Happy Thanksgiving

I hope that you and your families had a Wonderful Thanksgiving Day! We really have so much to be Thankful for and I feel so Blessed.

It has been 5 weeks at my site and I am finally settling in, at least my bags are unpacked and the furniture that I had them make is in my room! Boy, that was an accomplishment! Furniture is made when you order it, there is no furniture store to go and buy furniture, everything is made when you pay for it. Once it is made in Lira, it needs to be transported back to Iceme (64 kms). Well, my kitchen cabinet was the first to be transported, it was put on the back of a pick up truck on top of jerry cans, rice and other things along with about 20 people and all there belongings from shopping in Lira and traveling. Going to Iceme over the bad roads, with mud and rain.....well you can imagine what shape it was in when I got it to my place. But, it is still functional and that is all that matters. I also had a dresser made and Father transported that in his pick up on another day. It was well kept, but it was rained on. Ugandans say that when it rains on you, an event or things it is a blessing. So now all my furniture has been blessed.

On another note, I have now been to 4 weddings, 1 funeral and have been out into the village a number of times. I will try to post some of the pictures. If not when I go to Kampala over Christmas, I will be able to post pictures on facebook. I have also been working in the health center (HC). You would not believe the condition of the HC and patient population. The medical practice is so different, which I had expected. However, some of the cases we see I just cannot believe that people are still living. We have lightening alot here before a thunderstorm and a women and her 3 month old child was brought into the HC after being struck by lightening. Actually, they were sitting under a tree, the mother was making brooms and the 10 year old girl was playing around the tree. It is typical to find a young girl (7 and above) with an infant strapped to her back (they carry babies on there backs here). Anyway, she was playing and the 10 year old girl got struck by lightening and was killed immediately. The blot went right though her body, the infant was thrown off her back and burned across the face. The mother got the current, since she was so close to the incident. They brought the mother and the infant into the HC, but only after they did what they believe to be the treatment of choice. They believe that when you are struck by lightening, you must be carried to the well and submerged, because if not a frog will grow inside you. Also, the baby was rubbed down with all these herbs, weeds and grass before bring them to the HC.

Another incident worth mentioning that occurred was a patient that had come in with active TB. He had been to the hospital where they opened his chest to drain-what they believed to be the pocket of TB. Well, now it was infected and after urging them to go back to the hospital for aggressive treated, they elected not to go. Why, because no transportation and they said that if God wants to take him, then he will die; otherwise he will get better. Either way they were fine with the outcome. He died the next morning. But it was hard, when you know he could be alive today.

Talk about different methods of medical practice for treatment; we had a 20 year old boy come to the HC intoxicated. He was started on IV’s and given antibiotics, much different than we would have treated him in the States. He died that night. However, the week before a 35 year old came in after the wedding in the same condition and he got better and went home.

I was fortunate to go with the Health Inspector the other day to complete a HC survey for the World Health Organization (WHO) to find out the needs, medical practice, data, supplies, medical equipment and drugs. It was a 20 page survey and took us 3 hours to complete. This was a HC II and I was surprised at what they are doing with nothing. I really had to question the answers that were put down, sometimes the answers were different than what was said. Women in the North are still intimated by men and when a question was asked and the answer was given (even though it was not the wanted answer), it was asked again in a different way until the answer was what was expected i.e. Do you have written policies and guidelines? Clearly the answer was no, until a few posters on the wall met the criteria. Drugs were not readily available, but that is not what you want to put on paper. No wonder the staff have challenges to meet the medical needs of the people. It also was heartbreaking to find out that needles, syringes and soiled dressings were just thrown in a pit in the ground, the assistances were instructed to burn it daily during the survey. There was suppose to be 9 staff members at the HC II, however only 5 were on staff, so they were functioning without 4 staff members. They were lacking a midwife and many women were pregnant. They told me that the Government has to recruit, they do not recruit and hire.

On a lighter note, we will be going out to the villages and doing HIV testing. My PCT presentation was on recruiting Village Health Team males, train them to do HIV testing and then go to the villages and talk with the men in hopes to increase the number of males tested for HIV. Presently it is very low, so it was good to be able to start mobilizing this idea.

Also, Sr. Gertrude is very interested in learning Healing Touch and wants the staff to learn! So I will set up a weekend to teach them.

Other projects that I am working on is to get more livestock to the North and to see if some of the Bore hole (water supply) can be fixed. Alot of Bore holes were put in throughout Uganda by NGO’s for water supply. At Iceme HC III we had sparks coming out of one of the outlets in the children’s ward so all the electricity had to be turned off until Gulu Electricians come to fix the problem. So since a week before Thanksgiving the HC has not had electricity or water and we still don’t. The rain water tanks are pump driven so when the electricity is out then there is no water pumped. A bore hole sits right next to the HC, however it is not functional. So hopefully, that project will move fast and the HC can have a contingency water supply.

Since I am now doing my own, cleaning, washing and cooking I have realized how long everything takes. Just to do laundry, you have to have 3 buckets of water, so you have to go get water and then wash each piece of cloths, towels, sheets etc. So washing can take up to 2 hours. You have to cook from scratch so that takes time. If you have not soaked beans/peas for 12 hours, then it takes a good hour or more for them to cook! No fast food microwaves here! However, I made brownies from scratch the other day (no brownie box mix either) and it was really good! You really appreciate everything you have in the States, things we take for granted take so long to do here and so much more effort to do them! You have to clean and sweep everyday because of the dust in the air.

One funny note....one day just nothing was going right. We all have those days, but after a rough morning. By rough morning I mean that 4 cows camped in front of my door all night...so you can imagine what was left for me in the morning! Actually, I had to step around them to get out of my door. Also, at 5 am the roaster crowed right next to my window and you know that they crow for a good hour and pretty much stay in one place! Anyway, later in the morning I went to the latrine, as my pants came down so did all my keys and ALL my keys dropped smack dab down the latrine! You can imagine I just stood there.....thinking, “Oh my Gosh! Now what am I going to do....I can not get into my home...etc. etc.” Anyway, I had to try and get the spare keys from my window...you should have seen me! I learned very fast that you do not leave anything out in your room if your windows are opened that you don’t want to get taken even though the windows have bars on them! It reminded me of WLA when I always heard of staff dropping their beepers into the toilet, only my keys are not retrievable.

Hopefully, I will meet up with another PCV and go to Gulu to get my bike next weekend. I have also been given permission to go visit another nurse that is doing outreach in Southwest Uganda. She already has sacks of educational material made up. So I hope that I can use some of her ideas in the villages! I hope to do that maybe a week before Christmas, because they say that travel during the middle of December to January 4th, all transportation is double the price. So it may be hard to travel during that time. So December sounds like it is getting busy!

Well, I think that I have filled you in on what has occurred within the last 3 weeks so that is all for now, stay healthy and stay safe!

Love & Light,

Mari