybe I will love these things too!
This post appeals to the scholar
part of me because it details the history of the Ndere Cultural Centre and the
Uganda Development Theatre Association. They topics are: dance, development,
the impact of colonialism on traditional culture, and the conflicts of
homosexuality and born-again Christians.I am interested in how these topics affect the health of the community.
I aspire to model "Diary of a Muzungu" for my own
blog writing, as Charlotte portrays a wonderful integration of her voice and personality
with the details of her work and experiences. She went from being the shy
blogger with 1 tag to a smooth, humorous blogger who invites you in by saying “I am the Captain for your tour of the Pearl
of Africa”.
Now her posts are filled with tags like this:
In
addition, all of her posts are packed with links! She links to pictures, other
websites supporting her ideas, site-seeing websites, and other blog posts. If
she mentions a topic that she covered more extensively in another post, she
links the reader to that post. All of her links are integrated into her
sentences. Consequently, her links are not a long daunting list at the end of
her post, but a very fluid integration of links within sentences. I want to master this as well (this will also add to the credibility of my posts).
All of her tagging and linking shows that she is very detailed in her posts. Although she only posts monthly, she packs each post with links and accounts of numerous experiences. This means her posts are action packed with information!
All of her tagging and linking shows that she is very detailed in her posts. Although she only posts monthly, she packs each post with links and accounts of numerous experiences. This means her posts are action packed with information!
Our blogs will differ in that I am not going to Uganda for animal conservation efforts. Instead, I will be working with people and focusing on the issues of HIV, maternal mortality, malaria, agriculture, etc. I will also only be in Uganda for 3 weeks vs. Charlotte's 5 years, and I am not going to the other African countries she has been to. However, only time will tell what my future holds. It is possible that my blog, like Charlotte’s, will evolve into a broader, more comprehensive outlet for my future travels and volunteer efforts!
Hi, it's Paige :) Nice post. Your intro is a bit long (~4ish paragraphs) so I wasn't quite sure where you were going at first, but once you got past the assignment bit you really hit your stride when you started the actual profiling. I think it's really neat how you found someone with interests so similar to yours, and I also like how you differentiate between your two blogs in your last couple of paragraphs. This ensures that your blog is unique. Calling the other blogger by her first name, Charlotte, is a nice touch. It lends an air of familiarity to your voice. It makes readers feel as if you're talking to them about an old friend rather than writing out a class assignment. Calling her by her last name instead would sound too formal, a mistake which I made with my own post. Anyway. I can tell you're falling more in love with your topic (as denoted by several exclamation points). I hope you choose to continue with your blog like you say after the spring semester ends.
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