Week 11: Classes Finishing, C-sections, and Cats

This week has been pretty low key so it will likely be a short not too exciting post, sorry in advance if it bores you.

This week lectures finished on Tuesday and then the student had their exam for organizational development on Wednesday. Kash and I put together to multiple choice section of the exam again. This time we made it much simpler with more basic English and not testing as many definitions. This proved to be successful as many of the student had near perfect marks on our section and nobody was close to failing the section. The students were much happier with us, it was a good last impression for them to have of us.

Around the UCU campus

 

Fairly typical lunch in Uganda, I will not miss having this everyday

Wednesday evening we were at the Mukono Hospital again to observe surgeries, this week there were 5 procedures we got to see. The first was a young man who had had his fingers crushed, the tip of his pinky was missing and the tip of the ring finger was only partially attached. The surgeon did his best to repair the partially detached finger and then stitched up the pinky to try and make it cosmetically pleasing. Next we saw an inguinal hernia repair on another young man and two C-sections. The first caesarean as an added bonus to the woman the surgeon removed quite a bit of fat tissue from her stomach as he had her open and he figured she would appreciate it. He also worried that the fat would hang over the wound and disrupt the healing but really he wanted to make her skinny. The second caesarean was a bit more exciting as the baby would not breathe on her own. After both the midwife and anesthesiologist being unable to get her to breathe the surgeon tried and luckily was eventually successful and the stubborn little one came around and took her first breath on her own. The last procedure was an abscess incision and drainage on a man who had quite a few abscesses around his groin. It has been awesome getting to see so many different procedures the past few weeks but it is a shame Mukono hospital is not bigger as most of the really cool procedure are done at the national referral hospital in Kampala.

This is the main road in Mukono

Thursday we returned to Mengo hospital where we had not been since classes had started. The staff there were happy to see us as they had thought we had gone home already and didn’t say goodbye. There I was working in the triage and Kash was taking blood. I was working with a nursing student who was very interested in Canada and was asking tons of questions about life in Canada. In high school here students take geography and one of the things they learn about are the Canadian prairies so they are always proud to show off their minimal knowledge of Canada.

The craziness that is Kampala, there are always so many people no matter what time of day it is

 Friday I spent the day at ACHERU giving the kids their weekly test. It is going to be sad to say goodbye to that place as the kids and staff are so amazing and it is always so fun being there. There was a new young boy there this week who I was doing some colouring with, the only problem was that he did understand that I don’t speak Luganda. He kept saying “teacher” and then rambling on in Luganda, I had no clue what he was saying so he would say it again and again until the actual teacher would come over and tell me what he wanted. It’s strangely fun interacting with the kids with limited talking as the young ones know very little English and I know even less Luganda. I have gotten quite good at communicating with some of them without using actual words.

This past week the cat, Bubbles, that belongs to Save the Mothers, another Canadian organization, has been extra friendly. Typically she will come around once or twice a week but this week she’s barely left our guesthouse and barges into our rooms when we open the doors. This may have something to do with us starting to feed her… However we are rather regretting feeding her as she is still a kitten and quite a nuisance, she loves chewing on cords and anytime there is food around she tried to eat it. Yet it is nice to have an animal around to cuddle while we watch movies and stuff.

Bubbles burrowed in my duvet not wanting to be kicked back outside

We have come a long way from our microwaved noodles and eggplant the first week

Well that’s all for now, it has been a quite Saturday spent studying for the MCAT. I am now entering my last week here in Uganda before I go to Rwanda to meet my family for 2 weeks of vacation there and in Tanzania. I am so excited to see my family and travel around but it will also be sad saying goodbye to this place I have called home for the past 3 months!

Jess

Week 10: Horseback Safari

Another exciting week has passed and the reality that I only have 2 more left is starting to sink in. It will definitely be bittersweet saying goodbye to this amazing country.

