Week 12: Farewell to Uganda

It’s been 12 weeks since I arrived in Uganda and it has been such an amazing journey! I have learnt and seen so many things that have made me grow as a person in ways I didn’t even imagine. I have come so far from being homesick and feeling out of place the first week to now where the way of life here has become second nature. No longer am I phased when I see a family of 5 on the back of a boda or masses of goats and cattle being led along the road by an 8 year old child. As much as I have enjoyed my time here there are a few things I will not miss too much like eating endless amounts of rice, beans, and matoke(steamed plantain) or being packed my sardines into a taxi and getting stuck beside overweight or smelly people. The memories of my time here will definitely last a lifetime and I will greatly miss the people that have made it that much better!

 

This week was a short week as Monday was a public holiday for the end of Ramadan. Taking advantage of the three day weekend, we hung around Mukono enjoying another quite day of relaxation. On Tuesday and Friday we were at ACHERU, I think this will be one of the things I miss most about my time in Uganda. It has been such a joy interacting with the amazing kids and staff. Being able to witness how far some of the kids have come is such a treat, from being in a wheelchair or on crutches with casts when we first arrived to now walking and running as kids should be and many even returning home. As you can see below the last couple visits to ACHERU were filled with many many pictures to cherish the memories of this great place, it was quite hard to choose a small selection to share with you all. On Friday, Kash and I brought a bubble solution and bubble wands that we had made for the kids to play with. They were having so much fun creating the biggest bubbles they had ever seen and then chasing them around popping them. It was a fantastic way to end our time with the kids and they were all truly enjoying it.

Kash and I with the ACHERU staff taking tea

 

   

Patience loves to pose for the camera

 

 

Story time with teacher Kash

 

With Gideon, he works in the reception area

With teacher Juliet on the left and the accountant Brenda on the right

With nurse Tom, physio Charles, and teacher Juliet

 

One last meal of rice and bean...won't miss this too much

 



Fun with bubbles!!

  

Wednesday was our last visit to Mukono Hospital where we observed three more procedures. The first was a simple C-section where everything went smoothly and there was a healthy baby boy peeing all over the baby table before we knew it. Next there was a young girl who had an obstruction in her ear that was to be removed. The doctor was looking all over for a paperclip to use for the procedure but apparently the hospital was all out. I then remembered when I was at St.Georges Medical School in Grenada the ENT doctor told us that a simple hairpin can be used when the fancier equipment was not around for such a procedure. Luckily, I had a few pins in my hair so I was able to aid the doctor and he quickly turned my hairpin into a tool for ear obstruction removal. It turned out to be what looked like a bit of plant and some cloth in the little girl’s ear. Who knows what she was doing to get that lodged in her ear but I think most people have some embarrassing story about things getting stuck in their ears or nose as a child. The last procedure we saw was on the same man that was in last week for incision and drainage of his abscesses. This week things were MUCH worse, he had severely enlarged testicles with some of the tissue being gangrenous. The smell in the operating theater was something else! The surgeon cut off the gangrenous tissue and removed the pus and who knows what from the enlarged testicles, fortunately it didn’t look like the testicle itself was rotten. The doctor packed up the wound and was going to take another look the next morning to determine if the testicle actually needed removal or if it looked like things would be okay now that the gangrenous tissue was removed. It was a very interesting procedure to end our time at the hospital with…I was feeling very sorry for the man as I imagine that would be bloody painful and he would not have been very comfortable leading up to the procedure or after it for that matter.

Thursday was our last visit to Mengo Hospital and my final visit to the chaos that is Kampala city center. It was a fairly routine day at Mengo, I was working in the lab taking blood samples from patients. There were not too many clients so things were quite slow giving us lots of time to hang around and chat with everyone for a final time.

The homecare and counselling triage area at Mengo

With Sarah the technician who works in the lab

 

One last monkey picture, they are eating ants off the wall beside the guest house

 

Now I am currently at the airport waiting for my flight to Kigali, in Rwanda, where I will meet up with my parents and brothers to begin our two weeks of touring around Rwanda and Tanzania. I am really looking forward to having some relaxation time and getting to see more East African countries with the famjam. I will probably do a post or two about our vacation so this isn’t quite the last blog post, just the last one about Uganda.

Hope everyone is doing well!                                                                                    

Jess