Update from the Dark Continent

So we have been living here for over a month now, and have experienced some power outages here and there, mostly for just a couple of hours a day, 4 or 5 times a week. This past week, we have come to fully understand why this is the Dark Continent. We have been without power at our house and at the clinic for 10 days now and no sign of it coming back on any time soon. We have heard maybe by Thursday but who knows.  (Side note: I am writing this from the clinic right now, because their generator is running, and there is a HUGE lizard of some sort walking around the room. Bet you don’t see that in your clinic back home. ) Anyways, not having power has honestly not been as terrible as I thought it was going to be. We were warned that this happens often, so I had been anticipating it. We make due by not buying anything that has to be refrigerated, doing the house work before 7pm when you can no longer see anything, cooking dinner by candlelight and head lamp, and trying to do all of our emails and everything at the clinic as much as possible. It’s actually been kind of fun at times. It feels like we are camping. We hang our head lamp from our mosquito net above the bed at night and play cards. That way we are not bothered by as many bugs interrupting our games. We have also been almost too busy to even care that there is no power. We do miss our fan at night and a hot shower would be most appreciated, but I try to take my showers during the heat of the day. This is probably more information than you want to know, but we have definitely stopped washing our hair every day. Speaking of hair, Newman FINALLY let me cut his hair on Sunday. It was really rainy outside all afternoon and nowhere for us to go really, so after some convincing, he let me cut it. I must say I think it turned out rather nicely. It was driving me crazy how long it had gotten, and he said it was making him really hot, so we were both satisfied in the end. I however will not be letting him cut my hair!

So just a few more updates on things we have been doing. Last week was a pretty standard week of working at the clinic. Wednesday we went over to our friend Maggie’s house for her birthday dinner. She is a Peace Corps Volunteer. We had a Mexican fiesta, and the food was amazing. Everyone pitched in, and even though we ate everything in the dark, we still had a really good time. Michael and Amanda headed off for Kampala on Friday and Amanda will be gone for the whole week, but Michael will come back midweek. Newman and I will ride with Michael next Thursday to Kampala for the weekend. The boys have some meetings to go to and then we also have some fun social events as well over the weekend. It will be nice to get a hot shower and some good food and good company for a few days. We love Masindi, and it is definitely more our speed, but Kampala is a nice retreat now and then.

We went on a fun little outing on Saturday with the Pharmacy students that are here and Mustafa who is a local boda boda (motorcycle) driver. He traded his boda boda for a car and took us to the Rhino Santuary which is about an hour or so outside of Masindi. It is the only place in Uganda other than the zoo where there are rhinos. As soon as we arrived, we met up with our ranger who hopped in our car, AK47 in hand of course, and took us to a field where we got out. He gave us all gum boots to wear because he said we are going Rhino tracking and we would be tracking the rhinos on foot. Apparently the group that got there before us did not like that idea and they turned around and came back. They wanted to see the rhinos from their car. We were happy to get out and walk with them. As soon as we got out of the car, there were 3 large rhinos drinking in a pool of water in front of us. We were told that it was very rare to see them that quickly. I can’t remember 2 of their names, but one of them was named Obama because he was the first male born on the sanctuary.  His father is Kenyan and his mother is American and they said “Yes we can!” (Rhino's were hunted to extinction in Uganda in 1983 and have just recently been reintroduced through the sanctuary we visited.  There are 14 rhino's in the country and we saw 5 of them.)  We also walked a little ways through a large heard of long horned cows and made our way to a shady spot where a large mother and her baby named “Angel” were sleeping. It was pretty amazing. We got as close as about 50 yards from them. It was well worth the trip and we were back in Masindi by early afternoon.

We also went to St. Mathew’s for the first time, which is the Anglican Cathedral in town just down the street from us. It was a nice service and it was in English. We were the only white people in the packed church, so we definitely stood out. They came to us in the middle of the service and asked us to write down our names so that they could introduce us, which they did at the end of the service. We were at first introduced correctly, but by the end of the service they were calling us Newman, the doctor, and his nurses. We had two pharmacy students with us so I guess to them we were all nurses and Newman, since he is the head of the medical clinic, is obviously a doctor. It was pretty funny.

I will leave you with some pictures of the rhinos, the random fair that was in town, etc.... Enjoy and we love you all! Just a reminder that if you feel called to give to PMI in any way, you can do so on their website at www.palmettomedical.org. They have some really amazing projects going on and they are doing everything due to private donations. So, please pray and if you can…give. Thanks!!