Classes continued this week going on in their usual manner. This week, Edward tasked Kash and I with putting together a short multiple choice test for the students from questions in the textbook’s teacher’s manual. We did this and thought we had created a good test that would challenge the students slightly but wasn’t too difficult, oh were we proved wrong. After giving the students the test one of them said he was traumatized from it so he didn’t want to participate in the class discussion. Marking the tests was tough as we really wanted the students to do well but this was not the case and many were around the 50% mark. The next day we went over the test with the students and it seemed much of the English used in the questions was too complex for the students, so they were unable to fully understand many of the questions and answers. The next test we put together will be much easier and we will revise to questions from the book to make the English simpler. It was slightly upsetting seeing the students so upset over their less than stellar marks.  

Relaxing on campus using the Wi-Fi as it was problematic in the guesthouse as per usual

Some of the students working on a group assignment

On Thursday we went out to ACHERU after classes, it seems everyone is recovering nicely from last week’s tragedy and the place is back to its normal cheerful atmosphere. Now that we have been around ACHERU for quite some time, many of the children that were originally there and really warmed up to us are beginning to be discharged and going back home. It is awesome to see the kids healing and getting healthy enough to go home but it is also tough to say goodbye to the ones that were so fun and I had special connections with. Luckily there is high demand for ACHERU’s services so as the healthy children leave, new children arrive. One of the nurses at ACHERU, Betty, has an 8 month old son Joshua who accompanies her to work every day and is such a cute baby. Typically, Joshua is passed around among the staff and the mothers while Betty is working. Kash and I have held him before but he is only content with us for short periods of time then he becomes weary of the Mzungu’s. On Thursday as we arrived, Betty was just heading back to work after her break so she asked if I would take Joshua. Amazingly, Joshua was happy with me and I got to cart him around for a couple hours. It was hard work to carrying a baby while also trying to work with the other children, I have so much more respect for mothers with multiple children now!

Joshua and I, notice he's not terrified of the Mzungu

Peace and Patience, two of the younger kids that I work with most of the time

Handing out stickers at the end of the day, who doesn't love getting stickers?

This weekend Kash’s friend Arwen, who is also a Uvic student and doing her co-op in Nairobi, came to visit and we went on a two day overnight horseback riding trip. The trip was lots of fun with 4-5 hours of riding each day through varying landscapes. Saturday we mostly went along the Nile and through the local villages, there was one section along a maize plantation where we were given the opportunity to gallop on the horses. This was pretty much first time for all of us on the trip to gallop so we were slightly nervous but everything went smoothly and it was amazing! That afternoon we arrived at the lodge called The Haven which is located right on the Nile with a fantastic view. It was a lovely place with great food, a pool, hammocks, and comfortable accommodations.  When we arrived, the horses were put into the paddock on the property and my horse quickly began to roll around in the grass. Unfortunately, somebody had thrown a glass bottle onto the grass so my horse rolled on and shattered the bottle cutting his neck in the process. Luckily the wound was not too deep so he was just fine and able to be ridden back to the stables for further treatment the next day. The next day after the best breakfast I have had in 10 weeks, we set off to begin the return journey. The route we took back was completely different, we were doing up and down mountains/hills, through a rainforest, and through massive sugar plantations. The ride was longer on Sunday but since it was not in and around the villages as much we were able to go much faster. Luckily my body was no too sore as Kash and I had ridden the weekend prior to get our muscles back in the game. However, some of the soreness is unavoidable and today my bottom is quite sore and slightly bruised. All in all, it was a really fun weekend and the guides and guy that runs the whole thing were so fun which made it that much better.

On the back of a Boda Boda

Day 1 post riding with Kash and Arwen

Our group for the weekend, the other two girls were from the UK

Jack Daniel's cut from rolling on the glass bottle

Dan and Francis washing down Nile Gold after a rather dusty ride

Me with my trusty horse for the weekend, JD 



The view of the Nile just down the hill from the Haven

I could have stayed there happily all day

Watching the sunset



Gorgeous colours with the view of the Nile from the Haven

Fresh coffee, my book, and the Nile in the background made for a relaxing morning

Riding in a section of the rainforest

Kash and Arwen at the top of one of the hills

Just before setting off on a gallop through the sugar cane plantation

Hope you all have had a great week.

Jess



Week 9: Classes, Cantering, and the Circle of Life

Well with week 9 being over that means that ¾ of my time in Uganda is also over yet it still feels like I was only just planning this whole trip. I’m sorry if you’re all sick of reading my amazement with how fast time has passed but it is true and on the bright side you’ll only have to hear it a few more times!

Last Sunday, Kash and I met up with friends from our Murchison Falls Safari again at one of the fanciest places in Kampala, the Speke resort. This is a giant resort that was built back in 2007 for the commonwealth conference that was held in Uganda so the presidents and prime ministers had nice place to stay. It is located on the outskirts of Kampala at the shores of Lake Victoria. There they have a gorgeous olympic size outdoor pool where for a small fee you can spend the day. That is exactly what we did, if we weren’t in the pool we were soaking up the sun and either reading or just chatting. It was a lovely relaxing day getting to see another side of Kampala. All of us there decided that if you were to come to Uganda and stay in a place like that you would have a completely flawed sense of the country. When we were there it felt more like we were at a fancy beach resort in some developed country not in Uganda where a 10 min drive away will lead you to people living without running water or electricity. I am grateful that I have had such amazing opportunities while here to really see what life in Uganda is like since even staying at the university is far from what most Ugandan’s experience.

 

 

AHHHH not too bad for being on a co-op placement

Alice and Brianna enjoying the best of both worlds, tanning while enjoying the refreshing pool

Kash going for a swim

 On Monday, classes began for the ICMI diploma students. These are the same students that we went around and visited with Edward in May and June so it was very nice to see them all again and meet the few that we had not visited. These students are on their 3^rd semester of the program which has a total of 4 semester. Kash and I have been helping each morning with the class that Edward teaches, Organizational Development. The students also have Health Information Systems in the afternoon and Accounting in the evening taught by other Profs, but Edward recommended that it would be more worth our time to do other things in the afternoons/evenings. Helping Edward involves sitting in on his lecture which is from 8 until anytime between 10 & 11, and then helping the students with whatever work Edward has assigned them that day. Sometimes this is just answering some simple questions the students have or other times this means facilitating class discussions on case studies they have been looking at. Then by 1 or 2 it is lunch and after lunch we head off and do our own thing. It has been kind of nice being back in a classroom setting and taking things a little bit slower instead of long days going into Kampala. Monday, Tuesday, and Friday afternoon we just stayed around campus where I worked on my co-op project and studied for the MCAT and Kash worked on her med school applications. Although we were told there would be very little to no rain in July this week has had its fair share of rain, and it seems when it rains the Wi-Fi often stops working. It has particularly bad this week, often we will get one day a week where the Wi-Fi is down however two afternoons/evenings this week it shut off and then it shut off Friday afternoon and has not begun working yet (it is now Sunday evening). Luckily yesterday afternoon it began working around the classrooms and things and just isn’t working at our guesthouse so we have been able to get some work done but not as much as we would like.

Some of the students busy working 

 

The pesky rain that ruins our wireless

Wednesday afternoon, we went to Mukono hospital. We had been told that Wednesday afternoon/evening is a time they do surgeries so we were hoping there would be procedures to observe. We were in luck as there were 4 procedures done that afternoon/evening. First we observed a hernia removal although once the surgeon got a look at the hernia he decided not to remove it as it was right beside major vessels and was not worth the risk. Next was a simple removal of a liposarcoma, the patient had developed a growth on their side which was just a sac full of fat, this was a very basic procedure of cutting off the growth and stitching up the wound. The next two procedures were C-sections which both resulted in healthy little girls. It is still amazing to watch a tiny person be pulled out of another human being and knowing it grew from a tiny egg, man the human body is crazy!! Kash and I were taking great pride in the fact that our tanned skin is basically the same colour as an African baby that has been in fluid for 9 months, the nurses and surgeon just laughed at us and began calling the first baby Mzungu. It was a very successful afternoon and we hope to spend the remaining Wednesdays we have doing the same thing.