These children are our neighboors and Lynn, my mother-in-law, sent a soccer ball over with the May team which the children REALLY loved. This is a picture of Newman giving it to them.

This is a leopard that was at the fair.

This is a camel at the fair. Newman and I did not get on it, but Michael and Amanda did.

Michael and Amanda on the camel.

Our ranger at the Rhino Sanctuary

The first 3 rhinos we saw. The one closest to us is Obama.

Walking through the heard of cows.

Newman working with Joseph, the clinic's administrator, and Wilson who helps us out and also helps out at the clinic is standing behind Newman.

May Team 2012

Hey Everyone!

This was a huge week. We had the PMI May team arrive on Saturday night the 5^th and stay through Saturday the 12^th here in and around Masindi. The short term PMI mission trips for those of you who do not know are about 10 days long and have anywhere from 30ish to 60ish people usually from the U.S. come over to Uganda to run outreach clinics. Outreach clinics means that they do not work in the clinic here in Masindi, although they stay in Masindi, but rather they go to different sites in nearby villages to see patients who usually would not be seen otherwise. We drive anywhere between 30 minutes out of town to 2 hours away to set up these clinics in either school houses or churches. We usually see around 300 or so patients a day. The patients are registered in the morning when we arrive and are always already in a long line which they formed early that morning or maybe even the night before. Some camp out and walk long distances to be seen. After they are registered they move through the clinic which flows from Triage, to Providers, to PT/OT, to Glasses, to Dentist, to the Pharmacy. Some patients may not go through all of those steps depending on their needs and who we have on the trip. Some trips there are not any dentists. We had a great team this week of about 60 people which included a lot of OT students, some PT, a dentist, several great providers, some nurses, and various other students and non-medical people. These weeks provide a great opportunity for students from every area because of the variety of cases we see and because of the ability they are given to practice their skills. Some PA or Med students are paired up and able to perform as a provider with the other providers close by, the nursing students get to perform like nurses in triage and other areas, and the pharmacy students get to run the pharmacy.

When the team arrives, we always go  first to the Family Spirit Orphanage which is in town. The kids are always so excited to see us, and they quickly take your hand and show you around everywhere. They are so proud of what they have which is not much at all. Their small tripple stacked bunk beds usually have about 4 children sleeping on each mattress every night. They put on a little show for us with songs and dancing. I found it very amusing when we drove up to see almost every child in a Porter Gaud PE uniform. I guess a previous group must have brought a bunch over from home. I recognized a few of the last names on them and there is a picture below of some of them. One has the name Huey, so I guess it was either Gordon or James Huey's shirt. If anyone reads this and knows them, please tell them that their shirt is being loved.

This week we saw some pretty amazing things as usual at the clinics. There was a young girl about 10 years old at one site who comes every time a PMI teams comes. She was born without a sternum and you can see her heart beating through her chest. It’s pretty amazing, and she gets along pretty well with the way it is. A previous team had made her a shield to wear but she did not have it any more, so the PT/OT group made her a new one. Another girl at the same site came in with a cast on her leg. She is 7 years old and she was having pain in her lower leg. She went to the government hospital 4 months ago and without doing x-rays to confirm the leg was broken, they put a cast on her and told her to come back in 4 months. It turns out her leg was not broken but that she had a bone disease which was causing the pain. The worst part was that she developed a major wound which went all the way to the bone and was extremely infected and gangrenous. It was determined by our team that she would need the leg amputated to save her from becoming septic and perhaps dying. Newman contacted out clinic and some local doctors to find out the cost of the operation. The PT/OT group graciously offered to pay for her operation and treatment. We will be watching this patient and will hopefully be able to fit her for a prosthetic leg in the future.

We finished up the week with a night at the beautiful Para Safari Lodge for one night. We enjoyed the pool and went on a 3 hour safari where we saw giraffes, hippos, water buffalos, wart hogs, antelopes, water bucks, elephants, heartbeast, oribi, and many other deer like animals.

It was a busy week but a great week. We are back home now relaxing and the team is still in flight towards home. Thanks so much to our family who sent us things from home. We just ate some Mac and Cheese for dinner which was a huge treat. Also, a big HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all of the mothers and especially our mothers and grandmothers. We love you all so much and are so blessed to have such amazing mothers in our lives.

Below are a couple pictures from the week. Enjoy!