After experiencing the beginning of life of Wednesday we saw the other side of the coin as a young boy at ACHERU lost his life Thursday morning. Kash and I left classes after the lecture as the students did not need any assistance so we had enough time to go out to ACHERU. As we arrived there was quite a commotion and they were loading the young boy into ACHERU’s truck to rush him off to the hospital. After asking some questions we learned that within less than 24 hours the boy had begun to feel unwell. The previous day he had been doing very well and was making great progress in his walking, they even figured he would be discharged very soon. Later that day he had barely any appetite and was beginning to look pale. The next morning he was doing better and had some breakfast however after breakfast things took a turn for the worse. We do not know the details but it was said the boy took a big deep last breath and then lost consciousness. This is when we arrived to the situation. The boy was then rushed off to the nearest hospital with his caregiver and a few staff members. Very slowly people began to return to their normal day’s work and we were helping teacher Juliet in the classroom. Not long after that a staff member arrived to alert us the boy had been declared dead upon arrival to the hospital. The truck then returned to ACHERU with the boy still there as the nearest hospital does not have any morgue facilities. It was heartbreaking to see the caregiver clutching the child’s body and then exiting the vehicle and collapsing on the ground where she remained crying out for quite some time. The child's body was brought into one of the examination rooms where the nurses worked to clean the boy up to prepare him to be transported elsewhere. This really shocked ACHERU as it was the first child they have ever lost and the whole facility was feeling it. The rest of the day, understandably, very little work was done and we returned to Mukono with some of the staff earlier than normal. It was unclear as to the cause of the child’s death but they believe it may have been a blood clot. It is my understanding that a post mortem was to be done to determine the actual cause but lots of the conversation was in Luganda and not English as that is more comfortable for them to speak. All in all it was a very tragic situation and the boy will be greatly missed, he was such a bright light in the world he always had a beaming smile and was one of the smartest children in the classroom.

RIP James, your smile will be missed

Saturday was a quiet day with a trip into Kampala to do some errands that are not possible to do in Mukono. Today (Sunday), we were off to a place near Jinja to do some horseback riding. Next weekend we are going on an overnight horseback trip where we will go through villages, plantations, and along the Nile. The company strongly suggested that we come the weekend before hand and do a half price hour long ride to stretch out the muscles and refresh ourselves in the saddle. It was a great ride going through the nearby village where we had opportunities to trot and canter with the horses. I have never done too much horseback riding so I was a little nervous at first but that quickly subsided as it began to come back to me. Kash had done quite a bit of horseback riding when she was younger so she was having a great time being back in the saddle as it had been a while since she rode as well. We are both very happy that we did the short ride today as already we are able to feel some slight muscle soreness and definite sits bones soreness. Next weekend we will be riding for 4-5 hours each day so hopefully we won’t get quite as sore then having got it out of the way this weekend. It also gave us a nice taste of what it to come next weekend so we are even more excited now.

Shameless horseback selfie

Going through one of the villages

My trusty companion domino

Kash thanking Sambuca for not killing her (he didn't really like the dogs in the villages)

 Hope all is well in your lives.

Jess

Week 8: Graduation and Ggaba Beach

Well it has been another busy week here in Uganda. This week was our last full week of volunteering for a little while as classes begin next week and run for 3 weeks. During that time we will be busy helping out with the classes instead of being in the hospitals and such.