My first week at the clinic and other updates

Hello Everyone!

I hope you all enjoyed Newman’s post. I’m sorry that mine are not as funny or entertaining. I am going to try to keep everyone informed and updated, while Newman will probably focus more on the humorous things that come with living here as there are many.  

I would say that we have become pretty comfortable here by now. We know how to get what we need for the most part, and we have begun to form relationships with the people here. We have been welcomed so warmly by everyone we have met. I just walked by a man who I don’t think I have ever met and he asked me, “How is Newman?”  Everyone knows we are the new Mazungus in town even if we have not officially met. The family that I have mentioned before that lives on our footpath to the clinic gave us a taste of Jack fruit last night on our walk home. It was actually very tasty. I dropped off some tangerines on my way to work this morning to repay the favor. I did not tell Newman I had done this, and he asked me, “Why are the children asking me for more oranges?” They are such a sweet family, I couldn’t resist.

So to recap the last few days:
Saturday, Amanda drove Newman and I to the sugar plantation close by which has a private club with a pool and golf course. We went for a couple hours that afternoon just to get away and relax. It’s another thing that is just good to know it’s there. Michael had a lot of work to do for his master’s program, so he couldn’t join us, but we went back to the house and grilled steaks and had a delicious dinner. The “grill” that we used was simply a steel box with legs and a couple layers of chicken wire on top. A little makeshift, but it worked!  On Sunday, there was a big soccer tournament going on in town, and PMI had a team which played 2 games and won both! We went to watch some of it and it was a really fun community event. They had music and a lot of people came out to watch. It was good team building for the clinic staff as well. To continue to staff bonding, there was a party that night at one of the local hotels for all of the staff as a thank you for their hard work and also as a welcome to Newman and me. We had local food which was pretty good, and then they started the dancing, or should I say Newman and I started the dancing. They insisted that we start the dancing by having us get in the middle of the room and dance to a slow song in front of everyone. The song of choice was a Celine Dion song, which I cannot remember right now which one, but let’s just say it was quite hilarious and embarrassing. They immediately started laughing at us when we started to dance, and we quickly motioned for everyone else to join in which they happily did thank goodness! They quickly changed the music to a more up-beat song, and even the babies could dance better than me. One of the staff’s sons, Jack, who is about 3 or 4 had on a 3 piece dark suit and nice black shoes and he was cuttin’ a rug! The next day at the clinic, he spent a few hours on a bed in the hall sleeping. It must have taken everything out of him.

Monday was my first day at the clinic and it was also our one year anniversary! We both worked for a half day and then went to the Masindi Hotel for the afternoon. We spent pretty much the whole time outside opening anniversary cards and gifts and relaxing in their shady courtyard. It was so nice. We then ate a huge yummy dinner. We did not know what to order, so we just ordered a lot. We also had Tuesday morning off, so we had a nice breakfast and then headed back to the clinic that afternoon. That night, 2 pharmacy students from SC showed up for a one month rotation here at the clinic, so we greeted them and they went to the clinic with us that afternoon as well. It’s been nice having more people from home here.

So to sum up my experience so far at the clinic, it’s been really good and I’m figuring out how I can be helpful. I’m still kind of stepping back and observing how they operate right now. I have helped with a few things like starting IVs, giving injections, and making assessments. I taught this week’s CME this morning which is their continuing medical education. I taught on hypertension, and I think it was well understood and received. I am anxious to get into the storage containers which are full of supplies and see what is not being used and if I can train the staff on how to use the supplies so that they are not just sitting there. I have heard several times from them that they think they have some things in the storage containers, but because they don’t know how to use them, they just sit there unused. The staff overall is really great and they have been so kind and helpful to us.

I know this was a long post but I haven’t written anything in a while so I wanted to get everything up to date. There are still more stories I want to share, and I will in future posts. The PMI team from home comes this Saturday so I can’t wait to see everyone. It will be a very busy week but I will try to post some because those trips are pretty amazing. Love to you all and hope to talk with some of you soon!

Below are some pics of the kids that live across the field, and they came to hang out with us. We had just had our laundry done and it was hanging up on the porch. We had our small athletic socks and my sports bras hanging up which I guess looked like small clothes and they asked if they could come see the baby.  I told them there was no baby, and they asked then why do you have these tiny clothes. I just laughed and said there is no baby and gave them some stickers (thanks Lynn by the way) I think they will become frequent visitors.