On Wednesday we spent the day at ACHERU where the kids have become very comfortable with us. The young ones are now at the point where they will be climbing all over us and not letting go when it comes to the end of the day and we have to leave. It is awesome to feel so loved from the kids. There was also quite the drama at ACHERU on Wednesday, a bunch of the people from the north decided to go on a hunger strike. From my understanding, some people had missed dinner the night before and were quite upset about this. I’m not sure if they just missed being told to come for dinner or if they were at the market and there was no food when they returned or what. These people rallied others and decided they were not going to eat. The staff tried to reason with them and explain the situation and how it was not the facilities responsibility to make sure everyone has dinner, they serve at specific times and if you miss dinner that is your own fault. I guess this was not the first time the staff has seen such a thing occur so they were not too worried and figured the situation would sort itself out. They were right about that as by lunch it seemed everyone was eating again and the situation had settled.

Cathy thought it was hilarious to steal Kash's glasses and wear them herself

All the kids wanted to help do Kash's hair, she had a lovely knot by the end of it

It seems everywhere we go we have a herd of children following us

Friday we were invited to attend the graduation ceremony for the university. There were more than 1200 graduates but only 290 attended the ceremony, of those present about 10 were from ICMI. One of the graduates is also the administrator at ACHERU that we know and love so she invited us to lunch at her house after the ceremony. The ceremony was pretty typical of any convocation and they did a good job of making it so fairly fast considering the number of graduates. The families of the graduates were quite entertaining to watch as they would get so happy standing up cheering and dancing when their relatives name was called. The excitement is understandable as for many of these families it was quite a struggle to produce the fees needed to send their kids to university so seeing them accomplish what the families worked so hard to make happen must be very exciting…or they are so happy they no longer have to pay the school fees. After the ceremony we went with Joyce, the ACHERU administrator, to pick up her kids from school so they could all go to a photo studio and get their pictures taken to commemorate the day. Once the pictures were all done we went to Joyce’s house where we met her extended family and close friends and joined them for lunch. Calling the meal lunch isn’t quite appropriate as by the time we were eating it was more like 5pm which for us is more considered an early dinner. It was a lovely meal however and very kind of her to welcome us into her home and allow us to join the celebration.

Joyce with her parents before the ceremony

A bunch of the ICMI graduates from the Bachelors program

Joyce with her husband and sons cutting her graduation cake

Joyce's daughter Esther and I, she loved playing with my hair and having thumb wars

 Today (Saturday) we met up with some of the people that had been on our Murchison Falls trip to go to Ggaba beach on the outskirts of Kampala. The Ggaba beach definition of beach and our definition of beach must be very different as there was not really much of a beach at all. There was a little bit of dirt between the grass and Lake Victoria but it was sectioned off and not accessible. We still had a lovely time sitting out in the sun having some freshly caught tilapia. In the later afternoon, we went to a hotel up on a hill top near where some of them stay which had a gorgeous view out over the lake. It was the perfect ending to the day having a drink looking out over the lake as the sun went down. As the sun was setting, Kash and I decided we should be on our way as it is a bit of a commute back to Mukono and we didn’t want to have to navigate the taxi park in the pitch black. Our timing was perfect and we were in the proper taxi heading back to Mukono just as things were starting to get really dark. That’s one of the downside to being right on the equator, there are no long summer days, the sun sets around 7-7:30 all year long.

The view of Lake Victoria from Ggaba Beach

 

The lunch menu had three things big fish, large fish, and extra large fish

Looking out over Lake Victoria from Cassia lodge up on the hill top

 

I can’t believe how quickly each week passes, before I know it my family will be joining me here and we will be off on safari. It is bittersweet thinking of my time here coming to an end. Part of me is very excited to get home and enjoy Victoria with food that is not rice and beans, but on the other hand it will be hard to say goodbye to Uganda and all the amazing people we have met. Luckily I still have another month before I have to face that!

Hope you are all enjoying your summer!

Jess